4 ms·

It’s arguably this exact mentality that separated the Nazis and the rest of the Axis from the Allies. The Nazis had valued an outdated concept of ruling with an

It’s arguably this exact mentality that separated the Nazis and the rest of the Axis from the Allies. The Nazis had valued an outdated concept of ruling with an iron fist, which led them to discount the opinions of their scientists (as well as all other intellectuals.) Whatever advantage they gained by being absurdly and annoyingly aggressive, they slowly lost as the Allies gained the technological advantage. The Allies then promptly punished them for their mistake. I think this author is correctly identifying the attitude shift, but they don’t seem to understand that the attitude they’re describing was actually correct at the time. They’re passing judgment on it because they’ve seen it used for evil in recent years, but it’s like a bit of old useless programming: it was probably added in for a reason, and that reason was probably a pretty good one at the time even if it’s now a nuisance or even outright problematic in the current era. The Allies didn’t want to go into war, but were forced to by Hitler. Hitler’s actions were a bit like the tragedy of the commons: if you break the precedent then the precedent is broken and we all suffer together. The Nazis were bombing London every night. What are you gonna do? “When they go low we go high?” I mean, cmon…

petsfed 3y ago
>Whatever advantage they gained by being absurdly and annoyingly aggressive, they slowly lost as the Allies gained the technological advantage I think there was also a lag between when the Nazis committed any given strategic blunder, and when the real consequences of that blunder came due. Hitler's obsession with Stalingrad in particular, bailing out Mussolini's adventurism, the constant and maddening obsession with complexity in their war materiel, etc Its also not that the Allies were more technologically advanced per se, its that they had a much better understanding of design for manufacturing. The Sherman tank and the T-34 were, in most every respect, inferior tanks to the Tiger. But in the time it took to build that 1 tiger, American factories churned out 6 Shermans. Soviet factories churned out 6 T-34s. The entire German offensive strategy hinged on blitzkrieg, and their economy was barely able to sustain that, let alone a besieged economy with limited resources, supporting increasingly bogged-down and defensive campaigns. A lot of hay is made out of the Nazi superweapons, but not many people reflect on the fact that only about 50,000 Kubelwagens were ever produced, while the US shipped that many Jeeps to the Soviets, then built another 550,000 for themselves. Because of all of this, Germany basically lost the war when they failed to hold any of their objectives on the Ostfront, it just took years for the whole train to come to a stop. I think a similar analysis can be applied to Japan regarding their failure to end the Pacific carrier fleet at Pearl Harbor (I recall reading that as Japanese industrial capability failed through the war, A6M "Zero" fighters had to be moved by horses because Japan could not afford the cars necessary to move them around at the factory).
- kouru225 3y ago
  My understanding is that the Nazis lost the technology war because their scientists weren’t given much power and didn’t have representation in high command like they did with the Allies. The Nazi politicians were deciding which technology to fund and their decisions were dumb. They lost air superiority at the end of the war because the Allies had better technology… that I know for sure.
  - c_crank 3y ago
    It seems odd to say the Nazis lost a technology war when the Allies worked very hard on recruiting Nazi scientists as soon as the war ended to harness their expertise in fields like rocketry. They had their strengths and weaknesses.
    - kouru225 3y ago
      Like I said, the Nazi scientists were very capable. They just didn’t have any power or control. The movie Oppenheimer correctly points out that the Nazi politicians saw a lot of important ideas as “Jewish science” and didn’t take critical scientific innovations seriously, underfunding them in favor of more conventional innovations like “big powerful rocket.”
      - c_crank 3y ago
        The movie overdramatizes history to make Einstein seem more significant. Einstein never worked on the Manhattan project, and the Nazis were earnestly working on their own attempted nuclear device. They just didn't finish it first. The "big powerful rocket" would have been quite valuable if they did.
        kouru225 3y ago
        There was a post on here a day or two ago that linked to a transcript of ex-Nazi scientists: https://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English101.pdf https://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English101.pdf As you can see, most of them were convinced that it wasn’t possible in the current time frame and seem to be thinking the nuke was more along the lines of decades away rather than years away. They also argue that there was no possible way they could’ve developed the bomb because they didn’t have even close to enough funding.
lostlogin 3y ago
> It’s arguably this exact mentality that separated the Nazis and the rest of the Axis from the Allies. The Nazis had valued an outdated concept of ruling with an iron fist Where does Russia fit in this? And even if you make an exception for Russia, the allies had plenty of warts. British rule in Ireland and India for example. Treating the Second World War in isolation is also a mistake. The First World War was not finished when the shooting stopped. The resentment, restrictions and reparations were directly responsible for what came next.
- kouru225 3y ago
  Oh I didn’t mean to imply that the Allies were all nice and cosy or anything. I was just pointing out the difference between a belief in soft power and a belief in hard power, and how those ideologies extended into technological research. The Allies believed in control through soft power and that kind of systems-based approach put engineers and scientists higher in the social-political hierarchy while the hard power approach of the Nazis put them much lower. Edit: as far as Russia is concerned it seems to me that they won their front through sheer endurance in the face of the most horrifying trauma. I’d say they were more into hard power than the US and UK so… yea maybe I should be more specific when I talk about the Allies.
- pyrale 3y ago
  > The First World War was not finished when the shooting stopped. The resentment, restrictions and reparations were directly responsible for what came next. This is nazi propaganda straight out of the book. It's being repeated a lot so maybe you don't know. "The first WW was not finished" is an allusion to the dolchstoss legend. The allusion to war reparations being a cause for resentment was a common talking point for the Nazi party, but in reality Germany barely paid reparations.
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    I didn’t know that this was a thing, so thanks for that, it’s eye opening. I don’t entirely follow the line of reasoning though, how do you explain The Marshal Plan? Was working with the losers a nazi (and Japanese Empire) support scheme? It worked far better than the things tried at the end of The First World War. What would have prevented the Second World War? If Nazis didn’t rise to power, something bad was still on the cards.

