What’s great about this, and Stephen Fry is brilliant, is not that he’s absolving Musk, or that he’s criticizing Tesla, but that it is an argument likely leading to Elon Musk protesting,
‘No, my cars are good enough that I can be a Nazi!’
What’s great about this, and Stephen Fry is brilliant, is not that he’s absolving Musk, or that he’s criticizing Tesla, but that it is an argument likely leading to Elon Musk protesting,
‘No, my cars are good enough that I can be a Nazi!’
A small country took on the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD (TWICE) and very nearly won. The second time with a lunatic at the helm.
What does it take to impress you? To what would you assign their disturbing success?
What point are you trying to make here @Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com?
I was arguing that there was a terrible war, and the enemy was dangerous and capable. Many of our and other country’s soldiers died to destroy them, and it wasn’t easy.
They weren’t “Colonel Klink” from “Hogan’s Heroes”, they were efficient at killing, rounding up and killing millions while fighting on a number of fronts.
My grandfather fought in World war I, and my uncles fought in World war II. From what I heard the Germans were not incompetent bumbling idiots. They were a very competent and difficult enemy.
I don’t know what history everybody’s been reading, but there sure as heck are some major changes to history interpretation that have taken place in the last 40-50 years. Probably peer-to-peer instruction, rather than accounts from those who endured it
Ok fair enough, I accept the explanation you provided. Folks are taking issue with the following comment in particular.
In isolation, this sounds a little too close to admiration for the Nazis, which is why we got some reports about it. It seems to me it’s just unfortunate phrasing, because together with the explanation you just provided, it sounds like a reasonable take for you not to want to paint them like some hapless foe that was easily defeated, because that discounts the difficulties faced by those who fought the bastards.
I wanted to clarify, but there were so many comments coming in, I didn’t see how I could do it effectively. And not seem like I was what some people thought I was
Not even close dumb fuck and fucking Nazis betrayed the German people with their bullshit.
I have to ask: What success? They did typical fascist bullshit: They had an economy so bad they had to invade new countries just to loot them to pay for their horrific economy. They picked fight after fight of the smallest kids in the neighbourhood they could find until they met those kids big brothers and sisters. They required fucking slave labour to try to meet their wartime goals because they grossly underestimated just about every single facet of running a country. They privatized state-owned industries, crippling longterm wealth for their people, they instituted tariffs (sound familiar?). Pay remained as bad as they it had been in the depression because while their wages were raised, they were forced to constantly work overtime for no additional pay. Their military was the majority of their economic spending, and they used deficit spending because they were going to literally plunder the countries around them to pay for it. Sound like solid long-term planning? They killed or jailed anyone in the trade unions, and due to their insane tariffs and you know, generally being the worst people in history, lacked incoming trade so things like poultry or clothing was in short supply for the average person.
Then it took thirty five days for the Nazi German army, along with the Serbian and Soviet armies, to conquer Poland. For every success in the early war they had embarrassing fumbles. They lost entirely because of how fascists work: they need to invade more countries to pay for their insane military spending, make bigger and bigger enemies, then get beat by those enemies, then later people claim they ‘could have if…’
Yeah, they could have done just fine if they hadn’t been fascist. All of their failings fall to being fascist.
And the first world war, are you kidding me? Are you seriously suggesting their insistence on investing in overseas colonies while fighting against the British was a brilliant plan? In both wars they were led by colossal morons who constantly underestimated their opponents, while in the second world war in particular having the worst spy agency of any nation. Their insistence on torturing, raping, and murdering everyone they came into contact with meant they just got the answers they wanted to hear, instead of the actual truth, and were constantly on the back foot. Their evil, cruel, and twisted nature was their own downfall; the insistence of their superiority, as you are doing now, is the very reason they failed.
Incredible. Literally everything you just said was wrong.
Germany wasn’t “a small country”. They were an industrialised, highly productive and heavily armed global power. They were slightly battered by post ww1 humiliation regulations pressed on them by the winners (because they ALSO lost that one!). But the instant they told the Allies to eat shit and started using what they had, any claim to “smallness” went out the window.
And they didn’t “almost win”. They got their asses kicked.
Every single thing the Nazis wanted to achieve, they failed hard. They wanted to prove the genetic superiority of the German people in the Olympics, instead they were soundly beat. They wanted to expand their territory, they got as far as fucking Poland and France and then stalled for years until a double whammy of Americans and Russians basically curb-stomped them, with the last few years of the Reich consisting of lots of propaganda coping hard about how their soon to come wonder weapons would turn the tide, which never happened because said wonder weapons were stupid ideas that only succeeded at getting more Nazis killed when they failed in testing. They wanted to stop the spread of communism, instead half their country became Soviet domain.
And then their “strongman” leader blasted his own brains out rather than face the fact that he was a loser in every way one can be a loser.
Nazis took on world in one war, and lost.
“WE ARE THE GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD! THE PUREST OF THE PURE! STRONGEST OF THE STRONG!”
[Fights one (1) war]
“Guess we’ll shoot ourselves in a bunker and lose in a big lopsided defeat.”
At no point did they “nearly win” against the world. In World War 1 they made desperate attempts to break out of trench warfare because the blockade was obliterating their wartime economy. In World War 2 they were cooked the second they invaded the USSR and the USA landed in the UK. Those were unwinnable areas for them. Even if they eventually managed to wear down the British, the Americans were right behind them manufacturing 100 tanks a day and 15 Aircraft Carriers in 1943 alone. Which means all of those tanks are getting to the European theater.
And once the USSR got it’s production under way the Germans were on the defensive all the way back to Berlin.
What the actual fuck are you talking about?
Small country? They were a highly industrialized, highly educated and still quite materially wealthy colonial power going into the wars. They didn’t need to be competent. Enough people went along with them and there was plenty of residual wealth to burn on the war machine.
You don’t need to be an architect to burn down a building.
Germany didn’t really have much wealth after WW1 due to the restrictions placed on them from the western powers.
Most of the reason the Nazi party was popular early on was them championing a number of socialist policies designed to bring the country out an economic morass.
This is a really good book on the subject (and part of a really good trilogy of books about understanding Nazi Germany): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/319473.The_Coming_of_the_Third_Reich
I get what you’re trying to get at. But I’m talking inherent developed material wealth of a region. Actual physical infrastructure like rails, mines, factories, universities and everyone with the required education and training to run all of it.
If the victors of the first war received the dividends of that real infrastructure- that matters right up until the moment that they don’t anymore.
Um it did not take the entire world, for a lot of their early success most of the fighting was against countries that were unprepared and devastated after ww1.
Do Japan and Italy just not count as part of the world? I mean Japan took over half of Asia and the Pasific while Italy took the Mediterranean countries. Germany took over part of northern Europe and helped a bit of North Africa.