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

  1.  @TheStugbit  I didn't say that the panther was useless, but I don't think the Germans was able to get the full value out of this tank. Had they had better crews, more support, not fought so outnumbered, and made this tank more mechanically reliable then it could have done some wonders in this war. But instead were many machines wasted in the dumbest ways. And this make me think that the panther was maybe not the right kind of tank for Germany then. It seems wiser that they would have built a 10 tonnes lighter tank which was more mechanically reliable and easier to mass produce. If they wanted to then they could probably have added the same gun on it, like they did with Jagdpanzer IV. The panther was a nice tank with good optics, good penetration, good precision, frontal armour, good suspension and great ground pressure thanks to its wide tacks, and the sloped shape also great. So there was much to like about this tank. But as I said earlier, I don't think the Germans were fully able to capitalize on its strenghts. The impression you get from watching episodes of great tank battles is that German tankers in the later half of the war often behaved stupid and wasted good tanks. While the Americans on the other hand were able to use their tanks in ways that in a tactically smart way. They fired smoke grenades to deny the panther tanks the upper hand in long distance gun fights. And they used sneaky flank attacks to take out the panthers by outflanking them and hit their weak sides. Or they just used air power to take them out instead of involving themselves into costly frontal assault duels.
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  2.  @TheGantus  the good thing is that you do not take space for granted and apprechiate life outside the tank more after you have spent a long time inside of it
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  3. Russia have lost more men in the last week than it lost in 10 years in Afghanistan. And this against an outnumbered opponent with chronic ammunition shortage. Says a lot about how effiecent russian warfare is.
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  4. I think not. Most countries cannot afford any big airborne arm. And even the few who can (USA) I still think that it is hard to see them as units with any heavy strategic impact. They are light units that lacks the ability to fight enemy armour, and the low amounts of supplies makes them vulnerable to other attacks as well - especially in long term isolation. Airborne units are useful for operations with small duration to capture things like bridges or closing an enriclement of an enemy army. And for the last half of the war did Germany use their paratroops as regular infantry in the frontline, since their excellent elite training have made them superb infantry units. So I think airborne infantry is still limited in their capacity because helicopters and airplanes cannot carry big cargoes, they can easily be shot down by even a single rifle bullet, and they cannot usally be used in bad weather with snow, rain, and night darkness. And they also need lots of trained pilots and maintance - which limits the use of the machines even more. So supplying an entire army from the air is still difficult today... I mean the 6th Army at Stalingrad used 11 railway wagons of rifle bullets each day of fighting. And beside from that they also needed tons of food, fuel, high calibre ammo, medicines, and much else.. So carrying stuff with a tiny helicopter carrying 0.5-2 tonnes or a hercules carrying 20 tonnes will demand many, many (more than a thousand) sorties before an army can get the minimum of supplies it needs.
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  5. Maybe that have something to do with the industrial revolution made it possible to replace slave labour with machines? And that Europe did not have a harsh hot climate, in which no one would want to work in if they have the option to say no
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  6. The Europhile countries France and Germany are the most pro-Putin. While Britain is the one most anti-Putin. The Brexiteer Boris Johnson have been the most pro-Ukrainian politician among the big countries. While the Europhile Macron have acted like a pro-Russian traitor. Just saying. I am 100% pro Brexit. And I am also 100% in favor of Ukraine. So things are not as simple as Brexit just happened only because of Russian manipulation. Nope. People have some rightful genuine concerns and good reasons to prefering souvereignty over the EU. As patriot I feel sympathy with other patriots, like those in Ukraine fighting against Russian imperialism. I don't like Russian imperialism, just as I don't like other forms of imperialism either ;-)
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  7. "how is Ukraine doing? well, loss after loss" You have been sleeping under a rock. Reality is that Russia have retreated and retreated. They failed to take Kyiv and was forced to make a retreat. They failed at Sumy and was forced to retreat. Snake island was a costly mistake with disproportionally high losses for Russia, so the Russians felt like it was not worth keeping that island at a very high price for minimal gains. With the long range anti-ship missiles delivered to Ukraine and the loss of the warship Moscow was the Russian black sea fleet soon also forced to leave the western black sea and Crimea to not get sunk. And the next humiliating defeat was the retreat from Charkiv which was an enormous loss for russia with large amounts of equipment falling into Ukrainian hands. And then did Ukraine retake Khersun - the 2nd largest city in Ukraine. And on top of all this have Ukraine won large amounts of small tactical victories and inflicted heavy losses on Russia. And the idiotic river crossing attempts by Russia resulted in hundreds of men being obliterated by artillery fire. But that did not prevent the idiotic russian army trying to redo the same mistake 3 times more with the same result 🙄
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  8. The numbers that you believe in are utter nonsense so I assume that you are a complete newbie to military matters. First of all the Russian military in Ukraine is at best 200-300.000 thousand strong. It cannot be a larger force than that because Russian logistics suck. Russia is a 3rd world country that has not yet invented the wooden pallet, and its military trucks cannot even handle small amounts of mud without getting its made in China tires from exploding. Russian troops are fed outdated combat rations, the troops have to buy their own equipment or ask family members for tampoons to use for treating bullet wounds. Having an army that is 500 million strong will be worthless if you do not have food for the troops, ammunition for the guns or fuel for the tanks. And the Russian economy, and the military transport organisation cannot supply more than 300.000 men in Ukraine. Even the invasion force Russia threw into Ukraine in February last year which was 200.000 strong and had not yet lost thousands of military trucks and had many months of preparations behind them before this war could not succeed in providing its troops properly, but instead was a gigantic traffic jam created north of Kyiv where the Russian army was in a standstill. And this is just the beginning of problems Russia have. I have not yet even mentioned all the enormous corruption that have led to army units lacking the