Comments by "MarcosElMalo2" (@MarcosElMalo2) on "Military History not Visualized" channel.

  1. Would you rather fight a duck the size of a T-55 or 100 duck-sized T-55s?
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  2. It’s gamer spec fetishism. Gamers fixate on weapons and the specs of those weapons, which is never the full story. The stereotypical example is the comparison of tigers to shermans. It’s meaningless to discuss tank specs without considering the multi-level multi-system contexts, from the operating level to doctrine to logistics to manufacturing. One of the reasons I enjoy Bernard’s presentations is that he understands this fundamentally and is always reminding us of the bigger picture and role that equipment plays within that bigger picture.
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  3. Terrific interview. The Grugq is a great resource—I recommend checking out his Medium essays/slideshows. He has the expertise to get into gritty details, but more importantly, he has the wisdom to approach cybersecurity as security (that is, in the broader context of security). He’s really good at explaining the bigger picture to lay persons.
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  4. It’s for passing other tanks on the tankbahn.
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  5. Pretty much, right? The 101st considered them serious foes. Just the fact that they were (and considered themselves) elite soldiers confers an advantage in morale, and troops with high morale operate at a more effective level. What I am curious about is what the paratroopers thought about never again performing airborne operations after Crete.
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  6. True, but was holding territory a viable option? The Green Berets had an interesting strategy with the Montagnards, creating village based defensive forces, but it wasn’t scalable—MACV tried and failed with the model hamlet program. The underlying problem for counter-insurgency operations is political, the relationship between the government and the people. The insurgency had popular support for the most part (and would ruthlessly eliminate those who didn’t support them). The SVG lacked this support mostly because it’s leadership was so corrupt, going back to Diem.
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  7. It was the Last Tiger because it spent most of the war in the maintenance shed.
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  8. The Greatest Generation fought World War II to end hyperbole FOREVER.
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  9. Sometimes I type so fast I have to change out the space bar.
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  10. Some people grow on you, but other people grow more grating. I initially liked his energy, but he never changes gears.
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  11. Enemy tanks hate this one hack!
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  12. Well, Wehrmacht soldiers had to swear a loyalty oath to Hitler . . . Not to the country and certainly not to a constitution. That says a lot right there. And there are those in the U.S. that would put loyalty to a political leader over loyalty to the country.
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  13. Is your wargame an example of an intelligence misstep? Were they trying to determine Japanese naval capabilities in the exercise or was it serving a different purpose? Planners are the ones who analyze the “what if” questions. Intelligence analysts try to answer the “what is” questions.
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  14.  @orlock20  Yes. And the corruption of the military was a natural and inevitable outgrowth of the massive corruption permeating the Russian state and society. Which raises the question, if the society was not corrupt and therefore the military was not corrupt (and presumably strong), would the invasion of Ukraine have even been implemented? I’m suggesting that if Russian society, state, and military were healthy, and the military was capable of winning a war in Ukraine, they would not have invaded in the first place.
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  15. Underrated
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  16.  @ycplum7062  That’s the upshot. Unionized workers with an agreement with an employer to rehire based on seniority has nothing to do with what Russia is up to, trying to conceal its level of unemployment. It’s a false equivalence and/or downright ignorance about what the word “count” means.
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  17. Yeah, you’d need to change upholster to tailor in the translation. This is the challenge of jokes based on word play.
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  18. How is their strategic position excellent? They haven’t made significant gains since the first week of March—unless you want to count taking out the steel plant at Mariupol a significant gain. What do you mean that their approach to war is “very specific”? That seems like a meaningless phrase. Do you mean the Russian military doctrine of envelopment? When are we going to start seeing it? Much like the Nazis at Kursk, the Russians have allowed their adversaries plenty of time to prepare defenses in depth. And like the Soviet Union, the Ukrainians have used that time to build the defenses. Neither the Russians nor the Nazis managed to break through. Look up Operation Citadel.
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  19. I don’t think his employer will allow that.
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  20.  @numberboxgamer  it’s a wartime practice for the most part. Also, the military’s standards have been quite variable over time.
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  21. It was in the video. Leaders quickly migrated to new comms channels/platforms.
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  22. WielkaKasza the term is “Tankie” for people who defend Stalin until their dying breath. If there was justice in the world, that last breath would come in G.U.L.A.G.
