Comments by "Not Today" (@nottoday3817) on "TIKhistory"
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@rbfishcs123 Well, Germany was an industrial nation for almost half a century by the start of WW2 (even more if you count Prussia). So much so that UK, the largest Empire the world has ever seen, was considering them an existential threat in early 1900s. Soo, asking how much industrialisation the Germans did is kinda pointless. The only appropriate answer would be: A LOT.
However, industrialization plays only a fraction of the roles in a food crisis. What industrialisation allows for food production is access to machines (tractors, harvesters etc. ) and improved irrigation systems. Something generally called 'mechanised agriculture'. While mechanised agriculture does a good job at helping the farming situation (the lack of it could explain the food/agricultural crisis in late Russian Empire or pre-war Romania -which are generally ignored by historians because they don't fit the 'communists ruined everything' narrative), it's more of a socio-economic benefit rather than a straight up agricultural one (more machines means less need for farmers which means more people can do something else, but you still have limited ammounts of farmland) This clusterfuck of sentences being said, you could summ it up in this: Germany was an industrialised nation, but it really lacked the proper farmland and climate to sustain it's massive population, which means their industrialisation had only a very limited impact on what it could actually do.
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Unfortunetly, the thing is: You cannot attack any strong position, but in waves. The reason why we are led to believe the Germans were different was because their tactics revolved around finding weakpoints and thrusting through them, going after supply lines and encirclements. However, if a strongly defended position HAD to be taken or breached through, well, early Germans and mid-late war Soviets were not that different. We have examples like Tottensontag or battles around Stalingrad and Kursk where head-on assaults had to be made, and the Germans paid for them like the Soviets did. The discrepancy in casualities comes from another fact, the Germans were masters in defense. If you think about it, even the Blitzkrieg/Bewedungskrieg (or however you want to name it) kinda focuses on that. You breach the enemy weakpoints and set up a strong point deep inside their lines. Now the enemy has to attack the position you are defending while you have the advantage of defensive position, despite being the attacker on the operational level. Meanwhile, while the enemy has to charge to even have a chance at retreating, your less powerful units can mow them from the other side. This being said, the Soviets, as well as the Allies would face the Germans defending much more than actually attacking. That's why the killcount is much higher.
And this brings us back to the topic of SMGs vs Rifles. For assault purposes, SMGs are almost always better than Rifles. While squads fully armed with SMGs might not be a great ideea, having them as the main weapon is. The thing is, with a rifle you have to get out of your favorable position, go over exposed ground and if you wanted to do shoot at anything, you had to stand still, in the middle of open ground, perhaps being shelled by mortars and artillery. With a SMG you can just advance while spraying with bullets or have the riflemen at the defensive positions cover you while you get over the open ground much faster. Assaulting with riflemen is simply suicidal. As mentioned, over open ground they have to stand still, taking shots from others and when they get into close range, they don't have the firepower to carry on.
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Some arguments for unpopular opinions:
Soviet numbers: I believe the number of troops were between 60-150k initially, but after troops were requested to other fronts, the planned reserves were sent there and this is how we got to the 40-60k we see for the Soviet accounts. I would estimate initially that the soviets had around 100k and dropped to perhaps 55k actual combatants.
Soviet losses. Well, I am not sure they would downplay to an excruciating ammount. It's entirely possible that the Finns and Germans to also have counted lightly wounded [, but unfit to fight], soldiers as casualities.
Stalin not wanting to invade the whole Finland: Well, the whole point of the operation was to get Finland to agree to an unconditional surrender. You cannot do that if you just look at them. You need to strike them and make them bleed. When we look at the status of Finland after the war, we see that the peace they reached was nowhere near 'a victorious' one for Finland. They still had to renounce a huge part of the territory prior to the operation, perhaps even more (as far as I remember, Vyborg is part of Russia nowadays). And they had to pay war reparations to the Soviets. This being said, I believe it wasn't just a matter of 'Stalin suddenly realising he could propose a conditional peace to the Finns', but more like he needed to at least get into a favorable position before asking anything.
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Never assume that something has 100% or 0% chance of success when you are talking about something on the grand scale. We now know Hitler mopped the floor with France, but at the time, I assure you, nobody, absolutely nobody, expected German troops to even set foot on French soil. RAF and the French air force had superiority over the Luftwaffe. French and Britain had more and better tanks. They had rough parity in terms of soldiers. And they had the Maginot line. And Germany was expecting for a long war in France. And we now know that the French victory was achieved by idiotic French generals, and German officers and generals ignoring the orders and plans to deal even heavier blows which led to a morale collapse. This means that even if someone had prior knowledge of the German plan, they could not have 100% stopped them. So, Sealion? They could have attempted the invasion as a joke and the British surrender as soon as German troops were on their soil. Or at least give in enough land to establish a solid bridgehead. U-Boats could have blocked the Royal Navy from entering the channel and stopping supplies comming in. etc. So no, 100%, doubt it.
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@Brandon Parrish
I think you get something wrong about Stalin and the whole 'purge' devastating the army myth.
Why is it a myth? Well, let me ask you something: There were no purges in the French and British armies. However, how did France got captured in a month? How did France and Britain lose Norway? Mind you, France and Britain were both colonial empires with resources far beyond what USSR could have dreamed of and they were in full declared war with Germany. And Germany alone, not Germany and 6 others.
Now that we set the context, I want to adress 2 incorrect points that you made.
1. No, the purges in the Red Army were not as detrimental as one could make them look like. Especially for the Great Patriotic War. (For winter war, there might be something else, but the disaster there was mostly due to political prowess and comissars which were gradually discarded afterwards) On the contrary, many of the geneals that made a difference in the Patriotic War became known after the purges. (like Zhukov reached important positions after smashing the Japanese armies in the East using combined armed tactics and forcing them into a more permanent cease-fire)
2. Neither Stalin, nor the Soviet generals were ignoring the German threat. However, they really did not want it to happen. As TIK pointed out in this video, Operation Barbarossa was done in the perfect moment. Many soviet units were deployed in the Baltics, Poland and Bessarabia(nowadays Rep Moldova) to 'pacify' the new lands. There were also contracts with Germany which were supposed to deliever guns for a new soviet battlecruiser as well as a new cruiser( Lutzow, Cannot remember if it was Deutchland-class- like graff spee- or Hipper-class) USSR was also selling much needed oil to the Germans. Furthermore, and the most important aspect, Germany was still engaged with UK and opening a second front would have been suicidal for Germany(which indeed was). This being said, all rational arguments pointed out that Germany would not attack in 1941. And given the state of the Red Army(in retraining, getting new equipment to replace the Abysmall one etc.) no one wanted to provoke the germans either. However, the German hate for slavs was well known to the Soviets and they were expecting a war with Germany sooner than later.
If there was anything that might have taken the Soviets by surprise, that might have been the huge number of allies Germany had. They had Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy and Finland as official allies. They had Croatian and Spanish battalions as well as troops from captured lands, like Czechoslovakia, Austria Netherlands etc.
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Well, Hitler was a long time thinker. Also, food should be taken with a bit of schepticism and in a larger sense.
If you want to make things clearer: food means 'total energy and material resources' , while indusry means turning those resources in something else through technological processes.
Despite not being officially theorised, even US would go to war from time to time for resources or, better said, control of resources, mainly oil and gas, as influencing the market solely based on own resources and extraction capabilities would lead to a fast depletion of their own deposits.
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US and USSR were mostly exceptions at the time. (Altough US was the bigger exception due to food problems in USSR). Through nations, he was talking perhaps about France or England (They were still ahead of US as Industrial powers, shortage of resources and bombings during the war as well as the foreign debt of the UK quickly turned the tides) France and UK, as I pointed out in an individual comment, were the main ones to implement the ideea of Lebensraum. Their colonies were the equivalent of the territories Hitler wanted to Anex. Mainland would stay industrialised and keep developing, while the colonies would produce only what was strictly necessary. Further autonomy was given to some of them, like Australia and Canada and they developed a bit of industry due to distance and optimal population density. (Mostly british, unlike India where the british were minoritary and occupiers)
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@davisjacobs5748 Off, how should I start and end this.
Well, the basic difference comes to personal view of the world.. In TIKs world, every nation, every society since societies were created on this planet has been SOCIALIST. Prisons? Socialists. Roman Empire? Socialist. Mongol Empire-socialist. US, British Empire, French Empire Socialist. Everyone is a socialist. Because in his view, any intervention from the state or any form of gouvernment is SOCIALISM. The basic argument against this view is that you can have a capitalist fairy tale, but each company in it would be in fact socialist because each company has a 'gouvernment' which dictates what to produce and so on.
Now to return to the more general view of the world. Generally, socialism means an economy under control by some representatives of the people. What most people consider socialism is a derivative of the marxist-engels socialism (with some leninism). The revolution that Marx and the likes of him brought to the world is that they affirmed that Economy and the needs and status of society ARE CONNECTED BEYOND SEPARATION. I think the best example would be the roman grain dole (hope I did not butcher the name, english is not my first language). Soo, what was the thing with this 'dole'. Well, prior to it: richer became richer because the poor had to sell more and more of what they had to not starve. Problems: less population, problems with military recruitment and equipment (state sponsored equipment was not yet a thing) and wealth was locked to the higher class. After, what TIK considers INEFFICIENT CRIMINAL STATE INTERVENTION (aka raising taxes on the wealthy and redistributing the wealth to the poor) people were no longer afraid to starve and started investing themselves, thus helping the economy. End of example. Soo, this is basically what we generally define as the marxist ideology. You redistribute the wealth towards the poor so the poor can actually make investments unde different forms( not necessarily monetary) and help the economy and society progresss. As another example: you give each person in a country education and healthcare. This means that in a few years those guys would be skilled and able workers producing wealth for the country. However, for this to happen it is important that you have the so called 'world revolution'. Why? Because greed. People would not look at what you've done for them and how far their society got. They'll always look at the best thing others have. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, doesn't matter if the neighbours use radioactive pesticides.
There is much more to add, like the 'class system' as you no longer have economic-social classes, but rather functional classes/hierarchy. The marxist ideology also takes into account historic context which would be impossible for me to describe atm as I still have to sleep and tomorrow drive safely to work :) . It's enough to say, understanding the historic context is critical to understand the marxist 'class struggle'
National Socialism. Well, it's socialism because you have controled economy. However, it is opposed to the marxist ideology because, firstly, it discards the ideea of 'world revolution' and puts the nation in the center. Furthermore, you have another class system, based neither on wealth nor on functionality, but rather on blood/genes, as the aryans should rule the world and jews and slavs should be slaves.
Aaand, if you want to talk about 'capitalism', this thing, especially in the view promoted by TIK, has never and will never exist. It's impractical, inefficient for the society and dangerous. If you want any proof for my last two points: Just look at the Boeing 737 Max 8
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5:10 To rephrase what you said 'The only benchmark is how tanks performed in WW1'. Really? I guess the Spanish Civil war was nothing? (Altough, arguably that proved more how crucial air supremacy was -another lesson the French and British did not learn). Japan, mind you one of the most powerful militaries at this time, including land army, getting its divisions smashed by soviet tanks in 1939 was also nothing? Come on TIK. Yes, tank on tank battles have been very few prior to 1941, but tank warfare, modern tank warfare was not.
12:50. 'Then capitalism happened'? Really? FUCKING REALLY? Are you going to ignore the fact that in 1870, when the graph shows the living age of 30 years Britain, your very own capitalist country was killing people left right and center? THE FREAKING OPIUM WARS. EVER HEARD OF THEM? THE BOXER REBELLION? BOER WAR? Mind you, they were not done to 'spread an ideology', they were meant so that your great capitalists at home could live happy and rich.
TiK, I love your battles, I love how you analise logistics, but when it comes to economy and history, you Sir, ARE FREAKING INTELECTUAL FRAUD. Not even going to bother with the rest of the video.
EDIT: Looked through comments and thought: let's at least appreciate the passion put into this video and at least force myself to finish it. Something good might come out of it.
What I find? Another bullcrap. Thankfully, not from you as far as I understand, but from an author.
A stone-age man thrown into the middle ages would not be that shocked? REALLY? GIANT FREAKING CASTLES? Ocean going vessels? Arithmetics? Algebra? Astronomy? Men clad in steel armor? Should I mention how many people include the Renaissance also into the middle ages? This means freaking gunpowder. I think the poor man would suffer a severe case of brown-allert hearing thunder coming out of the mouth of a metal monster. Why would anyone assume that stone age and Middle Ages were that close? There still massive leaps in life improvement. And this is just talking about the european middle ages. In the same timeframe you had civilisations around the world much more advanced. Like China.
The reason people fear change is not adaptability in the way they cannot comprehend what's going on. It's because fast change means YOU CANNOT CONTROL IT. 15 years ago you had a student with a project in University. Now you have Facebook spying and selling info on a billion people.
As for 'ThEy GoT oTheR JoBs' argument for the fear of automation: IT'S *******. People that lost their jobs due to automation DID BECOME UNEMPLOED FOR A LONG TIME. The fact that automation creates new jobs does not mean you will have one of these jobs. Why? Because you are trained for the job that the machine is doing now. So there is no need for what you can do. Of course, you can start over. The only question is: will be able to start over or will you starve before that?
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First of all TIK, pointing out a strawman argument does not make your defence a strawman. It means that you point out the inabiity of your challenger or the one you challenge to grasp the concept discussed, meaning that his whole argument is baseless. You are not obliged to challenge such an argument beyond demonstration unless, well, you want to show off.
Also, nice ideea mocking people who adhere to a well established school of thought regarding linguistics. Yeah, for I believe centuries now people have argued that languages develop naturally and so does the meaning of words, and this natural development should be allowed to continue to further the process of abstract thinking. The first, and perhaps biggest, irony is that the subject of the previous video is an ideal example of this phenomenom. Otherwise fascism would mean worshiping a bunch of sticks, not an ideological current.
The second irony? You use other words suffering from the same denaturated meaning. Last time I checked an organ was a collection of various types of tissues serving a similar biological purpose. Or a church musical instrument. Third irony is that if you would pull your head out of a capitalists ass you would see that in those dictionaries 'state' has 3 separate definitions. Ironically, many of the examples arguing against you pointed out the 3rd definition, 'state' as in 'controlled by the upper administrative body of a nation'. Trade unionism means unions establishing mutually beneficial relationships between them on a large scale, It does not mean they are fulfilling all the tasks of a state: defence, foreign policy, prosecution etc.
And the last irony, you are chastising people for not believing the dictionary definition, but then yourself state that some dictionary definitions can be wrong. Soo... what makes you so damn sure that you are right to a point you are mocking your viewers, if the source you mention is wrong? In the fina virtue of irony, you are falling under the exact same philosophy as Wilson does in the 2nd part of 1984, where he reconsiders his memory of the photo of the 3 statesmen which he previously viewed as proof of the Partys lies: if everyone is lying, how can he makes sure that the photo was not fake, a mere forgery of past circumstances
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@chrism7969 Well, first of all you assume that the Royal Navy would have been destroyed, or shattered beyond recovery. This is highly unlikely considering how big the Royal Navy was. As for the middle Eastern oil fields, let me answer your question with another question: What means did Germany have to get to those oil fields? They would still have to cross the Mediteranean Sea, which serves under the jursidiction of a whole other military theater. BEF is called like that for a reason. It was an expedition, not the whole British military. Other military districts, like Middle East, Far East etc. had their own garrisons and army effectives. The biggest threat to Britain would actually be Sealion in your scenario, which would put Germany at a disadvantage.
And yes, a peace deal would give Hitler the British crown and a Queen to shag along in theory, the problem is that such an offer was extremly unlikely. And, even more unlikely to hold. As soon as Britain would sense a right moment, they would break the peace and strike Hitler back. I mean, that's what they did with Napoleon
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This is not a 'could be' this is a fact.
The history of the 1930s is taught from an anti-communist perspective, even here in Eastern Europe (for... obvious reasons). As such, many 'ugly' parts are burried under a thick rug of propaganda and idealism. Of course, you won't find any Western historian or politician admitting that they willingly helped Hitler to make a warmachine out of Germany the same way Russian historians are reluctant to aknowledge Ribentrop-Molotov. I mean, seriously, who would come up and say: "Hey, my nation proudly helped Hitler exterminate millions of people?"
However, you can do the job of a historian yourself and piece the puzzle back together. If you look in the dark annals of the early 1900s history, you can quickly realise that what Hitler did was, horriffyingly, nothing special. Everything from his racist theories to concentration camps to 'Lebensraum' were not singular to Germany. Lebensraum is nothing more than good ol' colonialism implemented by Western Europe for centuries. (Even Millenia if we include Romes expansion). And colonialism took some time to dismantle even after WW2: 'Belgians in Kongo' (Billy Joel reference to a real life reference). So you cannot claim that Lebensraum was something out of the ordinary with the times. Oh, and Italy had a similar concept too. Anti-semitism? Social-darwinism has been around since the late 1800s. It was widespread in the US and UK as well. Concentration camps? Second Boer War. And the Belgians in the Kongo, round 1. This is just the begining, showing that the ideea of Britain being incapable of helping Hitler out of some 'moral highground' consideration was pure and utter BS. Anyone defending it should have the same credibility as a Holocaust denier.
So, the moral framework existed. How about actions? Well, let's look again at the claim that 'Appeasement was born out of feear of another total war in Europe'. Oh, really? Then, if you are really afraid a nation could start a total war in Europe, would you allow that nation to remilitarise itself in the League of Nations conference of 1932? If you were afraid Germany would start a war in Europe, would you throw Versailles out the window in 1935? If you were afraid Germany would start a war in Europe, would you help them defend their opponents in a proxy war in Spain? If you were afraid Germany would start a war in Europe, would you hand out the industrial region of Czechoslovakia to Hitler for notihing but a piece of paper (not good enough to serve even as toilet paper), and, in doing so, ignoring all the please for an anti-Hitler coallition, INCLUDING GERMAN GENERALS THAT TOLD YOU ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS TO SAY 'NO!' AND MAKE AN ANGRY FACE? If you were afraid of a war in Europe, wouldn't you demand an advanced payment of Germanys debt? Wouldn't you put pressure on it's allies to stop trading with them? Wouldn't you stop your own aristocracy giving Hitler publicity and donations?
Plus, Germany was not the only British 'project' in this direction. Intermarium was also a British attempt to create a meatshield in Eastern Europe against USSR.
For as much damage as Ribentrop-Molotov had done to my Eastern European country, I would say the pro-Soviet historians still have better factual arguments for signing it than anyone could come up to defend this 'appeasement', but, again, I doubt you could find any 'reputable' sources to actually state this.
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I might answer that for you:
a. Reason 1: building relations in order to get Italy on the Eastern Front. Hitler believed he could take on USSR easily after his army alone basically nuked France out of the War and Britain out of Europe, despite facing the best militaries in the world protected by some of the best defensive fortifications in the war. By comparison, USSR should have been nothing. However, he knew that the size of the front was much, much higher so, in order to hold it, he needed additional troops to fill the gaps between and behind his formations.
Reason 2: Greece was under the control of UK (Ok, I believe the official historical term is 'had strong relations with') Anyway, by leaving Greece alone, UK would still have had a possible foothold in Europe and Hitler could not move the overwhelming majority of his forces in the East if UK could launch a strike in their back, trapping them between the Red Army and British Forces. Allowing the Brits to settle a foothold in Greece might have also panicked the Italians into recalling their troops to defend the homeland.
b. It didn't delay them. No matter what those internet historians say, the timeframe of Barbarossa was picked perfectly. You could not have attacked USSR earlier because the mud in the spring would prevent any form of rapid troop movement. And they needed to get in Russia in the summer so the crops could grow until they captured them so the german soldiers could live off the land. And even if one could call a delay of a few weeks, the numbers speak for themselves. 4million axis troops (perhaps more) invaded USSR. 1 million (half of which did not go into USSR) went into Greece. You cannot say that such a massive operation suffered a major delay because of Greece
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Well, capitalism cannot fail because capitalism has no practical definition of failure like socialism and communism has (have?). In communism, failure occurs when the focus of the state is not the benefit of the people, but to serve the goals of those in power. And this has happened. And, ironically, not with Stalin as Stalin, however tyranical he might have been, still gave a lot back in terms of reforms, infrastructure economy etc. Many judge inter-war USSR forgetting from where they started. They were not Victorian Era Britain with multiple colonies to plunder and murder. They were a turd with a golden hat which did not even manage to properly industrialise. No. The fail of communism in USSR occured when the leaders tried to secure their position and outmatch the US on Western grounds instead of playing on their own terms. Through further extension, socialism fails when it reverts back to social classes. When people start clinging to their positions by any means instead of accepting they are worn out.
But how can capitalism fail? Well, in practice we have no answer for 2 reasons: 1. We never had real capitalism, so TIK can shove every economy book he preaches up his ass. Economics and politics are, have been and will always be two branches of the same tree. You cannot separate them and say 'leave economics alone'. 2. The main ideea of capitalism is the transfer of capital. Aka invest and gain from your investments. However this is the general principle of humanity. We invest something to gain something in return. You cannot break that.
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Well, Romanian here.
The thing is: Romanians, finns, germans, we were all invaders to them, so I highly doubt conditions would be better or worse.
The difference is, at least for romanians, in the Army Size. Romania had 200,000 soldiers in USSR as far as I remember (altough that might be only for Stalingrad). Compare that with around 1million German forces. Even if the same number of germans and Romanians would die, the percentage would skyrocket for us. What is truely horrifying is that despite more Soviet PoWs being taken by the German, the death rate among them is even higher than the german one.
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Altough you get +2 points for interesting humour at point 9, TIK, do you really have to ruin anything by pushin politico-economical ideologies up to the point it becomes retarded? Seriously, 'Hitler and Stalin wanted more control because their were socialists' (and to go on with your ideeas 'who wants free market?') What on Earth does free market even have to do with this situation?
Instead of blaming everything, from individual decisions to actions to being rainy on a sunny day, on socialism how about starting to use our brains and look for more logical arguments? Hitler taking control over the state from his generals towards of the war? Maybe, was it because his generals towards of the war were freaking incapable and were planning on freaking KILLING HIM? Does capitalism encourage socialism nowadays, since supporting their 'independent ideeas' would have resulted in him getting himself killed. Soviet partisans enforcing soviet law beyond the frontlines? Well, 2 things to consider beyond 'MUAAHAHAHAHA SOCIALISM'. 1. The efficiency of an invading army is tremendously increased by it's abillity to impose it's own rule over occupied territories. If the soviet population cooperated with the germans, guess what, Germany would have had a much nicer time. And this can be applied to every freaking army throughout the ages. 2. Encourage 'independent' uncoordinated actions? Hmm, right, because after defeating the enemy in the territory you have, the best thing you could wish for is defeating another enemy which set up their own independence movement in areas critical for your economy.. Eventually, if that would happen when your main enemy is not yet defeated, that would be God damn freaking awesome, right? And this is the end of the logical points. I would make another one or two. The first one is the Forrest Brothers, which the Western Narrative tries to portray now as some righteous freedom fighter (pretty much like talibans in 1980s). They were just as bad as the soviet partisans you mention with respect to year 1941 1942. After the war ended, they had no one to support them. So they took to guerilla warfar. How did they maintain themselves? Attacking russians and russian sympathisers in their own country. Not soldiers. Civillians. Because what a fucking lunatic attacks and army camp, guarded by machine guns and tanks? Villages, farms and others are much easier targets and yield much more vital supplies, such as food or medicine for a much lower cost. And returning to the point of 'lacking initiative', well I guess Churchill was also a socialist, pushing his subordinates on attacks more and more, despite their stubborn resistance to the pressure.
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The nature of warfare. Generally, we can see that everyone, Soviets, UK, US (And france lost their whole country) had a big hard time fighting the Germans, especially when the Germans were on the Defensive. If I could sum things up, Germans were shit on strategic level, but very good on Tactical level. Because they were very good on Tactical level, when it comes to defensive (which is 90% tactics, since the only strategy is 'Hold on or Get back to point X'-so simple) they were in their advantage. And it is true. German defensive doctrine was the best in the war. This defensive doctrine was even the 2nd strongest point of the 'blitzkrieg'. The panzers and mobile formations could break through, but it was the infantry and supports that would dig around encircled enemy who would win the day as the enemy units would be unable to break out. Soo, to the basics, when it comes to tactical level, there is something that TIK always said: The odds are always for the one defending [ on TACTICAL LEVEL-cannot stress that enough]. This explains why almost everyone suffered great loses against the germans and even the combined British-US forces( so 2 world empires) thought the Germans were so hard despite facing a joke compared to what the Soviets had thrown at them.
Now, for why the soviets suffered so dearly compared to others. 2 factors.
1. As pointed out at the end of my last paragraph: they had to face more germans. TIK gives a ratio of 3 or 4:1 for the guy on the tactical offensive to be able to breach the defenders sucessfully. When the defender has a lot of manpower and equipment, of course it's going to be more effective than an army much smaller (like the one faced by US and UK) and the one on the offensive would suffer more.
2. Morale/pressure. If we take a look at a map, UK and US were never really threatened by Germany. UK had only one 'moment' of fear: the battle for Britain and especially the Blitz. Comparing the affected area with the whole British Empire (1/4 of the world) and considering the advantage of the defender suited them quite nicely and, even more, that none of their territories was actually invaded, the Battle of Britain had little effect on the British effort and it's a total joke compared to what some German, Romanian and especially soviet cities, including Leningrad(2nd biggest and cultural capital) suffered. However, Britain still regards it one of the most devastating and traumatising events in their history. Now, we move on the other side of the continent: USSR. The most populated areas under siege or captured, main food supply (Ukraine) captured, major deposits of Strategic Resources (Iron, Oil, coal in Ukraine/Donbass, Caucasus etc.) major cities in Rubble and enemy hands (Kiev, Kharkov, Sevastopol) and the whole masterplan Ost (slavery and extermination) as well as rapes and other athrocities hard to describe are the main things on any Soviet citizen's mind. From Soldier to High command, everyone knew they had to push the germans back. And do that FAST. The longer they would wait, the more the civillians in the captured territories would have to suffer. That's for the regular folk. When it comes to the high command, they also were thinking about how the captured territories would help their enemies. Not only that, but as war moved on, high command would also start worrying about other nations as well, like if the war drags on for too long, the "Western Allies" could pull a 180(like they did in 1918) and attack them when they saw it fit. Overall, the whole point of this: the soviets HAD TO ATTACK. They felt they HAD TO ATTACK from day one of Barbarossa. Meanwhile, the Americans and Brits simply took their time. There was nothing for them to rush for. The soviets were keeping most of the german troops in check, they were mostly on the defensive.
Overall, combining the 2 reasons: The Eastern front was a ticking time bomb for the soviets who HAD TO, for whom it was imperatory to, attack and win as fast as possible, an attack which would pit them against the best and most numerous german formations who most often had the advantages of a good defensive position. Meanwhile, the Western Allies faced a much smaller and ill equiped enemy and, since they were not pressured by anything, could take their time planning each of their moves to minimise casualities
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The 'Pharisee' is almost never refered to as a member of a Jewish sect. Mostly because it was not a Jewish sect. A sect means a branch of a religion (denaturated meanings tend to the more general ideea of a branch of a philosophical belief/ideea) interpreting the 'sacred texts' in a different way (more liberal or more fanatic way). Pharisees were not a sect, but more of a social class, a distinguished part of the clergy (like the Greco-Roman priests -note by Greco-Roman I mean the ones found in the Ancient Greek and Roman civilisations, not the ones following the later established Greco-Roman religion). They appear multiple times in the Bible as anti-examples of moral and religious corruption of the Jewish faith and how it strayed from the true word of God. They are even allocated a full story in one of Jesus' teachings and that one strongly resembles the incident Marx is refering to. Sorry if I get the words wrong, but I do not know the English version of the story (God bless King George and King John and basically every king using linguistics and translators to push forward their version of the Bible), but in that teaching Jesus compares a pharisee with a border tax collector/guard. The Pharisee is considered a negative character because he knows that he's corrupt (especially spiritually), but during his prayer he dares boast of how much he serves his God and His teachings and degrades the guard for he is also corrupt. The guard is seen as a 'redeemable' character since he aknowledges his sins and his corruption. (Not going into the philosophy of the story here and its implications here).In a similar way, Marx' Pharisee is clearly a symbolic meaning as he (the pharisee, aka the morally corrupt preacher of capitalism) is trying to justify his actions by claiming to cling to values like familly and protection children, but he himself would destroy such values if he suits his interest.
Also, Judaism and Jews are technically not the same thing. Judaism is generally the belief of the Jews ('ethnic' group) and those who believe in Moses' teachings (The Torah if I am not mistaken). While most Jews would deny that you can be a Judaic without being a Jew, there were some tribes of Turkik people who did embrace Judaism. Funny enough, in the Old Testament you actually have ethnic Jews being disconsidered as Jews (Judaics) by the other 'puritan' Jews and even wars erupted between those branches. If I remember correctly this division makes way into Jesus' teachings as well as he often uses people from Canaan (a disconsidered branch of Jews) as positive examples. And this does not stop to 'ancient texts'. Even in modern day you have the scandal of Israel sterilising Ethiopian Jews or Israel accusing everyone that tries to defy their exceptionalist policies as an anti-Semite while other Jews condemn Israel.
