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

  1. I don't know. On one hand one could argue that Rommel was often forced to play offensive and steal equipment and supplies from his enemies since he didn't any of his own. I don't consider Rommel as brilliant as the legend about him says, but nor do I think that it is completly fair to call him reckless by doing offensives with little or no logistical support for the operations he made. He was in a tough situation with scarce supplies and reinforcements, stronger enemies, the allies were reading his secret communition, he had a hard time to get along with the Italian leadership, and then Hitler and his other Generals had much opinions about how the war should be fought and were Germany's military forces should be deployed the critical years 1941-42. But on the other hand... Kesselring and Rommel had their disagreements in 1943 if the Afrika Korps should make use of the terrain around Tunisia and surrounding areas to make an inpenetrable defensive line to hold the Allies, while Rommel was tired of North Africa and wanted to send home his troops and fight the allies in Italy instead. Rommel never got replaced by Kesselring but Hitler refused to allow him to move his forces to Italy... but Rommel disliked the idea so he secretly moved his forces back to Tunisia anyways and abandoned much good defensive terrain - because he wanted to move to Italy anyways. And that made Kesselring pretty pissed off. And Rommel's decision to cancel the capture of Malta was an incredibly foolish mistake that would allow the allies to keep that Island as an airbase and harbour, so they could attack and sink massive amounts of Axis ships so that the Afrika Korps wouldn't get all the supplies and weapons they needed. So in my opinion do I think that Rommel is a bit overrated. And Kesselring was a smarter strategist - as his formidable defence of Italy would later prove. It would have been interesting to see how the war had turned of if Malta was captured and if Kesselring had been given command of the DAK in late 1942. Maybe then North Africa could have been kept some longer and the retreat to Italy could have been done better.
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  2. Nope. Russia is not fighting Nato. Where are Natos best modern weapons? They are not in Ukraine. Russia have not been fighting with any F35 fighters, B2 bombers, Leopard2 tanks, Gotlands class submarines, Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, ATACMS, RBS 15 and such. Instead have Ukraine been sent some old surplus weapons from the west in small amounts and not a single Nato regiment is involved in the fight. Your comment sounds like typical Russian copium to deal with the fact that the entire Russian military failed to defeat its smaller neighbour. The poorest country in Europe. And this despite crushing numerical superiority in tanks, planes, attack helicopters, artillery. And despite Russia had an advantage of the element of surprise. And despite Russian troops ignores the Geneva convention which the Ukrainian troops have to follow. This war had been humiliating for Russia. And it suits them well. I like to see bullies suffer.
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  3. (Kampfrad means combat bike in German)
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  4. No George, this was not the strategy that the German used. The idea behind a flexible defence in depth was to let the enemy overextent its supply lines during an advance, while your own troops are shortening it. And then you launch a great counterpunch and encircle and easily destroy your undersupplied enemy. This happened at Kharkov both in 1942 and in 1943. But Hitler didn't like the idea because he was a man of the first world war, and his beliefs was that every man should be in the frontline instead. And all retreats should be forbidden. Not a step back would be allowed. 1943 started well for the Red Army: after the victory at Stalingrad, it had crossed two major rivers and driven 500 miles into the vast open spaces of the southern Soviet Union in a very short time and had become overstretched. And the Germans had just evacuated the Caucausus with Army Group A, and the 1st and 4th Panzer Armies (which Hitler didn't wanna evacuate at first until Manstein convinced him, and had Hitlers initial decision been kept would probably had been left in the Caucausus and destroyed). And few people assumed that the German army had any strenght left after the disaster at Stalingrad. And the Russian had pushed forward in the middle of february to try encircle and destroy what was left of Army group South, by coming from the north and pushing towards the black Sea. And contrary to what you claim did the Germans have any mobile defence. On the contrary, Hitler strongly opposed the idea of retreating from the Donbass region - which Von Manstein wanted, in order to shorten his frontline and thereby get more men available for his counter-offensive in the north towards Kharkov. Von Rundstedt had lost his job after outraging Hitler by suggesting the same thing a year earlier. Hitler and Manstein argued against each other for 5 hours, and Hitler said that it was absolutly vital for the war effort to defend the area for the Ukrainian coal mines and the diplomatic relations with Turkey. Manstein knew very little of the economic aspects of the war, but he responded that Hitlers choice was now to lose the Ukrainian coal mines with or without Army group Don. And surprisingly did that argument finally convince Hitler to allow a retreat. And Manstein moved back and created a new frontline behind Mius river, and used the rest of his forces to launch a counter-offensive in the north around Kharkov. The overextended Russians were completly taken by surprised and the got outflanked encircled and destroyed. And this battle gives a vital lesson of the importance of being economical with your forces. If you try to be strong everyware you will also be weak everyware, as Sun Tzu said. And it was Mansteins retreat and shortening of the frontline that gave him enough forces available for his succesful counterattack, even when the situation was dire. And Germany could never hope to win a defensive war with Hitlers tactic of letting all troops sit at the frontline along the entire Russian front. Because the Russians were numerically superior and could counter the German all along the frontline and still have enough troops over to concentrate for offensives in certain areas - where the German defensives would probably the weakest.
