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

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bucnasty14 Nonsence. The fact that pure capitalism and socialism has never existed does not mean that there have not been many capitalistic and socialist economies--although socialist economizes tend to fail and do not last long.
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@Observer29830 Well said. I think that most Western historians now understand the importance of the Ostkrieg and the monumental achievement of the Soviet people. I think three factors need to be considered which as you point out are not well-received in Russia: 1) Soviet archives were off-limits to Western historians. It is hypocritical to close your archives and then complain that the West is not properly reporting. 2). Lend-Lease was as you mention much more important than the Soviets admitted. 3) Lend Lease was not the only Western contribution to the War. While German MANPOPOWER primarily went East, German INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT primarily went to support the War in the West. This left the Ostheer poorly supplied and supported.
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@Observer29830 You are absolutely correct about Lend-Lease. However, what is also underappreciated is the War in the West. The Germans sent most of their MANPOWER East to fight the Ostkrieg. But most of that manpower was unmotorized infantry on foot with horse-drawn carts. Meaning they were poorly equipped and supplied. (Their Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian allies were even more poorly supplied.) Part of the reason for that is that most of Germany's INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT went West to fight the war in the West. I don't mean to tarnish the epic struggle of the Red Army and Soviet people, only to point out that the victory over the NAZIs was a joint effort.
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@spidrre The Lend Lease tanks certainly improved Soviet logistics.
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@Jukanella Kudos for your English language skills. But it would help if you worked on word meaning. Criticism does not reflect bias if it is based on fact.
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@Jukanella Decent economy? The Soviet economy had a very weak agricultural sector and the industrial economy turned out low-quality consumer goods in limited supply. The Soviets could not export manufactured goods to the West because they were of such low quality. In addition, the raw materials that went into Soviet factories were commonly worth more than the manufactured goods that came out of them. It is why Soviet wags were so far below those in the West. Did you not notice that after the fall of the Soviet Union, most Soviet industrial enterprises went bankrupt? The Soviet economy was not just different, it was inefficient and basically destroyed rather than generated wealth. It was why Siviet living standards were so far below those enjoyed in the West. It was the major reason the Soviets lost the Cold War and was eventually relegated to the ash can of history.
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Socialists are ideologues who carefully filter out facts that do not support their narrative.
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Have you ever compared living standards in Eastern and Western Euyrope and asked yourself why Eastern Europe was so far behind the West. Ad using an expletive is far from a convincing argument to a fact laden video.
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That is a bit different. Socialists fail at creating prosperity. But they are very good at generating military power.
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Absolutely. A good deal of Lend Lease was high value items that the Soviets could not produce or produce in needed quantities: trucks, aircraft, locomotives, communications equipment, aluminum for aircraft production, , and much more. And remember that the Soviets chose what they wanted and had teams in the the States to inspect what was being produced. These team besides carrying out legitimate activities were deeply involved in espionage. This would lead to Venona Papers as many were decrypted. https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/cou/us/aod/ll/llc-sov.html
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@Vlad79500 It may surprise you, but I agree with you. The Eastern front was essential to the Allied victory. What I find rather surprising is that you would write at such length to demonstrate what is widely accepted in the West. There is no important Western historian that does not agree with you, despite the fact that Soviet archives were closed to them for years and once more are severely restricted. I have a substantial website on the Great Patriotic War and fully agree with your assessment that it was the Red Army that tore the heart our of the German Heer. https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/cou/sov/gpw-camp.html What I find that is not widely accepted, especially in Russia. is the vital importance of the Western Front. Now it is true that that the German casualties were primarily suffered by the Ost Heer in the Eastern Front. something like 70-80 percent depending on the source. Now as someone well versed in military matters, you must know is that manpower is not the only factor in combat power. Military equipment produced by an advanced industrial vase is also important. And as I assume you know, the NAZI Ost Heer was not all well equipped Panzer Divisions. In fact most of the Ost Heer was motorized infantry relying on horses and carts for mobility. Now as you point our the German Army had been nin Russia before. That has seized huge swaths of the Tsarist Empire.and knew very well about conditions there and the vast distances -- and thus the importance of motorized transport. So you have to ask why Hitler who was not an idiot, sent the Ost Heer east with horses and carts for transport. The reason for this was that while German MANPOWER was mostly committed in the East, the bulk of German INDUSTRY was devoted to the war in the West. It does not take much industry to build horse carts. It takes a lot of industry to build naval ships and aircraft and vast anti-aircradt artillery emplacements to ring German cities . And both the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine was destroyed in the West. Now I take issue with comments about Lend Lease although you are correct that deliveries in 1941 and 1942 were fairly limited. And you seem to be unaware of America humanitarian aid to the Soviet Union. Both of which I would be happy to discuss with you, but did not want a long response to distract from mny main point that both the Eastern and Western fronts were vital.
