blackjack21 wrote:A big aspect of Christianity is the sort of sentimental caring for others.
Only Christianity extends that behaviour to people who have taken up arms against you. Which is where it becomes completely ridiculous.
Once they start fighting you, the time to care about them is over.
blackjack21 wrote:Having said that, it strikes me that a bigger problem for Hitler was a tension between racism and nationalism. By appealing to a German Reich, rather than a pan-European Reich, his propaganda fell on deaf ears in Britain.
Both types of propaganda existed, but that was not where the organisational failure came up. The failure came from the fact that Oswald Mosley was unable to tap into the feelings of the working class, because the liberal state outmanoeuvred him earlier on because of liberal Beveridge-ite social welfare reforms.
He was never able to find a way around that, and he was also never able to gain a hold inside industrial and urbanised areas of the UK, which, because of UK demography being different from that of Germany and France, was precisely where he needed to gain a hold if he was to have any hope of growing his movement enough to get into power.
Basically, Britons were not having it, and he wasn't able to present a narrative that would make enough of them want to have it, and thus organisations that ought to have been formed were not formed, enough sponsors were not gained and some even pulled out their money from loss of confidence, and so political power was not attained.
German propaganda from outside the UK actually had much less impact than you think it did.
blackjack21 wrote:I would argue that it was materiel from the United States and soldiers from Russia that ultimately won the war for the allies.
And I wouldn't deny that.
blackjack21 wrote:Dunkirk was a stroke of luck for the British, but I doubt that would have been the end of it.
I didn't say that it would have ended, I only was saying that it was a significant factor in British survival because what escaped from there were skilled people whose knowledge was of use in all theatres.
blackjack21 wrote:What do you mean by this? I've never heard of anyone comparing Japanese aerospace as superior to German. Would love to hear more. J
I was going to give a big explanation, but then History channel has an overview and so I'll be lazy and post that:
1/3 Secret Japanese Aircraft of WWII[youtube]PGS8bvHAr_s[/youtube]
2/3- Secret Japanese Aircraft of WWII[youtube]ipsEYKRFsFw[/youtube]
3/3- Secret Japanese Aircraft of WWII[youtube]_zvnrps0MRU[/youtube]
Leaving aside the history channel, I would focus on a few things.
Of particular note would be the Nakajima Kikka
(aka 'Imperial Weapon No. 2'), which was a small jet aircraft that looked loosely like the Me 262, except it was only 66% as large and had folding wings. The jet engines were Ishikawajima Ne-20, a design created by Technical Naval Commander Eichi Iwaya based on him having
merely looked at a cutaway drawing and a photograph of a BMW 003 engine prototype
(which would be destined for use on the Heinkel He 162 Volksjaeger). The Kikka flew on 07 Aug 1945, and was slated for mass production.
Another one to note is the Kyushu J7W, which was a radical - for its time - attempt to have a push-configuration plane with the wings positioned in the rear and the stabilisers at the front, which is to say, a canard design. The propeller was later intended to be switched for a jet engine, but even as a propeller plane it was a very agile interceptor and would have done well. Its prototype flew successfully on 03 Aug 1945.
And then of course in the standard fare of propeller-driven planes, there was the Nakajima Ki-84 Hayate, which was easily one of the best planes in the entire war, because it was equal to any other fighter out there and could be produced at a remarkably low cost, and could be flown even by a complete idiot. It was faster than the NAA P-51D Mustang and the Republic P-47D Thunderbolt at almost all altitudes. At mid-altitude it quite
literally could not be intercepted by anything. It could reach 16,400 ft in 5min 54sec, making it more agile than any allied aircraft. It's maximum range was 1347 miles. 1670 of them were built and used during 1944, to significant effect.
The production quality of the Ki-84 slowly decreased as allied efforts to cut off Japan's raw materials, disrupt its parts supply network, and as skilled factory workers increasingly found themselves having to take up arms. Thus, the performance of Ki-84s in the final months of the war changed as ingenious
(and often horrendous) attempts were made to get that model of plane into the air no matter what.
The Ki-84R was supposed to be a super high-altitude version of that same plane, using a turbocharger, but the prototype for that was not finished before the end of the war.
Another one worth mentioning was the Nakajima J1N1-S Gekko, which was actually a disastrous failure at what it was originally designed to do. Originally designed as the J1N1-C, it was supposed to be an escorter, which would engage Chinese fighters to defend Japanese bombers. It was a laughable concept. Since that failed, the infamous Lieutenant Commander Yasuna Kozono of the Atsugi Airbase, decided that it should be re-made into a night-interceptor, the J1N1-S. It was a stroke of genius, and it was responsible for wrecking lots of American B-17s and B-24s, before things went downhill in late 1944 and the B-29 was everywhere and significantly harder to stop. This is because the B-29 was so fast that J1N1-S crews would only be able to make a single pass at them. Had it been possible to build the J1N1-S in larger numbers - only 486 were built, many more were required - then they would have been more effective.
Okay, that's enough examples, I think. I won't belabour the point. Japanese people knew how to build a freaking plane.
blackjack21 wrote:I agree. I think the Antisemitism actually clouded Hitler's thinking.
It's not that antisemitism clouded his thoughts, it's that he simply kept ignoring the fact that the Americans actually
love Jews. FDR's entire government was basically FDR, old white Christian people, and Jews. The Americans had some antisemitic banter, but when push came to shove, they love them, they love everything about them.
blackjack21 wrote:Britain was ready--defensively. They were not capable offensively.
They would have been if they had kept waiting.
blackjack21 wrote:This was also true of the USSR.
I disagree, for the third time.
Read this, and decide what you think is most likely:
[Link]starman2003 wrote:Stalin was afraid of Hitler, "like a rabbit in front of a boa constrictor."
Well, no, it seems he really actually wasn't.