petsfed 3y ago

>Whatever advantage they gained by being absurdly and annoyingly aggressive, they slowly lost as the Allies gained the technological advantage I think there was also a lag between when the Nazis committed any given strategic blunder, and when the real consequences of that blunder came due. Hitler's obsession with Stalingrad in particular, bailing out Mussolini's adventurism, the constant and maddening obsession with complexity in their war materiel, etc Its also not that the Allies were more technologically advanced per se, its that they had a much better understanding of design for manufacturing. The Sherman tank and the T-34 were, in most every respect, inferior tanks to the Tiger. But in the time it took to build that 1 tiger, American factories churned out 6 Shermans. Soviet factories churned out 6 T-34s. The entire German offensive strategy hinged on blitzkrieg, and their economy was barely able to sustain that, let alone a besieged economy with limited resources, supporting increasingly bogged-down and defensive campaigns. A lot of hay is made out of the Nazi superweapons, but not many people reflect on the fact that only about 50,000 Kubelwagens were ever produced, while the US shipped that many Jeeps to the Soviets, then built another 550,000 for themselves. Because of all of this, Germany basically lost the war when they failed to hold any of their objectives on the Ostfront, it just took years for the whole train to come to a stop. I think a similar analysis can be applied to Japan regarding their failure to end the Pacific carrier fleet at Pearl Harbor (I recall reading that as Japanese industrial capability failed through the war, A6M "Zero" fighters had to be moved by horses because Japan could not afford the cars necessary to move them around at the factory).

kouru225 3y ago
My understanding is that the Nazis lost the technology war because their scientists weren’t given much power and didn’t have representation in high command like they did with the Allies. The Nazi politicians were deciding which technology to fund and their decisions were dumb. They lost air superiority at the end of the war because the Allies had better technology… that I know for sure.
- c_crank 3y ago
  It seems odd to say the Nazis lost a technology war when the Allies worked very hard on recruiting Nazi scientists as soon as the war ended to harness their expertise in fields like rocketry. They had their strengths and weaknesses.
  - kouru225 3y ago
    Like I said, the Nazi scientists were very capable. They just didn’t have any power or control. The movie Oppenheimer correctly points out that the Nazi politicians saw a lot of important ideas as “Jewish science” and didn’t take critical scientific innovations seriously, underfunding them in favor of more conventional innovations like “big powerful rocket.”
    - c_crank 3y ago
      The movie overdramatizes history to make Einstein seem more significant. Einstein never worked on the Manhattan project, and the Nazis were earnestly working on their own attempted nuclear device. They just didn't finish it first. The "big powerful rocket" would have been quite valuable if they did.
      - kouru225 3y ago
        There was a post on here a day or two ago that linked to a transcript of ex-Nazi scientists: https://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English101.pdf https://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English101.pdf As you can see, most of them were convinced that it wasn’t possible in the current time frame and seem to be thinking the nuke was more along the lines of decades away rather than years away. They also argue that there was no possible way they could’ve developed the bomb because they didn’t have even close to enough funding.

lostlogin 3y ago

> It’s arguably this exact mentality that separated the Nazis and the rest of the Axis from the Allies. The Nazis had valued an outdated concept of ruling with an iron fist Where does Russia fit in this? And even if you make an exception for Russia, the allies had plenty of warts. British rule in Ireland and India for example. Treating the Second World War in isolation is also a mistake. The First World War was not finished when the shooting stopped. The resentment, restrictions and reparations were directly responsible for what came next.

kouru225 3y ago
Oh I didn’t mean to imply that the Allies were all nice and cosy or anything. I was just pointing out the difference between a belief in soft power and a belief in hard power, and how those ideologies extended into technological research. The Allies believed in control through soft power and that kind of systems-based approach put engineers and scientists higher in the social-political hierarchy while the hard power approach of the Nazis put them much lower. Edit: as far as Russia is concerned it seems to me that they won their front through sheer endurance in the face of the most horrifying trauma. I’d say they were more into hard power than the US and UK so… yea maybe I should be more specific when I talk about the Allies.
pyrale 3y ago
> The First World War was not finished when the shooting stopped. The resentment, restrictions and reparations were directly responsible for what came next. This is nazi propaganda straight out of the book. It's being repeated a lot so maybe you don't know. "The first WW was not finished" is an allusion to the dolchstoss legend. The allusion to war reparations being a cause for resentment was a common talking point for the Nazi party, but in reality Germany barely paid reparations.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  I didn’t know that this was a thing, so thanks for that, it’s eye opening. I don’t entirely follow the line of reasoning though, how do you explain The Marshal Plan? Was working with the losers a nazi (and Japanese Empire) support scheme? It worked far better than the things tried at the end of The First World War. What would have prevented the Second World War? If Nazis didn’t rise to power, something bad was still on the cards.