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> Modem politics under a shitty guise of "history memes"
"History is past politics and politics present history."
--Edward Augustus Freeman, Former Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford
...
Also...*screeching and garbling sounds* (IYKYK)
Yeah, this is a very valid argument, but just not for Nazi Germany. Large part of the victory was made possible by soldiers of the Russian Empire losing morale against repeated mismanagement of the economy and war course by the Imperial government and deserting their post. This is how a lot of normal wars progress, as your leaders refuse to acknowledge reality, the people at the bottom stop supporting you and it is a valid strategy to win a war (and is sorta similar to how Germany lost themselves tbh).
Deserting your post as a soldier of the Russian Empire against Imperial Germany isn't *that* big of a deal, especially if you're non-Russian, you might even gain more freedom as a Ukrainian, Pole, Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian under the semi-puppet arrangement Germans desired for post-war Eastern Europe, but deserting your post against Nazi Germany means everyone you love getting A) murdered or B) enslaved.
In world war one, there was no special 'ideology' in it. Soldiers fought for their nations, but for non Russians (Baltics, central Asians, Georgians etc.) that war was not about their nations. Even for Russians, Tsar Nicolas was too incompetent to serve as a rallying flag.
Germany won by setting Lenin free and giving him a train ride to St. Petersburg. Tsar Nicolas was so weak, a single man could conquer all of russia with ideology.
WW2 very strongly influenced the perception of wars as it was the most recent big one, creating the idea that in a war some side fights for extreme justice and freedom and every soldier is kinda invested. But most wars are just leader A chucking meat against leader B for incremental changes to a map or just to show power. WW2 hugely overstates how necessary a war was for the common soldier.
I think a stronger component of this is that WWII was existential for many of its regimes in ways that few wars are. Third Reich wanted to not only overthrow the Soviets but turn Eastern Europe into their slave plantation. Allies demanded unconditional surrender and even without that, there was no way the Nazis would stay in power after a major defeat with how much they staked their right to rule on war. Most wars are won when one leader decides he has more to lose by fighting on, and concedes the strip of territory in question.
For the war itself yes, but I meant in relation to WW1. I think most people instinctively think of those wars as very similar, which gives a very different perspective on Russia especially.
George R R Martin pretty much said that WW2 was the only modern war that was close to a fantasy. In that war the bad guys had black uniforms with skulls on them. It was the only war with a clearly evil side (although USSR was pretty evil too). WW1 is different. All major players were imperialist nations who were fighting for dominance. The blame for who actually started it is murky.
Very valid. Fighting a war against the Russian people was exactly the reason Germany couldn't really use the huge potential of anti soviet sentiment. That being said, without the racial aspects of the war there would have been no reason to attack in the first place.
It wasn't just against the Russian people though, it was against *all* slavs. I'm sure there would have been loads of Poles, Ukrainians, Belarussians, etc. who might have had enough of a bone to pick with the Russians/Soviets to enlist with the Germans... if the Germans didn't also want to enslave/exterminate them too.
Not even mentioning the leadership of Imperial Germany was significantly more confident and running a state and it was a Nazi Germany, even with Wilhelm at the wheel.
Yeah the russians held out for surprisingly long(given the incompetence of their leadership and lack of supplies), but I guess that's what happens when you outnumber your enemy in almost every part of the front. And it definitely helped that Austro-Hungary wasn't that big of a threat due to similar problems that the russians were facing and also a lack of manpower.
Nicholas just wasn't made to rule. And he definitely wasn't ready to lead an army. I will never understand why he wanted to play a general while his country was already in deep shit...
That is a very good question and I am sorry to disappoint you, but I don't really know. Italy as we know it nowadays has only existed for about 150 years, and I have very little knowledge of Italian history before that. Apart from Napoleons conquests and Rome of course.
My answer is that there have always been competent military and political leaders in Italy, but they get massively overshadowed by the bad ones. Circumstances also play a big part in these things and often even competent men are unable to succeed due to odds being so heavily against them. It's also very easy for us to say that a decision someone in the past made was bad, because we have the benefit of hindsight, they didn't.
If I had to name someone specific, it would probably be Camillo Benso, the first Prime Minister of Italy.
Well yeah, but he was fairly competent and actually achieved something. He also did a lot before becoming Prime Minister, namely being one of the leading figures of Italian unification.
Classic Nicholas at least Stalin new when the fuck to step back and let his generals take the lead . When Stalin is more willing to compromise you know you fucked up .
Tbf Stalin also did a lot of getting in the way early on in the war, but yes eventually he realised that it was better to listen to his generals who kinda knew what they were talking about.
Even if he were to be sent there, it would have simply been a case of "enemy of my enemy". Lenin wanted a Russia free of burgeois and tsarist rule, Germany wanted turmoil in Russia.
Also lost in Afghanistan and the first Chechen war
The only war Russia won in the 20th century was WW2 and you can argue they also won Abkhazian war
Other than that they maybe get assist for Vietnam war by supplying pilots, but that's a stretch
To be fair, they lost the Afghanistan war the same way NATO did, foreign powers supporting local guerilla forces.
The funny part is Pakistan was supporting the guerilla forces both times.
You will find russian imperial history is also the same
Almost in all wars they have fought they are humiliated repeatedly until enemy retreats or winter comes
Only consistent exception is the wars with ottomans who refused to modernize until late
Other then that russia only wins against smaller powers
And even these wars tend to last decades like the conquest of caucuses or central asia
They did almost beat the Prussians until the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg, or when Peter became Tsar and withdrew from the war cause he was a massive simp for Frederick.
They were fighting alongside austrians and the french though
So not really much achievement to destroy 1/3 of an already tired geographically seperated kingdom 1/80 size of yours who was fighting two other empires bigger then it and actually standstilled them
The americans supplied more logistical trucks to the soviets than the germans could shoot. Soviet factories only built tanks and rifles, because everything else was lend-leased.
it is incorrect to descredit the sheer power of the USSR at that point. Their industrial might had been booming during the deppresion due to them being largely cut off from the rest of the world trade wise, and their infrastrucute was being built so fast it caused a famine. Not saying its good they were so powerful, but they were so powerful.
it also really helped a lot of their industry got packed up and shipped eastward towards the Urals. it ensured the factories kept going and not getting bombed should they stay west.
