Comments by "Alan Pennie" (@alanpennie8013) on "TIKhistory" channel.

  1. When your advisors tell you you're not in a fit condition to fight a war it's wise to listen to them. Franco did that, Hitler and Mussolini not so much.
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  2.  @andrewpestotnik5495  Napoleon's ghost nods.
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  3. Good to get a video about the rather neglected southern sector of the campaign in France.
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  4. Hitler actually shooting himself wasn't the most surprising thing that ever happened.
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  5. It worked partly because the country was the centre of s world empire and had plenty of food available if it could ship it across The Ocean, which the u - boats could never prevent it from doing.
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  6. I agree with this post. The battlestorm series is of a depth you don't usually see on YouTube. I don't know anything else like it.
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  7.  @zupalan2265  He certainly comes across as delusional. He should hide under the bed from those scary Communist teachers.
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  8. It was something weirder, a quasi - government bill whose redemption could be indefinitely extended.
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  9.  @AFGuidesHD  You should do it. Wouldn't be hard to do better than Hoggan.
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  10.  @CloneDAnon  It didn't. When Ribbentrop asked the Poles to join The Anti - Comintern Pact they turned him down.
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  11. I'd say they had exactly two reasons. 1. That The Dual Monarchy had in effect been assimilated to the German Reich and it was hard to see how the two could be separated again. 2. President Wilson wanted it.
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  12.  @gogojoob  Absolutely. It's really remarkable to get such a thorough account from an Anglophone source of an iconic battle where no UK or US soldiers fought. For all his idiosyncrasies we're extremely lucky to have TIK.
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  13. I suspect many of these pows actually were civilians and that the Germans rounded up all men of military age inside the kessels, whether they were wearing Red Army uniform or not
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  14.  @billbolton  There's a good short article on voxeu.org (Accominotti and Chambers) arguing that Keynes' strategy (based on market fundamentals) was inferior to interest rate (carry) and historic (momentum) strategies. Keynes himself quipped that a speculator would probably go bust before the market aligned properly.
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  15. Yes it's incorrect. Nazism isn't really the same thing as national socialism. You could make a reasonable case that national socialism was destined to be the most popular political formation in CEE after 1919. As the Czech case indicates it was perfectly compatible with liberal democratic norms. But Hitler's movement, though it had nationalism and socialism in the mix (it wouldn't have been popular otherwise) was actually driven by racism, revanchism and the idea of a military conquest of the region (Lebensraum). Hitler's misleading choice of a name has distorted our understanding of the period ever since.
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  16. You can't. That's why the Soviet economy was rather well suited to wartime conditions.
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  17.  @righ-naalba6715  I'm a Leningrad cowboy, Raising cattle on the steppe, Won't you pour me a glass of vodka, Coz I'm drinking to forget.
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  18. The very worst were mines in The Arctic. The ones around Magadan most infamously.
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  19. I detest his ideas, but it is admirable that he preferred truth to continued group - think.
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  20. It should be said that not all Nazi writers reject The Hossbach Memorandum. David Irving accepts it and gives an interesting brief account of it in pages 62 - 65 of, The War Path (1978) noting that French Intelligence was well informed about the meeting.
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  21. I have heard it said that the Russians lost in 1905 because The Trans - Siberian Railway was single tracked.
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  22. Marxism - Leninism has its advantages.
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  23. Being on the offensive The Red Army was able to muster some recruits in the areas it was overrunning. The German neglect of spare parts was an extraordinary self - imposed handicap, the downside of Speer's Production Miracle possibly.
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  24. Also The French Revolutionary Wars, launched because the Revolution. which was the result of a fiscal crisis, had made that crisis even worse
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  25. Very true. If only they had been able to clone their star general the Germans would have been invincible.
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  26.  @TheImperatorKnight  I'm not surprised. It's a hell of a battle.
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  27. Remember the other thing Clausewitz said: War is very simple and at the same time extremely difficult.
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  28.  @kickinghighify  Some Americans believe crazy things. How many have been abducted by flying saucers?
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  29.  @ryanward10  There's a depressing thought. Perhaps the Vietnamese will save us.
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  30. I agree with that. I think Browning is more at fault for ignoring extremely good intelligence about panzer divisions at Arnhem than Gavin is for believing bad intelligence about tanks in The Reichswald. But blaming a failure on a subordinate isn't exactly impressive leadership.
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  31.  @TheImperatorKnight  I've been doing that. I should read the instructions more carefully.
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  32. If Curzio Malaparte is to be believed the Germans routinely shot any Soviet prisoner who could read
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  33.  Blesava Konjina  He didn't develop his argument well but I thought it was a good one. Because price signals are lacking military supply is almost bound to be less efficient than civilian
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  34. I think you have outlined them pretty well. Given the intelligence Browning and Gavin had a counter attack from the east looked pretty likely. And so they guarded against it before securing the bridge. In hindsight obviously the wrong decision, but this was much less clear at the time.
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  35. The principle of moving the people to conform to the borders (ethnic cleansing) was first accepted in The Treaty of Lausanne (1923).
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  36. Yep. Distrust of The Brits is sensible.
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  37. Indeed. The Russians could have paid with natural resources, but the Americans had plenty of those.
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  38. Speer called it a second front over The Reich.
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  39.  @harshbansal7982  It was Allied Policy to regard Austria as Conquered by The Nazis. You can't blame the Austrians for going along.
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  40.  @jarozawiercie3357  I think you have a point. Though as I say the targeting of already victimised foreign workers does add a complication.
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  41.  @soupordave  I think that's it. The Soviets weren't interested in Hess as such but his continued incarceration gave them a presence in West Berlin which was probably useful for intelligence gathering.
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  42.  @dixiewhiskey3273  I think it was The Russians Partial control of the prison gave them a listening post in West Berlin.
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  43. Plus the Soviets had killed around 100,000 Poles less than two years earlier.
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  44. There was the same problem with food as people ate out less.
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  45.  @therealignotus7549  Franz Josef was a stickler for legality, and correctly imo since The Empire had nothing else to hold it together.
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  46.  @ducomaritiem7160  It's a long way from being a fun read.
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  47. A. Lack of fuel kept them grounded B. Tooze suggests these production figures may be fiction.
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  48. The bugler of Cracow nods.
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  49. I know what you mean. We still have nearly two months until Uranus, and though Sixth Army is beginning to lose its killing power it's still pretty terrifying.
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  50. Notified before 18.30.
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  51. Yes. It's sad to learn that Gavin was less than frank.
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  52. If The USSR had been defeated by Germany I don't think Finland would have had much difficulty annexing the Karelian SSR. It's population was small (650,000 in 1959).
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  53.  @jimtaylor294  Bismarck really didn't want to quarrel with Russia, and that meant keeping out of The Danube (and The Balkans)
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  54. And then there was the religion problem. A Gross Deutsch solution so have meant a Catholic majority in the new federation. Neither Bismarck nor The National Liberals wanted that.
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  55.  @jimtaylor294  Klein Deutsch = Protestant majority. Gross Deutsch = Catholic majority.
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  56.  @jimtaylor294  Bismarck designated the Catholics enemies of his new Reich, and persecuted them for a decade with the enthusiastic assistance of the National Liberals.
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  57. It does. Also a cemetery where the Canadian soldiers killed in the Reichswald Battle (February 1945) are buried.
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  58. Area attacks were the best option available in 1942 when Bomber Command couldn't hit anything smaller than a large city. Arguably they should have been abandoned by 1943 as accuracy improved.
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  59.  @benbruce9192  He often picks up the wrong end of the stick but at least he gives it a good look.
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  60. It does seem highly unlikely. By the time they unsnarled their supply lines winter would be setting in.
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  61.  @TheImperatorKnight  No small part of the Reich's workforce were civilians from occupied enemy territory conscripted by the German authorities. It was particularly problematic to attack them when bombers flattened industrial targets.
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  62.  @konstantinkelekhsaev302  That seems to be the consensus. It's a dreadful thought that the Soviets might have suffered even more casualties than they did
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  63. Yes. He accepted the blame like a gentleman. And he really was to blame because he could have issued Gavin firm orders to secure the bridge immediately. Though it's possible that Gavin, who seems to have felt disdain for his commander, would have ignored them.
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  64.  @uncleJan1  The Soviet victory was an extraordinary achievement.