equipment they should have because someone have sold stuff off to put profits into their own pockets - like with for example diesel for the military vehicles stationed in Belarus before the invasion of Ukraine. And when the war started was the Russian invasion army short on gas so it had to spend time on plundering Ukrainian civilians instead of fighting an enemy. The entire thing feels like an army of the 1600s which spended more time on plundering potatoes from farmers than preparing for combat with the enemy 🙄 And Russian tanks and IFVs are garbage. Leopard 2 got no Russian equal. Russia have no equal to Combat vehicle 90. Nor does Russia have any artillery which is as good as Archer, Caesar, or Panzerhaubitze 2000. Add to that all crappy Russian logistics, crappy (if not non-existent) combined arms tactics, lack of thermal imaging systems, crappy tanker training and you will have a mess... Russian equipment losses have been catastrophic even if this war have not yet lasted one year. Tank losses have been horrible by western standards. And now is Russia forced to use more and more of their old tanks because their new ones have been destroyed in large numbers. And to make matters even worse have all Javelins, NLAWs and Stugnas exploded so many Russian tank turrets that there are not many experienced tank crews left inside russia. The Ukrainians will now get more equipment form the west. A dreamteam of say 100 Leopard 2 tanks, plus 150 IFVs such as Combat vehicle 90 and Bradley... and the older marder of course. And they Ukrainians got a bunch of archer, PZH2000, HIMARS and Caesar that can support them. So it is indeed a very powerful armored spearhead that can make powerful offensives in any local area where they are being deployed.
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  9. Dying for mother Russia is a honour and a priviligie comrade. I can only congratulate you. This must be the best day in your life!
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  10. Yea. We cannot not learn anything from past experiences. We should ignore history all togheter.
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  11.  @vladmartyn6246  I am all for giving Ukraine all the weapons it needs. UK and USA have signed the Budapest agreement so they are obliged to give Ukraine help. Other countries are not obliged, but its in their own interest to help Ukraine. And if USA do not provide troops, then it should atleast give Ukraine tanks and ATACMS. Personally I consider all French-German appeasement talk as treason towards the democratic world. Russia should give back all land it have stolen since 2014. Russia should not be given anything. It should just be grateful that we have not carved it up. Its only right that we now steal their frozen assets and give them to Ukraine, after they have stolen 500 airliners from western countries.
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  12. The allies planned the D-Day invasion for years, and logistically it was very impressive indeed, including the mulberry harbours. But the invasion was close to failure even despite all that, because no one had thought about the breakout from the beachhead after the landing was done...so the allies were stuck at the beachead for months without a real harbour and would have runned out of supplies within a few months if the situation hadn't improved. So if that was what happened to the allies, then I am even less hopeful that the Germans would have improvised a succesful landing in Britain without any mulberry harbours, without any landing crafts, and without the massive support of planes and ships that the allies had at Normandy in 1944. So the Germans had to take a port and then bring in men by transport ships rather than by amphibius vehicles - as they did in Norway. And making a landing without specialist vehicles can make landings costly. The Brits used DD- tanks, Sherman crabs and other specialist equipment and were quite succesful at D-Day, while the Americans rejected such "silly" ideas and therefore suffered from huge losses compared to the brits. So I guess that the German infantry without any specialist equipment and training would have a very tough day if they would try to make a landing on the beaches of England. But the worst problem would be to put all reinforcements and supplies ashore so the invasion force could push onwards and take London and force a surrender.
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  13. After Hitlers invasion of Russia Franco decided to aid his fascist buddy against Communism and told the public that he was going to send volunteers to show solidarity with Germany and repay his debt in gratitude to the regimes that helped him during the Spanish civil war. And as soon as that news got out more than 40.000 people had announced their interest to join this force - which was a much larger number than what the Spanish government had expected. So the numbers were more than enough to from a Division. The volunteers were then sent to Southern Germany and trained and equiped there, They couldn't wear Spanish uniforms so they carried German uniforms instead, but kept their traditional blue shirts of the Falangists underneath - and thereby they got the name the Blue Division. And soon after they were send to the eastern front by the autumn of 1941. And due to the lack of motor vehicles did the German army only have mostly horses to spare for this Division. And the Division didn't have to wait for long to see action after it arrived in the east, since the situation was dire and fighting was hard. The men fought well and tough fighters, but the end of 1941 ended badly for the Blue Division with heavy losses due to the fierce Russian counter-offensive and the extremely harsh cold that Spanish solidiers were neighter used to or equiped for. But strangely enough did someone in the German leadership think that it was a good idea to let a Spanish force fight with Army Group North in Northern Russia in temperatures as cold as -40 degrees Celsius.... something that even sounds cold to me even if I am a Scandinavian. And then came Hitlers declaration of war against USA. And Britain were no pleased with Franco's military aid to Germany. So the political situation was now getting a bit litte more sensitive from December 1941 and onwards. And the Division stayed in the North in 1942, but the situation on the eastern front was swinging back and fourth on epic proportions... with many battles fough in Southern Russia in the year 1942. And the came the terrifying loss of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad, and in the desert had the German Afrika Korps been defeated at the battle of El-Alamein... and to the people around the world it was now seeming like Hitler was going to lose the war. And Franco and other fascists were beginning to negotiate peace deals with the allies. Meanwhile did Hitler plan to make one last major offensive in the east to win back the iniative by encircling and crushing half of the Russian army in trap. But Hitlers plans got deleyed and the plan leaked out to Russian spies so the Russian forces had prepared their defences well with minefields and trenches. And Hitlers attack on Kursk failed and it now was obvious that Germany now lost their last last chance of winning the war. And Franco therefore decided to withdraw the blue Division. The war was now lost, and angering the allies was now a bad idea for Franco. So the men came home to Spain, but a few decided to volunteer to fight for Waffen-SS.