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@Vlad79500 Vlad, The link is in Russian and I do not speak Russian. Can you give me his name or a link in English and I will be glad to give you my take.
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@Vlad79500 Vlad. Col. David Glanz is indeed a highly respected American historian. He is provably the best American historian on the Red Army and the struggle on the Eastern Front. As to the quote, I suspect something was lost in translation, not so much your translation of the Russian, but the original translation from English to Russian. I would be very surprised if Col. Glanz said that Lend Lease did not have a significant impact on the War in the East. That was true in 1941-42 because shipments were still limited. Beginning in 1943, however, when American industry was fully retooled for war, Lend Lease began delivering substantial quantities to the Soviet Union. Actually, I have been corresponding with Col. Glanz. We were not discussing Lend Lease, but the point I was making to you. Mainly that while in terns of MANPOWER the Germans were largely committed in the East, in terms of INDUSTRY, the Germans were primarily engaged in the West. I was preparing to respond to his e-mail message. Let me know your e-mail and I will include you in the conversation.
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@Vlad79500 Sorry. Typo. I meanr "Most of it was high QUALITY." Not quantity.
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@Vlad79500 Vlad I can scarcely believe you wrote asking what could Stalin have done. You are well informed about the War. I can nor believe you ask this. Not only did Churchill warn Stalin. So did Roosevelt. He had Magic decrypts from the Jaoamese Embassy in Berlin. Sudpplatov describes that front line units had orders not to fire because Stalin feared that they might inadvertently start a war. He ordered the Red Air Force to allow Herman reconnaissance flights so they could see that he was not preparing an invasion. What could he do? He could have prepared for an invasion. In particular he could have had the Red Air Force in a state of readiness. You know that the first month of Barbarossa was a disaster for the Red Army. Part of the reason for that was that the Red Air Force was destroyed in only a few days---and mostly on the ground. It was at the time the largest air force in the world. Yet the Red army would have to fight Batbarosssa with no air support. I can't believe you ask that question. Is it that you are so determined to believe that America and Britain played no real role in the War?. Yet you then turn around and try tomprove that the West does not recognize the Soviet role.
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The Last Crusader No doubt if that included oil. But you do not have to imagine. The Soviet Union shipped vast quantities of critical materials to NAZI Germany (1939-41). Without those shipments, the German 1940 Western Offensive would have been impossible. https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/camp/axis/ns-coop.html
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You are of course correct, but you ignore one overriding basic fact. The Soviet Union was central to the defeat of the NAZI menace. It was the Soviets that did most of the fighting and most of the killing of German soldiers. Right or wrong, this was the major underlying fact as well as the Allies' desire to get along with the Soviets after the War to avoid another War,
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@ Gus Jackson Vengeful? Perhaps. How about saving Western Civilization? Britain did not begin the War. Or begin to bomb civilians. Obviously German civilians were being killed, but those civilians were producing the tanks, planes, and U-boats that made the NAZI war effort possible, not to mention the gas chambers. My hat is off to your dad and his comrades at Bomber Command who played a significant role in destroying the NAZI tyranny, and who suffered enormous losses in doing so.
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Bella Adamowicz Precisely. Bombing civilians was terrible, but it is not reasonable for a country to invade and bomb other countries and expect other countries not to do the same. Air Marshall Harries explained it best, "The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind."