In the end, accusing Karl Marx of anti-semitism is actually a funny ideea since he's a Jew by 'ethnicity'/blood, but a christian and later mostly an atheist by belief, aka a non-judaic Jew. From most of the de-contextualised quotes you've provided he's not attacking the Jews as an ethnic group (aka you should not shoot/ fire/disconsider someone just because his parents were Jews), but rather criticising the lifestyle of the Jews as greedy oportunists. The quote of Engels put forward by your viewer which you try and discredit (the comment, not the guy) actually supports this: you can have Jews not adhering to the general view of the Jewish lifestyle. And frankly, this is perfectly fine. Life-style, life-choices are usually the product of thoughts and decisions made by people and they can be changed if a person so desires (severe health conditions are also exceptions that can also confirm the rule). Therefore, since they are subject to change, they should be criticised or supported. And Marx criticising the Jews is nothing more than the same principle of a black person criticising Black Lives Movement for the chaos they are creating or criticising the ghetto or gangsta lifestyle that some choose. Or a woman criticising the MeToo movement. Or a white denouncing white supremacy outside of political campaigns.
TL:DR Seems mostly like a straw-man argument.
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Ok. Here we go again. From around 10:00 to 15:00
No TiK. There is something preventing people from starting their own businesses: LIMITED RESOURCES, MAN. Like seriously. Everytime I hear someone saying 'socialism does not work because you don't have infinite resources to share with others'. Guess what. Neither does Capitalism. And you just said it yourself: THE MAIN HUNGARIAN RESOURCE POOL of the hungarian industry WAS NOW OUTSIDE HUNGARY (and of course controlled by their enemies). Please, enlighten me, how would those people get resources for 'their new businesses'? And keep in mind. This is the industrial age. You need raw resources for the economy.
Also. No TIK. As in a previous comment, I HAVE TO POINT OUT how wrong you are about the Hungarian marxist revolution. It did not fail because 'they had a bad taste of it'. It failed because WE CRUSHED IT. 1919, the newly reformed Romanian army, under agreement with the Entente, took a big march westwards and stopped beyond Budapest. This was the same thing that the West and Japan (and the new polish state) tried to do to USSR. Do I really need to tell you to grab a history book? Or perhaps 'grab a better history book'? Also, what's with that bloody nonsense of 'capitalis is failing. That's not true'. Errm? The great depression of 1920s to 1930s? Ever heard of that? 15:00 It's failing because a bunch of dudes took huge loans to fight a bloody war and now had their economies in shambles and could barely pay back because they expected to pay back with the money they would take from nations that they ruined themselves. That's why it's failing. It's also failing because the population in many countries, especially in E. Europe, was pretty uneducated so good luck making investments. And again. NO FREAKING RESOURCES BECAUSE MESSED UP BORDERS. So what ends up happening is that you have a bunch of guys starting to get a monopoly. And when a guy gets a monopoly, other guys can kiss their asses goodbye.
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@TheImperatorKnight Well, I think a mixing of the numbers is the most likely answer. Judging by your video, 1st Kotluban costed the Soviets 80,000 casualities while the 2nd costed 88,000. Numbers so close together are almost 1 in a million coincidence cosnidering the different tactical approaches and compositions of units. There should be a bigger difference between them. Most likely the one who compiled the table looked a various reports with casualities (which themselves might have been compiled and dated on different dates) and concluded that he could get accurate figures only for a large period of time, like 10-20 days and tried to reverse-engineer the numbers for each day.
I would say each offensive costed the Soviets around 20,000-30,000 total casualities (KIA,MIA, wounded) while the rest of 22,000 is made out of skirmishes victims.
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So, it was 1am when I saw this. Encouraged by the previous video on the food shortage in Nazi Germany I though I could give this a try. But, oh dear, after 5 minutes of TIKnomics, I wanted to punch every British person out there just to make sure I get to you And then I noticed this non-sense has a length of over 1 hour, getting worse and worse. Oh Good god. Each and every 10 minutes of your video can be debunked by logic or are so weirdly mentioned that they point straight out psychois.
Let's start with the most mindbogling thing. 'Black Market is not called black market because it's evill. It's actually good because it's actually free'. Are you out of your minds? Where do you think the goods on the black market come from? Aliens dropped them? God sent them on Saturdays like in the Bible? Black market goods come from the same production output as the rest of the 'evil socialist market' goods. But because people steal from the output to sell on the Blackmarket, guess what? THERE ARE LESS GOODS ON THE REGULAR MARKET. And stealing is the last freaking problem of the black market. No, no. Theft and smuggling are 'humane black market'. There are even worse reasons why people hate it. First and foremost: the market is so free that there is no protection for the consumer. Why is that a problem? Because producers (entities) don't want their stuff to be stolen before they reach their buyer, so getting things to sell on the BM is pretty hard. But, because it's a free market, some great entreprnours take this opportunity to 'enhace' their stocks. For example, a guy sells 100l of vodka on the BM, but he cannot possibly get 100l without it being unnoticed, so he steals 40-50l and dilutes it with other things to make it look like 100l. And the poor consumer is happy for some Good ol vodka and then dies of alcohol poisoning and the dude who sold it to him is nowhere to be found and the market is still freaking free. Great. And another reason why people hate black markets: origin of some goods, like human or organ trafficking. Should I even go into detail about those? So there are 3 reasons why people would hate the 'good and free BM' you propose: theft, stealing from the regular market, reducing the wealth even further; dangerous to the consumer; danger to the ones that want nothing to do with it.
'The economy was growing, but people were starving' Really? Do you even Economics, TIK? Yeah, the 'ECONOMY' was growing because economy oversees the whole system. If one branch is lagging behind for various reasons, others can still grow and contribute to the economy. How the economy be growing? Well, just look at the freaking Russian Empire before the War. It was utter shit. They and the Ottomans were the last big European Empire not to industrialise properly. Actually, with a few exceptions, they were not industrialised at all. And this was showing for a long time. Social unrest was present in the Russian literature even 70 years prior to the Revolutions. When Stalin started reforming, bringing up industry, irrigation, developing schools and many more OF FREAKING COURSE THE ECONOMY WOULD BE GROWING. You literally have entire branches that have not been taken care of suddenly exploding. And now, why are the people starving? Well, because other people were hoarding grain during a drought. Too freaking bad the evil Soviets did not have TENS OF MILLIONS OF INDIANS TO STARVE TO STEAL THEIR FOOD, instead concentrating only on the grain hoarders. They should really have followed the example of the great capitalist British Empire and steal everything they needed from others. I'm no fan of 'colonialism bad', but seriously, you cannot talk seriously aboout British economy without mentioning where those resources actually came from or what was done to protect the trade routes. Now that I remember, does anyone remember the Irish famine or the Opium Wars (plural, because apparently getting a country high and killing thousands just so you have a cheap supply of tea and spices once is not enough. You need to keep the capitalism growing so you start a second war.
And good god, it's over 2 am and I need to get up less than 5 hours, or I would keep ripping those 60minutes of utter nonesense to shreds.
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You are falling for the same trap moder historio-economists fell for (or even set up) when talking about 'communist' or Soviet trade in general. USSR tried to branch off from the world economics as it was clear they could not succeed in it. (Russian Empire was so much behind the rest of the world that what they inherited was basically useless.) So the ideea of 'we are gonna buy what we need' would not work for them as they had too much to buy and nothing to offer (techonological inferiority and over-saturated market the subject is a bit more complex as we add up time, but for pre-war era this is the general case). Going for world trade, the balance would have been so off their economy would collapse from day one. So what they did is that they closed the borders and tried to develop their own industry. In the first years they hoped they could trade with potential new communist countries formed after glorious communist revolutions. But as the communist revolutions got brutally crushed (Germany by the Western Armies, Hungary by the Romanian Army, China -initially by nationalists backed by Western Powers, Spain by fascists etc) and USSR lost control of strategic ports and connections due to the situation after the [not-so-]Civil War (baltic ports, Poland, Finland) this trading plan went down the drain and the isolation of USSR became even stronger. What little trade they did with the outside was done under the form of bartering: you give me this and I give you those resources. This was made a bit easier in the inter-war era as the Gold Standard was still a big thing and USSR had good gold reserves, so if they needed anything, they would not pay with roubles, but with Gold
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Although this is an Edit, this has to be top remark. Around 11:30. 'If you had a democratic gouvernment, it's unlikely that a democratic regime would have sided with Hitler. They would have sided with France'. BIGGEST FREAKING IRONY EVER. TIK, I know economics beyond 'mainstream capitalism' beat you up hard, but I thought you were an expert historian. THAT IS PHRASE. What you have said yourself in the second half, 'WOULD HAVE SIDED WITH FRANCE' IT'S EXACTLY WHAT USSR TRIED TO DO. IT WAS FRANCE THAT SIDED WITH HITLER. TREATY OF MUNCHEN 1938. The French were requesting the Soviet Union to not defend Czechoslovakia, despite the tri-partite treaty between them AGAINST HITLER. Soviet Union had no way to directly interfere without France because 1. France was backing the Munich Agreement 2. No direct way to reach Germany.
'Everything it builds is consumption rather than production'. So I guess in the great capitalist West, people just sat on the shit they built instead of consuming it? Really TIK?
Also, 'into something that is not needed, such as guns, tanks battleships'
Yeah, those T-34s were deffinetly freaking useless against the initial german onslaught. I believe some WW1 era tanks would have been more than sufficient.
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Hey TIK Amazing video. For a few points throughout QA. I am actually going to split this into 2 comments because too much of a difference between themes.
So. Switzerland: why in the world would Soviets attack it? The soviet plan was an offensive defence (like the british intended to do with operation Crusader). Basically, Warsaw pact was supposed to spear as far ahead to Germany and stop around the Rhine area (because natural fortification potential) and capture as many airports and missile launching platforms/positions as possible. They would use these airports to target various ports in Western Europe which were supposed to be receiving supplies from the US or even supply chain themselves.. If this objective would have been achieved, Warsaw Pact would have won the war in a non-nuclear scenario. Had the war lasted longer, soviet missiles would have hammered important objectives for the Western Allies (quick mention, France had a bit of a rough romance with NATO, so willing to fight without necessity, big MEAH) meanwhile main production centers, especially USSR, would have been safe. Again, from the Rhine, they could deceide what to do further, either attempt a push Westwards, to further weaken Western ability to supply Europe or to open second fronts, perhaps take out Turkey and smash the middle east or most likely go for GIUK gap, and northern Norway and north and south sweden to allow their submarines to break loose into the atlantic without too much worries. However, the main point was GET TO THE RHINE( or as far westward into Germany as Possible). To do this, they would not have any resources to spare to launch an invasion of Switzerland. The only reason why they would go to switzerland would be if allied reinforcements would go through Switzerland (like from Italy), but that would be a limited war, focused more on securing the flank. Anyway, that's my humble opinion.
Then we come to the chemical weapons thing. Well, now it depends on what you classify as 'chemical weapons'. If reffering strictly to gas, they did not use it too much because it already became inefficient. Yeah, in WW1 with huge 'entrenched' concentrations of troops, with no hope to gain much land or advantage in one push, yeah, gas was efficient. Gas the whole enemy trench, kill as many as possible and hope for two things: 1. There will be no reinforcements by the time gas clears out. 2. Hope the wind does not blow it in your face. However, in WW2, I think there are 3 main reason why it wasn't used on such a big scale and especially in surface/front level.
Reason A: No longer efficient. WW2 was more a war of manouver, you gotta move that a$$ boy. So gas, which takes some time to be deployed and such. is not so effective. Then, units were a bit more dispersed, so again, gas efficiency was lowered. Last but not least, it is presumed that the number of countermeasures (gas masks, body suits etc.)
Reason B: detrimental to the user. First of all, there is always the big risk of it blowing back straight in your face. Furthermore, if used on the offensive (like the Brits and US through Norway), because you have a war of manouver, you either had to give up the opportunity (if it was ever created) to let the gas settle, or you had to send your troops through clouds of poisonous gas.
Reason C: You already stated it: fear of retaliation. This also includes the 'inhumane thing'. Germany signed the Geneva convention which would restrict them from unleashing upon the Westerners and hoped the same thing would apply to them.
If we include other things in the form of chemical weapons, like incendiary, phosphorus bombs, then yes. They were deffinetly used. In Europe I believe against Dresden or Berlin and in the Pacific, well, some historians claim that the devastation left by the incineration of Tokyo by phosphorus bombs from US was even worse than Hiroshima.
Edit: forgot about alcohol stuff (and generally alternative sources of fuel)
First, alternative sources: there was a program to use actually steam to power tanks. Or actually boilers fueled by wood (germany had a lot of coal and wood) Several tigers were actually equiped with those things. Perhaps some cars as well. Using such methods for non-combat reasons shows how Germany was able to bypass it's fuel deficiency and still wage it's Panzer warfare even in late war(altough to a much more limited extent).
As for gas for tanks and stuff like that: errm, you do not really want that. as you explained, gas is extremely flamable and volatile. Alcohol, if not handled correctly, turns into alcohol vapors, which is basically extremely explosive gas. Furthermore, alcohol is a less eficient way to store and release energy than fossil fuels. So you would have to produce quite a bunch of alcohol to cover a little of your necessities. So that's why they might not have bothered. last, but not least: ENGINES. As far as I remember, most engines at that time ran on eithe lead gasoline or diesel, because those engines could not handle the explosive force of such fuels properly, causing them to disintegrate after some time. This would have plagued alcohol engines even more. Yeah, it's a simple engineering problem, in the ideea that the basics of why it happens are simple. Getting rid of such a problem, oh boy. Trust me, I'm an engineer, fixing problems, even simple ones, is hell.
And this is my first comment. The second one is going to focus on Lend-Lease thing. But going to write it in the evening
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Before watching the video, let me give a guess of 4-5 reasons why not to:
1. The Nazis (and their friends) wanted the lands in Ukraine, resources in Donbass AND the oil in Caucasus. So they would have had to invade Ukraine either way, but with a much smaller force.
2. Even if they went through Turkey, they would need the SOVIET oil in the caucasus (and the raffineries). So they would still have to declare war on USSR. This means that instead of fighting USSR alone, they would need to fight USSR AND Turkey.
3. If they went through Turkey, they would fight the Soviets mainly in the caucasus. This meant that Panzer operations were limited and so would air-combat. (Caucasus maximum height is above 5.000m which was quite a feat for airplanes of the time). Not to mention the whole front would have been much narrower. Overall, it would have been much more suitable for the Soviets which would also have the benefit of the Black Sea fleet.
4. Just have a moment to think about the map? The main German assault would be through Turkey, right? But Germany had a border with USSR. Soo, USSR would just sit and watch and then try to beat Germany back THROUGH TURKEY? Couldn't they use the favorable terrain to hold the Germans off in there and strike through their common border? or strike at Romania?
5. Going through Turkey would mean that they now had a land border with the Middle East colonies of the British Empire which meant UK could now join the fight as well. Naval Power, Aviation and Army. And would probably alert the soviets too, so the whole surprise element which made almost 50-60% of Barbarossa imho, would now be gone.
And now that I think of it, they would also have even bigger problem with their poor logistics
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Ah, nothing gives better joy than having a nice can of beer and proving people wrong on the internet (/s)
5:00 You are building a false narrative. (really need to refresh my knwoledge with standard names for logical falacies). Putin saying Poland is to blame for what happened at the start of WW2 does not mean he's defending Hitler. On the contrary, he's doing the exact opposite. He's painting both Poland and Germany as 'accomplices' in the crimes which led to WW2 start the way it started. His speech comes in the wake of many declarations from European leaders trying to paint USSR and Germany as 'one and the same', 'sharing the blame for the start of WW2'. His statements are meant to show that not only did USSR not desire the outcome of the events in late 30s, but it had actually fought against them in an uphill battle. So your commenters are actually right: Putin never said Hitler was not responsible for WW2. That's an argument you made up yourself based on flawed, incomplete logic and twisting of words. Why would you do that? I do not know. But I assume it must have something to do with MI5 and 6 and some other defamation divisions.
14:00 (and earlier) As a Romanian here, I would have to strongly refute those statements. Romania did not double up in territory in order to create such a big state to hold against USSR (even that ideea, hold it for a moment, cause it might come back later, depending on my energy). The territories which Romania received are inhabited by Romanians were generally inhabitted by a Romanian majority (saying generally because you had enclaves). And it's not an issue of 'now it's 1918, identify with this'. Anti-romanian policies existed in Hungary since 15th century in official acts (Unio Trium Nationum). So, no, the people like that did not start to identify as romanians in 1918. In fact, the course of events is exactly the opposite. Romania deceided to join WW1 in order to unite those territories inhabitted by Romanians and their annexation was a huge issue in the negotiation talks and an even bigger one in the post-war border establishments (because we took more than what was promised, aka Bessarabia which was part of the Russian empire and annexed by them in 19th century) Overall, the whole point that you make here is almost bullcrap. Where you might have gotten that false ideea from is actually 2 separate events/ideeas. First was the Intermarium project, proposed by Britain in early 1920s, which envisioned a megastate between the 2 Seas in E Europe (Baltic and Black), based on the model of UK (England, Scotland, Ireland) or US. Another one was the Little Entente alliance between Yugoslavia, Romania and the last one should have been Czechoslovakia (IIRC)
25:20. This is basically the whole point of his speech. His speech is aimed at Polish claims against Russia (as if there wasn't a Ukrainian SSR and a Belarusian SSR in USSR as well, but you cannot milk them, right?) because Poland claimed USSR was on the same side as Hitler. Putin twists the facts in their face and asks them: So, what's it, either we are in this together, two sides that tried to play with fire and got incinerated or we are both victims?
26:16. Yeah, Putin already adressed your argument. We know of the 'secret' protocol because it got declassified. And he asks the others to declassify their archives as well. And then you have historical facts which support him. Poland DID block the attempts to save Czechoslovakia and Poland DID annex land from Czechoslovakia. This means that Poland and Hitler were allies in all, but papers and even that can be debated as we are unsure of what's happening. In fact, the course of the splitting of Eastern Europe in 1939 is exactly the same as the one done by the Great Powers following Munich. And Munich was set on paper. And why do you think 'it must be true only because Putin said so'. How about we look at the Western and German relations in 1930s? US companies were trading with Hitlers Germany. Ford was a personal supporter of Hitlers anti-semitism. You had English Ladies and Lords being photographed among nazi officials. You had the Olympics of 1936. Are we really going to argue that no talks were occuring between the horrible nazis and the honorable British people that popularised concentration camps in the Boer Wars, starved indians and wiped out entire communities in the Middle East? Actions speak louder than words, and the actions of Poland during and after the Betrayal of Munich speak the same volume as the Ribentrop Molotov Pact, regardless of how their build up was worded. Oh, and just one final thing. As mentioned USSR DID TRY TO FIGHT THE NAZIS before signing that pact. Poland did not.
Around 30:00 I think it's explained earlier by Putin. USSR had to sign an agreement with Germany becasue a two front war. And this is not something you can deny or twist. USSR just signed a feeble peace treaty with Japan. And Japan always maintained a considerable force in continental East Asia. Also, that's not all. I'm surprised TIK of all people (because he claims to be a Historian and he has ALREADY DONE VIDEOS on the state of Soviet Military in 1930-early 1940's) would dare to bring up that argument of 'Why would USSR do this?' . First of all, as previously mentioned USSR DID TRY TO STAND UP AT THE NAZIS. TWICE. Once for the elected Spanish Gouvernment in the Spanish Civil War and then they tried to help Czechoslovakia. What they got in return? The first time indifference from the West and then BROKEN PROMISES AND DIRECT INTERFERENCE FROM THE WEST. Secondly USSR faced the Germans in Spain. They knew their strengths. They were also expanding their army and trying to figure out their deep battle doctrine. SO WHY ON EARTH WOULD THEY TAKE ON THE GERMAN BLITZKRIEG? ESPECIALLY WITH JAPAN IN THEIR BACK?
33:00 Ok, I'm writing this as I am watching and now I am even more (unplesantly) surprised by the audacity of this video. So TIK spent the previous 5-10 minutes trying to convince us that there is no evidence of Poland siding with Hitler/Germany or of Poland being anti-Soviet. Then casually brings up Poland and Germany conspiring together to overthrow an official in a third country, Romania -which would also push a pro-German, pro-fascist movement with disastrous consequences-in order to prevent USSR from fighting Germany in aid of a country, which out sheer ****ing coincidence (as you want us to believe) was split among Poland and Germany (and a few others)
34:00 'It doesn't meant Poland was working for the Germans' Dear reader. Here we are talking international politics and geostrategy. NO SANE NATION ON EARTH would turn itself into a slave for another nation. POLAND HELPED HITLER AND POLAND WAS PURSUING IT'S INTERESTS. THOSE ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE STATEMENTS. In lack of a contradictory or contrary proof (which it's impossible to bring since Polands actions allowed Hitler to capture the industrial base of Czechia for free) they are complementary.
35:00 The ideea of that 'if' does not mean the Soviets were unwilling to attack without France. It actually has a double meaning, which you hide for the sake of your propaganda. First, USSR was a junior partner in that Alliance. This means that for an intervention to be legal, FRANCE had to deceide help was needed first. This was done specifically to prevent USSR from intervening on a much larger scale in Europe. Second, how about you look at the map first? Where do you see a common border beyond USSR and Czechoslovakia? In the quantum realm? This meant that in order for USSR to fight Germany, without invading Poland or Romania they had to either rely on French diplomatic pressure on these countries to allow troop transports or to send troops all the way to France (like they did with Spain). It's not a matter of 'I want <<peace in our times>> as well' It's a matter of physical impossibility.
35:41 Oh, so earlier the video is like 'Why they didn't do nothing in 1939', now it's 'Do you think they would have done better in 1938?'. The goalposts are almost broken from all this movement. And no, the units still had 'commanders', inexperienced, but they were there.
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Well, the thing is: everything is in a snowball effect with explosives along the mountain.
First of all, let's take logistics on sea.
Logistics on sea you have 4 things: Infrastructure, suprastructure, length/speed of supply routes and goods to be transported.
Infrastructure in this case means port facilities.
Suprastructure: ships. And 3rd and 4th are a bit self explanatory.
Now, let's dive into the Hell of practice.
Let's assume you have 10 ships. Now here the fun begins
In the infrastructure area: you need ports to load and unload the ships. But loading and unloading takes time. If you cannot serviced all 10 ships at the same time (so 10 piers in a dock), some ships will have to wait to be serviced. This branches into 2 ways: 1A. You send in each set of serviced ships and take care of another. Problem: you are highly likely to have no damn escort for some of the sets you send in, meaning they get sunk. 1B you have to pull ships back and let others be serviced Problem: lost time and ammount of supplies which can be transported.
Suprastructure: certain ships might not be serviced by certain ports. So they need to go to other ports. Others might be faster, others slower. And the biggest problem: losing ships. You do not lose only the ship itself, which alone could take months to complete. You also lose its fuel and supplies. And not only you have to make those AGAIN, this also means that some tank or soldier in the field no longer has ammo or fuel. And because you lost a ship, this means that tank or soldier won't get any more supplies because your supply capacity has been limited: AGAIN.
And we get to the 3rd point: supplies themselves. A ship does not carry fuel for troops. It also carries fuel for itself. So a part of what it transports, is consumed. When you get to land warfar THIS IS A MAJOR PROBLEM.
4th. Time and efficient use of it. Ok. Efficient use of time in logistics can be interpreted as being the time a good takes to be changed between one side to another. Aka loading (port changes to ship) and unloading (ship to port). Now, if we assume those things travel at light speed, you would have no wasted time. However, in real world, ships have to travel. While traveling, ships cannot change goods. Thus your ability to transport goods is INEXISTENT. The slower the supply route, the more time it takes for the supplies to reach the destination it is needed.
Now, in land warfare, things change a bit.
Why? Because, unlike ships which are tied to fixed ports, the end point of the supply chain is not set. So, basically, look again at what I mentioned above: you have roads, trucks carrying supplies for the troops that go on those roads and the supplies needed to be carried. So... here is how it goes. When a force move forwards, first of all it takes more time for its supplies to reach it. However: the means of transport alos need supplies. So. You need trucks to carry fuel for the tanks. Then you need trucks to carry fuel for the trucks carrying fuel for the tanks. And in the end you might need trucks to carry fuel for the trucks that carry fuel for the trucks that carry fuel for the tanks. And then you also need fuel for the truck carrying ammo. Food. Water etc. And fuel for those fuel trucks as well :)
When it comes to different types of ammo: I think the right word would be triage. It takes much longer to load and unload and distribute the supplies because you have more types of supplies needed in different places in different quantities. Furthermore, if a shipment is delayed, it means certain units are going to be paralysed because they have nothing to use.
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Why the Germans reduced their divisions in size?
Well, I might be more than 1 year late for this video, but I believe there is quite a good explaination in it: They bit too much soviet land and started choking on it's size. I will take it as a fact that after the catastrophical fall of France, considered the most powerful land force in the world [Britain held supeirority on the seas], German planners would expect that an even better German army, supported by the armies of another 4 nations and soldiers from other 2 or 3 would have a fields day in the Soviet Union. For operations like in France, triangular divisions or, generally, better manned ones are a bit better as you have a more concentrated force,
However, when the advance ground to a halt, they ran into some problems. They could no longer concentrate forces if they wanted to hold all the fronts (north, center south), each divided in multiple sub-fronts. And now the enemy was pushing back. Soo, they needed to move troops around. You cannot really move a whole division because, well, you can have problems on the strategic ballance. You cannot move individual regiments or batallions because you risk putting too much stress on commanders of regiments or divisions, creating unbalanced divisions. So, you'll need independent batallions, but then you can have CnC problems. So why the hell not just take the batalions/regiments out and reorganise the divisions while we have time instead of creating chaos in the battle
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@utvara1 I meant more like how many civillians are in the combat area, because you could have the poor bastards in 3-4 blocks, and civillians somewhere else, in which case, Air-Strike/bombard them, or they could hold the civillians hostage, in which case you are in big trouble, I would say that for your number of 1000 rebels, 4000-4500 would allow enough flexibility, maybe go down to 3000 if some of them are in armored support. Realistically, for launching an assault on a city, you would want as many troops available as possible, so you can surround the enemy and constantly harass them in a series of small skirmishes and fast dashes (to cut off lines to more isolated positions and force the enemy to attack you). This would also allow you to weasel in some diplomacy by convincing individual groups to surrender or at least leave the area. Pretty much like how Syria and Russia handled Aleppo. 3or4:1 is good, 10:1 is even better. The biggest downside is that such an operation takes a very long time and it is going to be costly on the civillians in terms of prolonged suffering (you cannot really supply them because the enemy is going to steal the food from them, they are pressed into fighting used as slaves and so on). Thinking about it, dealing with a professional army might be somewhat easier than with a group of insurgents since a professional army, in theory, would try to avoid barricading themselves in the same quarters as civillians (keywords: in theory, try) so they won't face international trials and such.
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@bezahltersystemtroll5055 @Tancred De Hauteville
Nerve Gas was used in WW2. I believe there's at least one recorded instance of it being used in sweeping operations in Odessa.
The reason why it wasn't used that much in WW2, on such a scale combined with WW1, is simply a different nature of the warfare.
'Large stockpiles' is a relative interpretation. I doubt a 'large stockpile' has any importance when your frontline stretches 200km just for one area of operations, let alone the whole Eastern front which has a few thousands of them.. Gas was used to some effect in WW1 due to the static nature of the warfare, where cannisters would land on enemy troops stuck in trenches, in the very crowded areas of Western Europe (more dense areas, more damage). And, of course, against fortifications, like Osterlitz, where, again, you have concentrations of troops. Throwing gas bombs left and right would only deplete your stockpile without achieving anything.
Also, think about the technological differences. It's easy to launch a smoke cannister at a poor sould in a trench, stuck in 10in of mud and with 10 blokes around him, and catch him unaware, and there's a whole other thing launching gas at an advancing tank force who's not even happy to advance before your position gets battered by artillery or air-raids.
Finally, gas is not a consumable you unlock in a game. It's a highly specialised weapon, with very specific requirements. You need trained personel and special built storage facilities to operate it. If you don't have that, you risk either it being leaked/contaminated, thus making it useless, or, worse, you risk poisoning your own troops. And, of course, you risk it being hit by enemy bombs and artillery strikes.
