Zapp Branigan: "I sent wave after wave of my own men at them"
It's easily understandable why a strategy that boils down to zerg rushing with poor or missing equipment would result in heavy losses.
It is also understandable why a country that subscribes to an ideology that places very little value on the individual and has a large population would pick such a strategy.
Believing that such a strategy is a morally correct thing is another matter entirely.
What this chart does show is the discrepancy between the different war conducts. Namely that the Ostfront was a horrific meat grinder where life had no value, and there was no point in taking prisoners.
Yeah just a random number of deaths really doesn't say much about what actually happened. You can't just link a chart and say "look, this describes the events of WW2!"
Eh, it's more likely that he was a threat to Eisenhower's political asperations and would of curb stomped him if he decided to run for president against him.
The horrendous losses the soviets suffered in the war had less to do with human wave tactics and more to do with incompetent officers (the competent ones having been largely purged or posted elsewhere - Zhukov's arrival in the theatre marked a significant turning point) and a general order from Stalin to not retreat one inch meaning that their formations would be encircled as the Germans plowed through weak spots in their lines.
Human wave tactics are not unheard-of but they are a lot rarer than you might think, even for communists.
Yeah: the Zapp Branigan comment was a bit of a joke, but it's true that especially in the early days of the war that the Russians were poorly equipped and used sheer numbers to make up for it.
The Chicoms had a habit of letting the Nationalists do all the heavy lifting (and take the brunt of casualties) while they ate paste and mostly just stayed underground. The notion that the Communists were actually not just helpful in the war against Japan, but even did more fighting and fought more competently than the Nationalists, is pure Maoist revisionism with zero grounding in reality.
Hell, those assholes ended up fighting non-Communist-aligned guerrillas behind Japanese lines as much as or more than they did the Japanese themselves. He Long's campaign to eradicate all such resistance militias in Hebei which wouldn't recognize CCP leadership in the late 1930s is just one example of this perfidy. And Mao himself had the nerve to thank Japan for invading decades later, because Japanese aggression got Chiang's generals to backstab & coerce him into an alliance with the Reds when he had them on the ropes and then weakened the ROC to a point where they could take over fairly easily!
The French resistance was similar to the Chicoms. They spent most of their time fighting amongst themselves and robbing tobacco stores. The anglos largely stopped air dropping supplies to the French because the different groups would ambush each other trying to recover the drop.
That is actually tactically sensible, though. Who would you attack if you wanted to take their money and supplies? The full might of the WWII Wehrmacht - or - some ragtag bunch of guy who don't even have any support to call in afterwards?
Completely strategically and morally bankrupt, but tactically sensible.
Very this. The CCP is trying to change the history on this. The Communist faction contributed a negligible part to the Second Sino-Japanese War, mostly just hiding while the Republic of China did all the fighting. Mao actually thanked the Japanese for invading China and creating the power vacuum he filled.
That's why. Islam is more totalitarian, collectivist, and authoritarian than Communism. You might still find Leftist like controls over the economy in Islam, but Islam's grip over the population is stronger than even Stalin's.
If you intend to have freedom in some way, however, you can't do it with purging.
The same goes for Iran and the Iranian Revolution.
If you intend to have freedom in some way, however, you can't do it with purging.
History seems to bear this out. It's funny that in the two cases of countries that executed (murdered) their monarch (Charles I and Louis XVI), the monarchy later returned, but when the monarch fled and died in exile, the monarchy never returned.
Notice also that despite executing their monarch, they also instated monarchs in all but name: Cromwell and Bonaparte.
Of course they returned the monarchy (albeit in a reduced power capacity), they never actually established proper Liberalism that weakened the government and promoted individual growth. Instead, they embraced authoritarian mass institutions, or effectively Lyncherdom in the form of Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety and the House of The Commons alone asserting total parliamentary sovereignty.
This is not Liberalism.
Charles was actually fucking clever enough to use this as a weapon at his trail. Where he claimed to be acting to protect the freedoms of Englishmen from the House of The Commons. This strategy started working on witnesses to the trail... because he was right.
