World War Two
Published 21 Dec 2024In the early hours of July 12, 1943, the Waffen SS and the Red Army are ready for battle. SS General Paul Hausser has his armoured spearheads ready to strike at Prokhorovka while Soviet commander Pavel Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards Tank Army readies his counterattack. Today, Indy walks you through the enormous armoured fleets deployed for the coming fight.
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December 22, 2024
Tanks Prepare for Battle! The Greatest Ever? Prokhorovka Part 2
December 18, 2024
QotD: Western shaming – the grass is always greener overseas
In the late 1950s, many elites in the United States bought the Soviet Union line that the march of global communism would “bury” the West. Then, as Soviet power eroded in the 1980s, Japan Inc. and its ascendant model of state-sponsored industry became the preferred alternative to Western-style democratic capitalism.
Once Japan’s economy ossified, the new utopia of the 1990s was supposedly the emerging European Union. Americans were supposed to be awed that the euro gained ground on the dollar. Europe’s borderless democratic socialism and its “soft power” were declared preferable to the reactionary U.S.
By 2015, the EU was a mess, so China was preordained as the inevitable global superpower. American intellectuals pointed to its high-speed rail transportation, solar industries and gleaming airports, in contrast to the hollowed-out and grubby American heartland.
Now the curtain has been pulled back on the interior rot of the Chinese Communist Party, its gulag-like re-education camps, its systematic mercantile cheating, its Orwellian surveillance apparatus, its serial public health crises and its primitive hinterland infrastructure.
After the calcification of the Soviet Union, Japan Inc., the EU and the Chinese superpower, no one quite knows which alternative will next supposedly bury America.
Victor Davis Hanson, “The Cult of Western Shaming”, Townhall.com, 2020-01-29.
December 15, 2024
Nazi Tanks Advance on Kursk: Prokhorovka Part 1
World War Two
Published 14 Dec 2024German tanks advance on Kursk, smashing through Soviet defences and setting the stage for one of history’s most legendary tank battles — The Battle of Prokhorovka. In this six part miniseries we will cover the fierce fighting, the strategies, and the men and machines that take part in this battle.
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December 14, 2024
December 10, 2024
QotD: Nuclear deterrence and the start of the Cold War
Understanding the development of US nuclear doctrine and NATO requires understanding the western allies’ position after the end of WWII. In Britain, France and the United States, there was no political constituency, after the war was over, to remain at anything like full mobilization and so consequently the allies substantially demobilized following the war. By contrast, the USSR did not demobilize to anything like the same degree, leaving the USSR with substantial conventional military superiority in Eastern Europe (in part because, of course, Stalin and later Soviet leaders did not have to cater to public sentiment about defense spending). The USSR also ended the war having annexed several countries in whole or in part (including eastern Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, parts of Finland and bits of Romania) and creating non-democratic puppet governments over much of the rest of Eastern Europe. American fears that the USSR planned to attempt to further extend its control were effectively confirmed in 1948 by the Russian-backed coup in Czechoslovakia creating communist one-party rule there and by the June 1948 decision by Stalin to begin the Berlin Blockade in an effort to force the allies from Berlin as a prelude to bringing all of Germany, including the allied sectors which would become West Germany (that is, the Federal Republic of Germany).
It’s important, I think, for us to be clear-eyed here about what the USSR was during the Cold War – while the USSR made opportunistic use of anti-imperialist rhetoric against western powers (which were, it must be noted, also imperial powers), the Soviet Union was also very clearly an empire. Indeed, it was an empire of a very traditional kind, in which a core demographic (ethnic Russians were substantially over-represented in central leadership) led by an imperial elite (Communist party members) extracted resources, labor and manpower from a politically subordinated periphery (both the other Soviet Socialist Republics that composed the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries) for the benefit of the imperial elite and the core. While the USSR presented itself as notionally federal in nature, it was in fact extremely centralized and dominated by a relatively small elite.
So when Western planners planned based on fears that the highly militarized expansionist territorial empire openly committed to an expansionist ideology and actively trying to lever out opposing governments from central (not eastern) Europe might try to expand further, they weren’t simply imagining things. This is not to say everything they did in response was wise, moral or legal; much of it wasn’t. There is a certain sort of childish error which assumes that because the “West” did some unsavory things during the Cold War, that means that the threat of the Soviet Union wasn’t real; we must put away such childish things. The fear had a very real basis.
