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

  1. The main reason why Spain didn't join the Axis was probably the war exhaustion from just coming out of civil war.
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  2. At Leuthen did a group of Hussars capture some deserters which they brought to the king. Among the prisoners was a Prussian hussar who had deserted a day or two before. "Why did you leave?" Said the King to him. "indeed, your majesty," replied the grenadier, a Frenchman by birth, "things are going very badly with us." - "Come, come" rejoined Frederick, "let us fight another battle to-day: if I am beaten, we will desert togheter to-morrow" and with these words he sent him back to his colours.
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  3. - Auftragstaktik + kampfgruppen - Earlier combat experience - Better with radios and coordination - More Luftwaffe sorties thanks to close positioning of the airfields to the frontlines. - Element of surprise - Local superiority thanks to concentration of force, and enemy troop concentrations getting encircled and wiped out - Political confusion and blunders by the political leadership of the allies
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  4. Its not just in the military people plan to fight yesterdays war in the future. Economists and politicians are just the same. They behave like we need to balance our budgets despite we no longer use gold standard currencies anymore. Politicians are paranoid about Russia as if the cold war was still going on. Some media figures think they can roll back the clock and make and people abandon the internet and start watching cable tv again. I think lessons should be drawn from the past, but one does also try to see the changes which have occured in the world since the last war was fought. And I also think one needs to be humble. Otherwise one might become an idiot just like everyone else.
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  5. I agree. I knew that the Russian army still relied on much Soviet junk because it lacked funds to replace all Soviet tanks, artillery, steel helmets and provide everyone with body armor. I also knew that the Russian military doctrine sucks and is the opposite of auftragstaktik. I did also knew that Russia lacked funds and high technology to keep competing with the western world in top notch high quality weapons... and that T14 Armata and SU57 was both overly hyped in their capapbilities, and they were too expensive for poor Russia to mass produce, and that they would likely be delayed and perhaps not be produced at all. The tolerance of heavy losses might be a strength of the Russian army compared to the west. But otherwise I have been fundamentally unimpressed by the Russian forces. But even I did not expect them to perform as bad as they did. Poor maintance, corruption, overheard communcation, poor morale etc were factors I was unaware of on how bad there were before the war.
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  6. Europe never really conquered the world until the 1800s, so obviously could Asia and the middle east compete with the west for a long while while the native Americans and Australians quickly got crushed at first contact. I think western military edge was much technological and organizational plus the benifits of having domesticated animals and resistance to diseases that had come with having livestock. The Aztacs did not have any horses or even invented the wheel. So solidiers had to carry all their supplies on themselves, so if they only had rations that lasted for 12 days to the frontline and then 12 days to get back... that would limit their ability to cencentrate forces. And their lack of written langauge made it difficult to transfer orders. And their total lack of experience with siege warfare gave Europeans another great advantage. But in the end would it be diseases that brougth down the native American empires. Europe would not succesfully conquer Africa until the 1800s because of all diseases that made it risky to go into the djungle and trying to colonize the land. But Europe would change their minds in the 1800s and take over the continent and drain swamps and eradicate malaria mosquitos (as in french North Africa) and turn around the demographic trends in the area with their arrival. And the population in North Africa started to increase again for the first time since the bubonic plague had hit the area. India was the richest part of the world in the 1700s. Richer that Europe and China. Its iron industry was in many aspects the most advanced in the world and in the 1600s did the Mughal empire fight battles with war elephants and a hundred thousand musketeers. So the continent could probably have beaten back the Europeans if they wanted to. But India was divided into many countries that fought each other, and the great Mughal empire was a rotten, corrupt, injust society that no one felt much love or loyalty for. And Britain would ally themselves with some states against others, and win wars and gain more and more power for themselves. And Indian troops would be recruited on the spot to fight for the British against other Indian troops. And Japan and China was never conquered by western powers. Both countries were however forced to accept free trade after gunboats from western countries had bombared their harbours and threatened to take over their entire nations. But before the 1800s did both countries stack up well against western countries. Standard of living was atleast as high as in Europe (if not even higher in terms of GDP per capita, access to clean water, and japanese lived in stone houses resistant to earth quakes while Europe lived in home made of wood). And in the 1600s did more fire arms exist in Japan than in the entire Europe combined. But with the industrial revolution did the technological gap between Europe and Asia become wider and Asia could not keep up. Asia was also beginning to become overpopulated in the 1800s, while Europe had solved its overpopulation problem by sending people to America and get them to grow food on an entirly new continent (America) with access to a broad variaty of new crops.
