Controversial Historical Opinions You Have

[YeahOkayCool]

We're not arguing with you about any of that. Most of what you've said is perfectly reasonable on its own, and the only thing we're taking objection to is the efforts by certain parties to swing into the thread and wring their hands about how the importance of interrupting a "circlejerk" about how Nazis are bad, and the importance of "challenging established opinions" about how the Nazis are bad.

Click to shrink...

Oh, fuck off with your lies, you lying sanctimonious piece of shit. I don't have to defend my presence in this thread to you. What, you think if you accuse me of being a Nazi in an indirect enough way nobody will notice, or be able to tell you're talking about me? Fuck you buddy, what the hell makes you think that's okay? Show me one time, ONE TIME, in my two posts on the subject that I in any way defended or justified the crimes of Nazi Germany, you slanderous fuck. You can't, you fucking liar. I came into this thread to have fun, and you pull this shit? You worthless slandering fucking Pharisee.

Why don't you engage with what I actually said instead of making shit up to get upvotes? Nevermind, answered my own question.

 

[Mandemon]

Considering that even during the start of Barbarossa one the majority tanks of the Germans was not German-designed this is an interesting assertion.

Click to shrink...

Armored warfare is different from tank design. You can have individually poorer tanks the enemy, but if your doctrine and tavtics are better... Well, individual superiority doesn't matter that much.

Case in point: invasion of France and early stages of Operation Barbarossa until soviets got handle on how to use their tanks.

Once Soviets realized that they needed coherent plan and solved certain issues (such as reducing number of tank types to bare minimun and focusing on numbers), they were able trounce German army.

On the counter point, French tanks were generally better than German, but lacked radios and operated individually or as pairs. This was matter of their armored warfare doctrine. Germans pummeled them not because Panzer II was a good tank againts French tanks, but because German Panzers operate in groups, had radios to communicate and support from others branches.

 

[Havocfett]

Just found this thread through "recently gilded posts", but Controversial Historical Opinions? Our societal and technological progress in the past century can be laid almost entirely at the feet of the Nazis. Both as an example of what to do, and what not to do. If we did not have monsters like Mengele, we would not have anywhere near the understanding of human biology as we do today, as his lack of anything resembling ethics meant he and his fellows could preform experiments we would reject as "immoral", "cruel", and even "evil".

Click to shrink...

rule 2
Do not scare quote the nature of Nazi atrocities to imply that they were necessary to modern science or that they were not cruel or evil.

 

[Winged_One²]

The USSR once it got its shit together? Even Britain gave a good fight. But yeah, the pickings being thin is part of my point. Most of Europe really really wasn't ready for war, which is why the self destructive machine of fascism managed to get so far before failing.

Click to shrink...

I mean yes, the Nazis spend more on their war machine than other nations, and it was not economically sustainable. But it's not like the other nations didn't spend anything. It also doesn't change the fact that French doctrine went into the wrong direction.

As for the Soviets, they very much were preparing for war and had fought a number of wars in the wars leading up to it. Just like Germany initially benefitted from the Nazis spending more on the military than reasonable, then suffered from Nazi bullshit, the Soviets needing to get their shit together is partially the fault of Stalin purging its officer corps. And he new that war with Germany was going to happen.

Though the "why" isn't really connected to my initial point of the Wehrmacht actually being the better army in the early war. Because all too many times, the wehraboo countercirclejerk seems to go into the direction of "lul Germans suck at war and can't do anything right". Even if the overall plan was bad from the outset (lets just invade Russia, they will collapse any moment now), the early Wehrmacht actually had a coherent and good doctrine and designed their vehicles and equipment towards that (and augmented it with plenty of capture vehicles).

 

[Jonen C]

Armored warfare is different from tank design. You can have individually poorer tanks the enemy, but if your doctrine and tavtics are better... Well, individual superiority doesn't matter that much.

Click to shrink...

The single most important factor in this, in terms of doctrine and tactics is concentration of force and mass.

If two sides have roughly equivalent tanks, amd all other things (terrain and skill) being equal (ie perfectly spherical tanks in a vacuum), and let us say that it always takes two shots to take out a roughly equivalent enemy tank:

If side A and side B both bring 12 tanks, the battle will end with no tanks on either side.

If side A brings 24 tanks, they will destroy side B in the first exchange of fire with only six tanks lost.