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  14. The civil war was a large scale industrial war with railroads, trech warfare and mass mobilization it showed what was about to come in World war1. It was a in interesting case of building up large armies of hundreds of thousands of men from scratch. And for those who like to study the economic aspect of war is the Confederate States of America an extremely interesting subject to study. I consider it the ultimate example of how to not handle a war economy. Everything that could be done wrong, was made wrong. This is a very underestimated aspect that played a huge role of the defeat of CSA. In some ways can I see that Putins Russia are copying much of the idiotic ideas the CSA had, and that makes me happy.
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  15. Germany could probably have mass produced a truck comparable to the GMC or studebaker - like Henschel 33 for example. But that would not have changed much. Germany did still have too many different tanks in service so the Germans would have to keep too many spareparts in service and keep to many lines of production going. And there was uniforms made for all kinds of occassions. The mass industrial capacity was also too low before 1942 to compete with western powers on an equal footing. And the food and oil shortages would complicate things further. The allies had a huge land mass of resources at their disposal - they had Russia, The British empire, and USA. And they also had the ability to import things from latin America and other places. While Germany on the other hand only had the resouces of occupied Europe and a few half-unwilling trading partners of limited value - like Spain, Turkey, Sweden, Switzerland. So a new truck would do very little to adress Germanys many more greater problems with logistics and lack of resources.
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  16. The Tiger I tank was also used in the wars in former Yugoslavia so they used all kinds of garbage they could lay their hands on. And the old rusty T-55 tanks russia sends to Ukraine does not have any upgraded sights so I will not be surprised if they miss their targets with 15 or 30 meters. A sane government would have given up this war and put those old tanks to rest in a museum or letting them become scrap metal. But Russia is not sane. Is this their respons to Europe giving Ukraine Leopard2 tanks? Pathethic.
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  17. And it is also easy to deflect all criticism of stupidity and imcomptence by saying "well it is easy to be clever in hindsight". -No seriously fuck you idiot. Everyone with a brain knew that a tactic that didn't work the past 5 times would not work the 6th or 7th time it was tried out either. I could have told you that in forehand. And many others could as well. But the stupid people at the top couldn't ever realize this. Douglas Haig, Conrad von Hötzendorf, Luigi Cadorna, Falkenhayn, Nivelle and others were all fucking idiots. I can have respect for Generals in the past even if they didn't always win their battles. I respect leaders from the 2nd world war and antiquity. But I have nothing but contempt for the leaders of the first world war. They wasted millions of their own men for nothing. And I can understand why many famous authors who served in the frontline as a rifleman got nothing but contempt for those idiots as well. Many contemporaries regarded them as well, so fuck them. And I simply don't understand people who defend those people in our days. Have you learned nothing from history? Or are you only here to make smug pseudo-intellectual bullshit remarks on others instead of thinking things through yourself? In this case you are clearly not edgy for going against the mainstream. You are just dumb. People warned that the Euro currency was a stupid idea and that it would never work before it was introduced. But should we all just now pretend that no one could have seen the Euro crash would be coming? and pretend that some people just like to play clever in hindsight, even if they warned about this shit all along even before the Euro was created? Fuck you and your anti-intellectual bullcrap.
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  18. Many useless Generals got their job thanks to their connections and aristocratic background (Haig probably only got his job because his daddy was a rich whiskey distiller). And that can be an explanation why British generals also sucked in the Crimean war and why many backward dumbasses still served in WWII. And France huge losses in 1914 could probably be explained by the high age of most Generals - so most of them were stuck in old thinking from the 1800s and their stamina to actively lead their mean in crucial times was not the best. The average age among French Generals in 1903 was 61 years, while the average German general was 54. The Generals also lived a life totally detached from all the realities at the front. Joffre had the habit of eating 2 hour lunches while he refused to let any thing interrupt them, no matter how urgent the situation at the front was. Hindenburg had his 10 uninterrupted hours of sleep per night. Haig had roads near his headquarters sanded so that his horse would not slip during the field marschal's morning canters. And Stavka had their huge Champagne partys. By contrast did the solidiers at the front had to spend their days in muddy uniforms, wet boots, cold food, destroyed bedplaces and lice and enemy fire. So I can understand Sassoon, Remarque, and Barbusse's strong criticism. All the common excuses that they needed to stay behind the front to get information (due to the limitations of the communication system of that time) holds no merit to me when Generals in other times in history regularly visited the front and ate the same food as their troops, slept close to them and sometimes even fought along their side, as CharlesXII did in the early 1700s. And Erwin Rommel would also pay many visits to his men and eat their food to get a picture of their situation. And the modern Israelian army would also have a culture of leading men from the front. So I think that the least one could have expected would be that the Generals would have paid regular visits to the front to get a good first glance of the situation and hear about the solidiers situation of the war and boost their morale. And prioritizing lunch and sleep over doing their job should have gotten them fired immediately - just as in most other workplaces. If a patient is pressing the alarm button, then a nurse can't just ignore it and have his 2 hour lunch break. Because then the patient could be dead. And if a nurse cannot do that, then what resonsability would then not be on the shoulders of a field marshal with the fate of hundreds of thousands of men under him? The fate of an entire empire could be doomed by his nonchalant careless behaviour. And a few of them actully did destroy their own empires - like how Conrad von Hötzendorf destroyed 65-75% the Austro-Hungrian army in just the first 4 months of the war, and he neglected pre-war promises to the German about protecting Prussia from an invasion while the Germans would crush France. So Hötzendorfs incompetence forced the Germans to move troops to the east just when France stood near defeat and the war was almost won. Hötzendorfs accomplishments in World war 1 can therefore hardly be overstated. He managed to destroy the 640 year old Habsburg empire which was one of the most powerful empires in the history of Europe.
