Cracked.com on WW2 myths

[Setzer]

http://www.cracked.com/article_18389_th ... lshit.html

[TabascoOne]

Not the most rigorously accurate site ever, but its about time that the Red Army got some recognition in popular media for its contributions.

[Thanas]

....and moved it.

[CaptHawkeye]

It's definitely true the US didn't "win on its own" and it certainly wasn't Germany's biggest opponent during the war. I just still think American industrial contributions to the war are worth mentioning though. Lend Lease usually doesn't get as much credit as it should in these myth busting sessions.

The article should have included "The Nazis rebuilt Germany's economy" myth.

[Mr. Coffee]

Come on, guys, this is revisionist history at it's worst. Everyone knows that if it wasn't for fine upstanding AMERICAN heroes like Superman and Captain America that the triple thread of Nazi aggression, Japanese imperialism, and Italian trains running on time would have gone unchecked! You'd all be speaking Nazi if it weren't for D.C. and Marvel Comics!

[Darth Wong]

It's definitely true the US didn't "win on its own" and it certainly wasn't Germany's biggest opponent during the war. I just still think American industrial contributions to the war are worth mentioning though. Lend Lease usually doesn't get as much credit as it should in these myth busting sessions.

The article should have included "The Nazis rebuilt Germany's economy" myth.

Again, however, the same objection applies. The Russians managed to crank out vast supplies of equipment despite being forced to move much of their industrial base in order to avoid the German advance in the early part of the war. That is a pretty damned impressive achievement, and by the end of the war they were cranking out truly vast quantities of equipment. The T-34 swarm alone was a seemingly limitless horde.

As for the myth of Nazi economic prowess, I agree that this really needs to be deflated. I still run into morons claiming that today.

[CaptHawkeye]

Yeah, that's something I forgot about when it came to the Soviet Union. Not only did they crank out immense amount of material, they had to do so with a highly mobilized industrial base. It had to be prepared to literally pack up entire factories and ship them cross country at a moments notice. Yet as German commanders often noted during the war, the Russians ALWAYS seemed to have re-enforcements. By the late war period Russian equipment was not only more numerous but qualitatively superior to German equipment too. To the Red Army tanks like the Panther and King Tiger were a joke.

[Marcus Aurelius]

To the Red Army tanks like the Panther and King Tiger were a joke.

Not quite. The Soviet commanders and tankers had a healthy respect for the German "Zoo", while at least the commanders realized that the war was a numbers game and a smallish number of good tanks on the German side would not change anything. That said, I would not want to go against Panthers with T-34-85s on a numerically equal basis.

[Darth Wong]

To the Red Army tanks like the Panther and King Tiger were a joke.

Not quite. The Soviet commanders and tankers had a healthy respect for the German "Zoo", while at least the commanders realized that the war was a numbers game and a smallish number of good tanks on the German side would not change anything. That said, I would not want to go against Panthers with T-34-85s on a numerically equal basis.

Why not? Unless those Panthers are fresh out of the factory, there's a pretty good chance that you would quickly have a practical numerical advantage anyway, due to German mechanical unreliability.

[Ziggy Stardust]

The article should have included "The Nazis rebuilt Germany's economy" myth.

Nobody would happen to know of a good article or book I could read on this subject? I have heard the myth a number of times but haven't run across the facts that refute it, yet.

[Darth Wong]

The article should have included "The Nazis rebuilt Germany's economy" myth.

Nobody would happen to know of a good article or book I could read on this subject? I have heard the myth a number of times but haven't run across the facts that refute it, yet.

The first thing you might want to do is demand the fact that support it in the first place.

Myths like this survive in part because they have been repeated so often that their proponents tend to think they should be treated as "true until proven untrue", much as Christians feel their religious beliefs should be treated. The thing is, that's a pretty high bar to set for opponents of the idea, and there is no reason to accept that it should be set there. Since when are ideas assumed true (without evidence) until proven untrue?

The first thing one must do is disabuse them of this arrogant notion. There is no logical reason why a monstrous military buildup, for example, should help an economy. If they're going to claim that the Nazis' policies rejuvenated the German economy, they should explain how.

[Setzer]

The Wages of Destruction is a good one.

[Masami von Weizegger]

It's definitely true the US didn't "win on its own" and it certainly wasn't Germany's biggest opponent during the war. I just still think American industrial contributions to the war are worth mentioning though. Lend Lease usually doesn't get as much credit as it should in these myth busting sessions.

The article should have included "The Nazis rebuilt Germany's economy" myth.

Of course. I don't think anyone but the most raving anti-American would suggest that American history books covering World War II should not mention the United States industrial contributions and so on. Irish history books focus on the war as it effected Ireland, British books do the same and so on. That's only natural. The problem is when it goes too far one way and facilitates the creation of myths such as those covered in the article linked.

Lend-Lease doesn't get much credit in these myth busting sessions because when it is brought up by the majority it is usually in the same vein as the original myth being discredited; that America won the war on its own, while giving out aid and money to those too ineffectual to play anything other than support anyway because they're not America. A full discreditation would bring up and discredit the idea of Lend-Lease as being some sort of charity give away to ungrateful Europeans and nasty Soviets who then stabbed the States in the back, and instead giving credit to what Lend-Lease actually accomplished with the Americans as the benefactors and also point out that the US also demanded that the rent eventually be settled.

