'Hitler's Tailor' Hugo Boss apologises for using slave labour

@Wicked:

Don’t forget, unlike France or Norway surrender was no survivable option for the Russian population. Hitler made very clear quite early that he considered them “subhuman” and GeStaPo and SS did their deadly job in notorious german thouroughness in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. So I’m not sure if taking the capital would have ended the war in Russia - perhaps the regular war, but not the need for massive amount of troops there. I’m pretty sure the long term need and lack of administrational staff and police for this vast area with millions of deads causing disobeyance and riots would have been more than a pain in the a… for the Reich.
The Nazi dictature based on nationalism including/featuring hatred towards Jews and Slaws, denunciation and a powerful police - that wouldn’t have worked there. But on second thought, they might have been able to get some russians to help and give some incentives like surviving a month longer… It would have been hell on earth.

In the end Hitler had not enough of his beloved true blood Germans to realize his megalomaniac ideas - you don’t make many friends by hating them constitutionally.

An important part of German planning for the postwar period included the intention of forcibly relocating 30 - 50 million Poles eastward, to make room for German expansion. Had the Allied food blockade still been in effect, the deaths of large numbers of Poles along the way would have been considered an acceptable way of relieving pressure on Germany’s food supply; thereby preventing the starvation of an equal number of non-Poles.

During the war, the combination of the Allied food blockade and Stalin’s scorched earth tactics made it impossible for Germany to feed all the people within the lands it had conquered from the Soviet Union. The physical impossibility of Germany feeding those people proved a boon for Soviet propagandists; who took advantage of the situation by claiming that Germany planned to starve or kill all the people of the conquered Soviet Union. Soviet propagandists were not normally considered a highly reliable source of information. In this instance, however, the fact that large numbers of people in German-occupied portions of the Soviet Union were actually starving seemed to lend a hint of credibility to these claims.

As the war in Europe became increasingly less favorable for Germany, large numbers of Soviet civilians fled west into Germany. The westward flight of many Soviet civilians demonstrates that not all Soviet citizens believed Soviet wartime propaganda.

@RJL518:

The real question to be asked is how would a battle have gone if the Missouri and Iowa took on the Super-Battleships Yamato and Musashi.  
As Samuel Eliot Morison, author of the History of US Naval Operations in World War II, once said…“What a brawl that would have been!”
Even though the Yamato and Musashi had 18.1 inch guns compared to the 16 inch of the Iowa class, the Iowas were still faster and still had better range.  
But who knows.  
IMO it would have depended on the tactics and strategy of the captains in a great battle at that time.

And it was a match-up that nearly happened.  Yamato and two of the Iowa-class battleships, Iowa and New Jersey, missed each other by only a few hours in the area of the San Bernadino Straight during the closing stages of the Battle of Leyte Gulf.  And if Musashi hadn’d been sunk the previous day, there would have been the potential for a two-on-two fight.  I’d have given a lot to get tickets to watch a slugging match like that.

One interesting technical difference is that even though the belt armour of the Yamatos was thicker than that of the Iowas, its performance might not have been better by comparison.  Japanese industry wasn’t capable of producing 16-inch armour as a single block, so the Yamato belt armour was in two layers rather than monolithic, which reduced its effectiveness.  Also, the Class-A armour components of the Iowa’s defenses were more advanced than the grade of armour used on the Yamatos, and thickness-for-thickness had better resistance to penetration.  On the offensive side, the 16-inch AP shells fired by the Iowas were heavyweight designs, with a greater weight relative to their diameter than the 18.1-inch AP shells fired by the Yamatos (2,700 lb vs. 3,219 lbs), and they were fired at nearly the same muzzle velocity (2,500 ft/s vs. 2,600 ft/s) because the Iowa guns had longer barrels relative to their bore (50 calibers vs. 45 calibers).

@DarthShizNit:

The Swede’s were just plain awesome in the age of musket lol. So many great commanders.

No doubt, The Great Northern Kingdom had an elite battle force.

@Gargantua:

Are you on DRUGS?

Uhm, I won’t answer any questions without my lawyer present.   :wink:

I regard most television documentaries as highly entertaining, but at least sometimes containing information of dubious reliability.  They are there to entertain and inform, and sometimes propagandize, not simply inform.