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  19. They had common enemies (Russia, USA, Britain). And Japan got a powerful navy to take on USA which Germany lacked.
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  20. You just ignored anything said in this video. The gun on Leopard1 is very dangerous.
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  21. Humvees are probably better than taking civilian cars that both sides does in this war
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  22. I don't know about that. I mean 60-80% of most countries state budgets went to the military during earlier times. And Frederick the Great also had conscription. So building mass-armies were certainly possible before Napoleon.
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  23. Why do you come and visit a western webpage if we all are nazis here in the west? Is it because you are a nazi? Why do the russian elite come to western universities to study and why do russians come to nazi land for vacation? You russians seems very strange.
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  24. It was a war and old tanks quickly got obsolete. So building mountains of spare parts would be pointless if the tank would becoming obsolete 2 years ahead if it not would have become a burning tank wreck before then. Why build spare parts for tanks so they can last 100 years, if the war is probably going to be over within 5 years at most? Why create spare parts for a tank that soon has to be taken out of service as it is becoming obsolete? Even if Germany had mass produced tank, and mass produced spare parts, would the German panzerwaffe and the German industry soon run into problem. What should Germany do when panzer IV and Stug III starts to become inferior to the new allied tank - Centurions, ISU152, IS2, T44, T-34/85, Comet and the late m4 Variants? Germany need a new flow of tanks since old tanks needed to be replaced (panzer III, pz38t and panzer II) and some super tanks could be good to have just as a pre-cautionary measure so Germany would not have get into more unpleasant surprises, as the summer in 1941 when Germany stood against KV1 and T34 tanks that were nearly hopeless to destroy for everything but the most powerful guns. It is also possible that German tank designers underestimated the amount of mechanical failures the Panther would have as they quickly tried to press it into service. And if the panther had not spent so much time in the repairshop, then it could have made a much larger impact on the battlefield. A problem with being outnumbered was that Germany's enemies could choose to attack at one place to tie up the German panzers, and then attack with another force upposed and trying to outflank them. So trying to make more panzers would make sense then to counter this problem, so Germany could have enough forces to beat back the enemy attacks at multiple places at the same time. Germany did also lack the luxury of the allies to have access to lubricants to extend the lifecycle of different component, or to have access to rubber that made tank tracks to last longer, or to have access to rare earth metals that improved the quality of the steel in tanks or the lifespan of the aircraft engines of me-262. So Germany could not make things that would easily a long time as the allies could.
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  25.  @BobSmith-dk8nw  "And no - in Vietnam - you still had to be careful where you dropped your artillery." My point was just that rocket artillery was unpractical in Vietnam because the Vietnamese loved to hug their enemy. Had USA used nebelwerfers in such situations, then would many American troops have been killed by their own artillery. "There are MLRS systems today" Of course there are. Rocket artillery can be very practical in certain situations. Especially in real wars, and not colonialist BS. "Western powers are in these countries now to kill terrorists who are attacking them" There are more terrorists in Libya today than it was back when Khadaffi ruled it. Syria under Assad have been fighting ISIS, Al-Qaida and FSA, and yet do USA and EU rather side with the terrorists than Assad. Exported American, Swedish and French weapons have been found in the hands of FSA terrorists, which later on handed them over to ISIS. The suggested Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Irans links to terrorist that caused 9/11 have all been bullshit. So no. These wars had very little do to with fighting terrorism. If you want to fight terrorism, then you can start bombing FSA instead. And bully the terror-state Saudiarabia into submission, since it have been sponsoring foreign terrorism and the preaching of jihadist islam. "It's much cheaper to just buy the oil from who ever is selling it - than it is to put military force into the area." The oil company Total and Blackwater do not care about what is best for the tax payers. They care about their own profits only. The French oil company Total could make big profits when it could just steal the Libyan oil production after France had completed its war of aggression. And Halliburton and Blackwater could make big amounts of money from the Iraq war, so of course they liked that pointless war. And what the real point of this war was, that is something you have to ask the liar George W. Bush which himself have admitted that the original reason to invade Iraq was a lie. So I guess we now can just execute the man as a war criminal who starts a war of aggression that killed 600.000 people. Same of course goes for Tony Blair, Hollande and the politicians that in secrecy exported weapons to FSA.
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  26. Rommel's Corps had only three divisions: 21st Panzer Division 15th Panzer Division 90th Light Division Each of them had about 15.000 men. So in total that would be about 45.000 men. Which is a pretty small number of men. For example did the Germans lose 400.000 men during Operation Bagration and more than 200.000 men during the battle for Stalingrad.
