Comments by "Not Today" (@nottoday3817) on "TIKhistory"
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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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