Car Hitler?

[Pink]

Yeah even though they did the science in a inhumane manner such as disecting people to chemical tests

Yes, but Horus was asking what we actually learnt from that? Very little?

 

[Horus Lupercal]

they were doing what they were told to

Humanity’s weakest souls will always cling to the words “I was just following orders”. ’They cower behind those words, making a virtue of their own weakness, lionising brutality over nobility. I know that when I die, I’ll have lived my whole life shrouded by that same excuse.’

Argel Tal -
Captain, Chapter of the Serrated Sun and Commander of the Gal Vorbak, XVII Legiones Astartes.

 

[JSP]

Yes, but Horus was asking what we actually learnt from that? Very little?

I got it from my history teacher

 

[Marmilo]

Wait. kakelso is saying, that he thought it was funny

Sorry. It was a lame attempt at a joke. Didn't know Car Hitler was such a serious subject. Backing away now.

The thing is, he didn't post this:

idk if im alowed to post this but if youve ever watched the film cars there is a jeep and a plane who fought during car ww2 so that means there was a car hitler

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&u...ved=0CA0QjhxqFwoTCJi4y5eHneoCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

.
Joeanian Space Program did. As if kakelso had the idea to post this, or as if they were the same person. So, who's idea actually was to post this?

 

[JSP]

Wait. kakelso is saying, that he thought it was funny The thing is, he didn't post this:

.
Joeanian Space Program did. As if kakelso had the idea to post this, or as if they were the same person. So, who's idea actually was to post this?

Mine

 

[Roger Jolly]

I got it from my history teacher

History teachers are evil with few exceptions, attempting to explain history is basically black magic

 

[JSP]

History teachers are evil with few exceptions, attempting to explain history is basically black magic

My history teacher isn't evil

 

[Zeeray13]

My history teacher isn't evil

But he is clearly wrong there

 

[Horus Lupercal]

History teachers are evil with few exceptions, attempting to explain history is basically black magic

Eh?

But he is clearly wrong there

He is. But there's a difference between ignorance and evil.

 

[Zeeray13]

Eh?




He is. But there's a difference between ignorance and evil.

The only thing that came out of those expirements was how to kill someone more efficiently. So I don't know how that helps science or medicine... The point of medicine is to help people not put them down.

 

[JSP]

Eh?




He is. But there's a difference between ignorance and evil.

What do you mean my history teacher is ev

The only thing that came out of those expirements was how to kill someone more efficiently. So I don't know how that helps science or medicine... The point of medicine is to help people not put them down.

I agre with you but they did have some great scientists

 

[Zeeray13]

What do you mean my history teacher is ev
I agre with you but they did have some great scientists

Who? Werhner? The only reason he stayed is cause the Nazis were the only one he could get funding otherwise I bet he would have not stayed too. Really all Germany had was engineers and yes they were great, but that also caused problems especially in manufacturing as the engineers wanted to change shit all the time and you wonder how they got to the panzerkampfwagen Vier ausf. G. All those changes that mostly didn't effect combat effectiveness required re tooling of factories and backed up the production lines. The allies had the opposite idea with long runs with little changes

 

[Horus Lupercal]

The only thing that came out of those expirements was how to kill someone more efficiently. So I don't know how that helps science or medicine... The point of medicine is to help people not put them down

I was talking about his history teacher, not the nazis.

What do you mean my history teacher is ev

I didn't say he was evil either.

Who? Werhner? The only reason he stayed is cause the Nazis were the only one he could get funding otherwise I bet he would have not stayed too.

You could argue he didn't want to end up like Goddard in the US (they were 'friends', of a sort), under-funded and publicly ridiculed. You could argue that the V2 programme actually saved lives and shortened the war. You could argue he's just a scientist and has no moral responsibility over how his creations are used.

You could also argue that he cared not whom his masters were or at what cost in lives his work continued by. Only he knows the real truth.

