Comments by "Itinerant Patriot" (@itinerantpatriot1196) on "Imperial War Museums" channel.

Germany's fate was sealed in August 1914 when the Kaiser decided Germany needed to come up in the world. His military took it from there. In 1939 the fight continued but the script was flipped a bit. The goal remained the same this time around. Hitler decided Germany needed to come up in the world but instead of his military taking the lead Hitler drove the madness and his military went along for the ride. Most of them knew it was a lost cause, especially after they invaded the Soviet Union, but enough of them believed in the cause to get a lot of people killed. Some just liked killing. But it's one thing to take all that land, it's quite another to hold it. And when Hitler declared war on the U.S. the game was truly up. So tragic. The 20th Century is littered with hundreds of millions of corpses, people who died as a result of other people trying to create a new world and make their ideology the ideology.
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I saw a retired Blackbird years ago and it is an impressive aircraft to look at. But it was doomed from the start. Satellites were the future and the camera's kept getting better. In that sense the SR-71 was a bit like the battleship, another sturdy craft that got left behind during the technology wars of the 20th Century but a piece of history people still have a great deal of nostalgia for. All that aside, it was cool having a plane that could flat out haul-ass. Kind of like that sports car you may have had as a kid. You knew it was a blast to drive but eventually it would have to be traded in for a minivan once the Mrs. started having babies. Oh well, I can only imagine what flying at Mach-3 + must feel like. Hat-tip to all the folks who have been fortunate enough to experience it. Still, as an old C-130 crew chief I'll take my Herc and it's plodding turbo-prop engines any day. But then again I hear they crammed that beautiful bird with a buncha fly-by-wire technology as well. Oh well. Call me a knuckle-dragger but I miss the days when an aircraft mechanic was more than a box swapper and when planes like the Blackbird and the Herc had their own unique personalities.
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The problem with Russia is there's so much of it. Even if Hitler had managed to knock Stalin and his criminal regime off their perch, what in the hell was he going to do with the place? How was he going manage it? Or was he just planning on killing everyone? Hitler lost the minute he decided to invade. Stalin got bailed out early by Zhukov who happened to be lucky enough to be stationed fare enough away from the purge's. Zhukov was the Russian Ulysses S. Grant. He would just keep throwing guys at the Germans until he won.
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I'm glad they restored that aircraft to its original mission configuration. Some may take this the wrong way, but it was built to bring destruction to the enemy, not fly around a rich guy, or even a group with a noble purpose. I worked on military aircraft for many years (the good old C-130 Herc) and I can tell you, they have their own personalities (at least the older ones did). Again, some may not get it, but if you've worked with the same bird night after night you get to know its quirks and habits and how to deal with them in ways not always found in the technical orders. The men of the 8th Army Air Force were true heroes. That outfit had the highest casualty rate of any group during the war and they accounted for more than half of all Air Force losses during that timeframe. To put it into further perspective, they lost more men than the Marines. Before the 25-mission rule went into effect the flyers knew it was just a matter of time before their number came up. Yet they kept at it. They kept bombing in the day in spite of the warnings of the British because in their way of thinking daylight bombing offered the best chance of success. While I served, I was fortunate enough to speak with several flyers who served with the 8th and they were all humble guys who just did a job that needed doing. Most are gone now, but if you are ever fortunate enough to meet one, give him your thanks. Those men, and their brothers and sisters in arms from all allied branches and nations truly did save western civilization.
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So the Brits and the French lie to the locals, lie to the people they want money from, secretly divide up the region in half-ass fashion, stir up all kinds of animosity and...in the end everyone hates America. Sounds about right. I like mayonnaise and The Beatles, beyond that...
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Saying nobody expected a war in 1914 is not accurate. Europe had been teetering on the brink for quite some time and people spoke openly about the inevitability of war at some point, like a relief valve popping due to too much pressure being exerted on it. What they didn't anticipate was the mass causalities inflicted as a result of tactics not keeping pace with technology. The major powers witnessed what unfolded in the American Civil war a half century earlier but they learned the wrong lessons. As for who started it, I pin most of it on Austria-Hungary and Russia but as I say, the other powers like France and Germany were itching for a fight and it was going to happen at some point before 1920. Too much bad blood and too many guns pointed at each other. It was the seminal event of the 20th Century and we are still dealing with the aftermath today. War is hell and that was one helluva war.
