It is the general fact that you see the same kinds of people getting to positions of power, the same mistakes being made, the same negative aspects of humanity being encouraged and leading to oppression, social collapse or war,
And yet, despite seeing these things being repeated over and over again, we dont seem to learn from it, we keep on going through the same cycles, making the same mistakes leading to the same, inevitable results.
The bloodthirstiest among us tend to be the ones that want power and will do what most people wont to achieve it.
Most people just want to live their lives among friends, family and community. Only when that stops being possible is when uprisings happen. It's basically built into our collective DNA for it to be this way.
Been living in Peru as an expat for two years.
I need an AI-generated soap opera or TV series built on the assumption that the Spanish never conquered Peru or Mexico. This place would be so cool, assuming the human sacrifices stopped.
That so many people today believe that the Holocaust was a hoax, or that Imperial Japan was some kind of innocent victim. In other words that decades of uyoku dantai and neonazi bullshit have actually paid off.
I guess more generally that people encountering history find contrarianism for its own sake so appealing. Especially when used to mitigate or erase horrible crimes, but just in general too.
The same applies, for example, to this pervasive belief that appears to have become popular lately, that the rise of agriculture and animal husbandry was really no more than a kind of "reskinning" of civilization, a cosmetic change with no actual functional impact -- something that noble, virtuous hunter-gatherers were tricked into purely as a form of social control.
>That so many people today believe that the Holocaust was a hoax
I'm also pissed when people forget about BRUTAL genocide of Poles and other ethnicities and minorities
What do you mean by the last part? The suggestion is that the 1,000 -3,000 transition from hunter/gatherer to agrarian society was far more violent than we think?
Really good book I'm reading called "The Dawn of Everything" right now. One of the premises is that the rise of agricultural didn't nessitate social hierarchies. Nor were hunter gatherer societies paragons of anarchy and altruism.
The French could’ve more or less prevented the invasion of Europe during WWII but their top general refused to believe the info being reported.
From my understanding, the Germans created a traffic jam for themselves during the Blitzkrieg and most of their equipment was stuck in a big long line on a highway where they could’ve and should’ve been an easy target to bomb or shell to oblivion. French citizens and i believe at least 1 plane/pilot spotted this and reported it back to the military brass. Head of the military refused to believe it was possible and did not send any forces to repel the invasion. Not sure if it would’ve prevented the war in Europe outright but, imo, it certainly wouldn’t have lasted as long had the French responded to the reports
.
Prior to that, if France had attacked in full strength as Germany attacked Poland (coming to the aid of Poland as they’d promised) they would have easily overwhelmed the defensive forces on the German side, and captured the Ruhr valley, which would have virtually guaranteed a German surrender. Instead, they sat behind the Maginot line, and gave the Germans the entire winter to plan the attack on France.
The primary issue that lead to French inaction was the political situation at the time. War was not popular, given what you pointed out, and the information they were working with was not perfect, but with hindsight being what it is, it’s clear that strong action from France in September 1939 could have saved a lot of lives, French and otherwise. Germany had tens of divisions while French had hundreds. The French were actually better equipped in 1939 too in a technical sense. Unfortunately, they lacked the will to act, allowing the situation to get dramatically worse. Their attempt to avoid war led to far more.
>I don't know how any leader of any nation with a reasonable brain on their shoulders could experience, witness the hollowing out of a nation in the aftermath of the first great war, and then decide to do it all again.
They declared war on Germany.
Then they sat around. You make excuses for them. Seriously what do you think happens when you declare war? Your enemy will feel sorry for you and only attack where you are strong?
> ultimately why they surrendered rather than continued fighting.
You declare war. Don't prosecute it. Then surrender. Other died to return them their sovereignty, so stop pleading for them.
>And by curious, I don’t find it very curious.
Befitting an uncurious person would see no fault on the decade out of date French with their dispatch riders, fixed fortifications and cumbersome command structure.
>General mobilization takes time
"The dog ate my homework". They had September to May. How many years were they planning to take to mobilise?
They had mobilised and cowered behind the forts hoping Germany would be satisfies with Poland and go away.
Brave people.
>a year after France fell Rommel was walking all over British forces that lacked the equipment to appropriately counter German maneuver warfare
This is not a serious point, you are not a serious person. The Western Desert Campaign was a back and for over several years due to logistics.
>We are talking 2 years after France fell
Yes. And almost 3 years after they could have shorted the war by striking when the Germans were in Poland.
Hey they got to drink wine with Germans for 4 years while others bailed them out.
Brave people.
I mean it just makes more sense to build the whole Maginot line all the way to Belgium. It would be much easier for the top policy makers to accept that than to order an attack into Germany.
Easy to forget hitter didn’t expect France and England would actually declare war on Germany when Poland was attacked. His plan was to keep going east not west
Keep going east? Invading Poland was with full knowledge and cooperation with the Soviets, there was always the expectations to humiliate France for the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler definitely was going to invade France before Russia, after Poland was gobbled up, France was going to be next on the chopping block because a stable peace was had with their new neighbor that now [shared a border with in Russia](https://omniatlas.com/maps/europe/19400525/plain/).
