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vyelkin posted:It's possible to say that war has changed since 1945 and saturation bombing is no longer normal, but I wouldn't say that for certain until you can point to a comparable situation to World War II and see it not happening. It's clear that even powers like the US are still not holding back on missions because of civilian casualties (in drone strikes and bombings, etc.), and that's before even getting to militaries that might be considered less scrupulous like the Russians. it's precision weapons. strategic bombing was never really 100% intended to mass murder civilians in most cases, it was intended to hit useful targets (just murdering civilians isn't all that useful) except that was pretty impractical with ww2 tech so you'd come up with ideas like "dehousing" to justify why most of the bombs you were dropping were actually landing in people's kitchens. now we have the capability to drop a weapon that is most likely going to destroy the target and only the target and a handful of immediately adjacent people, so you don't have to just shovel explosives out the back of a big slow plane
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Apr 14, 2016 21:46
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Popular Thug Drink posted:it's precision weapons. strategic bombing was never really 100% intended to mass murder civilians in most cases, it was intended to hit useful targets (just murdering civilians isn't all that useful) except that was pretty impractical with ww2 tech so you'd come up with ideas like "dehousing" to justify why most of the bombs you were dropping were actually landing in people's kitchens. now we have the capability to drop a weapon that is most likely going to destroy the target and only the target and a handful of immediately adjacent people, so you don't have to just shovel explosives out the back of a big slow plane This really is the big reason why don't really see mass bombing raids anymore. At the same time, though, it's important to note that strategic bombing never really went away-or at least, we haven't stopped planning for it. Not only that, but the bombs have gotten bigger and the delivery systems have gotten faster. The only reason we haven't seen them in action is because, like in 1944, the purpose of strategic bombing is the complete and utter destruction of an industrial society-and since that time, there haven't been any instances in which the political cost of doing so has been worth it for the few nations with those capabilities.
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Apr 14, 2016 22:32
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The increase in precision also helps, but it wasn't like we didn't drop dumb bombs in Iraq. They just didn't get all of the TV coverage.
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Apr 14, 2016 22:38
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Taerkar posted:The increase in precision also helps, but it wasn't like we didn't drop dumb bombs in Iraq. They just didn't get all of the TV coverage. well dumb bombs have their place, such as massed troop formations
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Apr 14, 2016 22:43
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Taerkar posted:The increase in precision also helps, but it wasn't like we didn't drop dumb bombs in Iraq. They just didn't get all of the TV coverage. Compared by proportion of bombs dropped and absolute tonnage, we basically don't drop dumb bombs anymore by Vietnam or WW2 standards. It's not just a collateral damage consideration. A bomb that doesn't hit its target gives that target more time to kill your dudes (or even worse it kills your dudes for the enemy). Popular Thug Drink posted:it's precision weapons. strategic bombing was never really 100% intended to mass murder civilians in most cases, it was intended to hit useful targets (just murdering civilians isn't all that useful) except that was pretty impractical with ww2 tech so you'd come up with ideas like "dehousing" to justify why most of the bombs you were dropping were actually landing in people's kitchens. now we have the capability to drop a weapon that is most likely going to destroy the target and only the target and a handful of immediately adjacent people, so you don't have to just shovel explosives out the back of a big slow plane I don't know the exact numbers and I'm by no means a SME but I think the argument could be constructed that the nuclear strike on Hiroshima, what with vaporizing the 5th Army, was more targeted and had a lower proportion of civilian deaths compared to conventional bombing in Tokyo. Same for Nagasaki: we dropped one big bomb in the industrial district which was in a bit of a valley so the damage was relatively focused as opposed to dropping tons of little bombs all over trying to hit it.