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  65. He's a most engaging writer. I believe he modelled his aphoristic style on Albert Sorel, the historian of the French Revolutionary Wars.
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  66.  @matthewbadley5063  I shall return to Nebraska and wait for the people to call me to save them.
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  67.  @brucetucker4847  It's quite interesting that Rome conquered the world despite The Fetial Law, which prohibited wars of aggression.
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  68. Spandau Prison, where Hess was the only prisoner in the 1980s.
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  69.  @matej2733  The ghost of "faraway" Neville Chamberlain has never been laid.
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  70.  @nkristianschmidt  Around 100,000 in June 1935 according to my source (Jane Caplan ed, Nazi Germany, p.136.) I doubt it was much different in 1939.
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  71. Hungary and Croatia had been closely associated since the dynastic union of 1102 after which Croatia was effectively the coastal part of Hungary (though the legal position was much more complicated especially after both kingdoms got merged into The Habsburg Empire).
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  72. You're actually describing one part of the real Cold War. By no means all the Soviet diaspora were repatriated. A large number remained in The West (notably Canada) where they were virulently anti - Communist.
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  73. The weapons were probably the least valuable Lend Lease shipments, behind spam, trucks and communications equipment.
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  74. It was an effect a treasury bill but with the unusual quirk that after its original redemption date (180 days) it could be indefinitely extended in 90 day instalments. This is all from Wikipedia so it may not be quite accurate.
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  75. They just hate a logical contradiction.
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  76. This series is a jewel in the rather tarnished crown of YouTube history.
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  77. Germany and Austria were very reluctant to grant citizenship to anyone who wasn't an ethnic German. So I suppose these Whites were simply given resident - alien status, which would have left them very vulnerable in 1945.
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  78. American tanks were a bit rubbish. Trucks were much more useful.
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  79.  @rankedpsiguy1  It should be pointed out that as early as their second massacre ( at Lomazy) Police Battalion 101 had assigned most of the killing to local auxiliaries. Shooting people at point blank range is revolting. The testimonies are very graphic about this.
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  80.  @jgelt  Browning estimates that Police Battalion 101 was responsible for the death of over 80,000 people ( that is around 160 people for each man in it). Of these just under half were shot and just over half put on trains to the death camps.
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  81.  @davedoe6445  Neutral on the side of NATO!
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  82.  @igory3789  I think ML is mostly false, but partly true.
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  83. You have to remember this all happened during The Great Depression. The idea of self - sufficient empires seemed more plausible in the days of The New Deal, The Five Year Plans, and the Ottawa System.
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  84. Probably means January 1942.
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  85.  @colinplatt1963  I think you're right about Dragoon. The operation didn't make sense except as part of a "broad front" strategy. Though I suppose it could have been used to liberate Northern Italy if that had been thought desirable.
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  86. Buffer time.
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  87. I've never been quite sure what he was a genius in. Logistics is a good guess.
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  88. Very interesting. I think it does shed some light on the German experience.
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  89. Oh we have plenty of inflation. It's just that asset inflation (unlike inflation of commodity prices) doesn't officially count.
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  90. I think the model is fine provided you take an instrumental view of rationality. Hitler's methods were rational in the light of his weird conception of the world.
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  91.  @richardvernon317  That makes sense. It's interesting how much we think we know about WW2 is actually questionable.
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  92. I think they found him useful as a source of information. See also, Xaver Dorsch who made himself useful to The Americans writing the history of The Todt Organisation, and so escaped prosecution
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  93.  @TheImperatorKnight  Oh dear. You need to read more Roman monetaryl history. But basically goes like this. Silver coinage until mid - 3rd century. Partial demonetization under Diocletian (the military annona) Partial remonetization under Constantine (the gold solidus). Full remonetization under Anastasius (late 5th century, bronze coinage). This is highly over simplified but will do as a rule of thumb. Based on Michael Grant, The Climax of Rome, chapter 3.
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  94.  @YuryTimofeyev  The Anglophone is gradually arriving at an accurate assessment of this war, after decades of myth making. The distortions are partly the results of Soviet secretiveness during The Cold War
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  95. @Answer Questions Clearing The Scheldt was the truly vital task. That and not the fatuous plan to bounce The Rhine should have been the focus of operations in September.
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  96. The Nazi - Soviet Pact allowed Stalin to make major territorial gains. Stalin demanded control of the three Baltic republics in order to protect Leningrad (St Petersburg). The British said no, but Hitler said yes. So Stalin went with Hitler. Additionally you have to remember that in 1939 people expected a long Stalemate in The West, not a quick German victory
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  97.  @caryblack5985  The infamous Rzhev meat grinder. But it does not appear to have ground down Army Group Centre as much as I might have guessed.
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  98.  @simplicius11  The Junkers 88 bomber was commissioned with an air attack against England in mind. It wasn't really adequate though because of its small bomb load.
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  99.  @ZESAUCEBOSS  Just so. Gavin is to blame for trying to shift responsibility but he was really given an impossible task: both to capture the bridge and set up a defence perimeter against panzers.
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  100.    Finnish and Estonian are regarded as mutually intelligible I read.
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  101. They became famous for 48 hours.
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  102. @maciejl20 The shoddiness of planning for Barbarossa is extraordinary. The assumption seems to have been that the Red Army was so useless it would have been utterly crushed long before winter set in.
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  103. Let me recommend, Hitler's Thirty Days to Power, Henry Ashby Turner.
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  104. Probably at his desk the whole time but taking cat naps. Napoleon used to operate like this, though it eventually ruined his health.
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  105.  @Treblaine  Let's hope he had a comfy chair for his naps.
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  106.  @pwmiles56  It is odd they used the Soviet word. You're right about that.
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  107.  @pwmiles56  They refused to let The Bolsheviks expropriate a good German word.
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  108. It appears that the Germans deployed two divisions from their occupation army in France to hold the Italian Riviera. The Littorio Division, which rallied to The RSI, was also deployed. They were opposed by a US anti - aircraft brigade, recruited mainly from Japanese - Americans. There wasn't much fighting but it was an interesting situation.
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  109. A great book.
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  110.  @przemekkozlowski7835  Interesting. I think this was all widely known before around 1990 when the "ideological turn" led to economics being neglected for a while in accounts of The Third Reich. Adam Tooze says something like this in his book about the Nazi economy.
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  111. This seems to have been widely misunderstood. While apes have been diverging from the common ancestor for millions of years humans have also been diverging in a different direction.
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  112. Goering talked very foolishly.
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  113.  @FidelisRaven  It would be good if YouTube promoted him more. It's unfortunate that they're so capricious and arbitrary.
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  114. Indeed. Free markets can only exist in pre - state societies (or in the criminal underworld which tries to do without the state and its law codes).
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  115. They could have. But Hitler was impatient and a gambler. So a slower, safer policy didn't appeal to him.
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  116.  @3gunslingers  You should check out British historian Tim Mason. He used to argue along these lines very persuasively. I don't altogether agree. The Nazi regime was so popular it probably could have weathered some economic dislocation.
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  117. The town may be. The General isn't.
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  118. No. You pay your creditors in money you steal from someone else. Like someone stealing money to pay their drug dealer.
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  119. We don't have a reliable text, but in general terms we know how the meeting went, Hitler rambling on, and The War Ministry interpreting his maunderings as a brief to plan an attack on Czechoslovakia.
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  120. IG Farben is a curious case. They became so interlinked with The Wehrmacht that they could be considered more a parastate organisation than a private corporation. Hitler being such a petrol head was definitely unfortunate for The Reichsbahn.
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  121. It may all have worked out in the end, however frustrating the three - month delay in clearing Antwerp was.
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  122. In discussing the role of nationalism it's worth considering that beginning around 1860 the European powers began to implement systems of "national education" (to use a term current in The UK at that time) to effectively "nationalise" the population. Not being dominated by a single nationality The Empire couldn't do this and this was a major reason why defeat caused it to collapse.
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  123.  @seniortrostky7124  Romania was given a part of Ukraine (Transnistria) to administer.
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  124. If hypothetically Goering had been in charge I doubt there would have been a world war. He lacked Hitler's obsessive mindset and would not have taken such a risk.
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  125.  @vallergergo737  I'm afraid Tik's economic notions are bizarre. Pity because on other topics he's well - informed.