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  7. And I don't think that Spain alone would have much difference to the war effort. But if Hitler had less half-assed allies, then he could probably have gained an extra army group from Spain, Vichy, Finland, Hungary, and Bulgaria. It seems that Romania and Italy was the only countries who cared to fully commit to the war.
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  8. Sturmgekocht
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  9. I guess the inexperienced US military and the limited capacity of amphibious assaults would be the main factors for me advising against a strong frontal assault on the west front directly. The Normandy landings in 1944 nearly ended in failure, and without the experience from earlier naval landings and earlier combat experience for US troops it would have been hard for the allies to resist the full force of the German army. The US military were still noobs in 1944 despite the fighting in north Africa, Italy and the pacific should have teached them to be better prepared. The British knew better and used all kinds of special purpose vehicles during D-Day, but the Americans rejected any use of the many special variants of Churchill tanks and the sherman crab for mineclearing - and suffered from high losses as a consequence, while the British landings went smoothly.
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  10.  @alexnderrrthewoke4479  Well production of Armata was supposed to start at the beginning of this year, but because of all sanctions have all production of that tank been cancelled, and only older Russian tanks are being produced right now, and then only in very small numbers. Without high tech machinery from the west will it be difficult if not impossible to produce high tech weapons for Russia. You can of course use cheaper low quality components for your tank and plunder dishwashers, refridgerators and washing machines for semi-conductors and such. But then you will end up with an inferior product of course.. It will also take years before Russia can recover from all losses of armored vehicles. Some moderate guesses says that 2-3 years of production have been lost in Ukraine. But personally I think that is just an understatement in how bad things are for Russia. 1500 tanks and 2000 APC/IFVs and 2000 trucks will take years to replace. And cost a lot of money to replace. Maybe you are lucky and get high oil prices to pay for it... but it will still be years of hardship for the Russian people where you have to rebuild your army and cannot afford government spending on anything else. And you will not be able to export any tanks to other countries and get money from that exports. You will need all tanks you make for yourself for years to come... And to make matters worse, Russian tanks vulnerabilities and junk reputation after this war will probably hurt sales. And so will long delivery times - as customers have to wait years to get a tank. And when they get one tank, its not just an old outdated "Monkey version" of an already bad tank. The tank will also now be even crappier because of the sanctions. T14 Armata was supposed to start being built in 2015 - 7 years ago, and nothing much have happened since and few have been built because of lack of funds. And now with Russias economic problems I only expect things to be more complicated for Russia. Maybe you cannot afford as many as you wanted and have to rely on old Soviet junk for more decades 😂 Perhaps. Regardless, the fears in Nato of this tank are gone. Leopard2A7 And M1A2 can deal with it. And since it lacks turret armor It wouldn't be hard to take out with javelins and NLAWs either. And like all other tanks its also vulnerable at the sides and rear. It do rely on sensor and cameras for everything unlike other tanks. That is an interesting concept. However this also makes this tank vulnerable. Machine gun bursts and a hit with a high explosive round can render this tank blind by destroying all sensors and cameras and thus making this tank completly useless on the battlefield even if the tank itself has not been knocked out. And the lack of turret armor also make you able to shot and destroy the main gun on that tank and thereby disarming the tank. So yeah I think this tank is overly hyped. In my own personal subjective opinion are western tanks better. This tank is a bit more expensive than the other Russian tanks and I doubt Russia can afford to replace its bronze age tank fleet with this newer machine.