Really all Germany had was engineers and yes they were great, but that also caused problems especially in manufacturing as the engineers wanted to change shit all the time and you wonder how they got to the panzerkampfwagen Vier ausf. G. All those changes that mostly didn't effect combat effectiveness required re tooling of factories and backed up the production lines. The allies had the opposite idea with long runs with little changes

They got to the panzerkampfwagen Vier ausf. G and beyond through a design process thanks to a requirement from battlefield experience, current Wermarcht doctrine and armour protection theory. Germany had a list of things they wanted and prioritised (protection-firepower-mobility) and every other nation had their own list and built their tanks accordingly.
You're looking at them through the lens of the victor. "The Germans lost because their equipment was overly complex, ruinously expensive in materials to build and incredibly difficult to maintain."
But if the Tiger/Panther had been built in the US or a similarly massively industrial, unmolested by air raids nation, it would've been praised as a masterpiece of design and engineering over-coming issues that had never been encountered before and paved the way for heavy and main battle tanks ever since.

Under that lens, double torsion suspension isn't a 'problem'. It's the only way in the 1940s to spring an 60ton tank. Overlapping road wheels are overly complex. But how else are you going to support a tank of that weight back then?

You have the advantage of looking back at what the engineers were doing then and going 'all they're doing is causing problems, over-complicating things and losing Germany the war', forgetting that at the time, those engineers don't know they're losing the war.
Far as they're concerned, that overly crafted chain holding the shovel onto the side of a Panther is the best chain they can make, because less than best isn't how the Germans build things and an inferior chain could break and you lose the shovel.

Which is worse, cos now you have to make another chain and another shovel.

You scale that mindset up, and you get the Third Reich military production. Until almost the last days of the war, only the best craftsmenship and the highest standards leaves the factory and under any other circumstances than fighting on 3 fronts, in a slowly starving country being bombed day and night and ran by a mad man, that philosophy would be applauded.
Put it this way. If the Germans made russian tanks (T-34 and variants) to russian standards and the war had gone the same way, you'd be here saying "of course they lost. They were making sub-standard vehicles with armour so badly made that the tanks leaked in the rain."

 

[Roger Jolly]

Perhaps Eurocentric, but the US, Britain and Germany were the great rival innovators rising from the western industrial revolution, they all had/have great science and engineering, placing one above the other is purely subjective

The Germans were rather boxed in chronologically by the English empire and the American, um, super not an empire power but all 3 shook the world

I said history teachers are evil, generally of the hapless henchmen sort mindless regurgitating propaganda from a textbook of mind numbing power points; I had exactly one good high school history teacher who threw out the infernal text and taught the evolution of science and engineering with never a word of Caesar or Hitler to the horror of school administrators

 

[Pink]

I said history teachers are evil, generally of the hapless henchmen sort mindless regurgitating propaganda from a textbook of mind numbing power points; I had exactly one good high school history teacher who threw out the infernal text and taught the evolution of science and engineering with never a word of Caesar or Hitler to the horror of school administrators

No Caeser?
You can't throw out the culture part of history or you're doomed to repeat it.

 

[Roger Jolly]

No Caeser?
You can't throw out the culture part of history or you're doomed to repeat it.

Caesars aren’t culture, they’re politicians

“History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes a lot”
-someone, I forget who
...and there is no clever way to avoid that, collectively people are dumb beasts, not to be nihilistic, just politically speaking we’re doomed to fate

What we create as long standing foundation for future generations is our purpose, from our evolving genetic code to our architecture and trade skills, the lays of political institutions have standing power but the leaders and battles on the field and in the courts don’t have much relevance in general education and less in historic value but as base point counters which should be obvious after the fact

Ancient Greece is great for Geometry, not the Trojan war

 

[Horus Lupercal]

Perhaps Eurocentric, but the US, Britain and Germany were the great rival innovators rising from the western industrial revolution, they all had/have great science and engineering, placing one above the other is purely subjective

Dunno. Like you could objectively say a nation has contributed more to a field than other nations. That can be measured, proven. That doesn't mean that other countries did nothing, it's not a zero sum claim, but you can definitely rank them, especially if you break it down to timelines and fields as well.