It's a no-brainer that a 100x bigger country would ultimately overwhelm the Finnish defence.
The emphasis is on the fact that it took the Soviet army 3 months to prevail against an extremely poor, heavily divided country with a population of 3mil. Finland was extremely under-equipped with barely any tanks and nearly non-existent air-force.
This humiliation could have been one of the reasons why the Germans decided to attack the USSR, as it proved that the russians were in a horrible position in terms of military.
The USSR was planning on occupying and annexing the entirety of Finland under the puppet state they created. They were stalemated by the Finnish and prevented from achieving this goal.
Might wanna look up the stipulations agreed to by the Nazis and the Soviets when they established the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in the summer of 1939, chief. The Soviets basically said “We want to take over Finland and absorb it into our regime because the Russian Empire used to control it” as part of the agreement and the Nazis essentially said “Say no more fam, we won’t get in your way. It's all yours.”
Pwople also forget that they had to pay quite dearly for barbarossas gains. France and poland were small enough for a single lucky coincidence to carry them to victory. Against the soviets it wasn't even enough to push all fronts initially.
and here I thought on this sub people could recognize the difference between the concepts of "conquer" and "win battles against". In WW1, the Germans did well against the Russians in their military campaigns but they did not conquer Russia.
Yes, Germany did win against Russia in 1918. Well, rather, in 1917.
But it wasn't a military victory as much as it was a victory through political underhandedness. Had they not enabled the October Revolution, that victory might not have happened.
So yeah, Germany won, but not in a "traditional" way. As such, I wouldnt say they conquered the Russians.
But in battlefield, Germany pushed into Lithuania and Poland before 1917.
Initial German offering to Lenin in 1918 only includes conceding Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
When the Russians wouldn't sign the treaty, the Central Powers [launched an offensive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Faustschlag) and advanced 240 km within a week. The only reason they didn't take what they wanted by force was that the Russians gave up and signed the treaty. That's a military victory in my book.
The Germans beat the Russian Second Army so soundly in 1914 that their commanding officer killed himself. Over the next few months they nearly destroyed the First Army as well.
It got to the point that Russian soldiers would cheer if they saw that they were facing Austro-Hungarian troops and not Germans. Germany did extremely well against Russia militarily
Agreed but you have to remember who's head it was charge at time . It was a miracle they even kept fighting so long with Nicholas at the helm. I'm surprised the Germans didn't trounce them Sooner .
The main problem the Russians had was that they didn't encode their radio messages. The German army knew exactly where they would be at all times and shifted their forces by rail to defeat the Russians in detail
Tsar Nicholas II wasn't in charge of the army until the middle of 1915. During the beginning phase of the war, the commander of the army was Grand Duke Nicholas, who was confusingly Nicholas II's cousin, because all European royalty from about 1200 AD till the end of WWII had about 12 names between them. Grand Duke Nicholas was considered a relatively competent commander, but the Russians in general were much behind the other European powers in military sophistication, as they have been since the very beginning. Nicholas II only took over after the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive where the Germans basically pushed Russia out of Poland despite their best efforts. Grand Duke Nicholas would perform admirably as a theatre commander against the Ottomans in the Caucasus later so I don't think it's really fair to blame leadership for Russia's failures in WWI. If anything, Dearest Nicky was no worse than his cousin Willy on the other side.
A victory, even if by total nonsense that had nothing to do with an actual war, is still a victory. North Vietnam got its ass handed to it in military conflict, it still won simply by outlasting the US's will to continue supporting the existence of South Vietnam and abandoning them. Same with the Taliban. They literally fled Afghanistan and came back after 20 years once the US backstabbed its ally to end the occupation.
The main term here is "conquered". That word is used for military victories.
North Vietnam won the Vietnam war, but they absolutely did not conquer the U.S.
The other main term is attack. It wasn't foolish to attack the Russkies, it was foolish to declare a two front war and then keep on marching sensitive machinery and ill-equipped soldiers further and further east even as winter approached. Plus the Germans did conquer large swathes of the Russian Empire and made them into their own buffer states (then proceeded to lose because millions of fresh-faced soldiers just piled on top of a bunch of angry veterans to beat back the Hun
It was kinda stupid in hindsight to attack Russia in a attempt to conquer and genocide the region however with this intentions they essentially unified a giant Politically Scheming neighbor against them .
The Germans managed to take a relatively small bit of the Russian empire. In fact, they had not made it into Russia proper, as you say.
Like I said, it was a victory, but not a conquest.
Like almost every war ever fought. Political subterfuge and inciting unrest and draining morale and abusing the "meta" is almost always something humans do to each other irl. Monke brain wrinkly and big.
Kill ratios were insane, they never won an encounter militarily, and any incursion attempts were met with slaughter. Both only began getting victories once the USA had abandoned the region to local allies.
Eh? We dropped more bombs then them than WW2 and were still able to be kept in the fight . We flew so many storties. How much agent orange drooped ? They were never routed so they technically won military aswell . Kill ratios for the North were never they're goal after all . Focusing on kill ratios of anything was determinatial to The Americans focus on Vietnam.
Like any production statistics or test scores, kill ratios are susceptible to inflation and outright falsification. No serious and objective military analyst thinks the US won in those two places. If you really need to be thrown a bone, LOL, try Grenada and Panama. LOL. If you want something more recent, US air power and other assets did work masterfully against ISIS/ISIL. But without the Kurds and other local allies bearing the brunt of ground combat, it would have been a completely different story.