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  23. History Gaming Verified Its a Nazi apologist, I imagine, hoping to unify white people against the non-white hordes. The lie these white supremacists want to perpetuate is that Hitler was forced to fight Britain and France against his will, when he really wanted to unite with them to fight the Slavs and the Asians. If the British were really “war mongering”, i.e., had Churchill been PM during the stages leading up to the invasion of Poland, I doubt Hitler would have had the ball (singular) to enter the Sudetenland.
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  24. Riceball01 The push into France was ongoing, but the full operation hadn’t started yet. Germany had a foothold in France, having flanked the Maginot line, but hadn’t penetrated deeply. Case Red wasn’t initiated until early June. The Dunkirk evacuations happened in late May. France did not surrender until 22 June, a little more than two weeks after Case Red kicked off.
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  25. There’s a Vietnam era sick joke about how the war could have been ended. 1) Put all the friendlies (non-communists) on boats and ships in the South China Sea 2) Bomb the country until all the communists are dead and not a tree is left standing 3) Sink all the boats and ships
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  26. Phil They were tough horses, but still delicious if properly marinated.
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  27. It’s a tracked vehicle. There are no tires to be filled with air under pressure, so no air pressure to measure. 😜 Oooooh, did you mean atmospheric pressure? That was covered.
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  28. This leads me to the question, “Why are there no cattle herding video games?”.
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  29. MattCellaneous Part of the perception problem is the History Channel and other low quality sources consider tanks outside of their contexts—tanks hardly ever operated alone, but were a part of a platoon of tanks and operated in a combined arms tactical environment. Another dimension they don’t focus on much is the supply chain and logistics. Five or ten reasonably armored and gunned tanks that are also mechanically reliable and easy to maintain (including parts availability) are better than one tank with excellent armor and the best gun that spends 33% or more of its time in the maintenance shed waiting for parts.
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  30.  @chaptermasterpedrokantor1623  Benny Hill relied on visual and physical comedy, which “translates” much more easily. I’m not aware of any French comedy beyond Jacque Tati/Monsieur Hurlot, which is also physical and visual. Mr. Bean is visual comedy. Buster Keaton, visual. Monty Python has been translated internationally, but not all of their material works in other languages. Again, the visual and physical humor is what works best. Edit: I realize now that you were just setting up your joke about Rammstein.
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  31. And I have to wonder how much his negligence in French Indochina exacerbated the French-Vietnamese conflict . . . which eventually leads us to the worst post-WWII U.S. general, Westmoreland.
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  32. Ma Cro There were two likely causes for the ridiculous quality control. 1. The soviet purge of engineers in the 1930s (many were shot and many more sent to perish in Siberian slave labor camps). 2. Corruption, where high ranking party members skimmed materials (to be sold on the black market) and substituted inferior materials or fake materials. Is it safe to speculate that the state organs got more serious about the corruption sometime in 1942? I don’t want to guess, but I bet one could learn a lot by examining Minister of Internal Affairs Lavrentiy Beria’s lists.
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  33. Interesting. I suppose you could then collect unemployment until you found work as a general in another army.
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  34. Heck, even rat hunting videos.
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  35. We are all hungry for the facts, but some of you are starving to death.
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  36. SmithN' Wesson Maybe watch the video, which contradicts your unsupported statement.
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  37.  @tomitiustritus6672  I think you are correct. Even if the threat from Belarusian forces is low (Belarus military seems disinclined to join Putin’s adventure and has made that very clear to Belarusian leadership), the flanks must still be protected. Furthermore, UKR could use these to equip Quick Reaction Forces in strategically important rear areas in case Russia wants to throw away more air assault and Spesnaz forces.
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  38.  @darkiee69  It’s not an APC, it’s an IFV. IFV doctrine is different from that used for APCs. In essence, an Infantry Fighting Vehicle is used like a light tank to support the infantry it carries. In some ways it is like an APC, in other ways it’s like a tank (albeit a very light one). APC doctrine is to safely move soldiers to wherever they’re needed. IFV doctrine is to move them there and help them fight.
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  39. If the Army had developed a heavy tank and named it the Yamato, it would have gotten built. 😄 But seriously, the decision to attack the U.S. came quite late. The Japanese might have felt that war was inevitable, but it was far off in the future until the oil embargo and shipping embargo undermined the war in China. The infrastructure to manufacture and supply medium and heavy tanks wasn’t developed because up until the attack on Pearl Harbor, it wasn’t necessary.
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  40. That needs explanation for those of us that don’t understand the cultural differences.
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  41. Did you say crowdfunding or krautfunding?