Direct military action against the USSR with conventional forces was both politically unacceptable even before the USSR tested its first nuclear weapons – voters in Britain, France or the United States did not want another world war; two was quite enough – and also militarily impossible as Soviet forces in Europe substantially outnumbered their Western opponents. Soviet leaders, by contrast, were not nearly so constrained by public opinion (as shown by their strategic decision to limit demobilization, something the democracies simply couldn’t do).
This context – a west (soon to be NATO) that is working from the assumption that the USSR is expansionist (which it was) and that western forces would be weaker than Soviet forces in conventional warfare (which they were) – provides the foundation for how deterrence theory would develop.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Nuclear Deterrence 101”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-03-11.
November 29, 2024
Why the Communists subjugated half of Europe
World War Two
Published 28 Nov 2024From the Bolshevik Revolution to post-war dominance, Stalin’s plans forever changed Europe’s political landscape. Discover how the Soviet Union used ideology, diplomacy, military power, and ruthless suppression to control Eastern Europe and establish a new world order.
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November 28, 2024
Town-class destroyers – Guide 400
Drachinifel
Published Aug 3, 2024The Town class destroyers, old Wickes, Clemson and Cadwell class vessels of the US Navy, transferred to the British Royal Navy and others, are today’s subject.
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November 25, 2024
Looking toward the first order effects of 47
At Postcards From Barsoom, John Carter is delighted that his pessimistic election forecast turned out to be wrong and considers what the incoming Trump administration will be doing in the short-term:
There are obvious parallels between the 2024 election, the 2016 election, and the Brexit vote, all of which are a bit awkward for elite theory maximalists. Their position, taken to its extreme, seems to be that only the elite can actually do things, that all political phenomena are ultimately a consequence of elite machinations. Which makes elite theory in many ways the highbrow version of conspiracy theory, the main difference being that they talk about the Cathedral’s systems of power instead of the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and smoky backrooms. And yet, the elite clearly don’t always get their way. In the case of Brexit, the elite were absolutely unanimous in their support for Remain … and the elite lost. Similarly in the case of the 2016 US election. Elite preferences carry an enormous amount of weight; it’s generally much better for a cause to have elite support than suffer elite opposition. But elites are not actually decisive. They can be beaten.
It’s obviously much too early to judge the 47th US presidency, which hasn’t started yet. Cynics expect a repeat of 2016: just as Trump’s promises to drain the swamp and build the wall came to, if not nothing, then very little, so will his promises to deport them all, replace the income tax with tariffs, reign in the universities by going after their accreditation and endowments, drain the swamp for real this time, and so on prove to be so much hot air. So far all we know are Trump’s cabinet picks and other appointments, which suggest that this cynicism might be premature. […]
The new Trump admin shows every sign of gearing up for a Dark MAGA rampage through the Beltway.
If you’re curious about where Dark MAGA came from, why yes it was memed into reality. Aristophanes
tells the wild saga: from in-joke to shitcoin to the hat on Elon Musk’s head.They aren’t going to just drain the swamp. They’re going to drain it, dry it, soak it in gasoline, and set it on fire. They are going to purge the US government of the useless, the incompetent, the subversive, and the criminal. At least, that seems to be the intention … and given the way the rats are scrambling to escape the ship before it sinks, the regime’s minions, at least, seem to think that plan has a good chance of succeeding. […]
Of course, a lot could happen between now and January. The Democrats might find some convoluted legal pathway to deprive The Insurrectionist of the Oval Office, as Tree of Woe suggested, which of course would initiate a constitutional crisis and probably a civil war. They could assassinate him, which would also probably start a civil war, and which is probably why Trump has been holed up in Mar-a-Lago since the election. Either of these outcomes would probably place JD Vance in the presidency, which is probably much worse for the regime than Trump: Vance is marine corps combat vet who reads Curtis Yarvin and is fluent enough in meme that he probably has a frog alt on Twitter.
[…]
News that suicides spiked after the election is apparently fake, though crisis call centres catering to the Pronoun Jugend did experience a massive increase, and one guy apparently unalived his entire family. They’re still in a state of shock: shaving their heads, vowing to start a sex strike, fleeing to Canada (I do not recommend).
