Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "Why Has Ukraine Not Yet Collapsed?" video.

@dankengine5304 Zelenskyy disagrees with you Dank. BTW, there is a TON of stuff -- under Lend-Lease -- that's in the works -- and can't be publicized. This tempo repeats that of WWII and American aid to Stalin. It started out as crisis response -- and then turned into a munitions pipeline. Lend-Lease aid was responsible for the Soviet victory of Uranus. Naturally, Stalin put a lid on that reality. Once the Volga was cleared, British and American aid flowed up the river from the Caspian, from Iran, from the West. The Nazis started moving backwards -- and never really stopped.
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@PrimericanIdol Since he didn't last any time at all -- and his own army laid down their guns -- that's no hurdle to beat. He was a monster. He committed crimes even Adolf omitted. From genocide to aggressor warfare -- Saddam did 'em all.
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@palsyr4307 Nope. As a defender, the UA need only stay in its trenches. This saves a LOT of blood. This tic also explains why the UA has been so slow -- the delay in its counter-offensive. The boys are getting pretty happy just blowing up Russian assets -- without leaving their trenches. In this, everything is repeating WWI.
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@palsyr4307 When ? Where ? The only instance where Putin bagged a lot of Ukrainian defenders was at Mariupol. Every other (highly touted) bag has proven empty.
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@arnembatubara7868 The tale came from Yeltsin's revelations. He broke out the Soviet archives in front of the world's press. Stalin and Adolf jointly carved up Europe -- via the M-R Pact -- written entirely by Stalin, himself. He took no input from Adolf. (!!!!!) This revelation fried the brains of everyone attending. Absolutely no-one since has been able to refute Yeltsin's analysis and assertions. You lose.
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@islandwills2778 As bad as Soviet Winters are -- it was MUD that did in the Krauts. How's that ? During Mud Season, nothing much can move -- at all. Even the railroad system shuts down. Yup. Stalin's rail grid was un-ballasted. When the ground turns to mud, locomotives simply flip off the rails. Thousands of train engineers were sent to the Gulag for just this reason. (!) [ If they had refused to ride the rails -- they would've gone to the Gulag, too. ] German accounts record that the entire army had to eat its horses during the first Mud. Since panzer troops had no horses, those boys were pretty much starving for a month. This is all recorded in diaries, official transcripts. Then, when the mud froze, food, gasoline -- the works -- finally could get through to the front. So, conditions actually improved. Then the Krauts surged towards Moscow -- the final effort. Even as cold as it was, for a while, the Germans could handle it. That didn't last. The Soviets counter-offensive kicked off in early December -- well before the bitter days of February. This crushed the Germans. They took a huge beating -- before -- deep Winter. Finally, now defeated, Winter inflicted even more ruin upon the Krauts. The ultra-cold hit AFTER the Germans were already screwed. It was so cold that even the Soviets could not function. The snow had gotten so high that every defense 'pit' was an open igloo. Blocks of ice and snow replaced trenching. (!) In such conditions, neither side can do much but hang on. Only ski troops have any mobility at all. This is why historical maps record the front being totally broken up. So, yes, Winter was a bitch -- but it was Mud -- the first one -- that truly did the Nazis in. The photos from the period are shocking, the tales astounding.
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The Europeans love gas -- but can get by on coal. This is where religion and politics merge. Coal can hold them until the war is over -- which is not going to go on and on. Then the gas can be turned back on. (America, Qatar, even Australia) The sanctions are just too extensive for Putin. In WWII, oil, steel, rubber were critical inputs. Today, it's mirco-chips and satellite photography. Putin is screwed. Modern industry utterly depends upon PLCs. ( Programmable Logical Controllers ) [ Your car is run by a design specific PLC. ] Putin was getting the bulk of these from Siemens. But no more. Eventually, they DO BREAK. (Brutal conditions.) When they go, an entire manufacturing line can go down. They are even more important in chemical engineering. Of course, the general public doesn't know a thing about them. Neither do the talking heads. So, no-one brings PLCs up.