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  11.  @alexnderrrthewoke4479  "Russia is using the old to replace the newer ones. It's all armies what it does." Russia had this problem for 20 years and Putin has failed to solve it. The Russian army still rely heavily on old Soviet junk. And the new Russian "super weapons" Armata and SU57 seems too expensive to afford to be build in large numbers so they can become the main tank and plane in the Russian military.
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  12. The logistical burden might be heavy to keep an old tank in the field. Perhaps that money is better spend on infantry with toyota trucks and modern weapons. But perhaps will I be proven wrong when Russia mobilize their BT-7 tanks and slap some ERA blocks on its front and say its ready for frontline combat in 2023
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  13. Underestimation of Russia. Too little preparations for the war they started in the east. Lacking logistical capacity. An industry not ready for the war, as a short war turned into a long one.
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  14. The middle ages called and wanted their outdated beliefs back
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  15. I would say that the German intelligence was not that good. In both world wars it failed to prevent their own codes from falling into allied hands. In the first war it could have had very dire consequnces for the mighty German navy, and only sloppy co-ordination among the British ships made the battle of Jutland a small victory for the Germans while this battle easily could have ended up in a disaster for the Germans. And the 2nd world war and the enigma code fiasco, the failed guesswork of Russia's strenght in the prelude to Barbarossa, and the crazy underestimation of the strenght of the USA tells me that Germany had very much to learn when it comes to the secret war. German intelligence could of course score some minor victories here and there, but overall am I deeply critical of their work.
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  16. Das booty A gay porn movie about half naked male sailors in a uboat
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  17. The German panzer IV were so few that they were irrelevant in 1940. Panzer III vs S35 would have been a better comparison. But once again, panzerIII was also quite rare eventhough its numbers where much higher than just a little more than 20 vehicles. I would say that the french overall had the better tanks since most the panzers the germans had were really non-tanks like panzerI, Panzer II, Panzer 35 and panzer38t. France had more tanks and they had tanks with better armour (S-35 had angeled armour and was immune to all German tank guns) and the french guns had the highest penetration values for its day. So if anything, did the Germans not win because they had better tanks and not because the French had wasted too much resources on building the Maginot line so that they did not have any resources to build tanks - as clowns like Liddell Hart claims. Panzer III had not yet been upgraded to an impressive machine as it would become later in the war. So in 1940 it was still a mediocre tank and even inferior to british and french tanks. It might have a radio and more comfy turret. But so what? What would that help if your gun cannot penetrate the armour of the enemy tanks? Its engine was underpowered which made the tank sluggish. Its gun was too weak. And its armour was unangled and thin on the early variants. And worst of all for Germany was that this was the best tank they had in 1940 and even this pile of junk couldn't be produced in numbers compareable to those of allied tanks. The tiny tank production in 1940 barely was enough to cover the losses Germany had made in Poland the year before. And Germany did not start the war with much tanks either. They had to press foreign czech tanks into service because tank numbers were insuffiecent even after all panzer1 and panzer2 tanks had been included.
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  18. Too much optimism is dangerous. Too much pessimism is dangerous too. One should always try to be a realist. It is of course easier said than done. Too much optimism can make you take stupid risks and walk into ambushes and have no plan B for escaping because you was too overconfident in your own ability and underestmated your foe. But if you overestmate your foe all the time, then he can psychologically blackmail your country into concessions despite your military is stronger. And in a war you might be paralyzed and too afraid to take risks despite there is a high chance of success and your attacks are very likely to pay off very well, and quickly bring the war to an end for you with a small price for you and a high price for the enemy. So one should try to never over or underestimate an enemy. A realistic view is the best. Then you can avoid stupid overly aggressive mistakes, and you can still sometimes play very aggressive when it pays off.