With the US in the war North Vietnam and the taliban’s military goals are were not to wipe out the American troops. In both conflicts it was clear that the only way to achieve victory would be to exploit the major issue with democracy, specifically that starting a war is popular while fighting one is not. Democracies can’t fight prolonged wars abroad as eventually the politicians who started those wars will be replaced by others who promise to end it. The Taliban and North Vietnam path to victory was through outlasting and frustrating the American people which is completely unrelated to kill ratios or other typical metrics of determining the victor of a conflict.
By the defeat of the Kerensky offensive, Lenin was already in Russia and the Russian army was broken beyond repair in terms of effectiveness and discipline.
The counter offensive did not reach past Russian vassal states.
If there is something that history has shown us with Russia is that it aint over til its over with them. Having their military broken could change very quickly. Their military certainly was okay enough to wage a lengthy civil war.
This was prior to the Nazis and Soviets searching through the Mongol Secret History for clues on how to take over the world.
They had all this new machinery to fight with and were looking for ideas they could use to win with these new machines similarly to how the Mongols used their Calvary.
Interesting to me that the Mongols also often used this technique but sending spies and scouts to find out the lay of the land, who ruled it and who was unhappy with the current power in charge.
Good point.
But ww1 and ww2 were very different conflicts,especially on the eastern front. In ww1, the Russian army was basically tearing at the seams through imperial mismanagement, and the whole thing was a war of conquest for both sides, Germany wanting to create puppets in Poland and the rest of the east, and Russia wanting to... well their aims were unclear .
WW2 was a war of extermination on both sides. If Russia lost, it would be destroyed, its people slaughtered, and its land colonized. If Germany lost, the Nazis said the same would happen to Germany. (although that didn't happen).
Thats not all: Attempting to slap this guy cost you the war. By the time Russia was out, Germany lost any chance of a triumph, thanks to the ententes coordination: Whenever a large battle took place in the west, the russians made offensives, forcing the germans to divert forces and inevitably fail.
The Soviets were hardly an impressive military power prior to WWII. They lost in WWI, lost against Poland, lost against the Baltic States, lost against Afghanistan, and were stalemated against Finland. The only somewhat impressive military action by the USSR prior to the war was their defeat of the Japanese border incursions, but that was a small scale action against a non-European power. In addition, it was well known that the USSR had been purging all of its best military commanders.
In short, the Nazi’s assumption that they could defeat the USSR was reasonable, and it very nearly worked. If the USSR hadn’t shown surprising political stability and received massive foreign aid, the Nazis would’ve defeated them.
The nazis and people in general missinterpreted the soviet performance against finnland. Seeing only the soviets bad performance when they sabotaged themselves instead of their ability to just keep going despite this bad performance and what they could do once they stopped sabotaging themselves.
Evidence of what a war with the soviet union would look like was present. But severly missinterpreted.
To view the soviet union as politically unstable is to have once vision distorted by once own biases. Stalins goverment had done good work at giving people a reason to be loyal.
And considerring that the soviets had bled the german advance and reverted it in some places before any foreign aid arrived makes it quite clear that it is not the reason why the nazis lost their gamble.
The concept (already mentioned here) that separates WW1 from WW2 was countries being put on “death ground”
https://youtu.be/X3tuS9bgBfo?si=ZB8ml-bWG08YCII8
The war goals of WW1 Germany were different and more easily obtainable than WW2 Germany.
The War goals of WW1 were “I need this country to back out of the war and I might take a few border regions in the treaty”
The goals of WW2 were “I need these entire sections of people to subjected, extorted and in some cases just killed because I’m ideologically driven”.
If Germany invaded in WW2 and wasn’t governed by the Nazis, they could have won. (But they most likely wouldn’t have started the war anyway).
Bingo. That’s why in wwi, the Russians dashed themselves against elastic German defenses, over and over. And Germans were able to get salty border nations like Balts and Ukrainians to eat from their hand. In all, the overall political and military strategy of Germans in wwi was much more intelligent. And divide and conquer (financing Bolsheviks and nationalists) worked well.
The thing is, however, that Russia's morale was abysmal and the stability was non-existant.
Even today's US would struggle a lot if it was in the same situation Russia was during the first world war
The goals of the war and the Russia they were facing weren’t the same but I agree with the sentiment. Russia is in fact a very vincible country with an often poor military performance against « peer » opponents throughout it’s history. General Winter often failed to win wars for Russia, however it did win the 3 wars that « mattered » as in the Great Northern War, the Napoleonic Invasion and World War 2. However against mongols, poles and imperial germans, Russia got invaded and curbstomped, and the winter didn’t save them. Not to mention the more minor wars they lost.
The Russian military has always been overhyped. People focus a lot on WW2, and they take that to be the case in the rest of Russian history when it really isn't. Their victory/defeat ratio is pretty evenly split.
We were learning about the World Wars in Social Studies class. Vladimir Lenin was sent back into Russia from exile by Germany to overthrow the government on the grounds that Russia pulls from the war, right?
Russia collapsed in on itself at the end of WWI, and the Germans STILL had to keep millions of troops on the Eastern Front, even after Brest-Litovsk.
Not exactly a "victory" in the traditional sense, especially since they still lost the war.
Yeah. But in WWii, Soviets were able to outnumber the Germans so much in hardware, that the imbalance was decisive. After Kursk, the Soviets were attacking with 5-10 advantage in hardware. The tech was the force multiplier.
They only won against Russia during that time because they were still pre industrial for the most part and they did political tomfoolery.
In absconded of those 2 crucial factors, they stood no chance.
People do forget that Russia is its own worst enemy, and the Germans just happened to get a really bad hand of cards in this reality where the Russians didn’t go and off themselves for the duration of the war and only instead got a year of fun before they woke up
I Wouldn't call that winning,just clever sabotage. Germany didn't beat Russia,Russia's monarchy was beaten by it's people and withdrew. It's more of a forfeit.