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Apr 15, 2016 02:09
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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The Ranger posted:It feels like it's been a little while since a new question was raised, so what do you feel is the legacy of WW2 with regard to collateral damage? Civilian deaths have been a part of warfare since time immemorial but if you're doing the killing with a sword then it's a conscious choice to, say, massacre or decimate a village that refused to cough up the crops or embrace the new God or what-have-you. Setting aside deliberate WW2 atrocities that are obvious and many, there also seemed to be a lot of new avenues for random and chaotic civilian casualties. I'm a layman when it comes to history but it seems to me that around the time it became feasible to use bombers on a large scale, it also became acceptable to bomb the crap out of urban population centers. Is this something that people came to accept in the apocalyptic context of total war and then just continued to accept as the new normal for armed conflict? Was there a slow creep from military to industrial targets through evolving strategic doctrine, or were cities targeted because the bombs-on-target accuracy was so poor that you couldn't really drop direct strikes on smaller targets? Was there intense public debate about these acts like you have protests against drone strikes today or was the general wartime attitude that every available weapon should be used as early and often as possible? I can picture a Londoner of a certain mindset in Spring '45 hearing about the firebombing of Dresden and being glad for it. There was no aerial bombing prior to WWI, but incidental civilian casualties were a common part of pre-industrial warfare. If 25,000 soldiers show up at a city of 20,000 people in September 1630 and stick around for more than a day or two, it doesn't matter which side they're on, odds are good that a bunch of people are going to starve that winter - the area simply won't have the food stores to feed that many people, so even if the soldiers don't go on a looting-and-pillaging rampage for the sheer hell of it, keeping them fed is still going to lead to a local famine, and refusing to feed them is a good way to inspire a good old round of the aforementioned looting-and-pillaging. There was some measure of "don't be overly cruel without a decent excuse or the other nobles might think you're kind of a jerk", but I wouldn't say it was really a consistent or reliable thing, and it wasn't easy to keep the troops in check even if the leader was inclined to. However, note that I've extremely overgeneralized in the above, since I'm trying to summarize thousands of years of warfare all over the world and that's impossible to do with much real accuracy. The idea of things like "war crimes" as we know them today mostly really came around during the 19th century when people first started to realize "hey, this industrialism thing is going open up options that are pretty nasty even by our standards, maybe we should ban chemical weapons and put in place protections for humanitarian groups and stuff". It wasn't really quite the modern conception of war crimes yet, but I'd say it was laying the early foundations - including how quickly countries violated those agreements whenever it was convenient. As for firebombing of cities, it should be noted that it (and many other WWII atrocities) had been done before in WWI. Many Brits had memories of Imperial German zepplins raining bombs down upon cities, villages, and random patches of countryside - in theory they were aiming for military targets, but airships in 1915 were lucky to even find their destination at all, let alone accurately bomb specific buildings. In WWII, some people openly advocated attacks against the civilian population to demoralize them, and there were a lot of airpower devotees who were convinced they could win a war with strategic bombers alone, no ground troops necessary...but even that's just the logical next step from the British naval blockade and German U-boat activities in WWI, which were both all about starving the other side's civilian population under the guise of military necessity in order to break their morale and win the war through naval power alone. In many ways, many of WWII's war crimes were really just rehashing old ideas, except this time people actually just about barely had the technology to basically pull them off.
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Apr 15, 2016 16:10
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Main Paineframe posted:As for firebombing of cities, it should be noted that it (and many other WWII atrocities) had been done before in WWI. Many Brits had memories of Imperial German zepplins raining bombs down upon cities, villages, and random patches of countryside - in theory they were aiming for military targets, but airships in 1915 were lucky to even find their destination at all, let alone accurately bomb specific buildings. In WWII, some people openly advocated attacks against the civilian population to demoralize them, and there were a lot of airpower devotees who were convinced they could win a war with strategic bombers alone, no ground troops necessary...but even that's just the logical next step from the British naval blockade and German U-boat activities in WWI, which were both all about starving the other side's civilian population under the guise of military necessity in order to break their morale and win the war through naval power alone. In many ways, many of WWII's war crimes were really just rehashing old ideas, except this time people actually just about barely had the technology to basically pull them off. It should also be pointed out that most of the major air power theorists between the wars, Douhet being the prime example, were predicting that future war would be mostly/entirely carried out by vast bomber fleets attacking industry and civilian populations, often with chemical weapons being the expected munition. "The bomber will always get through" was the prevailing attitude for many, until WWII proved that, no, they don't always, and even when they do, it's a lot harder to actually knock out industrial targets than you'd think.
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Apr 15, 2016 16:49
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DeusExMachinima posted:Compared by proportion of bombs dropped and absolute tonnage, we basically don't drop dumb bombs anymore by Vietnam or WW2 standards. It's not just a collateral damage consideration. A bomb that doesn't hit its target gives that target more time to kill your dudes (or even worse it kills your dudes for the enemy). The US dropped hundreds of thousands of dumb bombs on Iraq during 1991. They dropped about 5% of that number during 2003. The number of PGMs dropped was ~18k for both invasions.