The left are religious fanatics, and religious fanatics don’t give up just because it looks hopeless. It’s also worth recalling that the last time Trump won, the riots didn’t start until inauguration. There’s plenty of time yet, and there are a lot of very wealthy and very influential people who probably feel they have nothing to lose as their precious oxen are in danger of being lethally gored by Dark MAGA on the Washington Mall as a sacrifice to America’s Founding gods, after which they themselves will be hanged from Wotan’s Tree of Liberty. Note that it doesn’t matter if Trump will really follow through with all of this; what matters is if the other side thinks that he will. Ruling out a dramatic escalation in civil violence in the US is almost certainly hasty.
[…]
Another play the regime could make is to just start World War III before Trump takes office, either in order to justify a military coup d’etat, or just to dump a catastrophe in Trump’s lap so that he’ll be too busy dealing with that to drain the swamp. They definitely seem to be ramping things up in Ukraine, with the new strategy of long-distance missile strikes deep into Russian territory. The idea is probably to provoke the bear so badly that it starts mauling NATO countries directly, rather than just chewing through their exhausted national arsenals in the mud of the Donbass. That might work; then again, Putin knows full well that all he has to do is wait a couple months and he’ll be dealing with Trump directly, and Trump is on record as wanting to wind down hostilities as a top priority as soon as he’s in office. Vlad may be a bad man, but he is a very patient bad man.
Assuming that the regime is unsuccessful in baiting Russia into a direct attack on Europe, Trump’s victory probably has very big, tumultuous, and positive implications for European politics. Positive, at least, for anyone who doesn’t hate Europe … and therefore very bad implications for the people currently running the civilizational centre of the human species into the dirt.
The Germans, at least, seem to think so.
Chancellor Scholz’ unstable “traffic light” coalition disintegrated almost immediately after Trump was elected, sending Germany into its own election … in which the AfD is poised to do very well for itself, much to the consternation of Germany’s political class. eugyppius has been doing invaluable work covering Germany’s politics for the anglosphere audience; he provides an excellent overview of the reasons for the coalition’s collapse in this recent interview on the J Burden show.
November 24, 2024
“… if Russia were found to have had its own troops assemble a long-range missile and help launch it into the United States, do you think a US president would feel able to let it slide?”
It probably tightened a lot of already tight sphincters when it was announced that President Biden had authorized the Ukrainian government to use US-supplied long-range missiles to attack targets on Russian soil:
There was something truly surreal about President Biden suddenly changing course and agreeing to give Ukraine advanced long-range missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory in the last two months of his administration. There was no speech to the nation; no debate in the Senate; just a quiet demonstration of unilateral presidential fuck-you power. You know: the kind we’ve long worried about with Donald Trump. The missiles up the ante considerably against a nuclear power for a simple reason. As Putin noted:
experts are well aware, and the Russian side has repeatedly emphasized this, that it is it is impossible to use such weapons without the direct involvement of military specialists of the countries producing such weapons.
The tiny tsar continued:
We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities. And in case of escalation of aggressive actions we will respond also decisively and mirrored.
And he looked on edge, bedraggled and belligerent, his arms and hands not moving a millimeter in what sure looks like AI.
There was a time when a NATO missile strike on Russian territory, followed by a Russian threat to attack NATO “military facilities” in response, would have caused the world to stop dead, paralyzed by the fear of nuclear armageddon. Yet here we are, blithely preoccupied by Pete Hegseth’s sexual exploits and Congressional bathrooms.
Others are not so sanguine. “I believe that in 2024 we can absolutely believe that the Third World War has begun,” Ukraine’s former military chief, Valery Zaluzhny, warned yesterday, noting both the new involvement of NATO troops and the involvement of North Korea. Our own president, having brought us much closer to the brink as a lame duck, seemed unconcerned. He was last seen wandering off-stage in the vague direction of the Brazilian rainforest. Not optimal.
The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, was even punchier, and pledged to allow Ukraine to use British long-range missiles as well: “We need to double down. We need to make sure Ukraine has what is necessary for as long as necessary, because we cannot allow Putin to win this war”. When asked if he was prepared to risk the UK forces or Ukraine or a third country like Poland being nuked in response, as Putin has threatened, Starmer simply ignored the question.
Meanwhile, just to keep things from escalating, the deputy chief of the British defense staff told a parliamentary committee yesterday:
If the British Army was asked to fight tonight, it would fight tonight. I don’t think anybody in this room should be under any illusion that if the Russians invaded Eastern Europe tonight, then we would meet them in that fight.
There seems to be a general impression that Putin is of course bluffing, that NATO can keep lobbing missiles into Russian territory with minimal consequences, and nothing could possibly go wrong.