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@theoneeyedwoodsman4726 American Lend-Lease aid is rarely repaid. It's actually free weapons. France and the USSR never paid the US for their Lend-Lease aid. De Gaulle told Ike and Kennedy to stuff it. Open your eye. When American mining firms do business overseas, it's always under the terms of this or that local government. These deals ALWAYS feature the locals getting a HUGE extraction tax or a percentage over-ride of the deal. Putin pulled such stunts way over in Sakalin Island -- the natural gas deal -- you know -- the one where he screwed the Japanese out of their entire investment -- just the other day. Stop with your blather.
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@orionlt1028 But Putin is already done. Put a fork in him.
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@3o3tigger Phone Beijing. Those are fighting words.
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@JustAvoidNothinghere It's a dictatorship... a very repressive one. Check the videos.
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@Devon Bueno The Pentagon is trying the boil the frog slowly. That's why American aid has been so measured. I'd say that Putin has finally noticed the heat. Now he wants peace talks -- in the worst way.
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@myth1c916 Say what ? The West is thwarting a war of aggression -- for conquest and genocide. Put down the bong.
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@jjryan1352 You actually believe that J. Stalin coughed up Big Bucks to pay off America ? During the Cold War ? France didn't. No-one really did. Even Britain paid off its debt in massively deflated currency. Marshall Plan funds were also paid off in massively deflated money. The USA deliberately set the rate of interest WELL below the rate of inflation -- which -- under Truman -- was pretty extreme. Lend-Lease funds are GIFTS -- repackaged for the American taxpayers as if they are only loans. You just crack me up, you do.
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@arnembatubara7868 Arnem -- you're dreaming. The documents Yeltsin produced had both Bolshevik AND Nazi signatures. They are the real deal -- and there are nothing like them in any other archive. Every dang journalist in the world had access to them -- and absolutely no-one now disputes them... just ignorant Internet posters. The Whole Deal was Stalin's brain fart. Period. Adolf was crazy enough to sign on the line that was dotted -- without changing a word. The M-R Pact stunned even Nazi insiders -- because it was NOT a negotiated deal. Adolf didn't run it by ANYBODY in Nazi Germany. (Except his FM, Ribbentrop, his man to Moscow.) Stalin cut his own FM out, too. (!) [ Stalin's foreign minister was Jewish -- as were loads of his staff. They were pushed out of their positions overnight by Stalin. This latter fact is scarcely brought up in popular histories. As Nikita noted, Stalin was anti-Semitic, through and through. (See: Doctor's Plot.) ] Fundamentally, Stalin thought he could 'aim' Adolf at the West -- and conquer everyone after the bloodletting. This possibility is also to be found in Bolshevik musings even before the M-R Pact was signed. History records two totally vicious tyrants -- with oceans of blood on their hands.
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@mattiasdahlstrom2024 And the sky is blue ? What an insight ! Russian front line losses are running 70-90% based on revelations during phone calls home to mom or wife. This is to be expected when war takes on WWI style tactics. The infantry takes the losses -- while the artillery does the shooting. Most combat is taking place beyond the range of small arms. Patrol clashes are the rarity -- on the whole. This does not apply when the Russians are moving into cities/towns/rubble. Then the Russians -- as attackers -- suffer six-times as many casualties as the defenders. It's just the way things are in urban warfare. The defenders lay back in hiding -- only needing to shoot. The attackers have no alternative but to stand up, move around, and take a beating from mines, bullets and shells. Still, Ukrainians are fired up. Their army now seriously out numbers that of Putin's. It's their lack of heavy weapons that constrains them... that and their pitiful air force. It's small and is flying dated equipment. That's destined to change -- a lot.
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@ОлекЛис He committed genocide against the Swamp Arabs (down south) -- he cut down millions of date palms so as to ruin the wealth of Shi'ite farmers (down south) -- he gassed Kurds in Halabja by air attack -- he used nerve agent against Iran during his war of aggression -- he murdered political suspects a the tempo of 150 souls a day ... every day of his regime -- he whacked his own son-in-law-- he invaded both Iran and Kuwait ... for profit -- he established a rape platoon to terrorize all ... the house specialty was victimizing wives -- he starved entire families ... in his prison cells ... while their father's were caged next and opposite ... and then put the sorry spectacle out on DVDs to circulate among the Baath Party faithful -- All of the above are documented to the extreme. Saddam looked upon Adolf, Stalin and Mao as mentors. That's the real Saddam.
