Chris: Nice. I especially like the way he conflates Japan’s behavior with the normal sexual urges of all young men. Presumably the Japanese soldiers just got a bit carried away. Chalk it up to high spirits. I wonder what behavior he can link to the Japanese habit of using civilians for bayonet practice. This “everybody was doing it, more or less” is a bit more sophisticated than the old “just following orders” defense. It also resembles the favorite charge of good...
March Hare: Charming! And your “government” , sworn to uphold the rights of their citizens, are importing these savages by the gross. Why doesn’t a bunch of true Brits attack the guy? He’s only one sorry savage and could easily be taken down by a couple of men. Or, would that be considered a “hate crime” in the sorry land that once was an Empire?
Bruce Charlton: Certainly Britain would be better off if we were still ruled by the Britons of 50 years ago…
Space Nookie: See Soviet offensive plans controversy for a better article that doesn’t appeal to consensus. What is controversial about Suvorov is that he claims Stalin intended to attack on July 6, and that consequently Hitler’s June 22 invasion was justifiable as a preemptive strike. He makes other claims with a stronger factual basis, and it does leave you wondering why, exactly, Stalin had built such a powerful (on paper) army if it wasn’t for defensive purposes. Organizations miss...
Buckethead: Great, now we’ll have antibiotic-resistant back pain causing bacteria, too.
Isegoria: The consensus, for what it’s worth, seems to be that Suvorov overstates Stalin’s ability to launch an attack in 1941. That said, I have trouble imagining Stalin simply standing by as Germany wore itself down on the Western Front. The Allies would practically demand his entry, after all.
Space Nookie: There is a 1987 book, Icebreaker, by Viktor Suvorov, that goes into great detail about Stalin’s preparations for an attack on western Europe. Suvorov argues that Stalin intended for France and Germany to exhaust themselves in mutual combat — after which he would intervene. I find that a lot more plausible than the standard narrative where Stalin is basically neutral and disinterested until Hitler attacks him.
Isegoria: If the French and British forces held out against the initial German offensive, couldn’t we expect the Russians to open up the Eastern Front?
Erich Schwarz: “I’m not sure why there would have been no Communist takeover of Eastern Europe…” If France and Britain had managed to turn the tide of the war before Hitler invaded the USSR, then the final borders of Soviet control would have looked like this rather than this. That’s why.
Lucklucky: You can’t say that an earlier vehicle is more “conservative̶ 1; than another when they have 10 years difference. The critique looses all propose. For example being build in steel (Marder) instead of aluminum Bradley like M113 is more or less conservative? Amphibious is a requirement that is seldom employed if at all, like the mostly useless infantry firing ports they were nixed with uparmor. So Bradley is not amphibious anymore. The ATGM was later because that was when Germans...