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  42. What was better? For what? For fun transportation, I prefer a motorcycle. For evading snooping code breakers, also a motorcycle.
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  43. Kay Sawn
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  44. Edax Have you seen Kelly’s Heroes? The Shermans are so weak they shoot paint rounds rather than AP.
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  45. Alexander Seven The agreement was that Poland would have democratic elections after the war, and thus reconstitute its government. The Soviets then fixed the elections. Churchill was up in arms about this (iirc, was already out of power), but Truman let it pass.
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  46. There are rational reasons beyond branch rivalries why a navy would want their own specific tank design for amphibious assault. I’m not sure of what justifications the Japanese Army had for building their own aircraft carrier.
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  47. Oh, look, Tailgunner Joe’s ghost.
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  48. DBallz11d lol, as if it never occurred to anyone before to cross breed horses and burros after millennia of domestication of both animals.
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  49. Operation Rings around Uranus. Not my anus.
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  50.  @looinrims  In 1941 Russian industrial capacity was moving at a fast pace—loaded into trains moving east.
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  51.  Admiral Tiberius  I was going to say, if I was a Russian tanker, I wouldn’t want the commissar to catch me extolling the virtues of my lend-lease tank made by dirty corrupt capitalists.
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  52. Torin Jones good point, but also the British strategy there was to GTFO as quickly as they could hand indochina back to the French.
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  53. Do small towns still have small town papers, though? Has Facebook taken over PTA potluck dinner announcements from the East Bumblefuck Herald?
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  54. Why is this the first time I’ve heard of Tang battles?
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  55. I quite agree with you, and I’ll go further. The “fall” of the Western Roman Empire was a slow process. Although there was a significant breakdown in the empire’s government and a reduction in trade, Roman society didn’t disappear. It’s important to note that in the centuries before the fall, Rome was already employing “barbarian” tribes in their armies, sometimes as discrete armies (large units) and sometimes as individual mercenaries. It’s hard to believe that the Germans and Gauls somehow forgot about logistics as Roman influence waned, while not forgetting about military engineering (as used in sieges and fortifications). The so-called barbarian tribes didn’t suddenly forget what they had learned from the Romans. There is no doubt that following the political and economic breakdown, society became more primitive, more agrarian, less urban. Cities became depopulated, people moved to the countryside and engaged in subsistence farming. A new political/economic system arose from these changes. There was less material wealth to support learning and preservation of knowledge (but it did continue to a lesser degree), less wealth to support arts and other material aspects of an urban culture.
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  56.  @freemanreed5228  I’m glad my joke question actually led to an interesting discussion about stand-off range. One thing I am curious is shooting past the theoretical maximum line of site. The earth’s curvature limits LOS to (roughly) 5,000 meters for a 6’ tall person. So going beyond 5,000 meters presents interesting challenges. Some are more or less solved, others aren’t but could be. To be clear, I’m thinking about projectile rounds, not guided rockets. What would you call this? Indirect direct-fire? Battlefields have been getting interesting, even without ducks, and they will continue to get more interesting.
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  57.  @wazza-au  I like the way you think.
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  58. Thanh Ho Viet I would have recognized that, but I didn’t understand what he was talking about until the comparison with Dien Bien Phu.
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  59. Twirlip Of The Mists These sorts of comparisons are of limited usefulness. The real differences were in doctrines and tactics, and the Germans’ were better.
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  60. That kubelwagon driver must have gotten exhausted.
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  61. Logisistics is an important subsystem or component of the war-making system. We conceptualize it as a discrete component, but it also blends (or bleeds) into other subsystems. Bernard touched on this: The Wehrmacht didn’t just have a problem of getting supplies to the front, but they had the even bigger problem of the soldiers keeping any sort of pace with the tanks. Even those infantry units equipped with trucks had to contend with terrible conditions of roads (which got even worse after rain). Without relatively equal mobility among the branches, combined arms doctrine falls apart. Envelopment strategies are not as effective (or doomed to failure) if the main force infantry is a day or more behind the tanks. Put another way, war-making system is a country’s war-making capacity. The German leadership was well aware of their limitations in raw materials. industrial capacity, and transport but at the same time chose to ignore it in their planning. They had a misplaced faith that it would somehow work itself out.
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  62.  @fulcrum2951  It should be. To some degree, it always is—most military leaders understand the importance of protecting your lines of communication and supply.