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@Ravi9A Stop raving Ravi. When Moscow falls -- it will be by internal revolt against Putin's tyranny. History records that this is the way Ivan reacts to failed despots.
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@RayES03 Stalin buried Lend-Lease. He had an entire corps of 70,000 NKVD troops re-marking ALL Lend-Lease aid -- to suppress its British and American labels. This reached such an extreme that the Americans protested -- when Stalin even re-labeled free food donated by American children who had gone door-to-door across the land to raise funds for Soviet kids. Yes, the American Ambassador formally protested to Stalin. This didn't change anything. The British contribution also was suppressed. British Petroleum ran the Abadan (world scale) refinery. (Iran) During WWII, it shipped astounding amounts of aviation grade fuels up to Stalin. It's the reason that the Soviet air force could keep flying... along with American fuels shipped all the way from Houston. Soviet refineries (distilleries, really) could not hope to crank out sufficient avgas for Stalin's air force. What the Reds did is blend British and American avgas down with Soviet gas to get a tolerable blend for which their aircraft engines were tuned. The Reds never had the high octane blends that the RAF and USAAF used in WWII -- because of this blending. This goes a LONG way towards explaining Red Air Force combat performance. They could match German octane -- both were inferior to the RAF/ USAAF by this metric. It's huge, as lower octane means lower engine output at all altitudes. As you can imagine, after the war, Stalin had all media purged of Lend-Lease references. So modern Russians are wholly unaware that their most famous tank corps were all equipped with M4/Sherman tanks... Studebaker trucks... and Willys Jeeps.... No M4s made it onto Soviet victory monuments, either.
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@seanniemeyer5437 It went beyond "large proportion." All of the high-end stuff was via Lend-Lease -- from America. (Britain was not a major player in machine tools giving.) When it came to commodities -- other than refined oil products -- America was the source. Britain had none to give. British rubber came from Malaya. The Japanese took it all away. Ditto for British tin. (Burma & Thailand) Of course, British gasoline and avgas was HUGE. Today, even most Brits are unaware of how much gasoline the Empire gave to Stalin, how decisive it was. (For the Iranians, this is a painful memory. They figure themselves as resource rape victims. They have a point.)
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@dankengine5304 No, there's a difference. Ukraine is still standing. That's quite a difference. The Pentagon wants to boil the frog slowly. It also takes a while for the US DoD to shift gears, to spool up mass production. Think in terms of months -- sometimes -- years. The Willow Run B-24 plant was built before Pearl Harbor. Yet, it didn't reach its stride until 1943. (!) [ So many parts, so many green employees -- so many women. ] The M2 machine gun started out with a trickle of production. This pitiful stream didn't really increase until 1943. Then -- holy cow! A lot of WWII weapons had never been designed for mass production. So, the early months were spent doping all of the details out. Since absolutely nothing can be omitted, it's the slowest, minor, items that were hanging things up. Something like this dynamic is underway with aid to Ukraine. The reason for the tranches -- is that the DoD has to make sure that what is pledged is really ready to go. It does not want the President or itself to look stupid. BTW, most of the stuff is now traveling by sea. America is not flying tons of 155mm shells by C-17. An oceanic pipeline is being established. Air freight is being reserved for high priority items that can't wait a month. It's never mentioned, but I'll bet that the US is beginning to manufacture -- on a pilot basis -- repair components for this and that Ukrainian defense equipment. 3-D printing and robotics makes it possible for the US to crank out just about anything imaginable -- and on pretty short notice. Our Eastern European allies don't have this capability. ( I would suspect that Western Europeans are stepping up in this regard, too. ) It is plain that Poland, Slovakia, the Czechs, et. al are repairing Ukrainian gear, too. Putin is screwed.