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  19. Airwar: Strategic bombing - attacking factories, cities, railway hubs, bridges Tactical bombing - Supporting your own ground troops by attacking tanks, infantry, bunkers and such. Land war: Tactical level - Units of a minor size (less than say 5.000 men) fighting battles of very limited importance to the outcome of the war. And the study of tactics involves much around co-ordination between tanks, air support, artillery and infantry... and what tanks attack formation should look like, and how trenches, machine guns and land mines are best put to use, and how helicopters best can cooperate during a helicopter landing so that losses can be kept low by careful planning and cooperation between attack helicopters, recon helicopters, transports and attack aircraft. Strategic level - Are about seeing the war from a bigger picture and ignore the minor details (such as what type of tanks and machine guns that being used by each side). A Strategic General is much more interested in the logistic situation since supplying and feeding big armies of 200.000 men are much more of challange than to someone who is just leading a battallion of 750 men. Getting supplies forward to your own troops and cutting off the supplies for the armies of your enemies are much more important than worrying about how many men who died in a small battle with 50 men of each side. For a strategist terrain does matter, mountains, trenches and minefields are excellent defensive positions. While bridges, railway hubs, oil fields, industrial centres, powerplants and such are valuable key areas to take. And encirleing enemy armies can destroy them more cheaply and effectivly than winning a 100 small tactical battles. Then there are of course not always so easy to put things into the right box. Its not always black and white. There are sometimes greyzones between tactical and strategic level combat. Fighting about a single building in a town is usally just an unimportant tactical level operation - but in Stalingrad did thousands of men die over the control over builds such as Pavlovs house. And it was not uncommon that small German and Finlandic units could fight off entire soviet armies during world war 2, So should battles with 2 Finnish regiments fighting against multiple Russian divisions be classed as tactical or a strategic battle? I think it is often hard to tell. Small battles can sometimes impact the larger strategic situation. And while losing 50 tanks might not be a big deal for the allies, but losing 50 panthers in the battle at Korsun can have much negative consequences also for the eastern front as a whole.
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  20. @Fabian Kirchgessner I guess the high losses in the beginning of the war demoralized the Austrian army for the rest of the war. Germany won victories, while the Austrians won none. Germany modern equipment while the Austrians lacked artillery. The Austrians faced one bloodbath after another. Battles were lost or ended even. A few were won, but usually with German help. So it is easy to understand why the war no longer was fun for the Austrians by the end of 1914. The empire had already become dependent on life support from Germany. This was a humiliating prestige loss, and took a toll on the country's self-esteem. Most of its best units had been wiped out. And the slavs within the army had limited willingness to fight. And the Austrian militia units were also of low quality. So there was not much left of the Austrian army. It had become too weak to launch large offensives on its own. Its only major military victory it won on its own for the rest of the war, was when some Austrian militia units which were badly equipped and trained managed to hold off the entire Italian army which were attacking through the Alps and thinking that Austria was an easy win after all catastrophic defeats it had suffered against Serbia and Russia. But despite greatly outnumbering the Austrian low quality units were the unable to break through. And they suffered large losses.
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  21. The simple answer is that this is just spaced armor. Its not a huge extra heavy wall added on the turret, but rather it is a large empty box that weight 500kgs that are sitting in front of the turret and forces incoming enemy shots to travel many extra decimeters before it can start blowing a hole into the main armor of the tank. The enemy projectile lose force before it reach the tank, and armor protection gets increased with a minimal cost of extra weight.
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  22. A personal reflection that struck me when I was reading about the crusades, was that stealing money from jews seems to have been a necessity for a succesful crusade. Both the 1st and the 3rd crusades involved large massacres and plunder on the jewish population so that huge armies could be raised and an extremely costly journey to Jerusalem could be paid for. But the 2nd crusades didn't include so much anti-semitism and therefore lacked the funds needed to raise enough troops to accomplish anything.
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  23. Anschluss II happened in 1995 when Austria joined the EU
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  24. Valentine was not the best tank in the world. But it had a much more reliable engine than the russian tanks - which made them superior to use for intensive driving unlike russian made tanks. So for that reason did Valentine become the tank used by russian tank schools because their own tanks was so crappy.
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  25. Kesselring had the opposite opinion of Rommel on this issue and he had also fought in Italy. Both sides have quite good arguments on their side, but usally I do consider Kesselring to be the better commander of the two.
