Comments by "Dennis Weidner" (@dennisweidner288) on "TIKhistory" channel.

  1. Absolutely. So you notice how socialists try to hide where their ideology leads by denying that evil regimes was socialism. The NAZIs are just one example. Those who honestly admit the atrocities of socialism simply deny that the regimes involved were socialist. The argument is that Stalinism was a perversion of socialism. The problem is that this is the way all socialist regimes behaved with varying degrees of brutality. I have had many internet discussions, and I always ask, name one successful socialist regime. Or one socialist regime that did not use extreme violence. And they never take me up on the challenge. Some suggest European democratic socialism. But these are not socialist regimes. These countries do not ban private property. They allow free trade unions and have core capitalist economies.
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  2. Awakeandalive1 Fair enough, but my experience with modern academics is the extent that they are motivated by not-so-hidden agendas.
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  3.  @chriscross7494  Well I don't think it is that simple. In Russia and China, historians are state employees and have to write what the state tells them to write. In the Arab and wider Muslim world, your life expectancy is short if you challenge the societal Islamic norms. Just look at Solomon Rushdie and he is not an isolated example. In America, historians are supposedly free to write, but for a century after the Civil War, the Lost Cause narrative dominated. And today most academics have liberal and as a result, woke outlooks. For example, most university professors are highly critical of capitalism even though the only countries with prosperous economies have core capitalist economies with the exception of a few oil-rich countries. And there has not only 1never been a successful country with a socialist economy, but many of the efforts have left us with horrific mass graves. Yet as well as the media academics continue to push socialism. Just look at PBS. Think of all the programs highlighting issues with our capitalist economy. How many programs deal with the fact that in a little than a generation, market (capitalist) reformed economies mostly in Asia have thrust some ONE BILLION people out of abject poverty into the prosperous middle class--the greatest creation of wealth and prosperity in human history and in all in barely more than a generation.
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  4. There is no way Britain could have won the War after the fall of France-which was not Churchill's fault. The traditional strategy could not have worked. The Soviets were supplying Hitler. Then after Barbarossa, Europe was going to be dominated by either the Soviets or NAZIs Tik is right, Churchill got a great deal wrong. But Churchill's importance is that he got the two fundamental matters right: 1) Britain had to stay in the war, no negotiation with Hitler. 2) American participation was vital. For which he laid the foundation for the Anglo-American alliance.
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  5.  @mcpartridgeboy  Bravo. I hope it includes the realization that socialism destroys wealth while capitalism creates wealth.
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  6.  @karaaslan7402  It is amazing, isn't it? But our universities are filled with socialists. Socialism is s very appealing ideology, only as you can testify to, it does not work. What is amazing is that nowhere else in America have prices increased so much as in academia where the professors constantly castigate America. They decry capitalists but insist on students paying high fees to finance their bloated salaries. They can influence young people because the metric they set up is to compare America to utopia. Of course, compared to perfection. America does not do well. Compared to other actual real countries it is a very different story which is why people from all over the world are voting with their feet to come to America.
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  7.  @jloiben12  Well, I was disagreeing that an honest conversation on MacArthur cannot be had. I think most WW II historians agree on the major issues. He botched the defense of the Philippines badly. And unlike Kimmel and Short, he had forewarning. Not that the Japanese could have been stopped, but that a competent commander could have done much better. The Army wound up on Bataan without supplies. Air assets were poorly handled. He opposed Watchtower (Guadalcanal). He treated the Australians in New Guinea badly -- primarily because his reputation was not burnished by their victories. His focus was on his reputation. He competently handled the South Pacific campaign. He competently handled the liberation of the Philippines. He brilliantly handled the occupation of Japan.
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  8. Absolutely. And who did they elect in 1945? SOCIALISTS. Compare that to the German Economic Miracle. https://www.histclo.com/country/ger/chron/20/pw/dec/1950/gem.html
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  9.  @tomazlah8238  Just like it was Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Chavez, Maduro, Mao, the Kims, Pol Pot, etc to blame on the failure!?! Absolute nonsense. It was the system that did not work. And the system that created those monisters. did not work. There have been about 25 socialist regimes. And not one of them worked. I challenge you to name one single prosperous socialist economy. JUST ONE. They could create military power. They could not create a productive, prosperous economy. How many failures does it take to convince you that socialism does not work? The only prosperous economies are capitalist economies.
