Trump Hands Putin Major Geopolitical Victory

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

1 hour ago, Wombat said:

Yeah Doug. My Great Uncle, Ernest Putley, developed radar which helped turn the tide. My Grandfather was in the Royal Navy, one of his brothers (a paratrooper) died in action after D-Day, and his other brother was POW in Burma. My other Grandfather was leader in Dutch Jewish resistance movement. I hate the way that history is being re-written (by the losers), and it s****s me that OP.com says they don't allow trolling but whenever I react to a troll, I am the one who gets a warning! I am on my final warning, coz I told Bradley PNW that he so fascinated with Trump that maybe he wants to perform homosexual act on him. I got banned for 2 weeks, Bradley gets to keep trolling? Why Doug? Coz OP is a politically-correct communist site, and tbh, I think you not much better. I would prefer an Aboriginal bride to an Asian bride, it's a matter of trust, not race. My Chinese doctor (although the best doctor I have ever had), has been practising in Australia for 4 decades but is pro-CCP for some strange reason. My 17yo daughter speaks fluent Mandarin, and I no longer want to know her thanks to the fact she is a Sino-phile. She thinks Cantonese is "inferior"! Talk about bloody brain-washed. I stand with HK and Taiwan. All of my Grandparents would be turning in their graves if they could see what is going on now. They fought for our freedom, and now it is being taken away by stealth. Just disgusting. And OP is disgusting for hosting trolls that continually push the communist line. 

Anything that smells of political correctness is just another means to muzzle freedom of speech and thought.

Perhaps now you understand why us ‘old timers’ restrict our visits to OP...it is no longer worth the effort to ‘discuss’ anything on this forum.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

1 hour ago, dukeNukem said:

@Douglas Buckland, I would suggest to have a broader look at what happen in Europe in 1930's...."Russia had a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany" it was just a tiny piece of big puzzle, you are missing whole picture.Almost everyone understood that war is coming in early 30's (even before that). Everyone was against everyone and looking for allies (, Poland-German non agression pact, Munich pact, German-UK talks in London July august 1939, UK-France-Soviet talks, and German-Soviet talks on the same time. Basically Soviet-German pact was signed only because Soviet-France-UK failed). Soviets and Germans both clearly understood, that Molotov-Ribbentrop pact August 1939 was temporary tactical deal, as they have been enemies since 1920's and been fighting in Spain in 1936-1939 against each other.

But the original statement was that the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany, which is bullshit if you “have a broader look”....which is all that I am attempting to point out.

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

7 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

You should also note that the Soviets NEVER confronted the Japanese until the war was essentially over...

IIRC the Soviet Union declared war on Japan after we'd bombed Hiroshima. For that, they stole the Kuril Islands, and have been producing oil from there ever since. 

[frankfurter + 562]

On 7/30/2020 at 11:52 AM, Eyes Wide Open said:

Personally i admire Trumps solution...take the oil/money from both Isis and Syria....then hand things over to Russia and Turkey....Go ahead gentlemen it all yours...Moving on to Iran...well they have been isolated in the world community and are financially broken they did get a few old rusty tankers out the deal and just today are playing war game with wooden ships....Big toys for big boys...such is life.

The above comments reflect on governing bodies and not the good citizens of those countries... I cannot help but say...Will your mileage vary on the above opinions...but of course comes to mind..simply priceless.

spoken as a true ardent thieving imperialist.

 

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,555]

14 minutes ago, frankfurter said:

spoken as a true ardent thieving imperialist.

 

Why thank you, it was a very elegant solution was it not. Time for Russia to rebuild a nation or Turkey..Question what will happen to the pencil neck dictator from Syria?...And then there is Lyba all that money being spent for worthless black oil.

[dukeNukem + 80]

On 7/30/2020 at 1:36 PM, ronwagn said:

It is not America's job to defend Europe for free. They should be paying the full bill. We have spent far more than we should have since 1945. What have we gotten for our effort but aggravation from the European Union? I spent 26 months defending Germany 1962 to 1965. At least in those days we were needed and appreciated because Germany could not defend itself. In fact Russia could have overrun much of Germany unless we used tactical nuclear weapons. We can still stop Russia if we have to, but Europe needs to be forced to defend itself first. I would rather help Eastern Europe, which still needs our help. 