I said history teachers are evil, generally of the hapless henchmen sort mindless regurgitating propaganda from a textbook of mind numbing power points

Again, there is a difference between evil and ignorance. Teachers tend to be mandated to teach to a set curriculum, usually to keep within guidelines, time-lines, exam requirements and my least favourite reason, 'creeping excellence'.
Sometimes, there are things that just aren't taught to reduce confusion that early on.
Sometimes, teachers stick to the playbook simply because they're not an expert in that area, and straying off piste could get them into a discussion leading to a question they either can't answer, or worse, answer wrong.
That's at best, ignorance.
And who's to say that they're actually, factually wrong, reading off from their mindless textbooks? It's boring for sure, which is why I've always taught 'book down'.
But evil? For them to be evil, they have to be wilfully misleading you for reasons and not all teachers are governmental pawns, placed in to brainwash you.

I had exactly one good high school history teacher who threw out the infernal text and taught the evolution of science and engineering with never a word of Caesar or Hitler to the horror of school administrators

I'll bet they were. Why leave out men like Caeser or Hitler? He's there to teach history. Low level history. Like it or not, these men shaped the world far more and to ignore / omit them is a huge mistake.
I'd question just why he would do that. It's not just governments that have agendas.

I had one good teacher as well. Mr Dywer. A truly fearsome mind that totally stood at odds of his appearance, a big barrel chested man with proper welsh coal miner sideburns and forearms that made popeye look under-developed. He looked like he should be 500ft underground with a pick in hand, but could utterly annihilate or inspire you (depending on how cocky you were being) on any subject you liked.
But that wasn't why he was good. Good teachers don't throw away books or ignore facts, they contextualise it for the audience.
Something that if your teacher had done, you wouldn't say things like this:

Caesars aren’t culture, they’re politicians

with a straight face.

 

[Pink]

Caesars aren’t culture, they’re politicians

“History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes a lot”
-someone, I forget who
...and there is no clever way to avoid that, collectively people are dumb beasts, not to be nihilistic, just politically speaking we’re doomed to fate

What we create as long standing foundation for future generations is our purpose, from our evolving genetic code to our architecture and trade skills, the lays of political institutions have standing power but the leaders and battles on the field and in the courts don’t have much relevance in general education and less in historic value but as base point counters which should be obvious after the fact

Ancient Greece is great for Geometry, not the Trojan war

I disagree on the Caeser not being culture thing.

Since you brought up Ancient Greece and Troy...
The Iliad doesn't have any useful scientific info and is very dull fiction compared to newer books (pages and pages of who's who and which gods they're descended from), but I can't say that it's not important.

 

[Roger Jolly]

Dunno. Like you could objectively say a nation has contributed more to a field than other nations. That can be measured, proven. That doesn't mean that other countries did nothing, it's not a zero sum claim, but you can definitely rank them, especially if you break it down to timelines and fields as well.




Again, there is a difference between evil and ignorance. Teachers tend to be mandated to teach to a set curriculum, usually to keep within guidelines, time-lines, exam requirements and my least favourite reason, 'creeping excellence'.
Sometimes, there are things that just aren't taught to reduce confusion that early on.
Sometimes, teachers stick to the playbook simply because they're not an expert in that area, and straying off piste could get them into a discussion leading to a question they either can't answer, or worse, answer wrong.
That's at best, ignorance.
And who's to say that they're actually, factually wrong, reading off from their mindless textbooks? It's boring for sure, which is why I've always taught 'book down'.
But evil? For them to be evil, they have to be wilfully misleading you for reasons and not all teachers are governmental pawns, placed in to brainwash you.




I'll bet they were. Why leave out men like Caeser or Hitler? He's there to teach history. Low level history. Like it or not, these men shaped the world far more and to ignore / omit them is a huge mistake.
I'd question just why he would do that. It's not just governments that have agendas.

I had one good teacher as well. Mr Dywer. A truly fearsome mind that totally stood at odds of his appearance, a big barrel chested man with proper welsh coal miner sideburns and forearms that made popeye look under-developed. He looked like he should be 500ft underground with a pick in hand, but could utterly annihilate or inspire you (depending on how cocky you were being) on any subject you liked.
But that wasn't why he was good. Good teachers don't throw away books or ignore facts, they contextualise it for the audience.
Something that if your teacher had done, you wouldn't say things like this:

with a straight face.

Evil has no set definition, but ignorance could certainly be considered a base evil;
Why should anyone who doesn’t have a passion for a subject be allowed to teach it?