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  10.  @CarrotConsumer  I think you are absolutely correct. With one exception. Marx may have talked about worker control of the means of production. But when the Socialists actually take control, they suppress free trade unions. It is only in Capitalist countries that you have free trade unions. In Socialist countries, the state/party seizes control of the unions.
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  11.  @AFGuidesHD  This demonstrates your inability to support your opinions with fact. European colonialism is an important subject, buit it had nothing to do with Hitler and World War II. Britain went to war to stop NAZI aggression pure and simple. Incidentally, Hitler approved of British colonialism. It was Roosevelt that was critical.
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  12.  @Tiberius_I  What is your source about Stalin's comment? Remember that the Sovits had teams in America helping to choose what was sent.
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  13. But the Soviet Union did not survive.
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  14.  @elchinpirbabayev5757  If Marx and his 'Das Kapital' are correct economics, can you please answer these two questions: 1) Why has the Soviet Union and Communist Eastern Europe been consigned to the Ash Can of history? 2) Why after Communist China went Capitalist has it surpassed the Soviet Union and Russia?
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  15.  @mcpartridgeboy  I would add two more benefits of capitalism: 1) prosperity and 2) innovation/invention.
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  16. High octane aviation fuel was badly needed by the Red Air Force.
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  17.  @johnross2924  I think that is correct, but it is also a fact that the Soviets won because the Western Allies were fighting on their side. The importance of Lend Lease is well understood, less well understood is the degree to which the War in the West diverted resources from the Osrkrieg--the decisive campaign of the War. The Ostheer had to fight the War with limited supplies and the support they needed. Over half of the German War economy was diverted to the War in the West. German MANPOWER was largely committed to the East, but German INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT went primarily to fight the War in the West.
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  18. Absolutely. Remember most of the Ostheer was unmotorized infantry using horse and carts.
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  19. @Awakeandalive1 What you say is very true, but it is the inevitable aspect of being Human. What is going on in academia is very different and shameful. Academics are using their position to propagate their left-wing views and prevent the free discussion of ideas.
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  20. Joseph O'Brien Itis a disgrace what is happening in our universities and schools.
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  21.  @Comradez  Yes and too often the reason the Germans did not have oil is ignored. It is because the War in the West made it 1) impossible for the Germans to import oil and 2) diverted a real deal of the oil they had from the Ostkrieg. The Ostheer was 80 percent unmotorized infantry. It does not take much oil to power horse carts or to move men on foot. Ir does require oil to power air and naval operations. This is in sharp contrast to 1939-41 when the Soviet Union provided vast quantities of oil to the Germans making possible the conquest of France and the Battle of Britain. Facts usually ignored by Rusian authors who claim the War in the West was a "sideshow".
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  22. The Lend Lease trucks could be used to move artillery.
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  23.  @Tiberius_I  I think yoi are correct. The Soviets were remarkable in their ability to form new units and move them to the front. Many were poorly trained. The Germans constantly underestimated the Red Army. In the run up to the Winter Offensive before Moscow (December 1941), the Stalingrad Uranus offensive (Novenber 1942) and Kursk (July1943), the OKW assessment was that the Red Army had been bled dry. It is also important to note that the Soviets after Barbarossa were steadily building up their artillery while the Germans were pulling back their artillery (and aircraft) to defend their cities from Allied bombers.
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  24. A very interesting and balanced discussion. Thanks for this. Although I think Eisenhower was indispensable. He was one of the major reasons that the American that the Anglo-American Alliance worked.