It is in stacks of dry dusty books that one finds interesting facts, and hot lonely librarians.   :evil:  The internet also does decently as a search tool, although you often have to have a good idea of what you are looking for.  (For example, you won’t typically find mention of “The Protocols of Zion” in any discussion of the Holocaust, which is, well, really bad.)

My understanding of the history of the StG 44 is that production of the gun itself was generally approved of by Hitler.

The MKb 42, FG 42, and MP43 were the predecessors.  I think the referred to “stoppage of the StG 44 by Hitler” (to paraphrase an earlier post) referred to the real infighting in Germany over the design and production of these various predecessor guns.  To sum up, there were various plans for various assault rifles / machine guns, but there was a lot of bureaucratic infighting.  Rather than allowing them to continue arguing to no positive end, Hitler at various points told them to shut up and shut down.

So naturally there was some delay in StG 44 production, but saying Hitler made a stupid decision, or that he completely lacked vision, is like yelling at your cat after you burn your toast.  It’s not the cat’s fault, even if it was in the room at the time.

Am I missing something here?

HERO - a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.

Tell me to lay down if I’m drunk but…

What’s so heroic about this?  The dude did his job?  Theres nothing particularily “distinguished” about it.  Other then the fact it was big H on the stand.

Hans was a lawyer and he cross examined Hittler rightfully on the stand, did a good job (But not good enough to convict?) and pissed off the Nazi’s, ok - cool.  But so what?

Whats the big deal?  For this Type A personality, it’s normal to be good at what you do, and not care what anyone else thinks - be stubborn and often RUDE in your interactions with people in general, which he was.

I’m still not seeing the heroics… ? ? ?  Heroic would be he put a luger in Hitlers face, and took one for the team.

Otherwise… where do you draw the line?  Is every footsoldier in the conflict a hero?  Is everyone who passed information, sent thier children to war, or baked applie pies for the troops a hero?

Everyone has parts to play, Heroic’s in my understanding is when you step up and above that?

I mean, is a paramedic a hero for saving lives everyday - or is that just his job?

It is wholly unheroic not to stand up in the face of tyranny, but that does not make it heroic to do the right thing everyday.

all the best NATO military testing facilities

Canada should get an award for that. Most important thing ever!

@finnman:

@gnasape:

Looks like an episode of “Deadliest Warrior” on Spike TV!  Someone should contact them about doing this.

Best show ever, The SS just fought the veit cong.

Good show, not great show. Had the show had this face off ( Marine Raiders vs Waffen SS) it could hold the title: great show.

Patton is one of the most interesting characters in WW2.

First of all look at how the Germans feared him. They were terrified of the man. Secondly a good many of Patton’s strategic and tactical viewpoints came to pass about both the 2nd World War and the Cold War. The man also had a sense of justice. He forced German civilians that tried to ignore the existence of the concentration camps to walk through the horrors there. As a tactician and commander I doubt we had anyone better than Patton.

The man had his faults certainly. The two incidents of slapping a soldier (he discharged a firearm in at least one of those, not sure about the second), he always seemed to have trouble managing his supply lines, and he always had trouble keeping his opinions quiet. He blundered severely sending troops to liberate a POW camp that happened to have his son in law as a prisoner. Patton never believed in shell shock, “battle fatigue”.

I really enjoyed Rick Atkinson’s first two books (Army at Dawn and Day of Battle). Patton is a major player in Army At Dawn (focused on North Africa). In the second book Patton is involved briefly but you learn many of his predictions about the fight in Italy prove to be correct. I look forward to third which focuses from D-day to the end of the war. I was disappointed in the amount of time Jeff Shaara devoted to Patton in “No Less Than Victory”. True a wealth of information is already recorded about Patton but writing any WW@ novel without Patton would be like writing about the Shenandoah Valley without mentioning Stonewall Jackson.

I believe that some authors portray Patton with a bias and marginalize Patton (most notably alternative writer Harry Turtledove). Part of this is because Patton offers so much stuff to criticize in his character. Part of it also comes from the fact it is popular to criticize anyone that could be considered conservative today.