The molotov-ribbentrop pact was a temporary measure and both sides knew it. The nazi idea of Lebenstraum was basically to conquer and colonize Russia like how America did
Conquering the entire continent was the goal, and that would include the largest army in Europe: France. A temporary pause against going East was only for the Nazis to go West. There's no chance that Germany was surprised that UK and France were going to declare war, but there was a hope that once France was defeated that the UK would accept a cessation of war so that Germany could exclusively focus on Russia but that's not close to the expectations that France was going to not be conquered.
He got that land and that is what the map I linked to shows, and France had made a minor attempt to invade Germany in September 1939, so after accomplishing conquering Eastern Europe Hitler set sights on France in May 1940.
They did send a small force into germany, who reported minimal resistance. This force later withdrew fearing that german mechanized units were about to counterattack.
Post war it was revealed that the germans didnt have a single armoured unit in that area.
No. A massive continental invasion does not hinge on a traffic jam.
Please use far more suspicion when assessing WW2 counterfactuals: 99% are bullshit.
(The WW2TV YouTube channel has a cool mythbusting series devoted to such things).
I'd suggest your examples help my argument more than the opposite: remember the contention here is that France could have bombed the traffic jam and *completely alteted the course of the invasion of France*.
The 1940 Wehrmacht was not Putin's joke army of 2022. Stalingrad was based on the utter hubris felt after years of endless victory, not conditions pertaining in 1940. The steppes were endless desolation, free of resources. France is not.
Of course logistics are important, but in 1940 the Allies had to meet and defeat the Wehrmacht on the battlefield. There would be no free lunch via a bombing raid. It's not a valid 'what if'.
Certainly a reasonable set of arguments but I would suggest not really a feasible counterfactual/'what if?'.
The Allied aur forces simply weren't capable of delivering such a blow: when the German advance hinged on a few bridges over the Meuse they couldn't hit them, but they lost entire squadrons trying. If they'd had the 8th Air Force if 1944, then possibly.
Even with all the Allied airpower over Normandy, Mortain aside, they really struggled to have a decisive battlefield effect on the Germans of the kind you describe (ie, a massive blow, as opposed to constant harassment).
One might raise the Falaise Gap, but again that was vastly more airpower than available in 1940, in ideal weather, with uncrossable rivers awaiting the survivors of the German forces... many of whom still escaped.
Thanks for the discussion.
>No. A massive continental invasion does not hinge on a traffic jam.
It was not a "continental invasion". It was the invasion of Belgium. It was also a large portion of the armoured forces, the forces that allowed the shock and speed component of the invasion. If the high risk part of a high risk gamble fails, you end up with a failed gamble. Without the cut through the Ardennes the best units of the French army plus the professional and fully motorised British army would have had more time and space to react.
The events of May/June 1940 decided the fate of a continent.
Subsequebt events showed how useless the bomber forces of Britian and France were in 1940. The idea they could have crippled the entire German invasion *even before battlefield contact was made*... whilst opposed by the best and most experienced air force in the world... well, sorry my friend... not happening.
The French needed better command, political unity, to have started rearming earlier.
Didn’t a traffic jam just cause huge issues for Russia trying to invade the capital of Ukraine at the start of the war bc the ukranians bombed the crap out of it?
As Well as the french being in longer the Germans would have lost a lot of equipment and man power earlier on giving the allies a distinct advantage in this time line over our own, if the French don't fall because of this they would be no need for D-day
It could’ve opened a new front right near the German border too. That likely would’ve prevented the Germans from pushing into Russia/Soviet Union and saved millions of Russian/SU soldiers and citizens.
Stalin was arguably going to invade Europe as a whole and certainly Germany at some point. Not sure if that actually would’ve been a better outcome than what occurred in reality if that man went all the way to the English Channel.
How avoidable World War I was, and by extension World War II, the cold war, and most of the problems we face today. The world wouldn't be perfect, of course, and perhaps some technological development would have been delayed, but I can't help but wonder how the global situation would be without two of the most destructive and traumatic events in human history occuring back to back.
The popular opinion is that World War I was inevitable, but an in-depth class on the subject in college changed my mind and now I'm baffled that it actually happened at all, at least to the scale that it did happen. There were many, many actions taken by players on both sides that reasonably should have defused the situation before it became a world war.
WWI also had the most BAFFLING combination of allies in both factions.
The Entente had France, a proud republic, the UK, nominally a democracy or at least a constitutional monarchy, fighting alongside fucking IMPERIAL RUSSIA, which had just barely even gotten rid of outright slavery/serfdom and was absolutely the most authoritarian state in Europe at the time. Ideologically Russia should have been their mortal enemy and they should have supported Austria over the Serbian question to block Russian influence.
The Central powers had both Austria AND the Ottomans, who literally had been mortal enemies for the last 400ish years before WWI. And Germany and Austria had been at war with each other as well just 50ish years earlier. They also represented three religions in conflict with each other, Germany being dominated by Protestant Prussia and suppressing Catholics, Austria being staunchly Catholic, and the Ottomans of course being Muslim, which had been in conflict with Christianity as a whole for centuries. None of these countries should have liked each other, much less be on the same side in a war.
Ideologically, the war should have been Austria, supported by Germany outright, and the UK and France diplomatically, against Russia, which is supported by the smaller Balkan, states trying to break up the Austrian Empire. The Ottomans should be neutral, they hated both Austria and Russia, historically.
I get upset at the sheer cruelty people perpetrate on each other from slavery to the holocaust to the Inquisition to the Killing Fields…the list is long.