He was standing against the tyranny of the House of The Commons (Tyranny of the commons?) because they were in utter violation of the law. His trial was a complete sham. His charges may not have even had merit legally (even if they should have because fuck you for invading your own country with a foreign army to attack your own people with), and the The Commons was just making shit up as they went along, while appointing a biased and ignorant judge to oversee the whole thing. It's also why The House of Lords didn't participate in any of this, even though they were literally the rest of parliament.
This is the thing about "Popular Sovereignty" that they introduced, but in a bastardized way. The people being Sovereign is correct. However, the people claiming to represent the people are not the Sovereigns. This is a fine distinction that the British repeatedly failed to learn, and the Americans literally rebelled against them for.
The American Revolutionaries, particularly the New Englanders, understood that the British government and Parliament hadn't done fuck all for them in 200 years, and then simply seized control over the colonies. America didn't rebel against the monarchy... until the King sided with parliament. It was not King George who was out of control. It was parliament that was out of control. Parliament's excuse was again, parliamentary sovereignty. When the Americans screamed that they couldn't be taxed without having representation in the British Parliament, the British Parliament claimed "virtual representation". It was Parliament who passed the Coercive Acts, it was Parliament who refused recognition of colonial legislatures, it was always Parliament that kept getting more radical and more violent, and then the king agreed: 'You must all die.'
Once again, after the Brexit vote, the English had to learn the hard way that Parliamentary Sovereignty is nonsense, because the people who claim to represent the people are never sovereign.
The Americans have survived authoritarian seizures of power multiple times in an era of human civilization where collectivism was optimal due to technological advances because the American Revolution was a Liberal Revolution and properly weaponized the government against itself. Not enough, clearly. But just enough to survive. It's survived the Progressive Racial Autocracy of Jim Crow, it survived the Progressive Era itself without becoming fully Communist, it survived a Democratic Socialist president from FDR, as well as Lincoln's authoritarianism.
You have to treat the government as a weapon, and not a friend. If you build a government to solve problems, it's one day going to see you as a problem and try to solve you.
Notice also that despite executing their monarch, they also instated monarchs in all but name: Cromwell and Bonaparte.
The British revolutionaries were not republicans. The French ones were. 'They' did not install Bonaparte, they were removed in the Thermidorian Reaction, replaced by the Directory - the abbe Sieyes of whom then conspired with Bonaparte to prevent a restoration of the monarchy. Neo-Jacobins in fact opposed Bonaparte because he was a monarch.
Of course they returned the monarchy (albeit in a reduced power capacity), they never actually established proper Liberalism that weakened the government
Of course not. The whole point of the Revolution was strengthening the government and centralizing it. A jurist in Provence was hanged for objecting to the removal of the traditional privileges of the county.
His charges may not have even had merit legally (even if they should have because fuck you for invading your own country with a foreign army to attack your own people with), and the The Commons was just making shit up as they went along, while appointing a biased and ignorant judge to oversee the whole thing.
Correct. But note that David Frum was a while back citing Charles I as a warning to Donald Trump, in a veiled warning that he may want a similar fate for POTUS.
This is the thing about "Popular Sovereignty" that they introduced, but in a bastardized way. The people being Sovereign is correct. However, the people claiming to represent the people are not the Sovereigns. This is a fine distinction that the British repeatedly failed to learn, and the Americans literally rebelled against them for.
But then you instituted the same system.
The American Revolutionaries, particularly the New Englanders, understood that the British government and Parliament hadn't done fuck all for them in 200 years
This is incorrect. The British had protected them from the French. It's likely that the British were contributing more to the colonies than they collected in taxes.
When the Americans screamed that they couldn't be taxed without having representation in the British Parliament
It must also be noted that they also refused to have representation in the British parliament.
You have to treat the government as a weapon, and not a friend. If you build a government to solve problems, it's one day going to see you as a problem and try to solve you.
America to it's soldiers : "I don't want you to die for your country, I want you to make the other guy die for his"
Russia to it's soldiers : "Lol, your life is worthless, either go catch a bullet from the enemy or catch a bullet from the commissary and get your family gulag'd"
I suppose were supposed to also believe the Mensheviks were totally the opposite of the Bolsheviks on every issue simply because they fought each other for the same power?