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the problem with anarho capitalists is that they don't operate on a hard system you could rely your attacks on. Socialists, statists, centrists etc. do have a set of premises like: 'The focus of economy should be doing this', 'the gouvernment should do that', therefore by pointing out that 'the gouvernment does not do that' or 'it does something else', can be an effective argument against a statist. However, a capitalist has no such thing and this is why you still have them around. Their way of thinking is: 'interactions between humans are going to solve everything on their own and everyone [still around] is going to better off'. (Basically survival of the fittest). To adress your point about 'Climate change'. Who says that would be a problem to solve? You will have people that say 'it's a problem' and take action themselves and you will have deniers. If the ones taking action are succesful, the world moves on, people are happy (probably the ones taking action a bit less since that means making sacrifices), so the capitalists are right. If climate change turns out to be real, well, not everyone's going to die. There will be some building bunkers or ships or whatever and the survivors are going to establish economic relationships between themselves and they will 'thrive' and will be happy. Again capitalists win. You could nuke us back into the stone age (arguably the last time a 'capitalist' society existed) and the capitalists will still say it's a working system becaue people will find something to do.
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@robert48044 For TIK socialism and nazism and fascism are all the same, with only small variations (like Nazis hating the 'untermensch')
For your question, you operate on a few wrong assumptions.
'the personally owned shops and markets under communism wouldn't exist would they? 'The motto of socialism, which became a meme is 'Seize the means of production'. Shops are not means of production. I know many people want to consider them as such because some economics theoriticians had to come up with some figures to justify capitalism being the superior race, so the included the tertiary sector (services) in the mix because, technically, they produce revenue. However, they are not 'means of production' and neither are more than 75% of the other services (with half of the rest, if not more, being mega corporations and/or international service companies which still don't produce anything, but bring in foreign exchange). Socialism focuses on implementing a system in which the industrial effort of a country is planned to serve the population as a whole, not a limited group of people owning the factories (farmers were included in the ideology after 1917) How successful were they in that? Pretty debatable, but they did have lots of failures.
Now, back to your shops. Socialism plans the economy thinking how much would a person need in order survive and progress. However, it's a no brainer that some people might consume much less from an alocated good while other might need more. So, instead of going from door to door to shove a bunch of needed or not needed resources up someones ass, they had centers in which people could take to their hearts content, as long as resources were available. The familly of my grandmother used to own such a shop. I think it was something related with textile materials IIRC. Those shops would 'buy' (aka place an order for) their goods from 'the gouvernment' (aka production agents representing the state) at a 'fixed' (aka almost irrelevant) price.
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Hello house. I had a small insight into the 'academic publishing' world thanks to some history teachers and private tutors I had in high school. Let me tell you, the moment you become 'official', like academic, you are getting tied up, hands, feet and neck. Like those guys were writing some books on a subject, taught something different (almost completely) in schools and in private talks, mentioning full picture, they said something else as well, because when you go public, you anger a lot of people.
And it's not only history. It happens also in the 'scientific/engineering world'. I and a few other guys had a chance to sit at a table with the dean of our faculty (We study aerospace engineering) and he told us about how tough life really is and why the progress in technology has slowed so down in the past decades. It's because there is a huge image problem. If you publish something and get it slightly wrong or even if somebody else gets something wrong and money or worse are lost, then people will get angry and they will start going after the ones that supported you. I might not agree with TIK in everything, but this time he's correct, the academic world is a meatgrinder
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@Kaiser Conquests @TIK
As usual, there are various reason for big decisions to be made. No one is risking their neck for a small quarrel.
If you are in for a long-ish read, here are my top 3-4 (3.5?) and justifications:
1. Two front war with Japan. Hitler wanted to drag USSR into a war on two fronts, so distant and against two differnt enemies which would make progress on one front irrelevant on the other (like what happened to him). This is not a far-fetched ideea considering that even after Okinawa, Japan still had around a million soldiers at the Eastern Border of USSR, so the ability of Japan to wage a war against US and USSR at the same time was not a fantasy. Plus, a war on two fronts would have collapsed USSR much sooner considering they were barely catching a breath in the winter of 1941.
2. US supplies to UK and USSR. US supplied Britain and gave them a pretty big envelope where U-Boats could not hunt or search. As another comment points out, there were also incidents where US ships were harassing U-Boats. At this point, US was 'in the war' with almost everything, but the name. So, why not get it over with and declare proper warfare, at least you might be able to strike closer to ports and open new attack routes. But wasn't Germany afraid of US military might? Well, for this we get to point 3.
3. US had no military might. In 1941 they did not even have a proper fighting tank. The M4 was still in design and testing phases. M3 was a stop-gap and they faced the M3s in Africa, we know how that ended thanks to TIKs crusader video. Military doctrines were also pretty new as the whole upper echelon was replaced by new members (I think it was Marshall who did that?). They had their Navy, but it wasn't that spectacular compared to Japan and Britain. And they were dealing well with the British. Separated between two oceans, I am sure Hitler thought Japan could take on or at least resist against USN in the Pacific and there was no threat from USN against Germany
And... 3.5 US was an entire Ocean away. The logistics of trying to support a war in Europe were going to be massive. It might have not occured to Hitler that US could actually be a threat.
And, if we look at the European theater in WW2, well..., we cannot say this reasoning was entirely wrong. Before Normandy and Italy, major victories where US participated were in North Africa, a secondary front for Hitler, took on only because Mussolini needed help and it was annoying the British. Then came Italy. And US and UK got bogged down. Hard. After clearing the beaches of Normandy, they got bogged down a little again. And this time they were facing an enemy which was even weaker after Kursk and Kiev and attempts to capture Romania. Soo, yeah. The military ferocity of the US did not really show up in the Europe of our timeline (in the Pacific, there's another story). Had Japan declared war on USSR as Hitler expected, things were sure to have ended slightly to more different
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Totally agree, modern time capitalists don't even want to look at 'life before communism'. They only look at 'life under communism' and try to compare it to the flashiest they have. I live people in Romania here and they want to compare Bucharest to some third hand city in Russia to show how disastrous Putins policies are. However if we were to compare Bucharest to the 2nd (not even first) most important city in Russia, St Peterburg, a city of which I've had first hand experience with, our capital and many others cannot hold a candle, in the context that Bucharest is 300years older than St Pete and our country was a petrochimical power. That was about historic bias.
Speaking about 'fighting for socialism', while the youth fighting in the war might have had little ideea of what means life without socialism (the ones being 20yo when the war started ), their parents surely remembered how life was without socialism: famine, because an existing irigation system would not disappear when communism came (strangely enough, the reverse happened when capitalism returned to Romania in 1990s), a ruling class that was appreciated by the foreigners for their lavish balls and arhitecture while the poor masses could not even read. The middle class was split between those two. They were feudal (because that's what Russia basically was in 1918) supporters, because of the prestige of the high society or they supported the revolutions because they saw how backward the country was compared to Western Europe
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36:50 Yes, because USSR helping a state in need would mean that they were going to invade all of Europe and no one is going to say no to them. Wait a minute, didn't the video just say the Red Army was useless (bloody nose from Finland and stuff like that? ) Soo.... why would Poland and Romania and Yugoslavia and Greece be afraid of it?
37:00 'Western allies were trying to prevent a war'. One has realise that Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia BECAUSE ALLIES WERE TRYING NTO TO START A WAR? Maybe, just maybe, putting pressure on the side that actually DOES TRY to start a war would deter them from gambling with the lives of their soldiers?
37:47 You cannot say 'Correctly guessed' since the scenario presented in the premise did not happen. Poland did not allow Soviet troops to assist Czechs (and not only 'for Poland' since they actively interferred in Romania as well) so you would never know if they would have left or not. As for the Warsaw Pact? Is TIK mental? First of all, Soviet troops were out of Yugoslavia after the war. They were also out of Romania and Austria after 1955. Is this relevant? NO. Because we are talking about political blocks. USA did not leave Europe until 1989 either.. Acutally, not only did it not leave Europe until this day, but it actually moved in even more, even with the use of armed forces (like in Yugoslavia after refusing to host a NATO base).
And towards the end, when talking about 1940: WHY WOULD THEY HELP THE FRENCH? The French betrayed Czechoslovakia and USSR. Then, you have the Saar Offensive (I could make a whole theory based only on that offensive and talk about the decisions of Stalin). Everyone, everyone, expected a long, drawn out war between Germany and France. Who would be to say that if USSR deceided to strike, the Germans wouldn't redeploy, France back out of the war and thus USSR be left with the burden of the whole German army? The French pulled out twice, why not a third?
Finally, some 'meta arguments'. TIK seems to have a hobby in this video with citing Hobbs instead of Putin. He literally tells us to go read Putins speach (perhaps thinking we wouldn't), but starts citing Hobbs, a completly differnt guy. Just a matter of logic. Why would Putin and his aids, who have the Soviet narrative, official history, Russian authors and soviet archives with complete intelligence details go on and cite Hobbs? Because there are similarities? Yeah, there are similarities between everything. TIK has 2 arms, tow feet and a head. So does a monkey. Does it mean he's a monkey? Doubt. I'm a human. He's a human. Does it mean I'm a Brit? No. I'm European (yes, I'm so pissed at this obvious piece of propaganda that I had to make a Brexit joke)
Also, if there is a question of why I bring up Munich. It's coloquial name is so grim for a reason. When it was time for Munich, neither USSR, nor CZECHOSLOVAKIA (the country whose future was to be deceided) were invited. You could make any argument you wish to defend France or England (or Poland for the matter), either in terms of personalities or as nations, however no such argument or chain of arguments leads to a logical conclusion in which a nation is not allowed to negociate its own future. The Munich Betrayal is called like that because the West and Poland CHOSE HITLER over anything else. It wasn't about peace, about 'doing the best for all' (since you cannot do the best for someone you don't even ask), it was simply about siding with Hitler.
And in conclusion: One does not have to agree with Putins views of USSRs decisions. They are mostly based on a conviction of security deeply rooted inside Russian culture and mentality, conviction which, unfortunetly, has been proven correct times and times again throughout history and even that does not excuse the crimes committed under Stalin. However, from the same objective view one has to agree with Putin about Poland. If you cannot excuse USSR, you cannot excuse Poland. Poland tried to see to its national interests (like every country) , but in doing so they turn into allies of nazi Germany, delluding themselves in a gamble that if anything goes wrong, a Western saviour would put Poland above himself and rescuse their nation.
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@janehrahan5116 There are three issues with US healthcare (and two with healthcare in general).
1st, as a famous guy put it: 'If your system only focuses on treatment and surgeries, that is not a healthcare system, it's a treatment and surgery system. A healthcare system constantly looks after your health'. This is why many systems are so overworked around the world. Unlike US or even NHS or other countries, when the people go to the doctor when they are too much in pain, those systems also have to account for regular checkups or 'minor alerts'. Of course, people argue things like 'it's becuase of those minor alerts that our system is so screwed and ineffective. Those blokes could just endure it'. Unfortunetly, this is rather stupid. Even if the system is overextending a bit, having those minor check ups allow you to detect problems that could potentially show up later on. Fixing them early means lesser costs for the individual and the system. Just think of cavities (giving this example since it's personal experience). I've had quite a few in my lifetime (loved sweets, sue me). But I was afraid of the dentist. So I only went to the dentist when I absolutely needed it. In some cases, the teeth were beyond repair and had to be removed. In other cases, I had to undergo full reconstruction, which is a really expensive and time consuming procedure. But for the ones that I've treated as soon as they manifested a weakness, I ended up with lower costs than a reconstruction and with decent teeth. So, by following the initial quote, and taking care of my health, instead of just waiting for treatment, I saved myself money in the long run.
2nd. Input of specialists. You cannot just throw random people in a hospital and call them doctors. They need to be trained and they need to be wanting to work there. And the life of a doctor is Hell. I know a few of them on almost personal level (aka we are close, but not a familly or a couple). I've went for aerospace and literally rocket science in university, but I swear, it's nothing compared to medicine. In the current enviroment, where people are encouraged to 'dream' and 'be independent' and other bullcrap so business colleges could get their share of money, professions like doctors, which introduce you in a very grim and rigid world, are at a growing disadvantage. (And it's not only about general data here, I should mention. Even if many people enter med schools, how many are going to finish? From them, how many doctors are going to be into each specialisation? How many are going to last more than a few years, and so on. The population increases constantly, so the demand for doctors increases as well)
3rd. 'Price gauging' Perhaps the biggest issue with Medicare/Obamacare is how it is implemented. Even though it seems like a 'socialist' ideea, it's not. It's capitalism bleeding money from the state, because the hospitals can still charge you whatever the hell they want. Unless someone starts actually calculating how much effort and resources is poured into medical procedures, the costs will never actually go down.
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Hmm, Regarding your questions about wether Soviets were burning through German supplies or they were rubbish.. I might make a larger comment, but to give a 'shortish answer' (just the size of War and Peace novel :) )
Why nobody thinks both ideeas can have some part of their truth?
I mean, the fact that the soviets were pulling divisions from Courtland I believe clearly shows that there was a shift in priorities.
And it would make sense for them to keep the germans busy there as not to allow them to reinforce the Central European front (Vienna-Berlin). This is because both Stalin and Churchil knew that the other side would try to monopolise the capture of the capital to their best. Sporadic offensives would prevent the germans from forming a possible breakway attempt or organise a retreat for the fear of not getting hit from the back.
However, I feel like they could do a lot better, tactically and strategically. Like in the 2nd, 3rd 4th 5th, the main direction was westwards (to liapaja), from center to west and from east to center. This makes some strategic sense if you are an optimist. You go westwards, try to take or surround Liapaja and establish a solid defensive line. This means that the germans can no longer evacuate so the 'grind through german supplies' would work as the germans would desperately throw themselves away to re-establish supply lines or straightaway suffer a morale breakdown and surrender. However, this meant that the soviets would face the strongest german resistance and would throw away their biggest advantage: the ability to concentrate forces. I would not call them rubbish, but after 2-3 battles with the same stagnating result and heavy losses, even for the sake of having some fun a better commander would have changed tactics, perhaps not attacking Liapaja from east, but from south, or rather ignore the port completely and push straight north along the eastern coastline. Of course there can be various explainations to why this was not done. apart from the commanders being bad, there might be the ideea of the soviets trying to gain access to the german U-boats in Courtland.
As for Donitz. Well, I cannot give a clear answer as I never read Donitz' memoirs and conisdering my uni I might never have time to give it the proper analysis it deserves. The thing is, the quote in the memoirs can be made in the hindsight, while the one at the consultations with Hitler could be made 'in hot blood'. Since we do not have clear context, perhaps Donitz was asked to give an answer to the question 'Hey, can we actually pull this off'? And his answer would be like the one from Kurowski: 'Well, if we jeopardise our entire global strategy, literally gambling every resource we have on some units we have no ideea if they would be useful and assuming the enemy would not take advantage of our situation, then we have a chance of pulling off another France 1940'
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Yes and no. First of all you have to remember that in BoB the German bombers were targetting the English mainland coming from France and Netherlands, at worst from Norway (for surprise, not efficiency). Basically, the German bombers were coming from the Frontline to their Target. The reverse was not really true. For British/American bombers, they would have had to cross a fully armed 'No mans land' of France or BENELUX and then parts of Germany before they could get to most important German centers. In this aspect, the German boxing system was quite efficient up to two points, which they missed. The thing is, if you do not spread your forces like that, you risk having big blind spots in your air defences. The effectiveness comes in the ideea of capacity and control. The Germans had a much larger area to defend, so a centralised command would have complicated the things for them even further since you can't really assign fighters from southern France to intercept in Netherlands. In the Boxing system, you should have a very flexible system, where each box responds when it discovers an intruder in its area faster than if it had to wait for the whole chain of command to respond. They also work nice because ATC (military of course) capacity to direct planes effectively is limited. I mean, even with modern technology, the maximum capacity for an ATC is of around 9 to 15 airplanes. Mind you, this means modern radars, touch screens, predictive software, big screens etc. I've messed a bit with ATC simulators and I can tell you, it's a bloody mess for civillians alone. Now imagine having to deal with that crap back in WW2, in night time even. You run the risk of your airplanes colliding with each other or identifying a friendly one as a foe, so you need to assign them sectors, make them aware of one another etc. etc. You also must make sure that the airplanes don't get out of their effective range or they will crash before they get back to airfield. It's doable, Britain did it, but it's much harder and frankly only worked because Germany did not want to lose all of its airplanes before the end of USSR. The Box system worked better. And it wouldn't have had problems with the 1000 bomber raids either, if not for 2 factors.
The first factors is not overlapping boxes or assigning an 'over-box' system, in which neighbouring boxes could assist each other.
The second: not enough planes to throw at the enemy.
With those two, the boxes would have worked flawlessly, as the massive swarm would have been chewed up bit by bit, passing from one box to another
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@marianocabrera7290 and @Jamie Strode Well, the effect on overall war is hard to quantify.
Since we are dealing with history here, not with 'what if' wehraboo stuff, I can state some of the clear effects it had:
1. Freed up Italian forces which would be later used in Africa and, more importantly, BARBAROSSA (since you asked for effect on that as well).
2. Closed the Balkan Front and, effectively, the whole Mediteranean Sea. Greece was an ally of Britain, now that Italy was at war with Britain, it would not be unreasonable to think that Britain would use it's Middle east forces to ship troops into Greece and from Greece advance into Yugoslavia and Italy. Once they gained a foothold outside Greece, they could then use it to strike against Germany. Furthermore, by moving contingents of the airforce there, they closed the Mediteranean Sea to British Warships. So UK could not deploy a large fleet through the Suez Canal and attempt to take on Italy.
3. Perhaps it gave a push to other Centra-Eastern European nations to join the war against USSR, nations like Bulgaria and definetly Romania
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Well, as it's usually the case with history, it wasn't a single factor.
Perhaps the biggest problem for the US was Britains debt from WW1. If Britain fell, they couldn't help recuperating the money. Not gonna go into details of why not choosing Germany instead.
Another issue is logistics. Britain was easy to supply. They could just send the stuff to Canada (British territory) and be done without firing a bullet.
Now, for more details. It was a perfect financial/economic scheme combined with geo-political considerations. Britain needed two things to fight in the war: money and supplies. So the US companies and gouvernment bascially started a nice scheme. Britain was already buying supplies like raw materials or food from US companies, even without Lend-Lease. The US Gvt and banks agreed to lend Britain money. Britain would then use the loan to pay for US goods send through Lend-Lease and such, so basically the cash returns in the US. And, after the war, Britain would have to pay back the debt it took. So US would get twice the money it would invest in Britain, thus boosting its economy.
Now, about geo-politics and why getting involved directly in the war. A first thing would be securing the supply chains to Britain. On 'grand strategy', Roosevelt realised that the Monroe doctrine and the focus on Latin America became kinda obsolete. The European nations were devastated by economic problems (With France reduce to the status of a puppet state), so they could have made no pressure on the American continent. American nations themselves were not a threat to US plans in the region anyways (Maybe, mayyyybe Brasil could be a thick thorn in the side, but not one that could not be dealt with). However, US would stand to gain much more if they helped stabilise Europe as they could create a bunch of strong economic trade partners which would be de-facto dependent on the US to survive and thrive, giving US companies good opportunities for trade.
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Well, there are many reasons for such. The truth might be a combination of them:
1. He's eating and spewing crap. Not the first time it happened when TIK talks about economics.
2. There is a little time frame when those things might occur. This is because we associate 'boom' and 'bust' with the traditional, 'industrial' meaning, aka products tend to flow and prices are tame. Economic boom usually means the ammount of money and capital. When you have many companies trying to expand at once you have a huge increase in search for capital because everyone is looking for a loand from the banks or gouvernments in order to fund their expansion. However, this expansion quite usually means halting parts of or even the whole business. (Think of it, you cannot sell rooms in a hotel thats under renovation. You cannot produce cars in a plant that has it's machines in the process of replacing-aka it has none usable) Thus the prices for whatever you want to sell go higher so you can cover for the damage caused by your inactivity. After a while, the prices would go back to normal or decrease due to an increase in production.
3. Funds missmanagement causing a bubble to burst. Because its still companies that deceide to do whatever they want with those funds/credits, they might not use it to increase the availability of goods, but rather for their 'own' benefit, aka increasing wages, building headquarters and stuff like that
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@robert48044 I mean communism was not the same here in Romania as it was in Czechoslovakia or GDR or in USSR. There were local variations from gvt from gvt. As for the no money in communism, that's more like an ideal rather than an actual thing. Sure, if you could narrow down the needs of every person and the total production in each sector of the world, then distributing them would be a simple matter of addition, division and substraction. However that would almost be impossible because people tend to overestimate their needs, so it's much easier to have a universal standard, a currency, in the form of money. However, a key distinction compared to what we see today in many nations (including some 'socialist' ones, like Venezuela) 'money' is simply a common base for goods, for 'tangible' stuff. You print more money as more goods are generated, if needed. Services (tourism, shops, restaurants etc.) operate on the same ammount of money as everyone else. You don't inflate figures or cash supply to show 'Hey, so much money are circulating here, come and invest', because you enter a never-ending spiral.
Unfortunetly, this does have drastic and unfortunate consequences for the gullible or unwise. As mentioned, money are the value of 'production', of 'goods'. A 'placeholder', if you want. Of course, who would want a placeholder when you can have the real thing? Well, as mentioned, the unwise. I mentioned before how my grandmas familly used to have a shop. Unfortunetly for them, a monetary reform came and new bills were issued. The ones who kept their wealth in money not in goods soon found their economies and/or plans ruined, like it happened to my familly. IP.S this is a genrally valid ideea, especially today when Hyperinflation of the dollar is threatening a world war upon us CONVERT EVERYTHING YOU HAVE IN NECESSARY GOODS)
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I mean all of Hitlers plans being implemented in reality seem to defy logic.
Spanish Civil War: Hey, we just got rid of Versailles, let's display our military might by intervening in another country south of France (our traditional enemy). Sure the powers that previously anihilated us for doing that will have no problem with that. And they didn't. Some say they might have even helped a little.
Austria: Ok, ok. I have this wonderful ideea. Let's invade another country (Austria). Surely the Allies would say nothing about it. And they didn't
A few months later: Czechoslovakia looks kinda nice. And they have an alliance with USSR and France. Let's attack them. France betrays USSR and Czechoslovakia and together with England hand crucial areas of Czech industry to Germany. And Poland later invades Czechoslovakia as well.
1939: Hm... I think we don't have more time to gear up our military, but I have a feeling we have enough. Let's move all of our military force into Poland, a country having a military alliance with UK and France. Surely those nations on the total other end of our country are going to do nothing. France invades Germany, advances a few hundred miles, turns around.
1940: I have an ideea. We'll invade Norway. We'll send our most powerful battleships (and the only ones we actually have) togeher with troop transports on a literal parade in front of the Home Fleet (which alone outnumbered the Germany Navy) to capture a port at the end of the world. The Brits see the ships and do nothing until it's too late. And they also lose a carrier to the German battleships. (Take that carrier superiority lol- take it as a joke, I know the story and why it ended like that)
France: I have an ideea. France. They have the most powerful tanks around. They have amazing artillery pieces and quite numerous. They also have the support of UK with some amazing tanks and good aviation. We might also have to deal with Belgium which has a nasty fort. And there's the issue with the Maginot line. LET'S GO STRAIGHT AT THEM, we can use a forrest to cover us. The Belgian fort falls in a matter of hours. The French spot the tanks in the Ardennen forrests, do nothing about them. The Maginot Line was so effective that nobody bothered to fight it, France fell in a matter of months.
The luck of that man in early war and before was insane. Heck I could even add more: Crete in 1941 and then, for Barbarossa, Finland and Romania, 2 nations that Hitler dismembered in favour of other countries (USSR, Hungary, Bulgaria) ended up being his strategic allies
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@Ludvigvanamadeus 'Most democracies are also republics while all republics are democracies'. You got it wrong mate. Most republics are democracies, but all democracies are republics. That's how it goes.
To make a short paranthesis about the first part of the comment. It is not really a democracy due to how the system works. First of all: how the 2 final candidates are picked. Had the principles of electors stuck, it would be ok. But some candidates have super-electors and things like that. This cancels the general ideeas of democracy. And the second point: The electors can vote for another candidate. Of course, many twisted definitions of a democracy exist, so you could create one that fits the US and one that fits China as well. And well, you could also make a third point: lobby, aka legalised corruption.
Now, back to democracy vs republic. Republic means a state for the people. This means that each citizen could, in theory go for any position in the state, saying it again. In a monarchy or diarchy only the king could rule the state and only him could appoint people into positions (or delegate the power to do so to others). In plutocracy, again, the state is considered the backyard of a restricted ruling group. However, not every republic is a democracy. Ancient Rome, pre-Imperator age, was a consular republic. This means consuls were elected by a restricted group and only a few people could become one. You could have a military junta for example, where the matters of state were 'public' affair, but there was no democracy. And basically, most dictatorships take place in republics.
Democracy as a whole is compatible only with a republic, as in any other form of ruling there is always that could overturn the vote of the majority: the king, the council of elders, the oligarhs etc. etc.
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Hello TIK, Romanian Here.
Romania did not commit 1million men to the Eastern Front. Actually, as far as I remember, learning from the total disaster that WW1 was, our combat power was more like 200k men to the Eastern Front (aka invading USSR considering our whole country is on the Eastern Front). Also, an interesting fact, one of the reasons that Romania did not send more soldiers was because Germany was canibalising our resources, aka we would be sending oil and grain to Germany, along with soldiers on the Eastern Front and in exchange Germany was supposed to provide refined avgas and AT means. However the Germans could not even supply themselves, so what we send to Germany to be processed and returned to us, actually went to them as well.
Also, I do not get what the hell do those people have with those 'not fully commited'. Not fully commited means, at best, that you don't send all of your fighting power to that said front. (Side note, by this logic USSR was not also 'fully commited' to the Eastern Front as it still had millions of soldiers defending the Eastern and Central Asian Border). Commiting your military force has to do with many factors, supplies, armament, strategic goals, tactics, logistics etc. You can fully commit like the Italians did before Operation Compass, turn everything you have in active military power, overwhelm your supply lines and get decimated when the enemy sees he has the advantage.
When you compare population sizes you mention the ability to replenish those losses, because one recruit in the army must be taken from somewhere else. So, due to the population advantage it means that one dead soldier for USSR was worth much more than one dead soldier for the Axis, because the Axis industrial power would not be affected that much due to a lack of workers.
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Logistical resources issue.
The ammount of something you can transport is tightly related to the ammount of carrying capacity you've got. Carrying capacity can be expressed in many ways (total volume/payload, volume per carrier, volume per time unit) and it's largely a product of quality and quantity of the carriers. When using the volga for oil, you have the boats acting as carriers. If you switch to the railway, you basically remove the boats as carriers and need to fill the gap left by them in your carrying capacity by using railcarts, obviously. This would be a problem in itself, as a boat tends to have a bit better capacity than a train, but you need to transport oil, which requires specialised carts So you have a change in quantity and a double change in quality. To upset those things you would need to source more rail carriers. Of course, one can do it, but unless you are a magician, it's going to take quite some time before you substitute the capacity of the ships. Meanwhile, the oil available to you is basically reduced (You cannot transport it, you cannot use it so it's not available).
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@TheImperatorKnight By 'you' I didn't mean you TIK, but you, the general reader of the piece of writing, who might not afford the college taxes or things like that, being forced into debt. If you personally are debt-free, I am happy for you. Personally, I'm also trying to stay debt free, unfortunetly, as things look, it's most likely to not last long or, if I make it last long, other areas would have to suffer leading to grimmer consequences.
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We love TIK for his awesome military videos, especially his Battlestorm series, filled with great detail. However, from time to time, he also starts blabbing about economics and teaching people all the untrue things one could imagine. By the 11:00 mark, here are some things he gets wrong in less than 5 sentences: panick-buying,price doubling, free-market and human condition/psychology, real world, supply chains and store management. All while trying to explain 'THE GREAT TOILET PAPER CRISIS'. In yet another attempt to debunk TIKnomics, here how things actually are/were.
Part 1: Doubling the price and shortages
1. Price-gouging is not the same as panick buying. Rather, panick-buying creates some price-gougers.
2. Free market. It's impossible to solve shortages and oversupplies for the matter using ideeas and principles of the free-market (not the basic, usually touted ones at the very least). That's because shortages and oversupplies appear in a noticeable manner when there is a big disturbance in the global network of suppliers, distributors and consumers, thus requiring careful analysis at both individual and macro-economic levels. Free-market on the other hand, focuses only on trade and economics on small scale levels and offers only a descritive, post-action image of what happens. Price adjustment ideologies are simply not fast or/nor elaborated enough to react to market shocks or production shortfalls. If at all, in the current case, free-market is what caused the issue with toilet paper and more. Continuing next
3. Price-doubling as a solution to the problem+human nature. This is mathematically flawed. If a person has 100 c (c from currency unit) and another one has 200c and the seller doubles the price of a paper roll from 75c to 150c, the B-guy might only buy 1 roll, but A-guy cannot buy any roll now. Because of this, there is still a perceived shortage in goods. (Venezuelan style ) And no, price adjustments won't work, because the price drops, the B-guy is going to buy it from the seller. So, doubling the price did not solve the problem. If more, it made it worse, because:
4. In the real world, by the time the prices have adjusted, panick-buyers already accumulated a neat supply of toilet paper. Maybe not ALL of them, but a lot had. And soon, they will realise they have more than they need. And what are they going to do with that? Well, they would start selling it, but at a higher price than pre-crisis, meaning that the guys who could not afford it after the doubling are still screwed, and might still not be able to buy it, and now the store is in trouble because someone is selling cheaper than them. Ironically, by doubling the price (or hiking it in any way), the store itself would become a price gouger.