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  5. Fortifications was not useless. The Siegfried line did a good job of defending Germany against a large scale French attack during the invasion of Poland. And Patton and his superior forces failed to take Metz for months, despite their opposition was made up by some volksturm in old fortications from the 1800s. And the unimpressive fortifications of the Mannerheim line served Finland very well during their wars against the Soviet union. And the many defensive lines in Italy prevented the allies from taking the country before the war ended.. and the Italian campaign was a failure for the allies in that sense that it didn't make the allied landings in France easier. Instead the contrary was true, the allies had to commit disproportionally large amounts of troops to the fighting in Italy so less resources were available for the campaign in France. So are fortifications a bad idea? no. They are not that useful in themselves, but only an idiot would use fortications and minefields in that way. No minefields, barbedwires, dragoon teeths, anti-tank mines, boobytraps, trenches and bunkers are best when they are used togheter with defending troops. And they can tie up disproportionatly large enemy forces for a long time and thereby giving the defenders time to organize a defence or a counterattack. And meanwhile will the prepared defensive positions keep the own losses low, while they can inflict disproportionally high losses on the enemy. Just ask the German machine gunner Heinrich Severloh, on Omaha beach. He killed 2000 Americans on D-day.
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  6. Russia did the massacre at Bucha. Unsurprisingly are Russia not the good guys in this war either, like in 99% of all other wars it have fought throughout history
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  7. The human body decays with about 1% per year after you hit 40. You can delay the decline of your body by exercise and good diet, but it will still come. Just ask your doctor. Lung capacity decline correlate strongly with age. And without enough oxygen will cells not be able to perform work since they need oxygen and sugar to perform work. So there is a limit to what the human body is capable of. Personally do I think that it would be great if more middle aged people was able to fight, and more women. That would get numbers of the army up. But realisticly speaking do I not think that someone at the age of 40 would be first class infantry. They might better be used for other tasks, such as guarding POWs, serving in AA and SAM units, handling trucks and logistics and so on. There are of course a few exception here and there... it takes 10 million dollars and years to train a combat pilot so of course would it be good if you could keep experienced pilots in service if a total war would happen.
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  8.  @Osvath97  My guess is that most middle aged men are far from athletes and are therefore of limited military use as their bodies have declined. I do not think that every man in his 40s and 50s will be the next Robin Olds. "Experience" is also a word which I got mixed feelings about. I want men with the right kind of experience in this changing world. I do not want men with stupid outdated opinions that belongs in a past world that does no longer exist. I want men that are open new ideas, and not being backwards and stupid like WW1 Generals. In general would want men aged 27-35 to be in the front lines fighting the wars. Their bodies are fit and they are experienced. And I also think it is immoral to send away young men who are easily manipulate into political convictions. Men who are too young to die, and many have not even get laid with a woman. So I rather prefer another age bracket. But politicians will disagree with me. I guess its not popular to send away married men with kids to war, and corporations would not like to lose men who have done careers... Sending away elderly would have been the best, but they are on the other hand not good fighters. And they hold a lot of money and political power and would protest too much. So the politicians rather take the easy way out and send young men away to fight their wars since they got no money or political power. And I also guess that the military want young men because they only care about physical strength and they do not want a person in his 30 who have started to get bad vision to become a fighter pilot. At least that is not their first hand choice. To some degree can I agree with you that right experience is more valuable than a first class body. There are a few examples of this (Otto Carius was at first twice rejected for military service because of bad vision and underweight, but then he became one of the greatest Tiger tank aces in history. And Douglas Bader became a fighter ace without legs). However, on a macro level do I think it is in general a good idea to pick strong young men for the military instead of women and middle aged men.
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  9. I have seen many babayaga drones score large numbers of kills on russian troops sleeping inside a forest. Its also hard to hide from drones that have sensors like heat seaking cameras. Many russian soldiers hide among their dead comrades and pretend to be dead to avoid getting killed, but its easy to see which bodies that are still alive or not so this strategy does not work.
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  10. Putin is living isolated in a bunker in Siberia. Zelensky and Biden are eating meals with their troops. Speaking with international leaders, Talking to the people. To me western leaders seems more likable than this arrogant bunker Tzar that even his own advisors are afraid of.