Your reference states that the high number of weapons systems is a problem rather than a strength because they are all different and very hard to coordinate in a defensive strategy. Did you read the article?

 

Why Europe need to pay full bill? It should be free(if America wants to maintain geopolitical influence), just print more dollars 1, 2, 5....20 trln, nobody count it anyway

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

3 hours ago, dukeNukem said:

Why Europe need to pay full bill? It should be free(if America wants to maintain geopolitical influence), just print more dollars 1, 2, 5....20 trln, nobody count it anyway

Let those countries print Euros then!

[Yoshiro Kamamura + 274]

23 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

But the original statement was that the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany, which is bullshit if you “have a broader look”....which is all that I am attempting to point out.

Except that it's not a "bullshit", but a historical fact. You Trumpist drones have problems accepting facts, but that's nobody's fault but your own. Do you know what happened in the USA when Hitler was finishing his sixth concentration camp and already systematically killing his opposition? This happened:

There was a lot of nazi sympathizers, especially among ku-klux-klan, rigth-wingers, republicans, all those racist nobrains from the south, and had Soviet Union lost the war, the US and German nazi government would be the best pals. Of that I am sure. 

You can watch at 3:00 as your fellow US fascists beat down a protesting Jewish plumber. You can be sure that similar speeches did not take place in Moscow or St. Peterburg. 

Edited August 3, 2020 by Yoshiro Kamamura

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

You are obviously not a student of history...wait...you may have actually graduated with a doctorate in history from one of those ivy league Marxist mills and this is now the new woke history!

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

13 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

You are obviously not a student of history...wait...you may have actually graduated with a doctorate in history from one of those ivy league Marxist mills and this is now the new woke history!

If that's the case, then history doesn't matter!

[0R0 + 6,251]

On 7/31/2020 at 5:29 PM, Yoshiro Kamamura said:

WW2 Nazi Germany was defeated by Soviet Union, and the critical moments were the battles at Moscow and Stalingrad. When the Hollywood's beloved "Operation Overlord" took place, Germans were already pushed back to their home territory on the eastern front, losing ground quickly. The real motivation to hastily come and join the last phase of the war was that if US troops stayed home, the whole Europe could have fallen under the Soviet influence, which would equal strategic defeat for the USA. 

When French populace was queried in 1946 who defeated Hitler in WW2, 75 percent answered that Soviet Union and Red Army did. When the same question was asked in polls in France in 1990, 75 answered that USA during the Normandy invasion. That's the power of systematic rewriting of history. 

If Soviets lost Moscow and Stalingrad and their manufacturing bases far on the east, and capitulated, and Hitler consolidated his grasp over Europe, the only thing he would receive from across the ocean would be a congratulatory telegram and contract drafts for economic and trade cooperation. 

That is the unique perspective of E Europeans who imagine that the Soviets actually produced their own armaments and their far east manufacturing made the difference for their materiel. It was not the case, US equipment and materials fed the Soviet production and war machines.  It was why when any area was conquered by the Soviets in E Europe, they took apart key advanced manufacturing and moved them and their engineers back behind the Soviet border out of reach of future front lines. Those were the things that Soviet manufacturing and technology could not come up with itself.

Without US support, the Soviet system would have succumbed to the Nazis. It was only after the capture of Polish/German industrial capacity in the East, and then Czech and Hungarian factories, that Soviets actually became a threat to what remained of the Nazi territory and  later the West in  general. Their own equipment was designed to be tuned in the field rather than robustly reliable and accurate coming out  of the factory.  Though it was never as badly designed and built as old style Chinese equipment that was as much a danger to the user as to its targets, it was really not a giant distance away from it. What was advanced and accurate was also fragile and limited in use before it had to be taken back for extensive maintenance.