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  25.  @666mrdoctor  I never said Hitler abolished private property. He abolished the rule of law. Not only could they institute laws by fiat, but they could act without any legal basis, just drag people off to the concentration camps--just like the NKVD in the Soviet Union. Thus there was no legal protection for private property. As a result, the Government could seize anyone's property as they saw fit. While the Government did not seize ownership of all private property, they did, however, seize control of private property so private owners had to bow to state demands. Those that did not, had their property seized. German had a state-controlled economy like the Soviet Union. Stalin had Five Year Plan. Germany had Four Year Plans. Abd the Four Tear Olan staff headed by Goering essentially created a centralized state planning executive https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/tol/ger/eco/ne-4yp.html You have an incorrect view of Communism. A huge government exc=utive was not what Marx and Engked wrote about at all. That was the Leninist addition and why we speak of Marxist-Leninism. The Leninist addition was not only obscene brutality, but statism. It was necessary because you need statism to have a totalitarian regime. Just one more example of why the NAZI and Soviet regimes were so similar.
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  26.  @CallanElliott  I am a reformed liberal from the years before liberal/progressive meant socialist. I wouldn't say that government can't produce wealth. In a capitalist state, I would agree with you. The government can redistribute wealth, but not create it. In a socialist state where the government owns the means of production, it can theoretically create wealth, but experience has shown us it is more likely to destroy than create wealth. There have been about 25 socialist states beginning with the Soviet Union. All of them have failed to create wealth and many have left mass graves in their wake.
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  27. These videos, especially the Russian losses never address why the Russian casualties were so much higher than the German casualties. Here I am not just talking about Brvarissa (1941), but throughout the Ostkrieg. And even in the great Russin victories, their losses were enormous. Of course, there were many factors, but there was one overriding factor, and the Soviets as well as the Russians today do not want to admit it.
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  28.  @johnwolf2829  Absolutely. The fighting spirit of the Romanians, Hungarian, and Italians is an open question, but rarely mentioned is how poorly supplied and equipped they were. You have to realize that 80 percent of the Deutsche Ostheer was unmotorized infantry. Given that you can only imagine the state of the German allies. They had few vehicles and heavy weapons such as effective tanks or anti-tank artillery. Putting such poorly equipped divisions on both flanks of an extended position was the height of military insanity. And the performance of those divisions has to be assessed in terms of how poorly they were equipped. It also leads to a very neglected issue, how poorly German industry performed in producing military equipment. Germany had a much larger industrial base in terms of the heavy industry needed to produce weapons, even before they occupied large areas of the Soviet Union. Yet the Soviets outproduced them in both tanks and artillery. They should have been able to better equip both the Ostheer and their Axis allies. Why they failed to do so is perhaps the most neglected topic of World War II.
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  29.  @xJavelin1  Yes, I was trying to say that the traditional strategy did not work 1939-May 1941 because the Soviet Union was supplying the NAZIs with food, oil, and other critical materials. It is only with Barbarossa that the traditional strategy could be effectively employed.
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  30.  @yvonneblocker5618  Aviation fuel is a poorly covered topic. One reason the American P-51s outperformed the German fighters is access to high-octane aviation fuels. Nit only did the Luftwaffe has trouble obtaining fuel, but they did not have high-octane fuel. The German response was using water-methane injection.
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  31.  @wbertie2604  Just look at the numbers. Where were the 88s and FW-190s which you mention deployed? Most were position in the Reich protecting German cities, not in the East fighting the Red Army. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. It takes a lot of industry to build artillery and planes as well as ships. Notice that when historians describe the Eastern Front, they point out something like 80 percent of German casualties were sustained in the East. In terms of manpower this was the primary German front. But in terms of industry, it was the West. And in the East he Ostheer was on foot -- using horses and carts. One reason the Red Army prevailed in the East was that most of German industry was diverted to supporting the war in the West, ,
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  32. @Берти Вустер Just look at the numbers. Thev88s and other important anti-tank guns were not deployed in the East, but in vast artillery emplacements around German cities to try to take down the Allies bombers.
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  33. It was absolutely morally correct. It was a matter of self defense and played a major role in stopping the murder of tens of millions of people. https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/air/moral/acm-civ.html
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  34. What utter nonsence. He had every desire for war with France. He wanted to avoid war with Britain And America until he had destroyed the Soviet Union and had access to Soviet resources. The Soviet Union as you say was his main goal. But the idea he begged for peace absurd. You might read a little about the Munich Conference. There is no historian of any importance who shares your absurd ideas.