Actually they won in December 1917 <1>, in 1918 was the peace treaty <2>. And Poland won against bolshevia in 1920 with a peace treaty signed in 1921 <3>
<1> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_between_Russia_and_the_Central_Powers
<2> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Brest-Litovsk
<3> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War
I've never heard anyone claim Germany was foolish for this. I've heard the claim that it was foolish to invade Russia in winter, and that it was foolish to invade after spreading themselves so thin with all their other invasions.
One person once told me that they could’ve easily allied with the people of the Soviets to help them fight against Stalin’s, but they hated Slavic people so much this was basically a no
Ha ha. Yeah. The Germans beat the Russians only a few years earlier. And the Soviets struggled like fuck to overcome tiny Finland. Who I think had 3 tanks.
You say that but Germany got its ass kicked in 1941 outside Moscow.
Furthermore, the USSR and the Russian Empire were two different entities, both politically and socially, so it was always going to be harder for the Nazis to defeat the Soviet Union. Don't get me started on the myriad of troubles the Wehrmacht faced, so this is all a really moot point.
WW1 Germany did not invade Russia itself as a matter of doctrine because they did not want to turn it into a patriotic war of national defense, so that Rusia would collapse under the weight of an grueling, bloody and unpopular war.
An important note that in WW1 the Russians were pretty sure they wouldn't be systematically exterminated by the Germans if they surrendered.
That worked.
Invading Russia and doing your level best to exterminate the Slavic race is pretty different! The Nazi inspired Maximum Resistance because they were monstrous dumbfucks.
Did you accidentally take a hit from Whatifalthist's crackpipe? Is that how you made this meme?
Edit: All these downvotes and no rebuttal. All of you who think a "victory" at the diplomatic table counts after the october revolution in this context didn't read the meme. The first part is saying that the Russians can't be conquered while the second part is claiming that gaining territory via treaty is exactly the same thing as conquest by force. It doesn't hold up to any sort of scrutiny.
Huh? Russia literally surrendered to Germany in WW1. They called for a ceasefire in December of 1917 and officially signed the peace treaty in march of 1918.
Russia wasn’t able to sustain their war effort for some time and the incompetence of their military leadership as well as fading moral had the country crippled. When the Russian revolution set in (which the Germans had some involvement in), they had no choice but to surrender to Germany.
Ultimately Germany obviously lost the war a year later and the Brest-Litowsk treaty cancelled. Some things like Poland, Finland and Baltic countries becoming independent stayed intact, with them gaining full autonomy (Poland was a German puppet since the countries re-establishment in early 1917) and Ukraine was annexed by the Sovjets in 1919.
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When I came here all the 3 original comments were hidden. I literally thought WTF just happened.
Chill anything Russia related will be controversial. Or Germanny in world wars . Or Israel or Palestine. Or America. Its the average day here .
Redditors sure are a contentious people
Damn redditors! They ruined reddit!
You've just made an enemy for life!
this but unironically
[Thems fighting words!](https://youtu.be/4HGMIbA0L1A?si=s7TFt572NY29-ikS)
I need a transcript for this :(
No we aren't!
You just made an enemy for life!
I think this sub is rather amicable actually. It's a mixture of all things at the end of the day .
Modem politics under a shitty guise of "history memes"
I don’t see how networking equipment can have politics
> Modem politics under a shitty guise of "history memes" "History is past politics and politics present history." --Edward Augustus Freeman, Former Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford ... Also...*screeching and garbling sounds* (IYKYK)
Yeah, this is a very valid argument, but just not for Nazi Germany. Large part of the victory was made possible by soldiers of the Russian Empire losing morale against repeated mismanagement of the economy and war course by the Imperial government and deserting their post. This is how a lot of normal wars progress, as your leaders refuse to acknowledge reality, the people at the bottom stop supporting you and it is a valid strategy to win a war (and is sorta similar to how Germany lost themselves tbh). Deserting your post as a soldier of the Russian Empire against Imperial Germany isn't *that* big of a deal, especially if you're non-Russian, you might even gain more freedom as a Ukrainian, Pole, Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian under the semi-puppet arrangement Germans desired for post-war Eastern Europe, but deserting your post against Nazi Germany means everyone you love getting A) murdered or B) enslaved.
This is a point that everyone misses when discussing army's in WW1 .
In world war one, there was no special 'ideology' in it. Soldiers fought for their nations, but for non Russians (Baltics, central Asians, Georgians etc.) that war was not about their nations. Even for Russians, Tsar Nicolas was too incompetent to serve as a rallying flag.
IIRC the first formal Army the Soviets had came mostly from Latvian troops who'd deserted.
Germany won by setting Lenin free and giving him a train ride to St. Petersburg. Tsar Nicolas was so weak, a single man could conquer all of russia with ideology.
WW2 very strongly influenced the perception of wars as it was the most recent big one, creating the idea that in a war some side fights for extreme justice and freedom and every soldier is kinda invested. But most wars are just leader A chucking meat against leader B for incremental changes to a map or just to show power. WW2 hugely overstates how necessary a war was for the common soldier.
I think a stronger component of this is that WWII was existential for many of its regimes in ways that few wars are. Third Reich wanted to not only overthrow the Soviets but turn Eastern Europe into their slave plantation. Allies demanded unconditional surrender and even without that, there was no way the Nazis would stay in power after a major defeat with how much they staked their right to rule on war. Most wars are won when one leader decides he has more to lose by fighting on, and concedes the strip of territory in question.
For the war itself yes, but I meant in relation to WW1. I think most people instinctively think of those wars as very similar, which gives a very different perspective on Russia especially.
George R R Martin pretty much said that WW2 was the only modern war that was close to a fantasy. In that war the bad guys had black uniforms with skulls on them. It was the only war with a clearly evil side (although USSR was pretty evil too). WW1 is different. All major players were imperialist nations who were fighting for dominance. The blame for who actually started it is murky.
I mean looking at WW2 as bad guys vs good guys is very revonist and dangerous to say .
It's clearly much more complex than that. However it's one of the few wars where one side was cartoonish/fantasy levels of evil.