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  27. One could of course argue that the situation on the Eastern front could have been much different if Germany had moved say 12 out of the 20 Divisions from France to the Eastern front in 1942, along with much of the bombers in North Africa. That would definatly been enough force to save the 6th Army from destruction. But I don't think that more planes alone could decisively win the struggle on the Eastern front for the Axis. But I do think that Germany could send more of their bombers to the east along with two panzer divisions and a few motorised divisions and infantry divisions. And then 8 Divisions could be enough to defend France from an allied invasion - atleast it would be enough men, until Hitler could move troops from the East to push back any small landing of inexperienced American troops. America ha just joined the war and I would doubt that they would be able to move much forces across the sea or providing much air cover. And doing an invasion in the autumn would also seem like a bad idea for them, because then they need to capture a harbour pretty fast so they could transport in enough supplies. And if they fail with that then they only have the choice of either surrender to the Germans or get on a boat and go home again. That was almost what happened to the allies after D-Day, when they were stuck in northern France for 2 months before they were finally able to break through the German defensive line after Hitler had weakened it with his foolish Arracourt offensive. Anyways, sorry for getting longwinded and a bit off-topic
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  28. I don't think Charles XII was as interesting as Frederick the Great. But the Swedish army during the Great Northern war is interesting since it was the peak of Swedish military sophistication. It wasn't the strongest army in the world (like it might have been under Gustavus Adolphus) but it was a high quality force with good organization, tactics and leadership. Sweden faced an enemy coalition which had 40 times more resources, and despite those hopeless odds Sweden nearly won. Charles was simply a warrior king without any clever intellect like Frederick. Charles was a warrior king and nothing else.. except perhaps immature and a christian fundamentalist. His parents died from disease when he was young, and Charles was having a fever as well, and the doctor told him to urinate in a cup and drop an egg into the urine, and then eat it. Charles would survive the disease and crazy medicine cures and become king as teenager. And as such he was immature. He wasted money on wine and party. He liked to be drunk and hang out with Frederick of Holstein, and togheter they had "funny" games like trying to chop of the head of cows with just a single blow from a sabre. And at another occation they invited a tame bear into their palace and let it feast on a pile of food left on a dinner table and afterwards did it drink 2.6 litres of wine and got drunk and walked up the stairs and fell out from a window, and broke its back and died 3 days later. And foreign ambassadors sent home reports about this immature, wasteful, irresponsible King. And with such a fool in power, many thought that Sweden would be easy to defeat. August the Strong was among Charles enemies. And he was called the "strong" because he was a strong man who could bend horseshoes with his own bare hands. He and Frederick Vilhelm of Prussia (Frederick the Great's father) used to hang out on partys togheter which August arranged. Either they could eat a large cake made with 600 eggs, or listen to gun salutes made with hundreds of guns. August also had a big harem with over 300 ladies and he was probably a father of atleast a hundred kids. He wasted lots of money on other stuff too - like bribes to polish noblemen so he could become King of Poland and he waged war against Sweden of course. Peter the Great was the modernizer of Russia. And he founded sankt petersburg with swedish POWs and made Russia agreat power. And his hobbies was to blow people up with fireworks which he put in peoples mouth. Or he could knock peoples teets out with a pickaxe. He was a tall man (over 6feet and he always wore boots) and liked to get drunk togheter with August. And he also founded a colony for dwarfs. A not so normal person either with todays standards.
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  29. Not enough fertilizer. Not enough money for tractors. And german steel was needed to make weapons and not tractors. And even if Germany would have tractors, then there would have been no fuel for them. So then you would need more workers to do the job in working on the fields doing farming. But every man farming is also a man who doesn't carry a Wehrmacht uniform or work in a factory building weapons. So what should one prioritize?
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  30. @Britannic hayyomatt ""The easiest way to farm it is to have loads of children (5 maybe 8) and get them to work on your farm."* It was a deliebrate imperial strategy to expand the population so China could then expand its territory so that China then could expand its population even further so it could expand its territory even more. "However it also means that the individual European had more energy than the Asian or African or American." ... "Having large families is also not a problem because there's loads of rice to go around." I think you just contradicted yourself here. Rice produced large yields as you said and that also meant that the Asians also could keep their calorie intake very high - unless they overpopulate and have to share their fixed food supply among a larger population, which would then result in a lower number of calories per head. (source: The great divergence - Kenneth Pommeranz) As I said earlier so did east Asians have a higher standard of living than Europeans, and their daily average calorie intake was higher than that of Europeans. Europe suffered from deforrestation, and exhaustion of their farmland soil because of its overpopulation in the 1700s while China had much less such problems. So one can therefore say that China lied ahead of Europe. And things only changed as Chinas population continued to grow and forrests were cut down and soil got exhausted and lakes dissapeared. And the standard of living began to fall as the population grew faster than the economy, and the country got stuck in a Malthusian trap. Europe on the other hand got saved in the last moment before it was also about to get stuck in a Malthusian trap. And instead of economic growth leading to more population growth (as in China) so did economic growth instead lead to higher incomes and higher standard of living. Europe discovered that the could use coal from the ground instead of burning trees to make coal for heating their homes and making steel. So Europe did then not have to exploit the forrests as harshly as in the past. Furthermore did the East India company also discover the art of forrest preservation when they took control over India, so thanks to this could Europe get more forrests in the 1800s than what they had in the 1700s. And while Chinas growing population had nowhere to go, so could Europe dump their surplus population on America and Australia. And while China was struggleing with their land use, so could European settlers in America exploit the huge natural resources there. And the could start to grow wheat in the American mid-west, Sugar in Caribia and Beef in Argentina and send all those calories over to Europe to relief their overpopulation problems, in exchange for European manufacturing goods. "Play time and relaxing is important in all cultures but it's probably the most important aspect in European cultures. Think, the only "freemen" that existed until the 1900s were Europeans" The west dominated the world in the year 1900. But things were not always this case in the past. It could very well be argued that China was well ahead of Europe in various time periods. Europeans and Americans were still miserable places up until the late 1800s (just like the rest of the world). It was common for men to die before they hit the age of 30. Child labour was still common. Governments were corrupt and aristocrats could buy government offices. Democracy and freedom of the press were not the norm. No social safety net system existed. Most of those nice things did only come about around the 1900s in most western countries - 100 years after the industrial revolution had begun. So most changes have happened quite recent, since the last 200 years or so.