Now, it doesn't matter if side B has 48 tanks if they deploy in packets of twelve spread out all over while side A fields larger formations, and moves them the way tanks are supposed to (ie: not at the pace of the infantry fight), side B will loose when tanks clash.

God is on the side with the big battalions, after all.

 

[Sumeragi]

The USSR once it got its shit together? Even Britain gave a good fight. But yeah, the pickings being thin is part of my point. Most of Europe really really wasn't ready for war, which is why the self destructive machine of fascism managed to get so far before failing.

Click to shrink...

The Soviet Union was far more self destructive than the Nazis. They were only saved from being reduced to Russia on the western borders by LL.

 

[Artificial Girl]

The main problem was that they tried to stretch their doctrine too far? Like the doctrine was pretty basic, the same kind of war they had fought, iirc, in 1871 and tried to fight 1914: one of maneuver, where they could pocket the enemy. It was heavily focused on the concept of schwerpunkt, or the main point/main focus where mobile forces (like the panzer arm) would focus on a single point of the enemy line so they could break into the enemy rear.

This ended up with the panzer and motorized formations tending to outrun their supports in the leg infantry, who marched everywhere like their fathers in 1914. or outrunning their supplies and this even happens to some extent in their early victories. The dash to the channel coast was halted not because Goering promised to destroy the BEF with the Luftwaffe but because the German generals were concerned about the exposed flanks of their armored forces and the risk of overextending. It becomes fatal in 1941 when the Barbarossa campaign has the panzer formations stopping and starting as they are able to get fuel and with the infantry trying to set a breakneck pace to maintain support for panzer formations, all while also being responsible for mopping up encirclements.

Barbarossa also was where a huge number of the professional veteran NCOs and junior officers that had been through Poland, the Low Countries, Greece, France, etc wee killed or wounded, which drastically effected the fighting capabilities of the Heer going forward. Basically, while their doctrine was pretty solid they didn't have the material capability to do it effectively.

The Soviet Union was far more self destructive than the Nazis. They were only saved from being reduced to Russia on the western borders by LL.

Click to shrink...

I mean, lend-lease was important but there was almost none of it when the Red Army threw the Germans back from Moscow in 1941 (though British lend-lease armor did make up a significant portion of the medium/heavy weight armored vehicles during the Battle of Moscow, 30% per wikipedia). Lend-lease was important, though. There's no getting around it--especially logistically, it kept the Red Army capable of carrying out its major offensives going forward, especially Bagration.

I'm not sure I'd say that the USSR would have lost all of its western territories without it, though.

 

[Simon_Jester]

@Jordisk is factually incorrect, too. Mengele wasn't much of a medical researcher. More realistically, he was a sadistic serial killer cosplaying as a medical researcher to get free access to real live victims whom he could torture to death with horrifying mutilations and diseases with no negative consequences whatsoever.

I mean, this is a guy whose 'contributions' included obsessive examination of people with heterochromia, that amazingly important medical condition that as we all know proved so foundational to our understanding of human nature and heredity.

(Rolls eyes)

Oh, and the part where he'd do shit like randomly infect one of a pair of twins with typhus "to see what would happen" when everybody fucking well knew what would happen because typhus was a well known disease. And lopping people's limbs off for the hell of it when, again, amputations were a well understood field of medical science. Or sew a pair of children together in an attempt to create conjoined twins. Visionary.

(spits in disgust)

Nazi medical experimentation didn't teach us all that much that humanity actually needed to know, or benefited from knowing.

...

There were areas where the Nazi regime actually did something for the first time and it was, viewed as a technical achievement, impressive. Being appallingly evil does not automatically confer stupidity and weakness in all fields of human endeavor. But in medical research? It made them stupid and incompetent.

Because "we want to learn medical facts, and don't care what happens to people" does not actually attract smart physicians and scientists who are unshackled from petty morality. It attracts sadists and crackpots who don't value human life enough to actually care about healing people.

The Soviet Union was far more self destructive than the Nazis. They were only saved from being reduced to Russia on the western borders by LL.

Click to shrink...

The Nazis enjoyed tremendous advantages that had nothing to do with their political system. Without awareness of these advantages, it is not feasible to compare how self-destructive the two political systems were.

Pretty much the issues that every other tank in Europe had. In the case of the one-man turret, that was never really a big issue in the first place, since tank-to-tank wasn't even that common anyway.

Click to shrink...