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  26. Germany was a young mosaic country. There was no German army uniform until 1912. So many men in the military had reason to feel like Bavarians first and Germans second. Also within the British troops many wanted to point out that they were Scots, Irish and such. But I guess willingness to fight also depended on the unit type. A Prussian Grenadier Guard unit might have more willingness to fight than a unit of Saxon reservists. Provincealism existed also in the German army in WW2, but it was probably to a lower extent than in WW1 since Germany had existed for some time now and more merged together into a country.
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  27. I guess it all depends on the context. The problem with the Stuka was its short range, small bombload and that it was an easy target for enemy fighters. But when you had control over the skies as Germany had before 1943 on the eastern front, then this plane could be useful. It could probably be useful even today if it would be put against jihadist fighters in the middle east without any own airforce. But after 1943 and the battle of Kursk I don't think that the Stuka was very practical since the dominance over the skies had been lost everyware. So fighter-bombers as the Fw190G began to enter service instead, since those planes had a better chance of surving.
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  28. Oil is complicated. You just don't put a pole into the ground and a fountain of black liquid comes up and you can fill your car with it. Oil is dirty and mixed with sand and needs to be refined before it can be used. And opening a new oil field takes time - about 12 years on average today. And even before you can start pumping oil from the ground you first need to find out where the oil is. And for that you need to make tests and drill holes into the ground - which takes much time and costs large sums of money. I doubt that Germany had the knowledge that Arabia had the amounts of oil it had. And I also doubt that it had the time to develop machinery and infrastructure to get it to Europe in reasonable amounts of time. And transporting oil by truck from Iraq to Egypt and then on to transport ship and then move it to Europe and refine it seems like a hugely energy consuming process. So transportation and driving the oil pumps at the oil fields would eat up so much of the oil produced, that very little would be over for the German army to consume.
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  29. USS Enterprise fought in every battle in the pacific ocean and after the war some people suggested that she would become a museum object with her great history to honour the men serving on her. But it was anyway decided that she would be scrapped and the metal would be sold, because the US Navy no longer had any use for her after the war since jet fighters needed much larger aircraft decks than the tiny deck of Enterprise. So I guess that her fate was quite typical. The German carrier Graf Zeppelin became a target practice for Russian bombers. And a few TigerII tanks were sent to Sweden for target practice and testing after the war, while surplus Sherman and Centurion tanks were sold off to friendly nations by the British and Americans. And Wellington bombers were melted down after the war so they could become pans in peoples kitchens. So things have all taken different fates. And some weapons were still in service decades after the war.
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  30.  @lavrentivs9891  Because the Swedish army have scaled down its military and see no point in keeping museum pieces unlike russia which never throws away anything. It all reminds me of people with hoarding behaviour problems that keeps all kinds of junk and never throws anything away no matter how useless. Stridsvagn 103 was not replaced because it was bad. It was replaced because better tanks were available. The bolsheviks on the other hand have not built any modern tank as good as Leopard2 or M1 Abrams that is a good replacement for their old junk. Their military have been in a chronic lack of funds to modernize their military so they have been forced to keep old weapons in use. For the sake of argument, If the choice is between an upgraded Stridsvagn-103D or a Leopard 1 or a T62 - then I definatly prefer to sit in a Stridsvagn 103. It was taken out of service 25 years ago, but if the Swedes for some reason wanted to cling on to this tank for a strange reason, then I expect it to have a 120mm gun attached to it, extra armor + ERA, plus barracuda camouflage net that would make it a sneaky sniper with more survivability in this war. It would probably still be unwise to use it in frontal attacks. But it would be a good ambush tool, and it could offer much needed infantry support with its gun and high rate of fire - as it would do like most other tanks are doing in ukraine stay away from the frontline and fire some shots from over 1000 meters away from the enemy. In a way would it be used more than a StuG than as a tank. But on the other hand have this war not seen much succesful tank action. There are no big open areas without minefields and trenches that could be used for manouver warfare where tanks comes to their own right. The S-tank would come more to its own right in offensive warfare in such terrain, and probably even more so the Leopard-1.
