Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Military History Visualized"
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I guess it is a common flaw to appoint people on other grounds than competence. Hitler wanted loyal people in his administration - such as early party members who joined the nazi party before it became popular, and the earlier someone joined the party the more trust did he have for them.
Ingvar Kampfrad (the founder of IKEA) appointed chiefs not according to skill or qualifications, but instead he hired people who were just like himself - white males from the countryside in the little province named Småland - because he felt most trust in those kinds of persons, despite they were lacking in competence and English skills to run such a huge company.
And Napoleon trusted his family members - which he made rulers over the countries he conquered. And everyone kissed his ass, but after 1812 with the defeat in Russia everyone just betrayed him and stabbed him in his back.
Even his own family that he have helped so much.
His empire fell apart. But his legacy is enormous. The metric system, the system of adresses with even and uneven numbers on each side of the street was all thanks to him. He radically modernized the law system across Europe for the better. He helped to destroy serfdom, and thereby laid the foundation for the democratic system in Europe.
He did of course do bad things to like brining back slavery in the west indies (not so much freedom, equality and brotherhood there), but overall did he radically modernize Europe.
And he also ended the Holy Roman empire among other things. He built roads with oaks on the sides, he made a census in Egypt and promoted science.
So despite all bad sides, I still think that this man made more good to humanity than bad.
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The First world war proved that Germany had the best army in the world. The Austro-Hungrian army lost all their core units in 3 lost battles against the Russians the first months of the war, and the Ottomans wasted much of their offensive power with the stupid Armenia winteroffensive.
And after that Germany had to fight the war mostly by herself, since her allies had exhausted almost all their offensive capabilities. But even so, Germany almost got close at winning the war entirely by herself. She knocked out Serbia from the war, and then Russia and Romania, and then Italy, and then also almost Belgium, France and Britain - which were only saved by the arrival by American troops in 1918.
So I would say that the Army of the Kaiser was a much more impressive creation than the Wehrmacht. But in the end it would lose the war anyways because it didn't enough resources to keep on fighting, and the leadership also had some useless full retards in command as in all other armies at that time.
Falkenhayn and his waste of a million men at Verdun is probably the best example. I think that Hitlers anti-monarchist anti-traditionalist attitudes made him an enemy of the old guard within the German army, which led him to fire all the old retards and put new fresh minds in the positions of power.
And without Hitler, there would never had been any great career for Guderian, Manstein, von Paulus and others.
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1. Japan could not get the resources it needed for its own industry. So it needed to steal them from other Asian countries, and Japan did not have enough transport ships to transport all plunder to Japan.
2. Japan was technologically inferior to America and the early victories was won much thanks to outdated equipment the Americans had. But soon things changed and America would get superior aircrafts, and American tanks would outclass all armour the Japanese had. And the Americans had access to the Japanese codes.
Winning in the Philippines against America might be easy when you have the element of surprise and fight a lightly equiped enemy. But fighting without the element of surprise against an enemy with superior tanks is much harder.
3. The Japanese army was involved in wars on multiple fronts against Vietminh, China, Russia, Australia, Britain and the USA. And troops were spread out on so many islands that there was not enough transport ships to supply them - especially not when the industry also wanted the same transport ships so that oil, aluminium, coal, copper, rubber, cotton, sugar, rice and other things could be shipped to Japan.
4. America produced more aircrafts in 1943 than Japan did during the entire war (including the years of war they fought in China). And the American planes were also much better than the old outdated junk the japanese had. And America had plenty of oil and trained pilots, while japan did not.
5. Even if Midway had ended in a total victory for Japan, it would hardly change anything. Japan would never been able to take Australia, India or California in 1942 anyways. Japan was already overextended and could at best only spend their time to consolidate their earlier gains.
But meanwhile would America build up a new fleet in the pacific. And British and American ships would be transfered from the Atlantic and the mediterranean in the meanwhile to stabilize the situation.
6. America realized that the war was won in 1943 so they stepped down military production even before the war ended. Had the Japanese won at Midway, then America would probably have increased military production instead of decreasing it.
