What’s great about this, and Stephen Fry is brilliant, is not that he’s absolving Musk, or that he’s criticizing Tesla, but that it is an argument likely leading to Elon Musk protesting,
‘No, my cars are good enough that I can be a Nazi!’
What’s great about this, and Stephen Fry is brilliant, is not that he’s absolving Musk, or that he’s criticizing Tesla, but that it is an argument likely leading to Elon Musk protesting,
‘No, my cars are good enough that I can be a Nazi!’
Hur hur. I’d wish people would stop assigning hyper-competence to Nazis. They never were. Hitler was a drug addict and the trains didn’t run on time.
That’s just ignoring history. There are plenty of good reasons to hate the Nazis without needing to do that.
In the similar way, it’s not necessary to dismiss Soviet Union’s early modernization successes in order to blame them for their crimes against humanity.
German trains still don’t run on time. Can’t blame that one on the Nazis, that’s just a German thing.
At least you didn’t rip up your railways. We barely even have trains here in the US.
Still better than Canadian rail. That shit is regularly late. Significantly late.
German told me
Sounds like one of those people who prefer standing in a 20 minute traffic jam instead of giving a chance to public transit. If you actually use the german trains from time to time, you will notice how well used they are. They are admittedly often late though.
I had four long distance ICE journeys in the last two months. Three where thirty minutes late, one was two hours late.
Also had four long distance TGV journeys, of which one was about 20 minutes late, and one was an hour late, though that delay happened in Germany.
Apparently, DB is currently working on the infrastructure, but those renovations haven’t been fully funded, and it looks like the conservatives will get in next.
On Via Rail Canada, my train trip was 3h. The delay was 3h. So it literally was double the amount of time.
European train delay is nothing compared to Canadian train delay.
Yeah, OK, my journeys where all around five hours. Double is kinda mad.
Exactly this. My grandmother lived under the Nazis and she said they were fucking idiots. Exactly the same type of incompetent blowhards. The whole hyper scientific ubermensch BS in the cultural zeitgeist is so frustrating. I blame all the WWII video games and movies that played up the myth to have more interesting villains than the sleazy shit stains that they actually were.
The strength of the Germans was that I.) they had a really good industrial base, and ii.) the traditions within the army meant they had extremely well trained soldiers. Both of these predate nazi-rule. For instance, Germans also arguably had the best (equipped) army in WW1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion
Two things can be true at the same time. German soldiers were incredibly cruel in non-combat situations, and at the same time highly competent in combat.
Early Nazis also galvanized a young working force with actual socialist policies that guaranteed them good jobs and housing (before Hitler’s multiple violent party purges, scrapping most of it for a fascist-capitalist junta)
And drugs.
I guess Wolfenstein being banned for glorifying Nazis actually had some merit.
It’s hard to convince people that they’ve been had by a bunch of morons.
This is why the left can’t have nice things.
Like this isn’t the point here. You don’t need to be pointing out this stuff. Just dog pile
Minor clarifications aren’t the end of the world. The left is fine. Stop being sensitive
A small country took on the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD (TWICE) and very nearly won. The second time with a lunatic at the helm.
What does it take to impress you? To what would you assign their disturbing success?
Incredible. Literally everything you just said was wrong.
Germany wasn’t “a small country”. They were an industrialised, highly productive and heavily armed global power. They were slightly battered by post ww1 humiliation regulations pressed on them by the winners (because they ALSO lost that one!). But the instant they told the Allies to eat shit and started using what they had, any claim to “smallness” went out the window.
And they didn’t “almost win”. They got their asses kicked.
Every single thing the Nazis wanted to achieve, they failed hard. They wanted to prove the genetic superiority of the German people in the Olympics, instead they were soundly beat. They wanted to expand their territory, they got as far as fucking Poland and France and then stalled for years until a double whammy of Americans and Russians basically curb-stomped them, with the last few years of the Reich consisting of lots of propaganda coping hard about how their soon to come wonder weapons would turn the tide, which never happened because said wonder weapons were stupid ideas that only succeeded at getting more Nazis killed when they failed in testing. They wanted to stop the spread of communism, instead half their country became Soviet domain.