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  11. If you think that statistics is the same thing as reality, then you are frankly not very smart. Young men are more often victims to street violance than women and elderly. Why? Because women and elderly knows that they are not as capable of defending themselves so they rather stay at home and don't take any risks of getting hurt. So if eveyone then stayd home, then crime statistics would show low numbers, but would that mean that crime is not a problem? Of course not. Crime is so serious that people would stay home because they are afraid to go out. So if people don't go out and make suicidal attacks against barbed wire and machine guns, that doesn't mean that they are increadibly effective weapons on a first world war battlefield. On the contrary. They were the driving force on how tactics were formed at this time, and all war-winning strategies had to adapt to this fact if there would be any hope of getting any success. First world war was not a war mainly about artillery duels. It was a war when armies desperatly tried to find ways to silence enemy machine guns and pass through barbed wire... and solutions of all kinds were tested to fix this problem, like bomarding an area for an entire week with a million artillery shells. "The way they got around the lack of communication was by massively pre-planning their artillery bombardments, and by using extensive pre-registered defensive fire plans that could be initiated by the infantry simply firing a group of flares." Armies tried these solutions, and they almost never worked. Sometimes they failed because the enemy was sitting behind the front line or deep underneath the ground, and the infantry would therefore not take any serious losses and could easily repulse any infantry attacks after the bombardment had started. You could of course keep on firing with your artillery once your own infantry had started attacking, but that would also lead to more losses among your own men as your artillery would accidentaly hit your own men. Furthermore was timing of a bombarment very difficult to get right, as you don't know all the factors in the fog of war about the future weather, the enemy strength and such. So if your men attack too fast they get crushed by their own artillery, and if they cannot keep up with the time schedule then the artillery would be uneffective as well. And in the early war years did Generals have to learn those lessons above the hard way. And gigantic battles with hundreds of thousands of men lost also failed for other reasons. Like the lack of High-explosives to destroy the barbed wirse in no mans land. And barbed wire was a huge problem. It is not just something you can fix with a little scissor. It was something nearly impossible to get rid of. And entire armies could stuck in front of it an not get through, while enemy machine guns ripped people apart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hQ-otfHZx8 And even if your attack was succesful, then your biggest still lie ahead. How would you repulse an enemy counter attack? In the first world war was a counter-attack the most powerful force on the battlefield. More powerful than defence or assualt. And the enemy was not stupid. He would see that you was about the breakthough at one part of the frontline, so he would concentrate more forces to the area. So once your men had punched through the last line of defence, then he would swiftly launch a counter-attack before your men had a chance to rest and organize or dig yourself into the ground and get reinforcements. He would bombard you with arty and then attack you. And your own artillery would be too far away behind to be of any help. And nor would you have any way of communicating and directing your artillery fire from such far ranges. And moving artillery up through the no-mans-land moonland scape was difficult and time consuming, and it would not be able to keep up with the attacking infantry. So once the offensive had been done, there was really not much plans what to do next. So the enemy always had all the good cards at his hands. And it was these counter-offensives that made the first world this war of largly static frontlines that it is known for. Because every progress usally was destroyed as fast as it had been created.
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  12. The 2nd most outdated army after Russia. I rather sit in a Swedish BMP than in a Russian one. Furthermore do Ukraine got lots of modern missiles that outclass Soviet planes and tanks. And most importantly - The Ukrainian army is not crap when it comes to tactics, in fact they are very skilled. Far from perfect, but still very skilled. Russia on the other hand is Ukraines opposite when it comes to tactics... they use incredible outdated tactics and miltiary thinking. And not only that... Considering the chaos that is the Russian army, the soldiers do not even seem to follow their own manual of military training, but instead everything is disorganized chaos.
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  13. I think German thinking also have been poisoned by liberalism and anti-militarism. It sees power and military force as something inheritibly bad. But rerality could not be further from the truth. Power is in itself not evil. Power is the ability to do things, things which could either be good or bad. Just like a knife can be used for killing people, or saving peoples lives when it is in the hands of skilled surgeon. Cars can kill people in traffic accidents, but they can also be used as ambulances to save lives. Everything depends on how they are used. And the same goes with power, and military force. Germany is scared of holding so much power in its hands... because it did not end up well when Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler had a powerful force in their hands. But as I see it can the western would just choose to give up all its economic and military power if it wanted to. That would however not create peace and a better world. If we abdicate our leadership role and hand over the position as the worlds most powerful country to for example China and Russia, then they will certainly create a more evil and opressive world. That is how they would use their power. They would use it to redraw borders and force people to become Russians or Chinese or being put inside concentration camps to die like Uighurs and Ukrainians. The only thing stopping those evil regimes are western military and economical power and soft power. Evil people in this world will not give up their power just because we do that. So what is the least bad option, should we have the power, or should evil dictatorships have it instead? I think that democracies have more self-restraint to use its power more responsibly, while dictators happily abuse their powers whenever they think they can get away with it. Furthermore do I not think violance in self-defence is wrong. There are evil people in this world. And just because you leave them alone, does not mean that they will leave you alone. Jesus fed the hungry and cured diseases and preached love and never harmed anyone, but he ended up being nailed to a cross anyways. Using self-defence to protect oneself from unprovoced aggression is not wrong. Nor is it wrong to use violance to kill a crazy person that are killing innocent people left and right in a mass shooting. Often times can the person not be talked into stop doing what he is doing, and then is force needed to protect innocent from being killed. And if the choice is between all good people dying nailed to a cross, or to use violance in self-defence to prevent evil people from taking over the world, then I pick the latter option.
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  14. Couldn't the wood be used because it doesn't create dangerous sparks like metal or stone?