Part II
I have all respect for TIKs mom. She raised a fine son and she provided us with an interesting perspective. However, maybe TIK should ask her how she supplies her store, assuming it's her store, to get a good picture about how the 'shortage' happened, even if the people 'bought only a little bit more than usual'. Well, to make an analogy, how could the germans/axis have outnumbered the Soviets in 1941 if they were constantly facing HORDES of Reds?! The answer is the same for both cases: False narratives built up on subjective perspectives.
Anyone who knows two things about retail, or logistics in general, should know that you cannot print things out of thin air. You generally need to produce them, or, if you are a store without a factory attached, buy and store them. Of course, the more you buy, the larger the storing facility you are going to need (aka the more money you spend on it) and the less likely you are to sell it all to recover the costs of buying and storing it. So, how much toilet paper you buy. Well, since it's a frequently used consumer good, n (natural number) times the population in your target area. But, is this enough? Well, the next delivery might be late, there might be an overconsumption of Mexican food demanding more toilet paper in your target area etc. etc. So you don't order n times the population. You order ntimes plus a bit more, like 10%. Why is this important? Well, because it deals with human nature and economics in general. ntimes+10% is enough to maintain the appearance that you will always have a steady supply of toilet paper to buy from. However, with the BeerBug thing, people started buying more than usual. MUCH MORE. (Personally, I bought twice as much as usual from a supermarket after the local store had ran out). If you assume an attrition rate based on my example (since there are bound to be people with more and less), the store would run out of toilet paper almost twice as fast, which means there is not time for the supply chain to catch up. This is how you create shortage. And, as such, the ideea of people 'buying slightly more than usual', which TIK tried to emphasize, is an illusion. How come? Well, even if people doubled the attrition rate of goods, there was still a limited supply, which just happened to be 'slightly more than usual'. So, no matter how much people wanted to buy, in the great picture 'they still bought only slightly than normal', because that's how much it was available for sale.
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@Edax_Royeaux Actually, it did put them in a favorable position. That was the whole point of the War of Manouver or Blitzkrieg or however you want to call it. The ace in the sleeve of Nazi Germany was not their offensive, but actually their mobility which allowed them to employ defense to perfection. The ideea was of using panzers to disrupt enemy lines was to insert yourself into a position the enemy could not lose, thus forcing them to attack you. Because of this, it is you who has the advantage of defence formation and tactics. Not only that, but there are other points. At this stage in the war, German tank and AT gunnery training as well as more sophisticated training was slightly above the Allies. However, these play little roles when advancing because you cannot shoot accurately on the move and if you stop, you become a target. However, if you put the gun/tank in a good, defensive position, it can aim perfectly at an enemy that cannot and is also hidden. Furthermore, the layout of German defences was excellent. (I recommend Military History Visualised for more and better explained details and examples).
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@xJavelin1 Again, France was seen as impossible to have been defeated. And not only did it fell, it feel like a meteor.
Mind you, invasion of UK does not mean invading the whole islands. Instead of Bombing the British into surrendering like the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, Luftwaffe would be supposed to cover the landing area and then slowly move inland. This meant that the Bombers would not have fighter escorts instead of being thrown wherever Germany wanted to be shot down by Hurricanes. And they would intensively try to sink British capital ships. Furthermore, landing areas would be flanked by minefields and U-Boats to prevent the Royal navy from interfering. No need to block the whole English Chanel, just a corridor to secure supply routes. And don't preach to me the importance of the Royal Navy. They failed to completly halt the inferior Regina Maria from delivering supplies in North Africa. What Guarantees do you have they would actually be able to cut off German supply lines for a signifiant time frame? I mean, sure, Royal Navy is impressive, but here the scenario works completly against them. We are not talking about defending the Middle East where you have the vast expanse of Aegean and Mediteranean sea for the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine to defend in order to secure supply lines. Frankly speaking, the capital ships of the Kriegsmarine would not even be needed aside from some shore bombardment. Torpedo boats, minelayers and submarines would be much more useful.
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1. Not everyone has done reading on eastern front. Especially not good reading, basing their beliefs only on western propaganda books which themselves were based on german-nazi propaganda by their generals.
2. The number of prisoners is more signifiant than you would believe. I will explain why(might not finish tonight)
The whole 'german superiority' thing was based around 2 things 1.it's "Blitzkrieg" (using this because I cannot spell Bewerungskrieg-or whatever it was named- many times over at 1am-) and how they defeated France and England many times. 2. Their excellent defensive tactics. Defensive tactics were indeed excellent as it seems (if we were to raise hell, we could question this as well since everyone, on a tactical level, has advantage on defensive).
Now, Blitzkrieg. Tactically, if you could pull it off it was great. Why? Because it encircles the enemy and leaves it for later disposal. This has multiple effects on the tactical to strategical transition level.(because it implies both). Tactically, you can switch from highly mobile moto-infantry and tank warfare to the static infantry warfare. So even if you do not have large oil or vehicle supplies, you can pull it off, because the motorised part does the breaking and encirclement and the non-motorised part holds position while the former rests and resupplies. And because you establish defensive positions for this infantry, a large enemy group actually ties down a small number of your forces On the enemy, the effect was devastating. The ones that were not encircled were forced to counterattack to break the encirclement, leading them on predictive routes against a fortified enemy, often allowing you to pull off another encirclement. This would cause a sever loss in morale, causing routs or even spontaneous surrenderings. Supplies to the encircled guys would drop low, so they would surrender as well. And this also happened in France. The bulk of the French and British army was surrounded and France surrendered. To put it into context, Britain and then France were the world's most powerful empires. If they wanted, French gouvernment could have fled into exile and continue the fighting using their colonies, despite even that being an extreme measure as many parts of France could have been defended if wanted. Something similar happened in Greece. And in Soviet Union.
Germany would surround large formations and they will eventually surrender. That was the main advantage on the tactical level.
However, what happens if the enemy does not surrender or you fail to encircle him? What if he keeps his morale? Than casualities in your rank keep piling up and you have to pay a much higher price for every loss inflicted to the enemy. That's why captured numbers are so important. Because there were not so many people surrendering (aka not so many prisoners) it means that superiority of the Blitzkrieg had failed. Without a broken morale, Germany would not obtain the fast victories it was used to. So, despite more men being killed, the soviets actually lost fewer people for more Germans killed. That's why the drop in this number is important on the strategic scale.
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As an engineer (and aviation one) and from Romania, I feel the need to point out a few things:
1. The Me262 was superior to the British Meteor, both in terms of firepower and speed. The Meteors would have had a real struggle against the Me262.
2. Romania had the IAR 80 fighter, which was one of the best early war fighters. I wouldn't say it would outclass the Spitfire, but it was better than anything the Soviets could throw at it and it was on paar with the Hurricane.
3. Technological advantage could be measured as a product between difference in quality and difference in quantity. And, you could also factor in another term (or perhaps include it in quantity), strain on logistics. Aka, even if the Germans had the superior Me262, the sheer volume of Meteors Britain could produce (and of course enhance) would negate the technological advantage of the Me262. Plus, the Me262 was bleeding the German oil dry.
4. I wouldn't say the Germans had superior tanks early war (pre-1942). On the contrary, I would say they had some of the worst. But they did have the radios, which was a massive improvement, but that is more concerned with doctrine, rather than technology, I would say, because by Crusader, the British also had radios, but weren't great at using them to effectively coordinate. Another advantage the German tanks had, and that remained throughout the war, was the better optical sights, which would allow them to effectively engage targets at much further ranges than the Allied tanks.
5. They also had an advantage in submarine technology, I would dare to say.
6. Japan. Well, Japan had the technological advantage over the Allies in early war. The Zeros were basically superior to any other carrier born aircraft early war. They had 'developed' armor piercing bombs to use against heavy ships, they learned how to use carrier aviation. They also had better optical sights than the Allies. And more advanced night fighting capabilities. Their biggest weakness was the lack of proper damage control. And the doctrine, because they also had some amazing submarines (not even mentioning I-400 class) The problem is that by 1943 they lose all those advantages because the Americans start adding armour to their fighters and they get Air and surface scanning radar, which completly anihilates the advantage Japan had in terms of optical sights and night fighting capabilities.
7. USSR. 'Gulags' yeah, yeah, funny jokes. They had radio controlled mines and radio-controlled tank-bombs. They had absolutely amazing artillery (too bad they lacked radio to effectievly use it) and the Katyushas. And they had their submachine guns for city fighting. Also, Mosin's rifles were quite a good piece of equipment. And by 1944, their fighters turned the tides on the Germans, with the exception of Me262
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Let me answer this first with an example, a conclusion from this example and then a switch to another perspective.
Example: Operation Tidal Wave. US bombed the shit out of Romania. My city (was not born back then, obviously) was bombed. Ironically, a bomb hit the house I would live in and another would hit my future high school.
Guess what, in a few months after the bombardment, the Romanian oil plants in Ploiesti were producing more oil than before the bombardment. Conclusion: strategic bombing has an overstated effect. If not overstated, then seriously misjudged.
Now another perspective. Germans also lacked long range fighters. They could have done much better in the Battle of Britain, but their fighters would go beyond the acceptable level of fuel shortly after crossing the english coast. (Keep in mind, for a fighter you need fuel for air combat as well, it's not just 'range'). This meant that their bombers would be easy target for British fighters. Going back to USSR. Ironically, Soviets had the MiG 3 which was a high altitude fighter/interceptor. So strategic raids against soviet plants in Ural? That would have caused major problems for the german bombers without any escort. And the volume needed to hold that fuel would not allow to create an efficient fighter.
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I was just going to point out how getting the oilfields themselves was not the only problems the Germans had, but then you show those comments. Yep, people seem to think too much in the ideea of strategy games like EUIV or Civilisation or whatever to realise how war-economy really works If you cannot defend your shipping channels (rail, air, water, road) raw materials are pointless. You might just want to give up on the area altogether or you will suffer twice the damage. Once you will suffer cause your raw materials are not getting to processing plants anyway and twice because now you also lose the vehicles and men operating those channels/lanes.
As for going or not in the city, I think there are 2 big arguments of why it happened (and why with hindsight a siege is not such a good ideea either):
1. Reinforcements and 2. Lookouts.
1. When they entered the city there were few Soviet troops there. However, we know the Soviets sent reinforcements over the Volga WHILE GERMAN TROOPS WERE IN THE CITY. A siege might have allowed multiple river crossings by boat to be set up and perhaps some pontoon bridges to be built as well (this bridge is not 100% failproof due to what I am going to say at point 2). As the city river bank is quite large, not sure if small artillery pieces could have prevented boats and ferries from crossing.
2. Lookouts for artillery and air raids. The soviets could have used the buildings (some quite tall) in the city to scout the germans position in the fields and direct heavy artillery fire (aka fire from heavy, long range, artillery, not heavy fire) for batteries now located perhaps on both banks for the Volga and provide targets for airplanes And while German heavy artillery might have had some areas of effect as well (like shelling bridges and crossing points), their scouting might be obstructed by the buildings and airplanes would have to identify targets more or less on the spot.
To those we have to add that Stalingrad was an industrial city and a railway node. Perhaps they were hoping to capture some trains and/or gain access to factories which could be used as maintainance workshops. It also had oil storage tanks (many were destroyed in the bombing in August, but the Germans might have thought there was more -need to find sources).
In short, not entering Stalingrad would have allowed Soviets to concentrate forces in the city and outside the german controlled area as well. Meanwhile, entering the city reduced the efficiency of Soviet artillery (altough at the cost of the German one as well, some may argue) and taking the city in such a way might have helped the germans improve their dire logistical situation. Plus, we have the problems of refugees, which I am not going to go into much, but with germans in the city, many might have reconsidered 'I'm not leaving' ideea, even though not officially, stretching the soviet supply lines, while putting pressure on their morale to save their countrymen from the invaders. Not to mention slavework for the germans
Now, with the whole ideea of setting up a ring to lay siege. This argument is made with the benefit of hindsight. However, with hindsight in mind as well, we know that the Soviets are going to strike in the areas controlled by Romanians and Italians in the North, across the Don. I'm not sure if setting up a ring would prevent this arm of the encirclement, especially considering point (1) . A ring would deffinetly have made the link-up at Kalach which happened in Uranus impossible and would force the Soviets to extend their lines much further than in real history However, especially considering the possible buildup in the city, I highly doubt it would have given the Axis any chance of holding the Volga. At best, it would have made a retreat possible, unlike the fate of the 6th Army
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"the Germans has a large area to police since they have taken so much land, and that requries manpower." Dude, have you looked at the Soviet Union? No seriously. HAVE YOU? Just look at freaking map and compare Russia and Europe. Russia had shitton more land to defend than Germany. Furthermore, Let's look at the strategic level of threats.
For Soviet Union there were 2 main threats on 2 fronts. One was obviously the combined force of 5+2 nations in the West: Germany (With Austria, Czechoslovakia and various territories after 1939), Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Finland+Spain and Croatia, On the other, was the Empire of Japan. Lietrally across the world with all the logistical nightmare. They had to face almost a milion more soldiers that never faced combat and were ready to fight. Note: those soldiers were stationed the throughout the war. Even when US-UK forces were nearing Japan, there were 1 million Japanese getting encircled by soviets in 1945. Prior to Barbarossa, the Soviets and Japan have been in a Border War which reached a fragile cease-fire/peace situation after Zhukov squased the nipons in 1939, but the threat was always present. As Hitler declared war on US to help Japan, it could have always presumed Japan would do the same, since they had no way to actually move those 1million troops to help in the Pacific.
Summary of Soviet: situation: squashed between 2 empires, one of which was not even tired from fighting.
Now, that we established Soviets: take the Germans. East, well, USSR. South, Southern border was covered by, first Mediteranean Sea, and invasions across seas are infinetly more difficult to achieve than land ones, then it was Italy and Spain. And Vichy France. All with their own armies and forces. And it was also Greece, but up to 1943 there was no serious threat considered there because Rommel, for the price of a few German divsions that would look like a joke on the Eastern Front, tied down a huge number of Allied Forces. On the West, same allied forces, tied down in Africa. And the same sea making it difficult for the offensive. And in North, same thing as in Mediteranean sea.
To put it mildly, USSR had as much strain on its forces Germany had due to policing
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@brunozucconi2409 The problem with TIK is exactly how he goes into detail. It's the old cliche of not seeing the forrest from the Trees. I will take one example. He mentioned something like: if the price of water is too high, people would buy tea (in highschool I was given this example with coffee since it made even more sense). This makes sense in capitalist economic terms: if the demand for water is too high (aka the price is high) some people would switch to tea. However, what his argument does not take into account is that you need water for tea. So if the demand for tea increases, the one for water would still not drop that much. And you still need water for more things than drinking, like cooking or washing (That's what I said it made more sense with coffee, since it's a direct, non-interfering, competing product) But, there is another aspect. If we compare tea vs coffee. Coffee is generally preffered to Tea because coffee gives you energy in the morning and people are literally addicted to it. Soo, even if the price is too high, people might still go out and buy it. In short, economcally, short-scale, speaking, TIK is right in water vs tea (or Coffee vs tea) But when you compare their usefulness, you might see that people would still opt for coffee rather than tea, even if more expensive.
And, on a side note. Disaproving with someone is 3 times harder than constructing an argument. Once comes from the prep-work trying to see where the person is wrong and where he's right. (according to your logic). The second is you deconstructing their arguments with logic and/or facts. And the third comes from assembling facts and logic to build up your own argument. The problem with TIK is that he goes into so much detail that you cannot claim 'This is utter bullshit' You have to carefully analyse everything, which takes time and resources. I remember I once lambasted one of his bullshit arguments about Black Market. But even if what he said was like 1 minute in an hour long video about Soviet economy (i believe), it still took me a comment that would be like 1 page long in a standard word format. And that was for something which was pure bullshit, so I only had to give counterexamples and put some logic to tie them together.
Eidt: That's why we don't go into so much detail. We are not youtubers. We are not paid to do this. We are just people trying to prevent misinformation while struggling with our realy daily lives, so we do not have time for this.
If you want to get better yourself, do what I, and perhaps many others, do. Start back from his details and rebuild the system. And once you rebuild the parts of it, set them in motion and see how they compare to the real world. That's how I knew TIK economics is bullshit. I compared his 'private society' (an oxymoron, I know, perhaps 'society of privates?') with a system of particles having attractive interactions between them (electronic or gravitational) . Then I went to look for the practicality of things (could a small business build giant things that we need today? most likely not)
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@jackspat2369 in 1400s there was a consensus that the world was flat.
If people think UK, a monarchy (so by definition incompatible with democracy), or that a US, a colonial empire where not even full citizens don't elect who gets into the presidency, but rather some electors and super-electors, (not to mention legalised corruption, aka lobby) are democracies, I am pretty sure one could find it pretty easily to develop a system for socialism and democracy to exist.
Actually, it's not that hard since socialism, at its inception was viewed as the democratic solution to the aristocratic and monarhic societies in the 19th century, where all the 'democratic' campaigns were organised and won by the same rich local elite (simply because they were the only ones with the wealth to market themselves to anybody). Socialism, by reducing their power, would allow more qualified people to run and reach everyone.
Socialism vs Democracy dichotomy is simply a myth and a lie perpetuated during the Cold War. The ones that did this had 2 basis: the authoritarian regimes like USSR and the way the mild ones worked. I am not going to attempt to change the views of people abot the former, but we might discuss about the latter. In mild socialist countries, like Nasser's Egypt, pre-CIA Iran, Lybia you did not have the iron hand that was common in Eastern Europe. However, they were not western-like democracies. That's because they considered the western view terribly unstable and inefficient. Why give a president only 4 or 5 years to rule and only one or 2 terms? He would spend most of his time trying to get re-elected, rather than taking bold steps. Then the next one could reverse everything in a matter of months. Mind you, those socialist countries were generally former colonies, so they needed strong leadership to develop them, not political chaos and impeachemnt trials and conspiracy theories trying to actually enforce more gouvernment control on private life and media. So, they opted for a different solution. Instead of the ideology of 'picking a ball from a pre-determined set just to have the illusion of choice', they thought democracy was 'let's do something for the people. The faces are always the same so they get to know us and judge us fairly. When decisions affect them or we need to replace one of us, then we vote.'
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@QuizmasterLaw His economic statements are largely omissive. Most of the capitalist examples we hear about today are the countries that robbed other nations of their resources. Aka, basically most western countries. You have more resources, you are going to be more successful, no matter the ideology.
And no, I'm not one of the guys who goes 'racism bad, colonialism bad let's turn main characters in remakes black to make up for it'. I want that if we tell a story, let's tell the whole story. This way we might actually learn something and fix mistakes, not get rid of them by making more mistakes.
Also, one other thing many 'anti-communists' fail to mention, perhaps even see, is how communism changed the shape of those nations from how bad they were. When you hear people talk about transition from Tsarist Russia to USSR, people complain about how writers, poets, lawyers fled or were imprisoned or killed or forced to allign themselves with the party. They mention them because that helps their case. They don't mention however that the same writers, just years previous to the change, were literally asking for it due to how shit their country was. They got into trouble not because they did not want the revolution, but because someone else from their favorite went. Interesting, nobody fails to mention how Soviets actually brought irrigation to many farmlands. How they actually industrialised the country. How they built airports to access remote areas and develop them. How they gave rights to women etc. etc. Pretty much every 'socilist disaster' started off from an even worse point. They were either the toilet of the world or were former colonies or, in the case of China, both
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@CruelDwarf TIK is a capitalist hard on. He's the type of guy trying to use a potato peeler to get juice out of oranges. Also, socialist economics does not mean 'state capitalism' (State capitalism was actually considered a degrading term by socialists/communists). The difference between 'state capitalism' and socialism is hard to make because various factions with different ideeas accused each other of being state capitalists instead of socialists. However, the general ideea is this: state capitalism sees the state as a capital producing machine, a giant corporation. It does not matter how it does it, as long as it produces the most capital, it's good. You need to fire hundreds of workers? Do it. You need sacrifices to Satan? How many per month? Socialism also takes into account the human factor. You could go for a slower economic progress in order to allow people to adapt. Let's go for a practical example and food for thought in modern days: full automation in factories. State capitalist nation vs socialist nation. The first nation, as said, works like a corporation: we are going to get as many robots as fast as we can (either produce them or buy them, what is deemed more economically efficient) and we are going to replace every worker with them. Best delay we can do is a couple of years so universities have time to produce students able to handle those robots (if necessary). A socialist nation would delay such full automation for a longer time in order to find new work places for the people being replaced or find a welfare plan for the replaced workers. They might also consider setting up factories to produce their own robots after aquiring the tehnology to do so. HOWEVER, this does not mean they will remain behind. Every new factory that they build is going to be fully automated from the start.
@TIK The price can be both calculated and set. That's how socialist economics work. Capitalist economics is an extension of the way socialist economics work. Actually, it's better to say 'the way we understand capitalist economies is an extension of how socialist economies work'. Why do you thing Marx had 1 of his 2 best known books named "The Capital". In socialist countries you have one way of controlling the price: availability of resources. A product's price means how much it takes to produce it. In capitalist countries you actually have 2 levels of price regulation. You need to account for the resources available and you also have the 'added price'. This is what 'supply and demand' tries to tell you. In socialist economies this second stage is 'usually' (as you have many exceptions) skipped because you have what's called 'planned economy'. This means that the gouvernments try to aproximate how much its needed of each good and set the price for it. However you still need currency as in a country you also have non-basic services, like holiday resorts, trains, hotels, restaurants etc. A citizen might want to go for a place or for another and plannign for such things would be a total headache. (Of course, there are also more reasons why currency is kept in a planned economy, but that's the most basic example I could think of right now). Now, going back to capitalist economies. In capitalist economies, first of all the 'production price' includes other elements that a product in a socialist country would no require, like marketing costs. Secondly, one company can add to the price as much as it wants, while still keeping its price atractive for the consumer.
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Hello TIK, nice to hear you are feeling better and thank you for your videos.
About 'the denial of logic', not really versed into the toppic of 'historians disagreeing with it', however the way you presented it feels wrong. Accepting contradiction is not really 'against logic' as you claim. What you are referring to seems an ancient form of binary logic (where you have only A and nonA ) -championed by Aristotle if my late night memory is still working-. However, in subsequent millenia things have changed a bit and the ideea of 'truth' has been changed a bit to better fit the complexity of our reality. Even modern science started to 'embrace' some apparent contradictions since humans became that for us to state that an affiramation is 'true' , we must first realise it's true, thus 'the truth' is merely a product of our ability to gather and process information.
Some interesting paradoxes which reflect this complexity are :
'If a tree falls in a forrest where no one hears it, does it make a sound?'. Yes, you might apply binary logic and say 'of course it makes' (which would theoretically be true or false in an abstract world). However, in reality, you could not state the value of truth of that sentence since you have no opportunity to gather information about that tree.
Another one is Schrodingers cat paradox. You cannot state wether the cat is alive or not until you check it. This means that the sentence 'The cat is alive' could have all the three values of truth (True, Plausible, False), depending on the state of our experiment (it's alive when we put it there, we have no ideea about the box and it might be dead when we lift the box)
Quantum mechanics and logic also dabbs a bit into the area since you might have the theoretical support to claim that 'this [Concept/particle] exists', however you have no way of proving it. Or you have a way of proving it, but it's so rare you are not able to isolate it properly.
And let's not dive into morality or semantics.
Basically, modern, 'realistic' logic states that we can argue someting is true only to the extent we are able to construct a context which isolates our object of reference from the outside world of interference (Aka constructing an axiomatic system). Outside it, everything is plausible and even seemingly contradictory statements could hold the same value of truth.
Again, not sure about the full context, but I assume Marx and Hegel are arguing from this perspective. Since in the real world you cannot prove 100% that something is true, you should accept contradictions because they both might contain useful information or parts of the truth.
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@aniksamiurrahman6365 'Great analysis buddy. But does it have a solution? Price is supposed to be the perfect fluid to fill up the small adjustments. But even if no one is distorting, price adjustments take time.' Well, it depends on what axiomatic system you rely on.
In reality, price is something abstract. Arguing with mathematics about 'price' is like arguing about dragons like Smaug or Ancalog (hopefully I did not butcher the name) using thermodynamics and aerodynamics. That is because price is derived from an abstract quantity itself: value. The original capitalist schools, austrian and classical, have defined value as something subjective, so it's not an ideea that I made up.
The real world has, however, things like cost and use. Costs mean the ammount of physical resources you have to invest in something while use is the potential employment of that something. An important thing to not, this 'potential'/'usage' is what later results in the value of an object. Economy means the management of resources, not the management of prices or stuff like that. Therefore, unlike the bullcrap that TIK is spewing, you can do some economic calculations without prices by creating a supply of objects and distributing them to their demanded use. In some cases, it might actually be easier to make those calculations compared to 'capitalism' because it features less abstract variables (like prices or psychological value), only focusing on mostly physical aspects. Of course, this would yeild results of different nature compared with the 'market capitalism' (like instead of km you get kg, not that with one you would get 10km with the other 100000km). but that's something different. The difference comes because the 'economic calculations' argument is a cyclical one. From the start economic calculations have been designed around the ideea of prices and currency, so they accept data about prices and/or currency as input or produce it at the output. Or both of them. That's how the current axiomatic system works. It doesn't mean its the only one. Conversly, it doesn't mean that calculations based on costs and uses are going to yield 'desirable' results, since what is 'desirable' depends on the view of each person, an that's in an ideal world.
In case I've deviated too much, to return to your point about prices being like an the fluid filling the gap, or the mortar in the cracks. It's not. The price comes as the result of negociations between costs and demands, which are derived from uses. So it's more disruptive than constructive. If I were to make an analogy, I would say a price is like an earthquake between two tectonic places 'negociating' the upper position.
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Just came here from Military History Visualised.
Did not finish the video, but there are some big problems with what Suvorov says:
1. Yes, it is true, the Soviets were planning for a war with Germany. My intuition says that they were planning since the Spanish Civil war, but anyways. However, July, 1941 MAKES ABSOLUTELY ZERO SENSE. First of all: USSR still had armament orders to Germany. For one example, the guns for their future battlecruiser Kronstadt. So why would they attack with an incomplete ship that requires guns from Germany to be completed? Second: the state of the Soviet Armed Forces(Air, Land and Navy) simply could not have allowed that. Soviet Union still relied on T-26 and BT series tanks. They still had to train people and properly deploy their KVs and T-34s. Not only that, but they wanted to upgrade their KV series with better guns(107 mm ZiS-6 cannons as far as I remember). They were supposed to receive new planes, mainly the famous IL-2 Those were all planned for the whole year of 1941. Not to mention restructuring the army. There was no way they could have expected to do that by July 1941. Furthermore, the soviets were actually building new defensive fortifications at their border(moving away from the Stalin line). In other word, in June 1941(actually the end of June 1941). The state of the Soviet Union was the worst possible when it comes handling a war against a big power. What this guy Suvorov says is that basically the Soviets would have used some Stalin shenenigans and turn this underequipped and untrained, disorganised mass of soldiers into a big war machine, in a matter of days, not even months. Even in the context of Soviets Preparing for War. The earliest I've heard about this concept comes from Marshall Zhukov(yes the guy at Stalingrad, Moskow and Berlin). He suggests that this 'soviet strike' could have taken place in 1942, no earlier than the winter of 1941-1942.
2. The argument of 'preemptive strike' is circular. If you say 'Germany invaded because they knew soviets would do that', you have more evidence to say that soviets would have attacked because they knew war with Germany was unavoidable(because Hitler wanted the lands of Russia for agriculture, the oil fields for the War machine. And he wanted to get rid of the slavs)
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he has at least one full video on it, referenced at the start of this one.
In short: yes and no.
In long:
USSR never viewed the Nazis as ultimate military enemies. (Ideologically, a bit, but not as a power). Their biggest concern were France and UK. Their greatest fear was a repetition of the war in 1918, where the nation weakend by war against Germany was now invaded and carved up by it's former 'allies' and to them Hitler served only 2 purposes: in times of peace, a buffer between USSR and the west, swaying away the masses with his 'nationa-socialism' instead of the international communism proposed by USSR; in times of war, they would weaken USSR before France and UK swoop in. Developments in Czechoslovakia in 1938-1939 and the first two weeks of the invasion of Poland I assume pretty much confirmed their fears.
As for talks, depends on the context entirely, but yes. USSR DID fight with Hitler in the Spanish Civil War and DID try to stop WW2 through a military alliance with France and Czechoslovakia. After Poland things were calm, before France fell. Then, yes again, Britain, and especially Churchil were urging USSR to invade Germany (Knowing the animosity between the two). And USSR was getting ready to do that, fully expecting a war. But they had no plans to do it in the short term.
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To wage war= 'To instigate or initiate war against some other country or group of people.'
My question is: How can you not wage a war of agression? Either someone wages a war on you, thus he is the agressor and you are defending, or you wage war and you are the agressor. Sooo, how can you wage and not have agression?
