5 ms·

> Germany has a greater supply of munitions; iron, gasoline, food and other essentials are more than adequate, he declared I believe he was either bluffing or

> Germany has a greater supply of munitions; iron, gasoline, food and other essentials are more than adequate, he declared I believe he was either bluffing or fooling himself on the gasoline point. Or had they captured sufficient reserves to make this a true statement? > "I asked from Poland something no other German statesman could have dared. I asked for the return of the old German provinces, then only with a plebiscite. If Churchill and the warmongers felt half the responsibility toward Europe that I did they never would have started the war. ... After alleging that the Germans had obtained possession of documents proving the "machinations of the warmongers" aimed at the spread of war... It seems strange that Putin should be claiming he is running an Anti-fascist[0] Special Military Operation when he is channeling (if yet more hypocritically) Hitler himself. ==== [0] I skimmed the stadium rally; this was a serious talking point! If they could've, Pavlichenko and Tsoi would've been spinning in their graves. In retrospect, PropAnal could've flagged https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuPX8mjeb-E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuPX8mjeb-E as psychological preparation for Operation Z.

LatteLazy 4y ago
Or the west and WMD...
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  indeed: WMD+Gitmo was my personal "love it or leave it" trigger to emigrate from the Old Country. I will note there is a qualitative (boolean!) difference between telling everyone you're going to conduct an injust invasion, then invading; and telling everyone you're defo not conducting an unjust invasion, then...
nicbou 4y ago
According to Adam Tooze (wages of destruction, great book), Germany was bluffing. They were always on the brink of shortages. That was a constant from 1937 to 1945, and a major theme in the book.
- aebtebeten 4y ago
  cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23612474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23612474 unfortunately the last link has rotted; it was supposed to link to a quote from Hitler's diary where he views failure to capture middle-eastern oil fields as implying his eventual loss.
  - nicbou 4y ago
    This was one of many similar gambles. That book stressed how most key events of the war were done right before Germany ran out of one thing or another: foreign currency, steel, oil, alloys. I was surprised to learn the extent of their brinksmanship. The economists saw the writing on the wall far before the military.
    - aebtebeten 4y ago
      A similar thing happened within the Wehrmacht[0]: > A curious point developed. German morale in the higher grades was worse than in the lower. ... This unusual situation arose from the fact that the National Socialist propaganda machinery was still working on the masses of the troops. The political officers still made speeches. The troops were given pep talks, ... In contrast with common troops, the officers had the professional skill to understand the advantages possessed by the Allied armies. The officers knew enough about global and continental strategy, about the immediate strategy of the Western front, about economic factors and so on, to see that the situation was genuinely bad. Furthermore, the officer class had been less indoctrinated in the first place... A common Landser, tough and ready in a whole division full of well fed, well armed men, could not be expected to undergo despair because freight-car loadings hundreds of miles away had dropped to zero. He might see that the Luftwaffe was less in evidence; he might grumble about mail, or about having to use horse transport, but as long as he could see that his own unit was getting on all right, it was hard to persuade him that defeat was around the corner. In World War I, the German troops at the time of surrender were much better off than most of them thought they were; in World War II, they thought they were better off than they actually were. The Germans may not have been in perfect shape, but they were incomparably better off than the starving scarecrows with whom Generalissimo Chiang was trying to hold back the Japanese in West Hunan or the Americans who had fought despair, fever and Japanese—all three at once—on Bataan. [0] at least if we believe Linebarger, a US Propagandist by profession. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm#Page_211 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm#Pa... I have read that strategic bombing was ineffective, done mainly for propaganda purposes. Having seen the OR tools that came out of that war, or were published a decade later, I would not be surprised to learn that they had in fact been doing (at least rudimentary) min-cut analyses for target selection, and that alleged ineffectiveness (of the mathematics or of the kilotons) is itself propaganda.
mcv 4y ago
> It seems strange that Putin should be claiming he is running an Anti-fascist[0] Special Military Operation when he is channeling (if yet more hypocritically) Hitler himself. That's only strange if you expect honesty from him. Despite everything, fascism still sounds like a massive negative to everybody today, so he appeals to that as justification, regardless of whether there's any basis for it. On top of that, he hopes the memory of the Russian WW2 fight against the Nazis will invigorate the Russian people to support his war. The fact that his war has more in common with Hitler's aggression than with the defense against it is of course an inconvenient fact he wants to ignore, deny, and bury under his war rhetoric.
nradov 4y ago
Hitler was at least partially bluffing. He knew that he needed to secure access to the Romanian oil fields and refineries but at the time of that statement had not yet done so. It took a few more months. But even with the Romanian alliance, Germany was chronically short of petroleum products.