He didn’t throw out the text book to preach ignorance, he wanted us to think;
We all knew what happened in WWII well enough by our sophomore year in high school and there was nothing left to learn, sure if anyone wants to be a scholar on Hitler they can pursue that in University but mulling over the battles from Normandy to Berlin with names and dates serves no purpose

He wanted us to dabble in what really makes humanity great, agriculture and the rise of civilization with all that allows, writing, math, the invention of the Roman arch, the simple but brilliant innovation of the Gothic arch and how it’s constructed with those impossible flying buttresses...Ptolemy, Socrates, Aristotle, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton made the western world

I know military history is important but it’s not what really shaped the world and it certainly won’t save it from boogeymen, but it’s all too impressed on people who have no use for it and ‘forced teaching’ only de-educates students

To say nothing of the complete nonsense of the good overcoming evil narrative twisted from the facts;
We can all pursue the truth as hard as we like but none of us will ever know it, objectivity is a sliding scale from total subjective BS on the not at all side to the unattainable truth running faster than we can pursue into that thickening fog of loose ends

The World Wars and all wars are battles of rival powers for control, anything added to that will only make it more subjective

 

[Roger Jolly]

I disagree on the Caeser not being culture thing.

Since you brought up Ancient Greece and Troy...
The Iliad doesn't have any useful scientific info and is very dull fiction compared to newer books (pages and pages of who's who and which gods they're descended from), but I can't say that it's not important.

It’s important as a piece of fine art and the forming the Greek empire was certainly important in setting the stage for its eventual ‘cultural enlightenment’, but its clashes of power had no value of themselves;
Examining the power struggle is important for posterity’s sake but we can’t build a new great empire or stop the next Great War by studying it, but that math and philosophy sure went a long way

 

[Zeeray13]

I was talking about his history teacher, not the nazis.





I didn't say he was evil either.




You could argue he didn't want to end up like Goddard in the US (they were 'friends', of a sort), under-funded and publicly ridiculed. You could argue that the V2 programme actually saved lives and shortened the war. You could argue he's just a scientist and has no moral responsibility over how his creations are used.

You could also argue that he cared not whom his masters were or at what cost in lives his work continued by. Only he knows the real truth.




They got to the panzerkampfwagen Vier ausf. G and beyond through a design process thanks to a requirement from battlefield experience, current Wermarcht doctrine and armour protection theory. Germany had a list of things they wanted and prioritised (protection-firepower-mobility) and every other nation had their own list and built their tanks accordingly.
You're looking at them through the lens of the victor. "The Germans lost because their equipment was overly complex, ruinously expensive in materials to build and incredibly difficult to maintain."
But if the Tiger/Panther had been built in the US or a similarly massively industrial, unmolested by air raids nation, it would've been praised as a masterpiece of design and engineering over-coming issues that had never been encountered before and paved the way for heavy and main battle tanks ever since.

Under that lens, double torsion suspension isn't a 'problem'. It's the only way in the 1940s to spring an 60ton tank. Overlapping road wheels are overly complex. But how else are you going to support a tank of that weight back then?

You have the advantage of looking back at what the engineers were doing then and going 'all they're doing is causing problems, over-complicating things and losing Germany the war', forgetting that at the time, those engineers don't know they're losing the war.
Far as they're concerned, that overly crafted chain holding the shovel onto the side of a Panther is the best chain they can make, because less than best isn't how the Germans build things and an inferior chain could break and you lose the shovel.

Which is worse, cos now you have to make another chain and another shovel.

You scale that mindset up, and you get the Third Reich military production. Until almost the last days of the war, only the best craftsmenship and the highest standards leaves the factory and under any other circumstances than fighting on 3 fronts, in a slowly starving country being bombed day and night and ran by a mad man, that philosophy would be applauded.
Put it this way. If the Germans made russian tanks (T-34 and variants) to russian standards and the war had gone the same way, you'd be here saying "of course they lost. They were making sub-standard vehicles with armour so badly made that the tanks leaked in the rain."