I don't think the one-man turret would only be a problem in tank battles. Having a slow-firing main gun is awkward no matter what you're doing. Having a situation where the guy who's supposed to be sticking his head out, deciding where the tank goes, and keeping a watch for the enemy is ALSO the guy who's personally loading and firing the gun... Yeah, that's a problem in any battlefield situation where the enemy has the capacity to threaten the tank, even if the threat involves crazy badasses with satchel charges jumping you or something. Let alone the possibility of running into concealed antitank guns or something.

 

[Susano]

The single most important factor in this, in terms of doctrine and tactics is concentration of force and mass.

Click to shrink...

Isn't that just literally Clausewitz' Schwerpunkt doctrine?

 

[Simon_Jester]

The single most important factor in this, in terms of doctrine and tactics is concentration of force and mass.

If two sides have roughly equivalent tanks, amd all other things (terrain and skill) being equal (ie perfectly spherical tanks in a vacuum), and let us say that it always takes two shots to take out a roughly equivalent enemy tank:

If side A and side B both bring 12 tanks, the battle will end with no tanks on either side.

If side A brings 24 tanks, they will destroy side B in the first exchange of fire with only six tanks lost.

Now, it doesn't matter if side B has 48 tanks if they deploy in packets of twelve spread out all over while side A fields larger formations, and moves them the way tanks are supposed to (ie: not at the pace of the infantry fight), side B will loose when tanks clash.

God is on the side with the big battalions, after all.

Click to shrink...

The flip side of this is that this can result in your "big hammer" of 24 tanks winning a tank engagement against 12 opponents and still not making much progress because of your good combined-arms antitank tactics... While in three other places along the lines the enemy's 12 tanks make considerable progress in the face of "literally zero of your tanks." Tactical superiority at the point of contact matters. But it matters a lot less if you don't have it at enough points of contact to offset whatever the enemy is doing at the other points of contact.

Combined arms engagement is complicated and in particular there is significantly more to it than "mass forces of the decisive arm and hit the Schwerpunkt with everything you've got."

 

[Mandemon]

Isn't that just literally Clausewitz' Schwerpunkt doctrine?

Click to shrink...

More or less, which is in many ways basis of WW2 German doctrine. Problem it had was that Germans never really figured "Okay, so we can't actually mass troops/pierce enemy line, what now?". Basically, they had a very good working and proven strategy and doctrine... and no fall-back in case something went wrong.

In contrast, in many cases Soviet, American and British doctrines fumbled around before converging to something workable, their doctrines might not have worked from time to time and had inefficiencies, but at least there was Plan B incase Plan A didn't work. As well as Plan C.

Combined arms engagement is complicated and in particular there is significantly more to it than "mass forces of the decisive arm and hit the Schwerpunkt with everything you've got."

Click to shrink...

You manage to ninja me, but this. Once everyone else managed to start getting their shit together and figured how to blunt or stop the piercing attack, Germans had no plan how to deal with it.

 

[Sumeragi]

I'm not sure I'd say that the USSR would have lost all of its western territories without it, though.

Click to shrink...

I was working off the mid-1943 borders.



The buildup at Kursk and the following Kursk Strategic Offensive Operation were all possible directly because of LL, so with a bit of hyperbole, this is the likely static front for quite some time until the Western Allies land on continental Europe.

The Nazis enjoyed tremendous advantages that had nothing to do with their political system. Without awareness of these advantages, it is not feasible to compare how self-destructive the two political systems were.

Click to shrink...

Indeed, that was sort of the point in responding Nyvis's post: Both Germany and USSR had clusterfuck economies. Thinking that the Soviets could have gotten their things together without the salvation of LL while going on about Fascism being economically bad is a problem in itself.

 

[Old Spice Guy]

Just want to pop in and say that I'm happy to have a site where people seriously discuss the term schwerpunkt especially with no wehraboos.

 

[Thief of Words]

especially with no wehraboos

Click to shrink...

Well, except for the Pokeposter's borderline cryptowehraboo insistence on 'centrist' defense of people making pro-fascist arguments.

 

[Jonen C]

The flip side of this is that this can result in your "big hammer" of 24 tanks winning a tank engagement against 12 opponents and still not making much progress because of your good combined-arms antitank tactics... While in three other places along the lines the enemy's 12 tanks make considerable progress in the face of "literally zero of your tanks." Tactical superiority at the point of contact matters. But it matters a lot less if you don't have it at enough points of contact to offset whatever the enemy is doing at the other points of contact.