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  31. ​@Britannic hayyomatt "The nutritional value of Asian and European foods was different" There are many ways of measuring standard of living. And sometime Europe did come on top, and other times it was the Asians (as mentioned in my earlier examples). My main point here would rather be to say that Asia did pretty well compared to Europe every century up until the 1800s. So I therefore think it is reasonable to think Asia could have challenged western domination of the world in the antiquity, in the middle ages, and in the 1500, 1600s and perhaps even up until the 1700s. "The problem with China... Is that it's huge. China often wins in most categories when we compare to other countries" There are richer regions and poorer regions in Europe just as there are richer and poorer regions in China. Not all of Europe was as wealthy as Holland, or as poor as a village on the east european steppe. And China have a huge diversity too. So that’s why I am comparing China with Europe here, instead of Comparing Shanghai with Albania or the Netherlands with the Gansu province. However my point about play time still stands. Europeans were more free than other cultures. English people since the 1200s had rights, they had the right to live and be free. Similar customs existed in France, Italy and German states" The rights of the individual was much a product of the enlightenment. Before then did the idea of the individual didn't even exist. It was simply unthinkable thing that you any own rights or was allowed to have any own beliefs. Just as you will get killed in muslim clan societies today for being a muslim apostate or homosexual. I think its quite clear that religion was not a private matter in the German reformation during the 1500s. This entire crisis could probably have been easily solved if people just had let people alone and let them follow what religion they wanted to for themselves. But instead was your religion an issue for your family, and even for your entire village. Private life didn't simply exist. People would bully and harass each other, and the local government would harass people of a different faith, and protestants would smear saints in shit and urine, and things would later on escalate to a religious war, inquisitions and such. And people were seen as subjects and serfs rather than citizens. "But China, India and basically the rest of the world were very oppressive and single minded states." I can agree upon that there was a difference. But we should overstate the differences either. "Innovation was so prevalent in the Netherlands and England because individuals had a bigger say" I think Europe had an advantage or China when it came to printing books because we use a small sum of standardized letters, while China uses pictograms which made printing books much more difficult. So transferring knowledge was simpler in the west. I also think that innovation was also benefited much by the division of labour and having a large market which made it more profitable to replace human labour with machinery. And if wages are high, then you have a higher incentive to use machines or robots instead. Americas shortage of workers and large access to natural resources made it profitable to replace humans with machines, and wasting natural resources wasn't so much of a problem as in Europe. So it was perhaps no coincidence that mass production, standardized parts and such production techniques were invented in America since they are very efficient in using as little labour as possible, but sometimes quite wasteful in their use of resources. Later on in the late 1800s would science & knowledge change face. The old medieval ways of innovation with trial and error, would get replaced by a more theoretical approach with much measurements and reading books. Because people had already discovered many scientific laws, and science had become so advanced that things had gone beyond simply trying out things with trial and error. "A country's population is set, overpopulation is almost impossible in natural circumstances. The people "dumped" onto America... Where freemen, they were rich Capitalists that wanted money, land and a greater opportunity. They MIGRATED to America." To some degree you are right. Many people surely wanted to go to America but they were too poor to afford to pay for a ticket on a ship. So ironically would one million Swedes immigrate to America only after the 1860s when economy in the country got an upswing and mass starvation finally had become a thing of the past. But on the other hand to my point remain true. All the people who left Europe took pressure off their overpopulated countries, and when they left their jobs and went to America, then other people poor and unemployed could get a job. And when the population fell thanks to immigration, it also became easier for a country to feed its own population. America benefited from getting their labour shortage solved, and Europe got rid of its oversupply of workers and its pressure on land and limited resources.
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  32. It does. But it is in port most of the time and needs to be towed by other boats every time it wants to get somewhere 😂
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  33. ​ @mpriymak  Look it up on wikipedia. They still have shit like that in their use. I admit that China also got more modern planes like su27 and perhaps even a handful prototypes of 5th generation fighters. But overall is the Chinease military a paper tiger. The army is corrupt and most time is not spent on military training, but on political indoctrination. China is still a developing country and as such it have not the potential to make any advanced weapons yet. It is still a country that is trying to climb up on the technological ladder and catch up with other industrialized countries. Why do you else think they choose to upset the Russians by stealing their aircraft designs and make illegal copies? Do you think there is a coincidence that they got a plane similiar to the Israeli Lavi, or other countries 5th generation fighters? The Chinease steal designs of western cars and scooters and everything else - like all other countries did when they were transitioning from a poor country into a modern rich industrialized country. Like when Germany made illegal cheap shitty copies of British manufactured products in the 1800s. Chinas military potential can become enormous half a century from now, when their technological capabilities have catched up with the west. But today I think it would be a somewhat easy win for USA, Sough Korea and Japans airforces. China got great manpower reserves and nuclear missiles that I would worry about. But the Chinease army and airforce in themselves are nothing that I fear today. I know nothing about their navy, but I doubt it would pose any problem since it only got 1 aircraft carrier and is hopelessly weak to challange the global dominance of the US navy. And without any oil imports from the middle east or iron and coal from Australia, of food from USA or Africa I think the Chinease economy would be brought to a painful halt pretty fast and starvation would become widespread.