I mean, yeah, theoretically, you could say: 'it'a a punitive war', but after a point, you will be invading or striking at the enemy, making you an agressor. Or, I suppose, you could attempt to declare war and then get yourself anihilated (Georgia 2008, Japan after 1942, Zanzibar etc)
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While there is some truth in the things you mention, there are some other things to consider when talking about weather.
1st of all, bringing cold injuries into the argument is a bit pointless, since the soldiers were fighting in cold throughout the winter. Being colder or warmer by a margin would not affect those things. So if someone manifested cold injuries during the warmer days, most likely someone manifested them in the colder days as well.
However, there are other aspects to look for. When the weather heats up, the snow starts to become watery, especially with heat sources, such as fires, people or engines around. This is quite bad news for the ones digging their fortifications in the snow and using them for concealment. Not to mention the damage that can be done by water infiltrations. While being a bit colder or a bit warmer does not change the chances of getting cold injuries, staying in humidity DOES. MASSIVELY. With their fortifications ruined, it would be much harder to defend against soviet attacks.
However, there is another thing which severly nukes the ideea of 'General Winter'. When proper winter set int, but before the Moskow counter-offensive, the Germans had a great success in Winter after the Autumn rains. The rains turn the soil muddy like hell, making the crossing of vehicles and foot soldiers impossible. So the Winter initially helped the germans.
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In excess of 20 million, actually 27million is the number that the official Russian position backs, is the number of total deaths. More civillians died in the war than soldiers due to many factors: accounting methods (1 might count POWs dying in captivity as civillians, extermination by nazis, famine, executions for treason, overworking etc.) Germany, as a nation, well, it's hard to say, considering they lost their whole country, aka it was split between East and West. So counting civillians is not an easy task since the onces not turning up in DDR might have been refugees in W. Germany or other countries. And they certainly did not get an extermination campaign against them. Excluding the bombardments, war was on german soil for about 6 months. On the other hand, war was on Soviet soild for almost 5 years, as areas like Courtland were still in German hands when the war ended.
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Ok. Perhaps I should actually start writing some articles on this, and rather soon, so I do not have to type the same thing over and over again.
I sense some historic revisionism, the bad kind, here. 'Soviets and Germans were allies in 1939'? Why were they allies? I mean, as far as I remember, the soviets were not invading France, nor fighting against Brits. If Ribentropp-Molotov makes you say 'Hey, they were allies', then the same arguments must tell you 'Germany and The West were allies (or super/mega allies) from 1930/1 to 1938. Actually, one could say they were allies up to the invasion of France, because those guys basically took no offensive action despite having all the reasons and possibilities to do so. They allowed, through the United Nations resolutions, for Germany to start remilitarising, they offered public support, they offered The 1936 Olimpic Games, industrialists offered donations to Hitler, they offered loans which were pumped into the German economy and war machine. And, in 1938 they offered Czechoslovakia and Austria. Czechoslovakia had a defensive treaty with France AND USSR. But for USSR to do anything about it, France HAD TO GIVE ITS CONSENT. France and UK gifted the nation to Hitler instead. On the other hand, Relationships between USSR and Germany broke down after Hitler came to power because the Comintern wanted to use the national-socialists to start 'the revolution' in Germany, but it was the other way around. Later, they fought a proxy war in Spain. Again, great powers did nothing, allowing for a fascist victory. Soo, you, as a Soviet leader, are faced with a German nation, whose leader publicly called for your extermination and have two options: Go to war with the said nation and risk allowing the much bigger power (who are your public enemy nomero uno) to come after you when you are weakened, or strike a deal with said nation, which would allow you to get invaluable technology and buy time to make your army ready for war? Best case scenario, those suckers kill each other and you might even get some benefits from the fallout. Worst case scenario, one of them obtains a hard earned victory and you would be ready to counter them. (Of course, who would expect France, biggest land army in the world to capitulate in 1 month) Again, without the hindsight of the Fall of France. What in the world would you pick? Instant suicidal war or preparation with huge benefits?
Second thing.
All this Lend-Lease second front I keep hearing TIK mentioning. Ok. This 'supposed' conversation took place in 1942. Now, let's diverge a bit. What's Lend Lease? Well, there are not 1, not 2, but actually 3 (THREE) Lend Lease agreements. First is signed 'from the start' between Britain and USSR. Soviets get some planes, tanks and pilots for training. This is 1941. The second one, which is the obvious one and the biggest one, yet people still seem to ignore it, was US-UK [/British Empire] Lend Lease. Roughly 60%(from what I remember) of US Lend Lease contribution went to Britain. And the 3rd is the US-USSR Lend Lease. However, we return to the 'conversation', that was 1942/1943. US Lend Lease aid was still small at that stage compared to the 30-40% percent mentioned above. And Convoy ships were still blown out of the water. Sooo, again, let's look at this . US-UK helped the soviets by patching up the holes, but, in hindisght, would not be enough for another 8 months at least and now, Roosevelt, whose nation barely faced the Germans, says if they cut the barely suficient aid for the next year, they would be somehow able to pull tens of thousands of troops, vehicles and military doctrines and training for the troops, as well as shipping them to Europe in less than a few months. And again, the americans barely faced the Germans. Germans, which with a joke of a force compared to the Eastern front, trashed the British Army in North Africa, a front which was won only because the Germans had to transport their supplies over the sea. Now. As A SOVIET OFFICIAL, you think of it:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!soo, those guys who had little battle experience and whose closest reliable source of info is another army trashed by the Germans in Battleaxe and Crusader and who only obtained victory due to logistical superiority while fighting a force much smaller and poorly equiped than what we face are going to attack the mainland Europe, with much more German troops, german fortifications, shorter german supply lines and supply lines that cannot actually be sunk. Hmm, they don't seem to have very high chances of success. THEY WANT THE ONLY THING HELPING US WIN THE WAR TO TRY THIS UNTHINKABLE PIECE OF CRAP? We are gambling a ton of silver for a promise of a ounce of gold. HELL NO. !!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And this is without the pre-war histeria, like, yeah, assume UK and US do actually manage to establish a foothold in Europe and scare the crap out of Hitler. What in the world assures us that Hitler won't be so scared that he would go for a sepparate peace with them and they would allow him to focus on us? I mean that's what they did in 1938 and look where we are now.
And last but not least, still related to the Second Front ideea: ITALY 1943 (I cannot emphasize that piece of text enough). US and UK did establish a second front in Europe. AND IT FAILED. US troops got bogged down in the terrain of Italy. Oh, and we have no clue if the Lend-Lease was actually reduced as per TIKs story claims. So, in hindsight, the whole ideea of 'we cut you off supply to launch a second front' is obviously a bullcrap.
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Also, who is this modern guy claiming Hitler was a 'reactionary'? You cannot just spout information like that in the public. Considering that killing somebody is not a very legal mean to deal with a situation, if the person you are fearing sees this video, it would be sufficient for him to feel threatened for your life to be in danger since he does not care about bringing 'legal' proof for it. Assuming your 'nuclear poison' (btw it's radioactive), I'm assuming you are talking about Putin, which is even more shocking. Therefore, in the spirit of historical debate, I would please ask you to state your sources, considering the stance of Putin in particular and Russia in general is quite the opposite.
If anything comes close to your claims from the declarations I have knowledge of, especially the 'reactionary' part, it actually means the opposite. They claim that Germany was not reacting to an anti-German sentiment, but rather to an increased pro-German one (allowing remilitarisation in 1932 through the League of Nations, cancelling Versailles in 1935, officially turning a blind eye to the intervention in Spain -which would have contradicted the now cancelled Versailles, Austria and Czechoslovakia (Where France denounced an alliance with USSR in favour of Germany). Oh, and attending the Olympics in Germany. As well as other 'close ties' between officials on both sides of the English channel and the Atlantic.
So, again, please state your sources
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Well, it depends a lot, A LOT on how you count. You could produce tanks, but what if you don't have steel for the tanks? Or oil for them? You could recruit soldiers, but what if you don't have food for them.
Yes, Lend Lease is highly disputed because it's such a complex matter. Volume wise, it only started to arrive in great numbers and frequency after mid-1943, when the Soviet production got back on track. But shipments before 1943 were arguably more critical as they served to plug in the gaps left by the devastation of Barbarossa. You simply cannot throw arround some statistics and reach a conclusion like this.
As for the Soviet industrial power, again a complex issue. And kinda where Lend Lease comes in. After Barbarossa Soviet war EQUIPMENT production moved to the Urals. This is how they kept up the productions of equipment. Industrial centers like Moskow or Stalingrad were also kept up in 1941 and this helped a bit. However, what could not be be moved and recovered was the raw resources they needed to build and field this equipment. They lost the metal and coal deposits in Donbass, they also lost some of the oil in Caucasus. Lend lease came to supply those allowing for the industry to keep working.
As for the 'traditional narrative', this is more of a personal take, but it's not the Soviet industrial potential which is downplayed, but the German one is overestimated. The Germans which 'started to prepare for war earlier than everyone else', could not match the Franco-British force in France in terms of equipment numbers, and their tanks were in many aspects inferior. The 'famed Kriegsmarine' was mostly a joke. The whole thing could barely match up with the French Navy, not even going to comment on chances of taking on a British fleet. Only the U boats were a thing. RAF and Luftwaffe had similar capabilities. Why is the German industry over glorified? Well, it might be to justify the traditional narrative of 'We had to appease Hitler' of the West to avoid disclosing the close ties between the two blocks.
As strictly speaking for USSR vs Germany, they both had something in common. They sacrificed civillian production for the war one. Here I am talking about things like cars, toys, bycicles, clothes etc. not necessarily breweries and/or restaurants. USSR had a huge industrial potential, which was geared for war. However they lacked in certain aspects when it comes to quality. Especially in the aeronautics sector. Germanys industrial potential only became serious after taking over Czechoslovakia. But they got a good lead in aeronautics and radio which allowed them to make full use of the element of surprise against its enemies.
A consequence of this disproportionality, the quality of Germans vs the potential of the Soviets is the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Germany feared that they could not defeat USSR in a head on war of attrition (At the time USSR just won a war against Japan, deemed a formidable foe) and USSR feared that the attrition needed to close the gap betweem the two nations would leave the country exposed to Western backed agression (like it happened in 1919)
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Saying that numerical superiority does not apply easily renders the whole 'hordes of soviets' useless anyway, because if the Germans could not take advantage of their superiority in numbers, why we would assume the soviets could. Or lets not say 'could not take advantage of', but rather 'it was meaningless' (for both Germans and Soviets).
The truth is in the middle. Soviets suffered massive casualities at the hands of the Blitzkrieg it's true, but the Blitzkrieg held on for so much because the Germans had numerical superiority. The opposite of this was the Battle of France, where pure Manouver warfare solved the problem by breaking enemy morale. If the Western commanders had not been such big freaking idiots (we complain about USSR because it's fashionable, but the Western armies, buah, they were far worse. I mean, in 1939, the French Armed Forces, all branches, were superior to the Soviets. Yet the Germans won, again, by breaking the morale. If Dunkirk was turned into a bridgehead instead of evacuation point and the French would have held on for their colonial armies to arrive from North Africa, it would now be the Germans that were caught between a rock and a hard place. In Barbarossa, the Morale did not break and many divisions held firm. It was because of the numerical superiority that the Germans afforded to leave un-mechanised divisions deal with resistance points and guard the flanks while the mechanised divisions were moving forward, preventing the enemy from forming up. At best I would say numerical superiority is not 'easily quantifiable', aka it's hard to measure it, not that 'it's not easily applied'
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The Colonel Well, there is something called propaganda and deception. Like the passage TIK quotes regarding 'a socialist resistance' with Christians, Social Democrats etc. etc. Perhaps those things were not even close to the size supposed soviet propaganda made it look like, if they existed at all. However, when you hear that: 'Hey there is a dude in our Germany against the nazis, and he's not necessarily communist. Hey there is another dude in there, and he's making friends with his enemies', there is this psychological mechanism that triggers which tells you 'this might not be a bad ideea'
On the other hand, you can have the German side. I mean the Germans were bluffing. They could see that by 1943 their 'Bliztkrieg' was not even a Thunder, more like a noisy wind. Considering they were masters of propaganda (and that Hitler, or some of his subordinates, did actually try to initiate talks between Germany and Britain) those calls for negotiations might have served only to create tensions in the Allied side and make any of the sides back down
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Regarding the Kotluban offensive numbers. I suspect it mgiht be a combination of both explanations: Maybe Isaev is correct in stating the numbers for a period of 20 days and reaching 88,000. I would say recoveries from injuries combined with the reinforcements would bring the fighting capability of Jukovs army back to the strength for the 2nd Kotluban. Also, what you say about 1st Guards army seems off looking at Isaevs table. 1st Guards might have taken the brunt individually speaking, but the other 2 armies are clearly taking more losses combined. Their total losses are around 1.4-1.5 times higher (35k vs 52k) By following this trend, the losses for the final period (15/18-30 September) would be well over 111,000 (and that's after continously decreasing the multiplier), and I don't really see a reason why it wouldn't follow the trend since all the armies struck almost at the same time and the Germans stood their ground with little positional redeployment (to say that the germans let those poor souls have a better day). So either is correct about the dates and the numbers or he's not correct at all.
Without primary sources at hand, it's hard to make sense of any of this data. Funny enough, this reminds me of one of your Q&As when you were asked if you consider yourself a proper historian. Well, in my opinion, we've just set you to become one, since (again, personal opinion) this is what being a historian is about. Not copying something which another guy said after hearing some information from anothe dude, but yourself spending days or months over tables and records, compiling them, analysing them separately, making charts, new tables and plotting the data to see which is closer to reality.
As for what to do with the video, I'm not sure what to tell you. On one side, the safety analyst and human side of me would tell you not to bother too much because you'll burn yourself out. On the other hand, the data analyst, history fan part wants you to redo the video. I suppose it boils down to what you want to achieve with this series. If you want entertainment for others, 'the greatest book is the one you already know the contents of ' so fo many it would not make a difference, some will spot the issue and look at the comments, others won't and not be bothered. On the other hand, if you aim for a bit of accuracy and disproving the myths, the Soviets, and unfairly the Russians, are getting s*** on constantly due to missinformation (and Cold War logic) about WW2 and the Western Front and leaving the information as it is will only help cement those myths even further. The best course of action in this sense mgiht be simply editing the video and cutting out the part mentioning the numbers and replacing it with a black screen directing people to this video (or to the description and this video). Or inserting the black screen after or before the numbers.
Talking about WW2, funny enough, it's different from us here in Romania as well. For a bit of context, in Romania, the most popular 'common education' (aka no university or tradeschools or stuff like that) course is 12 years, split into 4 'cycles' (1-4,5-8,9-12). First class of history starts in the 4th year, history of Romania, starting from Ancient times and ending when the weeks of the year run out. 5th year, back at ancient times, but now focused on world history. 6th year, God knows what they wanted with that split, but let's say Middle Ages, Renaissance, pre-Industrial, european civilisations, moslty. 7th year, Industrial revolution and later, until the weeks run out, again. 8th year is again history of Romania. Highschool (yrs 9-12) is a repetition of the former. Funny thing, in the 8th year, we had 2 classes per week. Despite that, only in the 11th year did we spend more than 5 classes (hours) on history after 1900s (WW1 to 2000s). And I suspect those 5 hours were only because of our teacher, I suspect. She was one of the only 2 proper historians I've got to meet personally.
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In Romania, the history of our country, no matter how often we would reach it, seemed to have end at WW2. For context: in Romania, we have 3 school cycles. Grades 1-4, 5-8, 9-12. Each of them, history of the world and Romania is re-taken. Like we studied it once in 4th Grade. For 3 years, history of the world in 5-7, then History of Romania again, and then 3 years of world history and then Romania again. During this time, only in 11th Grade for one hour or two did we get to talk about Romania in WW2 and afterwards. But because it was world history year, it was only comparison with other events around the world. And that was the last time we actually spoke about WW2 and afterwards in our history classes. We never reached WW2 before, nor after. And its 2010's
Russian side is told. It's been told for years by Russia. But nobody listens to them.
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Not sure if you are sarcastic or a person of questionable intelligence.
Yesterdays narrative, most likely like the one for tomorrow, judging by the trends of US and EU, was based on Nazi Propaganda. The big war has always been between capitalist west and socialist USSR (and company). France and England tried to deliver checkmate by supporting Hitler (check for the partition of Czechoslovakia, Austria and so on) The only reason they went to war with Germany over Poland was because Poland was a strong anti-soviet state.
When the war ended, big surprise, it turned out that the Soviets weren't the laughing stock that they believed at the begining of the war. They surpassed the west in Tank design (IS-2 and IS-3s were a sensation at the Berlin victory parade), they captured german technology and US and Britain supplied them with some of their own. Basically, they were on paar with the West. And now had half of Europe under them, not just a small isolated nation. So of course, even before the war ended, people like Patton and Churchill wanted to quickly deal with the Germans and then start a war with the Soviets as long as US still had an ace up their sleeve, the atomic bomb. And after the war ended, there came the Cold War. Who was the best to teach the Western minds how the Soviets acted? Well, the guys who fought the soviets, of course, coincidentally, they had them in quite a nice supply in the form of nazi generals who surrendered to them. And that's how nazi propaganda reached Western thought
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And you think wars go like that? They did that in Fall Blau, and what was the result? They did nothing. The ideea of a three proned attack was to anihilate as much of the soviet forces as possible. Due to the scale of the front and the size of the soviet army, they could not pull something like France, where they encircled the main French and British army and forced an easy capitulation by a useless oponent. If they would have concentrated on a single front, yes, the initial gains might have been greater, but this means dozens of soviet divisions would have been left at ease, able to relocate however they wanted. Let's assume the Axis followed your plans and hugged the Black Sea. This means that Dozens of soviet divisions from the Central and Northern parts of the Eastern Front could strike into the flank of the advancing Axis, the germans risking being trapped into their own Dunkirk. This was the main ideea behind the three proned attack.
Another thing, doubling the number of units at a front does not mean that you can advance with all of them. You are still limited by logistics, aka railway tracks, roads etc. If you want to use the full potential, you have to build your own supply lines, which is not an easy feat because the army advances faster than you can build.
And finally, Barbarossa's demise might have been the same reason why it had so much success. The soviets were anticipating a war with Germany, correctly guessing Hitlers intent, the grain fields in Ukraine and the oil in Caucasus. So they concentrated quite a lot of their forces into the Southern Front. However, Halde sensed the opportunity for a faster victory by doing the same thing like in France, aka go for the Wolfs lair and strike for Moskow. This meant that instead of the main Soviet force fighting the main Axis force, the main Axis force went towards Moskow and Leningrad. Now the bulk of the Axis forces faced a weaker enemy (although it seems the crews were better trained here). And this is supported by how the war unfolded, the Army Group North and Center had the greatest success, meanwhile in the South many objectives were not even close.
Lastly, we again have to look at logistics. Having the main german force go along the Black Sea meant that the logistical lines had to either pass through Romania or go from Poland to southern Ukraine and again be vulnerable to Soviet counter attacks. Not to mention, the Black Sea Fleet of the Soviet Navy could have intervened.
As for how things got so bad for the Soviets, there are three main reason that are too often overlooked.
1. A German attack in 1941 made almost no sense in 1941, especially in June 1941. Germany was still fighting a war against Great Britain. And it just launched an operation in Greece. Furthermore, USSR and Sweden were both main suppliers of strategic resources (iron and oil) for the German War Machine. Germany invaded two countries (Norway and Denmark) in one high risk operation just to secure the supply of iron from Sweden, so why would it attack a vital supplier of oil? The Ribbentrop-Molotov anti-agression pact and further deals secured Soviet Union's position as a necessity for Germany, so an immediate war made no sense in the context. The joke of Battle of France, the disaster in Greece and inaction from the British to engage mainland Germany along with other developments I'll discuss further made all those reasons useless.
2. Germany got unexpected allies. Bulgaria was a fascist state (well, close to one if not one at least), but it had no intention of war and was in good relations with USSR. Bulgaria had actually not actively participated in the war against USSR, but served as a supply route and naval base for the Germans. Furthermore, USSR was in good relations with Italy as well. Hungary was a bit of a mix, but they were considered as insignifiant. However, the biggest blow to Soviet plans was perhaps the joining of Finland and Romania along the Axis. This made almost no sense to them. In the memoirs of the Romanian embassy staff in USSR it is shown that our ambassador was the second most surprised person of the declaration of war, being topped only by Molotov. Not only Romania and Finland were countries too small to face the USSR, but they had reasons to hate the Germans as well. Yes, they had animosities with the soviets from 1939, but there is a lesser known side of history. Germans actually helped the Soviets in the Winter War. And with Romania, everyone knows the 'secret protocol' of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact allowing to annex the territories known as Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina (now Republic of Moldova and part of Western Ukraine) <I am not going to discuss the Soviet demands on Romania here, but they were not 'totally' unjustified>. Yet the Germans gave the way for this. BUT. And this is a big round but. No one seems to remember the more open and official Treaty of Vienna from 1940. With this, parts of Transylvania were given to Hungary (which secured the later's participation in the war). Economically speaking, this was a bigger blow then the loss of Bessarabia. Not only that, but following the annexation, the hungarians began butchering the romanian population there. And if that was not enough, later the same year <1940> Germany again pressed Romania to give up territories obtained after the Balkan wars to Bulgaria. So for the Soviets, Romania joining the Axis was illogical. 'I know we had problems, but why on Earth would you ally with a guy who did much worse to you and another guy [Hungary] that also did worse to you?! Couldn't you just stay neutral?' Finalnd joining the war meant that Soviet Forces had to be diverted to defend north of Leningrad which just a few months later proved to be crucial as there were no supply routes to the city. As for Romania joining the war, that was even worse. It meant that the Germans had a whole new logistic network to supply their Army Group souths. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers joined the Axis. A capable airforce (better than the Italian) joined the fight. Germans now had access to Black Sea ports and airfields and the length of the initial front almost doubled.
3. Given the fake sense of security the Soviets were not expecting a war in the West, so they began dismantling and reorganising their defensive lines and depots there. They were however expecting a war with Japan (they just fought an inconclusive one in 1939, part of a decade-long border conflict). So less attention was given to the Western Soviet Front compared to the Far East one.
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@Ludvigvanamadeus Is the head of state a monarch ? If no, it's a republic. Back to basics. No. It's not a republic because it could be a plutocracy.
'Is the government elected in free elections by the citizens? If yes, then it's a democracy. ' Again, there were elections in the times of Henric the VIII and Charles the I. Furthermore, definition 'A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, often a state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a means by which organizational policies are enforced, as well as a mechanism for determining policy'
To quote you: "and words are defined by what people mean when they use them.". So by this definition, the King is also part of the gouvernment. You do not elect a king (well, unless you are in medieval Eastern Europe), so those countries are not democracies by your own words. :)
I am not arguing that nations like UK or Spain don't follow democratic principles, but per definition of democracy, they are not democracies because you do not chose the head of state. Period.
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@simplicius11 You are delusional, my friend.
'they had with industrialization, tank and aircraft production. They were an agrarian country a decade before' Yeah, and when the Germans invaded they found KVs and T-34s, tanks that they thought the Soviets were incapable of producing. And not only they found those tanks, but the Soviets realised those tanks would not be enough and they already started modernisation projects for them, like the ZiS-7 107mm gun supposed to be mounted on KVs and T-34 was already set for an upgrade. And, at the time the Germans invaded, the Soviets only had a handful of those tanks, spread throughout more than 20million square km of Soviet land. Newer aircraft were set to be produced, like IL-2s and so on. The guy is correct. Hitler could not wait. 1941 was the latest he could invade as 1941 was set as the end of the modernisation program for the Soviet military and the year when a few large capital warships were supposed to be finished. Withot an invasion the Germans would have problems controlling the Baltic and Black Sea.
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You are too biased for ME262. Reading through the whole comment, I doubt you even know what you are talking about.
First of all, ME262. Aside from the numbers, ME262 was initially a dreaded airplane by high command and testers and engineers alike. Let's take it point by point:
Biggest issue: FUEL and parts. Jet engines burn a whole different type of fuel compared to piston engines and they also burn A LOT MORE of it. So, not only would the already depleted fuel reserves of the Luftwaffe deplete even faster, they would have had to increase the production of a whole new fuel type, which means diverting resources to new infrastructure. And that's only for the bloody fuel. Now, the turbo-jet engines. My God. Those were the most dreaded part of the plane. They were too unreliable. And not only they were unreliable, aka would often fail, they were a pain to maintain. You could not even reach half the number of flight hours the already proven BF109s could. So, if you hadn't lost the engines while flying and crashed your plane, you would have had to swap it for another one while it sits in repair shops, whereas a BF109 could mostly be flown multiple times. This is the first part of the argument: ME262 was not introduced because the Germans could not have fielded them enough as they were putting a bigger burden on their industrial-logistical chain than what they already had.
The Allied fighters were also not useless in their fights.
Finally, and this goes into the 'what if' scenario of earlier introduction. As mentioned before, the Allies and Axis had overall better performing planes, which is why the aircraft was introduced so late, as a desperate measure. However, it was not the only jetplane flying in the war. And earlier introduction would have resulted in more developments of the US/British jet-fighters (which were negliged because the fighters already available were doing a stellar job without putting a burden on the production and logistical chains) and would have soon come up with an answer for the ME262.
Conclusion: The record of the ME262 is so great only because it came so late in the war, when it was a total surprise to the Allies. Had it been introduced earlier it would only have served to squander Germanys resources faster and making the Allied forces much better.
As for Hitler's madness stuff... not really. Building a fighter is much harder than a bomber. He wanted a bomber because Germany lacked a strategic bomber (or at least something which could be used to target high value targets-like a ship) which would also be capable of evading enemy fighter screens.
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How typically British to blame the anti-drug movements of marxists and nazis and others on their distorted views on races and human condition and simply ignore the fact that those guys might have gotten their ideeas about drugs by seeing what they were doing to the Chinese in the 19th century, courtesy of the great British traders (and guns. And warships) Also, a few other nitpicks I would like to note.
When talking about France. Not sure how many proper arguments are made that say the Germans rushed to the English Chanel only because they were on drugs. I believe the argument was made that drugs allowed them to cut short on rotations, meaning a squad, platoon, unit etc. could fight for longer until reinforcements arrived to relieve it. A similar thing for pilots. And for sleeping at Stalingrad. Because the fighting was taking place up to 12 am it doesn't mean everyone was awake till 12 am. Some would go to sleep earlier, some later. Again, troop rotation.
But overall an interesting video.
Edit: Forgot another nitpick.
We are omnivores. Period. This means we can survive on eating both vegetals and meat/animals. I am not so sure about your ideea of we are more towards the carnivorous side. Meat became a comodity only recently. And only for those in temperate climate. For those in arid climates or very humid ones, meat is not actually such a big part. Most of the times, meat was associated with many other vegetables, forming stews or soups to enrich its nutritive value.
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As someone from Eastern Europe, let me give my answer to this question and opinion on this video: TIK made this video like his usual politics/economics ones. He seemed very well documented and presented facts, until he goes bonkers and completely ignores principles like judging the greater picture, objectivity or even trying to take a look at the greater picture, just cherry picking half-truths that support the narrative.
Soo, let's get to the actual point of this comment: Austro-Hungary.
TL:DR 1. TIK got only a small fraction of the points he made right. Those would be the importance of the economic collapse and foreign powers had something to do with how Hungary looked in 1920 and 1930s; and that at some point there were some revolutions. 2. Any gouvernment was doomed in that situation (not just the socialist one). 3. Nationalism and nationalistic revolutions: Nationalism was an ideology originating in the 18th and 19th centuries and powered by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, which considered that people who shared enough common traits (language, culture) to understand each other and live together, shoud be able to gouvern themselves in a sovereign nation. 19th Century brought many nationalistic revolutions in Central Europe. Many were quelled by the collaborative use of force from the main Empires there, including the 1848 one, since they were afraid that the success of any such revolution would embolden others in their territory. 4. The success of spliting Austro-Hungary in nationalistic states was not due to the direct policy of the Great Powers, but the military intervention of Romania which crushed the last major effort of Hungary to maintain the borders. 5. A quick wikipedia seach, if not everything else, would have saved TIK the embarassment of not knowing essential things about the Russian Civil War. Conclusion: The overall absurdity of the war (slavs were fighting slavs, romainians were supposed to fight romanians, people they could understand what they say or had similar or the same customs, while serving under people who wouldn't understand them and even persecute them for beign who they were) and the economic collapse of WW1 fueled the already torrid flame of nationalist revolutionaire sentiment which existed in Centra Europe for almost a century now. The crushing of the communist forces by the Romanian army in 1919 and Trianon put a nail in the coffin of Austro Hungary. Thus, nationalism was the key in the fall of this nation, while foreign pressure (maintained by the simple existance of independent nations, all stronger than either Austria or Hungary, which got those territories) sealed the fate of this empire.