Combined arms engagement is complicated and in particular there is significantly more to it than "mass forces of the decisive arm and hit the Schwerpunkt with everything you've got."

Click to shrink...

Certainly, but if you have a force of such strenght as to be able to defeat any one enemy push, the enemy will lose the entirety of that push permanently, while your force may be able to recover some, turn around and go after one of the other pushes (with sufficient strategic mobility).

It becomes a gamble that being able to fight more battles than the enemy at the same time is more important than winning the battles the enemy choses to go all in on.

And in any case, while the tanks are massed, the (theory behind the) doctrine for the Germans was that the line infantry (as opposed to the motorized units supporting the tanks) would keep the bulk of the enemy force busy. Replace line infantry with anti-tank units as armored warfare becomes more prevalent. These would be able to slow and delay (and against green units with inept leadership possibly beat), or at least somewhay hinder, small armored pushes outright. Because if the enemy can conduct good combined arms anti tank tactics so can you.


While anti-tank units can never beat an armored unit in an outright battle (all things being equal spherical tanks in a vacuum), for the simple reason of not being able to push and dislodge the tanks supporting forces, they can provide operational freedom for friendly tanks.

The main gist is - the side that disperses their tanks in smaller units rarely wins.
Compare the number of tanks in German formations for the battle of france and barbarossa.

 

[YeahOkayCool]

Well, except for the Pokeposter's borderline cryptowehraboo insistence on 'centrist' defense of people making pro-fascist arguments.

Click to shrink...

You're really good at lying about people. Too bad it's still a lie, and repeating your (slanderous, disgusting, loathsome) lies about me won't make them magically become true.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Just want to pop in and say that I'm happy to have a site where people seriously discuss the term schwerpunkt especially with no wehraboos.

Click to shrink...

I mean, it's a useful military concept, it's just not the kind of concept you can build your entire military toolbox around. Especially not in the context of industrialized warfare, where fast vehicles, greater troop numbers, and larger scale equipment mean that having your lines "punctured" isn't nearly as big of a deal.

In battles fought by marching infantry where transportation is horse-drawn as soon as you get away from the port or railhead (if any), it's different. In that case, if you've pierced an enemy "line" by capturing a key fortress or wiping out one unit in a long line of units fighting with short-ranged rifled muskets, and any immediate local reserve forces capable of physically walking up to your position and fighting you in time to alter the outcome... you've just won big.

But World War One shows this doctrine starting to creak. Even once the Germans invented offensive tactics capable of piercing a fortified line defended by machine guns, the enemy just kept entrenching more positions behind the first line, so that the attacking army never actually got to advance through and make a hole that would then enable the enemy army to be rolled up or surrounded.

World War Two stirred things up enough that the old approach of 'mass, break through, roll up' could be put back into practice at least temporarily, because nobody had a frame of reference for how to handle massed armor supported by airstrikes. But thaaat was only ever going to last so long before people figured out what to do, because their own defensive vehicles and air support meant they could still achieve that same result of keeping the 'breakthrough' force bogged down and unable to break out into open country faster than the defender could drop new reinforcement units on its head.

 

[Thief of Words]

You're really good at lying about people. Too bad it's still a lie, and repeating your (slanderous, disgusting, loathsome) lies about me won't make them magically become true.

Click to shrink...

Apologies. I'll correct for accuracy: the actual cryptofascist.

 

[Eliar]

I sense a great disturbance in the force...

It is as if the thread screamed one last time... And then was locked down for staff review.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Certainly, but if you have a force of such strenght as to be able to defeat any one enemy push, the enemy will lose the entirety of that push permanently, while your force may be able to recover some, turn around and go after one of the other pushes (with sufficient strategic mobility).

It becomes a gamble that being able to fight more battles than the enemy at the same time is more important than winning the battles the enemy choses to go all in on.

Click to shrink...

Sure- but it's important to understand that this can flip either way. It's pivotal to understanding how and why the fighting during the breakout from Normandy, and much of the fighting in Western Europe as a whole, went the way it did, for instance.

The Germans didn't lose the armored side of the fighting in the European Theater in 1944-45 because their tanks were inferior at the point of contact. They didn't even lose because of inability to mass armor at the point of contact that would outnumber or at least outgun the Americans and British locally.