Even the US not "winning on its own" carries the potential implication that the war was won by America "and friends" when it was won by, in fact, the Allied forces of which the United States was a major part.

[Darth Wong]

Yeah, some people respond to a deflation of the "America was the dominant force in WW2" myth by assuming that anyone who says such a thing must think that America contributed absolutely nothing to the Allied victory in WW2, and then triumphantly assaulting that strawman.

[thejester]

To the Red Army tanks like the Panther and King Tiger were a joke.

Really? Have you got any sources for this?

[Darth Wong]

To the Red Army tanks like the Panther and King Tiger were a joke.

Really? Have you got any sources for this?

It would be hard not to laugh at the joke when the enemy tanks are broken down in the road or unable to traverse their turrets

[thejester]

I'm sure that's why American and British tankers found them so funny as well .

Reading this, this post was the first thing to come to mind:

By the later years, I can see in German radio intercepts of tank unit comms a greater saavy and confidence in fighting. One example that sticks out in my mind is an intercept[from the Lvov-Sandomir opn 1944] of a tank commander reporting the appearance of four Tigers, and he calmly reports, "I'm handling them."

It's in the context of improving Red Army tactical skill, but it shows the point: not scared of them, but the fact they were mentioned specifically as Tigers in the report to higher headquarters suggests there was still an awareness of heavy German armour.

In a sense it's pretty irrelevant though, in late 44-45 German the tactical victories German armour scored (and there seem to have been a few of them) were rendered irrelevant by Soviet movement and success on the operational level.

[CaptHawkeye]

To the Red Army tanks like the Panther and King Tiger were a joke.

Really? Have you got any sources for this?

The Russians performed tests on captured Panthers during the war, and were pretty giddy to find out the piece of shit couldn't even perform a basic 200km road march before breaking down. This meant that the Panther literally gave every mobile initiative to the Russians. They could far outflank it and know it could not redeploy to meet them. Even if the Panthers won, the Russians could then take solace in that it would not be able to pursue a breakthrough in Russian lines before half of them broke down.

The Panther was also something like 63 tons. Only 1 ton lighter than the IS-2, yet it did not possess the IS-2's firepower, protection, or even mobility!

Do I even need to explain why the King Tiger sucked? It's ground cross-country was a pitiful 5-10mph. Infantry could outrun it. Given the shittiness of German propulsion systems at the time, they could probably outlast it in a cross country run too. More King Tigers were abandoned by their crews than lost to enemy fire.

http://www.lonesentry.com/tm_tigertank/index.html

[Darth Wong]

Nazi tank wankers gloss over their horrible maintenance inadequacies by harping about their "tactical" power, concluding that they were only defeated when they were outnumbered by inferior Sherman or T-34 tanks (a situation made more common by the fact that so few German tanks could be kept operational at any given time). The problem is that this attitude completely obscures the importance of reliability as a performance factor. The Germans made tanks that quickly broke down unless they stayed on paved roads, for fuck's sake.

[Darth Wong]

I'm sure that's why American and British tankers found them so funny as well .

Not literally funny, but German mechanical unreliability plagued them in the western campaign as well, although not as badly as it did in the eastern campaign where vast amounts of non-functional German equipment was abandoned by retreating German troops.

[tim31]

Do I even need to explain why the King Tiger sucked? It's ground cross-country was a pitiful 5-10mph. Infantry could outrun it. Given the shittiness of German propulsion systems at the time, they could probably outlast it in a cross country run too. More King Tigers were abandoned by their crews than lost to enemy fire.

I'm reading this and recalling David Webster's line from the penultimate episode of Band of Brothers, which the real PFC Webster may or may not have said:

Look at you! You have horses! What were you THINKING?

[MKSheppard]

Yeah, some people respond to a deflation of the "America was the dominant force in WW2" myth

It pretty much WAS the dominant force in WW2. The Soviet Union could field tank spam and back that up with some airplane spam; but only the US could spam on two fronts simultaneously, while supporting the greatest naval buildup the world has ever seen before or since.

And that site is just LOLtastic; especially on it's Hitler was a God myth:

where he singlehandedly blew The Battle of Britain with every advantage going for him, canceling the invasion of Britain in what would be the first real turning point of the war.

Yeah, a turning point for the allies.

[Darth Wong]

Fair enough; if we're talking about the Pacific Theatre, there's no question that the US utterly dominated there. I was thinking more of the European Theatre.

As for the "invasion of Britain" idea, I laughed at that one too. How were they supposed to invade? By loading their men onto catapults and lobbing them across the channel? But this is cracked.com after all.

[Setzer]

Give them some credit, they saw through the big myths. With a bit more research, I'm sure they'd have seen through the smaller ones.

[Darth Wong]

Give them some credit, they saw through the big myths. With a bit more research, I'm sure they'd have seen through the smaller ones.

Stuart did an excellent deconstruction of the "Hitler should have just steamrolled the Brits at Dunkirk" myth.