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Apr 15, 2016 16:55
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Captain_Maclaine posted:It should also be pointed out that most of the major air power theorists between the wars, Douhet being the prime example, were predicting that future war would be mostly/entirely carried out by vast bomber fleets attacking industry and civilian populations, often with chemical weapons being the expected munition. "The bomber will always get through" was the prevailing attitude for many, until WWII proved that, no, they don't always, and even when they do, it's a lot harder to actually knock out industrial targets than you'd think. Even after WWII, that attitude persisted, in part due to the development of nuclear bombs. In the late 40s, with the government very interested in chopping down the military budgets that had ballooned during the war, the Air Force managed to convince the President that all future wars would be fought exclusively by strategic bomber wings dropping nukes on our enemies and therefore the Navy and Army should bear the brunt of the cuts because we didn't really need them anymore. It was pretty much a fiasco - not only did the angry admirals spark some political scandals, but it ended up being super embarrassing when the Korean War broke out a few months later and Truman decided that maybe he did have some use for conventional forces after all.
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Apr 15, 2016 17:20
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Captain_Maclaine posted:It should also be pointed out that most of the major air power theorists between the wars, Douhet being the prime example, were predicting that future war would be mostly/entirely carried out by vast bomber fleets attacking industry and civilian populations, often with chemical weapons being the expected munition. "The bomber will always get through" was the prevailing attitude for many, until WWII proved that, no, they don't always, and even when they do, it's a lot harder to actually knock out industrial targets than you'd think. This could also be part of the reason UK/France didn't really want to fight Germany unless they really had to. It was commonly accepted that fleets of bombers would just level entire cities and kill millions of people if/when a major war broke out.
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Apr 15, 2016 20:54
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Dumb bombs are cheap, and precision guided weapons are expensive and hard to make. I think only the US really has the capacity to use them in any great quantity at the moment.
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Apr 15, 2016 21:04
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Darkrenown posted:This could also be part of the reason UK/France didn't really want to fight Germany unless they really had to. It was commonly accepted that fleets of bombers would just level entire cities and kill millions of people if/when a major war broke out. Oh, it totally was a contributory factor to Britain and France being slow to rearm and looking for any possible way to avoid another general war. Even after the war started, Chamberlain did all he could to block efforts by the RAF to initiate a strategic bombing campaign, ostensibly as it violated international law but largely as he was scared to death that it would prompt a retaliatory German campaign (not knowing that the Luftwaffe didn't have any actual strategic bombers to hand and wasn't suited for that sort of activity).
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Apr 15, 2016 21:17
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Captain_Maclaine posted:It should also be pointed out that most of the major air power theorists between the wars, Douhet being the prime example, were predicting that future war would be mostly/entirely carried out by vast bomber fleets attacking industry and civilian populations, often with chemical weapons being the expected munition. "The bomber will always get through" was the prevailing attitude for many, until WWII proved that, no, they don't always, and even when they do, it's a lot harder to actually knock out industrial targets than you'd think. Admittedly the firebombing of Japan on its own was a rather impressive defeat of death and destruction, and it did kill hundreds of thousands. It just took the dismantling of Japan's ability to defend its airspace.
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Apr 15, 2016 22:20
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Main Paineframe posted:There was no aerial bombing prior to WWI, but incidental civilian casualties were a common part of pre-industrial warfare. If 25,000 soldiers show up at a city of 20,000 people in September 1630 and stick around for more than a day or two, it doesn't matter which side they're on, odds are good that a bunch of people are going to starve that winter - the area simply won't have the food stores to feed that many people, so even if the soldiers don't go on a looting-and-pillaging rampage for the sheer hell of it, keeping them fed is still going to lead to a local famine, and refusing to feed them is a good way to inspire a good old round of the aforementioned looting-and-pillaging. There was some measure of "don't be overly cruel without a decent excuse or the other nobles might think you're kind of a jerk", but I wouldn't say it was really a consistent or reliable thing, and it wasn't easy to keep the troops in check even if the leader was inclined to. However, note that I've extremely overgeneralized in the above, since I'm trying to summarize thousands of years of warfare all over the world and that's impossible to do with much real accuracy. This could often be further exacerbated because a lot of professional mercenary soldiers actually were paid mostly through being allowed to loot as they pleased as this saved on upkeep and the need to mint coins to pay your men (or bring other stuff with which to pay your soldiers). There were many wars before the modern era that caused massive civilian casualties, mostly indirectly by the armies causing famines as they moved through and lived off the land, but contemporary sources very much paint the picture that both murder and destruction of property were completely common when armies foraged for supplies, and even more so when they would loot a town, a village, a church or something like that following a battle. The most clear example of such a destructive pre-modern war is of course the thirty years war which probably caused something like 5-10 million deaths, mostly civilians, and destroyed something like one third of all the towns, villages and cities in Germany.