They lost because constantly, up and down the line, the Americans or British could count on their tank support being physically present, whereas the Germans could not. Therefore, even if the Germans pulled off something rather badass with a company or two of Tiger tanks, it only mattered locally, and the individual locations of massed German armored formations were just polka dots on a broader map where Allied superiority was the 'fabric.'

And in any case, while the tanks are massed, the (theory behind the) doctrine for the Germans was that the line infantry (as opposed to the motorized units supporting the tanks) would keep the bulk of the enemy force busy. Replace line infantry with anti-tank units as armored warfare becomes more prevalent. These would be able to slow and delay (and against green units with inept leadership possibly beat), or at least somewhay hinder, small armored pushes outright. Because if the enemy can conduct good combined arms anti tank tactics so can you.

While anti-tank units can never beat an armored unit in an outright battle (all things being equal spherical tanks in a vacuum), for the simple reason of not being able to push and dislodge the tanks supporting forces, they can provide operational freedom for friendly tanks.

The main gist is - the side that disperses their tanks in smaller units rarely wins.
Compare the number of tanks in German formations for the battle of france and barbarossa.

Click to shrink...

Again, it depends on the context and what is meant by "disperse" and what people actually do with their equipment. You can't reduce the entire history of armored warfare to, like, 1940-42. The tanks exist in a broader framework, so just trying to keep the bulk of the enemy busy with a swarm of straight-leg infantry mooks while a couple of tank spearheads breach their lines like knights of old crashing through a rank of peasant conscripts isn't necessarily a sensible plan, depending on what they're up against.

See Kursk for reference; note that it's not as if the whole battle came down to a single action of the 'giant tank swarms clashing' type at Prokhorovka or anything.

 

[YeahOkayCool]

Apologies. I'll correct for accuracy: the actual cryptofascist.

Click to shrink...

Fuck you, liar.

 

[Hakazin]

Oh, fuck off with your lies, you lying sanctimonious piece of shit. I don't have to defend my presence in this thread to you. What, you think if you accuse me of being a Nazi in an indirect enough way nobody will notice, or be able to tell you're talking about me? Fuck you buddy, what the hell makes you think that's okay? Show me one time, ONE TIME, in my two posts on the subject that I in any way defended or justified the crimes of Nazi Germany, you slanderous fuck. You can't, you fucking liar. I came into this thread to have fun, and you pull this shit? You worthless slandering fucking Pharisee.

Why don't you engage with what I actually said instead of making shit up to get upvotes? Nevermind, answered my own question.

Click to shrink...

Props for originality, I've never been called a "worthless slandering fucking Pharisee" before. Does that mean you're supposed to be Christ in this metaphor?

 

[YeahOkayCool]

Props for originality, I've never been called a "worthless slandering fucking Pharisee" before. Does that mean you're supposed to be Christ in this metaphor?

Click to shrink...

You don't have to be a moral exemplar to simply notice immorality. There may very well be hundreds of character flaws I have that you don't. But I'm not lying about other people in public today, and you are. What, you expected to get away with snidely insinuating that I'm a Nazi and not get called out?

 

[Glitchrr36]

Oh hey there's a moderator viewing the thread right now. I'd suggest dropping this, personally.

 

[Jonen C]

They lost because constantly, up and down the line, the Americans or British could count on their tank support being physically present, whereas the Germans could not. Therefore, even if the Germans pulled off something rather badass with a company or two of Tiger tanks, it only mattered locally, and the individual locations of massed German armored formations were just polka dots on a broader map where Allied superiority was the 'fabric.'

Click to shrink...

And this largely came down to allied air dominance - a massed German armored push against the beaches was dead before it started by a combination of poor command and control decisions, poor basing decisions, the French resistance...

But first and foremost by the aerial interdiction and air support against their transport network that meant they could not move, and could not supply, any significant armored force into place to push, and any massed formation would be target for bombing, which even if largely ineffective was enough to force the Germans to take countermeasures, disperse their forces, and become largely passive and reactive on the large unit scale.

If the allied air dominance had not existed, and German heavy tanks hadn't had the rather unfortunate tendency of breaking down, the Germans could have done a number on the "always available allied tank support".

... well, hypothetically. By the results of the Battle of the Bulge, where allied air dominance was largely negated by weather, the war had taken a big toll on the skills of all levels of the German armored spearhead. (Though the Bulge was still victim to the allied air interdiction and strategic campaign against Germany. German logistic failures being such that they need a good margin of error to successfully improvise miracles, and that margin plain just didn't exist by 1942.)