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.
Second
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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