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  31. "The Ukrainians don't have to be perfect. They just have to be better than the Russians." Reminds me of the expression economists use that you do not have to be the fastest runner when a bear attacks a camping site. You only have to be faster than the guy who is the slowest runner - because he will be the one that will be eaten by the bear. And likewise, do you not have to be good at timeing your selling of stock market shares in a company that is going down - you only have to be faster than the losers that gets out too late
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  32.  @masterdreadeye1865  Which is why I think they should have pulled out of Afghanistan in 2011 as soon as Bin Ladin had died and when it thereby no longer was any reason to stay in the country
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  33. "American forces never stalled out. The British forces were an Auxiliary who had the easier job" When we talk about the breakout from Normandy this was not the case. 8 infantry and 6 panzer divisions were blocking the British/Canadian advance. While 9 infantry divisions and 2 panzer divisions were blocking the American advance. "British forces also failed to capture Antwerp or the Netherlands despite being up against wimps while the Americans faced off against the advanced German forces on the main line." Pattons 3rd army was stalled for weeks (between august and november) in the fighting around the town Metz. The Americans outnumbered the defenders - which consisted of the shittiest low quality troops in the German army which were totally unsuitable for any other duty than being a garrison of the 70 year old fortress near the town. Volksgrenadier-Division 462 was garbage but it could nevertheless keep the Americans back for weeks. And the Americans once again believed that air power could compensate for anything - including the lack of heavy artillery, engineers and trained infantry. The Americans was superior in both quantatity and quality, but the American 3rd army still needed weeks before it could crush a dozen German junk divisions. So I very much doubt that the Americans would have been able to get a foothold in Europe in 1942 or 1943. And even in 1944 was the Americans dangerously close to failing with the D-day landings. So the idea of making a landing on the western front (France-Belgium-Netherlands-Germany-Denmark) early in the war was a bit overly ambitious in my opinion.
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  34. I think warfare in the 1700s seemed a bit more humane that the past conflicts. The 1600s were filled with nasty ideological/religious wars were just about anything was allowed to towards ordinary people. While the birth of the nationstate and armies who fought for the monarch was another type of warfare... you fought on behalf of your king and didn't have any personal reasons to hate your enemy, and the enemies on the other side felt the same way towards you, so why should one then commit war crimes if you got no real personal reason for hatred towards your enemy?
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  35. A good vehicle for its time. It did look as it had lots of space inside it when I saw it at a tank museum. So I think it still can be useful for certain roles like medical evacuation, or as a command vehicle and perhaps as a mortar. It is of course not a modern IFV as it is an old vehicle and do not have the same armor and fire power as CV90 or any hatches for the infantry from where they can stick up their heads and rifles to shoot at targets. However they are mechanically reliable. And I rather sit in a M113 in a battlefield than a flammable BMP-1 that lacks gun depression or a crampy pansarbandvagn 301
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  36.  @Klovaneer  russian WW2 tanks are known for their engines that falls apart after a short service life. They were not built to last long like British or American tanks... or like top quality German tanks that was ridicilously over-engineered to last for centuries (which was a reason why they lost the war). In a way will I say that the crappy durability of Soviet tanks is a great testimony to the skill of Soviet tank designers. They managed to cut down production time and production costs for their tanks to a minimum and thus allowed them to outproduce the much more industrially developed Germany. Sure was Soviet tanks crappier, their armor was more brittle and 80% of the tank crew died when the tank caught fire compared to 20% for German, British and American tanks. But that was a necessary trade off for a poor 3rd world country. Russia did not have the luxury to both produce high quality tanks and produce many tanks. It had to pick one of the two, and it picked the latter since it could never win over Germany in terms of quality and precision work. So from an industrial standpoint do I think Soviet tanks are the most impressive ones in world war 2 togheter with American ones. Britain - the country who produced the worlds first tank - produced outdated crap like TOG2 and Churchill during the war. And their tank production never reached gigantic numbers of USA and USSR despite Britain back then was an empire and an industrial gigant and had a good headstart in industrialization thanks to being first with having an industrial revolution. Germany over-engineered their tanks. Russia on the other hand built some tanks that were truely feared by the Germans. And while their engines were crap and the tanks were cramped and dangerous for the crew even in peace time for a loader on a T-34 tank that could get knocked out by the recoil from the gun if he was not careful... would I on the other hand say that russians had an another view on reliability than in the west. Russian tanks could often easily be fixed in the primitive conditions out on the field and have their tracks easily and quickly repaired. While such things could be more complicated on a big German cat animal tank.