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  63. iirc, the non-aggression agreement was still secret at the time, including details such as the plan to divide up Poland. I imagine there are diplomatic documents somewhere to be studied to get a better idea of the Western Allies official stances toward the USSR at the time the Soviets occupied Eastern Poland. I’m certain that ambassadors and foreign ministers registered strong protests with the USSR diplomatic corps. “Look, buddy, we’re not kidding around. We protest your occupation of Poland in the STRONGEST possible terms.” Anyway, I’d love to see such documents. I’d like to see the Soviet response, as well. I wonder if the Soviet Union made “convincing” arguments that they were so afraid of the Germans that they needed to create a buffer by their invasion. It’s not so much that the English and French governments would completely believe the argument, but that it would give those governments a plausible excuse to avoid direct conflict with Stalin.
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  64. It’s a war of maneuver. It’s to be preferred over asymmetric warfare.
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  65. MarkTheMorose In Vietnam, only old people use Facebook.
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  66.  @ArchOfficial  I’m entertaining the idea that the security was so humiliatingly bad that this was a disinfo injection, but because the Kremlinites themselves couldn’t ascertain whether it was counterintelligence or real intelligence, they just put it back out there through RT. They thought it was more valuable to embarrass the German military and tip their hand because they couldn’t confirm it.
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  67. Pieter Steenkamp When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack.
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  68. LOL, just watched five seconds of an ad for collagen, which apparently will make my butt smooth.
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  69.  @johanmetreus1268  Removal of Asbestos is code for “removal of venomous snakes”. It’s to avoid panic. You would probably be fine getting into a vehicle after being told they removed 99% of the asbestos, but how would you feel if they told you they removed 99% of the venomous snakes? You’d probably want to know how many snakes were there in the first place.
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  70. Phylotoffer all the cheesy melodramatics aside, I was very impressed with the flashing red broken track indicator light.
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  71.  @johanmetreus1268  You are also incorrect. This vehicle is not an APC. Those calling it a tank are not completely wrong either. We refer to these sorts of vehicles as IFVs (Infantry Fighting Vehicles) and the doctrine for its use is different from that of an APC. An IFV brings soldiers into battle (like an APC) and then provides direct fire support (like a light tank) to those soldiers.
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  72.  @benwilson6145  Oh, no you didn’t.
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  73.  @jesper509  tapicero in Spanish
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  74. Modern writing? Just bad lazy writing. I’m not talking about just the dialogue, but the entire concept was hack.
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  75.  @wonderfalg  nicht fikmachen mit der fikkenwaffen. I worked in a theater wood shop and as an ongoing joke we spoke “shop German”.
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  76. TIL tanks don’t have airbags, hee hee.
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  77. Passing slow tanks on the tankbahn. Don’t forget to use the turn signals.
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  78. I’ll just leave this here: https://youtu.be/BYz1ADttI1g
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  79. You’re not considering the tank porn jag offs.
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  80. Good god, where to begin? To refresh your memory, the Japanese declared war and attacked U.S. Territory (starting with Hawaii, but including other places shortly after) and other allied territories, which the Japanese saw as a necessary step in securing control of the Pacific. It was a surprise attack, in case you’ve forgotten. (OK, that was sufficient sarcasm—I don’t really think you’re dumb, please don’t hate me.) It’s important to remember that, while the belligerents might not share land borders, there is something akin to that in the Pacific that you might think of as “frontiers”, i.e. the blurred/feathered edge of a power’s ability to project power (which gets weaker the further away it gets from its bases). If you think of it like this, you can see that the Philippines share a sea-frontier with Japan. It becomes a matter of how close together or far apart are the adversaries’ possessions, and those adversaries ability to project military power. Nevertheless, before hostilities commence, there is more or less free movement on the open sea. Germany’s quick declaration of war on the U.S. has seemed to me to be odd, though. I think it was inevitable that the U.S. would be drawn into the European conflict, but it probably happened much faster after a Germany declared war. Other than that, I object to your characterization of belligerents “happily declaring wars on each other”. Contrast this with the situation in Poland and Russia, where there wasn’t easy access across a shared border.
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  81. Gretownzu You’re misunderstanding the argument he’s trying to make. He’s saying that because the NVA breached the borders of a neutral nation, those neutral nations lost their neutral status. It’s illogical.
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  82. Blah b Not true. Why would you think that Cambodians would welcome with open arms Vietnamese incursions?
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  83. FlakeTillman And soccer goal nets.