And we could have seen Montana class battleships become reality - instead of being disbanded before they could enter service, as what really happened.
7. The co-operation between Japan and the Axis powers were nearly non-existant. While the allies had superior co-operation and huge land masses of resources. Japan might have 5 million men in China. But so what?
Those men were poorly equiped 3rd world infantry. And good fighting morale only go so far when you have to fight against Russian troops with IS2 and ISU152 tank support. Or American troops with superior amounts of artillery and tank support and excellent radios. American troops were better fed, they had more ammo to waste, they had better firearms. And Americas population was much larger than Japans. USA had 12 million men in uniform and they could easily call upon even more millions of manpower if needed to defeat a crappy japanese army.
But I doubt America would even bother. They would just use artillery, airpower and armour instead of wasting their own blood in fighting the japanese. Or give China or Russia some surplus weapons to deal with the japs.
Even junk like M3 Lee and Stuart tanks would outclass most of the armour Japan had in 1944 and 1945. Indeed, Japan did barely have any tank support at all.
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@michaelritzen8138
They would atleast not have fared any worse by not declaring war. I think Hitler made a big mistake even if we would assume that USA would join the war at a later point.
Hitler had units tied up in France which he could have used on the eastern front. And a 20 extra divisions could have been enough to prevent the Stalingrad disaster from happening.
And maybe he then would have been able to win the 1942 campaign then and basicly knocking USSR out of the war.
I also think that Roosevelt would have been very limited in the aid he could have given the USSR. Had USA not been at war with Germany it could have been politically difficult to give away as much aid as they did irl.
So the lend lease help would then have been small and not very significant - just as it was in 1941 and 1942.
It is possible that USSR still would have been able to defeat the Axis, but on the other hand would it also be very possible for Hitler to have defeated Russia.
Losing southern Russia would have been devastating to the Russian war effort, and the economy could have fallen apart like it did in 1917,
And the manpower shortages would become more of a problem for Russia. Germany could to some extent compensate their lost men by better weapons and more firepower. And a high GDP per capita of rich countries allows them to replace male workers with machines and tractors to a larger extent than a poor country like Russia. The Russian economy worked impressingly and surprisingly well during the war, and 80% of the country's GDP was directed towards the war effort - which is an extremely high number which normally only rich countries are able to achieve. Russia managed to achieve this by careful planning before the war, and the country had stored up vital resources before the war so a crash like 1917 due to resource shortages and price inflation would not happen. But this way of doing things could not work forever... and by late 1942 were Russia starting to running low on many vital resources. And if the resourced had runned out, then the industrial output would have fallen down like a rock. And Russia would have been forced into a dilemma - should they put more men in agriculture or mining? or should they put them in industry instead? or should they be put into the military instead?
All 3 branches desperatly needed more manpower at this very important time period during the war. And more men in the economy would have meant less men for the military. And more men in the military would have meant less men in the economy, and weapons lost in battle would become more difficult to replace.
So by 1942 I think it seems like Russia was in a more dire situation than Germany, despite Germany had not even started full rationing and mobilized its women for industrial work.
Without gigantic amounts of lend-lease and the resources from southern Russia it seems like Russia would have been forced to fight a terrible up-hill battle for the rest of the war. And Britain would not have been able to do much to liberate continental Europe on its own.
Russia had lost its entire airforce in 1941 and the army had lost millions of men, and large amounts of manpower reserves and industrial centers had also been lost to the Germans. So the war had already started bad for the Russians. They had lost 80% of their alumnium production to the Germans at the start of the war, and that was a hard blow to Russias ability to make aircrafts.
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They would probably have a hard time. Industrial countries does have an advantage - like the North had in the American Civil War. And in world war 1 Russia was suffering from a cronic shortage of rifles, guns - and most of all: Ammunition.
Building up an industry is something that takes time. At best it would normally take 15-30 years for a country to industrialize. Not only do you need a factory, you also need to import tools and machinery and modern production technologies in order to be able to build modern tanks, planes, cruise missiles and submarines.... You will also have to solve the problem, that a country that does not do any manufacturing will not get any foreign currency to pay for all imports.