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  15. Taking Italy would boost Allied morale while the Axis would see one of their 3 big players being taken out. Allied airfields in Italy would now create a threat to German cities from the south and to the Romanian oil fields. And the Allies were probably also overly-optimistic about how fast and easy the Italian campaign would go. In the end did Germany not lose so much by the allied foothold on southern Europe as one could expect. Most of the Italian industry laid in northern Italy and remained in German hands. The terrain favoured the defenders and Kesselring did an excellent job in deleying the allies. And the argument for opening the Italian front had been to tie up German units that could have been used on other fronts, but this argument collapses when you see that the allies had to spend 3 solidiers on the Italian front for every German (and even more if you include airforce personnel).
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  16. "I just like to hear all the best about my adversary as not to underestimate him." You Russians are not interested at all in other points of view. You get 15 years in prison if you try that in Moscow. And you only come here to spam Putinist poison in western social media and suck all media space. Well I hope you all get kicked out from the internet soon. I am uninterested in your lies and your total disrespect for truth and dignity. Nothing of value would be lost if Russia's point of view was not heard. And I would not miss your country if a big asteroid wiped it out tomorrow. As long as I am not free to speak the western point of view in Russia, should people like you have no right to speak your point of view here either.
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  17. Sportsmanship. Gentleman behaviour.
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  18. I think it is the duty of economic professors to be useful to society and talk about things that matter to the public instead of sitting locked inside their buildings and just drawing lines on a papper and doing maths. Personally I think that macroeconomics should be fun, and economics should be rather focused on problem-solving and giving people a general idea on how the world works so you as a citizen can make enlightened decisions and defend your own interests...anyways, I am getting off topic here , so lets go back. Economics of war is not a popular topic, maybe because it is a no-mans-land that no one wants to go into. This subject is too economic for historians, and too much based around history for economists. But I don't think we should give up. I think all aspects should be covered so an attempt to a general understand of the war can be gained. "Somehow economy science was able to study GDPs and other indicators through decades and centuries and to compare them between different states, despite "funny monies" To pharaphrase Max Keiser, I would say that economics is not a hard science like physics, but more of a soft-science like psychology without any hard clearcut answers. The economy is based around humans, and humans are unpredictable things unlike atoms in a bottle. Most numbers in economics are just arbritrary. How do you count inflation? How do you count unemployment? How do you count GDP? How do you measure poverty? I mean some economists say you should include housing rents and energy into your measurement of inflation while other say you should not. Unemployment statistics also have lots of flaws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulu3SCAmeBA And how do you measure poverty? when does someone count as poor? when they live on 1 dollar per day or less? or 2? or 5? GDP comparisons between countries does never get perfect because of uncertainties surrounding exchange rates and purchasing power parities. And countries with private healthcare and school systems can seem to have higher GDP than countries, when those services provided for by the government and not counted into the GDP by some people. While others tries to do a guess work of their value to GDP - which is arbritrar as I said. So to conclude do I think all numbers needs to be taken with a grain of salt, and not be taken to literarly to be the truth. And any economist that does think economics is a hard science is an idiot with hybris. So does that mean that numbers are all useless? Not at all. They can often give you rough estimates about things. Like that USAs GDP is roughly 20-25% of the world economy, and that the income per head for the average American is about 20 times higher than an African, or that the standard of living in Africa today is about the same level as Europe in the 1700s and perhaps a little better. Just think about it, even poor people in rich countries have access to better healthcare than Roman emperors did in the past. When King Charles XII of Sweden nearly died from a cold in the late 1690s his doctor told him to piss in cup and put an egg in his urine and then eat the egg, and that was supposed to cure him from his disease. If that was the best healthcare a mighty King of Swedish empire could get when the country was at its hight of power, then I definatly say that healthcare today for poor people today is much better. So to conclude, do I think that GDP is good for rough estimates for things. Like comparing the size of the German economy with that of USA is like comparing the size of Jupiter with Saturn. And comparing the size of Swedens economy with Polands is like comparing the size of Mars and our planet and see that they are roughly similiar in size, eventhough the average pole is poorer than the average Swede. And when comparing USA with Ghana, is like comparing the size of Jupiter with that of Pluto.
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  19. Given how piss poor Russia have performed in this war I will not be surprised if the US army would punch the crap out of russia with equal numbers on the battlefield. Indeed, I think we would see things we saw in World War 2 when a single division of the German army could fight off an entire Russian corps, and a German corps could beat an entire Russian army, and a German army could easily beat the crap out of a Russian army group. I have never seen the Russian army perform this bad since 1941. And the Russian army have a century old tradition of losing their way towards victory by suffer catastrophic defeats one after another and grinding down their opponents by attrition..
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  20.  @nirfz  Swedish is a super language in many ways. But that is not what we talk about here. Here we talk about swedish military language.