But Putin has responded by launching a long-range missile that could be used to carry a nuke but didn’t, as well as lowering the bar for the use of nukes in his military “doctrine“. And ask yourself: if Russia were found to have had its own troops assemble a long-range missile and help launch it into the United States, do you think a US president would feel able to let it slide? Here’s what the British missile, the Storm Shadow, did in hitting an underground military facility in Kursk, according to unverified Russia media sources:
[The strike] resulted in the Death of 18 Russian Officers, including a Senior Commander, as well as 3 North Korean Officers. In addition, a Dozen other Soldiers and Officers were Wounded in the Attack, including one of North Korea’s most Senior Generals.
I can’t verify that, but it’s perfectly possible. To have NATO’s fingers on the targeting and launch of that missile puts us in a whole new category of conflict.
The job of a president is to keep us far, far away from any risk of nuclear conflict, as Biden seemed to understand until now. And any student of history will know that blithe complacency as two sides trade military escalations is often exactly the precursor to something going very, very wrong. Accidents happen; misjudgments occur; the point of never getting to this point is that this point contains a host of unknowables, some of them globally existential.
I assume that this is all about strengthening Kyiv’s hand in what will be grueling negotiations to end the conflict once Donald Trump gets back into office. Or the intelligence is worse than we know and it’s about avoiding an Ukraine collapse before Biden leaves office — which, after Afghanistan, would be a final, damning verdict on his foreign policy. Or the intelligence is better than we know and the Russian economy is so weak and his military so depleted that NATO thinks this extra pressure will force Putin to crack. Or it’s a norm-defying attempt from an outgoing administration to derail any peace process the incoming one might want to start. The latter possibility — with Biden rolling the dice because he thinks someone else will have to face the music — is not a minimal risk.
How Allied and Nazi Generals Created the Clean Wehrmacht Myth
World War Two
Published 23 Nov 2024After the fall of the Third Reich, many of Hitler’s generals are convicted as war criminals by the Allies and condemned to prison and disgrace. Yet, within a few years, the Western Powers embrace them Cold War partners against the Soviet Union. In this new alliance, they rewrite history and create the enduring myth of the “clean Wehrmacht“.
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November 23, 2024
How the US Paranoia of Leftism was Born
World War Two
Published 21 Nov 2024Elizabeth Bentley’s defection in 1945 didn’t just expose a Soviet spy network — it fueled America’s second Red Scare and a wave of anti-communist paranoia. Her revelations about Soviet infiltration within the U.S. government became a catalyst for McCarthyism, reshaping American politics and society in an era defined by fear and suspicion.
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November 15, 2024
The Final Solution to the German Question
World War Two
Published 14 Nov 2024Millions of Germans continue to be expelled from their homes in Central and Eastern Europe. They run a gauntlet of violence, robbery, and even murder before arriving in the shattered remains of Berlin. By the end of 1945, the Allied Powers have at least agreed that further expulsions must be “orderly and humane”. But isn’t that a contradiction in terms?
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QotD: Battles are over-rated
Take another look at the conventional narrative. Almost every key event involves a battle, a period of time in a relatively localized area where combatants slugged it out to see who would occupy some bit of land or sea. To [How the War Was Won author Phillips Payson] O’Brien, this focus is silly, a relic of long-ago wars in ages with far less industrial capacity.
Start with theory. States fight to impose their will on another state in pursuit of some political goal. To do that requires that they achieve sufficient local military superiority that the other state can’t stop them from achieving their political goal.
Nazi Germany wanted to be the new administrators of the agricultural area of the western Soviet Union. To do that, they had to evict the Soviet military, whether through direct destruction or forcing the Soviet government to withdraw their armed forces. Individual battles for control of a localized area only matter if they are a means to that end.
Does the occupation or non-occupation of that point on the map affect the ability of a combatant to keep fighting?
In some limited cases, yes. Battlefield victory enabled Germany to overrun France before France could really focus its productive effort on the war. After their surrender, the French could not produce weapons, and they functionally could not organize their manpower to fight the Germans. But if the German army conquered, say, a random city in the Soviet Union, like Stalingrad, Soviet production and manpower was barely affected. The war goes on.
In theory, the German army could destroy so much of the Soviet military in one battle (or even a few discrete battles) that the Soviets run out of men or weapons. If there was ever a time this could have happened, it would have been the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, when the Germans basically won a series of crushing victories.