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  35. He offered peace to the Czechs, Poles, and Soviers. He offered peace to the British and French at Munich. Any bone who trusted his offers and assurances was rewarded with war and occupation. Chamberlain trusted him and Britain was nearky desrouyed and occupied.  He invaded neutral countries. He even invaded all his allies. Try reading a little history. There is no historian of any importance who agrees with you. Not one. He started preparing for war the day he seized control over Germany. He made this clear to his generals and admirals. Try dealing with facts like Generalplan Ost. A man of peace does nor plan the murder of tens of mllions of people. I am discontinuing this absurd discussion.
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  36.  @grizzlygrizzle  You are absolutely correct and what has influenced me more than anything in these discussions is the single-parent families. Something like 70 percent of AA children today is born to unwed mothers. This is a percentage far greater than any other group and these elevated levels did not use to be the case as recently as the 50s. As you zero in on, single-parent families began to escalate as liberal policies began to kick in. I don't mean to denigrate unwed mothers (and grandmothers), many against all odds work miracles, But nothing can replace having a dad in the home and a stable home life. (And a major factor in AA poverty. This is one of the matters that AA leaders and the media cover up and just stoke the flames of racial hatred by blaming it all on evil white people. Inevitably when I bring this up I am attacked as a racist.
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  37.  @Iv4Bez  You are correct that Marx did not foresee the need for a powerful state if you were going to create a socialist economy. The Bolsheviks who seized control of Russia (1917) were left with the problem of how to turn Marxist theory into a real economy. And they and every other of the 50 or so regimes that have tried to create a socialist economy inevitably came up with the same conclusion. If you do away with the free market to be the governing force in the economy, you need a powerful state to make and enforce economic decisions. Thus you have state economic planning. Without the free market--a planned economy is inevitable in socialist economies. This is what Lenin and his Bolshevik colleagues decided. And it is what EVERY ONE of the other officials creating a socialist economy has decided.
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  38. @ mcpartridgeboy What is a reformed socialist? Can you name a single economically successful socialist country?
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  39. @ oriontaylor Actually I think Bormann would be less likely to mangle Hitler's comments than the modern-day historians who worked on the books.
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  40.  @xJavelin1 , I think you are correct. Food was the single most important item, but raw materials should not be ignored. Shortages of raw materials impaired the functioning of German war industries.
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  41. Tik, As usual you are absolutely correct. My only point of disagreement is the alliance bit. Now while you are technically correct that the Non-Aggression Pact itself was not an alliance, as you point out ,there were further agreements based on the Pact. The most important being the Secret Codicil Which was perhaps the most evil alliance in history--partitioning all of Eastern Europe and exposing its people to monstrous atrocities.. Anyone who says that the Soviets won the War on their own either have an ideological motive or knows nothing about military history. 1. The ideological crowd that insists that the Soviets won the War alone is primarily the hate America/Britain crowd who do not want to admit the vital importance of democracy and capitalism. The others are Russian nationalists who have no interest in actual history. 2. The other group who thinks that the Soviets won the war alone know nothing about military history. Notice that they mostly talk about MANPOWER--both Soviet and German Any one who has studied military history even minimally knows that manpower is only one element of combat power, an important one, but not the only one. If manpower was all that was important, China would have won the War. World War II was an INDUSTRIAL war. At it was the Western Allies that provided most of the industrial might that defeated the Germans. The Western contribution to the War is often described as limited primarily to Lend Lease. Too often the War in the West is ignored. As you explain, it involved less manpower. (Primarily because of the Soviet role in destroying the French Army and almost destroying the Brutish RAF in 1940.) If nothing else, the War in the West prevented the Germans from getting the oil they needed, which you mention. (Notice the Soviets in sharp contrast provided vast quantities of oil to the NAZIs during 1939-41). But even more importantly, the War in the West forced the Germans to divert most of their Industrial output to fight the War in the West. The central reason for Germany's defeat was that most of their industrial output went West while their Manpower went East--a recipe for disaster in any war. This meant that the Ostheer went East on foot with horse-drawn carts and was poorly equipped and supplied. It was the Red Army that actually defeated the Ostheer, but it was the Western Allies that both helped supply the Red Army and denied the Ostheer the support they needed from German industry.