As the Soviets couldn't manage supply lines, they lived off the countries they captured to supply their front lines, thus starving the locals and converting their production to Soviet standard armaments rather than civilian and German standard. Their Tatar forces were particularly feared, thus driving the Germans to quickly surrender to the Western alliance when the war was a sure loss. In land warfare terms,only the central mountains of Germany and Poland were defensive hindrances. Otherwise, the space between Moscow and Berlin is wide open and indefensible. The great European plain is wide open from Moscow to Paris and the low countries. The Soviets had no problem advancing through just as the Nazis didn't have a problem rushing the other way in the earlier portion of the war. The US and UK had to gain traction across the sea. They could not rely on exploitation of captured local capacity to the extent that Soviet non-planning did. Their precious forces were not disposable like the Soviet's. Indeed, that disadvantage was what led to the formation of NATO right after the war. The US and UK could never hold on to Europe against the Soviets now armed with Germany's (and Austria's) Eastern industrial zones. The countries had to rebuild industrial capacity in order to be able to sustain resistance to Soviet advancement. As the Soviets had both people and industrial capacity (that they didn't produce) at hand. in order to obtain investment in that capacity, they needed market access to the remaining consumer markets in UK, Norse countries and US. For that purpose, GATT was formed. All of that was about the countering of Soviet post war capacities, that did not exist on the scale of their full form till then. 

[0R0 + 6,251]

On 7/31/2020 at 7:08 PM, Tomasz said:

The most important battles of World War II in Europe include

Moscow 1941 - the end of the Blitzkrieg, although in truth, according to military historians, the merit of the Russians as well as the Wehmacht's logistical problems. The German commanders themselves argued hotly with Hitler in 1941 as to the direction of Operation Barbarossa - ultimately opting for an offensive in Ukraine and then Moscow turned out to be a strategic mistake

The second turning point was Staliningrad - the collapse of the German offensive in 1942, 300 thousands of soldiers of the 6th Army of Paulus went into captivity

Kursk Battle - first an unsuccessful offensive and strategic defensive from Russian side, then an effective counter-offensive by the Russians. The last great offensive operation of the Wehrmacht and the final passing of the initiative into the hands of the Russians

Then we have the year 1944 and the so-called 10 Stalin strikes led by the Bagration offensive - the greatest military defeat of Germany in history and the most successful Allied offensive, although it was undoubtedly helped by the withdrawal of aviation in connection with the landing in Normandy.

Overall, on the Eastern Front, the Germans lost about 80% of their living strength, according to military historians, in the style of probably the most famous Antony Beevor, and thats maybe the end of the discussion.

 

in general, the defeat of the Wehrmacht can be reduced to the fact that in 1941 and first half of 1942 Stalin did not trust the professionals and made his own decisions. Taught by bitter experience from mid-1942, he gave command to professionals, of which at least a few, such as Chief of Staff Vasilewski and Antonov, front commanders Rokossovsky Zhukov Konev or Rodion Malinowski were, however, relatively good commanders.

And Hitler, for a change, the farther into the war, he made more of  his own unwise decisions from 1942, even though he had even better commanders and therefore lost the war.

The general conclusion is that the command should be left to a professional military man and not to an old revolutionist and a failed World War I painter-corporal with a group of nods

 

The main takeaway from your proclamation of Soviet triumphs is that the Wehrmacht magically disappeared and thus allowed the Soviet advance. That it was shot down and its factories bombed by the Western alliance is somehow not a factor of your analysis, similarly the German's need to spit their forces in the East in order to fight in the West.

This is a CCP narrative that you bought into, and coming from E Europe, it was probably what your parents were taught in the Soviet era propaganda schools.

It is a complete cutoff of China from the West that is necessary and a thorough weeding out of the CCP narratives out of culture. Including a shock to the global corporations clearly eliminating China as a participant in their futures.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

20 minutes ago, 0R0 said:

Otherwise, the space between Moscow and Berlin is wide open and indefensible.

Difficult terrain that has broken many armies.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

5 hours ago, Dan Warnick said:

If that's the case, then history doesn't matter!

Political history is written by the victors and therefore is full of BS.

If you take textbooks from around the globe they certainly don't agree about many things.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

8 hours ago, Enthalpic said:

Difficult terrain that has broken many armies.

In the winter yes, otherwise?

[0R0 + 6,251]

8 hours ago, Enthalpic said:

Difficult terrain that has broken many armies.

It is flat. Hence no cheap fire cover from mountain tops. No natural fortifications, nothing to stop a tank or a horse drawn carriage other than the mud. Which is the reason Russians are paranoid, as Poles Swedes French and Germans have made the trip across the land, some of them more than once.  Same fear on the German side as their land was under the control of several different rulers or separated into a variety of principalities and free cities till 1871. Unified Germany is younger than Australia, Canada, USA and united India. Indeed, it was not under unified rule since Charlemagne. Even now, what used to be Prussia is in large part Polish.