One could say that the ideology of the Mensheviks was far less pathological than that of the Bolsheviks, because they believed that there first had to be a bourgeois, democratic revolution. So they were not interested in immediately seizing power and imposing a totalitarian dictatorship, as opposed to the Bolsheviks who believed that they could 'telescope' history.
But is this theory, or reality? Well, in Georgia, the Mensheviks took power, and they instituted a democratic system and did not abolish capitalism in three years before the Red Army ended that experiment.
the Mensheviks took power, and they instituted a democratic system and did not abolish capitalism in three years before the Red Army ended that experiment.
By sharing a party with the Bolsheviks, they made the Bolshies more palatable.
They are guilty.
The dispute originated at the Second Congress of the RSDLP, ostensibly over minor issues of party organization... The split proved to be long-standing and had to do both with pragmatic issues based in history, such as the failed revolution of 1905, and theoretical issues of class leadership, class alliances, and interpretations of historical materialism. While both factions believed that a "bourgeois democratic" revolution was necessary, the Mensheviks generally tended to be more moderate and were more positive towards the liberal opposition and the dominant peasant-based Socialist Revolutionary party.
By sharing a party with the Bolsheviks, they made the Bolshies more palatable.
I am not sure they did, I think everyone was able to distinguish between the two. Under the mid-Kerensky government (pre Kornilov), the Bolsheviks were outlawed, but (IIRC) there were two Menshevik ministers, or at least the Mensheviks supported the government.
They are guilty.
Of what? That they - along with the Kadets and many other forces, including the tsar - can be blamed for the rise of the Bolsheviks is absolutely true.
The Kadets were liberals. And of these groups, only the Bolsheviks were truly dangerous. The problem with the others is that they destabilized the regime to a point that a Bolshevik takeover was possible - including the Kadets, which refused to condemn acts of terrorism by the SRs.
Weird how the USA isn't even included in the pie chart, which would have been more than 400,000 deaths, or the UK for that matter which would have similar numbers. I think its safe to conclude that the chart and overall tweet is communist nonsense.
There was a voice clipping of hitler talking about how he could not understand how the soviet union had so many tanks,but found out after capturing a tank factory and finding out the people were being treated like animals.
Also using the wrong flag for Canada. We were still using the Red Ensign, but it looks like based his on that Corporate Logo that was introduced in 1965.
Without lendlease the soviets would have lost, plus, they were fighting on one front only. Annnddd this is a problem that they themselves caused, because nobody told them to ally themselves with Hitler.
The US produced 6 times as much war material as every else combined, while sending convoys of much needed supplies to England and the Soviet Union, fighting the war in North Africa, Italy, Northern France, and the Pacific, while being able to churn out merchant ships like they were going out of style, including one entire ship in 4 days, and 175 advanced fleet destroyers.
But no, the Soviets won World War 2 because they took the most casualties
Like always, Communist success depends on parasitism. We gave them as much logistics as we could to keep them afloat long enough to stop them from collapsing.
I always figured that Hitler had no chance of defeating the Soviet Union, but the logistical nightmare and food shortages of the Soviet Union in 1941 & 1942 were so great, they really were on the verge of defeat.
Then again, Germany was also having huge logistical problems due to their socialism as well.
Fascism, being more practical, would have potentially won if Democratic Socialist US hadn't been pushing Revolutionary Socialist USSR to win against National Socialist Germany.
By refusing any alliance with the West, unless they handed over the Baltic states, a concession he got from Hitler in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Stalin did more to kick off WWII in Europe than even Hitler.
Not to mention, the oncoming attack from Germany allowed the Japanese to pull forces out of Manchuria for their debut at Pearl Harbor.
Zapp Branigan: "I sent wave after wave of my own men at them"
It's easily understandable why a strategy that boils down to zerg rushing with poor or missing equipment would result in heavy losses.
It is also understandable why a country that subscribes to an ideology that places very little value on the individual and has a large population would pick such a strategy.
Believing that such a strategy is a morally correct thing is another matter entirely.
What this chart does show is the discrepancy between the different war conducts. Namely that the Ostfront was a horrific meat grinder where life had no value, and there was no point in taking prisoners.
Yeah just a random number of deaths really doesn't say much about what actually happened. You can't just link a chart and say "look, this describes the events of WW2!"