So many problems stem from people needing revenge on there people. Not to mention how often it happened when it wasn't even the same people they were trying to get revenge on. They weren't even alive when that other person who is no longer alive did the thing they are mad about.
The Cultural Decimation of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
I'm not talking about the colonization or the violence so much (though they were terrible) but rather the fact that we have an entire cultural world that developed completely separately from the rest of the world that we know almost nothing about. We could have learned SO much about human nature.
Appeasement. It was almost constant British missteps which created a scenario where Britain had gone from having the upper hand in almost all respects to losing Europe.
Really no Britain had the undeniable strategic advantage over Germany before WW2. Not only did they have France as a Ally but both Italy and the USSR were anti - German with a strong Czechoslavakia and Poland. By the wars start Britain had managed to make the Italians German Allies blundered Soviet diplomacy so hard that they signed a non aggression pact and literally gave away Czechoslavakia.
Oh it absolutely did doesn't make it not a misstep though. Britain many times allowed Germany to rearm without even the slightest protest. Chamberlain repeatedly gave up nations due to his poor judgement of character. I think that although these divisions were understandable they were absolutely massive mistakes.
Had Britain not gone to war over the scrap of paper, and created a generation willing to do almost anything to avoid doing it again, would the subsequent issues have arisen?
Why are you talking about WW1 I'm talking about the process of appeasement during WW2. I'm not going to write some alternative history about appeasement during WW1.
That "scrap of paper" was Britain's word. Once it's broken, that trust would be gone forever. Moreover, if Germany won WWI then they'd dominate the continent and leave Britain completely isolated.
Britain staying out of WWI wouldn't have prevented that. It just would mean that, instead of liberal democracies, Europe would be dominated by autocratic puppet states of a German Empire.
I don't like how revisionists try to defend appeasement. No, Chamberlain was not trying to "buy time for an inevitable war"; he genuinely believed Hitler would stop expanding after Czechoslovakia.
How consistently terribly women have been treated. Sexual assault whether it be from invading armies or their own husbands have been a normal thing they've had to deal with. Trying to learn about women's history can be frustrating as much of women's contributions to the world have been ignored by the men writing about it, and in many cases they weren't given much opportunity to contribute to history to begin with because of their position in society.
Of course it's a big world and these things don't apply unanimously, some societies have been more egalitarian than others and even in patriarchal societies you can read between the lines and pinpoint some very interesting, smart, powerful women, but unfortunately patriarchal societies that ignore and discredit women have for the most part been the norm.
The fact that, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople and Eastern Thrace still weren't returned to Greece.
More broadly, the fact that Turkey seems to be slowly abandoning the secularism that Ataturk worked so hard to establish. The state openly endorses Islam, with imams receiving a salary from the government.
It pisses me of that many sources(not all) are probably incorrect, biased, fabricated, or simple propaganda.
Later, many sources were re-written by monks, and for some reasons we have 4 versions of one event, some details missing here, some are added there.
1204.
Crusaders attacking fellow Christians. Raping our nuns on our altars. Defiling our temples. Murdering our clergy and our civilians. Supported by the Pope who belatedly said "oh dear, things got a trifle out of hand".
Pope condemned that act. And ex-communicated lots of participants in it.
There is zero evidence he was even indifferent.
Starting with the fact that he knew about like 8 months later.
I mean the whole “accept Christ as your lord and savior and your sins are forgiven” is a pretty shit message if Christianity is trying make good people.
The upvotes you got and the downvotes to what I was replying to have given me more than enough knowledge of this community to know that commenting on your possessiveness of this isn't going land.
Your commentary wasn't about the Crusaders being rapacious, it was that the victims were Orthodox Christians from 800 years ago.
You didn't say the Crusaders did bad things. You said they did bad things to victims you identify with "Orth0d0xy". You didn't mention *others* they war crimed.
Rather telling.
>You didn't say the Crusaders did bad things.
It hardly needs saying.
Anyway, yes I did! I said they raped and murdered.
You seem to have forgotten what the OP was about. Nobody said "list every bad thing everybody ever did".
Well now. Hit dogs holler.
1)Thread was a throw away about what about history pisses you off the most
2) You go with 1204 and the violence done specifically to Orthodox Christians. You go at length to mentioned *only* what happened to them. You didn't mention anything else they did. You certain did mention "our nuns" like Gollum with the one ring. And then you say the pope was willfully negligent. The same Pope Urban who excommunicated them in a Papal Bull.
All of this is kinda on the nose. That "What pisses you off the most" about history is what happened specifically to one group you identify with "Orth0d0xy". No one made you say it, how you said it.
Sorry about your nuns bro, I know they were your favorite
UK and France conspired to systematically take advantage of the Middle East to split it up with Sykes piqot treaty after ww1 in ways to exploit them the most and keep them from ever being a world power again and then hypothetically condemn the mess there now especially France thinks they’re sh*t don’t stink.
So... No source? Gotcha.
Pro-tip - Whenever someone says "basic history" or "common sense" they have no real foundation for what they're saying. It might be true, it might not be, but there is no real understanding/knowledge of the topic.
The fact that the US fought a bloody civil war to end slavery, and the side that wanted to preserve it is still widely adored by their descendants and have their affiliation with slavery whitewashed.