 

[dukeNukem + 80]

15 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Let those countries print Euros then!

They are actually...But US is unbeatable leader in this activity 

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

1 hour ago, 0R0 said:

 

the mud

 It's mostly the winter, mud, and sheer distance; no land operation can cover that distance without supreme air superiority.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/08/the_atomic_attacks_on_japan_justified_or_not.html

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

1 hour ago, Enthalpic said:

 It's mostly the winter, mud, and sheer distance; no land operation can cover that distance without supreme air superiority.

After Stalingrad it was not air superiority which was the issue, it was out running their supply lines which became the issue.

After D-Day, the Luftwaffe had to pull aircraft and crews from the Eastern Front for the defense of the Reich. This lessened the pressure greatly on the Soviet airforces. Another point is that Germany never fielded a 4 engine strategic bomber, in numbers, to attack the rebuilt factories east of the Urals.

Many things conspired to keep the Soviets from getting their asses handed to them.

To say that the Soviets singlehandedly defeated the German forces is ignorant.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

2 hours ago, dukeNukem said:

They are actually...But US is unbeatable leader in this activity 

It is an ‘economy of scale’....

[Marcin2 + 726]

On 7/29/2020 at 8:23 PM, rainman said:

The U.S. military unveiled plans to withdraw about 12,000 troops from Germany, in fallout from President Donald Trump’s long-simmering feud with Berlin but said it will keep nearly half of those forces in Europe to address tension with Russia. Still the U.S. is doing a huge favor to Putin weakening NATO with this withdrawal.

 

I would rather say lets roast at least 3-4 chickens over one oven:

1. Increase US combat readiness in Germany, Europe and globally at the same time. It is 2020 nobody wins modern wars with infantry units, lets save money that are wasted for their European vacations.  There are way too many US Army  soldiers in Germany. Part of them would be exchanged for Air Force and high  tech support units like radar and missile stations.

12,000 wasted resources freed in Germany means 12,000 soldiers that are needed in other parts of Europe and most of all in Asia Pacific.

2. Trump will get another 1% or maybe 2% in the polls as the hero who really brings our boys home. It may be enough to win a few swing states.

3. Trump shows that he is tough to NATO allies who until recently got free ride on US taxpayer , another 1% in the polls, maybe another swing state. MAGA !

4. Democrats would have another topic to bark about and waste their resources and in being anti-Trump they would support Trump voter base.

5. Making such a „bold” move,  it gets easier to appease voters in times of severe depression and unemployment while you just recently voted for largest military budget since Cold War ended.

1% here , 1% there , they do add up and could make re-election closer.

Edited August 4, 2020 by Marcin2
Typo

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

On 8/1/2020 at 7:04 PM, Wombat said:

I would. Probably less deaths than the genocide in Somalia?

No, it was a complete catastrophe estimates are between 3-6 million dead.

https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/s/Second_Congo_War.htm

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

On 8/1/2020 at 7:25 PM, Wombat said:

Actually, it depends on speed of the aircraft. With Scramjet technology, we might be talking about supersonic cruise at Mach 5-6?

 

Did someone say Scramjets!!! Check this bad boy out, British engineering at it's finest. Of course the CCP gave a scientific award to one of it's own citizens for 'inventing' the pre-cooler the British came up with. Better copy like mad, this is real innovation.

https://www.reactionengines.co.uk/

This engine will change air travel/space travel/warfare forever. I keep thinking this might by why the USAF has been dragging out the announcement on next generation aircraft. Forget reusable rockets, this will allow real space planes.

[Wombat + 1,028]

6 hours ago, Strangelovesurfing said:

Did someone say Scramjets!!! Check this bad boy out, British engineering at it's finest. Of course the CCP gave a scientific award to one of it's own citizens for 'inventing' the pre-cooler the British came up with. Better copy like mad, this is real innovation.

https://www.reactionengines.co.uk/

This engine will change air travel/space travel/warfare forever. I keep thinking this might by why the USAF has been dragging out the announcement on next generation aircraft. Forget reusable rockets, this will allow real space planes.

Actually Strangelove, the real trick to the SCRAMJET is keeping the flame going at such a high speed, and it was the University of Queensland (Australia), that cracked it about 10 years ago.