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  34. I think aircrafts are important as they carry much more explosive power in their bombs. A 750km bomb gives a really big "BOOM!!" compared to a HIMARS rocket with a warhead with 75kg of explosives. They do also offer an alternative to artillery now when ammunition is running low on both sides. And they do also carry certain types of bombs needed to destroy some targets, like bunker buster bombs (which Russia lacks which made it difficult for them to storm the gigantic Azov stal steel works as the entire complex was built to withstand a nuclear bomb during the Cold war), and for Ukrainians it was impossible to knock out the Antonivskyi with only HIMARS rockets and their small firecracker bombload. Aircrafts are superior to helicopters in ground support when in comes to carrying heavier loads of bombs and missiles. And they are also faster moving and more difficult to hit for enemy aircraft guns. And some planes like SU-25 Frogfoot and A10 Warthog can also withstand some hits from enemy small calibre fire. But helicopters are much more vulnerable as they move more slowly and because they cannot carry heavy weights do they not have any armor and a hit from a single rifle bullet in the hydralic system is therefore usually enough to shot down the helicopter. When the Americans decided to use attack helicopters instead of attack aircrafts during their invasion of Laos did helicopter losses pile up very high because of that reason - planes are simply better to use in an enviroment where the enemy have lots of anti-aircraft guns. And since the Vietnam war have more threats been added to the helicopters with manpads and such. But on the other hand, can attack helicopters can provide troops with a big boost of fire power and have an overview over the battlefield and can closely support the troops on the ground. And while jet fighters fly too fast to be able to see the enemy troops on the ground properly and they also have even less time to aim their weapons at them and fire... do helicopters have more time to aim carefully at their enemy. So both planes and helicopters have a role to play on the battlefield. But to me do the attack helicopter seem much more limited in its capabilities and more vulnerable. Lobbing rockets far away over to the other side with minimal accuracy seems to have no impact at all for the outcome of this war.
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  35. Well they won all the battles against them but lost the wars. While Russia does not have any splendid performance of the battlefield with high losses in almost every engagement and little to show for it. And if the US army is so worthless I wonder why the Russian propaganda feels the need to say that are not just fighting Ukraine but the entire Nato? Who cares? I mean if USAs military is in the same rank as Luxemburg, Albania and Botswana this is no good explanation why Russia is losing so hard in Ukraine.
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  36.  @Sturminfantrist  I think of punishment and collective punishment by drill instructors as a way to get soldiers motivated to fix their shit. If one man screw up in war, then the entire team can get killed. So the group matters, and you dont want your buddies killed.
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  37. What does victory mean? Total world domination? USA and Britain under German rule? Or "just" a German controlled Europe that includes all of western Russia? Plus an Italian Roman empire around the mediterranean, and Japan controlling China + South-East Asia? If those dreams would come true, then I think Germany should have needed some better friends than Italy and Japan because they could simply not compare with USSR, UK AND USA in economic and military strenght and size of populations and size of the territory and the resources within that landmass. The only strong power in the axis bloc was Germany, and it was not strong enough to win against 3 big allied powers on its own.
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  38. Russia have proven itself to once again having the most worthless ragtag garbage army... just like in World war 2, in World War 1, in the Crimean war, In the Great Northern War.. It seems like they are unable to learn anything from history 🙄
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  39.  @junahn1907  There are no good arguments for Russias claims of being a world power, and even less so a super power. Its GDP is tiny. Its population is the same size as Mexico, but Mexico is not a world power, so I don't see why a population of 140 million would make Russia a world power when the same rule does not apply to Mexico. Russia got nuclear weapons, but so does Mexico and Pakistan which are not world powers.
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  40. A MBT is a bit unclear concept. But genrally speaking can one say that the MBT was born in the late WW2 with say the Centurion tank. WW2 tanks were generally speaking very tall and and not very wide - M4 Sherman is an example of this. And that have some advantages that you can get an overview of the battlefield. But it also made you easier to spot for the enemy and a bigger target that was easy to hit. By making tanks lower profile and wider instead you made your tank harder to see and to hit, and you also made it possible to have a bigger hole in the hull - so that you could fit a bigger turret to your tank and therefore carry a bigger gun there, as a bigger turret meant more room was available to fit a big gun inside. So at the end of WW2 you could see big guns on medium tanks. Guns that were so big that they previously only were used on big heavy tanks. The Russian T-34/85 used a 85mm gun - which can be compared to the massive 88mm gun that the German Tiger tanks. The German Panther medium tank used a 75mm gun with a long gun barrel that fired shots with such high speeds that it could knock through the armor of any allied tank used in the war, even up to the biggest heavy tanks. And the British Centurion was also a powerful machine when it entered service. So now you have medium tanks with guns as powerful as heavy tanks. And they were almost as fast as light tanks. So the new medium tank could therefore start filling almost all roles on the battlefield. While the heavy tank was expensive and was more difficult to mass produce, they could not cross bridges, they were difficult to recover, and its firepower was not much superior to the medium tanks anymore. So the MBTs began to replace the old big monsters. However some exceptions from the rule exists. The Soviet union kept their IS3 tanks and T-10 heavy tanks in reserves til the mid 1990s. While one could argue that Abrams and Leopard2 now weight so much that one could question if they are not near being heavy tanks... and some light tanks were used after WW2 like AMX-13, M41 walker bulldog, M551 Sheridan and cadillac stingray.
