Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Re: WW2: The Resource War - IV: Strategic Bombing - Extra History @Extra Credits" video.

  1. America never won the war in any sense, and there was no way they could. They were backing up a corrupt regime that put the foreign aid into their own pockets instead of the people, and it even sold weapons it was given to the enemy. And their solidiers lacked will to fight. Vietnam was more than just a communist invasion, it was also a war of national unification, a war where people joined VietCong because they were feed up with terrorbombings and strategic hamlets, and most importantly of all - it was a class war of farmers who hated their oppressive landlords that often took 60-80% of their incomes in tax when they had to work for them because they owned all land and no land was left for the poor farmers. South Vietnam was controled by the landlords who used their Army to defend their own interests. So the easiest way, and perhaps the only way to win the Vietnam war was to do a landreform and give the poor farmers a bit of land so they could feed themselves and their families. But that would never have happened if USA didn't pressure South Vietnam. And if they pressured South Vietnam, they would have gotten accused of USA-imperialism by meddling in the affairs of independent countries. The US Army had no idea how to fight the war so they could never have won the war militarily. Over half a million men, and a large chunk of their aircrafts wasn't enough. They used faked statistics that was supposed to show that the war was almost won by 1967 since the enemy lost more men than they could recruit. But with the tet-offensive in 1968 people lost faith in that talking point. The US army had no idea how to fight, so instead they relied on this stupid idea of body counts and the absurd thinking that the war was a mathematics game. So soliders were sent to places like Hamburger Hill to kill a bounch of enemies at a high price of their own, and when the hill was won they just left it and let it be taken by the enemy a time later. Things like that made soliders furius. Their lives was worth nothing, they were just seen as a replaceable commodity in a production system, based on the same ideas as profit and loss in a company. And if a worker died, no big deal, America had plenty of men. The soliders were tired of risking their lives by being told by their commanders to walk into enemy ambushes just so the warmanagers could produce high enemy body counts by rain artillery and air support over them when the enemy was found. The soliders were just used as a bait, and sometimes their missions were almost suicidal. But the high level commanders didn't care, they just cared about high body counts so they could get a promotion, a bounch of medals and economic rewards. So the soliders started a revolt against their commanders and started to refuse orders, and fragging became commonplace and the fragging incidents went up dramtically, but most of them was never reported. So the commanders was then unable to push their soliders too hard. And in the end, the losses that got inflicted upon the communists were never anyware close to being impossible to replace by North Vietnam.
    5
  2. I think the American army since the late 1950s puts too much emphasis on cool modern equipment and stupid maths like kill ratios and force multipliers, and too little to understanding the war from a broader perspective. The Vietnamease beat the Americans, as well as the horsedrawn Germans defeated motorized western armies. So horses and tractors can still be useful if you manage to force the enemy to fight under your terms. If your army is superior in your type of warfare and got superior experience and leadership, you will beat the enemy almost every time. Fighter jets, helicopters and B-52's had their limitation in Vietnam, as well as tanks had their limitations in Normandy.
    4
  3. Germany didn't produce as much food as it consumed. So who should be with it? The leaders og the government? No. The military? No. The industrial workers? No. The civilians? No. The people in prisons and concentration camps? Yes. Furthermore, even when food was intented to go to the camps it never reached the prisoners. Eugen Kogon writes in his memoirs about Dachau that prison guards often stole their rations to eat themselves, or they gave the potatoes to their pigs or their families or sold it on a black market to get some cash to put in their own pockets. So the corruption and sadism of the prison guards caused suffering among the prisoners and hurt the german war effort when workers ability to perform work was harmed.
    4
  4. "One could argue that, if Germany had developed a fully functioning wartime economy they would have a lot more to work with in the field in '41 and '42." Germany was not a peacetime economy in 1939-42, it was in the greyzone between a wartime economy and a peacetime economy in that period. And it was only in late 1940 that Hitler choose not to use the full industrial capacity of the military industry when he decided to cut back on ammunitions production after the fall of France. So a total war in 1941 would just have a marginal effect because Germany didn't have the extra factories to produce the extra tanks that you dream about. It was only in the late war years Germany was able to catch up with the Americans in massproduction thanks to the new larger factories and a higly trained labourforce that gained skill throughout the war. So would the path of history have changed with a German wartime economy in 1939? No. My impression by reading "The Economics of World War. II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison" is that Germany couldn't get their war economy started for real until 1942-43. Maybe Germany could have waited to attack USSR 2 years, but then things would be very different on the other hand...USSR would recover a bit from the purges and the army would probably be better equiped, while Japan probably would have stayed out of a the war against America. "With regards to Hitler as a military commander I am baffled why you would defend him." I would flip the question, and saying why should we blindly believe in self-serving biographies of military commanders? (Especially when they are blaming a dead person who can't defend himself). It was true that Germany had geniuses such as Manstein, Kesselring, Halder and Guderian. But not all German generals were that great, and Hitler didn't always make bad decisions. It was he who gave Guderian and Manstein a chance to make a career, while the old school retards in the Army did not want anything of it. It was Hitler who saved the Ostheer in 1941, and it was he who made the decision to go for the oil. He wasn't perfect, but neighter was his Generals. Manstein never admitted that he never understood the economic importance of Ukrain, and Rommel constantly exhausted his supplies and wasted his forces and then demanded reinforcements, while Germany was needing every man they could spare on other more important fronts. Wehrmacht wasn't all super competent through and through, as Von Paulus is a good example of, and neighter was the Waffen-SS only led by complete idiots, as Paul Hausser is recognized by many as a very talented leader. Things aren't black and white, competence and incompetence. And Germanys resources was very limited, and her allies industry were weak. "With regards to Dunkirk...Hitler could have easily overturned the decision of one of his generals." So now of a sudden you blame him for not micromanage things after you said (to pharaphrase) that his micromanagement costed Germany the victory? It was Hitler military who convinced him to support the decision that Küchler made, and the battlereports over the losses confirmed his decision. People who blame Hitler makes it very easy for themselves. This thing of blaming Hitler for the loss in WW2 and the popular opinion and politicians for the loss in Vietnam is just history repeating itself with stab-in-the-back myths.