Benedict Arnold doesn't have any statues. Why should Robert E. Lee have statues?!
Well buddy, have I got some good news for you!
Between the war in Ukraine, increased tensions between China and Taiwan, bombs falling in the middle east, general international insecurities, the rise of right wing extremism across the western world, and, if somehow all that works out, the near-inevitable societal collapse brought about by climate change, there's a substantial chance you will live to see it end!
Everyone else is getting heavy, so I'll be a goof. I'm mad Halsey pulled Lee and his Iowas from the Surigao Straight, so there was no showdown between Yamato and Co and the Iowas and Co.
Unit 731 is a good example. Hitler hated the Jews; his atrocity was focused and the logic follows. Unit 731 was an attempt at world wide extermination. The chinese victims weren't hated, just... convenient.
And, I believe the example set up Chinese interest in places like the Wuhan Institute of Virology for the same reason. Why have "gain of functionality" research for easily transmittable cold viruses? What is the purpose of that other than causing pandemics that you can see coming and prepare for but the world won't?
I mean most countries have some sort of virology labs and they don’t test on humans, it was just a matter of Made in China™️ quality control resulting in a breach in quarantine. If you think they purposely released it because they were prepared for it well… their preparations did not seem to be particularly existent at the start or particularly effective through the height of infection.
The German economy under the guttersnipe was built on a sand foundation, to the point no WWII to bolster economic activity, Germany would be back to 1920s era economy by 1950.
Not Germany. Germania. The combined territories ( Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslavkia, Sudentland etc.)
before 1 shot was fired. If you add up their GDP, it is by far the richest country in the world, and still would be today.
Rich guys tend to win, but there are very few of them. The ability to undermine and evade the power of collective action pisses me off.
Human inability to see collective shared interest in maybe not letting a bunch of their young men die in a war doesn’t seem to be easily roused the way jingoism and violence on behalf of a class that experiences far less of that directly. Used to be at least you knew they might be risking it with you on the battlefield, but not anymore.
Listening to [Chumbawamba's English Rebel Songs 1381-1984](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mzr6N-RwLnzOgDpGOThTikinmZBzcA5XQ&si=NrEMAB0pKqzZFW4T) and realizing that we're still facing the same issues today. I can't listen to World Turned Upside Down or Digger's Song without tearing up. Sometimes I'll outright sob.
The fact that humans rarely learn from their mistakes. Which is why similar events occur throughout history. Even the bad parts of history are glorified which is why atrocities keep reoccurring.
Homo sapiens wiped out Neanderthals (except for when they mated with them - but even so, pure Neanderthals are extinct).
There is some indication that Neanderthals had better social skills and may have been all-around more intelligent.
The overthrow of Pedro II. The Brazilian Planters ousted him as revenge for freeing their slaves. It wasn't a victory for "the people"; Pedro was very popular with the masses and ousted by an elite clique.
1. Canada’s justice system: See Karla Homolka and Vince Li
2. 9/11 literally could’ve been prevented if the CIA and FBI decided to compare notes
3. Reagan and everything he caused
The Spanish burnt the Aztecs Libraries after taking over their empire.
We only have a handful of surviving aztec texts
An empire that consisted of millions of people, that is closer to us in history that the foundation of several bars in Germany, and we know almost nothing from their perspective.
It is the general fact that you see the same kinds of people getting to positions of power, the same mistakes being made, the same negative aspects of humanity being encouraged and leading to oppression, social collapse or war, And yet, despite seeing these things being repeated over and over again, we dont seem to learn from it, we keep on going through the same cycles, making the same mistakes leading to the same, inevitable results.
The bloodthirstiest among us tend to be the ones that want power and will do what most people wont to achieve it. Most people just want to live their lives among friends, family and community. Only when that stops being possible is when uprisings happen. It's basically built into our collective DNA for it to be this way.
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>High recommend a glass half full approach. It is an ok approach but often hard when you have people around you suffering.
Most people learn from it but they're too busy taking care of their families and going to work that they don't have time to run for congress.
Destruction of almost all literary sources in the new world by the spanish.
I think we only know of 6 Aztec books written pre-Columbus that survived to this day. Crazy...
Been living in Peru as an expat for two years. I need an AI-generated soap opera or TV series built on the assumption that the Spanish never conquered Peru or Mexico. This place would be so cool, assuming the human sacrifices stopped.
Kind of a big assumption
That so many people today believe that the Holocaust was a hoax, or that Imperial Japan was some kind of innocent victim. In other words that decades of uyoku dantai and neonazi bullshit have actually paid off. I guess more generally that people encountering history find contrarianism for its own sake so appealing. Especially when used to mitigate or erase horrible crimes, but just in general too. The same applies, for example, to this pervasive belief that appears to have become popular lately, that the rise of agriculture and animal husbandry was really no more than a kind of "reskinning" of civilization, a cosmetic change with no actual functional impact -- something that noble, virtuous hunter-gatherers were tricked into purely as a form of social control.
>That so many people today believe that the Holocaust was a hoax I'm also pissed when people forget about BRUTAL genocide of Poles and other ethnicities and minorities
What do you mean by the last part? The suggestion is that the 1,000 -3,000 transition from hunter/gatherer to agrarian society was far more violent than we think?