“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.”
-General George S. Patton
Friendly reminder that Patton was probably assassinated for his staunch Anti-USSR/anti-communist ideals
Eh, it's more likely that he was a threat to Eisenhower's political asperations and would of curb stomped him if he decided to run for president against him.
Does the total for the Russians include retreating soldiers that were shot by their commanders?
Stop thinking xir!
Or those starved by the bolsheviks?
To be fair, the Russians did have other strategies. The T-34 was a stellar tank.
The horrendous losses the soviets suffered in the war had less to do with human wave tactics and more to do with incompetent officers (the competent ones having been largely purged or posted elsewhere - Zhukov's arrival in the theatre marked a significant turning point) and a general order from Stalin to not retreat one inch meaning that their formations would be encircled as the Germans plowed through weak spots in their lines.
Human wave tactics are not unheard-of but they are a lot rarer than you might think, even for communists.
Yeah: the Zapp Branigan comment was a bit of a joke, but it's true that especially in the early days of the war that the Russians were poorly equipped and used sheer numbers to make up for it.
From the comments:
"You're using the wrong flag for China. Here's the flag of the Republic of China"
"No, that's not the flag of the 1.3 billion Chinese people!"
"It was in 1945"
"But some of the ChiComs fought too! I'm using the Commie Flag for China!"
"Hey you're using the wrong flag."
"Yes."
The Chicoms had a habit of letting the Nationalists do all the heavy lifting (and take the brunt of casualties) while they ate paste and mostly just stayed underground. The notion that the Communists were actually not just helpful in the war against Japan, but even did more fighting and fought more competently than the Nationalists, is pure Maoist revisionism with zero grounding in reality.
Hell, those assholes ended up fighting non-Communist-aligned guerrillas behind Japanese lines as much as or more than they did the Japanese themselves. He Long's campaign to eradicate all such resistance militias in Hebei which wouldn't recognize CCP leadership in the late 1930s is just one example of this perfidy. And Mao himself had the nerve to thank Japan for invading decades later, because Japanese aggression got Chiang's generals to backstab & coerce him into an alliance with the Reds when he had them on the ropes and then weakened the ROC to a point where they could take over fairly easily!
The French resistance was similar to the Chicoms. They spent most of their time fighting amongst themselves and robbing tobacco stores. The anglos largely stopped air dropping supplies to the French because the different groups would ambush each other trying to recover the drop.
That is actually tactically sensible, though. Who would you attack if you wanted to take their money and supplies? The full might of the WWII Wehrmacht - or - some ragtag bunch of guy who don't even have any support to call in afterwards?
Completely strategically and morally bankrupt, but tactically sensible.
There are no Chinese Communists. Only Communists that occupy China.
Ahem. China was not Communist in WWII. Perhaps the pie wheel should feature Taiwan's flag?
Also, because you suck at war doesn't mean you get more credit.
Everybody knows who won it (USA) and how (industrial/technological supremacy).
Very this. The CCP is trying to change the history on this. The Communist faction contributed a negligible part to the Second Sino-Japanese War, mostly just hiding while the Republic of China did all the fighting. Mao actually thanked the Japanese for invading China and creating the power vacuum he filled.
i dont think number of deaths has anything to do with who defeated whom....
Yeah, that chart doesn't actually represent well who had most effect on the war. That isn't to say the Russians had no effect, but still.
Interestingly, it understates how much effect the USSR had - because if they went by who killed German soldiers, its contribution would have been 80%.
Gulags killed even more German soldiers than combat
All im seeing is that the communists where really good at dying.
Actually, the communists were very good at sending other men to their deaths.
Including communists!
This is why massacring communists never works: the commies will always be prepared to kill more communists than you realize.
Communism: rise to the top of the bucket by killing every other crab and pushing them down underfoot.
I'm not excusing it, but it did 'work' in Indonesia.
That's why. Islam is more totalitarian, collectivist, and authoritarian than Communism. You might still find Leftist like controls over the economy in Islam, but Islam's grip over the population is stronger than even Stalin's.
If you intend to have freedom in some way, however, you can't do it with purging.
The same goes for Iran and the Iranian Revolution.