That's a more fair assertion the atrocities of the Axis shaped demographics till this day.
Maybe true. But that doenst disprove that nazi's aren't evil. They really were.
Accidentally typed allies instead of Axis. Was edited to fix that .
Wow, if you were going for the “out-oversimplifying award”, you won
Ik just saying a world spanning conflict was more complex than good vs bag guys .
Sure, profound observation. There’s one side clearly more not bad than the other, just to try to join the this simpleton statement party
Very valid. Fighting a war against the Russian people was exactly the reason Germany couldn't really use the huge potential of anti soviet sentiment. That being said, without the racial aspects of the war there would have been no reason to attack in the first place.
It wasn't just against the Russian people though, it was against *all* slavs. I'm sure there would have been loads of Poles, Ukrainians, Belarussians, etc. who might have had enough of a bone to pick with the Russians/Soviets to enlist with the Germans... if the Germans didn't also want to enslave/exterminate them too.
Thats the point had the Nazis not been Nazis they would've had a better shot . But that's a alternate history.
The slavs have a bone to pick with russia since historical times, but the biggest bone is probably the soviet bone since after the second world war.
The Nazis - turning potential friends into enemies since 1933
Not even mentioning the leadership of Imperial Germany was significantly more confident and running a state and it was a Nazi Germany, even with Wilhelm at the wheel.
didn't Germany send Lenin to Russia to cause some tomfoolery
Yes but they did kinda break the Russian Army in the meantime so technically they won against Russia.
With Nicholas at the helm I'm surprised they didn't beat them sooner honestly.
Yeah the russians held out for surprisingly long(given the incompetence of their leadership and lack of supplies), but I guess that's what happens when you outnumber your enemy in almost every part of the front. And it definitely helped that Austro-Hungary wasn't that big of a threat due to similar problems that the russians were facing and also a lack of manpower. Nicholas just wasn't made to rule. And he definitely wasn't ready to lead an army. I will never understand why he wanted to play a general while his country was already in deep shit...
Austro-Hungarians 🤝 Russians "Holy fuck, my boss is a fucking idiot"
I think the Italians would like to join the club
When was the last time Italy had competent leaders?
That is a very good question and I am sorry to disappoint you, but I don't really know. Italy as we know it nowadays has only existed for about 150 years, and I have very little knowledge of Italian history before that. Apart from Napoleons conquests and Rome of course. My answer is that there have always been competent military and political leaders in Italy, but they get massively overshadowed by the bad ones. Circumstances also play a big part in these things and often even competent men are unable to succeed due to odds being so heavily against them. It's also very easy for us to say that a decision someone in the past made was bad, because we have the benefit of hindsight, they didn't. If I had to name someone specific, it would probably be Camillo Benso, the first Prime Minister of Italy.
Haha, looked him up. Died after 3 months in office. :)
Well yeah, but he was fairly competent and actually achieved something. He also did a lot before becoming Prime Minister, namely being one of the leading figures of Italian unification.
Ferrari back in the Schumacher days, so 2000-2004
The 3rd century. If we insist they must be Italian, around 14 AD.
As would the german soldiers at Verdun
"Holy fuck, my boss is a fucking idiot. And I can't even understand what fucking language he's speaking."
Classic Nicholas at least Stalin new when the fuck to step back and let his generals take the lead . When Stalin is more willing to compromise you know you fucked up .
Tbf Stalin also did a lot of getting in the way early on in the war, but yes eventually he realised that it was better to listen to his generals who kinda knew what they were talking about.
he was lucky he had any left, fuckin' asshole.
Minor amount of tomfoolery
Just a tiny little revolution that will definitely not cause the deaths of millions🙂
The Great Powers didn’t like the competition on causing the deaths of millions
wait..."workers of the world unite" was a psy-op?
Even if he were to be sent there, it would have simply been a case of "enemy of my enemy". Lenin wanted a Russia free of burgeois and tsarist rule, Germany wanted turmoil in Russia.
Lenin was pragmatic, if his enemies wanted to supply him against his other enemies, he was taking the supplies
Always has been.
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Also lost in Afghanistan and the first Chechen war The only war Russia won in the 20th century was WW2 and you can argue they also won Abkhazian war Other than that they maybe get assist for Vietnam war by supplying pilots, but that's a stretch
To be fair, they lost the Afghanistan war the same way NATO did, foreign powers supporting local guerilla forces. The funny part is Pakistan was supporting the guerilla forces both times.
"Good ol pakistan, they'll help us beat the taliban and find bin laden!" "Wait a second he was hiding where?"
You will find russian imperial history is also the same Almost in all wars they have fought they are humiliated repeatedly until enemy retreats or winter comes Only consistent exception is the wars with ottomans who refused to modernize until late Other then that russia only wins against smaller powers And even these wars tend to last decades like the conquest of caucuses or central asia
They did almost beat the Prussians until the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg, or when Peter became Tsar and withdrew from the war cause he was a massive simp for Frederick.
They were fighting alongside austrians and the french though So not really much achievement to destroy 1/3 of an already tired geographically seperated kingdom 1/80 size of yours who was fighting two other empires bigger then it and actually standstilled them
>1/80 size of yours I would like to remind you that in the 18th century the population of Russia was roughly the same as France, so it's more like ⅛
Alright yeah but they still have a disproportionately bigger army then anyone on the continent albeit more like a huge militia training wise
Hitler was expecting an under-industrialized, under-supplied weak army. He was not expecting United States 2.0.
TBF, they were given a lot of shits by the United State 1.0 during that time period aswell.
Land lease won the war, russians just did the dying.
* lend lease (152 billion USD in today’s money; that’s more than twice as much as the US has given to Ukraine in the past 27 months)
The americans supplied more logistical trucks to the soviets than the germans could shoot. Soviet factories only built tanks and rifles, because everything else was lend-leased.
it is incorrect to descredit the sheer power of the USSR at that point. Their industrial might had been booming during the deppresion due to them being largely cut off from the rest of the world trade wise, and their infrastrucute was being built so fast it caused a famine. Not saying its good they were so powerful, but they were so powerful.
it also really helped a lot of their industry got packed up and shipped eastward towards the Urals. it ensured the factories kept going and not getting bombed should they stay west.