And then their “strongman” leader blasted his own brains out rather than face the fact that he was a loser in every way one can be a loser.
Nazis took on world in one war, and lost.
“WE ARE THE GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD! THE PUREST OF THE PURE! STRONGEST OF THE STRONG!”
[Fights one (1) war]
“Guess we’ll shoot ourselves in a bunker and lose in a big lopsided defeat.”
At no point did they “nearly win” against the world. In World War 1 they made desperate attempts to break out of trench warfare because the blockade was obliterating their wartime economy. In World War 2 they were cooked the second they invaded the USSR and the USA landed in the UK. Those were unwinnable areas for them. Even if they eventually managed to wear down the British, the Americans were right behind them manufacturing 100 tanks a day and 15 Aircraft Carriers in 1943 alone. Which means all of those tanks are getting to the European theater.
And once the USSR got it’s production under way the Germans were on the defensive all the way back to Berlin.
What the actual fuck are you talking about?
Um it did not take the entire world, for a lot of their early success most of the fighting was against countries that were unprepared and devastated after ww1.
What is this, the Übermensch Expanded Universe? Maybe actually learn history.
Small country? They were a highly industrialized, highly educated and still quite materially wealthy colonial power going into the wars. They didn’t need to be competent. Enough people went along with them and there was plenty of residual wealth to burn on the war machine.
You don’t need to be an architect to burn down a building.
Germany didn’t really have much wealth after WW1 due to the restrictions placed on them from the western powers.
Most of the reason the Nazi party was popular early on was them championing a number of socialist policies designed to bring the country out an economic morass.
This is a really good book on the subject (and part of a really good trilogy of books about understanding Nazi Germany): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/319473.The_Coming_of_the_Third_Reich
Material support from the Western ruling class who wanted Hitler to destroy communism for them.
This, the biggest mistake Germany made was interfering with dominant western European capital (i.e. the US, UK, and France). If they had just devoured the eastern European countries and fought Russia then capital would not have batted an eye.
At no point were the Nazis close to winning. After the Soviets won the battle of Stalingrad in 1943 the Nazis were on full retreat until Berlin got captured.
Even leading up to up 1943, Germany had its oil nearly cut off. They became dependent on Romania for their supply. This may sound like a cartoon, but Nazis were dragging their tanks to the frontline using horses.
Germany simply did not have the industrial or logistic capacity to win WW2 at any point. The Nazis had already ransacked the German economy through privatization reforms and selling off anything that wasn’t nailed down. Invading Poland incurred a bunch of sanctions and embargos that resulted in Germany’s only primary oil trade coming from uhhh…the Soviet Union, so the Nazis had the brilliant idea of declaring war on their main source of gasoline.
I think that they were winning before they invaded the Soviet-Union.
In an alternate timeline where they kept the alliance with the USSR, I think they would have won.
The USSR had resources while Germany had engineers and technology.
And without an eastern Front, they could have held off the allies on the western front.
But they got cocky, paranoid and greedy.
And I am glad they lost.
Germany was always the second strongest imperial power in Europe behind Britain from 1871 onwards, and without the English channel that would be debatable.
The Nazis’ initial success in WW2 is entirely dependent on France falling apart the second they were invaded and the Reich getting to loot the entirety of it and the low countries to keep their economy alive. Had France put up even token resistance Germany would have imploded within a few months and the European half of the war would’ve been a minor footnote in the history books next to Japan invading all of Asia.
Meth chocolate, fascism, and taking on armies using WWI tech and tactics
It can’t be discounted the amount of luck they had early on, as well.
Yup, biggest thing is that their attack, though expected by quite a few powers, came out of left field and add in the rushing forward on armies still using cavalry units and the early massive land grab via Germany makes sense
👆nazi
Nazi
Do Japan and Italy just not count as part of the world? I mean Japan took over half of Asia and the Pasific while Italy took the Mediterranean countries. Germany took over part of northern Europe and helped a bit of North Africa.