And even if you somehow get some imports and manage to steal a perfect blueprint of the latest fighter jet from the pentagon, you will not be able to copy it unless you got skilled workers and years of technological know-how within the aircraft producers in your country.
Allow me to quote economic proffessor Ha Joon Chang:
"When Germany became as poor as Peru and Mexico right after the Second World War, no one suggested that it should be reclassified as a developing country, because people knew that it still had command over technological, organizational and institutional knowledge that had made it one of the most formidable industrial powers before the war."
So as you see, building up technological know-how, organizatinal skills, and well-functioning institutions takes a long time. And neighter Peru or Mexico have catched and are as rich as Germany today despite their GDP was roughly the same size in 1945.
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"Now do a video explaining why Vietnam had NO chance in the Vietnam war"
While I agree that economic power in itself cannot determine the outcome of a war, I do however think that it can say a lot about the likelyhood of a certain outcome.
Usally does an industrial country defeat an unindustrial economy - as with for example the American civil war.
In the case of Japan vs USA I would say that USA had such a crushing superior industrial strenght that it more likely to win on the lottery than seeing Japan winning a war against USA while simultanously fighting wars against China, Russia and the British empire.
The reason why the Vietnam war ended in a failure for America was because they failed to create any realistic war goals. The thought that body counts was a goal in itself to win the war - but that is just a stupid idea of economifying warfare.
War is not about killing enemies in a faster rate than they can be replaced. Only idiots think that.
Both the American military and political leadership lacked basic understanding what war is. And they also thought that winning wars by economic means would be enough - because WWII was much won that way, as they saw it.
But Vietnam was not some stupid economic game, and nor could the enemy be understood by game theory. Ho Chi-Minh was not a typical Communist, even if the CIA and the political leadership of America thought so.
Ho Chi-Minh was most of all a nationalist. And after that he was a democrat. And after that he was a leftwinger. Indeed, he even got support from the CIA when Vietminh fought a guerilla war against Japan and was seen as a close friend to America.
But when the war with Japan ended things changed, because France wanted their colony back while Ho Chi Minh wanted independence for Vietnam. And USA had to pick side, and choosed to support France over some unimportant unknown farmer in Vietnam. So when America refused to sell him arms, he had to turn to the Chinease communists instead to get weapons - and after that he was begun to be seen as a Communist by America, despite all what he really wanted was a unified independent Vietnam with democratic rule. And only after the west had turned against him did he go into the Communist camp.
The next big mistake by America was to back the unpopular, despotic and corrupt regime in South Vietnam after the French indo-China war had ended.
This South-Vietnamese regime was hated by almost everyone for many different reasons. But once again did America have this ignorant view that it was simply a battle between Communism and liberal-democratic capitalism.
So America had no understanding for their enemy and how they could win over the people to their side.
The people in Vietnam fought for many other reasons than to promote communism. Poor farmers hated rich landlords that stole 80% of their incomes and treated them like medieval serfs. Some people hated the corruption and the power abuse of the rich landlord class that ruled South Vietnam. Some people hate the south Vietnamease regime because it was ruled by a catholic leadership (Ngo Dinh Diem). And some people were just nationalists that wanted to unify both Vietnams into a single country. And some minority people had been mistreated by the South Vietnamase government and therefore took up arms against it.
So the perhaps easiest way for America to win the Vietnam war would have been to throw the corrupt South-Vietnamease government under the bus and force the ruling class in Vietnam to agree to a landreform so all poor Vietnamese farmers could get their own piece of land to farm so they wouldn't have to be treated as slaves by some landowner.
But America could not agree to this. If they twisted the arms of their allies they could become accused of US-imperialism, and that would look very bad to the world. America needed allies in the Cold war, so they rather kept the impopular South Vietnamease regime in place and fought a long war to try to keep it in power.
But America lacked any ideas how to win this war. They thought that "body counts" would be the way to go. But the American solidiers didn't fail to see the insanity of this stupid doctrine that the military leadership promoted.
Hamburger hill was captured from Vietnamease troops after heavy casualties, but as soon as the hill was captured the Americans abandoned this hill - because the body count job had been done. And only after a few months did the Vietnamease retake the hill again.