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@gusjackson3658 I suggest you read about what the SS plan was for Britain once they invaded and occupied Britain. NAZI genocide and atrocity were not limited to the Jews. I am also not at all sure that you are correct that bombing did not lower British MORALE. If your home was damaged or destroyed or you lost family and friends, I can not see that your morale was not affected. But it did not lower British RESOLVE to resist the NAZIs. The same was true I think of the Germans. But remember both the British and Germans (until late in the War) had the means to resist. I suspect that countries like Poland, the Dutch, and Yugoslavia which did not have the ability to resist or civil defense systems thought differently about the bombing. I will also point out that the Germans (and Japanese) after World War II were a very different people than after World War I. Militarism in both countries was no longer a part of the national ethos. I suspect that the bombing was a major reason for that dramatic change.
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@jjquinn295 Lenin saw that Socialism did not work. So he introduced the New Economic Program (NEP). Stalin did away with it.
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@Glockenbeat I think that is a fair statement of formal state ideology, but in-actuality there was considerable racism in Soviet Society. Stalin was planning a major pogram when he died. (He might have lived exceopt his Jewish doctor who could have saved him was being tortured by the NKVD in the Lubianka.) And just look at Russia today,
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@dondajulah4168 The fact that Stalin killed moire people than Hitler suggests your distinction is not s obvious as you think. And you might want to look at Katyn before saying race and ethnicity had no place in Soviet society. A good place to begin is Solzhenitsyn's 'Gulag Archipelago'. There is a helpful index, just look up all the different eternities to see what hopened to them in the Soviet Union. The engineered Ukrainian Famine is a good place to begin.,
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@Glockenbeat The similarities are overwhealming because both are totalitarian ideologies. It is no accident they were World War II allies (1939-41).
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@dondajulah4168 Do you really think Hitler can be relied in as a truthful source. If that was the case, how do you explain Goering's Five Year Plan? And the seizure of so many private companies? https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/tol/ger/eco/nazi-eco.html
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@dondajulah4168 About 70,000. Millions is quite an overstatement. And the puroose was to resist Communist aggression.
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@kurt9395 Totalitarianism by definition means control of the economy.
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@davidolie8392 Absolutely correct. The synfuel processes actually destroyed huge quantities of coal, requiring vastly more BTUs than they created.
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@stephenobrien5909 Absolutely correct. Only at the begging as I am guess that you know, AA batteries were limited, mostly a small number of guns arranged around air bases. Goering assured the Germans that their cities would never be attacked. The huge installations ringing German cities came later in the War. And these were manned by large numbers of HJ boys as well as some girls. These were the formations that battled the Allied Strategic Bombing campaign. https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/air/eur/sbc/gd/flak.html
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Correct. And the FLAK units were not a drain on German manpower as they mostly used Hitler Youth boys. https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/air/eur/sbc/gd/flak.html
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@chrisyorke3013 This also meant that a huge amount of German artillery and ammunition was not on the Eastern Front stopping the Red Army bur deployed around German cities. It perrains to the comments I commonly see from Russian posters that the Eastern Front alone defeated the Germans. It is true that in terns of MANPOWER this is where most of the Germans losses occurred. But in terns of industry mire than half went to support the war in the West. This is because the Liftwaffe and Kriegsmarine required much greater industrial support than the Heer. It dies not require all that much industry to support infantry divisions using horses and carts.
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@chrisyorke3013 When you add in the Battle of the Atlantic and Hitler's V weapons you get a major share of German industrial power even without considering the ground campaign. I don't mean to demean the Soviets on the Eastern Front in anyway, but the idea that many Russians have that they defeated the NAZIs alone is monsence,.
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@reginaldmcnab3265 What is amazing is that in World War I only 20 percent of the deaths were civilians. In World War II 80 percent of the deaths were civilians. The deaths from the Allied bombing were a small part of those deaths. The major reason was the barbaric killing programs of the Axis powers which only stopped with the Allied victory. https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/wca/ww2-wca.html
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@reginaldmcnab3265 War by definition is barbaric. The Germans you must know launched the War. As for aiding the Soviets, do you not know about Lend Lease, the various Western actions, and the degree to which the strategic bombing campaign aided the Red Army?