LatteLazy 4y ago

Or the west and WMD...

082349872349872 4y ago
indeed: WMD+Gitmo was my personal "love it or leave it" trigger to emigrate from the Old Country. I will note there is a qualitative (boolean!) difference between telling everyone you're going to conduct an injust invasion, then invading; and telling everyone you're defo not conducting an unjust invasion, then...

nicbou 4y ago

According to Adam Tooze (wages of destruction, great book), Germany was bluffing. They were always on the brink of shortages. That was a constant from 1937 to 1945, and a major theme in the book.

aebtebeten 4y ago
cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23612474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23612474 unfortunately the last link has rotted; it was supposed to link to a quote from Hitler's diary where he views failure to capture middle-eastern oil fields as implying his eventual loss.
- nicbou 4y ago
  This was one of many similar gambles. That book stressed how most key events of the war were done right before Germany ran out of one thing or another: foreign currency, steel, oil, alloys. I was surprised to learn the extent of their brinksmanship. The economists saw the writing on the wall far before the military.
  - aebtebeten 4y ago
    A similar thing happened within the Wehrmacht[0]: > A curious point developed. German morale in the higher grades was worse than in the lower. ... This unusual situation arose from the fact that the National Socialist propaganda machinery was still working on the masses of the troops. The political officers still made speeches. The troops were given pep talks, ... In contrast with common troops, the officers had the professional skill to understand the advantages possessed by the Allied armies. The officers knew enough about global and continental strategy, about the immediate strategy of the Western front, about economic factors and so on, to see that the situation was genuinely bad. Furthermore, the officer class had been less indoctrinated in the first place... A common Landser, tough and ready in a whole division full of well fed, well armed men, could not be expected to undergo despair because freight-car loadings hundreds of miles away had dropped to zero. He might see that the Luftwaffe was less in evidence; he might grumble about mail, or about having to use horse transport, but as long as he could see that his own unit was getting on all right, it was hard to persuade him that defeat was around the corner. In World War I, the German troops at the time of surrender were much better off than most of them thought they were; in World War II, they thought they were better off than they actually were. The Germans may not have been in perfect shape, but they were incomparably better off than the starving scarecrows with whom Generalissimo Chiang was trying to hold back the Japanese in West Hunan or the Americans who had fought despair, fever and Japanese—all three at once—on Bataan. [0] at least if we believe Linebarger, a US Propagandist by profession. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm#Page_211 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm#Pa... I have read that strategic bombing was ineffective, done mainly for propaganda purposes. Having seen the OR tools that came out of that war, or were published a decade later, I would not be surprised to learn that they had in fact been doing (at least rudimentary) min-cut analyses for target selection, and that alleged ineffectiveness (of the mathematics or of the kilotons) is itself propaganda.

mcv 4y ago

> It seems strange that Putin should be claiming he is running an Anti-fascist[0] Special Military Operation when he is channeling (if yet more hypocritically) Hitler himself. That's only strange if you expect honesty from him. Despite everything, fascism still sounds like a massive negative to everybody today, so he appeals to that as justification, regardless of whether there's any basis for it. On top of that, he hopes the memory of the Russian WW2 fight against the Nazis will invigorate the Russian people to support his war. The fact that his war has more in common with Hitler's aggression than with the defense against it is of course an inconvenient fact he wants to ignore, deny, and bury under his war rhetoric.

nradov 4y ago

Hitler was at least partially bluffing. He knew that he needed to secure access to the Romanian oil fields and refineries but at the time of that statement had not yet done so. It took a few more months. But even with the Romanian alliance, Germany was chronically short of petroleum products.