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  21.  @johanmetreus1268  I have never in my life heard anyone use the word "åskvigg". And Sweden was interested in exporting weapons as Draken was exported to both Finland and Denmark. Denmark was also interested in buying Viggen but later on rejected the plane because of Nato. I think the names are bad. They are not cool or anything. Its not like Thunderchief, Storm shadow, Nebelwerfer, sturmgewehr or anything like that.
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  22. Probably true since pervetin can keep you awake for a longer time. And in Vietnam US solidiers used drugs to improve their night vision.
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  23. Frederick was an atheist during the 1700s when it was still a crime to not be a christian in many countries. And since Prussia is dead and forgotten people don't know much about Prussia or sees it as irrelevant to know anything about. He have been known as a warrior king and a despot and a figure who inspired Hitler - which in turn have given the man a bad reputation. Jacques Boudet writes in his book about military history that Frederick the great unlike other monarchs never tried cared to improve hiw own reputation in art or litterature, unlike most other monarchs of that time.
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  24. Putin is a fascist who starts wars of aggression and deliberatly bombs children's hospitals, and his troops commits massive war crimes - like killing 300 civilians in Buscha, placing land mines in peoples homes so they cannot return after Russia left Kyiv, a 10 year old girl had to visit a doctor after rupture of both her genital and rear after Russian troops raped her.... and if those things are bad, then it is hard to imagine what even worse things have happened to Marioupol which is a city Russia deliberatly have turned into ash and rubble.
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  25. Considering how incompetent the Russian army have proven itself to be, I do think it is more likely Russian troops will be on the receiving end instead.
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  26. They should have made their panther 7-12 tonnes lighter by shaving off 1-2 centimeters from the frontal hull armour, and cut the side armour down to a minimum that would only be able to stop rifle bullets. Hopefully would they then get a tank that is cheaper and easier to mass produce. Have better mobility and less fuel consumption, and is easier to recover from the battlefield and tow to a repairshop, and which runs a lower risk of overburdening the engine. The most important strenghts of the panther (its good frontal armour, its good gun and mobility) would have been kept, while Germany would have gotten a medium tank instead of a heavy tank, and they could have more easily have started to mass produce this panther tank in numbers closer to those of M4 and T-34. And the maintance of this tank would also be much easier with a lower weight. Overall do I not understand why the Germans loved to waste extra tonnes of steel on the armour of their tanks for no good reason. I cannot see why a King Tiger would ever have needed 18cm of angeled frontal armour when most allied guns would have problems taking out a tank with even half as much. And the Jagdtiger was even more dumb. I mean what is the point to add even more armour onto a King Tiger, when there is rarely any existing cases of a King Tiger gotten its frontal armour penetrated? And having 80 millimeters of side amour is even more dumb. Just why adding so much? It will only make the tank heavy and slow and expensive to build. And if you only want to protect your tank against rifle bullets you dont need that much armour. And this much armour is still to prevent this tank from being taken out by flanking fire at close range by a tank gun... so what is then the point in having so much armour if does not offer that much usefulness?
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  27.  John Cornell  They were never going to be able to produce as many tanks as the allies for various reasons. But they would have been able to produce more than only 6000 Panthers if they had made it into a medium tank instead of heavy tank. "the King Tiger etc needed so much, well the German designers thought ahead to not only overcoming the then current allied equipment" The King Tiger had too thick side armour regardless how you look at it. More than needed to stop a bullet, but too little than needed to stopping even a medium tank gun from getting through the side armour. And that frontal armour of the King Tiger hull was even more than needed for the next generation of big guns. And the turret could probably never stand a chance against an ISU-152 round no matter how much armour you had put on it, so why then even try to cover it in excessive amounts?
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  28.  @Dreachon  I know very well that nearly as many (6000) Panthers were built and that it was the 2nd most produced tanks after the Panzer IV (8000 built). The Panther also entered service in 1943 while Panzer IV did so in 1935... so clearly was German tank ramping up very fast. And this numbers I mentioned does not even mention the whole truth since the Panhter was more advanced and twice as heavy as the Panzer IV, so one should also have that in mind when one look at how much tank production did increase. Weight-wise was the Panzer a heavy tank while Panzer IV was a light medium tank. One could say that German tank production ramped up and produced too little too late. And the only vehicle that the Germans succeded in producing in somewhat large numbers was StuGIII (11.000 built). So the German economy was not yet ready for the war. And to me that is a reason why Germany should have prioritized making real medium tanks over heavy tanks, and get more quantity instead of quality. Building 30 tonnes tank would probably be easier than 40 tonnes tanks. Maybe Germany then could have built 8000-10000 panthers instead of just only 6000. It would still be a small number compared to 49000 shermans and 50000 T-34 tanks. But it would mean a lot more tanks for the German army. And a lighter tank would also be easier to handle logistically and could use more bridges. But then the question is if Germany should have built tanks at all, or focused everything on building StuGs at this point of the war when time was scarce and Germany most of all needed as many vehicles as it possibly could get.