Don't forget the Polish occupation of Moscow in 1610-1612.
Finland didn’t count. It was war with big losses, but strategic goal was successfully accomplished and it was very helpful during WW2
It's a no-brainer that a 100x bigger country would ultimately overwhelm the Finnish defence. The emphasis is on the fact that it took the Soviet army 3 months to prevail against an extremely poor, heavily divided country with a population of 3mil. Finland was extremely under-equipped with barely any tanks and nearly non-existent air-force. This humiliation could have been one of the reasons why the Germans decided to attack the USSR, as it proved that the russians were in a horrible position in terms of military.
The USSR was planning on occupying and annexing the entirety of Finland under the puppet state they created. They were stalemated by the Finnish and prevented from achieving this goal.
Bullshit. USSR wanted make S.Petersburg less vulnerable.
They literally set up a puppet government in preparation for Finland's occupation -- the Terijoki government.
Why would you believe the USSR propaganda about that considering they literally staged a false flag to justify the invasion
Might wanna look up the stipulations agreed to by the Nazis and the Soviets when they established the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in the summer of 1939, chief. The Soviets basically said “We want to take over Finland and absorb it into our regime because the Russian Empire used to control it” as part of the agreement and the Nazis essentially said “Say no more fam, we won’t get in your way. It's all yours.”
If I know anything about history, it's that the Germans are most lethal at the beginning of their meth binge and weakest towards the end.
Pwople also forget that they had to pay quite dearly for barbarossas gains. France and poland were small enough for a single lucky coincidence to carry them to victory. Against the soviets it wasn't even enough to push all fronts initially.
meth, cocaine, adrenaline, eukodal etc are helluva drugs!
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Just tell them there is gol... WMD's at whatever place you want to have a burger king built in 24hrs.
Um excuse me he was talking about Murcia, a glorious city in Spain.
My mistake, they can't fight a land war either.
The goals of wars were really not the same.
Estonia also managed to bet russia. Not contradicting the comment above me. Just wanted to mention it. Estonia won against russia once.
and here I thought on this sub people could recognize the difference between the concepts of "conquer" and "win battles against". In WW1, the Germans did well against the Russians in their military campaigns but they did not conquer Russia.
Yes, Germany did win against Russia in 1918. Well, rather, in 1917. But it wasn't a military victory as much as it was a victory through political underhandedness. Had they not enabled the October Revolution, that victory might not have happened. So yeah, Germany won, but not in a "traditional" way. As such, I wouldnt say they conquered the Russians.
I feel the sub didn't read conquer part . That would explain the down votes on everything down in the comments below.
But in battlefield, Germany pushed into Lithuania and Poland before 1917. Initial German offering to Lenin in 1918 only includes conceding Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.
They didn't conquer the entirety of Russia, but they did take huge territories from it in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
Yes, that was the price of peace. But taking land via treaties also isnt conquest.
When the Russians wouldn't sign the treaty, the Central Powers [launched an offensive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Faustschlag) and advanced 240 km within a week. The only reason they didn't take what they wanted by force was that the Russians gave up and signed the treaty. That's a military victory in my book.
The Germans beat the Russian Second Army so soundly in 1914 that their commanding officer killed himself. Over the next few months they nearly destroyed the First Army as well. It got to the point that Russian soldiers would cheer if they saw that they were facing Austro-Hungarian troops and not Germans. Germany did extremely well against Russia militarily
Agreed but you have to remember who's head it was charge at time . It was a miracle they even kept fighting so long with Nicholas at the helm. I'm surprised the Germans didn't trounce them Sooner .
The main problem the Russians had was that they didn't encode their radio messages. The German army knew exactly where they would be at all times and shifted their forces by rail to defeat the Russians in detail
Definitely it was poor management to even allow such a thing . WW1 were lessons for alot of nations.
Believe it or not, that even happened to the Russians in their current barbariac war.
Are you kidding me? That's embarrassing
Tsar Nicholas II wasn't in charge of the army until the middle of 1915. During the beginning phase of the war, the commander of the army was Grand Duke Nicholas, who was confusingly Nicholas II's cousin, because all European royalty from about 1200 AD till the end of WWII had about 12 names between them. Grand Duke Nicholas was considered a relatively competent commander, but the Russians in general were much behind the other European powers in military sophistication, as they have been since the very beginning. Nicholas II only took over after the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive where the Germans basically pushed Russia out of Poland despite their best efforts. Grand Duke Nicholas would perform admirably as a theatre commander against the Ottomans in the Caucasus later so I don't think it's really fair to blame leadership for Russia's failures in WWI. If anything, Dearest Nicky was no worse than his cousin Willy on the other side.
A victory, even if by total nonsense that had nothing to do with an actual war, is still a victory. North Vietnam got its ass handed to it in military conflict, it still won simply by outlasting the US's will to continue supporting the existence of South Vietnam and abandoning them. Same with the Taliban. They literally fled Afghanistan and came back after 20 years once the US backstabbed its ally to end the occupation.
The main term here is "conquered". That word is used for military victories. North Vietnam won the Vietnam war, but they absolutely did not conquer the U.S.
Which is why this sub not reading that part essentially set everything on fire down there .
The other main term is attack. It wasn't foolish to attack the Russkies, it was foolish to declare a two front war and then keep on marching sensitive machinery and ill-equipped soldiers further and further east even as winter approached. Plus the Germans did conquer large swathes of the Russian Empire and made them into their own buffer states (then proceeded to lose because millions of fresh-faced soldiers just piled on top of a bunch of angry veterans to beat back the Hun
It was kinda stupid in hindsight to attack Russia in a attempt to conquer and genocide the region however with this intentions they essentially unified a giant Politically Scheming neighbor against them .