So all the losses of lives had been for nothing. American solidiers had died for nothing while while high ranking personnel got their medals for wasting their own mens lives.
The solidiers made something akin to a working class revolt against their superiors. And fragging and threats became commonplace, so that American unit leaders would know that they will have a hadgrenade thrown at them and be killed by their own troops if they ever tried to waste their solidiers lives in pointless attacks.
So by 1970 had the fighting morale of US Army fallen apart and the leadership had lost control, and no American solidier wanted to be the last man to die in this pointless war. Corruption was rampant in South Vietnam where South Vietnamese generals sold military equpiment on the black market that America had given them. Mortars, grenades, rifles and even tanks could be bought by anyone.. and American troops started to find lots of American weapons in the hands of Vietcong. And drug sales were also a part of this rotten economy.
America had won the battles in the tet-offensive and regained control over the cities. But on the other hand had the large vietnamease countryside all been lost to the enemy. And people had lost trust in all the fake statistics produced by the military about everything from body counts to sorties flown - as a measurement of progress and effictiveness.
People lied about everything either to get promotions or to get home so they could survive the war. And even the accounting metodology idea in itself was flawed. If a dead vietnamese body was found after a battle, then both the infantry, the artillery and airpower would want to claim it as their kill - so there would be no complaints about their unit not fullfilling their monthly quota of kills, and that they therefore next month would be sent out to much more dangerous missions so the monthly kill quota could be boosted.
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The late 1800s was an age when nationalism was taken to the extreme, not just by Germany but by all countries. And Germany was a young country that only came into being very lately (1871), so Germany had to try to from a unifying thing... all the small different German Kingdoms felt like one people rather than as feeling as Bavarians, Prussians, Wurtembergers, Saxons, and Hessians in the first hand. So nationalism was drived into high gear, and the military was a way to achive this. With one military parade after another, all flag waving, all talk abour Germanys long and proud military traditions, and all beautiful patriotic songs and military marches were played non-stop such as Preußens Gloria, Die wacht Am Rhein and Oh Deutschland hoch in ehren.
The founding father of Germany - Otto von Bismarck, also tried to unify the German people by bring it togheter against a common enemy. And the Germans was taught to fear the French and Russians in order unifying the country against a common threat, and appealing to the feelings of all Germans to protect their loved fatherland.
But the side affect from this fear was that Germany went a little bit paranoid, and they thought they needed to maintain a strong military to protect against all outer threats.
And later on would the retarded Kaiser Wilhelm II take power, and he never understood how to play this game of diplomacy and didn't understand politics. He was a clumby arrogant idiot, and he went into collision course with France, Russia and England. He decided to build a huge navy for his country after reading a book that said that the country that dominates the seas would control the world. And his hunger for national prestige also contributed to this, as well as the fear the German military had about having too many socialist urban recruits in the Army, so defence spending was rather put into the navy instead.
But that just made Britain feeling threatened by Germany, and created a naval power arms race between Germany and Britain.
But the German army was great as well in 1914. And much money had been thrown into the military for prestigious reasons, like in all other countries. And the industrial revolution had also allowed massproduced weapons and uniforms.. so massarmies was also possible for the first time. And the German army had started to use their grey uniforms for all German states in 1912 as another step to unifying the country.
And the first world war was a German national trauma, that helped to bring togheter the country. But in other ways it also created division.. many became tired of the German Kaiser and demanded that he should abdicate in order to save his country from further pains in 1918. At first he refused, but soon he was kind of forced to accept it.
Many Germans then dreamt back to the days of the monarchy. And other Germans felt like their military was about to win the war - but the civilian protesters let the victorious army down (much like many Americans look upon their war in Vietnam).
The Versaille treaty forbade Germany to have a strong military and territory was lost and economic compensation would be paid to Germanys enemies. So it was a hard peace. And then Hitler came some decades later, and fixed the economy took back lost land and gave germans pride and jobs. And the military power was being restored with great public support.