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  37. I guess it is good to have different tools in the tool box - a hammer, a screwdriver, a plier and so on. Only focus on one type of weapon seems like a toolbox with only hammers in it. It can be good sometimes, but unpractical most the time. Furthermore can one good weapon become garbage pretty fast when the enemies invent new weapons to counter it. Mitsubitchy A6M Zero fighters might be great weapons early in the war, but later on in the war would their oppurtunity cost not be much worth it.
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  38. Two typical things for the Russian military historically when it comes to advancing into enemy territory: Slow tempo and extremely high russian losses.
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  39. Me too. Probably safest front, and standing at Denmark's beaches during the summer wouldn't be that bad, and the winters would not be as bad as in the other nordic countries. Sounds like one could live a lazy life. The only thing missing would be some women and entertainment - which could probably be fixed. The wartime rationing and food shortage would probably be the only real problem. Otherwise could one probably live a good life at this boring front.
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  40. I have seen videos of such dutch vehicles been used in assaults in ukraine. And that will of course mean higher losses. I believe that half of all Bradleys sent to Ukraine has been lost. 10 Leopard 2 tanks have been destroyed and 20 is undergoing repairs out of something like 120 vehicles. So yea, losses have been heavy. But resistence have been hard and losses on the other side has been hard as well. To me it seems like the Ukrainians are using their dutch M113 according to tactics provided by western instructors and they are not used as any IFVs because they are no such vehicles.
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  41. I read somewhere that 20% of the SS members were Austrians, while Austrians made up 8% of the population of the reich. So that seems like an over-representation. However, I do not think that indicates combat willingness. It can just be a sign of political affiliation.
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  42. Western aid allowed division of labor that enormously increased effiecency and industrial output of the russian economy which would never have been possible otherwise. Without millions of american food rations would soldiers, miners and factory workers have been forced to work in agriculture instead. And then you would have seen less iron produced, less tanks produced and fewer soldiers at the frontline. And with less russian troops and tanks to worry about could the Germans now focus their defence on a fewer points along the frontline and fight more effectivly. Russia would have been forced to down scale their own tank production if they had to upscale their own production of trucks and locomotives if they couldn't get those things from the west.
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  43.  TheSatanicTicTac Nah, the outcome of ww1 was increadibly unfair. The German army fought against almost the entire world alone and almost won against all of the countries. And then in the last minute was the allies saved by the arrival of endless waves of American troops.
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  44. France had a larger population than England, and while America was friendly to England during the world war, it was not so friendly during the Napoleonic wars. And the British dominance at sea was total in World war II. Germany was forced to dismantle her entire Navy with the peace treaty at Versaille, and after that she was prohibited from building a new one. And building a new powerful navy would have taken decades even under a militaristic dictator like Hitler, so Hitler never started the war with a Navy powerful enough to challange the British home fleet, and much less so when it was combined with the enormous fleets Britain also had in Asia and mediterranean. And the loss of Graf Spee and the costly Norway invasion left Hitlers navy in even less shape to invade England, and nor was there any suffiecent amount of transport ships for an invasion. And plundering food and living off the lands could work for an army of the 1300s, 1500s, 1600s, 1700 and even early 1800s.... but a modern army doesn't work that way - it need tonnes of petroleum, and tonnes of ammunition. The 6th Army at Stalingrad consumed 13 railway cars of small arms ammo each day. And then we havn't even included artillery that consumes even more ammo than that. So I would Guess that Napoleon had a better chance. France had a naval tradition as well as her allied countries, while Germany never really been a naval power. England didn't have much timber of her own to build ships, and her population needed food imports. German uboats was quite close to starving England, but they were never any threat to Englands dominance at sea, and Germany would never outnumber England at sea as Spain and France did at Trafalgar.