I never said because they were overly complex they changed things too often in many models short production runs. The U.S. and USSR had long production runs limited models only upgrading when they absolutely needed too. As well as in the American case the reason we didn't have the perishing around sooner to replace the outgunned Sherman was due too it being shitty and so it was redone then when it was truly ready for the troops was sent out. So Germany was the same way yet rather then making 1 model with all the changes they needed and optimizing the production run. A perfect example of these small and often times unessessary changes can be seen in the Sturmtiger with each one having different amounts of vents for the gun and there being like 20 plus tanks or so being made. Though it wouldn't have mattered anyway the real problem Germany faced was shortages of everything they needed. More tanks wouldn't have helped. Though even if some decisions were made better there is no way for Germany to win world war two without changing Hitler's beliefs and promises.

 

[Roger Jolly]

Revenge is a cramped space, I don’t know what Hitler was thinking but WWII basically looked like a rebellion against the oppressive interference of the US in WWI, Wilson’s 14 points, reparations and all that offensive nonsense

The game plan was a grand terror campaign and power points for the history books by which measure it was a raging success, that the Germans had any hope of “winning the war” with alliances as they were was hopeless;
They were cooped up making do with an uncertain industrial base and supply chain beat down by unbelievable allied bombing raids, how they managed to take it as far as they did from where they started is awesome/ful

Dunno. Like you could objectively say a nation has contributed more to a field than other nations. That can be measured, proven. That doesn't mean that other countries did nothing, it's not a zero sum claim, but you can definitely rank them, especially if you break it down to timelines and fields as well.

I missed a follow up to this point in last, not that I disagree

I just mean ranking these or any great powers in history can’t avoid strong subjectivity, certainly they all have their characteristic strengths we can praise objectively as superior but given their peaks necessarily happen at different times in history and for different reasons they can’t be summed up and fairly judged for rank as a whole though they can be grouped in certain ways that exclude others

I mentioned Britain/US/Germany as the key western industrial powers by which measure they all made huge contributions, but in the arc of antiquity I’d reject Germany or perhaps in a thousand years it would make more sense to combine all three as the Great Anglo-Germanic Industrio-Tech Empire at the dawn of the space age that had a terrible civil war that spilled over into the rising empires of Asia

I’m tired, the Hitler car is a VW Beetle

 

[Horus Lupercal]

Sorry, but its Waffle Time!

Evil has no set definition

In that a dictionary and the Bible contradict each other slightly in the wording, yes. But the basic premise and similar meanings of the words used makes it pretty easy. To be evil is to be wicked. Wicked, you can only be after a conscious decision to do 'wicked' things. The same thus goes for evil.

You can only be evil if you conduct an action that is considered immoral and wicked, that you yourself know to be immoral and wicked. It is not the action, but the intent that is important. It's what separates murder and self defence, terrorist and freedom fighter.

But what about people who do things that are morally apprehensive under any context, but do not know or acknowledge the immorality of those actions. An extreme example of this is genocide. Deep rooted '-isms' is another.

Then you have ignorance.

The vast majority of actual '-ists' are ignorant. By and large, they're not evil. Morally skewed, certainly. Badly educated, absolutely. But because they believe utterly in what they say and do, they are not morally wrong to themselves and thus aren't truly evil.

Again, I'll extend this out to the extreme ends. I once watched an interview of a guy who was a guard at Birkenau, filmed in the late 90s, early 00s. The man was ex-SS-Totenkopfverbände, about 90 years old and had been privvy to about one fifth of the Final Solution during his time there. But despite his age and everything else that'd happened in the world since, he remained totally unrepentant to what he had done. He held no particular malice towards Jews, had never been a brown shirted skinhead and didn't delight in their extermination.

He never once apologised or played down his part. His motives were simply put as 'if you grew up where I grew up, when I grew up, you'd think like me as well'. Hitler/Nazi propaganda hadn't 'radicalised' him. He grew up that way and genuinely thought he was doing the world a favour. As far as his morals, and the morals of his nation are concerned, he has done nothing wrong and thus is not evil.

BUT

That doesn't mean he isn't misguided. Ignorant. Badly educated. And with a slightly different early years, his outlook would've been very, very different.

Conversely, I have absolutely no doubt at all that there was a lot of people he worked with who really enjoyed coming to work every day cos it gave them opportunity to be truly twisted bastards. That is evil.