And the old tradition of unifying the country by cermonies, parades, patriotic music and culture and creating fear of a foreign enemy was brought up again. Hindenburgs funeral became televised as a great ceremony over a national hero. And likewise was the veterans day and the nazi party rallys made into great military spectacles. To impress foreign allies and frighten the allies from invading Germany. And to create an image to the German people and the world that people supported Hitler whole heartedly, and it created a cult of personality. Even today his propaganda movies are intoxicating. But I guess they give the wrong impression about his regime... changeing your countrys national anthem to contain the word Hitler seems a bit to egotiscial. And likewise the idea of making a party flag into a national flag, and even incorparate it into military standards. And having the soliders swear an oath directly to Hitler. And name a youth organization after himself....... all this after just some years in power. And on propaganda movies, this all seem so natural, but I wonder what the average German felt about all this new things.
Sorry for a long post.
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The German solidier wasn't any better. I would say that their training and tactics was the thing that made them superb opponent until the last days of the war in 1945.
The German army was well equiped and well organized in 1914. For decades the Germans had planned the Schlieffen Plan in to the tinyiest detail and made time tables for all trains carrying troops and supplies.
And even when millions of men and supplies should be supplied on Belgiums tiny roads and bridges they never got any traffic jams, becasue everything had been carefully planned and the Prussian burecracy was the most effiecent of all bureucratic machinerys. Germany had also studied the the Russo-japanease war and the Boer war and well learned the lessons, so German troops had their grey uniforms that blended in with terrain superbly while the french had their red-blue uniforms and suffered enormous losses, before they realized their mistake.
The German army also had the largest proportion of engineers, and every solider was equiped with a spade and much digging was included in their military education of their troops.
While the french had no digging at all in their military education. The British army had learned their lesson about the value of camouflage and digging in, so they performed better than any of the allied Armies. Even the Russians that should have learned more from their was with Japan.
The German army also had other strenghts, which would later on also become valueable in world war II. They developed new weapons and tactics, because Germany had no chance of winning a long war of attrition, so they had to try to come up with new ways of defeating their enemy so they could win fast. They tried planes, uboats, flamethrowers, submachine guns, poison gas, terrorbombings with zeppelins.. you name it. But they also turned all ideas on their heads, and instead of bombarding the same area for a week with a million shells and lead hundred of thousands of men forward by orders from the Highest Commander in chief, the Germans did the opposite. They made a short intensive bombardment to soften up their enemy and then launched a surprise attack with a small group of men that was armed with special weapons, body armour, handgrenades, flamethrowers and submachine guns. And those men could make their own decisions at the frontline instead of constantly awaiting orders from Headquarters.
And the best men was picked for this fighting teams called "Stosstruppen" and gived extra training in infiltration tactics.
And they proved very succesful in defeating their enemies, the first tank offensive the allied launched managed to win lots of ground from the Germans, so they decided to make a counterattack with their Stosstruppen and they managed to not only to win back all lost ground but also push back the allies beyond the original frontline the battle had started from.
This idea of lower commanders taking own iniatives was not entirely new since even the Prussian Army had encouraged their lower commanders to think for themselves and improvise instead of blindly following orders from the top. And this was an important reason why the germans could do so well, when the lack of radio communication made it to take 8 hours on average for an order to reach the frontline from the General Headquarters. And when this order finally came to the frontline, it was often times outdated... the weather had changed, the enemy had escaped while you waited for order to press on, or worse he could have recovered from the iniatal surprise from the attack and brought forward reinforcements and digged in.
The German army was simply superior in 1914, and almost managed to defeat all the allies on its own hand, but Americas involvement finally became the straw the crushed the camels neck.
In World War 2 Germany would use their stosstruppen tactics (aka auftragstaktik) with great success. Their skilled commanders and their rapid decision making caught their enemies by surprise time and time again. And their superb military training made them formidable opponents even in defence. They were also early fans of the radio, which enabled tank commanders to coordinate their attacks and take out superior Russian tanks. And the radio also enabled them to coordinate support from the airforce to a degree the allies couldn't.
And once again they researched superweapons as a way to neutralize the allied superiority in manpower.
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