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  126.  @billslocum9819  True. But it would not be very useful if the 82 secured the bridge(s) only to be overrun by panzers immediately afterwards.
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  127. There has never been a period where this was not true. There may be occasions when it is acceptable to argue with teachers but they are rare and it's best not to do it unless you're extremely good at picking up vibes. You should also, probably, be over 16.
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  128. Pretty much. Could The Soviets have destroyed the German Army and liberated their country without Lend Lease? It's doubtful.
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  129. Hmm. I don't think the British failed to realise. They didn't want Hitler to conquer The USSR, or anywhere else in Europe.
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  130. A very clear explanation. It appears that MEFO bills were converted into state debt in 1939.
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  131. Exactly. It was in The Spring of 1943 that Bomber Command really began to affect the German Economy.
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  132. Yep. It was "pretend East Europeans are American Indians" time.
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  133. It's estimated that about 1.5 million Gulag prisoners died during the 30 years the system was in existence. It would certainly be interesting to know how much of this loss occurred during the war.
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  134. He's an interesting guy to be sure. Someone published his memoirs during The Cold War, but sadly they were a forgery.
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  135. I agree. You could think of The Dual Monarchy (and its German ally) as besieged fortresses. All the authorities could do was manage the inevitable shortages as best they could.
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  136.  @francescofontana9707  There were two wars going on. The war between Germans and Allies, with both sides deploying a few Italian divisions which did not fight each other. And a nasty counter - insurgency war in The North between partisans and fascist militia.
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  137. He was a major asset to The Allies. Really sad to see him go.
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  138. Chamberlain had a best - case scenario and a fall back position. Best case: Hitler would not seek any territory in Europe but would be bought off with colonies in Africa. Fall back. Hitler would seek to incorporate the ethnic Germans on the Eastern frontier but wouldn't pursue a wider Lebensraum policy.
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  139.  @matthewbadley5063  What we need is a silver standard.
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  140.  BruderShaft1  If you define capitalism as a social system focussed on the accumulation of capital (which strikes me as reasonable) then The Soviet Union was capitalist.
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  141. Huh! Bulgaria was a member of The Axis too, and it made a point of keeping out of the War with The Soviet Union.
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  142.  @markod1719  Thanks.
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  143.  @illerac84  I think so. Up until that moment they decided they owned the world.
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  144. Glad someone else has remembered this. The USA were eager to get The USSR to declare war until they could be sure that the atom bomb would actually explode.
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  145.  @chaptermasterpedrokantor1623  The Soviet campaign in Manchuria was a remarkable demonstration of their new military competence. It's amusing that WW2 was bookended by Soviet victories in Manchuria.
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  146. I'm puzzled too. I think the answer is that the whole operation was planned in a fever of optimistic wishful thinking after the extraordinary victory in France.
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  147. Eisenhower had a difficult time at the end of the war preventing accidental clashes between American and Soviet soldiers.
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  148. Sheila Fitzpatrick is very good.
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  149. Italy suffered massively. It made naval operations very difficult.
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  150. The British were opposed to a formal alliance for two reasons, the danger of war with Japan and the Soviet demand that they be given control of the Baltic republics ( which seemed too much like a new Munich from the British pov).
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  151. Cool maps! I think you meant March 1939.
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  152.  @jussim.konttinen4981  It probably was from a pure cost/ benefit pov. Though The Ardennes offensive allowed The Russians to get to Berlin a good deal earlier than they otherwise would have.
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  153. Just so. It seems odd to us because we know how this story ends, but Stalingrad wasn't really very important.
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  154. Definitely. It may be that they made up for their losses to some extent by the new citizens they gained via their annexations in Eastern Europe.
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  155. @I swear to god I'm white Which is not strictly true either. Ricardian socialism was a thing before Marx.
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  156.  @jimtaylor294  Indeed. The Hapsburg Monarchy was both resentful (at having to ask for Russian assistance) and anxious (that the Russians would now permanently occupy The Danubian Principalities.) In the aftermath the two powers became permanently hostile to each other.
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  157.  @haroldfiedler6549  They actually were emancipated in the sense that they were released from the camps, in the hope they might be able to feed themselves outside.
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  158. Exactly. The Western Desert was a desert (shock!). Everything had to be shipped by the Italian marine and to make things worse there were no railways.
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  159.  @TheImperatorKnight  Part of the reason was that the various nationalist movements inside The Empire had branches in The USA because there had been a great deal of recent emigration across The Atlantic. This gave the movements some currency inside The USA while at the same time the American branches educated the folk still in The Monarchy on how to structure themselves for maximum appeal to US opinion. I don't think the British and French had any particular desire to break up The Empire but their dependence on The USA was by now so great that they could not effectively oppose American wishes.
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  160. That's a good question. I believe The Luftwaffe had some early success with intruder operations. It might be the oil shortage again.
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  161.  @sean640307  Nonsense.
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  162. Pretty much. Italian partisans appear in WestWorld season 3.
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  163.  @charlietipton8502  This is a good post. I don't think Gavin is to be blamed for his decisions at the time, only for his later weaseling that the bridge might have been captured if Lindquist had acted more decisively.
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  164. I wondered about that too Armies are generally careful to tell their soldiers as little as possible about operations. I was always amused that in the world wars The British Army never told their soldiers the names of hills. They were always referred to as "Hill, X" (the X representing the height of the hill in metres).
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  165.  @igory3789  I agree.
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  166. It's interesting how some episodes of WW2 have simply been forgotten. Without "The Guns of Navarone" no one at all would remember The Dodecanese Campaign.
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  167.  @electronworld4996  AF Guides is a Nazi but a well - informed one. He's not altogether wrong. You have to remember that what Hitler was interested in was his Lebensraum war. If Poland could be recruited as an ally for that war (like Romania later was) there would be no need to conquer it
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  168.  @lesliefranklin1870  Not that it would have achieved much if it had "worked".
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  169. As far as I know the US was the only country which took rape seriously as a war crime.
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  170.  @caryblack5985  There is the problem of "lightly wounded", who were often kept with their units in the expectation that they would be fit for service in a few days.
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  171.  @0utc4st1985  I certainly wouldn't say that it was a good idea. Just that it might plausibly seem like one then.
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  172. Unfortunately we don't have reliable English language accounts of this battle. Things may improve as the Soviet accounts are translated.
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  173. Yes is the short answer (if you accept Hitler's own testimony).
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  174.  @davidtakacs7549  The evidence is assembled by Alice Miller, For Your Own Good (1983). I've not read anything by Hitler himself for a long time.
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  175. He's a fascinatingly ambiguous figure. He first enabled the catastrophe ( by inventing instruments like the MEFO Bill to finance rearmament) then tried to avert it.
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  176. Good summary of the video. I think the bad effect of the dual command system should be investigated more though.
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  177.  @impalabeeper  It was best practice at the time. The British also preferred bayonet charges to protracted firefights.
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  178.  @Edax_Royeaux  He was unlucky, and TIK isn't really fair to him in this video. Arguably he rather successfully dug a heffalump.trap for Hitler at Munich.
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  179. I quite like him, but you don't really intersect except over Gnosticism.
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  180.  @HallBr3gg  Quite. Whether you want to call The Third Reich capitalist is entirely a matter of personal preference.
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  181. He'd really love Milo.
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  182.  @ns7023  Yep. These people had put on Nazi uniform. Any Allied obligation to them was limited.
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  183.  @johnbeal6758  There are some hilarious comments on this thread
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  184. The US executed around 100 of their soldiers for rape. I don't think any other Allied army executed anyone for this offense.
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  185.  @roberthansen5727  You wouldn't go far wrong if you believed the opposite of what they said.
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  186.  @MidKnightblue0013  Spam, spam, spam, spam. I suppose if you would starve otherwise even spam becomes palatable.
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  187. That's the way to do it. Break compound nouns onto their components.
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  188.  @zxbzxbzxb1  It was a simple recognition of reality. You couldn't hit the arms factories, but if you burnt down the cities you might, with luck, kill a lot of workers.
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  189. Certainly. That's why Schacht wanted the bills to be saved and not redeemed.
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  190.  @herbwag6456  Coal gas was fairly widely used in both world wars but the gas bag made the vehicle cumbersome to drive.