I'll use another example. Israel Falou was removed from Australian Rugby Union for tweeting that all homosexuals, adulterers and the like will burn in fires of Hell. He's not a Nazi, it's just his religious beliefs. Is he evil? If he were torturing gays and divorcees, then yes, as he would be committing an act even he knows is wrong. Torture. Instead he awaits Judgement Day, 'safe' in the knowledge he's going to Heaven and people like me who have sex outside of wedlock are gonna go to Hell. That's not evil. It's misguided. But then, he'd probably say exactly the same about me.

Why should anyone who doesn’t have a passion for a subject be allowed to teach it?

I absolutely agree. But who says these other teachers are not passionate? Their passion may simply have laid in giving you the basic foundation with which to build on, rather than tailoring the lessons to their own ends.

He didn’t throw out the text book to preach ignorance, he wanted us to think;

Very true. But as I said, I'd be wary on the reasons behind the direction he wants you to think in. If he truly wanted you to think without restraints, he'd not have left anything, or anyone out.

We all knew what happened in WWII well enough by our sophomore year in high school and there was nothing left to learn, sure if anyone wants to be a scholar on Hitler they can pursue that in University but mulling over the battles from Normandy to Berlin with names and dates serves no purpose

Ha, of course you did. Teenage experts with nothing left to learn cos they've read a book or 2. Not that I was there, but I would say the class (being high school history) wasn't about battle by battle strategies. Granted, there probably would've been some stuff about Normandy and Berlin with some numbers but I highly doubt you were being lectured on the fall of Singapore, Monte Cassino, the defence of Malta, the siege of Tobruk, the Battle of Britain, the 8th USAAF daylight bombing raids, Midway etc.

That mandated class would've been on what caused WWII. And I don't mean the road from Chancellor to invading Poland. I mean how a nation like Germany descends from a proud, serious, industrial nation into a choice between communism and fascism via a world war and a economic depression. And if he was a truly great teacher, he could've taught that as he's supposed to, but in a way that is engaging, contextual and as close to factually correct as he possibly can, rather than side stepping it completely to talk about architecture. Which to use your own phrase, is something you can pursue in University.

He could've had you debate about those times, enormous numbers of disillusioned ex-military who had never lost a battle, yet forced to lose a war. Proud, hard working Germans come home and face hyper-inflation, ridiculous unemployment, starvation and hardship caused directly by greed and decadence in a country that had 'defeated' them.

He could've had a field day placing you into that world, getting you to think about your own reactions to that situation and then weaving in the tiny, subtle (and really common) tale of greedy, Jewish bankers taking your money, explaining then how good men can be manipulated by bad information into doing really, really, really bad things. He could've made it interesting, new and most of all, relevant, ending with enforcing the need for balanced critical thinking (and not just government bad) with moral judgement.



And I'm not saying that all these...

He wanted us to dabble in what really makes humanity great, agriculture and the rise of civilization with all that allows, writing, math, the invention of the Roman arch, the simple but brilliant innovation of the Gothic arch and how it’s constructed with those impossible flying buttresses...Ptolemy, Socrates, Aristotle, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton made the western world

are not great topics.


But there are reasons why these aren't taught to 16yr olds. And again, it's not just cos government bad, but simply cos there is a time, place and context for everything, mostly decided by examinations and objective standards so everyone gets taught the same thing. That means they have to a) decide on a thing to teach you, and b) decide to leave a lot out. Same as your teacher did. I'm personally offended that he left out Brunel and Stevenson, but he had to make cuts somewhere for the sake of time. Same as your school.

 

[Horus Lupercal]

I know military history is important but it’s not what really shaped the world and it certainly won’t save it from boogeymen, but it’s all too impressed on people who have no use for it and ‘forced teaching’ only de-educates students

The rise of Hitler isn't really military history. Same with Caesar. Yes, they were soldiers and yes they started and fought in wars, but the politics and background that gave them the positions of absolute authority, the parallels you can draw between both men in their rise and demise, that is what you should have been taught.

And I beg to differ. Absolutely nothing has shaped human history like human conflict. For a start, the winners of your conflicts write the history that comes after it.

And you can take any single invention and innovation, thought, building, art or service (aside from religion, and even then it's still close and involves conflict itself), take its impact upon the globe, then watch it pale in comparison to the outcome of a large conflict.