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The thing about the Sudetenland crisis is it could have led to Hitler's defeat if Chamberlain had stayed out of it entirely. The German people weren't on board for war and Hitler's generals were prepared to overthrow the Führer, expecting the Czechs, who had a decent military, to put up stubborn resistance. If the war went badly they felt the public would have been on board or at least stayed largely neutral during a coup. They communicated as much to British intelligence, telling them to ignore Mussolini's call for a summit. But Chamberlain had it in his head that he could prevent war and he truly believed if Hitler was able to restore the German border to what it was prior to WWI that he would be placated, at least long enough for Britain and France to arm up properly. For his part, Hitler was pissed when Mussolini recommended a peace conference. He was ready to go to war and believed the Sudetenland Germans would rise up and help him defeat the Czechs. The real shame of it is, if they could have put their differences aside, and if they would have read the tea-leaves correctly, the Czechs and Poles could have entered into an alliance, forcing Hitler to fight a two front war right off the bat. That would have given the generals all the impetus they needed to stage their coup. Unfortunately, after Munich, Hitler's popularity was through the roof and the generals willing to stage a coup lost their heart. We all know what happened next. One of history's great what if's I suppose.
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They used it for the simplest reason of all, it was there. Like Truman said when told there were scientists who objected to it being used: "What the hell did they think we built it for?" There has been a lot of revisionist history written about Truman struggling with the decision to drop the bomb and Oppenheimer waxing philosophically and thinking about Hindu scripture when it was tested ("Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds"). Horse puckey! Oppenheimer came up with that bit of fantasy years later during a television interview. According to General Leslie Groves who was in charge of the project and was there when the Trinity test took place, everyone there was blown away by the thing and pleased as punch that they had managed to pull it off. Truman said he slept like a baby after giving the go ahead to use it. If the war had gone on and we were able to build more in time I'm quite certain he would have used those as well. There was no way he was going to stand in front of the American public and say he let U.S. sailors, soldiers, and marines die on those Japanese beaches because he was afraid of killing civilians. The gloves were off long before that. The fire bombing of Tokyo killed more people than the A-Bomb's did. Total war was a reality and there was no turning back.
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I recall reading an account of Ike taking Monty on a tour of the battlefield at Gettysburg after his presidency. Ike showed Monty the open ground Pickett's Charge had to cover and asked him what he thought of the decision to order the charge. Monty responded that had he ordered such a futile and poorly planned out attack during WWII Ike would have been well within his rights to fire him on the spot. I wonder if Ike saw the irony in Monty's statement since Monty's ego would never allow him to link such a comment with Operation Market Garden. But, Monty wasn't the only general in that war who made some bad tactical decisions. I listened to a former Marine who said if he would have been able to get his hands on the commanding general who ordered him and his platoon onto the beach at Tarawa he would have spent the rest of his short life on death row at Leavenworth. At the end of the day though the Nazi's were defeated but it was always going to be slog. Ask the Russians about that reality.
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The French were great when it came to planning for the previous war and the Germans had a tendency to see the world as they wanted it to be, not as it was. These patterns continued into WWII with the Maginot Line and Hitler's belief that America was a country of degenerates who could be dismissed out of hand.
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Saying the Japanese didn't consider the depot facilities isn't exactly correct. A third wave intended to take out those facilities was called off by the Admiral on the spot. He was satisfied with the damage they had inflicted and since he didn't know where the U.S. carriers were he was afraid of his carriers being vulnerable to a strong counter attack, basically what happened six months later at Midway. I do like that the creator of this video didn't make a big deal out of Yamamoto's remark about awakening a sleeping giant as a result of the sneak attack. Unlike the way revisionist historians have built him up, Yamamoto had little regard for the U.S. He believed we lacked the stomach for a fight and would sue for peace if Japan was able to get a strong foothold in the Pacific. He threatened to resign if the militarists didn't approve his attack on Pearl Harbor. He had an all or nothing mentality and like Robert E, Lee, was always looking for the one big knockout engagement. He paid the same price Lee paid at Gettysburg when he got his ass handed to him at Midway. Worse than losing the carriers, he lost most of his experienced fighter and bomber pilots. Ships can be rebuilt, but those pilots were indispensable. Like Hirohito, Yamamoto got a remake from the historians and analysts after WWII because we needed them as an ally against the Soviets during the Cold War. He wasn't the genius everyone made him out to be. Winners write history though. Such is life.
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