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  84. Tanks are a useful component of Combined Arms, but not as useful if one of those arms are chopped off. Iraq lost all air support previous to any coalition forces setting foot in Iraq. Given this fact, plus the fact that Iraqi forces were fighting a defensive war, it makes sense that Iraqi tanks would get buried up to the turret to make a pillbox. As a pillbox, they maybe had a chance to take a shot. Maneuvering, they’d be taken out before coalition forces were even within range of their guns.
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  85.  @fuckgoogle2554  That’s the big joke, no? The big boss of a criminal syndicate plans the ultimate heist: to steal an entire country. But the plan falls apart when the big boss discovers that his criminal organization is riddled with . . . . criminals.
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  86. But did they go to great lengths to cover up the corruption? Or were the higher echelons just not asking questions because they were getting their skim? If Putin was getting 5 or 10% of the vig, where did he think it came from?
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  87.  @bjorngve  You were part of an effort to prevent Real War, and should be commended for your contribution, even if you were just a kid doing fuck-all.
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  88. Wow! I hadn’t seen this vid. Thank you, B, for sharing your personal experiences. My take away is this: despite the other negatives, national service forges social bonds that help hold a democratic society together. It can also help you get your shit squared away (become a responsible adult). I’m writing from the perspective of a U.S. expat in 2020, watching my society get ripped apart by a fascist political party, against a backdrop of the pandemic and environmental disasters. The bonds that held our democracy together, that united us as a people, are looking increasingly fragile.
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  89. Then you’re only half playing attention. ATGMs make tank operations much more dangerous, but so do rotary wing and fixed wing gunships. Tanks are still being used. Some of the tactics are changing and tank doctrine is adapting to new conditions. Tank design will also adapt, and then we will see anti-tank development adapt, and so on and so forth.
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  90. Who knew leaving the porch light on could be such a brilliant stratagem?!
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  91. There was a sitcom about a family that had immigrated to America from Munster. Oddly, the grandfather was from Transylvania.
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  92. Let’s see if we can identify what you got wrong, Gregor. “entire west” — no “turned Iraq into ashes” — no “Indiscriminate bombing for a full month” — no The other stuff seems irrelevant. Sadam Hussein could have avoided invasion of his country by honoring treaty requirements to allow for weapon inspections. He broke the treaty. Ukraine broke no treaty with Russia. It’s weird of you to bring up the terrain that the invaders faced. Maybe Putin will be a little more careful selecting who he invades, next time. But back to the first three errors. No the entire west was not part of Bush’s coalition. No, Iraq wasn’t turned into ash. No, there wasn’t indiscriminate bombing. There was an air campaign to seize and maintain air supremacy, to disrupt and destroy Iraqi command and control, and to degrade fighting capabilities of Iraqi units. The bombing was the opposite of indiscriminate. The coalition went to great pains not to hit civilians—it certainly never targeted them. There is plenty to criticize about the occupation of Iraq, including the rationale. But you didn’t do that. You ignorantly tried to use one invasion to make an other invasion more palatable, on a channel devoted to military history. What are your people thinking, sending you to do a man or woman’s work? If you are any indication of the quality of soldier recruited by the Russians and thrown into battle, you’re confirming everything in the video.
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  93.  @ArchOfficial  It’s part of the myth that the U.S. killed a million civilians in Iraq. No, the civilians were killed by insurgents, blowing up mosques and stuff. The U.S. bears responsibility for unleashing the forces of sectarian violence, but very little civilian blood was shed by coalition forces.
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  94. You could argue that, but you’d need to make up a different definition of encirclement that didn’t include, uh, circles. Besieged or pinned down might be better words to use than to try and torture the word “encirclement” into submission. You mention Operation Uranus, which is an actual encirclement—German forces were surrounded completely and cut off, unable to move. Contrast this with how you described the situation of the Russians: they were not trapped on one side of the river, and were able to move back and forth across the river. If you’re not trapped, you’re not really encircled.
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  95. It’s been decades since I read them, but I do remember enjoying Theodore White’s books very much. White was a war correspondent that was on the ground in China during WWII.
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  96. If you could develop viagra for tanks, you’d have defense contracts up the wazoo.
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  97. Not to mention the logistical requirements of getting those reinforcements and then supplying them during the encirclement attempt. But if one looks at the map, one doesn’t really need to think to hard about this. Stalingrad was at one end of a salient, a salient which was later broken and engulfed when the Russians did their own encirclement. You are correct to point out the weaknesses on the flanks. Basically, the Germans could have used another Army Group (and sufficient supplies and transportation ) to take Stalingrad, hold it, and cut off the Caucuses.
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