Comments by "bakters" (@bakters) on "Was Germany's Defeat Inevitable in WW2? Turning Point? And more... TIK Patreon Q&A 4" video.

@nadiafriesen971 "FW-190 was better than any British contemporary" - That's what they thought, but then they captured one. It turned out, Spitfire was faster, or at least it won the race. 190 came second, Typhoon third. They expected exactly reverse results. The main reason for 190 success was tactical advantage. It's really dangerous plane with speed and altitude advantage, and not very good one without them. Over the channel it often had both advantages, in the East it often lacked at least one of them. As a result it was feared in the West and not regarded as highly in the East. Anyway, having slightly better fighter plane is not a reason to win a war or even a battle. 109 simply outclassed Hurricanes, yet Luftwaffe lost the Battle of Britain.
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@nadiafriesen971 "When was it captured" - June 1942. Regarding which airplanes were "better" - it's largely irrelevant. Contemporary planes were very close. So close that other factors were vastly more important than "paper performance". Regarding - Germans should've kept pounding RAF - I don't think it was working. Sure, people were tired of constant pressure, so that's what they wrote. What we don't read are memoirs of everybody kept in reserve. Because there was nothing interesting to write about. RAF as a whole was fine and nowhere near collapse. Even had Germans won with RAF, there was still Royal Navy to deal with... They had no answer to that.
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@nadiafriesen971 - until German technology surpasses british technology - The only real edge they had was rocketry. Usually people bring jets, but the British had jets in equally early stages of development, they just weren't forced to field them. Technological gap wasn't really there and it wasn't growing either, apart from rocketry, which while impractical at this time, was definitely far in front of everybody else. (Mostly because other people concentrated on more practical endeavors... ;-) Hitler could have starved Britain into submission if he had several times more submarines. He just didn't build them. Why? Because Britain was not his target. Soviet Union was though, so he invested more in land armies. He promised Germans lebensraum. That thing was in the east, not in crowded Western Europe. But I agree that if Germany decided to not attack USSR, they'd have survived for much longer.
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@nadiafriesen971 - I just checked the timeline. Schwalbe entered combat in April 1944 and the first combat mission of Gloster-Meteor was in July the same year. Whittle was British. He invented the jet engine. How Britain fights Germany alone? She doesn't. USA would have joined sooner or later. If they don't, then Britain can be starved into submission with enough submarines. At least in theory. Anyway, what was the point of starting the war in the first place? To win with Britain? No. It was to gain lebensraum in the East. So if they do not attack Soviets, it's all for nothing. All the death and destruction is for nothing. You say that attacking Soviets makes not sense, but not attacking them makes even less sense from their point of view.
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@nadiafriesen971 Jet engines don't need high quality fuel. Usually they run on kerosene (high flash point, high caloric content), but they will burn anything. Also, contrary to popular belief, they aren't particularly inefficient while running at decent power. They can't idle, that's true, but that's also less of a problem for planes. Sure, there were shortages which limited Me-262 utility, but those had to do with alloy metals. Germans lacked those, so they ended up making critical parts out of mild steel, which of course made the engines burn themselves out very quickly. Regarding the impact of oil shortages, I think that TIK overstated his case here a little bit, like it happened before on some other occasions. Oil wasn't necessary to run WWII economy. It was based on coal. Oil was necessary to make modern war of maneuver on large scale, but that's a different story, isn't it? Regarding what if scenario, USA was gearing for war, we know that for sure because numbers do not lie. Could Germany be eventually defeated without the involvement of Soviets? Maybe not, but who said that Soviets wouldn't be convinced to attack them? Regarding Germans taking over North Africa, I doubt that would happen, and if it did, then it would be a trap. Royal Navy was too much for Kriegsmarine, so the more units you send there, the better for the Allies. As it was, they couldn't supply Rommel. A tiny force by comparison to what was needed for a proper invasion.
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@nadiafriesen971 First the facts. I wrote that I checked the timeline and the first combat mission of Gloster-Meteor was in July 42 . Why have you ignored it and wrote about "first flies" in 1943? Meteor went into combat just few months after Schwalbe, and it was a better plane too, because the Brits had access to alloy steel, unlike Germans. Regarding Malta, Egypt or Suez - it's largely irrelevant. Malta almost fell, because Brits weren't sure if it's worth fighting for, but once they decided to keep it and make a stand in Africa, they achieved those goals. Say they lost Egypt. So what? They still keep all of the Middle East with their oilfields, resupplying their army in Iraq is no more difficult than in Egypt (you have to go around Africa in both cases), so what exactly changes? Germans still can't resupply their forces, Brits still can, USA is on another level and most probably joins soon. The same game on a different field.
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@nadiafriesen971 I don't feel like disputing most of what you wrote, because lots of it is pure speculation (understandably so), but I can dispute more or less verifiable statements. 1. Schwalbe "was definitely better than the meteor". How so? Meteors captured speed record in 1945 at over 600mph and they were more maneuverable. They did it at sea level too, because at altitude they'd go transsonic... Galland flew both and he liked the Meteor. Was he stupid? And of course there was P80 too, in case you still want to persist with your "technological gap" claim. Sorry man, I don't think it stands to the verifiable facts... 2. Losing Egypt, Alexandria and all - The vast majority of British supplies went round the Africa. That's a fact. They managed to outsupply the Germans who could just hop over the Mediterranean. Americans were even better. I read a quote, that "Americans didn't solve their supply problems in Africa. They overwhelmed them!" In Normandy Americans built a high capacity port with incredible throughput withing days. Could Germans do anything comparable? Because to win in Africa, they'd need to... And why would they even want to win a costly victory in Africa? For what gain? Egypt? Romans had a reason to go to Egypt. Germans? Hardly any, and that's why N. Africa was a sideshow.
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