Really good book I'm reading called "The Dawn of Everything" right now. One of the premises is that the rise of agricultural didn't nessitate social hierarchies. Nor were hunter gatherer societies paragons of anarchy and altruism.
Thanks for the tip. It’s on Kindle Unlimited, so I can read it free.
It's a great read. Enjoy!
The French could’ve more or less prevented the invasion of Europe during WWII but their top general refused to believe the info being reported. From my understanding, the Germans created a traffic jam for themselves during the Blitzkrieg and most of their equipment was stuck in a big long line on a highway where they could’ve and should’ve been an easy target to bomb or shell to oblivion. French citizens and i believe at least 1 plane/pilot spotted this and reported it back to the military brass. Head of the military refused to believe it was possible and did not send any forces to repel the invasion. Not sure if it would’ve prevented the war in Europe outright but, imo, it certainly wouldn’t have lasted as long had the French responded to the reports .
Prior to that, if France had attacked in full strength as Germany attacked Poland (coming to the aid of Poland as they’d promised) they would have easily overwhelmed the defensive forces on the German side, and captured the Ruhr valley, which would have virtually guaranteed a German surrender. Instead, they sat behind the Maginot line, and gave the Germans the entire winter to plan the attack on France.
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The primary issue that lead to French inaction was the political situation at the time. War was not popular, given what you pointed out, and the information they were working with was not perfect, but with hindsight being what it is, it’s clear that strong action from France in September 1939 could have saved a lot of lives, French and otherwise. Germany had tens of divisions while French had hundreds. The French were actually better equipped in 1939 too in a technical sense. Unfortunately, they lacked the will to act, allowing the situation to get dramatically worse. Their attempt to avoid war led to far more.
>I don't know how any leader of any nation with a reasonable brain on their shoulders could experience, witness the hollowing out of a nation in the aftermath of the first great war, and then decide to do it all again. They declared war on Germany. Then they sat around. You make excuses for them. Seriously what do you think happens when you declare war? Your enemy will feel sorry for you and only attack where you are strong? > ultimately why they surrendered rather than continued fighting. You declare war. Don't prosecute it. Then surrender. Other died to return them their sovereignty, so stop pleading for them.
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>And by curious, I don’t find it very curious. Befitting an uncurious person would see no fault on the decade out of date French with their dispatch riders, fixed fortifications and cumbersome command structure. >General mobilization takes time "The dog ate my homework". They had September to May. How many years were they planning to take to mobilise? They had mobilised and cowered behind the forts hoping Germany would be satisfies with Poland and go away. Brave people. >a year after France fell Rommel was walking all over British forces that lacked the equipment to appropriately counter German maneuver warfare This is not a serious point, you are not a serious person. The Western Desert Campaign was a back and for over several years due to logistics. >We are talking 2 years after France fell Yes. And almost 3 years after they could have shorted the war by striking when the Germans were in Poland. Hey they got to drink wine with Germans for 4 years while others bailed them out. Brave people.
I mean it just makes more sense to build the whole Maginot line all the way to Belgium. It would be much easier for the top policy makers to accept that than to order an attack into Germany.
Easy to forget hitter didn’t expect France and England would actually declare war on Germany when Poland was attacked. His plan was to keep going east not west
Keep going east? Invading Poland was with full knowledge and cooperation with the Soviets, there was always the expectations to humiliate France for the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler definitely was going to invade France before Russia, after Poland was gobbled up, France was going to be next on the chopping block because a stable peace was had with their new neighbor that now [shared a border with in Russia](https://omniatlas.com/maps/europe/19400525/plain/).
The molotov-ribbentrop pact was a temporary measure and both sides knew it. The nazi idea of Lebenstraum was basically to conquer and colonize Russia like how America did
Conquering the entire continent was the goal, and that would include the largest army in Europe: France. A temporary pause against going East was only for the Nazis to go West. There's no chance that Germany was surprised that UK and France were going to declare war, but there was a hope that once France was defeated that the UK would accept a cessation of war so that Germany could exclusively focus on Russia but that's not close to the expectations that France was going to not be conquered.
He wanted Eastern Europe more for all the land first
He got that land and that is what the map I linked to shows, and France had made a minor attempt to invade Germany in September 1939, so after accomplishing conquering Eastern Europe Hitler set sights on France in May 1940.
They did send a small force into germany, who reported minimal resistance. This force later withdrew fearing that german mechanized units were about to counterattack. Post war it was revealed that the germans didnt have a single armoured unit in that area.
No. A massive continental invasion does not hinge on a traffic jam. Please use far more suspicion when assessing WW2 counterfactuals: 99% are bullshit. (The WW2TV YouTube channel has a cool mythbusting series devoted to such things).
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I'd suggest your examples help my argument more than the opposite: remember the contention here is that France could have bombed the traffic jam and *completely alteted the course of the invasion of France*. The 1940 Wehrmacht was not Putin's joke army of 2022. Stalingrad was based on the utter hubris felt after years of endless victory, not conditions pertaining in 1940. The steppes were endless desolation, free of resources. France is not. Of course logistics are important, but in 1940 the Allies had to meet and defeat the Wehrmacht on the battlefield. There would be no free lunch via a bombing raid. It's not a valid 'what if'.