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  42. I am not sire what you mean by small amounts. This of course is a value judgement. I would rather talk about actual numbers,. See https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/cou/us/aod/ll/llc-sov.html . It would be interesting to note the percentage of high quality (high octane) aviation fuel that was supplied through Lend Lease. I was interested in your reference to rocket fuels. For the Soviets this of course meant Katyushas-- a very important Red Army weapon. Are you saying that Lend Lease provided fuel for these rockets?
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  43.  @НиколайНикакоюс-л2ь  Because someone does not agree with you is not necessarily 'nonsense in the head'. Now I would be interested in an informed discussion of the the aviation fuel situation in the Soviet Union. To have that discussion it is important to understand why the United States shipped aviation fuel to the Soivirts. They did that because the Soviets ASKED FOR IT All of Lend Lease was based ion what the Soviets requested. And those requests were based on what the Soviets determined they needed for their war effort. Now I would be interested in how the Soviets used the American aviation fuel. Are you saying it was only used for the P-40 Air Cobras and other American aircraft.? It is not like the high octane aviation fuel was necessary for American planes to fly. What it did was to improve the performance of the aircraft. One of the reasons American and British aircraft outperformed the Luftwaffe was that the Americans and Brits had access to high octane aviation fuel and the Luftwaffe did not. I would like to see some proof that the performance of Soviet aircraft, especially the fighters, was not boosted by high-octane aviation fuel. It strikes me that it is ''nonsense in the head' to suggest that it was not.
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  44.  @gusjackson3658  There is a huge difference. when you say that "Both sides also crushed and incinerated babies, children and the elderly" it suggests a moral equivalency, Nothing could be further from the truth. During World II some 90 percent of the casualties were civilians-just the opposite of World War I when most of the casualties were military. The reason for this is that a major NAZI war goal was to kill civilians - to eliminate whole peoples. The killing was done by bullet, gas, starvation, and other methods. The Allies did not start the War or start the bombing. Over 90 percent of the civilians killed were killed by NAZIs and the Japanese.
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  45.  @luciusdomitiusaurelianus5334  Well you can look at Wiki for details, but in a nutshell, he was a World War I hero. Responsible for the excessive use of force against the Bonus Marchers. Biotch the defense of the Philippines (1941) and treated the Australian troops under his command terribly (1942-43), and was a primadonna public relations freak. This was balanced by his island-hopping strategy and masterful occupation of Japan.
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  46.  @harrycallahan5018  Of course. ALL slander by its very definition is wrong. Praise and criticism are other matters. No individual is perfect. And becoming a public figure means that they need to be judged by history.
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  47.  @night6724  Where did I say that? Putting words in my mouth suggests to me that you are not an honest interlocutor. My opinion of MacArthur is based on his pitiful performance in the Philippines when the Japanese invaded. And his treatment of the Australians who were the bulk of his forces for most of the New Guinea campaign. In addition, he opposed the Guadalcanal landings and tried to stop it--putting personal prestige over the war effort. His management of the island hopping and the Philippines campaign was excellent. But his crowing achievement was the occupation of Japan.
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  48. John Hargreaves A lot of the post-War problem was due to the Labour Party that the British people elected (May 1945). And it was not just-food. While the German Economic Miracle was remaking Western Europe, British industry was in the doldrums. One of the countless examples that Socialism does not work.
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  49.  @christophersmith8316  Absolutely correct.
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  50. karapuzo1 You are correct. There was a gradual increase in living standards, but that increase was only a fraction of the increases achieved in the Western countries with capitalist economies. Not to mention the Asian Tigers who adopted capitalism. They began with in abject poverty and few if any natural resources. https://www.histclo.com/eco/sys/asia-tig.html
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