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  191. ​ @juanpaz5124  I don't believe it either. I think we're in the domain of rumour and suspicion rather than fact.
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  192. This is all what Clausewitz called the friction of war, which makes it much more difficult to conduct than appears at first sight. His solution, military genius, reads oddly now, but I think he was trying to explain the success of Napoleon rather than making practical proposals for the future.
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  193. A good example of military (or rather airforce) Darwinism.
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  194. That was the British assessment. They were very doubtful that the Red Army could give Poland effective assistance.
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  195.  @dennisweidner288  That's it. He had his name on obviously criminal orders. The guilt of other generals was murkier.
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  196. Soviet citizens who had defected and joined the German Army. It's generally estimated that 25% of Sixth Army strength were Hiwis. Since they were equipped exactly like German soldiers they were effectively the same except (presumably) for language of command.
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  197. There was that newspaper article. It appears that the brutal treatment of The Cossacks by Allied soldiers was known and deplored in The USSR. It was probably easier to sympathise with them if they had never worn Nazi uniform.
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  198. Workaholic. He made himself dictator by sheer diligence and he kept it up for over two decades until the immense strain of the war forced him to take things a bit more easily afterwards.
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  199. Brazil, the nightmare of their expeditionary force.
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  200. A famous factory indeed.
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  201.  @TheImperatorKnight  I think what the French wanted was not money but coal (the Germans had wrecked many of their nines in WW1). When the Germans didn't deliver the French tried to collect the coal themselves by occupying The Ruhr, but this failed because of the strike.
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  202. There were some really radical possibilities, like exposing the agricultural sector to foreign competition. But this wouldn't have been too popular. The famous Osthilfe scandal was a gesture in this direction.
    1
  203. Pity. I have looked and there don't appear to be any representations of MEFO bills online
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  204.  @TheImperatorKnight  Don't pay any attention to this poster The (very brief) mention of you in the D - Day video wasn't at all hostile.
    1
  205.  @billandreastv1166  Hmm. Well if this was the view it was soon altered. After WW2 many thousands of Ukrainians were settled in The UK and Canada.
    1
  206.  @kentamitchell  Way too high for The Gulag. Holodomor is a dubious construct of Ukrainian nationalism. The famine was by no means confined to Ukraine. In fact losses may have been higher in Kazakhstan as a %age of population.
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  207. Exactly. They are equally to blame. There are some remarkable comments above by David Rendall suggesting that they were really not that concerned about Arnhem and had an entirely different conception of the battle from the official plan. A suggestion worth following up.
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  208.  @lukebruce5234  Getty is very good. I think only now is the Great Terror coming into focus because this bizarre self - destructive episode requires a lot of explanation.
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  209. Landing on both sides of the bridge would seem to be a good idea.
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  210.  @lucashurkmans2206  It's better to report that the Germans sat there were huge losses. We don't have reliable figures.
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  211.  @lucashurkmans2206  The consensus seems to be that the first offensive (October - November)was a serious attempt to crush the Germans, the later ones holding operations. But the losses in the later offensives do seem high. (Krivosheev reports 30,000 "irrecoverable losses"). If most of the casualties were Latvian conscipts it may be the Soviets weren't too concerned to minimise casualties.
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  212.  @lucashurkmans2206  Hope you're right. It would really suck to be a Latvian killed in Courland wearing Soviet uniform.
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  213. Immediately attacked (and probably destroyed) The Kwantung Army in Manchuria. That's why The Japanese didn't do it.
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  214.  @dawidlijewski5105  The Polish - Lithuanian Commonwealth was still a thing in UK if nowhere else.
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  215. The different railway gauge in Russia was a huge problem. Every inch of track had to be laboriously converted before German rolling stock could be used.
    1
  216. No you're correct. The Poles made it very clear after Munich that they weren't going to join in Hitler's war for Lebensraum, but up to March Hitler still hoped they'd come around, and the Brits feared that they might.
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  217. The British had just begun a bombing campaign against Germany when The Armistice was signed.
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  218.  @chrisyorke6175  In recent years people have been more inclined to accept that Bomber Command played an important role in winning the war (or winning it more quickly).
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  219.  @68walter  Not since 1940. But they were before.
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  220. It only seems strange if you're not thinking clearly, probably because you're a deranged anti - Communist.
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  221.  @fazole  They would have been pretty severe (around 6% of German GNP) if they had actually been paid.
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  222. It was afraid of the effect on US public opinion if Germany had renounced its alliance with Japan.
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  223. sami parkonnen I believe the Finnish Reds were originally even more nationalist and irredentist than The Whites. But after they were defeated their leaders were mostly in exile in The USSR so they had to change their tune.
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  224. Very true. If countries want to fight wars they have to run deficits.
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  225.  @grekusPotatus  Much of my argument is based on, How War Came, by D.C. Watt. It's a bit long and repetitive, but well argued I think. You might like to check it out.
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  226. He did. But as he also said there was also a mass release of prisoners because they couldn't be fed in the camps.
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  227. Nowadays it's a British intelligence base. Perhaps it was the same then.
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  228.  @QuizmasterLaw  Interesting that the Anglo - Americans did protect citizens of The Baltic States. Presumably because they did not recognize their annexation by The USSR.
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  229. It's standard Western usage now I'm afraid.
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  230. There was an interesting historical debate about all this in the late 1980s, and the consensus was that Germany did not face immediate collapse but that ambitious plans for further rearmament (like building up a ocean - going navy) could not be carried out without foreign conquests.
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  231.  @thevillaaston7811  There's fairly good evidence that negotiations were conducted in Sweden about a separate peace. See Gerhard Weinberg, A World at Arms. From Stalin's pov it was a win/win. Either he would get the Germans out of the USSR without further fighting or the Anglo - Americans would be more amenable to his demands.
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  232.  @TheImperatorKnight  There's one by Ingeborg Fleischhauer. But it's in German.
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  233. That's a good point. The badness of the roads must have limited the usefulness of the trucks
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  234. You can certainly blame him for the way he shifted blame to Lindquist, apparently enlisting others to do some smearing on his behalf.
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  235. I'd say keep the original narrative and pin, because this is interesting from an historiographic pov. Remarkable that so many years later there should still be such uncertainty about casualties. Take no notice of haters. It's very obvious to sensible folk that you are completely honest.
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  236.  @charlietipton8502  What is shabby is the shifting of blame to Lindquist. Fortunately it doesn't seem to have damaged his career.
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  237. Yes. I do think it's important that the Americans didn't intentionally target civilians . However attacking a train station in the middle of a densely populated town pretty much guaranteed heavy casualties.
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  238. You more inclined to read Luther probably.
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  239.  @climberly  It's simply a fact that Luther was a raging anti-Semite.
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  240. According to Richard Sreigmann - Gall, who is the main authority on these matters, Confessional Lutherans were most likely to embrace Nazi values of all the German churches.
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  241. Most likely they had been conscripted into The Wehrmacht and then defected to The Allies.
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  242.  @KarakNornClansman  It's sad to see this casual dismissal of Solzhenitsyn. Obviously his account has the limited perspective of all memoir but had experienced The Gulag himself and could give an authentic account of what it felt like.
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  243. You could call wartime Japan fascist in the generic sense (combine a policy of aggression abroad and repression at home) but apart from that it didn't much resemble its allies.
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  244. Steve in the Mountains Why wouldn't they? He would tell his comrades that if they cooperation with the enemy after capture they might well be released.
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  245.  @michaelharvey75  Steven Kotkin is very good. Not perfect but much better than any previous Anglophone biographer.
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  246.  @caryblack5985  Particularly since he was so cooperative, as prisoners tend to be. Surprising that he knew so much considering his lowly rank.
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  247.  @82dorrin  The latter, I would think.
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  248. Ridgway The Rigid.
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  249.  @Xfire209  Exactly. The Gestapo responded to delation by neighbors.
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  250. There is absolutely none.
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  251.  @kwanchan6745  Could be. It does look like a deception operation.
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  252. I'd hope people would not waste their time on this worthless book, unless they're professionally interested in the psychology of Soviet defectors
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  253.  @richardvernon317  Yep. Battle of The Ruhr (1943).
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  254. Was it slow? I thought its problem was bad handling which made it liable to crash if the pilot pushed it hard?