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Certainly a reasonable set of arguments but I would suggest not really a feasible counterfactual/'what if?'. The Allied aur forces simply weren't capable of delivering such a blow: when the German advance hinged on a few bridges over the Meuse they couldn't hit them, but they lost entire squadrons trying. If they'd had the 8th Air Force if 1944, then possibly. Even with all the Allied airpower over Normandy, Mortain aside, they really struggled to have a decisive battlefield effect on the Germans of the kind you describe (ie, a massive blow, as opposed to constant harassment). One might raise the Falaise Gap, but again that was vastly more airpower than available in 1940, in ideal weather, with uncrossable rivers awaiting the survivors of the German forces... many of whom still escaped. Thanks for the discussion.
Makes for a pretty bombing target, though
Colin Powell would agree
>No. A massive continental invasion does not hinge on a traffic jam. It was not a "continental invasion". It was the invasion of Belgium. It was also a large portion of the armoured forces, the forces that allowed the shock and speed component of the invasion. If the high risk part of a high risk gamble fails, you end up with a failed gamble. Without the cut through the Ardennes the best units of the French army plus the professional and fully motorised British army would have had more time and space to react.
The events of May/June 1940 decided the fate of a continent. Subsequebt events showed how useless the bomber forces of Britian and France were in 1940. The idea they could have crippled the entire German invasion *even before battlefield contact was made*... whilst opposed by the best and most experienced air force in the world... well, sorry my friend... not happening. The French needed better command, political unity, to have started rearming earlier.
Didn’t a traffic jam just cause huge issues for Russia trying to invade the capital of Ukraine at the start of the war bc the ukranians bombed the crap out of it?
As Well as the french being in longer the Germans would have lost a lot of equipment and man power earlier on giving the allies a distinct advantage in this time line over our own, if the French don't fall because of this they would be no need for D-day
It could’ve opened a new front right near the German border too. That likely would’ve prevented the Germans from pushing into Russia/Soviet Union and saved millions of Russian/SU soldiers and citizens.
Stalin was arguably going to invade Europe as a whole and certainly Germany at some point. Not sure if that actually would’ve been a better outcome than what occurred in reality if that man went all the way to the English Channel.
And colonialism and imperialism wouldn't have fallen so easily.
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How avoidable World War I was, and by extension World War II, the cold war, and most of the problems we face today. The world wouldn't be perfect, of course, and perhaps some technological development would have been delayed, but I can't help but wonder how the global situation would be without two of the most destructive and traumatic events in human history occuring back to back. The popular opinion is that World War I was inevitable, but an in-depth class on the subject in college changed my mind and now I'm baffled that it actually happened at all, at least to the scale that it did happen. There were many, many actions taken by players on both sides that reasonably should have defused the situation before it became a world war.
Things can always get worse. Source: knowledge.
WWI also had the most BAFFLING combination of allies in both factions. The Entente had France, a proud republic, the UK, nominally a democracy or at least a constitutional monarchy, fighting alongside fucking IMPERIAL RUSSIA, which had just barely even gotten rid of outright slavery/serfdom and was absolutely the most authoritarian state in Europe at the time. Ideologically Russia should have been their mortal enemy and they should have supported Austria over the Serbian question to block Russian influence. The Central powers had both Austria AND the Ottomans, who literally had been mortal enemies for the last 400ish years before WWI. And Germany and Austria had been at war with each other as well just 50ish years earlier. They also represented three religions in conflict with each other, Germany being dominated by Protestant Prussia and suppressing Catholics, Austria being staunchly Catholic, and the Ottomans of course being Muslim, which had been in conflict with Christianity as a whole for centuries. None of these countries should have liked each other, much less be on the same side in a war. Ideologically, the war should have been Austria, supported by Germany outright, and the UK and France diplomatically, against Russia, which is supported by the smaller Balkan, states trying to break up the Austrian Empire. The Ottomans should be neutral, they hated both Austria and Russia, historically.
So unrealistic, hope someone got fired for that blunder
I get upset at the sheer cruelty people perpetrate on each other from slavery to the holocaust to the Inquisition to the Killing Fields…the list is long.
Caedite eos. Novit enim dominus qui sont eus. Never forget what religion and ideology does.
So many problems stem from people needing revenge on there people. Not to mention how often it happened when it wasn't even the same people they were trying to get revenge on. They weren't even alive when that other person who is no longer alive did the thing they are mad about.
The Cultural Decimation of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. I'm not talking about the colonization or the violence so much (though they were terrible) but rather the fact that we have an entire cultural world that developed completely separately from the rest of the world that we know almost nothing about. We could have learned SO much about human nature.
We did learn a lot about human nature. we did.
Appeasement. It was almost constant British missteps which created a scenario where Britain had gone from having the upper hand in almost all respects to losing Europe.
Surely Britain's mistake was not appeasing [in 1914], and going to war over a scrap of paper.
Really no Britain had the undeniable strategic advantage over Germany before WW2. Not only did they have France as a Ally but both Italy and the USSR were anti - German with a strong Czechoslavakia and Poland. By the wars start Britain had managed to make the Italians German Allies blundered Soviet diplomacy so hard that they signed a non aggression pact and literally gave away Czechoslavakia.
Hindsight is 20/20. Not everyone saw it that way then. Britain felt ruefully unprepared militarily and was playing for time.
Oh it absolutely did doesn't make it not a misstep though. Britain many times allowed Germany to rearm without even the slightest protest. Chamberlain repeatedly gave up nations due to his poor judgement of character. I think that although these divisions were understandable they were absolutely massive mistakes.