What did TIK get right? The economic collapse. Like 95% of it. That and the fact that there were some revolutions in 1848 (not even those were covered like they should) . And that's pretty much it. Now, let's dwell in what was actually going on. Start with the 5% from the economic collapse. It wasn't just because socialist came into power. It was because socialist came into power in a state ruined by war. A state at total war (aka not just some conflict in the colonies) is bound to have its economy in shambles. Especially if its blockaded. A socialist gouvernment in this situation has two choices: A. send resources in the military, hoping to end the conflict before the economy gets so bad that people rebel against a gouvernment which is bad at handling economics or B. risk defunding the military, allowing foreign powers to invade at ease, ruin the economy further by seizing resources, causing the peope to rebel against a gouvernment which is incompetent at handling military affairs. Basically, unless a miracle happens, your gouvernment is doomed. What would a capitalist gouvernment do? Well, it would create a hole in space-time reality itself as that, according to capitalists is impossible. Gouvernment means regulations and taxes. Capitalism is at least against regulations. What would a 'towards capitalism gouvernment do'? Well, it would pretty much end up in situation A or B of socialist gouvernment. Or perhaps both. First the free market people won't send resources to the front, allowing the enemies to gain ground and then, when they realise they actually need a central military to stand a chance, will try to pay taxes to fund the military. Soo, that's pretty much the economic collapse: Austro-Hungary bit much more than it could chew.
Now what? Hmm, let's go back in time. 1848 and nationalism . TIK got like 10% of the stuff right: mainly that there were revolution and that the Russian military did something in Austria. What did it do? We'll see. Now, what's with this 'nationalism' ideea? Well, it kinda came around the time of Napoleon, when people started to realise administrating massive lands with various ethnicities was quite problematic. It was fine for hundreds of feudal years, where you could just go to a peasant and gesture him to put his taxes in your pocket. But ,as industrialisation and cities grew, standing armies started to form and roads became were once again important, speaking the same language and having the same goal in the territory of one state became quite necessary things. Of course, the leading ethnicity in a multinational state would try and impose their administration in controlled lands and thus, their language. Of course, those locals who could speak a foreign language (like 1 in a full moon if you count the farm peasants towards the outskirs, more than 1 if you are selective with your data set) would have an advantage in solving matters involving the local administration. This would obviously make the locals believe they were opressed and thinking they would do better without a foreign power. This basically brought up nationalism: the ideea that people with similar languages and cultures should live and gouvernm by themselves in their own territory. Those feelings were powered up by the ideeas of Republicanism (from the French Revolution and US Independence), bringing rights to the masses, including the right to participate in public affairs (whereas previously only noble aka servants of the empires could) Now before we move to 1848 proper, lets look at Greece. The British and the Russians (and occasionally the French) had a bit of a problem with the Ottomans for some time at the start of the 19th century. Britain viewed them as a threat to their territories in India while Russians pretty much despised them. The Ottomans in their turn, tried to wipe out the indigenous elements in the Balkans (serbs, bulgarians and Greeks). Unfortunetly, for them, it turns out those pesky greeks had some talents for making money and administration, so they had to stay, but tamed. Greeks were orthodox, like Serbs, like Bulgarians, like Romanians and, most importantly, like the Russians. Soo, Russia thought about supporting their movement of independence from the Ottomans. Britain, always scheming. saw an oportunity in this to cause big damage with minimal losses to diplomacy and supported them as well. However, simultaneously, shaken from the revolutionary feelings which might have been triggered by Napoleon who trashed the whole Europe with his promises of independent nations and human rights and whatever, big empires like Russia, Austro-Hungary and the Ottomans agreed to not support revolutions inside others territory (So, if, let's say, Serbia rebelled, Russia would not march its army into Turkey, nor would it march wagons of guns and ammo). With Greece, this had the unfortunate effect that in 1821 Russia tried to secretly support a rebellion across all the Orthodox nations in the Ottoman Empire , lead by a secretive society known as Etheria. However, the plot was more or less found and the rebels got decimated before Russia could do a thing. But, this orthodox uprising was the first major nationalist wave in central Europe.
Finally 1848. Huge nationalis revolution wave in Central Europe following a new war between Turkey and Russia and some minor agreements of administrative nature. Not sure what happened all over Central Europe, but in Romania, we had 3 separate movements, one stronger than the other: Moldova, Transilvania (first along with Hungarians agaisnt the Austrians then alone against both of them) and finally in Walachia. Moldova was dealt with easily by the local overlords. However, in Transylvania and especially Walachia things were looking quite good. PLOT-TWIST. Remember what I said about an alliance between the major players in Central Europe and revolutions? Well, Turkey and Austria asked Russia to intervene. Russian troops finally intervened in Walachia and then in Austria, crushing those revolutions. The end. It was a nationalistic wave of great proportions which did not fell apart from any ideological reasons. Unlike what TIK said, the results of this chain of events were determined, like in 1918, by external intervention, only this time, it was against the nationalist and for the empires.
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What else TIK get wrong? Well, instead of saying everything, let's focus a bit on the situation in 1914-1919 in Central Europe. People wanted national states. National states meaning people were speaking the same language at the very least. That's how the partition of austro-hungary would later go on. People realised individually they were too weak, so they grouped together with the ones which could understand them. Slovaks and Czechs are pretty much one branch of the Western Slavs, speaking the same language. Croats and Serbs speak similar languages, they are differentiated by religion, both being slavs, as well as the bosnians. And Romania had Romanians in Transylvania. Of course those would group together, especially the Southern Slavs since they already had Serbia as an independent nations and Transylvania with Romania, for the same reason. Now that we understand what ethnic groups were pushing for separation to join other nations, did anybody try to stop them? The answer is obviously yes. Here TIK has a ray of light, which he than casts into darkness, perhaps cause it messes up his narrative? Yes, je's right, Western powers did not want multinational states, but they were still kinda busy with Germany (and some other stuff we'll speak about a bit later). Their role in Austro-Hungarian partition comes later on What did actually happen was this: there was a communist (aka marxist-leninist) revolution in Hungary, like in Russia and Bavaria. Enter Bela Kun. He tried to rally the communist and socialists in all former Austro-Hungarian territories and maintain as much of his forces as he could. In order to sustain his nation, he knew he needed Transylvania and it's mountains and hills rich in natural resources (iron, coal, gas) which also had a large hungarian population. PLOT TWIST. The now revigorated Romanian army had something to say and prevented Bela from linking up with the Hungarians in Transylvania, occupying Budapesta later on in 1919. With the secondary capital and the last relevant political power center in foreign hands, basically there was no way Austro-Hungary could mobilise a force to quell the rebellions and regain the taken lands before Romania could do anything. I pointed this out in an older video where TIK comments on how Hungary became fascist (he gets most of those things wrong and severly derails the discussion there as well) and since this mistake is made again, I suppose it shows how much attention is paid to comments contradicting his views. In 1919, near Versailles, a similar treaty was signed at Trianon, cementing the status quo in Hungary. Will talk about the actual role of those great powers a bit later on, since this turns into a massive wall of text and I still have one other point about the video.
Last, but not least: 18:30. Really? Are you kiddin me? He gave 4 examples... and they are all wrong. Spain and France were pretty much national states (all the people could understand each other in the same language), so why would you call for their dismemberment. However, that's not the best part. The best part are the other 2 examples, he, above all, should've known to never have mentioned. BRITAIN?! Have you heard about the Independence of Ireland? Promted by the Irish Famine? Oh, and that's the one which succeeded. There were others in the Middle East as well, but Britain wiped them out from the face of the Earth. He should have knowkn cause: 1. Britain at the height of it's power. 2. As far as I remember HE'S BRITISH. And, ok, ok, Ireland just happened to be. Nobody called for it. But then, double down on stupidity: RUSSIA. RUSSIA?! RUSIA?!?! Are you kiddin me? Britain gave Poland tanks and troops. Romania took Bucovina and Bessarabia. US established concentration camps in Arkhangelsk, fought even in Siberia along with US and France. Japan invaded Far East. Czechoslovakian Legion,. Germany helps Finland get independence in 1917. GEORGIA, ARMENIA WANTED INDEPENDENCE. SOME UKRAINIANS WANTED INDEPENDENCE. EVERYONE IN EUROPE AND BEYOND WANTED RUSSIA CARVED UP INTO AS MANY PIECES AS POSSIBLE. And of course no one cared about US being split up when you have only 3 categories of people there: 1. Just annexed, 2. Americans or immigrants just too happy to be called americans 3. Dead by great tools of spreading freedom and democracy: smallpox and machineguns.
Now about the role of the major powers? Well, after Trianon, they tried to force the central european nations to cooperate as a meatshield in case USSR tried to restart its plans of bringing a World Revolution. So they tried to appease everyone by constantly redrawing the borders of those nations.
Oh, fun fact for those that made it this far. The reason why you have many national socialists revolutionaires around (like the Mensheviks in Russia or the National socialists in Czechoslovakia) is due to a 19th century mixture between nationalism revolutionary trend and socialism. Initially, every minority wanted a nationalist revolution, states where everyone would understand each other. This nationalism was also usually associated with a form of republicanism since monarchy was the symbol of Empires, while the last major revolutions (England, US, France) all resulted in Republics. The reason why socialism was mixed in was that all those revolutions mentioned resulted in the upper classes gaining even more power, while the lower ones (which needed the revolutions more due to linguistic barriers) gained almost nothing in terms of political powers. Also, Britain and France would return to being empires (US was still irrelevant as a culture model). Soo, a lax socio-economic enviroment was not seen as a good ideea.
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@abc68130 There is a funny unknown story about US and taxes. The main reason for US starting their independence war was the heavy taxes imposed by the British. However, by the time the war was won, the new state was in such a bad shape and lacked so much money that the newly imposed taxes surpassed the British ones.
As for your statement: 'any country that isn't socialist'? That depends entirely on your perspective and what you consider 'socialist'. You know, it's like that old joke: we all think of ourselves as healthy, until we go see a doctor or (especially) a psychologist.
Now, strictly speaking, by using TIKnomics, everything is socialist. Like every entity which is larger than 1 human individual. That's because humans, like many other animals, have developed the ability to split themselves in functional classes based on their ability: some would make decisions, some would do manual labor, other would do intelectual work etc. [ And, obviously, some would do their best to parasyte on the others :) ] You could see this in the simplest forms of group porjects among students in schools. There is one that's always the leader, authoritarian or not, he's the one managing ideeas (even if not his own). Now, this is strikingly resemblign the 'social classes' we are used to speak about when we talk about states. However, this model (workers, intelectuals, rulers, soldiers etc) can, as mentioned above, be applied on everything, with slight variations. A US Navy carrier? You got the commanders as the ruling class, you got the maintainance workers (working), and you got the pilots and weapons staff. And, you could argue that medics constitute the intelectual class. A school? Yes! (Principal is ruling class, teachers are working class and perhaps intelectual class etc.) Even in a multi-billion dollar company you have the same structure: CEO and shareholders are the rulers, workers are workers, intelectuals are the guys doing R&D and marketting. Well, obviously the military class is missing because that is outsourced to the state level: army, police, special forces etc. So, you could have the perfect TIKnomics world, where you only got capitalism (never gonna happen), but, in the end, what you get are plenty socialist-like entities, because every entity of more than 1 individual is socialist. That's why people represent political orientations of states on a 2D spectrum.
Now, about the socialist vs capitalist thing. Many people, including TIK, try to portray them as total opposites. However, they are in fact two models of solutions to the same problem: wealth hoarding. This is what my high-school teacher used to describe as 'the Spanish castle syndrome'. Basically, the wealthy get so rich that they have more money than they can spend so they spend it on dumb shit that has no signifiant impact on the large-scale economy, like castles. Or, if you want to talk in modern terms: pornstar parties, drugs, ostentative homes. (well, basically the same thing now that I think of it :) ) The overall population has little access to this wealth and they are forced to accept the situation in order not to die, thus they have little chance to produce wealth for themselves, and, if they do, the lord takes it for himself to boost up its wealth. Here's why capitalism and socialism showed up. Capitalism proposed a system of free-market where the wealth hoarders would redistribute their wealth to others for the potential gain of even more wealth. (note, wealth is a relative term, not convertible into hard currency. It could mean money, true, but also estates, works of art, food security ect. The value of that is more sentimental and personal) The problem is that capitalism does not directly solve 'the spanish castle syndrome'. (As shown by todays situation with the 1%) And it cannot solve it because it (the system) depends on the wishes of the wealth hoarders. You also have a big pile of social problems depending on the mutation of capitalism that you have. For example: lack of workers' rights, no consumer protection (that's why TIK went full moronic praising the black market) etc. Socialism, on the other hand, proposed a forced redistribution of wealth based on the current needs of the society and keeping the structure of the social classes based upon functional principles (intelectuals, rulers, workers, soldiers etc.) instead of economic ones (poor, mid-class, rich). The main, and most known, mutations of socialism from it's 18th century beginings, are the marxism, which aknwoledges that economy and social needs are interlocked and indivisible (in the end, you start a business to fulfill the need of others) and, that for socialism to succeed, there is a need for a world-wide spread, otherwise the inequality generated by mutations of capitalism would always yield individuals that have a much bigger wealth compared even to the wealthiest in socialism, even if the society is itself doing worse. The next mutation came during the Russian Civil War, where (mostly out of necessity), farmers were included in the working class. [Note, I mention this because it's the first correlation between socialism and farmers. There are even earlier instances where farmers got right, like Romania in 1860s, but most of those led to other big problems] And by farmers I mean landworkers, not land-owners. This brought a great change, as now farmers gained access to education and medical system. They got healthier and could work the land better. They gained access to education, so now they could operate machines, leading to the mechanisation of the agriculture. Those were all economic benefits. On the social side, it meant that farmers were no longer locked by their ancestry. A child of a farmer could go on and become a painter or an engineer without fearing for the fate of its familly deprived of a working pair of hands. Now, those are the most important mutations in socialist ideology, but there are many variations of course. Capitalism as well suffered a lot of changes, to the point that what we have today is nowhere near the original capitalism ideology.
Well, the wall of text is over. I wonder who's gonna end up down here and be like: 'Lol, didn't even read'.
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Errm, wut are you talking about?
Ok, let's take things easy. Soviet re-education camps were meant for political prisoners and they were used outside of the war.
With prisoners of war, there would be little such things as it would have been impossible to do that logistically. Prisoners of War were sent to Siberia in labour camps. But they had nothing to do with 're-education'.
As for old Gunta, old man's tales should always be taken with a pinch of salt. First of all, he is a german, and good ol TIK channel has a few videos where he rips through german accounts of the war, especially Meinstein. Now for the more particular case, 'machined down thousands of unarmed men' charging at him seems pretty made up. I mean the best tank ace of WW2, cannot say he killed a thousand people, let alone thousands of them. And all unarmed. Of course, being a german those few thousand men could have been mostly civilians or PoWs getting executed. Or it could have been a false memory, a story you heard so many times, over and over again, that you start to believe it's true. The best example I could give is 'If Germany and Napoleon hadn't attacked Russia in Winter...' I heard this countless times. And this is literally, I keep hearing this for years and I lost count of it.
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Opinion on the evacuation: It's a nightmare to even think about it. This might sound rash as hell, but when you consider evacuating hundreds of thousands you have to ask yourself: 'okay, now what?'
Let's just think about the logistics of such thing. You allow evacuation? Alright. How do you move those people? Don't you need boats and trains? Wait, you don't have unlimited trains or boats! Nor do you have unlimited communication lines like roads and railways! And the number of trains are already used for something else, like transporting troops and materials. If you do not send troops and material to the front lines, the enemy would overcome your position and reach the civillian population even faster. You cannot work extra shifts due to fuel shortages and maintainance problems and also you run into the same problem of limited communication lines. Then is the problem of the harvest that you've mentioned. So...? Ok, let's say that you put the population before the harvest. Now what? You have even more mouths to feed with far less food. That is why they prioritised shifting the harvest first, so others could survive. And if you move the population, where are you going to move them? Do you have enough food, water and shelter where you move them?
Furthermore, as someone has already pointed out, an evacuation was already going on THROUGH Stalingrad, that being the people and equipment going from the Western side towards the safer East. Sooo... the communication lines were already clogged.This makes the evacuation of the city itself an unimaginable thought from a logistical point of view. It's something like the 'evacuation of Courtland' which you've debated in that series. Even if an evacuation was already taking place there, the circumstances made it look like it was not.
And that was not all. One has to think that the civillian population was also useful in the city, building destroyed communication lines, repairing vehicles, serving and preparing food, building defensive positions etc. etc.
May God have mercy on our souls that we'll never have to endure what those people had to live through
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Those that argue against Germany winning WW2 are the type of people who look at statistics: production, number of soldiers, tanks etc. Those who argue for Germany are the ones looking at history. If you look at statistics, there was no way for Germany to even conquer Norway. I mean, the whole Home Fleet basically dwarfed all the German navy, which was all poured into this operation. And the British still had at least one more fleet into the Atlantic area, so sacrificing all their ships in the Home Fleet to obliterate the German navy would have still left them on top. Mind you, Norway is 1940, so no Bismark or Tirpitz, so even losing the whole Home Fleet is rather questionable. But, guess what. The Home Fleet was nowhere to be seen. Their most famous action in the Norwegian campaign after Warspite smashing a few lone destroyers at Narvik was losing an aircraft carrier to freaking battleships. The Battle of France? The greatest German victory? Statistically that would have been impossible. France had the best land army in the world. They had better artillery than the Germans. More and better tanks (they even had operational heavy B1s and even superheavies -C1s-). I believe they even outnumbered the germans in terms of soldiers. And they had the support of the British and, theoretically, the Dutch and Belgians. But guess what. The whole fiasco was done with in less than a month. Those are just a few examples of instances where the German operations should have ended on nothing else but their troops massacred in a senseless struggle. But they ended up in brilliant victories. Sooo, tell that to those 'germany had no chance of winning WW2'.
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Well, Stalins policies were based on an Hitlerofile atteditude from the British, American and French parts. Relationships between communists and fascists declined after Hitler won in Germany in 1933 and Reached an alltime low during the Spanish Civil war when the Western nations refused to support an elected socialist gouvernment in favour of fascists supported by Hitler. This Civil War was a de-facto proxy-war between USSR and Nazi Germany. The last bit of thrust in the West was shattered when UK and France aknowledged the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia without even lifting a finger, despite having a defensive treaty signed with it( USSR WAS ALSO PART OF THE TREATY ON CONDITION FRANCE WOULD HELP FIRST). Basically, Stalin said knew that he had a war coming against him from Germany and the West would be rather an enemy than an ally. Thus, he tried to delay the war as much as possible, striking a deal with Hitler and gaining crucial objectives advantages. Had the defensive operations been completed, the war would have never reached Ukraine, Belarus or Russia. They would fight the enemy in Poland, with the main defensive line being the Stalin line, while the Prut river and the Carpathians would prove a natural barrier if Germany would opt to go through Romania . However, this was not to be the case. As France and England were still in the game in 1940, the decision was taken to set up a new main defensive line at the border with Germany. However, unlike Stalin line, this was just begining to be built and lacked proper equipment. It also placed soviet divisions well inside German Artillery and Aviation range. Furthermore, because the whole army entered retraining, there were no concentrated reserves to man the Stalin line as 2nd defensive position
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@fazole No, you do not need to get Both sides of the Volga. That would actually be idiotic from a strategic point of view. The goal of the Axis was to protect the flank of Army group A?( Was A or B going for the oil-fields, I have a massive brain block, anyway, you get my point, they had to defend the flank of the push) and they had to cut off the transport of supplies on Volga and neighbouring railways (which could be done with artillery strikes). You do not need to cross the Volga for that. It would actually be counter-productive to do that. Even if you find a break in the enemy defensive positions, you would need to build a bridge which would come under fire from enemy artillery and aviation and most of your guys would drown if they are being forced back. Also, for the modern US army, that ratio is specific for their military needs. They have operations all across the world, but in limited scale, not full wars. That means the support branch does hard work for some time and then they sit on their asses. Ancient rome had 1:1 (soldier vs support and auxiliary)or worse ratio. Also, I do not know how the US army counts that 4:1. Do they count support specifically or do they count 'special missions' as well? (aka combat engineers and such)
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Too many ifs, brother.
Finland was not justified by Poland, but by the fact that Finland was getting cozy with Germany in the pre-war period and their border was uncomfortably close to Leningrad and it was further south (so closer to nowadays Sankt Petersburg) than the excellent defensible positions of Karelia.
Romania would have sided with Germany. Ribentrop-Molotov pact is an aspect shoved down our throats by anti-soviet revisionists (don't get me wrong, we need a revision of our history, but not fascist like one) to justify anti-Russian sentiment. However, Romanian-German relations were very warm after 1938, both political and military. Also, in 1940, through the Treaty of Viena, Germany gave Hungary a big chunk of Transilvania (And later the Cadrilater to Bulgaria). Arguably speaking Germany openly took away from Romania as much land as USSR and with much bigger importance. Oh, and after receiving the land, Hungary happily started to slaughter the Romanians. And we were allied with those guys. Fighting on the same front. AS THIS WAS HAPPENING. So, again, the ideea that Rib-Mol Pact was the deceiding factor is overstated propaganda. Played a role? Yes, but the economic relations and promises of riches is what made the final decision
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Another thing to be noted, secondary sources are not necessarily 'worse' compared to primary sources depending on what you can classify. For example, one could say diaries, letters or memoirs are primary sources because they can come from people who had 'hands on' experience of the frontline or perhaps were written right on the frontline. Meanwhile a book by, let's say, Glantz, is clearly a secondary source. However, one has to remember, everything we have, every book or record is written by humans, so it could be faulty. (God, I study aviation engineering and despite mountains of legislation we often hear about 'doctored' record keeping). For a practical example, a soldier fighting in Barbaraossa could complain that he's been fighting 'hordes of russians', simply because he was fighting for many days straight. However, a secondary source, looking at the broader picture, clearly shows that the Soviets were outnumbered at the start of Barbarossa, meaning it was actually hordes of Germans fighting the Soviets.
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Can you give us some evidence that France was willing to defend Czechoslovakia? 'The fools' Was Dalaider's exclamation when he returned to France after the fiasco was over (he returned to people cheering). He was well aware of what was going to happen due to Munich and actually tried to force things. Unfortunetly, France could not go to war against Germany without Britain securing their back with their Navy (having another powerful neighbour as an ally in the war instead of a neutral joker card is also a great boost to morale).
'Alliance with USSR was meaningless as Germany and USSR didn't share a border and Poland and Romania would never allowed Red Army march through their territory.' Not really. First of all, the statement is false about Romania. We also had a balanced gouvernment in the first half of the 1930s. Unfortunetly this went down the drain starting from 1936. Still, without anything to gain at Munich, some international pressure from France and Britain would have made possible a passage, especially since the route towards Czechoslovakia through our territory was unbelievably short and ran across our northern border (so there wasn't a real threat of the Soviet troops simply spreading out in all directions). As for Poland, look at the map at 20:01 . Poland was 'very friendly' with Hitler. Had they taken steps to invade Czechoslovakia as well, they would have been invaded and their opinion rendered irrelevant. Even excluding those 2 countries, your statement is still wrong. it's like saying Britain as an ally was irrelevant because they did not have a land border with Czechoslovakia. This is a war against Germany. USSR could do the same thing Britain would have done: Put troops and tanks on ships, send ships to French ports, let them fight at the Western Border of Germany
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@thetau12 We did not allow Soviet troops through because the leadershup of the country got replaced by a mix of fascists (Legionaires) and a dictatotial king, both pro-German. And without outside pressure, there was no reason to change this. Espcially since UK guaranteed the German telling Cz/sk to back down from any confrontation. However, there were possibilities of allowing access, especially under foreign influence.
As for the Anti-Soviet alliance, I am not sure such thing existed. Maybe a defensive treaty, but nothing dictating foreign policy. However, Romania and Cz/sk were both part of the Little Entente alliance, which was still alive at this point. Cz/sk was in an alliance with USSR. The third member of the Alliance, Yugoslavia was not an enemy of the Soviets either. So pressure through this alliance could have been made as well. Unfortunetly, as mentioned, there was no incentive to follow, because some powers really wanted Hitler to grow popular and powerful
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Disregarding the insulting comment of MegaRaven, I would have to say that TIK spews some bullshit, mostly be omission.
The problem with Tikonomics or TIkeconomics, as we call his views on capitalism and such, is that they lack a general, dynamic picture. He often portrays capitalist societies in a state fixed in time, never altering. The problem is that in the context of capitalism which promotes free market and individual growth, the two things are total opposites. You cannot have a system of particles all maintaining their relative position to each other while you expect them to grow and develop or fail and shrink to disappearance. That is practically impossible. That's why TIK only promotes a fixed point in an anarcho-capitalist world, usually the time zero, when you only have small businesses with soft trade relationships between each other. In a dynamic, free, system, as the particular individuals develop the relationship between each other, they will become closer to each other and distance themselves from others. And this is how you gain things like corporations. If you prevent such things from happening, then the system is no longer free. In short: if you include time, TIKs ideea of capitalism is not valid: you either have to include the 'public sector' (with corporations and such) or you have to agree that you don't have a free market.
That would be the basic theoretical problem with the view on economics he promotes. There are also practical problems. No single pebble can break a stone castle wall. You need a big rock with an expensive system to breach it. What I mean is that for big projects that would advance humanity, you cannot rely on individual businesses. You need big companies that have to deal with either building a thing and maintaining it, or building multiple things (and maintaining them). Wright brothers invented the controls for the airplane. Do you see any 'Wright Brothers' company today on the aviation market? You don't even see Russian airplanes that much, despite being a whole country with tradition in making pretty good planes (I am from this field and I can say that despite the propaganda, they make some damn good and sturdy planes) Why you don't see either of them? Because only Boeing and Airbus and companies they finance have the ability to adapt to the changes in the market demand, build enough planes to satisfy the demand and maintain their products. (Russia built a good jet in the form of Sukhoi Superjet, but the inability to provide enough maintainance led to various problems and cancellations of orders, aside from a tragic accident)
And, for the final, I still have to say that there are times when TIK does go straight out moronic on an outrageous level. The best example is him promoting Black Market as a good thing because it's a 'free market'. Like screw basic things like Consumer Protection. I don't know about him, but in my Eastern European comunistoid logic, when we eat at McDonalds we like to eat some beef or chicken burgers, not rat meat and others.
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@BigHenFor Pretty hard to understand what you mean as you go after multiple things: overvalued houses, bubble and inovation.
Housing bubble generally means people buy overpriced houses and then their pricing drops sharply. Generally, prices of homes depend on many factors, such as the value of the land, the quality of the home and the demand for a house in a certain area. Most of those, while set in motion cannot be stopped or changed. Thus, such important bubbles are best solved by avoiding them. Aka have planned development of cities or other areas, so everyone has the necessary incentives to keep living where they live, so house prices wouldnt explode. If someone messes up and a bubble still starts to form, the first thing one should do is asses the cause and try to fix it through innovation. Sometimes prices sky-rocket because economic an economic area is rumored to be developed and people want to move in ASAP due to closer proximity to critical facilities, such as transportation. Othertimes, especially in my country it happens so people could benefit from compensations. Aka the gouvernment wants to develop some infrastructure, but needs your land. In order for you to increase the value of your land, you build on it. And then sell. The next owner, probably knowing what's going on, buys the house and starts selling it even more expensive. And, in the end, the gouvernment cancels the plans and the last buyer is left with a huge loss. This is done by gouvernments sometimes keeping their mouth shut or refusing to allow the selling of houses in planned areas of development.
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1. "The Soviets already had manpower ratios of 3-4:1" . They were never outmatched 4:1 that's what the whole video says.
2. "It doesn't make sense that in 1943 the Germans couldn't repeat the successes of 1941." According " watch the video again. He plays 2 games at the first time. First, the historical game, listing numbers and such. Second, it's actually trying to combat the wrong narative about the war. It doesn't make sense in the Germano-file logic, which says that the Germans were losing because they could never recover the losses in the first years and the soviets were outnumbering them SOOOO MUCH MORE, based on a Meinstein quote. In fact, not only Germany recovered their losses, they actually had more.
3. I think he goes into tanks as well later in the video.
4. "You don't mention the Soviet Winter (and the lack of German winter equipment)". A. It would not be an explaination because Soviets had the same winter to endure. B. THIS MEANS THE GERMANS WERE IDIOTS. So Bye bye German superiority myth.