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  255.  @dragosstanciu9866  Exactly. They wanted to prevent the quasi - alliance between Germany and The USSR becoming more solid. Though there was a hare brained scheme to attack the Caucasus Oil industry following the Soviet attack on Finland.
    1
  256. Inflation generally benefits both workers and employers. It's those on fixed incomes who lose out.
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  257. Dwight MacDonald has some good essays about this problem.
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  258. That seems rather tautological. That a broad front allows you to establish a broad front is only an advantage if there's some actual reason to prefer a broad front.
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  259.  @EdAtoZ  They didn't spread out though. Instead they concentrated in The Ardennes, though that didn't work out too well for them.
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  260.  @TheImperatorKnight  If he had really understood US politics he would have realised why declaring war was such a bad idea. He seems to have believed that Roosevelt was a dictator like himself.
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  261.  @ВячеславСкопюк  Flattened Helsinki with their bombers. Not in 1941 of course but in 1944 they could have done it in an afternoon.
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  262.  @TheImperatorKnight  I like the theory that the British ordered the assassination of Heydrich to protect Canaris. If it's true they clearly regarded him as a valuable asset.
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  263.  @jimtaylor294  I would say this lack of "commonality" is simply another way of saying that the Austrians were Catholics, which meant that Bismarck and the National Liberals didn't want them in their new Reich.
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  264. The career of Beust is interesting. A Saxon Protestant but not a National Liberal he became the first prime minister of the new Dual Monarchy, a symbolic declaration by Franz Josef that Austria did not want to be severed from Germany.
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  265.  @jimtaylor294  We'll have to agree to disagree here. I see you as down playing the Importance of confessional conflict in typical "post Christian" fashion. I will concede that permitting the annexation of Catholic Alsace - Lorraine was a blunder by Bismarck if he wanted the new Reich to be as Protestant as possible.
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  266.  @simplicius11  I think you're wrong there. You could trade them, but people preferred to keep them because the rate of interest was good (for a depression).
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  267.  @simplicius11  Agree to disagree. I would like to see a fuller account than those currently available online.
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  268.  @TheImperatorKnight  Don't let these idiots get to you. I'm very impressed with your Stalingrad series.
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  269. We are not worthy to speak his holy name.
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  270.  @leohard1814  The German production figures are lying propaganda.
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  271. It was a newspaper tag. The men of Bomber Command usually called him "Butch". It was not altogether a compliment.
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  272. Stalin was not such a fool as to fall for that. He was never going to make any aggressive move unless convinced it would not pose any threat to The USSR.
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  273. Thanks.
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  274.  @damyr  Have to agree. The US dating system is super - weird. Though we're not going to make any friends talking about 11/9.
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  275. It was his middle name.
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  276. That's an interesting conjecture.
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  277. Yes. But he couldn't have waged the great war for Lebensraum which he regarded as his mission.
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  278. He was among those killed in the wake of the Stauffenberg Plot.
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  279. Most likely The Allies simply didn't want to take on the task of caring for these people.
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  280.  @rfe8nn2  Absolutely right. The blame can be shared between Browning, Gavin, and SHAEF.
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  281. The secret is finally revealed. The Death Maginot Line was the ultimate secret weapon.
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  282.  @andrewwmacfadyen6958  The Americans lacked trained hangmen, and some executions were messy. Dunno why they didn't use firing squads like the Brits.
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  283.  @TheImperatorKnight  That 90% success claim is nonsense. Though Nijmegen was useful as a base for the February Offensive. There's a memorial at Groesbeek to the Canadian soldiers killed in the Battle of The Reichswald.
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  284.  @daarksideyt  There were many reasons why an invasion of France wasn't possible until 1944. But you're right in suggesting that even if it had been possible it would have been a bad decision to proceed with it if the cost had been a decline in the ability of the Soviet Army to kill Germans.
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  285. Lend Lease allowed each party to produce what they were best at producing, tanks for the Soviets, trucks for the Americans.
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  286. That is a good point. And there was a near certainty that an Anglo - Soviet alliance would lead to a German - Japanese alliance in response. Both The UK and The USSR had good reason for not wanting an alliance.
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  287.  @russellwright6190  Armies have always been very reluctant to punish their soldiers for killing enemy prisoners.
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  288.  @mahlapropyzm9180  Rhineland Pfalz is predominantly Catholic too.
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  289. Nightmarish. The Wehrmacht's fearsome operational skill was negated by it's logistical incompetence. Fortunately for the the world.
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  290. This is true.
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  291.  @Seven_FM  The Finns joined in Hitler's murderous war but it wasn't altogether a free choice and they did so half - heartedly. So it's not much counted against them.
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  292. It was sometimes said that many British armoured units were former cavalry, and still had that mindset.
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  293. All nations have been female since The Roman Empire.
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  294.  @fiddlersgreen2433  Yeremenko seems to have been reasonably competent. Stalin kept him in active commands until the end of the war.
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  295. According to Wikipedia The USA executed 141 of its military personnel in WW2. Apart from Slovik all executions were either for murder or (predominantly) rape. The large number of executions for rape are associated with US racism and are a very queasy topic.
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  296.  @thewoodpekker7980  Very interesting. The Finns seem to have been the victims of German disinformation.
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  297.  @taphos9469  It's an interesting question. The Soviets seemed to have wavered about the question. Sometimes they thought they should annex Finland (since it had been part of the old Russian Empire) and other times they just wanted it to be harmless. In the end the second view prevailed but it could quite possibly have gone the other way.
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  298.  @seanadler918  The Nazis couldn't have an alliance with both Japan and The Soviet Union. It was when they gave up on The Japanese (late July) that they began serious approaches to The Soviets.
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  299.  The Colonel  Koch was quite prominent in the 1970s as an expert on various aspects of German fascism (The Free Corps, The Hitler Youth, The Nazi justice system) but never became famous.
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  300.  @johnweber6612  Yes. The jet fighters were a huge leap forward in aircraft design but came into service too late to affect operations. Rather like The British Centurion tank.
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  301. Effectively. But off - book I think because issued by a private corporation.
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  302.  @petriew2018  It's, "If my grandmother had wheels she'd be a bicycle" logic.
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  303. TBF the Germans did have an ancient historical connection with Eastern Europe and many Germans had settled there over the centuries. This didn't make the idea of conquering the whole area sensible but the Ausland Deutsch were a real issue in an age of nationalist assertion and conflict
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  304.  @zxbzxbzxb1  True. True.
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  305. Bizarrely this was the most successful German operation in the final months of the war.
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  306. Did anyone point out that the Anglo - Americans wished to retain The Soviet Union as an ally and that until the atomic bomb was successfully exploded The US wanted them to join in the war against Japan at the earliest possible date?
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  307. They knew about but they didn't believe in it (with good reason).
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  308. That seems harsh.
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  309.  @eldragon4076  Pretty droll that someone would regard a potboiling hack like Hastings as an authority.
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  310.  @TheImperatorKnight  I think Courland was actually a better project, since it's so little known to Anglophones.
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  311. A good point. It should also be said that the infamous Night of The Long Knives saw Hitler and The Army collaborate in this murder spree, even though Schleicher was one of the victims
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  312.  @TheImperatorKnight  The little stukas (and Soviet aircraft) are a fun addition.
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  313. Interesting. I think those who had worn German uniform were less at risk of criminal prosecution than of social ostracism. It must have been tough living in The Soviet Union as a known Nazi collaborator. In some ways life in The Gulag may have been easier since no one there supported the regime
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  314. Indeed. A German - Polish entente would have been a disaster for The British. Fortunately the Poles never considered it, perceiving correctly that it would end their independence.
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  315.  @HomercleeseSimpson  I don't think TIK is totally wrong. There was a degree of overlap in Eastern Europe. You can see it in Romania where the Cold War "national communist" government followed a similar line to fascists who preceded them in power.
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  316. Yes. The idea is to smooth the economic cycle.
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  317.  @mrniceguy7168  So it would seem.
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  318. He's rather like a younger version.
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  319.  @TheImperatorKnight  I'm afraid Trevor - Roper was a rather unethical historian. Though I think The Last Days holds up. It was based on testimony gathered shortly after Hitler's death.
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  320.  @caryblack5985  Hitler nixed the foo fighters too (probably).