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@reginaldmcnab3265 That was mot U.S. Government policy. And in fact Lend Lease was approved to aid the Soviet Union. Truman was a senator at the time and his comment was based on the fact that both NAZI Germany and Soviet Russia were murderous totalitarian regimes. I suggest you read a little about the mass killing programs of both. https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/wca/ww2-wca.html
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@reginaldmcnab3265 Can I ask what your point is? Are you saying we should not have used our massive industrial power to stop the Germans? Are you aware that the German civilians deaths from the bombing were about 0.5 million, but that some 40 million civilians were killed by the Germans. Are you saying we should have limited are war making capability and allowed the Germany to carry on murdering people by the millions? Are you aware of Generalplan Ost, the German plan for Eastern Europe after they won the War? https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/leb/east/sov/es-gpe.html
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@reginaldmcnab3265 The unforgivable response that the Allies could have done is to fail to resist the Axis and their murderous aggressions.
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@andrewallen9993 Exactly the point. The Germans had to devote a sizeable part of their industry to fight the War in the West, leaving the Ostheer poorly supported and vulnerable. Remember that the Panzers were a small part of the Oshtheer. Most of it went east on foot and their supplies and equipment carried on horse drawn carts.
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@reginaldmcnab3265 The Soviets certainly committed war crimes and I agree that relatively little attention is given to them. The British did not commit war crimes, although I will admit the response to the Bengal Famine borders on war crimes. The United States did not commit war crimes. The simple fact is that over 80 percent of the civilians who were killed in the War were killed by the Axis countries and were killed on purpose as an actual war goal. I assume you are talking about the strategic bombing campaign. Please note that it was the Axis who began bombing civilians. In the case of Japan they were bombing civilians in China for 10 years before America entered the war, The Germans began bombing Polish civilians from the first day of the War.
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@reginaldmcnab3265 They do not exist. If the Germans and Japanese did not want to be bombed, they should not have bombed other countries.
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@reginaldmcnab3265 This video is poor history. 1) TheAllied bombing killed something like 0.5 million Germans. 2) The Morgethau Plan was never executed. 3) German POW and disarmed combatants survived the War--moralities were a tiny fraction of the POWs taken by the Germans. Conditions were bad in the camps right after the War. This is true, but actual deaths were very low. 4) America fed Germany for over 3 years after the War. 5) Most of the German civilians who perished during and after the War were civilians driven out of Eastern Europe by the Soviets and Eastern Euroopeans. America had nothing to do with that.. The idea that America murdered 7 million people is a monstrous lie. There is no evidence to support this. For example just where are all the mass graves?
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@skelejp9982 I am not sure I understand your point. But the bombing among other impacts forced the Germans to devote enormous resources to the war in the West leaving the OIstheer poorly supplied and supported.
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@skelejp9982 The AA emplacements and the FLAK towers were all resources the Germans devoted to the war the West. Just one of the many commitments that meant that the Ostheer was poorly supplied. Incidentally the AA guns were mostly manned by Hitler Youth boys.https://www.histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/air/eur/sbc/gd/flak-per.html
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@reginaldmcnab3265 What nonsense. It is you who is defended dictators. Instead of spouting left-wing dictators, try to read a history book. The Kaiser, Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Stalin, the Kims, Castro, Saddam, Ho Chi Minh, and the Mullahs would not agree with you.
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@reginaldmcnab3265 More nonsense. In fact, India has commonly been highly critical of the United States, but only after free market reforms and a closer engagement with America has India begun to prosper adopting the policies of the Asian Tigers. https://www.histclo.com/eco/sys/asia-tig.html
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@insideoutsideupsidedown2218 I don't understand your comment. The West invented representative rule. The Vikings practiced a rough version of it. And the history of it dates back to before Magna Carta.
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@cwolf8841 You state a fact. It is also a fact that far more Soviet troops perished at Stalingrad than Germans. But what is your point?
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MNK 90 Unfair. It was largely because of Churchill that Britain did not make peace with the NAZIs after the fall of France.
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@fairnews7484 I tend to agree with you. Perhaps the Allies could have won without Churchill, but the price in blood would have been infinitely higher. Stubbornness was part of it. But only part. Tik is correct about Churchill's many mistakes. But he got the really important matters right. 1) There could be no dealing with Hitler. He and the NAZIs had to be destroyed. 2) This could only be done with the aid of the United States. And before Pearl Harbor, he and President Roosevelt laid the foundation for the war-winning Anglo-American alliance.
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@jloiben12 Oh, I think an honest conversation can be had today, but you are correct that it was not possible in the 50s and 60s.
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