    3
  5. Resources guided many of the military operations, Hitler decision for ain air assult against Crete instead of Malta is said the to been made partly because he wanted to keep allied bombers out of range of the Romanian oil fields. Hitlers stubborn defence of Crimea was made for the same reasons. Hitlers attacks on southern Russia was made in an attempt to steal 90% of Russias oil production and open the way to Iran. And since day 1 of the war Allied planners aimed at denying Germany Swedish Iron and Romanian oil in different ways. Japan managed to conquer Indoneasia and adjent areas that were the most resource rich area in the world. But allied uboats made it more and more impossible to transport recources to Japan. So their colonies produced more rare materials than they could use themselves, while they at the same time lacked imports..which in turn drove up prices and inflation, and forced Japan to give them more local autonomy and production directed more at self-suffiecency and their own industrial production, when it was impossible to just plunder all resources to feed japans industrial factories.
    2
  6. German automotive sector was too small in world war I... I have a vague memory that they only built 40k trucks under that war, while the allies made half a million, but I can be wrong. When Germany industrialized under the Kaiserreich, they did so by having cartels and a heavily involved state, and this continued in the Weimar period where some ineffiecent companies were kept alive, and the regime didn't make full use of the structural rationalization in 1920s like in other countries. And the problem persisted as well with the first years with the nazis in power, because the aim of the nazi regime was job creation and not introduction of laboursaving effiecent production technics... mainly because Germany had 6 million openly unemployed when Hitler took power, and the regime had to get rid of massunemplyement quick if the nazi regime would have any chance to survive even in the short run. So Germany lagged behind America in productioneffiecency. And the victories in the west in 1940 gave Germany so many dutch and french trucks plus the entire british expeditionary forces park of vehicles that Germany felt no pressing need to fix their low production output. So besides all foreign trucks the German Army used that they would get problems with finding spare parts to, they would also have the problems with standardization of parts that the trucks german military truck manufacturers used (such as Opel, MAN, Hansa-Llyod Goliath, Phänomen, Henchel, Borgward, Büssing Nag, Ford, Krupp, Daimler).
    2
  7. David, your statement is ignorant. France not only had more tanks and better and more modern tanks than Germany. They also had 12 armoured Divisions compared to 10 Germans, and on top of that they also had lots of tanks deployed among the infantry - a luxury Germany couldn't afford simply because they didn't have enough tanks. Furthermore, defensive lines wasn't just a French thing, even the Germans and Erich von Manstein himself was a great proponent of them. And the German forts at the Siegfried line was were similiar to the french design, and they proved their value when France tried many failed attacks on Germany to come to the resuce of Poland. And many in the french military leadership predicted where the German attack would come. And they won some important tank battles over the Germans in the first days of operation Gelb. Then the political leadership of the allies paniced, and the new british government decided to call back their expeditionary force, which in turn left the flank open for the Belgian army, so they had to retreat as well. And they eventully got cut off by the German push forward and was then forced to evacuate at Dunkirk. So basicly was it the british side that fucked everything up, while France stood alone, with their frontline in caos, and with a weak political leadership, was then forced to give up and surrender. The french army did nothing wrong.
    1
  8. Bombing cities and murdering innocent people just filled the people with anger and determination and made them join up behind their leaders, so terrorbombing was counterproductive. Hans Von-Luck mentions it in his memoirs, that many Germans soliders tried to come back to the frontline as soon as possible after they had recovored from a wound, or coming home after a leave. What was the reason? It was because they wanted to win the war and make it end as soon as possble so they (the soliders) don't have to fear for the lives of their loved ones. Furthermore, strategic bombing also mosly got rid of people useless for the wareffort, such as oldies, sick people and handicapped that were just "useless eaters" according to Hitler. And by diverting away resources to build bomber, the allies had less resources over to spend on other more useful weapon systems. And despite all bombings. the German warproduction kept on increasing until the allies laid their hand of all Romanian oil and French Iron in Lorraine.
    1