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  29. Btw, GKY
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  30. The Russian troops do not even know basic tactics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lpf_KsFYg8
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  31.  @alangordon3283  track traverse/speed
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  32. Actions speaks more than words
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  33. Provide some evidence instead of just speculating Ruskie bot. Big claims, require strong evidence. Otherwise can you just shut up.
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  34.  @alexnderrrthewoke4479  "beating French legionaries all over the world" I think google translate must have played a joke on you :P "Ukraine is desperate for weapons and cache of munitions" And so is Russia. There is a stalemate and a war of attrition has started. Can a sanctioned 3rd world country (Russia) win such a war against all the biggest economies in the world at the same time? - USA, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Canada, South Korea, Australia etc? Nope. Russia is running out of smart bombs and cannot easily build new ones because of the sanctions. It cannot repair tanks because of the sanctions. Some sources say it is start running out of dumb ammo as well. The Russian army call upon 50 year old beer belly dudes to serve in Ukraine - that is how desperate the manpower shortages are. You have begun to use T-62 tanks there - which are tanks which were considered outdated already back in the 1980s. To me it seems like Russia is losing this war of attritition even before it has began. Ukraine now gets MLRS and Leopard2 tanks - so time is rolling in their favor. My advice to you is to pull out of this war while you can. You can lose this war with another 1000 destroyed Russian tanks or you can lose the war with no more Russian losses. The choice is yours. I used to think you Russians at least had common sense, unlike fanatical ISIS warriors and suicidal Japanese world war II soldiers. But I am starting to have my doubts when you prolong this war and your unavoidable defeat. You only cause suffering to yourself and doing yourself a big disservice. Why are you even still in Ukraine? Is it because of pride? Well then I only got bad news for you. You are going to lose the war anyways. I think you should just cut your losses and go home. Then you can start repairing the mess you created. And why do you need more land? You already got 11 time zones of it. And even more of it will become useable thanks to global warming which will benefit Russia. You are the largest country on the planet. You can lay your imperialism to rest.
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  35.  @masterdreadeye1865  Because there was no longer any reason to stay there when Bin Ladin had died. Killing the man behind the september 11 attacks was the goal. Punish him. Prevent him from doing any such attacks again. And deter future terrorism against USA was the goal. All that was achieved once Bin Ladin was killed in 2011. Staying in Afghanistan for another 10 years was just stupid.
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  36. Not really. The Afrika Korps only consisted of 3 Divisions. One light division, and two panzer divisions with weak tanks that were a bit too outdated to be used on the Russian front. With other words - it wouldn't make any difference to Germany if that tiny force got totally destroyed. Germany had about 3.500.000 men on the eastern front. And I guess the Afrika Korps had about 45.000 men. So it didn't any big difference. Germany lost 3000 men per day during the first 100 days of the war in Russia, to just take and example to compare with. So if you had put the Afrika Korps on the eastern front, then it would just had replaced the losses of 15 days fighting. World War 2 was decided on other places than North Africa. The Russian front was of course more important due to the large scales of everything... the number of tanks and men that fought, the large geographical distances, and the size of the losses. Stalingrad and Operation Bagration makes most battles on the western front to look tiny in comparison. But there were of course some large battles on the western front too, such as D-Day and the battle of the Ardennes.
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  37. Russia will not have a happy economic future after this war regardless how it ends. Its santioned. The military needs to be completly rebuilt - which is not cheap. Its foreign assets are stolen and used for war reparations. The country will never fully recover from the past brain drain. The country have lost 200 thousand young men, and twice that number if you include men who have been severly injured and lost arms, legs eyes and so on. And hundreds of thousands of men will become alcoholics traumatized by their war experiences and having PTSD and having problems with their work and their marriage. And along with alcoholism and drug problems comes criminality. Birthrates will also go south - not just by all deaths, and all injuries, and russians moving abroad in the braindrain,... but also because of all men who have to spend their years in the frontline instead of making kids. Many men will never experience fatherhood, and many women will never get married because there are too few men left. So Russia will continue to battle with falling birtrates and an ageing population. Furthermore can Russia no longer keep much of its manufacturing base alive because it cannot export to western markets anymore, and russian consumers are too poor after the war. And foreign friends like India are less interested in buying russian military equipment after it have proven itself to be outdated worthless garbage. It was that in the six day war and in the wars in Iraq 1991 and 2003. But the Russians said that the Iraqi losses were terrible just because they had the old T-72M model of the tank, and if they had the better Russian version of T-72 then they would have fared much better. Well the war in Ukraine did poke a hole in that myth, as even the most Russian versions of all their weapons are easily blown to pieces by western weapons. And even if India have locked themselves in to Russian equipment thanks to a "sunk cost". Might they still wanna reconsider moving away from a dependency on Russia. Partly because the country is a weak loser and not valuable as a geo-strategic ally anymore. And partly because Russia now cannot import western components so it can build many advanced weapons anymore. Russia have lost most of its car makers. Its airliners are facing hard times as their stolen western aircrafts are running out of spareparts - and after that do they no longer have any planes that they can fly passangers with from one part of Russia to another. China and India is taking advantage of Russia and its cheap oil that generates only a marginal profit for russia. And that is all that Russia can get from a resource