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  321.  The Colonel  Agreed. I don't think anyone doubts that the text we have gives a generally accurate account of what Hitler said but the participants were never given an opportunity to authenticate or query its accuracy (with the exception of Hitler himself, who declined to do so).
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  322. This is so. Hitler attacked Poland because Poland refused to to side with him against the Soviet Union.
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  323. You're not altogether wrong there. There's a good collection of testimony though.
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  324.  @Zveebo  I agree. The effect of increased money supply in the recent past has been asset inflation, and I see no reason why this should not continue indefinitely.
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  325.  @oliversmith9200  I think you're mostly right. Totalitarianism couldn't have perpetuated itself without mass support. You would think the fact that The Soviet Government being unable to feed the population adequately would have undermined its legitimacy but maybe this was believed to be a temporary problem.
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  326.  @lyndoncmp5751  Bad country for paras.
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  327. Apparently The RAF simply refused to land airborne forces anywhere near Arnhem, so Browning isn't to blame for that absurdity.
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  328.  @Malinb0ratt  They didn't feel any particular obligation to anyone wearing Nazi uniform. The deportation of civilians who had been living outside The USSR for many years was much less justifiable.
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  329. The charge against him is that he was better at the tactical than the operational level. Whether this is true is debatable.
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  330. I believe they were brought to The UK to work as agricultural labourers, and adopted by The Polish community there.
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  331. Impressive sarcasm.
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  332. Good explanation of what looks like an extraordinary delay in clearing the approaches to Antwerp on which depended the success of every other operation in this theatre.
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  333.  @johnpeate4544  Such an "inference" strikes me as insane. But then I reflect that there was no reason to believe that The Allies would be able to capture Antwerp intact before The Germans could wreck it. They were handed an amazing stroke of luck, and then threw it away.
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  334.  @johnpeate4544  As Tik the Brittany ports were utterly irrelevant. Allied planning really seems to have been bad. Though I guess only a choice of bad alternatives was available, until Antwerp fell. Interesting question how usable the southern French network would have been after the northern had been utterly destroyed.
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  335.  @johnpeate4544  I am highly sceptical about the feasibility of that "original planning". Certainly after Antwerp fell intact Chastity would have been completely pointless.
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  336. Yep. Ammunition was a problem for the Germans throughout the war because it consumes resources so voraciously.
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  337. No it was quite separate. But it does show that The Allies were very callous towards anyone suspected of collaborating with The Nazis.
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  338. Worth mentioning that Reiman lived most of his life in The USA, which is presumably why he came to the attention ofthe anarcho - capitalists. I hope he wasn't asked the, Are you now or have you ever been... question too often since that would have got old quickly.
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  339.  @TheImperatorKnight  Pretend - lend
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  340.  @TheImperatorKnight  They tried coal gas.
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  341. Milton Shulman, Defeat in The West (1947) is still worth a read, giving the experience of middle - ranking German officers fighting against the Anglo - Americans in 1944 - 45. Certainly not given to any extravagant praise of operational performance and in fact quite triggering to wehraboos.
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  342. This is a good point. The main value of German PoWs was that they could work at a time when war time losses had caused a major shortage of labour. There was no point in keeping really debilitated prisoners alive. After all The Soviets allowed many of their own citizens to starve if they couldn't work because of age or infirmity. This was an incredibly brutal war.
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  343. We have always been at war with Eurasia.
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  344. Chamberlain wasn't spineless. Once it became clear that Hitler really was pursuing a Lebensraum policy he declared war.
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  345.  @caryblack5985  Also Julius Fisher, Transnistria, The Forgotten Cemetery (1970). It's so little noticed it might be called, The Forgotten Book.
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  346. The Dawes/Young revisions and The Locarno Treaty were a strategic disaster for the French. They made it impossible to hobble Germany with reparations, and they left Poland and Czechoslovakia vulnerable to German irredentism.
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  347.  @AgendaFiles  They refused to make the payments demanded under the much higher 1921 schedule. Hence The Ruhr Crisis of 1923, which culminated in a French defeat.
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  348.  @AgendaFiles  Schuker is the authority I follow about reparations. It's a very complex topic and not many people understand it.
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  349. Charles Feinstein and Gerald Feldman are worth a read. And Niall Ferguson has some interesting comments in his, Pity of War. I know Ferguson is a doofus but he does know about banking.
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  350.  @vallergergo737  Pretty much.
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  351. I presume the camp was run by Austrians up to 1938, by Nazis up to May 1945, and by The Brits after that date
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  352. If Barbarossa wasn't an immediate success the war was lost, because the Germans would no longer be able to obtain all those Soviet natural resources they desperately needed.
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  353.  @konstantinkelekhsaev302  2% seems a bit low. I got the impression that there were plenty of Vlassovites in The Gulag after 1945. But it seems hardly anyone was shot, contrary to some British accounts. The days of The Yezhovshina were past, the Soviet Union needed every one who could work. Oh I see you said civilians. Obviously no civilians were Vlassovites.
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  354.  @chrisguido1858  Those SS eh!
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  355. An all - out assault on German agriculture.
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  356.  @matthelme4967  Finland's membership of The Axis was signalled by Finnish adherence to The Anti - Comintern Pact (1941). The Nazis always regarded this as an association of States which accepted their leadership, replacing the old League of Nations.
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  357. I'm pretty sure that Alsace at least was annexed into The Reich in 1940. Certainly men of military age living there were conscripted into The German Army, with the result that the province suffered greater loss of life in WW2 than any other part of France.
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  358. Yep. Misconceived plan badly executed is the correct assessment.
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  359.  @Digiidude  It's extremely useful to have soldiers who can go without sleep. It's bad for their health but in the short run in enhances their effectiveness a lot.
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  360. Economics was really his center of interest.
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  361.  @caryblack5985  Still people don't know about the Rzhev meat grinder. I was actually surprised casualties weren't higher. Heavy fighting seems to have been confined to August.
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  362. The Romanians had most formidable navy.
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  363.  @ahmedeox  It is indeed. And, no they couldn't.
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  364.  Comrade Kabo  This might be due to Hitler liking the Social Darwinist side of capitalism even while not liking the free.market side. It's a complicated subject.
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  365. No doubt it could be repaired eventually but the allies have devoted the spring and summer of 1944 to wrecking it totally employing heavy bombers, light bombers and The French Resistance. If The Allies could reinforce Normandy faster than The Germans the battle there could be won. And if not, not.
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  366. Yep. The element of discounting (which made them worth only 96% of their face value) meant they weren't quite cash.
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  367.  @tankgirl2074  Probably. They needed to prioritize. Nazi collaborators went to the back of the queue.
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  368. He accepted the blame for instructing Gavin to attend first to the threat of a counter attack from the east. He behaved like a gentleman. This may have been because any attempt to blame Gavin would have backfired. He was unpopular with the US airborne commanders long before Market Garden. He certainly behaved very differently to Sosabowski.
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  369.  @scottnieradka6836  Make sense. The private plots were small and the peasants would have grown whatever would have sold for the highest price Probably it was 30% by market value not caloric value.
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  370. We may wonder whether, if Browning had issued positive orders to prioritise the bridge, whether Gavin would have obeyed them.
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  371. Heaven knows. In retrospect the whole operation looks like the height of folly. I suppose it played some part in securiing Antwerp but that could have been done at much less cost.
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  372. Henry Ashby Turner says exactly this at the end of , Hitler's Thirty Days to Power, a very readable short book. A hypothetical praetorian government in Germany would probably have attacked Poland. However this might not have led to a world war had the British and French been convinced that The Germans would not attack anyone else.
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  373.  @mumin7229  Quite possibly. But it may be The UK (which had never been very friendly to Poland) would have restrained France as long as the Germans made it clear that they were only seeking the restoration of their 1914 frontiers.
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  374. There was considerable opposition in France to anyone "dying for Danzig". The attitude of The Soviet Union is the great imponderable. If they had also sought gains that would have meant the effective disappearance of Poland.
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  375.  Israel Hands  However much they disliked The Soviet Union they would not wish to be cut off from their families.
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  376. What a creep this Graham seems to have been.
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  377. A shorter overview of Stalingrad would be a good idea. That way viewers could miss some of the battlestorm videos but still have an idea how the battle progressed.