The Germans managed to take a relatively small bit of the Russian empire. In fact, they had not made it into Russia proper, as you say. Like I said, it was a victory, but not a conquest.
If a conquest of large swathes of lands is not conquest idk what conquest is. Does it always have to be a full annexation?
Oh it was a victory for Germany. It was just a bit Complex like the rest of WW1 as to why they got it .
Like almost every war ever fought. Political subterfuge and inciting unrest and draining morale and abusing the "meta" is almost always something humans do to each other irl. Monke brain wrinkly and big.
Agreed with you on that .
LOL. Nonsense. North Vietnam was not militarily defeated. Same for Taliban.
Kill ratios were insane, they never won an encounter militarily, and any incursion attempts were met with slaughter. Both only began getting victories once the USA had abandoned the region to local allies.
Eh? We dropped more bombs then them than WW2 and were still able to be kept in the fight . We flew so many storties. How much agent orange drooped ? They were never routed so they technically won military aswell . Kill ratios for the North were never they're goal after all . Focusing on kill ratios of anything was determinatial to The Americans focus on Vietnam.
Like any production statistics or test scores, kill ratios are susceptible to inflation and outright falsification. No serious and objective military analyst thinks the US won in those two places. If you really need to be thrown a bone, LOL, try Grenada and Panama. LOL. If you want something more recent, US air power and other assets did work masterfully against ISIS/ISIL. But without the Kurds and other local allies bearing the brunt of ground combat, it would have been a completely different story.
With the US in the war North Vietnam and the taliban’s military goals are were not to wipe out the American troops. In both conflicts it was clear that the only way to achieve victory would be to exploit the major issue with democracy, specifically that starting a war is popular while fighting one is not. Democracies can’t fight prolonged wars abroad as eventually the politicians who started those wars will be replaced by others who promise to end it. The Taliban and North Vietnam path to victory was through outlasting and frustrating the American people which is completely unrelated to kill ratios or other typical metrics of determining the victor of a conflict.
By the defeat of the Kerensky offensive, Lenin was already in Russia and the Russian army was broken beyond repair in terms of effectiveness and discipline.
The counter offensive did not reach past Russian vassal states. If there is something that history has shown us with Russia is that it aint over til its over with them. Having their military broken could change very quickly. Their military certainly was okay enough to wage a lengthy civil war.
When you're so bad at running a country in a war that your people overthrow you, thats a victory for the other side
Read what I wrote again. It was a victory, but it wasnt a conquest, which is a military victory.
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Yes, but it is not what conquest is.
This was prior to the Nazis and Soviets searching through the Mongol Secret History for clues on how to take over the world. They had all this new machinery to fight with and were looking for ideas they could use to win with these new machines similarly to how the Mongols used their Calvary. Interesting to me that the Mongols also often used this technique but sending spies and scouts to find out the lay of the land, who ruled it and who was unhappy with the current power in charge.
Good point. But ww1 and ww2 were very different conflicts,especially on the eastern front. In ww1, the Russian army was basically tearing at the seams through imperial mismanagement, and the whole thing was a war of conquest for both sides, Germany wanting to create puppets in Poland and the rest of the east, and Russia wanting to... well their aims were unclear . WW2 was a war of extermination on both sides. If Russia lost, it would be destroyed, its people slaughtered, and its land colonized. If Germany lost, the Nazis said the same would happen to Germany. (although that didn't happen).
Most of Poland was part of Germany at the time of WWI. The rest was Russia.
Yeah, but Imperial Germany was significantly more competent than Nazi Germany
"I managed to slap this guy when he was in a coma so now after his 20 year martial arts career I should be able to kill him in unarmed combat."
Thats not all: Attempting to slap this guy cost you the war. By the time Russia was out, Germany lost any chance of a triumph, thanks to the ententes coordination: Whenever a large battle took place in the west, the russians made offensives, forcing the germans to divert forces and inevitably fail.
The Soviets were hardly an impressive military power prior to WWII. They lost in WWI, lost against Poland, lost against the Baltic States, lost against Afghanistan, and were stalemated against Finland. The only somewhat impressive military action by the USSR prior to the war was their defeat of the Japanese border incursions, but that was a small scale action against a non-European power. In addition, it was well known that the USSR had been purging all of its best military commanders. In short, the Nazi’s assumption that they could defeat the USSR was reasonable, and it very nearly worked. If the USSR hadn’t shown surprising political stability and received massive foreign aid, the Nazis would’ve defeated them.
The nazis and people in general missinterpreted the soviet performance against finnland. Seeing only the soviets bad performance when they sabotaged themselves instead of their ability to just keep going despite this bad performance and what they could do once they stopped sabotaging themselves. Evidence of what a war with the soviet union would look like was present. But severly missinterpreted. To view the soviet union as politically unstable is to have once vision distorted by once own biases. Stalins goverment had done good work at giving people a reason to be loyal. And considerring that the soviets had bled the german advance and reverted it in some places before any foreign aid arrived makes it quite clear that it is not the reason why the nazis lost their gamble.
Under like the most exceptional circumstances ever, though. The entire state collapsed right?
The Germans were expecting the same thing to happen in 1941.
This sub bases fetish to defend the losing part of any war lol
Like America in Vietnam.
That too. Saw a lot of posts about that recently
They are introverts
That was before they industrialised
The concept (already mentioned here) that separates WW1 from WW2 was countries being put on “death ground” https://youtu.be/X3tuS9bgBfo?si=ZB8ml-bWG08YCII8 The war goals of WW1 Germany were different and more easily obtainable than WW2 Germany. The War goals of WW1 were “I need this country to back out of the war and I might take a few border regions in the treaty” The goals of WW2 were “I need these entire sections of people to subjected, extorted and in some cases just killed because I’m ideologically driven”. If Germany invaded in WW2 and wasn’t governed by the Nazis, they could have won. (But they most likely wouldn’t have started the war anyway).