History seems to bear this out. It's funny that in the two cases of countries that executed (murdered) their monarch (Charles I and Louis XVI), the monarchy later returned, but when the monarch fled and died in exile, the monarchy never returned.
Notice also that despite executing their monarch, they also instated monarchs in all but name: Cromwell and Bonaparte.
Of course they returned the monarchy (albeit in a reduced power capacity), they never actually established proper Liberalism that weakened the government and promoted individual growth. Instead, they embraced authoritarian mass institutions, or effectively Lyncherdom in the form of Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety and the House of The Commons alone asserting total parliamentary sovereignty.
This is not Liberalism.
Charles was actually fucking clever enough to use this as a weapon at his trail. Where he claimed to be acting to protect the freedoms of Englishmen from the House of The Commons. This strategy started working on witnesses to the trail... because he was right.
He was standing against the tyranny of the House of The Commons (Tyranny of the commons?) because they were in utter violation of the law. His trial was a complete sham. His charges may not have even had merit legally (even if they should have because fuck you for invading your own country with a foreign army to attack your own people with), and the The Commons was just making shit up as they went along, while appointing a biased and ignorant judge to oversee the whole thing. It's also why The House of Lords didn't participate in any of this, even though they were literally the rest of parliament.
This is the thing about "Popular Sovereignty" that they introduced, but in a bastardized way. The people being Sovereign is correct. However, the people claiming to represent the people are not the Sovereigns. This is a fine distinction that the British repeatedly failed to learn, and the Americans literally rebelled against them for.
The American Revolutionaries, particularly the New Englanders, understood that the British government and Parliament hadn't done fuck all for them in 200 years, and then simply seized control over the colonies. America didn't rebel against the monarchy... until the King sided with parliament. It was not King George who was out of control. It was parliament that was out of control. Parliament's excuse was again, parliamentary sovereignty. When the Americans screamed that they couldn't be taxed without having representation in the British Parliament, the British Parliament claimed "virtual representation". It was Parliament who passed the Coercive Acts, it was Parliament who refused recognition of colonial legislatures, it was always Parliament that kept getting more radical and more violent, and then the king agreed: 'You must all die.'
Once again, after the Brexit vote, the English had to learn the hard way that Parliamentary Sovereignty is nonsense, because the people who claim to represent the people are never sovereign.
The Americans have survived authoritarian seizures of power multiple times in an era of human civilization where collectivism was optimal due to technological advances because the American Revolution was a Liberal Revolution and properly weaponized the government against itself. Not enough, clearly. But just enough to survive. It's survived the Progressive Racial Autocracy of Jim Crow, it survived the Progressive Era itself without becoming fully Communist, it survived a Democratic Socialist president from FDR, as well as Lincoln's authoritarianism.
You have to treat the government as a weapon, and not a friend. If you build a government to solve problems, it's one day going to see you as a problem and try to solve you.
The British revolutionaries were not republicans. The French ones were. 'They' did not install Bonaparte, they were removed in the Thermidorian Reaction, replaced by the Directory - the abbe Sieyes of whom then conspired with Bonaparte to prevent a restoration of the monarchy. Neo-Jacobins in fact opposed Bonaparte because he was a monarch.
Of course not. The whole point of the Revolution was strengthening the government and centralizing it. A jurist in Provence was hanged for objecting to the removal of the traditional privileges of the county.
Correct. But note that David Frum was a while back citing Charles I as a warning to Donald Trump, in a veiled warning that he may want a similar fate for POTUS.
But then you instituted the same system.
This is incorrect. The British had protected them from the French. It's likely that the British were contributing more to the colonies than they collected in taxes.
It must also be noted that they also refused to have representation in the British parliament.
That ship has sailed.
They could be better though
It's not true Communism until all the Communists are dead wait
All I see is a chart showing of which nations placed the lowest values on the lives of their own men.
Also, that's the wrong flag for China. Nice try, commie.
That data is completely meaningless.
On top of that it's a pie chart.
Kill it with fire.
I especially like how the United States and United Kingdom apparently had 0 world war 2 deaths between them.
10/10 retard selecting propaganda.
Apparently war glory is needless slaughter of your own men + privilege.