What is the internet compared to if the Whites had won the Russian Revolution? What is the jet engine or the coliseum or the Sistine chapel to if Germany had somehow won WWII? You want to talk about the great Greek thinkers? What are they compared to what if the Persians had been victorious at Marathon or Platea?

And you can boil these down to individual moments, battles. If Patton (or someone as headstrong and loose as him) had been in the Wermarcht during Barbarossa, Germany would've won WWII. It was only because of Hitlers orders and his generals following those orders, was Moscow not taken and Stalin captured/killed, ending the Eastern Front by 1942. If Gavrilo Princip had missed 106 years and 2 days ago, the world would be a far different place than if the car hadn't been invented. Leonidas ignoring the Karneia festival that'd kept Sparta out of the Battle of Marathon and marching his bodyguard to Thermopylae (along with several thousand other greeks he'd 'persuaded' along the way) changed the face and fate of the world far more than gothic arches ever will.

Hell, even an invention as important as the wheel, or discovering fire, line that up to humans figuring out that flint actually gets pretty sharp and is surprisingly better than teeth at killing another human so you can steal his wheel.


All school is 'forced teaching'. You are forced to learn under threat of punishment or shame, be that if you're learning Pythagoras or D-Day. The difference between education and 'de-education' is delivery and attitude, not the subject being taught. One of the best lessons I've ever had was a subject as dry as the kinds of improvised explosive devices you'd find in Afghanistan. It wasn't changing the world. It wasn't even new information (I'd been there a few times), but I was riveted from start to finish because it was interesting, well taught, funny and the guy was utterly peerless in his subject matter knowledge.

To say nothing of the complete nonsense of the good overcoming evil narrative twisted from the facts;

It's not always nonsense. Granted, in some wars, the 'good guys' is a matter of perspective and usually is decided by the winning team. WWI is an example of this. Neither side were bad, the war was pointless in its entirety, the loss of life was unrivalled and Germany only became the bad guys because they lost. This is why WWI must be taught. Because unless you educate people on the reasons why it started in the first place, people will not understand how it happened and not recognise the signs of it happening again.

But can you honestly sit there and hand on heart say WWII was ambiguous, either side could have been the good/bad guys and the narrative of good (allies) overcoming evil (axis) is twisted facts? Again, granted there was some twisted deals going on in the background, but that doesn't push the US into being the bad guys or Japan into the plucky underdog.

We can all pursue the truth as hard as we like but none of us will ever know it, objectivity is a sliding scale from total subjective BS on the not at all side to the unattainable truth running faster than we can pursue into that thickening fog of loose ends

And therein lies your problem. Truth and facts are not the same same thing. Objectivity is objective. As soon as it stops becoming fact and starts becoming truth, it becomes opinion and is thus subjective. Even if it isn't bullshit. Pursue facts, not truth.

The World Wars and all wars are battles of rival powers for control, anything added to that will only make it more subjective

And not just wars and battles, but also any sports that involve teams or scores and any game where you have an opponent. Naughts and crosses is conflict of rival powers for control. But no, you can add objective, factual reasons for starting a conflict.

Xerxes invaded Greece because he was a rival power seeking to control that state. He also wanted to burn Athens to the ground for humiliating his father at Marathon. That isn't opinion or subjective, it's a fact. And he did it as well.

but that math and philosophy sure went a long way

It didn't go that far. 50 years after the cultural explosion in Greece which founded much of what you speak of, Athens and Sparta were right back where they were before the Persians invaded, kicking fuck out of each other and everyone around them in the Peloponnesian Wars. This era was so 'enlightened', it executed Socrates by getting him to poison himself.

I never said because they were overly complex they changed things too often in many models short production runs

Those changes never made the vehicles simpler. The other issue was many parts where hand made by craftsmen, meaning they only fitted one specific vehicle instead of an entire vehicle type. It meant you couldn't even cannabilise some parts as what fitted one Tiger, may not fit another Tiger of even the same version

The U.S. and USSR had long production runs limited models only upgrading when they absolutely needed too

The USSR had a long production run with limited models simply because they forbade improving the T-34. Not because they wanted to keep making the same version, but because the only alterations allowed were ones that made it either cheaper or quicker to manufacture which actually made the vehicles worse as quality control plummeted. The first actual upgrade of the T-34, was the -85.