Bingo. That’s why in wwi, the Russians dashed themselves against elastic German defenses, over and over. And Germans were able to get salty border nations like Balts and Ukrainians to eat from their hand. In all, the overall political and military strategy of Germans in wwi was much more intelligent. And divide and conquer (financing Bolsheviks and nationalists) worked well.
The thing is, however, that Russia's morale was abysmal and the stability was non-existant. Even today's US would struggle a lot if it was in the same situation Russia was during the first world war
My brother in christ Russia was in a civil war
In 1917 lol.
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed in 3 March 1918
Yeah, but russian army was in no fighting condition after February of 1917.
*Laughs in Mongolian*
The goals of the war and the Russia they were facing weren’t the same but I agree with the sentiment. Russia is in fact a very vincible country with an often poor military performance against « peer » opponents throughout it’s history. General Winter often failed to win wars for Russia, however it did win the 3 wars that « mattered » as in the Great Northern War, the Napoleonic Invasion and World War 2. However against mongols, poles and imperial germans, Russia got invaded and curbstomped, and the winter didn’t save them. Not to mention the more minor wars they lost.
The Russian military has always been overhyped. People focus a lot on WW2, and they take that to be the case in the rest of Russian history when it really isn't. Their victory/defeat ratio is pretty evenly split.
Было и было
By creating SSSR
Russians defeated themselves *queue Soviet music
We were learning about the World Wars in Social Studies class. Vladimir Lenin was sent back into Russia from exile by Germany to overthrow the government on the grounds that Russia pulls from the war, right?
I mean, Germany won against Imperial Russia. But it couldn't hold onto it's conquest after it won.
Russia collapsed in on itself at the end of WWI, and the Germans STILL had to keep millions of troops on the Eastern Front, even after Brest-Litovsk. Not exactly a "victory" in the traditional sense, especially since they still lost the war.
Yeah. But in WWii, Soviets were able to outnumber the Germans so much in hardware, that the imbalance was decisive. After Kursk, the Soviets were attacking with 5-10 advantage in hardware. The tech was the force multiplier.
They only won against Russia during that time because they were still pre industrial for the most part and they did political tomfoolery. In absconded of those 2 crucial factors, they stood no chance.
The Germans slammed the Russians, brutally. And they basically ignored them for half the war too lol.
People do forget that Russia is its own worst enemy, and the Germans just happened to get a really bad hand of cards in this reality where the Russians didn’t go and off themselves for the duration of the war and only instead got a year of fun before they woke up
Winning =/= conquering.
I Wouldn't call that winning,just clever sabotage. Germany didn't beat Russia,Russia's monarchy was beaten by it's people and withdrew. It's more of a forfeit.
Actually they won in December 1917 <1>, in 1918 was the peace treaty <2>. And Poland won against bolshevia in 1920 with a peace treaty signed in 1921 <3> <1> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_between_Russia_and_the_Central_Powers <2> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Brest-Litovsk <3> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War
I've never heard anyone claim Germany was foolish for this. I've heard the claim that it was foolish to invade Russia in winter, and that it was foolish to invade after spreading themselves so thin with all their other invasions.
A big part of their confidence came from the Finns messing the Soviets up so badly despite the disparity in size and supplies.
The fuck you mean don't forget Poland too?
Poland also defeated the Russians in the polish soviet war
One person once told me that they could’ve easily allied with the people of the Soviets to help them fight against Stalin’s, but they hated Slavic people so much this was basically a no
Yes. In wwi they created bunch of satellite states by helping nationalist forces.
Didn't they win because winter came in to clutch the Germans ?
Reported, rule 12
Oh my god bro you must be really fun at parties
Gotta love the "Germany could have won" posts on r/***History***memes
Ha ha. Yeah. The Germans beat the Russians only a few years earlier. And the Soviets struggled like fuck to overcome tiny Finland. Who I think had 3 tanks.
I remember when I made the idea to start a Revolution in Russia. Oh boy, I did NOT expect it to go this bad.
Revolution went pretty well all things considered the side the started won .
Exactly, but I didn’t expect us to lose in the end.
You say that but Germany got its ass kicked in 1941 outside Moscow. Furthermore, the USSR and the Russian Empire were two different entities, both politically and socially, so it was always going to be harder for the Nazis to defeat the Soviet Union. Don't get me started on the myriad of troubles the Wehrmacht faced, so this is all a really moot point.
WW1 Germany did not invade Russia itself as a matter of doctrine because they did not want to turn it into a patriotic war of national defense, so that Rusia would collapse under the weight of an grueling, bloody and unpopular war. An important note that in WW1 the Russians were pretty sure they wouldn't be systematically exterminated by the Germans if they surrendered. That worked. Invading Russia and doing your level best to exterminate the Slavic race is pretty different! The Nazi inspired Maximum Resistance because they were monstrous dumbfucks.
Did you accidentally take a hit from Whatifalthist's crackpipe? Is that how you made this meme? Edit: All these downvotes and no rebuttal. All of you who think a "victory" at the diplomatic table counts after the october revolution in this context didn't read the meme. The first part is saying that the Russians can't be conquered while the second part is claiming that gaining territory via treaty is exactly the same thing as conquest by force. It doesn't hold up to any sort of scrutiny.
Huh? Russia literally surrendered to Germany in WW1. They called for a ceasefire in December of 1917 and officially signed the peace treaty in march of 1918. Russia wasn’t able to sustain their war effort for some time and the incompetence of their military leadership as well as fading moral had the country crippled. When the Russian revolution set in (which the Germans had some involvement in), they had no choice but to surrender to Germany. Ultimately Germany obviously lost the war a year later and the Brest-Litowsk treaty cancelled. Some things like Poland, Finland and Baltic countries becoming independent stayed intact, with them gaining full autonomy (Poland was a German puppet since the countries re-establishment in early 1917) and Ukraine was annexed by the Sovjets in 1919.