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Apr 16, 2016 06:27
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Is this thread dead or can someone find a way to resurrect it?
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Jun 5, 2016 00:57
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After WW1 and the general feelings of the populations (in allied nations at least) what are the chances of WW 2 simply not happening if Hitler didn't "get it going" was there much of a war party feeling in Germany? I assume the populations of allied nations were only finally convinced of the need for war once those whacky Arians got going.
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Jul 10, 2016 01:09
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504 posted:After WW1 and the general feelings of the populations (in allied nations at least) what are the chances of WW 2 simply not happening if Hitler didn't "get it going" was there much of a war party feeling in Germany? I assume the populations of allied nations were only finally convinced of the need for war once those whacky Arians got going. The German population supposedly wasn't enthused about WWII at all going into it, and Hitler was pissed/worried about it. E: IIRC this was based on secret studies done by the Gestapo for Hitler on the popular mood in the lead up to the war.
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Jul 10, 2016 03:57
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Anecdotal, to an extent, but William Shirer, who was in Berlin when the declaration went out, described the mood as mostly apathetic--certainly compared to the wild jubilation from the declaration of the First World War.
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Jul 10, 2016 04:33
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Yeah, its really well known everyone thought the war would be quick and they would win!!! Teach those dirty Englanders/Kroutes!!! I don't suppose there are any documentary's on this?
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Jul 10, 2016 04:56
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sean10mm posted:The German population supposedly wasn't enthused about WWII at all going into it, and Hitler was pissed/worried about it. Putting Germany on a genuine war footing economically took ridiculously long almost entirely because the Nazis feared that it would remind people of the degraded conditions and hardship of World War 1 and undermine their popularity. When Speer took over in 1942 and seriously ramped up military production it was at the point they were already balls deep in Russia and with the Americans having joined the war. Its astonishing the Nazis were so lackadaisical about truly preparing the country for their Racial end-war, though the rapid successes in France, Poland and the Balkans that didn't seem to come with too much intrusion on civilian life certainly helped make the Public more amenable to later horrifying misadventures. khwarezm fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Jul 10, 2016 |
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Jul 10, 2016 05:22
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khwarezm posted:Putting Germany on a genuine war footing economically took ridiculously long almost entirely because the Nazis feared that it would remind people of the degraded conditions and hardship of World War 1 and undermine their popularity. When Speer took over in 1942 and seriously ramped up military production it was at the point they were already balls deep in Russia and with the Americans having joined the war. Its astonishing the Nazis were so lackadaisical about truly preparing the country for their Racial end-war, though the rapid successes in France, Poland and the Balkans that didn't seem to come with too much intrusion on civilian life certainly helped make the Public more amenable to later horrifying misadventures. Plus, German intelligence of the Soviet forces was dire and the war in the east was assumed as if it would go like it did in WW1.
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Jul 10, 2016 05:26
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khwarezm posted:Putting Germany on a genuine war footing economically took ridiculously long almost entirely because the Nazis feared that it would remind people of the degraded conditions and hardship of World War 1 and undermine their popularity. When Speer took over in 1942 and seriously ramped up military production it was at the point they were already balls deep in Russia and with the Americans having joined the war. Its astonishing the Nazis were so lackadaisical about truly preparing the country for their Racial end-war, though the rapid successes in France, Poland and the Balkans that didn't seem to come with too much intrusion on civilian life certainly helped make the Public more amenable to later horrifying misadventures. This is one of these "everyone knows this" facts that are totally wrong, caused partly by believing Speer after the war for a long time. Germany was on a war economy from at least 1938 and civilians were getting a lower share of the economic output than in the UK or France for the entire Nazi reign. "The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy" is a rather good book on this subject if anyone is interested, but this site quotes a few bits: http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.se/2013/05/wwii-myths-german-war-economy-was.html
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Jul 10, 2016 10:36
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Yeah, Tooze very much shows how the nazi economy was macroeconomically constrained by resource and manpower shortages, and was pretty much propping itself up through aggressive foreign 'acquisitions' from the Anschluss onwards. Speer's rationalizations very much weren't, as in, they weren't originally his policies and programs, but had come into effect in the period before his ascension. He was then able to reap the benefits and claim them as his own. Also thanks for making me able to play WWII industry manager DR.