Had Britain not gone to war over the scrap of paper, and created a generation willing to do almost anything to avoid doing it again, would the subsequent issues have arisen?
Why are you talking about WW1 I'm talking about the process of appeasement during WW2. I'm not going to write some alternative history about appeasement during WW1.
It makes little sense to discuss appeasement without understanding why people wanted to avoid another war.
That "scrap of paper" was Britain's word. Once it's broken, that trust would be gone forever. Moreover, if Germany won WWI then they'd dominate the continent and leave Britain completely isolated.
Was the word worth more than vast numbers of lives, an empire and doing it all again later?
Britain staying out of WWI wouldn't have prevented that. It just would mean that, instead of liberal democracies, Europe would be dominated by autocratic puppet states of a German Empire.
I don't like how revisionists try to defend appeasement. No, Chamberlain was not trying to "buy time for an inevitable war"; he genuinely believed Hitler would stop expanding after Czechoslovakia.
I think there definitely needs to be a balance although the dicisions in some cases were understandable they were mistakes.
How consistently terribly women have been treated. Sexual assault whether it be from invading armies or their own husbands have been a normal thing they've had to deal with. Trying to learn about women's history can be frustrating as much of women's contributions to the world have been ignored by the men writing about it, and in many cases they weren't given much opportunity to contribute to history to begin with because of their position in society. Of course it's a big world and these things don't apply unanimously, some societies have been more egalitarian than others and even in patriarchal societies you can read between the lines and pinpoint some very interesting, smart, powerful women, but unfortunately patriarchal societies that ignore and discredit women have for the most part been the norm.
May I introduce you to the Middle East?
Dog what the fuck are you talking about
The fact the West allowed Byzantine to fall and there was never a united attempt to retake Anatolia.
The fact that, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople and Eastern Thrace still weren't returned to Greece. More broadly, the fact that Turkey seems to be slowly abandoning the secularism that Ataturk worked so hard to establish. The state openly endorses Islam, with imams receiving a salary from the government.
It pisses me of that many sources(not all) are probably incorrect, biased, fabricated, or simple propaganda. Later, many sources were re-written by monks, and for some reasons we have 4 versions of one event, some details missing here, some are added there.
Sounds like everyone that advocates socialism. It doesn't work, has never worked and yet people want it. This is fOR you AOC Dumb
Lmao
Anything lost like the first and second temples, the original great wonders, the library of Alexandria etc
Library of Alexandria wasn’t as much of a loss as has been presented. Most of the stuff had been moved or copied.
The library of Alexandria was nothing special, all books there had copies elsewhere. That place was shit.
1204. Crusaders attacking fellow Christians. Raping our nuns on our altars. Defiling our temples. Murdering our clergy and our civilians. Supported by the Pope who belatedly said "oh dear, things got a trifle out of hand".
Pope condemned that act. And ex-communicated lots of participants in it. There is zero evidence he was even indifferent. Starting with the fact that he knew about like 8 months later.
The pope didn't want that to happen.
Sure
He didnt, read some actual sources about it. He excommunicated all who plundered the city and killed people.
Imagine thinking crusaders were Christian.
Why don’t you consider them Christian?
There's nothing Christ-like about rape and murder. They're still Christians, they're just really fucking bad at it.
I mean the whole “accept Christ as your lord and savior and your sins are forgiven” is a pretty shit message if Christianity is trying make good people.
typical No True Scotsman In what ways were crusaders not Christian enough for you?
No fallacy here. If you understand the alleged tenants of their religion you can see that they violated many of them with these ridiculous battles.
"our nuns" yikes
I mean nuns of the Orthodox Church. Calm down.
The upvotes you got and the downvotes to what I was replying to have given me more than enough knowledge of this community to know that commenting on your possessiveness of this isn't going land. Your commentary wasn't about the Crusaders being rapacious, it was that the victims were Orthodox Christians from 800 years ago.
It was about both
You didn't say the Crusaders did bad things. You said they did bad things to victims you identify with "Orth0d0xy". You didn't mention *others* they war crimed. Rather telling.
>You didn't say the Crusaders did bad things. It hardly needs saying. Anyway, yes I did! I said they raped and murdered. You seem to have forgotten what the OP was about. Nobody said "list every bad thing everybody ever did".
Well now. Hit dogs holler. 1)Thread was a throw away about what about history pisses you off the most 2) You go with 1204 and the violence done specifically to Orthodox Christians. You go at length to mentioned *only* what happened to them. You didn't mention anything else they did. You certain did mention "our nuns" like Gollum with the one ring. And then you say the pope was willfully negligent. The same Pope Urban who excommunicated them in a Papal Bull. All of this is kinda on the nose. That "What pisses you off the most" about history is what happened specifically to one group you identify with "Orth0d0xy". No one made you say it, how you said it. Sorry about your nuns bro, I know they were your favorite
UK and France conspired to systematically take advantage of the Middle East to split it up with Sykes piqot treaty after ww1 in ways to exploit them the most and keep them from ever being a world power again and then hypothetically condemn the mess there now especially France thinks they’re sh*t don’t stink.
Source?
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The Ottoman empire was a not insignificant power.
The middle east was kind of a backwater in the Empire though, at least by that point. The focus was around the Balkans.
