Some (sub)orbital geopolitics don't seem to have changed much in 8 decades: You too may be a big hero Once you've learned to count backwards to zero "In

Some (sub)orbital geopolitics don't seem to have changed much in 8 decades: You too may be a big hero Once you've learned to count backwards to zero "In German oder English I know how to count down Und I'm learning Chinese" says Wernher von Braun (for countdowns in a Japanese translation, see "Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise") Someone on HN convinced me recently that "Hitler in his Bunker" was on the looney side, but up until then the only non-looney explanation I had found for his behaviour was that he had been hoping he could sell germany wholesale either to the US[0] or to the USSR, not anticipating they would actually stay allied until after the war, each picking up the bits[1] they wanted retail (Operations Paperclip and Осоавиахим, respectively). [0] had the Sportpalast speech been given in 1953 instead of 1943, the "only we are protecting the West against communism" shtick might have gone over much better in the States. [1] it turns out that developing not just rockets but also jets is far less useful when, logistically speaking, you no longer have much oil and can no longer refine or synthesise sufficient jet fuel. (someday I'd like to figure out how much early-50's graph theory may have been just the first unclassified publication of network analyses developed during the war for strategic bombing purposes; compare Kantorovich' development and application of linear programming during the Siege of Leningrad) Linebarger relates that at the end of WWII, when getting Nazi units to surrender, they had difficulties[2] because although the officer corps was aware how operationally screwed they were, morale in the ranks was still high. [2] supposedly the difficulties decreased after the psychological warfare operators created an official looking "surrender form", in the blanks of which soldiers could fill in their name, birthplace and Jahrgang, occupation, etc. etc. then provide, dutifully filled out, to Allied units. As an anglophone, it's certainly plausible, but maybe those are just my stereotypes speaking?