Comments by "bart thomassen thomassen" (@thomassenbart) on "The Changing WW2 Historiography... and More! TIK's Q&A 10" video.

  1. Not everyone who was in the German hierarchy, committed war crimes. Also, while the Cold War was descending and until Solzhenitsyn and the Gulag Archipelago, the massive crimes of the USSR were largely ignored and large segments of the West were actively pro Communist. You spend the first 15 minutes not answering the question and dealing with a tangent. The Soviets also waged a war of aggression, Finland, Poland, Baltic States, Bessarabia and of course the Nazi Soviet Pact, in the first place enabled the war. Smolensk in 41 was not a turning point. That is a ridiculous claim and to say so, ignores the basic definition of what a turning point means. Also, throughout this video, I think the term turning point is misapplied. Perhaps what you mean to say is DECISIVE, meaning without this event or situation X could not have happened. Turning points are when the strategic balance switches, meaning the momentum of the war. Clearly the Germans were on the Strategic offensive up to Kursk. Even Stalingrad did not reverse this fact. In the East the balance shifted after Midway, so much earlier. Nothing before Stalingrad, at a minimum, can be considered a turning point in the war for Germany. There are a dozen different means by which the Nazis could have won the war, even with continued conflict with Britain. And the answer given by TIK, basically that, not going to war in the first place, is a bad answer. Also, oil was not a debilitative or crucial component to the prosecution of the war until 44, when the war was already lost. The war could have been won without massive oil supplies before then, especially in 41 or 42. The French definitely did not want to go to war over Poland and without strong British pressure to do so, would never have declared war over this issue. France was far too traumatized by WWI to do it again, sans the British determination to do so.
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  2. Anyone who asserts that defeat was inevitable for the Fascists and Imperial Japan, is simply ignorant of all the alternatives which very easily could have resulted in victory and or not a total defeat of these powers, as actually happened. The USSR came very close to collapse, as did Britain. Also, the USA never need to have come into the conflict at all and without that addition, victory almost certainly could not have been achieved by Britain or the USSR.
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