Comments by "Itinerant Patriot" (@itinerantpatriot1196) on "Henry Stewart History" channel.

  1. WWI wasn't a spontaneous event triggered by an assassination as some make it out to be. Bad blood between Germany and France over the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 became more toxic over time. There were crises popping up all over in Morocco, Bosnia, even the Japanese-Russo War was a harbinger of bigger things to come. People had been talking about the inevitability of war for a while in most of the countries in Europe, definitely in the cafe's, colleges, and political bodies of the main players. France hated Germany, Germany envied Britain, Austria-Hungary feared decline, Russia feared the people, The Ottoman's were dying, and the Brits looked at Germany with a wary eye and tried to figure out how to keep the peace and maintain the proper balance of power on the continent. Too many competing forces acting at the same point in time. And while observers had seen what happens when new technology butts heads with old tactics and the futility of frontal assaults against fortified trenches during the American Civil War they failed to learn the proper lessons from that conflict. Everyone thought the thing would be over in a few months and some sort of new order or stability would be achieved, though they were kinda sketchy on the details. So when you ask the question: "Who was truly to blame?" The answer is everyone, though it was Satan who set the chessboard and watched as a century he could truly call his own came to life.
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  2. The die may not have been cast in 1936 when the Germans reoccupied the Rhineland but it certainly set the stage for future events. It was a major bluff on Hitler's part and he had instructed his commanders to beat feet if they got any pushback from the French. But they didn't get any pushback. That proved to Hitler that he could get away with being a bully and it was an indication that the élan spirit of the French army was dead. Building the Maginot Line was proof that France was preparing to fight the last war and the Nazi's...well, they had decided fighting the last war was a bad idea for them. The French weren't the only p*ssies around at that time, but they were among the biggest. I don't agree with Stalin's position on much but he had a point about not letting the French have a hand in carving up Germany. He felt they hadn't earned that right and while you could argue the point, it's not without merit.
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  3. Okay, there are some valid points made here but there are major flaws in most of them that just could never be overcome. The first is the notion that Germany was going to be able to avoid a war with the U.S. In order for that to happen, Hitler would have had to stopped fighting everyone and pulled his armies back to Germany. FDR was hellbent on fighting the Germans, by hook or crook, and if the Japanese hadn't attacked some other incident in the Atlantic would have triggered it. The bit about treating the Eastern Europeans better, especially the Ukrainians, holds the most water except the Nazi's couldn't help themselves. The idea that the people in the East were subhuman had been drilled into the heads of the German soldiers since they were kids in the early and mid 1930s. For Hitler to change his tune at that point, after already blowing people's minds with his Soviet non-aggression pact would have been an ideological bridge too far. There was no way the Führer was going to hold back. He called for a war of annihilation right off the bat and he was going to have it. That land was meant for German's in his eyes and that meant depopulating the area. Otherwise, what's the point of the war? It would be like buying a car in the Amazon Rain Forrest. You could say you have a car but without any roads what's the point of owning it. Finally, Japan was just as racially driven as Germany. It wasn't in their cultural DNA to get too cozy with any European power. They had been in the business of cleaning out imperial powers and taking over as the new landlords for quite some time. Everyone who wasn't Japanese was inferior, including other Oriental races. No way they were going to fight along side white folks, not at that point in their history. Like the German soldiers had been taught to hate Eastern Europeans, Japanese soldiers had been taught to hate all imperial powers. That BS line they were selling the people in the lands they conquered; "We are clearing out the Europeans and Americans and creating a prosperity sphere in the East for everyone to share in" was jut that, BS. Of course nobody outside of Japan bought that nonsense but it didn't stop them from selling it. If they were suddenly fighting alongside whitey, a whole bunch of Japanese soldiers and civilians would have said WTF. I'm not a big fan of counterfactuals so maybe that colors my views, but some things just can't be overcome. Anyway, it was an interesting video and at least the arguments were well developed for the most part.
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  4. The claim that the Soviets didn't receive U.S. support is false. Money and material through the Lend-Lease program began in November of 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor had occurred. Prior to that the U.S. floated a 50-million dollar loan to the USSR, more than one-billion in today's money. Also, capturing Moscow wouldn't have changed Soviet resolve. Plans were in place for the government to move and most of the major factories had already beat feat and headed beyond the Urals at that point. Hitler would have gotten as much from capturing Moscow as Napoleon had, squadoosh. The Russians would have torched anything of value and to borrow from Dr. Seuss, they would have taken the last can of who-hash with them on the way out the door. Taking Moscow wouldn't have changed the reality that there were scores of battle-tested troops in the East led by generals who knew what they were doing and row after row of T-34 tanks waiting on the other side. And the morale value of taking capitals is old-style thinking and highly overrated. You'd think the fall of Philadelphia in 1777 and the burning of the White House in 1814 would have taught the world that much. Churchill engaged in the same type of thinking on the Allied side but luckily Ike was more concerned with defeating German forces than playing the old imperial game of capture the flag in 1945. But I digress. I'm willing to listen to more but I'm at the 15-minute mark and so far I'm not convinced. We'll see. I'm not much on counterfactuals but I try to keep an open mind.
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