5. On the deffensive part. IT DEPENDS. Here is where I do not agree with TIK. Being on the defensive does not help necessarily. HAVING DEFENSIVE STRUCTURE DOES. And this is basically the whole point. Now with those surrounding and concentrating. This sounds nice when you think in small numbers. But what do you do when you have 1 million men to worry about? And I mean 1 million men deployed in entrenched, complex and/or camouflaged positions. Armed with guns, tanks and anti-tank guns. Yeah, concentration of forces and encirclement would prove great and amazing in the times of Caesar or Napoleon, where the Defender or Attacker in a battle are basically deceided on the spot of battle as one could find the attacker in a defensive position or vice versa. In modern warfare, there are various lines of defence, so usually, the defender is defending. Concentration of forces is good, up to a point. Again, those are no longer simple men fighting simple men. They are tanks, guns, assault guns, cars, trucks, trains that need railroads or roads. You cannot bring them down on one route because they would become stuck. And once stuck they are an easy target for artillery or other enemy forces. Furthermore. ADVANTAGE OF DEFENSIVE POSITIONS. You can stretch your men along a long front and in multiple lines. And they couls still provide an effective defensive. Think it like that. If you use 100 men to attack a castle defended by 60 men, you would belive it's suicide.(Or at least you should). Why? Because those 100 men would have to either have to attack the main gate in a concentrated attack or stretch their forces along the walls. So neither a concentrated attack, nor dispersed forces work. And you cannot encircle a castle with 100 men. It's the same with fronts. Yeah, encirclements can be achieved, but only if the enemy is a bit(or more) idiotic, like in France or you have a huge number of soldiers, trucks, tanks and a good starting position.
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Romanian here: If anyone interested (will add up on this comment in time)
6:33 Romanians did not migrate from Transilvania. They were conquered by the Hungarians. Even discarding some historical sources, because some Hungarians did not like it, in, I believe, 13th century you have Andreanum, which was an 'edict' /'law' establishing the main nationalities in Hungary, with 3 main ones, having right of decision and limited autonomy and 'tolerated' nationalities, among which were romanians. It would be impossbile to have them there if they were to migrate away, especially since no mass migration took place from outside the romanian territories outside Carpathians. Strangely, it would be the opposite, as many Romanian nobles would go away from Hungarian persecution into the 'free' nations and establish small states. Furthermore, in 1600 Transylvania and romanian counties were united under Mihai Viteazul, (Mikhail The Brave)
Regarding other aspects prior and after 6:33 moment, one of the conditions for Romania to join WW1 and later the punitive campaign against Hungarian communists (perhaps one of our worst decisions) was to be granted ownership of Transylvania once again. However, Hungary did not like it and Romania had some debts to pay to Franco-British world domination so, what happened is that a comission of idiots was formed who deceided where the border should be in the end (around 1920 to 1930). There are a few more details to the story here, but this should explain what's up with all the messed up nationalities in those borders.
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They would struggle, but it would be a struggle they could fight. I mean, it's not like the Americans would triple their production out of thin air and the British would double theirs and then they would teleport a fleet in Iceland or Norway. If Russia had collapsed, many people in the West would have lost hope the war could be won. And, even more important, with Russia out of the war and oil secured, most of the Wermach (75% of it) would have been sent to Western and Southern theaters. I cannot overestimate how much that would improve the logistics of the German army. Not only would they need to run MUCH MUCH shorter transports between factories and frontlines, but the airforce could be used for both city protection and combat protection, not part of it locked in Kursk while Berlin is bombed by the US and they would also no longer waste time on changing railway gauges. And, of course, the transport infrastructure is more developed in itself.
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@johsenior1535 I think you and other people place too much of a price on the railway hub. A hub is valuable as long as it connects something. However, in 1941 the Germans were at the outskirts of Moskow, the main railway to Petersburg(Leningrad) was cut off and would stay that way for a long time. That was the whole point of Rzhev's meatgrinder: get that railway line back. And for southern russia, they could have found other ways. If it connects nothing, like 1941 case, it's useless anyway.
The main reason so much emphasis was put on Moskow is because, as others pointed out themselves, but failed to realise the whole picture: AG CENTER WAS THE BIGGEST. If they were to defeat it, they would cripple the german army for good. One decesive army. Furthermore, Moskow was, at this point, the deepest penetration in the frontline. So the supply chains were the shortest there for the soviets and the longest for the Germans.. Coupled with political and morale signifiance, it made it the perfect place to make a good stand.
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It all sounded so interesting until.. you guessed it, TIKeconomics joined and logic left. Honestly, if you weren't a channel claiming to focus on education and critical thinking, your variations of strawman arguments would actually be enjoyable. Strawman of this episode?
Premise: This logistics problem is unsolvable. How could you account for all those variables?
TIKeconomics: Well, it's simple, those variables are the product of evil central planners. Free markets are the answer people!!!
People with more than 2 working braincells: But, wait, how does free market this unsolvable problem?
TIKeconomics, with an obviously not villainous grin: Well, it's extremly simple. It takes this unsolvable problem, throws it aside and focuses your attention on this perfectly solvable problem that any transport company faces.
For any comment readers that actually want to get rid of this senseless ultra-capitalist brainwashing and hear some logic, here's the actual difference between TIKs solution and the real problem:
TIKs solution is to get a private company which would magically take advantage of the free market price magical self-regulation and find the best route to fix. However, by using a private company, you are basically ignoring the problem. Why? Because a private company has only one objective: building/rebuilding the route. In the original problem if a general comes to the gouvernment and says: 'oy, we need more tanks and need this railroad fixed pronto' and then comes a factory manager and says: 'oy, we need more engineers in our factory to produce more ammo', you are already in a dilema because you have two conflicting interests. But if you are a private company? Your workers are bound by contract, you already know how much steel you have so if some dude comes to you and says 'oy, I need more engineers for my factory', you can easily say: 'Go stick that demand up your arse, mate. I'm a railway company. Go have a word with the idiot in the gouvernment that hired me to do his job'.
Now, on a serious manner, everyone can throw 'free market' and 'capitalism' around until they realise what the hell it means (if they have enough braincells to think that far). Price self regulation? How would that work in real life? Ok, let's assume that by some miracle, we know the price of steel and the price of an engineer. What happens if the price of engineers has now suddenly increased (lets say that the russians are on the defensive, heavily entrenched and we need to spend more ammo so we need more engineers to make more ammo)? Are you going to switch from route B to route A during midworks just to be more efficient ? How much time is going to take to do that? What if during the changing process the prices fluctuate again? Are you going to change again? Doubt. That's why people bind workers by contracts, contracts which stipulate that the worker might lose benefits or even have to pay back a certain ammount if they leave earlier than the contract allows. Here's the biggest secret of private entities and free market: THEY HATE FREE MARKET. They want 'freedom from regulations' to screw over their employees and the customers, but they hate dynamic markets because that messes up their economic calculations and budgets.
And for those that want to know about Amazon and NHS and why one succeeds and one fails? To understand how Amazon succeeds just try to buy an RTX 3080 and see what it says: 'out of stock'. 'Stock', this is the keyword in most retail logistical planning. They use advanced algorythms (or simple guessing sometimes) to determine market trends for products and order batches of said products and send them to various distribution centers. When the product goes 'live on sale', your order might get delivered the same day, but that's if you are lucky enough to get one of the limited N pieces that are in the warehouse. If you are not, well, place an order and wait for it to come. By placing your order (and everyone elses), Amazon now knows exactly how many more pieces it needs to order (+10%, let's say, to account for future demand by the time the shipment arrives), so it knows exactly the demand and just places and order for them (Which was something impossible for the Germans). Amazon does not care that you cannot play Cyberbug 2077 because scalpers got all the graphic cards or that you needed that medkit for your injured pet yesterday. They sold their stock, they turned a profit, when they get stock resupplied, they will still have the best prices and sell it again. So they can do that 'forever;.
As for NHS, NHS actually had a period when it opened a COVID hospital to increase the number of beds then had to close it down because no one was being sent there. And for the love of God, out of all things you could have picked to show the false superiority of private enterprises, you picked healthcare? Like literally, every nation on the globe makes fun of USA because people would rather die than pay for an ambulance trip. There is even a tragicomic saying about private healthcare: 'Why cure a patient once, when you can treat him everyday, and charge him everyday?'. You see, this clearly destroys your argument. A public healthcare would want you back on your feet ASAP because the more time you spend in a hospital, the more resources you are eating and the less taxes you pay. A private hospital would not give a damn about you.
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Hello from Romania. Naval action in the black sea in WW2 (and WW1 as well) was pretty dim because there is no strategic gain that could be achieved via naval and/or amphibious assaults)
This being said there are a few important naval egagements in the area:
Perhaps the most important single operation was a Soviet assault on Constanta in 1941 with an amphibious raid supported by a few destroyers. Romanian naval batteries, destroyers and a minefield quickly cancelled this operation, resulting in at least one destroyer being sunk.
Commercial lanes? Not really. The biggest economic partners for Romania were the Axis (specifically Germany) during the 1930s (this being 1 of the 2 main reasons why we allied with Germany despite the 1940 landgrabs). Plus, the only available trade partner that would require shipping in the Black Sea was Turkey. Now, I do not have exact data on our economy in WW2, but with most of it focused on war production and the most valuable goods (oil and grain) shipped to Germany, I highly doubt we had any big commercial naval routes in this timeframe. Most of the naval shipping lanes were troop and supply transports sent towards Sevastopol and, later, to the Romanian armies east of Crimea. Our navy was tasked with protecting those supply lines. German submarines would assist sometimes or, during Sevastopol, harass Soviet supply lines.
The Black Sea Fleet of the Soviet Union, despite being the most important of their individual Fleets, didn't play a big strategic role either. They would often support the Red Army in shore bombardment or deliver supplies or evacuate the wounded. The overwhelming threat of the Luftwaffe (which crticially damaged or even sunk? a lot of their capital ships) caused Stalin to ban all large ships from straying too far from the ports
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@Kabayoth You are projecting too big of a scenario in my opinion. First of all, the Red Fleet, especially the surface one, was inactive due to Luftwaffe, but they were not sitting idle. And the submarines were actually quite active with respect to the limited number of targets. Even when the Caucasus fell, I believe the ports on the East Coast of the Black Sea were still open and active.
And about shipping lanes all the way to Italy. My question is: Why so far? There are 2 reasons why the allies did not bother sending lend-lease through the black sea. First of all, it was enemy territory. Romanian and Bulgarian navy controlled the east coast, Turkey could not intervene and Black Sea Fleet, well, we've already talked about it. So any supply routes through there could be easily ambushed by submarines waiting at the exit and entrance of the Bosphorus strait. Now, this is also available in the reverse. If Germany tried to sneak oil through the black sea, those straits would be perfect choke points for the Soviet and British subs. Another reason why they did not bother with the Black Sea for Lend Lease was that they already had the Persian Corridor, sending supplies from the middle east territories of Britain into USSR via their logistical lines around the Caspian Sea, so no need of risking the Black Sea. Speaking of alternative routes, Germany also had a better alternative: Instead of overburdening the merchant vessels with a long route to Italy, they could just drop off the cargo in Romanian and Bulgarian ports.
Another reason why that scenario seems exagerated: the German merchant (cargo) navy was not that big. And it was also pretty busy delivering iron from Sweden. Also, it would have been pretty hard for the Germans to move their merchant ships from the North Sea, through British-controlled Gibraltar or British-controlled Suez Canal to get them into the Black Sea. Italian navy was also busy supplying Rommel in North Afrika.
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Dude, that's alternate history to Maximum power. First of all, it's not 'Socialist Russia' it's USSR, Socialist Russia was part of USSR.
Second, the whole reason why Hitler started the Second World War was to attack USSR. The invasion of France was meant to prevent a future offensive from the Allies, aka Britain and France. What you are describing is a scenario in which UK and France would have not sat on their useless asses in 1939-1940 and actually send their expeditionary corps into Germany while Poland was getting squashed.
As for what would have happened, God knows. USSR also gained quite a few technological advancements due to the war, putting them on the same level with US and UK. They also managed to secure some ties with political factions around the world.
A more realistic scenario would be if USSR was ready for the German onslaught in 1941. In this case they might have been able to push or at least hold the Germans back without suffering so much. In this case, yes, USSR would have been a true victor of the war, like US
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Also, maybe not race, but 'nationality' does have a say in this because each nation has a 'culture' (Well, big ones at least) which evolved over time based on their needs, strengths and weaknesses. For example the Germans started building ultra heavy tanks (Tiger, Konigstiger, Maus etc) some of which would even break bridges or wreck trains if attempted to be transported. Meanwhile the Soviets starting even from 1941 refused to look at heavy/super-heavy tanks projects for the fear of not being able to weild them. That's why promising projects like the IS-7 or OBJ 277 got scrapped. Britain was a wild ride, but they generally reliet on fast, cheap tanks (Cromwell, Comet). US on the other hand spent a lot of time developing the M4 because they needed a super reliable tank from a mechanical point of view since it was going to be used far away from home, so no spares or vehicle replacements could be guaranteed
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@vassilizaitzev1 Barbarossa is basically three Stalingrads combined and more.
As for its success, it's paradoxal, but its success led to its failure and vice versa.
The success came because the Soviets were not expecting such large front (involving Finland and Romania) and because they were expecting the main German push to go south, after the oil and grains, so they concentrated there. But this did not happen and OKH went for a Battle of France style victory, aiming for the capital and hopping to demoralise the Soviets. As a result, the soviet lines were taken by surprise. Opening up the logistic lines through Romania allowed the Germans to put some effort in the South, while massing in the center. Soviet units trying to re-organise arrived in piecemeal, which were quickly overwhelmed by the German onslaught. Had the plan gone as originally intended, who knows what might have happened, but the shift of the strategic axes to the center really helped the Axis achieve those massive victories which paralysed USSR
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@Saul Fischauer KV series as seen in 1941 was a stop-gap in Soviet tank design. After the failure of their main heavy tanks, T-28 and T-35 (not their fault per say, multi-turreted tanks were a general failure), USSR felt the need to gather heavy tanks of their own as they thought France and Britain would launch a war against them, either direct assault like in 1918 or via their proxies, supplying them with weapons and tanks (like they did with Mark Vs to the polish in 1918 -Note, they did support the Polish and launched their own invasion of Russia in that timeframe). While Germany would not be regarded as major threat at the conception of KV, the main fear was that Britain and France would supply them with heavy tanks like Char B1 or Churchill. None of the soviet weapons were capable of dealing with those or resisting their firepower. Long story short, they needed a good heavy. KV series came to be. KV 1 was supposed to be a battle tank while KV-2 was supposed to be an infantry supposed tank. However the efficiency of KV-1 against existing heavies, even with the 76mm, was questionable. So, an upgrade was planned for the KV as it was planned for the T-34. KV-1 was supposed to receive a 107mm gun, Zis-6 I believe while T-34 was to be upgraded to T-34M. The ZiS-6 guns were manufactured and were waiting to be fitted. However the war started and the stocks in Leningrad had to be destroyed. Pretty much each tank in soviet arsenal in 1941 was either a stop-gap solution, to keep up with the times or obsolete junk, like T-26. If the War started according to soviet planes, German army would have had an even nastier surprise
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Well, 1917-1923 (The peace between the new USSR and Japan) is a taboo topic for most historians because it contains all the truths they want to deny:
1. Western Nations did actually invade Russia (France, UK, United States + Japan)
2. They did sabotage them (Sevastopol base sabotaged, fleet sabotaged, offered assylum to White Russians using stolen ships -which the above mentioned gouvernments would steal again as 'taxes for using the port')
3. They did use concentration camps. US had one in Arkhangelsk.
4. They did lose to the Russians.
5. Communism was actually wanted in Russia. Well, perhaps not the 'Holdomor' type that they got, but who can see the future? However, it is a fact that socialist ideeas were a thing in Russia for 50 years at this points as Dostoievsky debates them in a book published in around 1864.
And from the 5th point we get the key for answering the dilema. Even before the war the situation was tense. The whole Russian administration had been in disarray for about 50 years (The book I was mentioning refers to a secret organisation meant to spread anarchy. That would later come true in the form of the Decembrists. Basically, being a Russian tzar was one of the most life threatening jobs). In the context of this chaos we get the defeat in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. BIG NO NO for public opinion and then comes WW1. A bloody stalemate where the Russian soldiers were illiterate and their officers, whose ranks were still given on feudal principles, like being a noble familly, were idiotic. You had officers telling soldiers to charge through a lake or a swamp. After Brusilov failed in 1916, things degenerated and in February 1917, the Czar fell. Good news. Bad news, the new gouvernment wanted to continue the war. Bad news, they were still doing no progress. And in October 1917 the Russians finally had enough and started to join Lening. A major boost to this was given by the fact that the bolshevics had the proper ideea of including the farmers in the working class as well (traditional socialists don't do that because they conside the farmers uneducated). And so started the Civil War. With most of the army fighting each it is certain they could not hold against the germans.
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Double engine, and a larger aircraft means more stability (because counter rotating propellers). What nguyen tried to tell you is that the guns, being used on an aircraft, would often hit the top parts of the armor (engine deck, roof armour) which were often pretty thing compared to other parts of the armour. Furthermore, attacks from above pretty much negate the effect of angled armour, as shells would come much closer to the normal, having to act against the nominal thickness of the plate, rather than the -flat plain' effective one (which is based on the angle of the slope). And you do not need 'a steep dive' to achieve this. You are not on a bomb run, you are on a gunnery one. Even a 3 degrees descending slope (so -3dg to the 'horizontal') would allow for great performance of guns if you start your attack run at a few hundred meters (in horizontal direction) The size of the plane allowed for more ammunition for the guns to be stored. With such a large relative velocity between airplane and tank, having more ammo to spend is much better. And, in the end, 'against medium and heavy tanks'. The soviets still had plenty of light tanks. It would be more than perfect against those. And the later 3.7s would be useful against T-34s as well
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Except, the soviets were not fighting against Germany alone. They were fighting against 5 nations: Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Finland. To those, you can add forces from Croatia, Spain as well as fascists and rebels from soviet lands, like Ukraine or Lithuania. That would be 7-9 nations supplying troops against the USSR. And if you think those are small contributions, let me put it in context for you: At Stalingrad, the Italian contingent alone had almost double the size of the combined German-Italian army faced by the British in the invasion of Lybia during Crusader. The Romanian army was almost equally as large.
As for being bled dry, they were fighting a war on their home front, what do you think happened to the Royal Airforce during the Battle of Britain.
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Well, this is true to some extent. Hitler believed he could anihilate USSR if he got the initiative. Perhaps that's the whole point of holding on the surprise.
There are further layers to this:
1. Hitler might expect to be able to take out USSR, but he does not have enough forces to fight and occupy the territory (you need to pull back divisions to pacify the lands). Mind you, the Wermacht (or Heer, whatever you want to name the whole thing) grew in size between 1940 and 1941. Also, the Alligeance of Romania and Hungary and perhaps Finland and Italy as well to such a campaign was unclear at this point (in the end, Hitler just served a good chunk of Romania to Hungary). This means that if he waited, he could get more forces to secure the blow.
2. Knocking out USSR depended on the ability to concentrate forces. In 1940 many of Hitlers troops were in Western Europe. USSR could invade while they were in France. This means that Hitlers forces now would be unable to concentrate and might be forced to arrive in peacemeal, same thing like it happened to the French and Soviets. This means that his forces had to be able to concentrate on one front and be in 'striking distance' of it. Mind you, at this point the border was very close. If USSR would breach the Ostwall, they could reach Berlin.
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'how would Hitler even know if it works on Stalin (mistrusting everything)? Was this idea only "in Hitler's head" or does any source/person confirm this intention?'
Why do people favor such a simplistic view on life? Would burn a lightbulb to go a bit further and think of the general picture? You don't 'trust someone to belive you', you make them, give them reasons. In 1940 Hitler was at war with Britain, largest Empire in the world. Not only that, but his most reliable source of oil, Romania, now took a big hit. With the Viena memorandum, Hungary took a big chunk out of it. Bulgaria was next, seizing a small part on the Black Sea coast. Soo, if a war broke out, any sane person outside Romania would question the same thing: would Romania actually help those idiots? In the end, given the chance, they could disclose even the Pact if necessary and tip the scales totally against the pro-German faction. This did not happen in our history because Romania also invaded by surpise and anyone not adhering to war fervor would be considered a traitor. Oh, did we mention that the only other reliable source of oil Germany had apart from Romania was USSR? So what oil is Hitler going to use against England if Romania and USSR would not supply him.
If that's not enough, in 1940 the cooperation between USSR and Germany reached a peak. USSR would receive lots of technological boosts, ships and other equipments. Moreover, in 1940 the whole Red Army started restructuring and retraining following their experiences in Poland and Finland. Not to mention, the Japanese mood was still unknown.
So, there you have 3 reasons why USSR did not believe Germany was in a position to strike them soon and 3 reason why USSR itself did not want a war. The only logical conclusion of those 6 arguments? USSR / Stalin had no other choice but to trust Hitler
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From an engineering point of view, the answer why logistics are so bad is rather simple: you need to account for small changes that are impossible to account for because no one wishes to change drastically.
When you lay out your logistics network, you can have the best mathematics laid out for your graph, they will still not be able to account for time. The capacity needed for a logistical chain varies with time. The need either decreases, and in this case you have people arguing your system is inefficient or it increases up to a point where it overflows the system, and people will again argue it's inefficient. This, however, is only the fuse of the problem. The problem in itself is the impossibility to change. Logistical lines don't appear overnight and in any place. Only Hyperscam fans could buy such things. If you want to build a road, you need to conduct soil tests, dig the foundation, fill it up and then lay out the asphalt. Then build bridges and all of that. Want a railroad? Kinda the same thing, but it takes longer. And you cannot just have a railway pop up in the middle of the city. That is why people in countries like Japan are packed in trains and metros like sardines (if not worse): the capacity of the system has been long exceeded, but there is simply not enough space and time to build an alternative.
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@thomasgaul6315 The thing is, the end of your argument is false, but proves the point. Civillian logistics handle more or less like the military one. However, most of what we see as 'civillian logistics' are trade chains: someone manufactures something in China for Amazon, a Chinese company transports the products to a port, Amazon picks them up, transports them to US, UK or Europe (or has them transported for them). then takes them from the port and delivered to their depots and from the depot to the customer. This is the whole trade chain. The logistic chain for Amazon specifically is only from the Chinese port to your housedoor, or even as short as from the depot to your house. This means they have much, much less responsibilities compared to a military (or a gouvernment civillian service). You need a new tyre in the military? The gouvernment needs to move its whole mass for it: acquisition (maybe even production) transport, delivery etc. You need a life saving drug or piece of tehnology? Amazon can be simply like: We don't have any in stock. Want some miracle pills, recommended by ours truely, Alex Jones? Amazon doesn't give a shite wether or not you need what you need or if the manufacturer has delays. All they care is this: it's in stock and you have money or not?
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Well, I mean, they were a bad ideea in the way they were implemented and their used conceptualised. Sure, cruise missiles are an important asset of any modern military, but at the time of their use? Hitler was basically launching them at random areas hoping to terrify Britain into submission. I mean, two-three years prior, they were the only nation fighting you, they lost a huge chunk of their equipment in France, you were bombing them day and night during the Blitz, their cities were burning, and they still were fighting you. Now they have allies, they have more and better material, and you are basically putting a lot of funding into launching the equivalent of a couple a bombs per week. People could ask: why on Earth not use the funds for something more useful, like an AA rocket, or a SAM or at least set the targets for some landing areas/supply depots
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I believe the best way to counter a counter-argument is to use something that is not related to your narrative. Pretty much like saying: 'even if I were wrong, you are still not right, so you cannot say I am wrong'
For this, I believe the 1st counter on your list could be nullified better.
So the main point is that bombing Britain would bring her closer to surrendering. But is this valid reasoning? No!
1. the argument is not valid because it involves and post-decision event. First he deceided to let the British go and then Battle fo Britain began (after quite some time even). You cannot say Brett did not buy milk at the store on purpose because three days after he bought yogurt from the supermarket. Same here, there might be other reasons why Battle of Britain was started, one of which is next and actually supports Hitlers diversionary war theory.
2. What if Hitler wanted to obtain better peace enviroment. Not just 'terms', but enviroment. This means that beyond achieving peace, Germany wanted to make sure the Britain would not be able to spontaneously break it and attack while the Wermacht was in USSR. How is this best achieved? Well... bomb factories, destroy RAF, destroy the Royal Navy. This way he could easily continue war with Britain to keep USSR distracted and avoid a backstab. Of course, better enviroment also means better negociation terms and possible gains.
3. Who even says that Britain would peace out? And on Hitlers terms? I mean, France fell because Panzers near Paris and because of the treacherous leadership. The loss of BEF would be tragic, however the E stands for Expeditionary, which means that the whole force was assembled knowing that their operations would not negatively impact the defense of the homefront. Before Dynamo succeeded the way it did, not even Churchil expected to save 300,000 soldiers. And even if they saved 300,000 soldiers, thos guys were without equipment. Basically, Britain had already rendered most of the BEF lost prior to Dynamo. If they didn't and the loss was so tragic, they would have peaced out before Dynamo. But they did not. This means that Britain had to be bombed before even thinking about surrendering.
In conclusion, Britain had to be bombed regardless of the outcome of Dunkirk and thus Hitlers decision to halt the Panzers can be considered more of a coincidence, rather than correlation.
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The problem with Armtrak is that it's both a company and an essential need. This means that economically they will lose in some to many parts, but the gouvernment invests in them to gain other things, like connecting distant communities. A funny report that I've read, cannot confirm it's accuracy though, states that the most famous railway in the world, the Japanese high-speed system, is also terribly inefficient, with few routes turning in an actual profit. But the rest are critical for businessmen and more reliable than airplanes (which are either slower considering check-in time, weather delays etc. or more expensive) Thus, you lose money on the company specifically, but you gain money by encouraging businesses to develop in certain areas by maintaining a connection with a central hub.
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@seanpoltzer1107 I think the healthcare argument has been nicely summarised by one of our safety assessment professors with a quote from a human factors specialist (It's a lot of parphrasing. If I get to find the exact source, I will edit this comment). Actually remembered where it was from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzS5V5-0VsA&t=462s About 2 1/2 minutes in. 'What do you pay a hospital and a doctor for? To treat you when you are sick or injured. That's a sickness and disability system, not a healthcare system'. The first problem is that many people try to measure the efficiency of something that's unmeasurable. And from this all the shitty costs and arguments I've seen by lots of people against state healthcare. Healthcare is not meant to treat you while sick. A healthcare system is meant to be there whenever you need it. Unfortunetly politicians or private managers (depending on where you are from) dimension hospitals only for the sick and injured instead of dimensioning them for the whole population. If you design your healthcare to keep people checked up for any malign conditions, you will make it easier for them to plan surgeries ahead or allow them to have less invasive or less expensive options, somewhat balancing the cost of investment, not to mention the whole social benefit of not screwing people over over one night.
The second issue with any healthcare system is that it unfortunetly fights a sysyphic battle. If you want to properly design such a system, you don't need just money, you need people to work in it. Unfortunetly, healthcare is one of the worst places for jobs because it meets all discouraging criteria: high skill, heavy workloads, high psychological and emotional pressure, and questionable pay. I know this from a close friend who is in medschool. She sacrificed her health and free time to get into that medschool (arguably the best in this shithole nation, but still) and that admission was only the easy part and did not compare to the finals. And her study period is twice if not almost 3 times as much as everyone else (6+2 years). And that's only to get a job with a 'respectable' position (aka not a nurse or receptionist). Unfortunetly, you cannot cut down on the training of people, because, again, you need them to be skilled and identify problems which might not directly relate with their speciality or work together with others. This alone discourages people from taking this medical route in life and the system has to cut down from them even more, since motivation without skill is dangerous. Then you have the workload, which is generated by the lack of infrastructure and the lack of personel for the task ahead, which discourages even more people who might deceide to quit it. Lastly, pyschological stress and questionable pay, kinda self explanatory.
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People would starve in the East all the time. Quit blaming it on the Soviets. There other major famines in Russia before them.
The reason why communism had failed to spread is hidden in history by the very ones that caused this course of events. The reason is simple: every communist revolution got crushed by Western or Western-backed powers. Heck, at the time of the Russian civil war, that thing was anything, but Civil War. You had US, UK, France, Czechoslovakia, Poland Japan, White Russians, Estonians etc. etc. all ganging up on the Reds. In Hungary, I almost screamed when TIK made a video about Hungarian fascism. The bolshevik/soviet/communist (however you want to call it) revolution there did not happen because the Romanian Army crushed their forces and occupied Budapest in 1919, sent there by the Western Powers. Plain and simple, they wanted to control at least all former Hungarian territory (including Transylvania which was promised to us for joining the Entente), the Western powers did not want a communist nation, so our army steam-rolled them. In Germany, there was also an attempt to create a communist state, but that got crushed as well. In China, foreign support for the nationalists prevented the communists from rising.
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US had a "Germany first Policy' for a very good reason: Germany was a Land Warfare, meaning the Army would be the most involved there. Japan/Pacific was a Navy Warfare. This means they could easily concentrate their land assets in Europe and use the navy and marines in the Pacific. And they did mostly that. And there was no actual way to do otherwise because island hopping is a great tactic, but requires careful resource management or you can easily mess up by over-crowding. Furthermore, they would be expecting to be able to use large tank forces, artillery, aviation and all that in Europe. In the Pacific, if you put all that on an island, again you get overcrowded. The terrain is much more difficult to handle as Well.