that makes up over half of russias GDP. And just like with the economic problems Russia had in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, will Russia once again be extremely short on cash - and especially foreign cash. Russia can try to sell more of its best high tech weapons to countries like China and India. But just like China did reverse engineer and steal all technologies in how to make SU27 fighter jets, will they once again steal technologies from Russia and reverse engineer everything and steal every technology until there is nothing less to steal. And then will China eventually become more skillful and knowledgable than Russia in every field of technology and being able to build better things themselves, and then no longer feel any need to buy anything russian in the future. And what can Russia do about it? - Nothing. - Oh well you can try to go to war with China of course with your badly battered army against a country with a 10 times larger population and the worlds 2nd largest economy. But I doubt you will win that war. And with the economic problems will Russia more and more fall behind the rest of the world. China is building its own stealth fighters. And other countries are making their 6th generation fighters. But Russia is unable to even produce a 5th generation fighter. India have lost patience and have pulled out from their funding of that failed SU57 project. And nor are they interested in any T-14 Armata tanks. And I cannot blame them. Had an American F22 used a F15 engine and put bolts and rivets on its wings then I would not call it a stealth fighter, and for the same reason do I not think that SU57 is a good stealth plane as its radar signature and generated heat is a joke for a stealth plane. And the T-14 Armata tank lacks turret armor and can be penetrated there by just about anything, and it completly relies on cameras for the crew to see anything outside so if the tank gets its cameras knocked out by artillery fire it will become blind and useless on the battlefield. And its engine is old and weak, which is why its top speed is lower than Abrams and Challanger despite being 20 tonnes lighter. Russia is falling behind the rest of the world technologically and its negative birthrate does further contribute to making this country very poor for decades to come.
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  38. I agree. Sensors can easily be taken out by enemy fire, desert sand and other stuff so its not practical to rely on sensors only. Furthermore would sensors also require space, and space for cables and electronics which will mean that less space would be left inside a tank for other things, and armour thickness needs to be reduced and several weakspots needs to be added when you fit all your sensors... so I doubt it would be worth it. And it would also cost money. But I also think the development will go towards more automation in other aspects. Tank guns are starting to use to large calibres that it would no longer be practical to load guns by hand when Leopard 2 and Armata starts to use shells with a big diameter of 130 and 152mm. So autoloaders will therefore become more common.
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  39. I was mistakenly thinking of the game Victoria. There one can see global imports and exports on the same page as when one can make national comparisons with other countries of the size of the economy and population. I don't remember if this thing was improved in Victoria II. I havn't played that game for years.
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  40. You pro-Russian fanboys says that all western institutions always are lying. So sorry Ivan, you are not allowed to use western institutions as a source for anything according to your own logic. It is not trustworthy to claim that IMF is a terrorist maffia organisation bullying the 3rd world and now herald it as a source of truth. Nor can you say that western media is always lying, and then in the next moment use New York Times as a source to prove that the explosion of the North Stream pileline was not done by Russia.
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  41. You have never heard about Pbv301
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  42. I think the German assesment was largely correct except the underestimation of the fighting morale of the Japanease troops. Japan did not have the industrial capacity needed for a big war against modern military powers, and it is surprising that the country actully could do as well as it did the first months after pearl harbour with its many surprise attacks and amphibous landings. The enemy was unprepared, and badly supplied with manpower and modern weapons while Japan had its battle-hardened military and element of surprise to throw at their allied enemies. But they would eventually run out of luck, as they were doomed to do sooner or later... and luckily for America did Japan lose their best card at their hand only a few months after the war started when Japan lost their many carriers at Midway in 1942. And after that the war was doomed to end badly for Japan ever after. The only other 2 strong cards Japan had at their hand, one was the large concentration of force it already had in the pacific, while America still was chocked after the declaration of war from the Axis and was trying to gear up its military/government and industry for war. But that advantage was soon lost as well in late 1942 when Japan lost hundreds of aircrafts and transport ships in the battle for Guadacanal, which severly restricted their ability fo move troops and control the skies for the rest of the war. And the last major trump card was the super-battleships that was lost in 1944 in the Leyte gulf battle. In the end was Japan doomed to fail no matter what they did. It did not have any large population or industrial base that could come anyware near their enemies. It did manage to steal recource rich areas, but it did lack the transport ships for transporting it to Japan. And the technological gap between Japan and USA was huge, and the Japanease army was also pretty easy to crush for the Russians in 1945, even after the red army had been fighting bloody battles in Europe for years. Japans resources was too small and fighting a land war in China and the pacific, while also getting involved in their air-sea battles was really too much for a poor backwards country. And the country would probably had been crushed much earlier if the war in Europe didn't get the much higher priority for the allies.
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  43. I copy my research methodology from CSI and try to use logic and reason and base my theories around the facts and low quality evidence. And I want to read the references when I read a book, because sometimes things can sound great in the book text, but when I see the references I see that the fact in the books has been based on junk science. And going back to the main source of a claim is also usally the best way to form an own opinion.