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  41. Its not big for being a post-WW2 tank so it can probably easily get a parking spot. And it is probably the closest thing to a post-war stug one could get, plus that it is over-engineered and expensive and overcomplicated design that did not attract any foreign buyers.
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  42. I think the Germans would at best have been able to close the pocket. But when the Russian counter-offensive started, then they would have been forced to divert some of their forces elseware. And as a result would the net around the russian troops in the pocket have been incomplete and many Russian troops would have been able to escape capture. The battle would have ended in a German victory (instead of just a minor German tactical victory as it was in the real history). So the battle would not have been strategically decisive - atleast not on its own. But if the battle had been won. And Germany could have diverted their troops and punched back the Russian assaults and avoided the Kherkassy thing, then German situation in early 1944 would have been greatly improved. Russian territorial gains would have been very limited despite the unsubstainable rate of losses that the Russians had piled up during the autumn of 1943. Had the Russians then continued to press on in 1944 in the same way as it had in late 1943, then Russia would have runned out of manpower before Germany had. And the balance of strength on the eastern front would have tipped over into German favour.
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  43. Well, the NKVD was basicly much like just that. A million men where court martial, and an even higher number of Russian men were forced to serve in penal battalions to make suicide attacks against German lines or clearing minefields with their own feets.
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  44. I think the economy in Victoria II is strange. When I have bulit a huge industry I can easily export 40.000 on a daily basis.... but total world imports is just 2000. So I wonder, how can I still sell stuff when there are no buyers? In the real world global imports will be in the same level as global exports.
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  45. they did a push forward (read mosiers book "the blitzkrieg myth") but the French attack could not penetrate the Siegfried line... and time went past and soon there was no Poland left to save. So France could go back to the defensive as winter came. And air bombings and naval blockades became the offensive tools used instead.
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  46. This German way of selling military equipment sounds like the EU law on how art is sold in Europe. I make a painting. I sell it to you for 50 Euros... Then you decide to sell your painting to your friend Hans for say 50 Euros - and now you have to pay me some of the money you got from selling the painting to Hans. And when Hans sells his painting to Peter, for 100 Euros... then Hans have to pay me some of that money he sold "his" painting for. And when Peter sells the paining, then he also needs to pay me the artist... I think this law is so ridiculous 🙄
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  47. @tSp289 My point is not that seamanship doesn't give any advantage, my point is rather that it is possible for a landbased empire with larger resources to defeat a seapower - as with the example of Rome and Carthage in the first punic war. Napoleon had the upper hand when it came to resources and number of ships, so he did atleast have a fairly good shot at beating the Brits. And losing ships one-by-one in a duel against an enemy with equally good ships and superior crews would not be a good idea. But taking them all under a skilled commander and crushing the Britishers with superior force would have been a better idea. And I can very well see that history could have taken another turn if France have had a Commander more of Nelsons calibre, and if they had been less unlucky. The French should have done much than they actully did at Trafalgar and the battle of the Nile.
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  48. In the long run I think that humans will be replaced by robots. Humans are in fact bio-robots themselves with sensors (eyes, ears, nose etc) and a computer (the brain) and actuators to do stuff with (as our fingers, legs and arms). Metal robots can do the same things as humans, but they detect smells and see better than we do. And they already got enough brain capacity to beat chess masters and win Jeopardy. And they are stronger than humans and could be repaired after they have been destroyed. And they can also have detectors for things humans cannot detect - such as radioactivity and ultra sound. And robots can fly planes in more G than any human could survive. So humans are very unlikely to not be replaced by robots in the future. But in the short run I think that humans are superior to computers of today. And building a mass army goes faster with humans than using robots. And much of our technologies have also made life easier, so previously difficult tasks can now be done by any lazy fat bum. A fat basement dweller can now control a drone and press a button on a computer and kill a bunch of enemy solidiers.
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  49. This is how most armies work. But there is a limit to how strong capabilities this army will have. You could of course build up two great armies, instead of just one, but then wouldn't the taxpayers like this idea that much when they have to pay for 2 defence budgets instead of just one. So the question then comes down to: which of the two armies should be kept, and which would be thrown into the trash? The mass-army for the defence of the national territory? Or the proffessional army for special operations that could be rapidly deployed in any part of the world?
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  50. That is the standard way of doing things for rational nations. Germany got their special forces (KSK), Russia got Spetsnaz, Sweden got SSG, and Denmark got Jaeger Corps. To just take a few examples. And then there is of course men like pilots who tax payers have invested millions into training, so of course would it be both stupid and wasteful to just let go of them. And then western countries usally tries to hold up the regular infantry to a decent standard, while national guard units, garrisons and militia troops with basic units could be left to doing simple tasks and guarding silent parts along the front and the local units can assisting the regular troops by giving them information about the terrain and such. It would not be very cost-effiecent to have special forces for everything. And in major wars proffesional armies usally runs out of manpower pretty fast.. as the British Army did in the first world war, and then they are forced to rebuild their destroyed army in the middle of war - which is not a position one wants to be in.
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