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Jul 10, 2016 15:00
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My girlfriend got me to watch The Boy in Striped Pajamas this weekend. What a devastatingly sad film. I banged the table with my fists and cursed with tears in my eyes when the main character pulled a Denial of Peter on his friend. Not hardly because I wanted him to stand up for himself and his friend, but also because I knew deep down I probably wouldn't have acted any different were I in his shoes. I don't know if it's a true story, my gut says no, but I was horrified all the same - I don't think I've ever seen a attempt to depict the actual use of the gas chambers before (I've never watched Schindler's List). I told my girlfriend she should look for Conspiracy next.
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Jul 10, 2016 18:17
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Darkrenown posted:This is one of these "everyone knows this" facts that are totally wrong, caused partly by believing Speer after the war for a long time. Germany was on a war economy from at least 1938 and civilians were getting a lower share of the economic output than in the UK or France for the entire Nazi reign. "The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy" is a rather good book on this subject if anyone is interested, but this site quotes a few bits: My understanding is that this is true but also that the impact on German civilian life was mitigated up until about 1942 by the redistribution of plunder from conquered territories and murdered Jews to German civilians
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Jul 10, 2016 18:47
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How was the transfer of wealth from Jews to Germans handled on a practical level? Did people stand in lines to get art and jewelry and property deeds?
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Jul 10, 2016 19:02
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Aliquid posted:How was the transfer of wealth from Jews to Germans handled on a practical level? Did people stand in lines to get art and jewelry and property deeds? I have no idea how it worked for personal items like things left behind after Jews were killed, but for the wider economy it was generally a case of "the state confiscated Jewish-owned businesses with no compensation, then sold them to ethnic Germans for low prices" and "the state instituted laws that fired Jews from certain occupations, opening job opportunities that ethnic Germans then filled". At least some of the loss of personal property (though by no means all of it) subsequently came from Jews selling personal items like art and jewelry to get money because they were no longer permitted to get money from participating in the formal economy.
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Jul 10, 2016 19:14
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Do you know if there were industries that suffered from their original Jewish workers/employees/owners being thrown out, but the ethnic Germans not wanting to perform them either?
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Jul 11, 2016 01:40
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gradenko_2000 posted:My girlfriend got me to watch The Boy in Striped Pajamas this weekend. Last time I taught History of the Holocaust, I almost assigned Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Almost. quote:I told my girlfriend she should look for Conspiracy next. And this one I did. Aliquid posted:How was the transfer of wealth from Jews to Germans handled on a practical level? Did people stand in lines to get art and jewelry and property deeds? This depends on what stage of the process they happened to be at. Following the 1935 Nuremberg Laws those Jews who were forced out of professions often had the "option" to transfer ownership of their now-illegal business to an Aryan partner, rather than just have it seized directly by state agencies. Later, those who saw the writing on the wall and wanted to emigrate had to go through a more rationalized sequence of dispropriation and outright robbery, by which they signed over just about everything they owned to the Reich in order to get their exit papers; they were only allowed to keep a small amount of personal baggage and I think like 50 marks. Which, of course, made it that much more unlikely they could gain entrance to other countries because of a combination of anti-Semitism married with the nativist fear that they'd be moochers on public dole. Of course, those who stuck around long enough to get deported just had their property seized and then usually auctioned off, often to their former neighbors who happily snapped up prized possessions at a steal, the wives of Hamburg being only one of the most notable examples of such self-interested behavior.
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Jul 11, 2016 02:36
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Koesj posted:Yeah, Tooze very much shows how the nazi economy was macroeconomically constrained by resource and manpower shortages, and was pretty much propping itself up through aggressive foreign 'acquisitions' from the Anschluss onwards. The Nazi war economy was fueled by plundering, the Allied war economy was fueled by American money. One of those was a much deeper and inexhaustible well than the other.
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Jul 11, 2016 03:34
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gradenko_2000 posted:Do you know if there were industries that suffered from their original Jewish workers/employees/owners being thrown out, but the ethnic Germans not wanting to perform them either? Supposedly (this comes from Speer) there were a group of German Jews that survived because they were highly-trained irreplaceable workers in the arms industry.
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Jul 11, 2016 12:43
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gradenko_2000 posted:My girlfriend got me to watch The Boy in Striped Pajamas this weekend. Son of Saul is another extraordinary holocaust film.