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  44. Giving them planes will not be of much help. You have to train pilots - a Ukrainian pilot cannot just instantly learn to fly a modified MIG-29 that will take weeks. And even if you land a plane in Ukraine it will not be able to fight if you don't have the logistics and ground support and a skilled crew of mechanics used to handle the plane. And thirdly is there a risk that Russian cruise missiles only will destroy the 20 MIGs as soon as they have arrived on the Ukrainian airfield.
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  45. "Thanks for starting WWIII" No one forced Russia to invade Ukraine.
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  46. We always hear that things are different now than in the past. And before the last Economic crash we heard that new financial instruments such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps had eliminated all the risks for another major financial crash, and the Federal Reserve economists were talking about new time when humanity finally had ended all "boom and bust cycles" and entered a new era called the "great moderation". But in 2008 this talk was proven to be bullshit. Just like all other times in the past when people said that old rules no longer applies because "this time its different". And just like such statements is ignorance in economics, the same kind of statements are also ignorance in the history of warfare. I just gave multiple historical examples of Swedish and French naval victories against better navies. And you are a stupid person who simply ignores facts. So I block you.
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  47. Wanderer628 Well, with your logic we can abandon the concept of history altogheter. Let's just say that things are different now than yesterday. So nothing in the past is worth studying. And if that is all what you got to say, then you can just go and fuck off. You have nothing to say of interest to me.
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  48. France had a larger population and they had conquered Europe, while Britain was an island without much trees to build ships. And as the battles of Trafalgar and the Nile shows, so did France atleast have the numbers needed to be able to beat Britain. Things are not different from land warfare, where poor country with badly trained and badly equiped men can beat a larger force when they have good leadership or are fighting under benificial circumstances. And France were by no means a shitty opponent who were fighting a hopeless struggle against an overmighty enemy as General Lee, Vlad the impaler or Mannerheim were doing. On the contrary, France had a large respectable Navy that had defeated the British at the Battle of the Chesapeake in 1781, which made Britain lose the battle of Yorktown - which ended up with Britain losing her American colony and suffered her worst loss in history. But that is another story...... Now we are talking Napoleon and his navy which had ships in slightly superior numbers to the British navy and they were made out of the roughly the same quality. So I would say that there were a good chance that things could have ended up differently.
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  49. Your post was boring, off-topic, and uninteresting so I decided to block you. I don't know if you are a troll, or simply a lamestream thinker incapable of seeing things from outside your own dogma. Anyways, this just feel like a waste of time arguing with someone who is like that. "Ships are useless without seamen to sail them, mate." I am not going to argue against someone who posts empety clichés - Fuck you idiot. "There aren't any brilliant flanking maneuvers that can be carried out with poorly-equipped ships and there aren't any hills to defend. The history of fleet engagements is rather devoid of upsets. The smaller fleet may win, but the inexperienced fleet never does." Yes, if we do like you do and choose to ignore the evidence of the contrary. I just mentioned the battle of Svensksund 1790 where the Swedes won an amazing victory against a superior force thanks to a schoolbook example of an double envelopment. If Cannae is the ideal of an double envelopment which all strategists at land warfare tries to emulate, then Svensksund is the ideal for admirals at sea. "France had not actually defeated an English battlefleet in generations. The Chesapeake was a tactical draw that enabled a victory on land, nothing more." Once again, we can reach your conclusion if we do like you and close our eyes to the facts that proves the opposite. Fucktard. Bantry Bay, 1689 Beachy Head, 1690 Lagos, 1693 St. John, 1696 The Lizard, 1707 Minorca, 1756 Sadras, 1782 Providien, 1782 First Algeciras, 1801
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  50. And yet history is filled with succesful amphibious operations before the 1900s. The crossing of Düna in 1701 for example - which was won by the landing troops at a very small cost despite hard opposition on the landing zone. Amphibious operations was difficult and still is difficult, and even the huge D-Day invasion could easily had gone wrong. But as I said earlier, history is filled with succesful landings. Otherwise I don't think it would have been worth trying to land troops in Normandie in 1944 or in Düna 1701. Generals in the past was no fools and of course would they not try to make a frontal attack across the water against the main British army. Instead the French would try to land troops at a location with little enemy opposition and try to use deception and the element of surprise to the largest extent possible. Pretty much like Alexander the Great did at the Hydaspes river 326BC, when he landed troops on the other side of the river under the cover of rain and fog, and the enemy was taken completly by surprise since this river was considered near impossible to cross... I think the french would first land a few troops to secure a bridgehead, and then more reinforcements would arrive to help. And then finally the French army would arrive en masse. And then they would march into England and take whatever supplies they would need by plundering, and there would be no need for huge piles of supplies since ammunition consumption was much lower back then and there was no need for oil pipelines or mulberry harbours. And supplying and army by sea was the easiest and best way of supplying troops before the age of the railroads and trucks...so if the French had control over the seas, then they would also have it easier to transport supplies than the Britishers.
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