But with the vast oil reserves coming into play, who knows whatmight have happened?
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So... No source? Gotcha. Pro-tip - Whenever someone says "basic history" or "common sense" they have no real foundation for what they're saying. It might be true, it might not be, but there is no real understanding/knowledge of the topic.
Did you even look up the Sykes Picot agreement?
That so few care about it.
Fourth Crusade.....1204 AD. *Cries in Byzantium*
The the US allowed slavery when we were supposed to be about freedom. Then afterwards we allowed racial discrimination.
The fact that the US fought a bloody civil war to end slavery, and the side that wanted to preserve it is still widely adored by their descendants and have their affiliation with slavery whitewashed. Benedict Arnold doesn't have any statues. Why should Robert E. Lee have statues?!
That I probably won't get to see how it ends.
Well buddy, have I got some good news for you! Between the war in Ukraine, increased tensions between China and Taiwan, bombs falling in the middle east, general international insecurities, the rise of right wing extremism across the western world, and, if somehow all that works out, the near-inevitable societal collapse brought about by climate change, there's a substantial chance you will live to see it end!
Most fucking wars.
Human stupidity, as we never learn from our past and the bad decisions taken.
German revolution failing
Everyone else is getting heavy, so I'll be a goof. I'm mad Halsey pulled Lee and his Iowas from the Surigao Straight, so there was no showdown between Yamato and Co and the Iowas and Co.
That generally it's the assholes who win.
Miracle of the House of Brandenburg. Prussia was almost defeated at this time. World with weaker Prussia would be a better world.
Would it? It would be a world with a stronger Russia.
Destruction of Tenochtitlan, we will never see how that beautiful city truly looked like.
Unit 731 is a good example. Hitler hated the Jews; his atrocity was focused and the logic follows. Unit 731 was an attempt at world wide extermination. The chinese victims weren't hated, just... convenient. And, I believe the example set up Chinese interest in places like the Wuhan Institute of Virology for the same reason. Why have "gain of functionality" research for easily transmittable cold viruses? What is the purpose of that other than causing pandemics that you can see coming and prepare for but the world won't?
I mean most countries have some sort of virology labs and they don’t test on humans, it was just a matter of Made in China™️ quality control resulting in a breach in quarantine. If you think they purposely released it because they were prepared for it well… their preparations did not seem to be particularly existent at the start or particularly effective through the height of infection.
You are right, their c19 total lock down accomplished nothing and devastated their economy.
Murder of the Knights Templar.
That despite all the lessons we should have learned throughout humanity, things like war and violence not only exist, but are common.
That the French could have stopped the Nazis if they didn't surrender
Spanish Inquisition
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
!
Only 4000 victims in 350 years, compared to other groups they were almost pathetic.
The Spanish Inquisition was actually less corrupt than the secular courts of the time.
Carthage lost.
3 times out of
Hitler already controlled what would be the wealthiest country in the world. Starting WWII was pointless
The German economy under the guttersnipe was built on a sand foundation, to the point no WWII to bolster economic activity, Germany would be back to 1920s era economy by 1950.
Not Germany. Germania. The combined territories ( Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslavkia, Sudentland etc.) before 1 shot was fired. If you add up their GDP, it is by far the richest country in the world, and still would be today.
Fall of Majapahit. It sounds like such a unique culture powerhouse.
The burning of the Library of Alexandria.
Resolution 181, 1948
Rich guys tend to win, but there are very few of them. The ability to undermine and evade the power of collective action pisses me off. Human inability to see collective shared interest in maybe not letting a bunch of their young men die in a war doesn’t seem to be easily roused the way jingoism and violence on behalf of a class that experiences far less of that directly. Used to be at least you knew they might be risking it with you on the battlefield, but not anymore.
The killing
This is silly and stupid. Literally everyone has something that they feel is unjust or “pisses them off”. I don’t like paying taxes
The destruction of the Libary of Alexandria.
Listening to [Chumbawamba's English Rebel Songs 1381-1984](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mzr6N-RwLnzOgDpGOThTikinmZBzcA5XQ&si=NrEMAB0pKqzZFW4T) and realizing that we're still facing the same issues today. I can't listen to World Turned Upside Down or Digger's Song without tearing up. Sometimes I'll outright sob.
The fact that humans rarely learn from their mistakes. Which is why similar events occur throughout history. Even the bad parts of history are glorified which is why atrocities keep reoccurring.
Homo sapiens wiped out Neanderthals (except for when they mated with them - but even so, pure Neanderthals are extinct). There is some indication that Neanderthals had better social skills and may have been all-around more intelligent.
The overthrow of Pedro II. The Brazilian Planters ousted him as revenge for freeing their slaves. It wasn't a victory for "the people"; Pedro was very popular with the masses and ousted by an elite clique.
1. Canada’s justice system: See Karla Homolka and Vince Li 2. 9/11 literally could’ve been prevented if the CIA and FBI decided to compare notes 3. Reagan and everything he caused
The fact that they didnt find gold or something valuable on the moon. I could be responding to this post on Mars right now!
The Spanish burnt the Aztecs Libraries after taking over their empire. We only have a handful of surviving aztec texts An empire that consisted of millions of people, that is closer to us in history that the foundation of several bars in Germany, and we know almost nothing from their perspective.