America to it's soldiers : "I don't want you to die for your country, I want you to make the other guy die for his"
Russia to it's soldiers : "Lol, your life is worthless, either go catch a bullet from the enemy or catch a bullet from the commissary and get your family gulag'd"
let's never forget the 8,863,000 germans that defeated fascism.
One could say that the ideology of the Mensheviks was far less pathological than that of the Bolsheviks, because they believed that there first had to be a bourgeois, democratic revolution. So they were not interested in immediately seizing power and imposing a totalitarian dictatorship, as opposed to the Bolsheviks who believed that they could 'telescope' history.
But is this theory, or reality? Well, in Georgia, the Mensheviks took power, and they instituted a democratic system and did not abolish capitalism in three years before the Red Army ended that experiment.
By sharing a party with the Bolsheviks, they made the Bolshies more palatable.
They are guilty.
I am not sure they did, I think everyone was able to distinguish between the two. Under the mid-Kerensky government (pre Kornilov), the Bolsheviks were outlawed, but (IIRC) there were two Menshevik ministers, or at least the Mensheviks supported the government.
Of what? That they - along with the Kadets and many other forces, including the tsar - can be blamed for the rise of the Bolsheviks is absolutely true.
Were they not allied with Germany in the beginning?
They were allied before the war, then Hitler turned around and attacked them with the weapons that they had helped him build in operation Barbarossa
The Kadets were liberals. And of these groups, only the Bolsheviks were truly dangerous. The problem with the others is that they destabilized the regime to a point that a Bolshevik takeover was possible - including the Kadets, which refused to condemn acts of terrorism by the SRs.
Weird how the USA isn't even included in the pie chart, which would have been more than 400,000 deaths, or the UK for that matter which would have similar numbers. I think its safe to conclude that the chart and overall tweet is communist nonsense.
I'm not sure a 1:3 K:D ratio is much to be proud of, but go off, comrade.
Just going to leave this here
Sad that more Commies weren’t killed.
These are conscripts, not 'commies'.
There was a voice clipping of hitler talking about how he could not understand how the soviet union had so many tanks,but found out after capturing a tank factory and finding out the people were being treated like animals.
Also using the wrong flag for Canada. We were still using the Red Ensign, but it looks like based his on that Corporate Logo that was introduced in 1965.
I am not sure how the many civilian deaths in the USSR helped "defeat fascism", but maybe that's just me.
Doing a good thing that's in one's self interest does not absolve one of future atrocities.
I, too, can chop my fingers off one by one and say I did the most cooking.
America and the UK.
Without lendlease the soviets would have lost, plus, they were fighting on one front only. Annnddd this is a problem that they themselves caused, because nobody told them to ally themselves with Hitler.
The US produced 6 times as much war material as every else combined, while sending convoys of much needed supplies to England and the Soviet Union, fighting the war in North Africa, Italy, Northern France, and the Pacific, while being able to churn out merchant ships like they were going out of style, including one entire ship in 4 days, and 175 advanced fleet destroyers.
But no, the Soviets won World War 2 because they took the most casualties
Exactly, these imbeciles are so damn retarded that they refuse to see this!
There is no. Left
Awesome how America rolled in and won WWII with no casualties! They really were the Greatest Generation.
Well, it certainly was black commies from america who've ridden their skin like a cheap whore their entire career.
We could easily say: The United States.
Like always, Communist success depends on parasitism. We gave them as much logistics as we could to keep them afloat long enough to stop them from collapsing.
I always figured that Hitler had no chance of defeating the Soviet Union, but the logistical nightmare and food shortages of the Soviet Union in 1941 & 1942 were so great, they really were on the verge of defeat.
Then again, Germany was also having huge logistical problems due to their socialism as well.
Fascism, being more practical, would have potentially won if Democratic Socialist US hadn't been pushing Revolutionary Socialist USSR to win against National Socialist Germany.
Surprise! Everyone loses.
Totalitarian states are good at killing their people.
By refusing any alliance with the West, unless they handed over the Baltic states, a concession he got from Hitler in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Stalin did more to kick off WWII in Europe than even Hitler.
Not to mention, the oncoming attack from Germany allowed the Japanese to pull forces out of Manchuria for their debut at Pearl Harbor.