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  45. I think the German assumptions on where the allied D-day landings would go were reasonable - after all it would be dumb to make a landing outside air cover, and having long distances for ship to transport, and not taking a harbour so that the invasion force can get supplies and reinforcements. Making an attack directly into Prussia would give the Germans all the advantages of having short supply lines, knowing the terrain, having men more determined than ever to defend their homeland (instead of just a outpost in France). And meanwhile would it the allied ability to use their massive air power be very limited as no planes had the range and no paratroops could capture bridges and protect the flanks of the amphibious landing. So a landing in Germany looks foolish to me. And same goes for an invasion of Denmark since the land is close to Germany and far away from Britain, and Germany could easily gather troops in Germany and by land just walk into the country. And German air fields would be perfectly in range of reaching any invasion force, while the allied planes would not be able to reach the area. Norway is a country with excellent defensive positions. The country is basicly just mountains and forrests, and it was not this rich oil nation back then as it is today, so the bad infrastructure would probably also become a huge allied invasion force. And the climate is not so friendly either. So it is a country which is suitable for defensive warfare. And the allied advantage of air power and large numbers of tanks would not come to its right in this terrain. It would simply be more wise to use them elseware. The Balkans were a more credible threat to the Germans. It could potentially outflank the German eastern front in the south, and its proximity to the Romanian oil fields were probably also worrysome. Even having allied bombers in airfields in Greece that close would be problematic enough. But on the other hand did the balkans and Greece have many mountains that offered good defensive terrain - as Mussoline learnt the hard way. And Germany could use airpower and send reinforcements to the area by land. So an allied landing here could very easily just have ended in one deadlock after another just like the campaign in Italy. Taking Greece could probably be done since most of the country laid in good range for naval bombardment, and bombers in North Africa and Italy could reach it. But then breaking out further from there would be hard and would require so much troops to get through the bad terrain that one could once again start to wonder if it would be worth it? France and the Benelux countries offered bigger rewards, and they allowed the allies to use air power and not overstretching their maritime supply lines unnecessarily much.
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  46. A country can never run out of money. It is actully the resources that determines how much money a country can create without getting inflation, so I wish that paradox would do the opposite of what you suggest and remove it as much as possible - and especially in the Europa universalis games, where the game developers shows that they are clueless about economics. When you in Europa universalis tax money without spending it on research you will automatically get inflation. But the real world operates the direct opposite way. When you take out more money from circulation in society than you pump in into it you will get deflation AND NOT INFLATION. Governments don't need taxes to pay for wars. And the only reason war bonds exist is to hold inflation under control. And in peace time you can print as much money as you want as long as buisnesses and farmers can increase their production at the same rate. Then no resource shortages will arise that will push up prices. So as long as there are unused land, empety factories and unemployed labour you will always be able to print money without getting any inflation, because that money will create consumer demand when it lands in someones hands out there in the economy. So the government national debt is totally unimportant - atleast for a country with its own currency. Only an idiot is afraid of a high national debt.
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  47. They got better pastry as well, regardless if Vienna bread is Austrian or not
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  48. The glorious part of the war can also be seen after it. With solidiers that walk around without an arm or a leg. The world war 1 veteran who got blind from poison gas. The German solidier after world war 2 who had lost his possessions during the war and only had his army uniform to walk around in the years after the war. All the people who lost a loved one. All persons who constantly gets reminded by horrible memories and dream nightmares for every night for the rest of their lives. All tears and pain.
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  49. Hitler was dissapointed in many of his Generals in the winter 1941-42 so he retired a hundred of them. Couldn't that have been an option if one was tired of the war? Just disagree with Hitler on some one small thing enough for you to get you lose your job, but not enough to get you shot.
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  50. S-tank can be driven by just 1 person and can drive just as fast backwards as forward, and its rate of fire is 15 shots per minute compared to 8 for T-72 and 6 for T-64 and 4 shots per minute for T-62. Its sloping of its armor is unmatched. And it also contain many clever engineering solutions. I think it is smart to use jerry cans with fuel as extra side armor for example.
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