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Jul 11, 2016 20:11
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Captain_Maclaine posted:This depends on what stage of the process they happened to be at. Following the 1935 Nuremberg Laws those Jews who were forced out of professions often had the "option" to transfer ownership of their now-illegal business to an Aryan partner, rather than just have it seized directly by state agencies. Later, those who saw the writing on the wall and wanted to emigrate had to go through a more rationalized sequence of dispropriation and outright robbery, by which they signed over just about everything they owned to the Reich in order to get their exit papers; they were only allowed to keep a small amount of personal baggage and I think like 50 marks. Which, of course, made it that much more unlikely they could gain entrance to other countries because of a combination of anti-Semitism married with the nativist fear that they'd be moochers on public dole. Partly this was due to the Nazis being so hard up for foreign currency to import poo poo with they could not afford to let any large number of Jews convert their assets and leave. I mean, anti-Semitism was a large part too, but the shortage of foreign currency was a huge limiter on the pre-war economy.
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Jul 15, 2016 14:54
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I know one poster specifically recommended watching The World at War. I'm 6 episodes in (Banzai!) and its incredible. I don't think I've seen any other WW2 doc with so many personal interviews. Though this episode in particular is kinda heavy on japanese stereotypes.
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Aug 10, 2016 22:05
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Can someone explain the rationale behind the move of creating the Free City of Danzig and cutting off any land connection to Prussia during the Treaty of Versailles? Of all the fuckups during that treat this seems to be the most glaring. Obviously Poland needed a sea port but why wasn't this created in the eastern half of Prussia? Hell, making Prussia it's own country would have been a better idea than that shitheap of a decision in my mind. I've watched Documentaries and read a fair bit about WW2 but I've never seen the rationale behind some of the bizarre stuff in the Treaty.
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Aug 10, 2016 23:16
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This is only partly about WW2, but I stumbled upon the Wikipedia article of Carl Gustaf von Rosen, and wish there was more to read. What a crazy, action-packed life that guy had. Would make for a good movie too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustaf_von_Rosen
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Aug 10, 2016 23:41
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YouTuber posted:Can someone explain the rationale behind the move of creating the Free City of Danzig and cutting off any land connection to Prussia during the Treaty of Versailles? Of all the fuckups during that treat this seems to be the most glaring. Obviously Poland needed a sea port but why wasn't this created in the eastern half of Prussia? Hell, making Prussia it's own country would have been a better idea than that shitheap of a decision in my mind. You mean, like, cutting a winding strip out of Lithuania? That makes even less sense. Danzig was German speaking, but there was no other way to provide Poland a seaport, and the countryside in the Polish Corridor was in fact predominantly Polish
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Aug 11, 2016 00:46
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Avocados posted:I know one poster specifically recommended watching The World at War. I'm 6 episodes in (Banzai!) and its incredible. I don't think I've seen any other WW2 doc with so many personal interviews. Though this episode in particular is kinda heavy on japanese stereotypes. The personal interviews from this series are extremely impressive, they were able to interview many of the key players in many of the conflicts and cannot be repeated at this point. Particularly when they ping-ponged between the adversaries. An example: On the Schweinfurt raid: Albert Speer: The damage inflicted on the ball bearing manufacturing was very great and had the allies continued to disrupt ball bearing manufacture then the situation for Germany would have become very serious. "Paraphrasing" Bomber "Harris": We knew we hit the factories hard but didn't really know how badly we disrupted ball bearing manufacture. Considering the very heavy casualties to our heavy bomber formations we couldn't justify repeating the venture. The only criticism I have of the series is that there isn't nearly enough of it. They have 1 or 2 (if you count red star) episodes covering the war in the east. While the doco series "Soviet Storm" has about 20 episodes just on the war in the East. Also a good doco.
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Aug 11, 2016 03:36
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They talk a little bit in the making-of about the agonizing over what to put in. It's fascinating stuff and their justifications for most everything are pretty well done.
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Aug 11, 2016 06:10
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YouTuber posted:Can someone explain the rationale behind the move of creating the Free City of Danzig and cutting off any land connection to Prussia during the Treaty of Versailles? Of all the fuckups during that treat this seems to be the most glaring. Obviously Poland needed a sea port but why wasn't this created in the eastern half of Prussia? Hell, making Prussia it's own country would have been a better idea than that shitheap of a decision in my mind. If you look at geography that's pretty much the only way. The problem is, the German right was never going to accept it regardless much the same way most of the right in Weimar Germany never really seemed committed to democracy, hence the autocratic turn in 1930 when they took control from the SPD.
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Aug 11, 2016 12:20
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