Comments by "Black Cat Dungeon Master\x27s Familiar" (@blackcatdungeonmastersfami5311) on "TIKhistory" channel.

That first negative review is indeed badly flawed but sorry, TIK, the rebuttal of both negative reviews contains important flaws itself. Firstly, the comment that the user's name looks German. No, it really doesn't. But apart from that, the observation contains the implication that the author's nationality or ethnicity has some bearing on his or her credibility. TIK should honestly ask himself why he even mentioned this. TIK talks about "history theory" as if these are authoritative laws like the laws of thermodynamics. But they're not, they're just ideas, and like all ideas in history, they are neither universally applicable nor beyond criticism themselves. The idea which TIK surely doesn't actually believe but implies in his analysis of the first review is that all sources are biased and so all perspectives are equally (in)valid. This is undergraduate postmodernism of the more extreme end of the spectrum. Even worse, that historical truth can be best arrived at by a sort of democratic poll of reading many authors. TIK is ignoring a contradiction here. If history is some kind of popularity contest and everybody is biased anyway, then this reviewer's perspective is just as valid as his own - exactly the argument of the more extreme postmodernists. But obviously, TIK doesn't actually believe that. He has explained elsewhere why he finds this postmodernist line of thinking poisonous so why bring in this postmodernist argument he doesn't really believe in so flippantly here? The reviewer accuses the author of cherry picking and TIK's criticism of that is because no historian can know everything or fit everything into a book, it's justifiable to present just those facts or arguments which suit the author. Obviously it is true that an author can't know everything and is under no obligation to try to include everything. But doesn't excuse cherry picking which is to deliberately overemphasise unimportant points which support your argument and ignore unimportant points which are unhelpful to your argument. TIK would rightfully condemn an author who minimised the brutality of the German or Soviet regimes by presenting facts which supported such an argument while ignoring more important facts which undermine it. An historian has no obligation to present ALL the relevant information (which as TIK says, is infinite) but does have the obligation to portray a subject honestly. If building an argument, there is the obligation to present the most important considerations with bearing on that argument, not just those which support it. It's not good enough to claim there wasn't room in your book! TIK claims that "all sources are anecdotal". No they're not! Official statistics are not anecdotal. Unit orders are not anecdotal. And nor are many other types of evidence historians deal with. The second reviewer criticises that the book authors don't attempt to quantify the popularity of the "pro-Wehrmacht viewpoint". Isn't this a valid criticism? If you're going to write an entire book warning against the popularity of a viewpoint you consider dangerous, shouldn't you at least attempt to quantify that popularity? TIK dismisses this merely because it's not practical to poll the entire country. Of course it's not. But isn't it reasonable to at least attempt to quantify the importance of the things like the authors or chatrooms or whatever that you're discussing? For example by looking at sales figures of books as the reviewer suggests. Because what if they turn out to be really obscure influences with no relevance to larger society? That would undermine your entire argument! Instead TIK just claims a "huge portion" of the American public has this perception and apparently, we must take his word for it. TIK criticises the second reviewer for noting that the book doesn't discuss films, again with the straw man argument that no book can include everything. But aren't films at least as important in influencing public perceptions of history as academic books, chatrooms and computer wargames? And if so, don't they deserve some attention? At bare minimum, the reviewer is making a valid observation. And the reviewer never claimed that Enemy of the Gates is historically accurate. TIK is putting words in his mouth here. TIK does a great job of visually presenting battles in depth and demolishing the Manstein/Halder view of history but in this video, if you're criticising other people who can't reply themselves, you should be doubly careful to present their arguments carefully and fairly. I don't think TIK quite measured up to this in this video. "The Wehrmacht was Guilty as Charged". Yes. Fair enough. If we're talking about the institution as a whole rather than every single member of it. But this is another straw man argument. Neither of these two negative reviewers attempted to claim otherwise.
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This would be true if human behaviour was purely determined by environment but we know for a fact it's also heavily influenced by genetics.
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@TheImperatorKnight I've got bachelors and masters in both engineering mathematics and history. I disagree that any of it was a waste of time or money. Studying history formally has some big advantages over just reading history books, it forces you to question your assumptions, read different points of view and opens up large fields you didn't know you should read about otherwise. Might depend what universities though - for me, it was Open University and Dundee for history. Excellent tutors for the most part who show you where you're wrong and what you're missing. That's what you're paying for. You just don't have that if you're learning on your own. BTW for context, I did history purely as a hobby with no career benefits other than improving my writing skills and possibly improving my ability to structure an argument.
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TIK is unbelievably arrogant for someone who has pretty narrow knowledge, yes his videos about particular battles are very good especially Stalingrad. But how can someone seriously believe that you can't model human behaviour? Individuals behave differently as individuals and individuals are individually unpredictable yes that's true but collectively, humans behave according to certain patterns. If they didn't then throw out ALL of the social sciences and economics and psychology. Not just the crap bits, all of it.
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This is a completely sophistic argument. Britain gave Germany an ultimatum. You can't just pretend Britain doesn't have any responsibility.
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Good content but the narrator manages to butcher not only French, German and Gaelic but even English. You'd think a native English speaker could manage names like Stewart and Campbell?
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@cooperchappell8310 Please point to specific facts he gets wrong. I ready Schultze-Rhonhof's book and spent a lot of time doing further digging. I believe he's wrong on some minor points but plenty of justification remains for his overall narrative. None of the major players escape blame for September 1939. A careful reading of British/French/Polish communications in the last few days demonstrates that they ALL wanted the war. Because much like Ukraine in 2022, they thought they were going to win.
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Speaking as someone who spends a huge amount of time writing software and giving it away for free, TIK comes across as a typical ungrateful user with unrealistic expectations. Commercial software often has hundreds of developers behind it, don't complain that free software doesn't work exactly how you think it should. The reason software doesn't do everything you want without an add in is usually to keep the size and maintainability and release cycles of the core application under control with a small team of developers (often one guy) behind it. The reason an add in might get uninstalled during an update is probably deliberate, to ensure the core application still works even if the the add in is compatible only with the older version.
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@axebob730 Cuba, soon before.
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@bluemarlin8138 By the same logic, Ukraine attacked Russia in 2022 because Russia had pledged to defend the LPR and DPR.
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@thewatchman9540 Theoretically yeah you could read any of those books outside of university but I found the whole thing really interesting and helpful for many reasons including the feedback you get from discussions and essays, not sure where you'd get the same quality from outside a university. I did two history degrees as a hobby without taking significant time off work but yeah I agree with you if you're going to spend years doing it full time, that's a big opportunity cost. I'd say if you really, really want to be a professional historian, it's worth it. Though also it might depend what university you're at too. My daughter is now doing first year at Edinburgh which is meant to be a good university but I have to say I'm not too impressed with what I've seen. Anyway a lot of people nowadays are going to university as a place holder and not taking it too seriously. I completely agree with you (and TIK) that's a total waste of time.
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I'm not sure TIK should be sarcastically criticising the English of non native speakers until he learns some basic pronunciation of French and German.
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TIK - totally missing the point. It's not about measuring what a particular individual will do. It's about statistically measuring a large group. If you think that's an invalid thing to do then throw away psychology and all of the social sciences. And almost all of economics.
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Dear TIK don't really agree with all of your political and economic takes but the work you've done on Stalingrad and Operation Crusader was really impressive, up there with the best content on youtube and certainly the best of its kind on those topics. That's not going to make you a lot of money but doing something better than anyone else in the entire world, surely that's got to be worth something. After all the effort, putting stuff on hold for a few weeks or months would be better to deciding to abandon it up front.
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