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james Deer You're calendar is faulty. Putin's economy is cratering. He had to shut down his two big tank factories -- for lack of imports. Putin has an impossible situation: this war turns on micro-chips and satellite photography -- and GPS. Adolf died for lack of oil. Putin will die for lack of micro-chips. He can't use a 1950's army to prevail in 2022. But that's what he must now attempt. If you remember correctly: Putin invaded with countless tanks with 'cope cages' above their turrets. This contraption was an improv to thwart Smart ATGMs. It was a total failure. You don't see any 'cope cages' anymore. The original assault tanks have all been destroyed -- that's why. Virtually every single Russian tank now rolling is a replacement machine from Putin's reserves. It's gotten so bad that even ancient T62s have been brought out of stir. They use different ammo (115mm) and thus are a logistical pain to have at the front. But Putin brought them in to play, anyway. The Russian armored force is actually going back in time -- technically. The Ukrainians are all fired up -- and have replaced all of their losses. That's why Putin has paused. It's why the RA can scarcely budge. And it's why the UA is now retaking ground -- here and there -- bit by bit. Such slow movements are to be expected in a war that echoes WWI.
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Batko Gele The West has an economic engine 50 times the size of Putin's. ( Soon it will be 100 times the size. ) So far, virtually everything Zelenskyy has received came from off-the-shelf, not fresh production. That is only now beginning to change. Putin is screwed. No wonder he thinks peace negotiations are a great idea. Yet, both Turkey and India have dropped away, and so recently, too. They see what the world sees: Putin is screwed.
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@pepe7044 For years I'd read that Winter did the Krauts in. Only after deep inspection I discovered that Mud was the killer. Soldiers can (largely) deal with the cold -- by just staying out of it. This was not always possible -- and such events were bewailed far and wide. Soldiers can't deal with starvation. Mud brings an absolute halt to food deliveries in the USSR. The locals are prepared for it. The invading Krauts were not. Even though many Kraut generals had spent time in the USSR -- in their younger days -- even so they didn't comprehend that their hosts had stocked up Big for Mud season. They also were never far from the rail grid. All Soviet military bases were astride it. In all of their war gaming, the Krauts absolutely did not figure on MUD, Soviet mud. They thought that it'd be like European mud. Nope. Soviet mud has no bottom, often enough. In northern latitudes, you're actually treading atop permafrost. It's so far enough below your feet that you don't know it. Deep ice stops fresh rain from weeping away. So even 'solid' dirt turns into a mud bath.
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@zeffy._440 They are not smashing trenches and having Ukrainians flee like jack rabbits. Check out the endless videos out on social media. What's happened is that the RA has run out of gas. That's why Putin is 'suddenly' re-interested in peace talks. Zelenskyy says that such talks are appropriate -- when the RA has entirely left Ukraine -- all of it.
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@mattiasdahlstrom2024 Putin's orcs have -- essentially -- stopped major offensives. This is due to their dire shortage of artillery shells. Russia had by far the larger army. And it showed. Putin blew it. He obviously didn't listen to the SVR. Indeed, he humiliated its top man... in public. (He's been sacked, of course.) As for the boys trapped in the Kherson oblast, they are in a self-supplied prison camp. They can't advance, and Putin won't let them retreat. Shades of 6th Army at Stalingrad. Drones are gradually gutting the Russian artillery advantage. The Soviet war machine was not designed for drone warfare. Russia now has vast numbers of SPA that can dish it out -- but can't take a hit. They are BIG -- and yet their armor is thin -- nothing like a tank. Even a feeble suicide drone will make them blow up -- so much ammo inside.
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@dankengine5304 The Pentagon is running the show for the USA. It's just acknowledged that a Military Mission is required. This structure is exactly what FDR used for Lend-Lease to the USSR. If history is followed, Zelenskyy will be sending two generals over to Washington D.C. to man the office -- which will be -- de facto -- a joint command -- very much like WWII commands. The Ukrainian generals will have their own officers, staffers, running all over the place. They will be, obviously, bilingual -- and thus bridge the communications gap to Kyiv. In another ninety-days, it will seem like the Military Mission Command is just another American army command... as far as spending on weapons is concerned. A MMC does not involve itself with active operations, strategy or much else -- just addressing needs and means. Putin will advance from headaches to migraines. BTW, the recently returned Muscovites are having a real impact on Putin's policy suite. I'd say he's been getting the real dope on how the RA has been performing.
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@dankengine5304 Probably British training and American equipment -- the best of both worlds.
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@3o3tigger I doubt it. 25 civilians -- that I CAN believe. Putin has a 'tradition' of missile strikes against civilian train stations -- with quite a few to his discredit.
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