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  378. The Brazilian Expeditionary Force is not much mentioned.
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  379.  @kaletovhangar  He dictated them posthumously. They were literally ghost - written.
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  380. I think there are two objections to The Table Talk, one major and one minor. The minor one is the obvious unreliability of anything touched by Genoud but this can be avoided by going back to the first German text. The major one is that that text is a reconstruction rather than a stenographic record and is designed (by Hitler and Bormann) to flatter Hitler. Still as a source it's not nearly as bad as memoirs and diaries published after the war.
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  381. You have to remember that coal is a plant concentrate, even if it looks like a mineral.
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  382. The so - called Memorandum is a very dubious source because again the text is compiled from Hossbach's notes and recollections and not from any stenographic record. As a document it is inferior to The Table Talk which, I believe, was approved by Hitler and so achieved "official" status.
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  383.  @TheImperatorKnight  The reports of criminal behaviour by British soldiers are distressing.
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  384. It was the same story at Arnhem itself, with the paras being landed miles away from the bridge there. The operation was both badly designed and badly executed.
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  385. They were continuously in action from May 1940 - May 1941, and definitely lost some of their edge.
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  386.  @electronworld4996  This is true. Plus WW1 had been financially ruinous and the Brits couldn't pay for another world war. Luckily the were able to persuade The USA to underwrite them.
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  387. He was pretty brutal. Though less so after he consolidated his rule.
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  388. They were presumably told that these people were Nazis, which many of them would have been.
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  389. The Brits would not have conceded him anything. That was all decided in May 1940.
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  390. I remember an amazing story of a British bomber which became so lost it attacked Bristol believing it to be Hamburg.
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  391.  @haroldgodwinson832  The US bombers were very heavily armed, and shot down many attacking fighters. But one Messerschmitt 109 for one much more expensive B 17 isn't a good exchange.
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  392.  @davethompson3326  It's sad that Sorel is so little known in England. There's an interesting discussion of him in, Napoleon, For and Against, by the honorary Englishman Pieter Geyl.
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  393. The German people mainly. Foreigners wouldn't lend following earlier defaults.
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  394. I don't think it was benevolence. The pows were valuable workers and the USSR was desperately short of labour.
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  395. You are correct. There was fighting between RSI and partisans in The North and casualties were high.
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  396. US submarines played a role in winning The Pacific War which often gets overlooked.
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  397. Some of these British actions against The Cossacks resemble pogroms (ironic in more than one way).
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  398. Yes. These are good arguments. I think under any leadership Germany would have pursued an aggressive, expansionist policy in the 1930s.
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  399.  @SamuelJamesNary  You could say that in the 1930s Germany was aggressive because it was so weak. The Kaiser's Germany was much stronger and could effectively protect the Germans who were governed by non - German rulers (most of whom were German allies, or at the least reasonably friendly).
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  400.  @johnburns4017  This looks like the guy was complicit in Gavin's shabby attempt to blame Lindquist for the failure.
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  401. Yes. Good comparison.
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  402. Highly likely.
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  403. You think he was going to tell his officers that he told the Russians everything he knew?
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  404. Definitely Stalingrad. It's the holy grail of WW2 land operations.
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  405. Browning was to blame as well. He should have insisted that Gavin concentrate on the bridge, but he too was probably worried by The SHAEF report.
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  406. Yora. Good to know that people are pretty well informed.
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  407.  @partytor11  Commitment to Enlightenment ideals of internationalism should stop leftists falling into fascism but the effectiveness of this seems to vary a lot according to time and place.
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  408.  @randomdude4136  I don't think libertarianism in either its left or right variations has ever been much of a thing in Eastern Europe.
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  409.  @partytor11  You're right. I should have said, Not much of a thing outside Russia (and Poland).
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  410.  @merdiolu  The improvement since Crusader was astonishing.
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  411. The British executed around 300 servicemen for cowardice in WW1 so they weren't squeamish. Kipling included an epitaph for a "coward" shot by firing squad in his, Epitaphs of War.
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  412.  @billbolton  You can't beat real estate. I do think there will be more house building in future but I doubt this will cause any fall in prices.
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  413.  @billbolton  According to the video he didn't expect The French to occupy The Ruhr, and it was this event that destroyed the already weak mark.
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  414.  @billbolton  I think hedging operations are very useful. Anticipating what exchange rates "ought to be", not so much.
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  415.  @billbolton  Me too!
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  416. Very happy to hear that Stalingrad has been reprieved. I do think more Patreon - response videos are a good idea. They're not too difficult and they show some love for the Patreon supporters. Submitted on Trinity Sunday. Hail the holy trinity of Guderian, Manstein and Rommel! But mostly Manstein of course.
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  417. Pretty sure it was being organised before Pearl Harbor.
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  418. August 1941 in fact.
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  419.  @TheImperatorKnight  I seem to remember reading that the British had pretty good information about it, but were sceptical because if it were true the Germans should have known that they were bound to be beaten.
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  420. Neither was the key problem imo. Rather the Reichsbahn being starved of resources because of rearmament was the real problem, though I'm sure the other factors made things worse.
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  421. 1942.
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  422.  @johnweatherby8718  Wikipedia reckons that the main reason to use a quasi - private corporation instead of issuing normal treasury bills was to conceal the extent of rearmament. A secondary effect would be to conceal the true government deficit. I'm not sure how important this was though. I don't think there was any foreign investment in Germany then because it was impossible to get the money out again.
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  423. @tokul76 You should read a book about Bomber Command.
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  424. It was because of the shortage of raw materials, the result of breakneck rearmament.
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  425.  @dongilleo9743  Good point. There was no reason for Browning not to stay in England, but of course he wanted a piece of the action.
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  426. It was way worse. Everyone with a brain knows that.
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  427. In his history of WW1 Niall Ferguson disregards estimates for numbers wounded since they are so hard to evaluate. Only permanent losses (killed and prisoners) are really meaningful. Ferguson's account does have errors ( he makes the standard Western exaggeration of Russian WW1 losses) but I commend his resolve to disregard the number of "wounded".
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  428. I should try Frost's memoir of the battle.
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  429. Doh! There was no mass murder of German POWs and it seems you actually know that yourself.
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  430. It usually is. But Weimar Germany was unusually constrained economically because of its dependence on foreign loans. World wars are very bad economically but unsurprisingly it's even worse if you lose
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  431. Eremenko was wounded three times during the war. He may not have been too bright but he was certainly brave.
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  432.  @DawnOfTheDead991  Not very crypto, I'd say.
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  433. The SPD maintained a well organised underground (The Sopade) throughout the Nazi period. It's best known for its surveys of German public opinion, which post - war historians have found useful.
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  434.  @jangelbrich7056  Just so. Money and trust are interlinked. Hyperinflation is really a breakdown in trust so that money becomes worthless.
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  435. Horatio82. Good point. This atrocity makes The Polish refusal to accept a Soviet security guarantee a good deal more understandable.
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  436.  @chrislambert1617  Bizarre that people present obvious and well known facts as stupendous revelations.
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  437. You should read, The Man in The High Castle, since the Nazis do exactly that in that novel (colonise Mars having wrecked Earth).
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  438.  @attila7092  I thought it was an interesting question. It was probably too inaccurate to be useful would be my guess at an answer.
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  439. It was all very lopsided.
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  440.  @ВалБал-н3й  It is the case that most of the officers imprisoned after the military purge had been released and reinstated before Barbarossa. Not that this should surprise us because A. Most Gulag prisoners were amnestied after a year or two. B. The Soviet Union was rapidly expanding its army and needed officers.
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  441.  @Observer29830  It helps relieve the monotony.
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  442.  @TheImperatorKnight  It's not pronounced that way in English. We don't drive folkswagen cars.
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  443. Something similar. And much worse imo in that many of these guys were actually British allies as former Chetniks, and that The Partisans actually shot most of those deported because they lacked the ability to handle them.
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  444.  @TheImperatorKnight  In other words you want to answer the question with an unequivocal, "Yes", but know that would rightly be dismissed as crazy talk.
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  445. The southern French ports (notably Marseilles) allowed the US armies on the southern part of the front to be maintained but I don't know whether it was a good idea to make an effort in the south. I suppose it did tie down a great many German soldiers.
