David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)Jul 30, 2024

Steven Spielberg said, after he made Schindler's List, that it was partly an apology for portraying Nazis in the Indiana Jones franchise as less evil than they really were. I think Hollywood has been guilty of something far worse in recent decades: portraying Nazis as competent.

Germany wasn't a country run by Nazis that happened to lose the Second World War, it was a country that lost because it was run by Nazis.

Take a look at the names of the folks that worked on the Manhattan Project. See how many of them are German? Several of them worked on weapons in the First World War, for the Germans. Germany had a huge lead in developing a nuclear weapon in the '30s, but removed people who weren't Nazi enough from positions of authority in fields related to weapons research. A load of their best scientists were on the various lists that would end up on death camps and managed to leave (others didn't, and died). When you start by saying 'only people from this arbitrary subset of the population based on race / gender / religion / sexuality / whatever may contribute to our society', you won't get the best people.

Hitler maintained control by promoting people based on their personal loyalty to him, not based on their competence. He ensured communication flowed through him and made parallel agencies compete, directing their effort against each other rather than towards shared goals, to avoid any becoming powerful enough to challenge his power structures.

Hitler was almost responsible for most of the German army being wiped out early on in the Second World War because he had an exaggerated opinion of his own ability. The only reason it wasn't was that allied commanders didn't believe anyone could be that stupid and assumed it was a trap (it wasn't, he really was that stupid). He then decided to invade Russia in the winter (which worked so well for Napoleon) against the advice of any of the people who paid attention in school, which was one of the key turning points in the war.

Don't let the smart uniforms fool you. They were not competent people who lost as a result of circumstances beyond their control. They were people with an ideology that was ultimately self defeating in the long term. And, if people with the same views are in positions of power again, they will fail in the same way. The problem is not that they might succeed, it's that they have a habit of taking a lot of other people with them on their way to defeat.

Show threadCapybara 
@david_chisnall great post, but The Nazis didn't invade Russia in the winter. The invasion took longer than expected and by the time winter came they were still in the middle of the fight. they thought slavs were inferior and the USSR would just collapse, but they were wrong
Feb 22, 2025 at 12:29pmWeb
Show threadJob BautistaFeb 22, 2025
@sotneStatue Yeah they invaded in June which was the most earliest month you could possibly get for a summer invasion. And the invasion was necessary economic wise because the Nazi economy would've imploded if they didn't invade in 1941 (they were literally running out of oil), which is again the Nazis' fault.

@david_chisnall
Show threadCapybara Feb 22, 2025
@job @david_chisnall That is why i dont like the comment "Germany would have won the war if they just didn't invade the USSR"
Show threadDeterioratedStuccoFeb 23, 2025
@job @sotneStatue @david_chisnall
My understanding was that they'd intended to go in May but Mussolini's problems in Greece meant they had to delay a month.
Show threadEvaFeb 24, 2025

@job you've misconstrued the overall plan to topple Russia via the Summer/Autumn invasion of Moscow with the diversion of its original armoured divisions, which were rerouted to take Minsk and then attempt control over the Caucus oil fields. They are related but not so easily simplified in purpose or outcomes.

Still no one mentioned Stalingrad, and I should hope that everyone understands that this horrific meat grinder was the true tipping point which marks the fall of the Third Reich; not the varying levels of competence in middle management, not the Wannsee Conference decision makers, not the focus on stealing Jewish gold to pay for post-war exfiltration transit to South America via the corrupt actions of the Vatican's "Rat Lines"... no, no.

Those were all contributory but it was the near-total destruction of the Wehrmacht eastern divisions (exacerbated by Göring's inability to deliver the Luftwaffe logistical promises for supply lines to ground forces) which occurred in Stalingrad. All because of the name of the city, not for any other reason than Hitler wanting to snub his nose at Stalin - the other dictator who threw his country's population into death and torture and mass murder by the millions. If Stalingrad had not been engaged, the Nazis would not have lost.

But did they really lose? Is anyone wanting to discuss USA's Operation Paperclip, or of Herr Galen being in charge of West Germany's version of our CIA - put into place by the Allied Forces after the war? Or maybe of the shadow government of America ruled by the Dulles Brothers who worked directly with former Nazi command to staff the opposition to communism in East Germany post-ww2...

> the Gehlen Organization. This organization, established in June 1946, was headed by Reinhard Gehlen, a former Wehrmacht Major General and head of Nazi German military intelligence on the Eastern Front during World War II. Gehlen recruited former SS and Wehrmacht officers to form the Gehlen Organization, which worked closely with the CIA from its founding.

It was not just about oil. It was not about Jews, or persecution of dissidents, or the original tenants of the NSDAP ideology, it was not a catch phrase capable sequence of events which originated an entire century prior to the events of that war.

Everyone wants a simple analogy from WW2 to modern times, but there isn't one. Stop focusing on the Nazis from WW2 - no one learned a damn thing from it so it's not a useful source of simple truths.

But if you must, if you have to summarize anything.. it's that the war never ended. We are still fighting and we can never stop. Peaceful existence on a global scale is a lovely dream, but it is impossible.

@sotneStatue @david_chisnall

Show threadJob BautistaFeb 24, 2025
@winterschon Yes the namesake of Stalingrad was a factor, but please do not pretend that was the only reason why the Wehrmacht laid siege to the city. It was the largest industrial center and an important transport hub, and the Germans needed Stalingrad to fully control the Caucasus where the oil is. Not bothering with Stalingrad would've meant a quicker German defeat in the battlefield.

It's also questionable whether the Soviets would've capitulated if Moscow fell. Yes it is an important supply hub like Stalingrad and is the literal capital, but the Soviets already made preparations for such an event by evacuating a lot of their industry to the east. If Moscow was the main goal then the race for the Caucasus wouldn't have happened. But he wasn't too naive like his most of his generals were who kept wanting to attack despite not having the supplies to achieve their goals.

Regardless I still believe it was inevitable that the Nazis would've lost in the battlefield. The Germans were still literally relying on horses for their logistics while the Allies have mostly ditched them in Europe and motorized their supplies by the end of the war. Hitler knew logistics was going to be the decisive factor, and when he didn't get the quick capitulation he wanted from the USSR by cutting off their oil, it was basically over.

@sotneStatue @david_chisnall
Show threadJob BautistaFeb 24, 2025
@winterschon Also pretty amusing you say that the southward advance was a diversion when it was pretty much the opposite. Moscow was the diversion. The Soviets logically guessed that the Nazis would go for the oil fields first, and one of Hitler's generals fortunately (or unfortunately I guess because it meant a longer war) anticipated this and revised the plan to include Moscow prior to Operation Barbarossa.

@david_chisnall @sotneStatue
Show threadEvaFeb 27, 2025

@job Wonderful response, and I appreciate the timeline details... do you recall which general adapted the logistics prior to Barbarossa being executed?

@sotneStatue @david_chisnall

Show threadJob BautistaFeb 27, 2025
@winterschon It was Gen. Halder IIRC who pushed for Moscow to be included in the operation

@sotneStatue @david_chisnall
Show threadmike805Feb 23, 2025
@sotneStatue @david_chisnall Had they treated the Slavs half decently, they could have had Ukraine on their side against Stalin. Instead they pissed everyone off and soon had partisans everywhere. Albert Speer talks about this in his book. In the early years he drove around Ukraine in an official car with no security. Later on nothing moved without a military escort.