And America is a really bad example of 'limited models'. Do you have any idea how many major variations of Sherman there are?! And I'm taking major changes like suspension, engines, guns, armour, turret. That's not including all the funnies and the minor modifications. The Sherman was constantly and extensively modified throughout the war to keep pace with what was happening on the battlefield.

As well as in the American case the reason we didn't have the perishing around sooner to replace the outgunned Sherman was due too it being shitty and so it was redone then when it was truly ready for the troops was sent out

Something the US had the luxury of since they could design, build and test things with the safety of an entire ocean between them and the enemy. Where as:

Germany was the same way yet rather then making 1 model with all the changes they needed and optimizing the production run

Zee Germans were having to test their vehicles in combat and make changes from reports from the front, resulting in modifications and upgrades like with the drivetrain on the Panther.

A perfect example of these small and often times unessessary changes can be seen in the Sturmtiger with each one having different amounts of vents for the gun and there being like 20 plus tanks or so being made

These are gun changes. Usually because (again) what they are trying has never been done before and the only way to test a Sturmtiger was to drive one to Warsaw and blow up a building with it to see how it performs. They then modify the weapons rather than leaving them at a sub-standard level.

Or

Though it wouldn't have mattered anyway the real problem Germany faced was shortages of everything they needed

this became a thing, which is how vehicles like Jagdtiger ended up leaving factories with the wrong guns installed, simply because they didn't have any of the right guns left but they needed the tanks now to defend Berlin. As I said, the only reason this constant changing, modification and refining was an issue (and the only reasons the Germans were doing it), was because the Germans didn't have the resources and freedom to extensively test a concept out before production like the US could. Swap places with the US, and such actions would be applauded (like they are on Sherman) for the attempt to keep their equipment at the tip of line in capability vs their opponents.

More tanks wouldn't have helped

I dunno, I'm not so sure the war would've been the same if the germans had made 12,000 Tiger I rather than 1247 of them. And you can insert any german AFV into that from the StuG to the Tiger II.

Though even if some decisions were made better there is no way for Germany to win world war two without changing Hitler's beliefs and promises.

Mania. Hitlers mania. They could have won regardless of his genocidal thinking, promising to help the Italians / Japanese and whatever. What lost the Germans the war was Hitler taking control of the Army at a tactical and strategic level and making some really stupid decisions, especially on the Eastern Front.

 

[Horus Lupercal]

Revenge is a cramped space, I don’t know what Hitler was thinking but WWII basically looked like a rebellion against the oppressive interference of the US in WWI, Wilson’s 14 points, reparations and all that offensive nonsense

Well, a rebellion against the Treaty of Versailles, and all that it entailed. Mixed with an utter hatred of communists and Jews. I genuinely think if France and the UK hadn't declared war after the invasion of Poland, Hitler wouldn't have invaded Europe. He'd have consolidated and smashed the USSR.

And then invaded Europe haha.

that the Germans had any hope of “winning the war” with alliances as they were was hopeless;

Yeah. They did pick the wrong friends. The Italians were an absolute hindrance at best and allying with Japan did nothing except give the US legal justification to join in the European Theatre officially.

They were cooped up making do with an uncertain industrial base and supply chain beat down by unbelievable allied bombing raids, how they managed to take it as far as they did from where they started is awesome/ful

Yep. Now imagine what they could've done without a blockade, a borderline genocidal bombing campaign and a 3 front war...

I just mean ranking these or any great powers in history can’t avoid strong subjectivity, certainly they all have their characteristic strengths we can praise objectively as superior but given their peaks necessarily happen at different times in history and for different reasons they can’t be summed up and fairly judged for rank as a whole though they can be grouped in certain ways that exclude others

Certainly. There was a time when the Chinese were invented everything. Or the British. Whoever has got the cash, prosperity and need.

I’m tired, the Hitler car is a VW Beetle

This is more like it. The Peoples Car Mark I, yours for only 35 RM payments.




Don't ask the word count. I think I've cracked my own record with this one...