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  446.  @SmotritelMayaka29  In The Cold War days many British and American soldiers were taught Russian but the Soviet Archives were closed. Now that they are open no Anglophone bothers to learn Russian. A little irony of history.
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  447. Not so much will as speed tbh
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  448. Possibly. But Anglo - American armies were also small.
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  449.  @TheImperatorKnight  Nijmegen was the base from which Allied operations began in 1945, so there is that to be said for Market Garden.
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  450. He did correct himself later in the video.
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  451.  @Juspa  A package deal possibly. The Finns get the Karelian SSR as long as they agree to take Leningrad (or its ruins) too.
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  452. They were correct imo. It looks like the decisive month was October 1941.
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  453.  @day2148  Agreed. In practice capitalism can only be state capitalism since capitalism needs a strong state to reproduce. But it won't be very successful if the state tries to micro - manage everything, to that extent the Austrian critique is valid.
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  454. They didn't control Libya after 1940.
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  455. Definitely. Given how bad German rail transport was to start with the partisans could really do damage
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  456. This is an ex post facto rationalisation. The Anglo - Americans were incapable of advancing any further (until Antwerp was cleared) whatever their "intentions" may or may not have been.
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  457. It actually happened in Italy in the 1970s, and people created their own money for small day to day transactions.
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  458. It was the story of The Caroleans repeated.
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  459. I think you are too negative in your comments about Nilsson, who seems to me to have performed a valuable service in drawing attention to the unwise behaviour of Anglophone historians in relying on so dubious a source as The Table Talk. Citing the "translation" of 1953 looks particularly inexcusable. He reminds me of Fritz Tobias, who made himself unpopular in the late 1950s and early 1960s by rebuking historians of that time for recycling nonsense about The Reichstag Fire
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  460.  @michanerwinski6394  You have to understand Hitler's temperament too. Being an Austrian he had no particular hostility to the Poles and he hoped Poland would be an ally in his war for Lebensraum. When the Poles turned him down he became very angry and wanted to punish them. Similarly he ordered his air force to destroy Belgrade when Yugoslavia sided with The Brits.
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  461.  @michanerwinski6394  The Chad Chamberlain, as the younger folk would say.
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  462.  @ars_gravitatis5858  It's a most dubious source and Anglophone historians have been much too ready to use it. I fear Trevor Roper led a great many people down the garden path after The Last Days established him as a Hitler expert. Have you read Ved Mehta, Fly and Fly Bottle? Very illuminating on this horrible man's role as an intellectual bully in the 1950s and 1960s.
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  463.  @MrKakibuy  The debate first arose out of the idea of a blitzkrieg strategy back in the 1960s and continued certainly until the late 1980s. After that there was an "ideological turn" in Third Reich studies. Tim Mason (an unorthodox Marxist) did very interesting work which would be worth re-examination. He may have been the first Anglophone to pay any attention to Victor Klemperer
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  464. They had mastered the schwerpunckt.
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  465. There was also the infamous Amerikabomber. ME 264 and JU 390 prototypes ordered in 1942.
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  466. It's a interesting question. I think the answer is the German industrial capitalism was exceptionally organised (kartellized) from its inception. You have to remember that Germany was economically unified before it was politically unified so that German industrialists saw themselves as national leaders. Which may help to explain why Schacht despite being a liberal banker, was prepared to accept a much more controlled economy than a British or American banker would have.
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  467.  @TheImperatorKnight  This is a long and exhausting battle and it's not surprising both you and the viewers got jaded. Come back to it when you can rekindle your enthusiasm.
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  468. Later promoted to general, despite Gavin's best efforts to sabotage him.
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  469. Check out The BBC radio adaptation. It's absolutely great, an impressive tribute to Bomber Command.
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  470. Nope. Hitler was not a Christian because he was an extreme social darwinist. Positive Christianity was a thing, but not a thing which interested Hitler. It was extremely appealing to German Protestants though.
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  471.  @thearisen7301  You're correct. The law of double effect excuses civilian casualties if these were unintended and incidental to some operation deemed necessary.
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  472. Inhumane punishment in their home country. Whether this applies to The Soviet Union is debatable. The days of mass executions had ended. However The Gulag was still a very brutal place, largely run by The Russian mafia.
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  473. The British view was that the more Polish territory Stalin conquered the better. That was the only effective way of denying it to Hitler.
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  474. Yes. I'm afraid he's a bit inclined to parrot Austrian nonsense. But apart from that his videos are pretty good.
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  475. He hoped to avoid war, but if it was inevitable it needed to be delayed until the British air - defence system was completed in 1940.
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  476.  @mustardjar3216  This is true. The Brits didn't really trust any other European country to oppose Germany.
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  477. I also thought of Marius. His military reform was made necessary by the failure of land reform under the Gracchi (arguably).
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  478. I don't think aerial reconnaissance could conclusively prove that there were no panzers in The Reichswald, only that they hadn't spotted any in a very large forest.
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  479.  @fiatlux4058  It was perfectly rational. The Whites were Russian imperialists. The Bolsheviks were preferable since they weren't. Mensheviks or SRs would have been even better but you have to play the hand you're dealt.
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  480.  @fiatlux4058  I'm exactly bright enough.
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  481. That's reasonable. Chamberlain hoped to prevent a world war by sacrificing The Czechs. It was reasonable (from his pov) but definitely ruthless.
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  482. robynn Yes. I think there was a lot of demand to make some use of the airborne forces before the war ended and so a plan was cobbled together. The whole botch seems to have been force led rather than strategy led.
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  483. You could ask exactly the same questions about Tunis a few months later.
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  484.  @johnnydavis5896  He did think about it, but decided that shooting his commander in chief would look bad.
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  485. Sweden adopted a position of neutrality in 1812 (The Policy of 1812) then immediately broke it to attack Napoleon in 1813. However since 1815 Sweden has not made war on anyone but has sent " voluntary" military assistance to other Scandinavians on occasion (Denmark in 1848, The Finnish Whites in 1918).
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  486. The Hapsburg Monarchy was the creature of the Catholic Counter Reformation. It may be that it was what historians call, "the secularisation of The European Mind" in the second half of The Nineteenth Century which debilitated it to the point that it could not survive a major crisis.
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  487. Perhaps he means in September 1944.
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  488.  @ee9117  The French really did consider Poland to be an ally, but at the same time wouldn't go to war to defend it. True in 1772, also true in 1939.
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  489.  @Cheka__  You're wrong, at least up to the point The Americans first exploded an atomic bomb.
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  490.  @TheImperatorKnight  Did it go on beyond 1945? The allies reversed course very quickly, permitting many thousands of former Ukrainian collaborators to remain in The West
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  491.  @SpiritBaker  Questioning whether Sholokhov wrote his own books was quite widespread in the 1960s after the author became a detestable toady who said that Daniel and Sinyavsky had been treated too leniently.
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  492.  @nobody227  Anne Applebaum's book about The Gulag is much more reliable than Solzhenitsyn's because she was able to use the Soviet Archives.
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  493. That is so. Suvorov's nonsense should be seen in the context both of US Cold War propaganda and Soviet ignorance about the outside world.
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  494.  @meeeka  Drunkenness might explain the gratuitous cruelty of the men Browning calls "the eager killers".
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  495. POW Gulag memoirs make interesting reading. I remember reading one by an Austrian POW who was relentlessly scathing about Russian work habits. He thought the Russians never finished a job properly.
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  496. The USA would not permit Germany to buy any oil on The American Continent. The Russians were delivering oil but expected to be paid for it, either in cash or in political concessions. Hitler thought it was easier to steal the oil than buy it.
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  497. I don't think there's much doubt that he did. But 1. It appears that the order was in accordance with Gavin's own assessment . 2. It's quite possible that had he given a positive order to concentrate on the bridge(s) and ignore everything else Gavin would have ignored it because he was the man on the ground and because he despised Browning.
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  498.  @samkaplun  I would say the problem was not reparations specifically but losing a world war.
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  499. Sure. But the Soviets didn't know what Japanese intentions were except for what they could learn from Sorge and other agents. I don't think the Japanese themselves decided to "strike south" until the summer of 1941.
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  500.  @legbreaker2762  14.38
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  501. I think about 1/7 of Bomber Command crew losses were due to accidents rather than enemy action. Night flying is dangerous even if no-one is trying to shoot you down.
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