They fell in with nothing from the soviet wishes. They fell in with the simplest ideea: THEIR OWN SURVIVAL. They knew if the germans would catch them, they would be dead or worse. That's why they did not surrender. In 1917-1918 the bolsheivks reached a peace agreement 1. because those germans did not threaten to exterminate them, because they were also fighting the 'white russians' and various independence movements and because the Germans poured massive reinforcements. 2. they trashed that agreement in less than a year and proceeded to recapture former possessions. It took a combined invasion of France, US, UK, Japan, Poland with support for the whites, finns, poles etc. from the great powers to secure the borders.
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I came here hoping for a conservative to tell other people that lefties are not simple minded people that don't want to work and feel opressed by everyone, who are all secretly nazis. Well, 50minutes later... -_- yeah, why did I even bother giving you my trust when it comes to socio-economics?
First of all, about the Biblical analogy. Mate, if you are confused about that, save some money, go on a cruise, cause your mind is really burnt out. It's literally in the name 'Fruit of knowledge of good AND EVIL'. Before eating the fruit, Adam and Even only knew good or neutral, the serpent tricked them so they can also know evil.
Secondly, and for anyone reading this, NO, not all socialists are like that. Heck, NO REAL socialist is like that. TIK has some what would call 'reactionary bias'. He believes that because he identified with part of the socialist world, he is more right when speaking about socialism than others who stick to their views.
Thirdly, you mention something scratching the back of your head when mentioning Venezuela, USSR, Cambodia, China etc and socialism. Well, dear TIK, why isn't something scratching the back of your head when you praise capitalism when there exist things like the Tuskegee experiments, the Opium Wars, the Drug Wars, the Cartels and the Mafia, the black population being on food stamps in the USA at the same time people were bashing USSR, black people being used as human experiments without their consent and so on? Why don't those things bother you as much as the others?
So, for any readers out here, here's how an actual view of socialism looks like:
1. It depends from person to person. Socialism was meant to be for the people, by the people. Of course, because it involves centralisation, people have varied opinions on how much should be left to the individual and how much should be left to the gouvernment.
2. Capitalists are not our sworn enemies. Capitalist exploiters, like the ones sending bombers against people trying to unionize or, in modern time, creating bots to promote anti-union sentiments in Amazon, yes, they are enemies of the left, but that's because they actively chose to act against people minding their business. Socialism doesn't reject principles of capitalism, like the right-wingers, would want you to believe. No. They still embrace the ideea of competition, they still embrace the ideea of initiative and they still reward them and they still realise the importance of capital and obtaining profit. What happens however, is that socialists see the limitations of capitalism. Capitalism is a system, more like an utopia, which works great when you are talking about small scale. One entity interacting with one or two others. However, on large scales, the existance of the core principles of capitalism (ie protection of private property, desire to invest and expand to accumulate even more capital, access to free market) are starting to collide with each other due to basic rule of economics: on large scales, we have limited accessibility to resources. (Mind you, I said accessibility, not simply 'resources', because you could have resources, but if you are unable to exploit them, in economics, they basically do not exist, or even become a hindrance). Because we have this limitation, it should be obvious that at some point, all those companies that are trying to grow will eat each other out until there is one or two who would control the access to all resources needed for an activity. If they control the access to resources, they have no competition, no competition, no free market. Also, one has to aknowledge that resources are different. The idea of 'finding alternatives' just doesn't work in practice. You cannot find a good alternative to toiletpaper and toothpaste for example, similarly to how you cannot find a good alternative to copper and aluminium in conductive circuits. (believe me, our communist leaders tried to)
3. We don't see the ideea of working as being opressed. Perhaps that picture is a 'somewhere in Russia' type of story, aka somewhere happened something weird, but people take it as the norm and blow it out of proportions. Yes, thanks to a huge increase in offers for business and economic majors, lots of people graduate from universities with good knowledge of economics, which should tell them that a centralised system has some really strong advantages depending on cases, but they forgot to ask for how to apply the knowledge they've obtained. And so, they end up working some depressing jobs in stores, accounting offices and so on, realising how the world around them is going to ** and they cannot do anything about it. But there are some lefties who instead went for engineering or medical degrees, or for law studies and for many others, and they can really get closer to implementing the changes they want to see. As such, for us, working, to some degree, is a non-financial payment in itself. The problem with opression, and why we say people are opressed under capitalism, has two sides: 1. Literally active opression (people being prevented from unionising, in some cases people being bombed, people being used as scapegoats etc.) 2. Passive opression and stealing of value. For 2, we know that you will never get paid for how much you earn your institution, since that institution needs to also sustain non-production staff. And, as I've said, in some cases, being able to work a job you enjoy might be a payment in itself. The problem and opression comes in when the work effort doesn't scale in with the payment.
And, for the final, here's an example. Many of you might be unaware, but in Japan, the land of turbocapitalism, you have a paradoxal crisis: the anime industry is in a crisis due to shortage animators, but there are plenty of animators on the market. So, how does that relate to capitalism and opression? Well, simply put, there is no shortage 'of animators' per se, however, there is a huge shortage of 'skilled animators', aka people with experience. This shortage comes from the fact that there is a huge number of animators on the market since anime is very popular in Japan and many people would want to work in a field that blends in their passion with creativity and money. Ok, a socialist might be confused: if there are so many, why a shortage? Well, because we are talking about turbocapitalism here. Because there are so many animators on the market, the bosses can easily tell their employees: do this, or I can easily find you a replacement. This leads to overworking, depression, health issues and, of course, they pay you nothing extra. And if you object, well, you are booted out and someone else takes your place. So, of course, people quickly realise they cannot work with passion in this field and they cannot ask to be paid more, even though the industry is booming right now, so everyone with some experience is quickly leaving the industry for some other jobs. Because of this, very few people spend enough time around senior animators and producers to learn all they need to know, before they quit, and, as such, the crisis comes. And, frankly, I picked this because it's easier to explain in its fullness, but similar situations can be found in the programming world, with game studios or web developers, or in the airline industry, with pilots and mechanics.
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@TheImperatorKnight Get me to drink? I assure you, even after 2 bottles of vodka, I wouldn't be drunk enough to believe all you are saying.
I am unwittingly criticising socialism, not capitalism? How so? Weren't the Opium Wars caused by a private corporation? Weren't the human experiments conducted by pharmaceutical companies? Aren't people in the workforce treated as replaceable fools thanks to a wrong mindset? Oh, and don't get me started with the argument of 'corporations aren't capitalism'. Yeah, sure. Capitalism 'technically' disavows the existance of corporations and any forms of polarisation (monpol, duopol, oligopol), but in reality capitalism has no means to stop the formation of those entities, plus, those are very effective forms of securing dominance over the free market, thus granting you the best return on your investments, which is what capitalism encourages. So, in short, even though corporations and all of that are technically not capitalism, capitalism doesn't prevent, and even encourages their existance.
Also, I'm not a landmine to be triggered
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Regarding the fate of civillians at Stalingrad (and also for a similar case in Leningrad).
I am no fan of the theory of 'They wanted to have the soviet soldiers with their backs against the civillians so they could fight better'
I believe the main reason (for both cities) is a combination of two factors:
1. Usefulness. Both Stalingrad and Leningrad were industrial centers. And the Tractor plant in Stalingrad was producing T-34s, the workhorse of the Red Army. (there are stories of T-34s being straight to the frontline after exiting the factory). Even if not for pure production, but at least for maintainance. Not to mention the hospitals that should treat the wounded.All of these need civillians to be operated. And you could aks the civillians to build fortifications. You take the people out of the city, your own city becomes and obstacle in your way. Especially for such a large urban area as Stalingrad.
2. Impossibility to deal with them. Suppose you want to evacuate them. Where would you send them? Most of the habitable land is occupied by the germans. Especially the big cities that have the infrastructure to deal with the refugees. And what few cities are not taken over by the Germans are either in Siberia or at the frontline. Speaking of infrastructure. What infrastructure? Whatever vehicles the nation has are being used to transport military supplies to fight the germans. You cannot use them to move people around or the germans would break through another city, reach another major population center and force you to repeat the cycle, but now with an even heavier strain on your resources. And where exactly would you send those people? I mean, you might find a habitable area, but we are talking about millions of people. You don't have homes for millions of people in the places you want to send them.
Those 2 factors combined are, in my humble opinion, what lead to those humanitarian disasters. The gouvernment tried to keep the cities alive for as long as possible to help the armed forces resist as long as possible, but, when the time came for an evacuation, it came much sooner than they expected and at this stage it was virtually impossible to accomplish (Leningrad was already surrouned and Stalingrad was already bombed and the bridges damaged and/or destroyed). During the fighting, attempts were made to rescue the civillians, in Stalingrad and not even going to mention the bloodbath in Leningrad. If the Soviets had concentrated their forces instead of sending attacks by piecemeal to relieve the siege, they might have had more success, but again, when your own kin is in danger, letting them suffer for later gain is perhaps the last thing that comes to your mind. (Talking about Leningrad here)
Also, I have a tremendous respect for your military strategy videos (Battlestorm series, talking about logistics etc.) However, as much as I respect that side of your channel, I hate when you turn to politics/ideology and pseudo-economy. Please don't try to spin this into an economic-ideologic debate about how soviet economy was not efficient in this matter, like you did with some aspects in your previous videos of the series. This is not a matter of economics or ideology, but a matter of war. In a war, people need a leader, that's why Stalin took the central stage, pretty much like Churchill and Roosevelt did. Stalin was more vocal because he did not have a large body of water and a top-tier navy to put behind him and any possible invading forces. On the contrary, the invading forces were at his doorstep. And he lost quite a lot in that war himself. Soviet 'economy' did not 'struggle'. Soviet economy was gone the second the Germans reached Kharkov. This is no matter of 'economics', but a matter of national survival strategy. You use whatever you have to the best you can.
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Well, I think I can finally say something: THANK YOU. THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART. For years I've been arguing with people that there is absolutely no logical way USSR could have known about about Barbarossa in a way suitable to take action. We know USSR did not see itself fit to take on Germany in such a way that they would win the war, not just the battles. This is why they put themselves into a situation where they got too many strings attached on them. But I'll provide more reasons on why this is the case as an extra read in another comment below. As for my views on Dunkirk?
I do not subscribe to your formulation of the 'Hitler wanted a diversionary war with England theory' since he could have obtained this by other means even after taking Dunkirk. What I believe is that the situation started from practical on- the ground reasons and evolved into a possible political tool. If we look a bit at France around the time of Dunkirk, we notice that the German troops were no mostly running on drugs and were pretty much exhausted. Dashes by the likes of Rommel demolished the French structure on one hand, but also pushed their communication lines to beyond the breaking point a few times. The panzers were mobile, but they needed to be refueled and time for repair. So a few days of rest and consolidation were absolutely needed. Otherwise, they might have eneded up with an earlier version of Crusader. Meanwhile, if we judge from the Franco-British perspective, their lines were stretched thin in the first days, but now they had a good solid line at Dunkirk. And the closer they could draw the Germans to the shoreline, the closer they could get to RAF range and possible intervention of the Royal Navy. Not only that, but the Germans did not know the French would completely collapse. So they were planning of striking deeper towards Paris, which meant they actually had to pull troops from Dunkirk to fight there. And let's assume Germany would indeed go for Dunkirk. As said, this means that more losses were to be expected both in manpower and material, which could hamper further operations, against France or England. And USSR could strike in the back at any moment. So, Hitler took the option which would give him the most positive outcomes or combinations of this. Without hindsight, those possible outcomes would be:
A. The diversionary war and peace. Hitler could pretend he's fighting the British, but, if he allows some troops to evacuate, he could use this as an emotional negociation tool. In the end, those guys, even if kept alive, would serve to nothing more than meatshields without the equipment left behind. Then, he could pretend to fight on, but secretly initiate peace negociations through third-party embassies and us this 'Hey guys, we kinda allowed your boys to return back home, didn't we? Now. If you accept the current status-quo on the continent, we will forget YOU were the ones to declare war on us and we'll return to being your good anti-communist dog we've always been in the past decade'. By doing this 'we strike you, but not with our full force' thing, he could drag on negociations long enough to give the illusion he's fighting on the Western front, but preserve and build up enough strength to crush USSR'
B. Psyops. By allowing the British to evacuate, not only would they preserve their troops, but they would give the French the impression that now they were fighting this war alone. There is nothing more depressing than the feeling of being abandoned. And this did happen and this did turn into a breaking of their morale.
C. Mongolian escape. I use this term because it was usual for the mongols to create a hole in their encirclements, allowing enemy troops to rout, break their own lines, escape through a funnel area and then they would slaughter everyone, but in smaller, less resistant groups. They would preserve their troops, break the enemy morale of the enemy with air raids and some artillery. What if Royal Navy attempts and evacuation? Well, nobody expected the use of civillians vessels and such an effective one. They were probably thinking Royal Navy would send their troop carriers and perhaps even battleships. Now, let's say you want to kill 900 people. On the field, they are dispersed in multiple locations, each having to be bombed with accuracy. But if you let them on a boat? One good placed bomb and everyone's gone. And they could draw in the cruisers or battleships in the minefields as they would try to help with the evacuation. This would give the Luftwaffe and U-Boats or torpedoboats a chance to put them out of action, giving the Kriegsmarine the initiative. Basically, they would let the British kill themselves and give up every advantage they have in order to save their people. If things were escalating beyond control, they could always come in with the tanks and crush them.
In the end, I suspect a combination of those happened. Britain got on with the evacuation, which left the French demoralised, resulting in their collapse as Hitler now had enough troops to create a new push towards Paris. Later on Hitler would use this 'miracle' in an attempt to secure his right flank and focus on crushing USSR. What they did not expect was such an effective evacuation which would allow for a faster rebuild of the British army and this occured with minimum losses to the Royal Navy, so the option of trapping them also failed.
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And, as said, now I will explain why the ideea of Hitler attacking USSR was illogical for anyone AT THE TIME. (In hindsight it makes perfect sense since we have a broader picture). It is not only the war with England that Stalin was looking at. It was the whole European theater. Most likely, when signing the deals with Hitler, he was looking no further than his version of Chamberlains appeasement with extra benefits. In the end, Britain and France were the biggest empires in the world, how could they fail to stop a punny army like Hitler? 1940: Oh well. This most likely triggered some concerns in USSR, but further deals with Germany and promises of boosting their military trade (which the Soviets badly needed due to the poor state of their navy, air force and secondary equipment for their Army), which calmed things down. And then early 1941 came and things turned even more bizzare. Think of yourself as a soviet general. You look at the world map. On one side, you need to support China as a proxy with Japan and Japan still has a few million soldiers at your border (no war with US-UK was forseen at this point) In Europe, Hitler not only denies peace with England, but sends troops in Africa to help Mussolini against the British. Not only that, but then he strikes in the Balkans. And Greece is allied with Britain, they could help there as well. Germany and Italy, the two beacons of ultra-nationalism were already fighting on two fronts. This makes it is clear that the offensive direction is going southwards, not eastwards. And if Hitler attacks us now? He will not have enough oil to fight with these guys. It would make no sense to attack. But wouldn't it be more prudent for us to strike while the offensive is still going? Well, our forces are not properly trained, we've barely finished our forced expansion of the Armed Forces and we still haven't properly restructured our ranks, nor did we finalised our 'Mobile Warfare' doctrine.. Furthermore, we still are to receive warships and equipment from Germany. We are not ready to attack and we might gain if we wait. But what if we attack anyway? Well, Britain and France sat ildly while we tried to stop the fascist expansion in Spain (there were reports that they were actually actively hampering the delivery of supplies to Spain). They betrayed us and Czechoslovakia in favor of Hitler and Poland. They invaded Germany while their troops were in Poland and then turned back behind their Maginot line. They failed to have any initiative on land before France fell. They failed to save Norway. What indications do we have that they'll not do like in 1939-1940 and, since they are not involved in Europe, just watch as our attack on Germany turns into a meatgrinder and, at the end, they'll do like in 1918-1919 and bring the whole world on our weakened nations. (Churchil and Patton actually tried to do that with Unthinkable)
Basically, in early 1941, for USSR, just waiting and consolidating seemed the most logical solution and without hindisght, nothing would suggest that Germany was even capable of invading, even if they wanted to, since they had their troops dispersed in too many places and those troops relied on Soviet oil and other resources. I'm not sure if Hitlers message which TIK showed is real or post-war Soviet propaganda, but if real, it would also suggest why Stavka was late to respond to Barbarossa, as they did not want to destroy a lucrative deal while they were on the backfoot
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Well, the story of Jet aircraft is full of mythos and interesting stories.
First of all, Jets in Germany were famous for their novelty, not really for reliability :). There were many chances of failure with them and they were much harder to maintain compared to regular piston fighters. Not to mention the much higher fuel consumption (something which germany was short on). And we are talking about two entirely different types of fuel here if my memory serves me right (I mean modern engines deffinetly use different types of fuel for turbos and Piston, not sure about the Jumos). So, you have less reliabilty, need new workforce (pilots, mechanics etc) and need more investment (fuels, runways, spare parts, engines etc.). And for what? the BF 109 was still a decently capable machine. They just could not get enough pilots for them and enough fuel for them. Oh, I forgot to mention, BF 109 (and pistons in general) could also use more runways compared to Jet fighters. So the cost-return analysis is not really in favour of the fighter here. It became a need when large bombing runs began to be assisted by fighter escorts like Mustangs or simply had too much volume of fire coming out of those bombers for the pistons to be effective.
A bomber is a bit more sound decision since you can actually use the greatest advantage of a piston engine (efficiency at high speeds) to get over the target, do your job and get out of there before the fighters catch you. Of course, the problem with this ideea is that you first must make an airframe capable of taking increased loads (you have a big, heavy, explosive payload compared to a fighter), the new aerodynamic loads and the much larger fuel supply that you need. And then you need the fuel to use that thing.
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1. Blitzkrieg. Let me ask those 'true blitzkrieg' guys a thing: is Panzer IV a real tank? Or is Tiger I the real tank? That's the same thing. Bewedungskrieg, Blitzkrieg or however we name it changed from Poland to France to North Africa to USSR and during those theaters massively because those situations required different measures. Poland was faster because the German Army had almost every strength there. France was more brutal because Germany played poker against a bunch of morons playing on a xilophone.
2. Short vs Long war. Well, I heard those theories, but never as a general combined war. The version(s) I heard go like this:
A. Judging by the experience of WW2 and the equipment state of the Western Nations (Both France and UK generally had better equipment and more of it than the Germans- perhaps in all aspects except aviation) German High command concluded that a war with France would turn into a long, attrition warfare if France wanted to fight. Both Nations (France and Britain) had vast colonial empires which could supply them with Troops and limited equipment even if the mainland fell almost entirely. And with the entire german army in the north of France, landing points could be kept in the south and continue the war from there. But France fell, so the attrition warfare never happened.
B. With their ego bolstered massively by the quick and humiliating defeat of the biggest land army in the world (France) and the defeat of the second biggest land army multiple times (Britain, in France, Norway, Greece) in less than a month, as well as the situation in WW1 and the defeat of Poland and the poor effort of soviet army in the Winter War of 1939 made the germans conclude that the war with USSR would be a short one. Even if not a short deceisive defeat, the main objectives of Barbarossa, aka Ukraine and Caucasus, would be achieved without a problem. From this point on, Germany could afford an attrition warfare with USSR.
Soo, bascially this is it: Attrition in the West, Short war in the East.
3- Ok. Where in the world did people like you get the ideea, and even promote it, that Germany was 'autarkik' or 'isolated'. No. They traded with and received support from the West until roughly around 1939. They traded with Sweden throughout the War. And this is suppored by the Norwegian campaign itself. Like the whole campaign was put together to secure that trade route. And they traded with Romania for oil. Trades might also have happened with Italy, Spain, Hungary, Bulgaria, but I have no information about them.
3. Proper. Early invasion of France. Unlike Britain, France thought about the possibility of a German war since around 36-38 with the re-militarisation of Germany, movement into Rhenania and Czechoslovakia. So France started to mobilise its forces. Hitler knew that he had to keep France in check because the 'phony war' would not last forever. However, if France had not declared war when Poland was invaded, Hitler would have never broken his silent alliance with Britain and France. Yes, those three were allies.
4. TIK, I really believe you have big misunderstanding of how racism works. Racism incorporated in the concept of Untermensch. You cannot explain the Eastern Front with 'racism', because THEY ARE ALL WHITE. Same for Far East. THEY ARE ALL ASIAN. It's the ideea of Untermensch, aka viewing of a person, nationality etc. as a species not worthy to be called human.
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Ah, the good ol times when TIK's videos were not actually brain-killers.
I believe though, that some important things have to be said when comparing USSR army, German army and US Army.
First of all, while US and USSR both sacked thier upper ranks, comparing the results of both nations in the war is a bit unfair. Both nations made this changes thinking they would have at least 3-5 years to fully complete them and fate proved both of them wrong. However, the wars they were drawn into were fundamentally different. US commanders were first put to test in the naval warfare. The land warfare would commence much later. This had 3 major implications: 1. The first battlefield for US would be the ocean, which meant less men involved, slower paced strategy etc. And in the first year they still got their asses handed to them. (well, not really, but they weren't doing that fine either). US Army would be thrown into battle into the European theater only much later in the war. (I am excluding land warfare in the Pacific since most of the plans and flow of battles was deceided by the naval strategy, especially in early war). In contrast, all branches of the Soviet Military were engaged on day one. Navy, Army, Air Force. And that was on thier home soil, close to their economic centers. 2. Because US was fighting on foreign soil, this meant that they could always rely on good supplies from back home. And they could also take their time developing new weapons. The M4 Sherman for example was made after numerous trials and experienced gained at the expense of others. Chieftain has a full lecture/presentation regarding the tank, it's true strongpoints and conception. All of that meant that the US commanders knew what they got and when they would be getting it. In contrast, Soviets had to produce equipment in new factories, cutting corners left, right and center. Not to mention they were cut of from some of their natural resources, now captured by the Axis. Having something to work with greatly changes how a commander acts. 3. Soviets were fighting on home soil. This meant that every minute they spent not attacking was a minute the germans would use to kill thier brethren and exploit their land. Every soldier knew that. And every commander knew that the soldiers knew that. This meant that for each day of non-fighting, the morale of the soldiers and the entire population would drop as they would see the command doing nothing while the enemy draws strength from what they stole.
Comparing the German Army and the Soviet army also has some stuff to be mentioned.
It is interesting that, despite agreeing with Tukatchevsky's ideeas would get you sacked or killed, as the sources in the video imply, Zhukov used the same thing to crush the Japanese. And the soviets tried to use those as well against the germans. And the germans themselves used the same tactics in 1939. So perhaps the problem was not the brain-drain. The problem was 'bad experience'. German army became a much better force because they had to adapt to their foes. And their foes before Barbarossa were France and Britain. Against them they learned that tank-vs-tank was not a great ideea because their tanks were much less and well inferior to what the French and British had. Meanwhile, Soviet Union had no such foes. Their tactics worked against Japan, they worked against Poland, Finland was a problem, but some lessons were taken from that as well. Basically, both nations learned from their experience, but circumstances meant that one nation had more valuable experience.
If we want to paint an accurate effect of the purges, I believe we should look at other 2 nations. Yes, Britain and France. Both nations were the biggest military powerhouses at the begining of the war, with many 'experienced commanders' (from WW1), with great equipment and plenty of men. And what they achieved? They sat on their asses for almost a year, perhaps hoping Hitler would not bother them and strike USSR first, and then they got utterly crushed in France. And then Britain struggled with mostly the Italians and a few german divisions in Africa.
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Well, when it comes to history, which is a 'secondary science' (because it implies scientific methods and research and all those processes) I doubt you can apply 'amateur' and 'professional' the same way you can with, let's say an 'athlete' or a scientist. In the general meaning, I believe the distinction between 'amateur' and 'profi' is determined by what can you do with what you know/practice. An amateur athlete knows how to run, but can he independently develop himself or teach others to get closer to his level? Doubt so. An amateur scientist can be a guy in a lab doing the same thing over and over again, while a professional goes and does research of his own, trying to bring novelty into the field.
For historians, I believe YouTube historians are on the border. Of course, we can have 'shit tier' with things like The InfoGraphics show that can't get the general drawing of an Iow class battleship right. Many, even though going as much in depth as possible, (Kings and Generals, Baz Battles, History Marche for examples) do very little apart from research and publishing what they found out in a video. Other Channels like Invicta or Historia Civilis go quite in a detail explaining how ancient societies worked and possible reasons why they were like that. Because they explain why they were like that, an analogy can be made with the modern world. As well as you TiK. What makes the big difference between a 'proper' historian and a great YT one is how the system works. A proper historian usually teaches a course or takes part in conferences, while living of book sellings or paid by university. This means he needs to do one or two great things to be accepted and then he can engage in discussions with others. A YouTuber needs to constantly publish videos. This means he needs to constantly do research. And Animations. And uploading and so on. This means little time to get in depth exposure to different perspectives.
That's what big channels might need. A proper medium to exchange ideeas.
As for History Channel, I have to give them credit for two shows: Soviet Storm: WW2 in the east (Whenever I hear your Battlestorm seires I think of this title) and Battle 360. And there were some shows like Pawn Stars and Storage Wars which were quite engaging and might teach you some useless stuff like the market value of different things. But whent they started with how guys cut trees, yeah, I was done for it
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@Edax_Royeaux Having more tanks might actually result in lower morale. I mean, this is not a video game, it's real life. If you were to pick what you are going to drive tomorrow on a NASCAR or a F1 circuit would take a cardboard car simply because you were able to produce more of them or would you take a more expensive, safer and sturdier car?
A big, armored tank, with a big gun, makes the crew inside feel safer when pushing forward. A big, armoured tank being focused by enemy fire is also making the guys behind him feel safer twice: once because they are not being shot at, and second because the guy getting shot at seems to be able to keep holding it. The Germans did not come out with this change of views on their own. They saw how the events happened in France and on the Eastern Front. Soviet charges, supported by tanks and infantry would break down as soon as the first tank was blown to pieces. The others would panik, the infantry would stop, leaving the tanks going forward because they would be too afraid to push forward and so on. Similarly, when their own troops would come face to face with Heavies, like KVs, the German troops would often have to be detracked from their plans and create alternative routes to surround the enemy and destroy it, with no one wanting to engage it head on. Similarly, having heavy, more sturdier tanks has multiple positive effects. They would often be grouped in larger formations, so whoever got them by their side knew something serious was about to go down. They would be given a feeling of importance, of uniqueness and duty, which is on top of that of having a strong dude take the punches for you.
TL;DR Having large number of tanks feels great for morale in a parade, when you see them displayed in front of you. When the shit hits the fan, or the projectiles hit your armour, the soldiers quickly realise they are nothing but cannonfodder for the higher ups and would ultimately do what is, contextually, a sound decision, and try to bug the fuck out of the danger zone. And it's not just a perspective. This is literally the message such an approach dictates. Morale in battle is more important than morale in a parade
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Hey, TIK. Love the Battlestorm series. It's what brought me here and what is keeping me here.
Regarding the burnout problem, well, I am not a Youtuber, so I do not know the exact technical necessities for this, but have you thought about livestreams to fill in the gaps between Stalingrad videos during seasons? Like small QandAs. I imagine it's going to be hard to set up at first, but it might be a bit more efficient than holding a 3 hour recording session just for the video to be banned later by YouTube or later having to do a 2nd Q&A the same week because people did not understand what was said the first time. And then re-upload the livestream recording as a video of its own (if it's not saved by default -again, no ideea how YT actually works). Plus, this would ensure, what was the corporate newspeak for it?, a better relationship with the clients and more social integration?
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@jasontrauger8515 All of your arguments are idiotic and nazi appologetic.
'Plus, it shouldn't be lost on anyone that, even going back to before WW1, Russia wanted the Balkans because they desired a warm water port.' You know, there is something called the Crimean Peninsula. Or the Caucasus. They have been featured quite a lot in the news recently. They are warm water ports. Why would Russia want to go in the Balkans for a warm water port when they already have one? The 'wanting the Balkans' was an old thing meant to get rid of the Ottoman Empire and even so it was never seriously sought after. And, to be honest, many nations there, including my own, own their freedom because of this.
As for Lenin, the premise of the Communist revolutions call for a world wide revolution (due to the need of enhacing the resource pool). It has nothing to do with Russia.
I live in a post-communist country and I see its effects every day, but SERIOUSLY? Are you going to defend nazism because 'they are better than communism'? Seriously, just get the hell out of here.
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@Ph33NIXx 1. Falling back is not as easy as it sounds. One has to remember, a front is made of various strategic lines and points, not only fighting lines. You need to protect railways. You need to protect hills, roads, waterways etc. If you abandon those lines, you will suffer greatly in the long term, so you have to plug in the holes, otherwise, you will wake up, like it happened in this video and previously in the campaign, with trains casually passing through and enter a german sector of the railway and get two trains worth of soldiers literally mowed down without a chance to fight. If you fall back, you must make sure your communication and supply lines are not broken, otherwise, you will only dig your own grave.
2. About the Germans. Germans were always the better ones on the defensive. I cannot recall any important mistakes they made in that regard. Apart, from, well, ignoring their allies on the flanks at Stalingrad and letting themselves get encircled.
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