The problem for the Germans was that by World War II, people in the combatant countries were good at building stuff in vast quantities, and the major combatants of World War II generally had access to sufficient natural resources. Even massive armies could not destroy produced weapons systems (e.g., tanks, airplanes) on the battlefield fast enough to remove the other side’s ability to continue fighting. What could (and did) happen was the destruction of the other side’s ability to produce and distribute weapons.
Sure enough, if you look at the actual data from even the largest battles, neither side really destroys a hugely significant amount of stuff. Take the Battle of Kursk — the largest tank and air battle of World War II. Wikipedia will dazzle you with the numbers of soldiers involved (millions), tanks deployed (in the ballpark of 10,000), and aircraft in the sky (in the ballpark of 5,000).
In this entire vast battle that supposedly dictated the outcome of the Eastern Front, the Germans lost approximately 350 armored fighting vehicles (AFVs) during the most intense 10 days of fighting. In the two months around when the battle took place, the Germans lost 1,331 AFVs on the entire Eastern Front. In the year of the battle, 1943, the Germans built more than 12,000 AFVs. Also worth noting: they disproportionately lost older, obsolete tanks at Kursk, and built new, capable tanks. The Germans lost a very manageable amount of equipment at Kursk — less than a month’s worth of AFV production.
If modern war means you cannot realistically destroy enough weapons in one battle to matter — if the largest battle of all time didn’t really matter — what did?
Anonymous, “Your Book Review: How the War Was Won“, Astral Codex Ten, 2024-08-09.
November 14, 2024
Trump’s position and likely options on Ukraine
In his weekly commentary, Niccolo Soldo considers what the incoming Trump administration might do about the war in Ukraine:
… Ukraine is losing the war, and is losing it at a faster pace than before. Time is not on Kiev’s side, and there is no magic wand that anyone can wave to turn the tide in its favour. The question is: how much is Kiev willing to give up in order to save as much as it can?
The foreign policy blob is on tenterhooks, waiting to see what Trump will do regarding this conflict:
Like in Trump’s first term, different factions are set to compete to influence the Republican’s foreign policy. More traditionally minded allies such as Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state now in contention to lead the Pentagon, are likely to push for a settlement that doesn’t appear to give a major win to Moscow. Other advisers, particularly Richard Grenell, a top candidate to lead the State Department or serve as national-security adviser, could give priority to Trump’s desire to end the war as soon as possible, even if it means forcing Kyiv into significant concessions.
Pompeo is out, but that doesn’t mean that those like him are entirely out either, as he has DoD officials sharing his views. No doubt that there are certain elements in the State Department, CIA, and in Congress as well who take the same position.
The proposals all break from Biden’s approach of letting Kyiv dictate when peace talks should begin. Instead, they uniformly recommend freezing the war in place — cementing Russia’s seizure of roughly 20% of Ukraine — and forcing Ukraine to temporarily suspend its quest to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
One idea proposed inside Trump’s transition office, detailed by three people close to the president-elect and not previously reported, would involve Kyiv promising not to join NATO for at least 20 years. In exchange, the U.S. would continue to pump Ukraine full of weapons to deter a future Russian attack.
Under that plan, the front line would essentially lock in place and both sides would agree to an 800-mile demilitarized zone. Who would police that territory remains unclear, but one adviser said the peacekeeping force wouldn’t involve American troops, nor come from a U.S.-funded international body, such as the United Nations.
“We can do training and other support but the barrel of the gun is going to be European,” a member of Trump’s team said. “We are not sending American men and women to uphold peace in Ukraine. And we are not paying for it. Get the Poles, Germans, British and French to do it.”
“Pumping” Ukraine full of weapons would be attractive to Trump, as it means steady cash flow. He is a businessman after all.
The last bit is the most important, as it conforms to US policy trends in which the dumpster fire that they started is left to the Europeans to extinguish while the Americans go deal with the Chinese.
That proposal in some respects echoes comments made by Vice President-elect JD Vance during a September interview, when he suggested a final agreement between Ukraine and Russia could involve a demilitarized zone “heavily fortified so the Russians don’t invade again.” Russia, Vance continued, would get to keep the land it has taken and be assured of Ukraine’s neutrality.
“It doesn’t join NATO, it doesn’t join some of these sort of allied institutions,” he said on “The Shawn Ryan Show,” a podcast.
“No NATO, no stealth NATO”, is music to Moscow’s ears. The problem here is that the Russians do not trust the Americans to keep up their end of any deal. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has famously described the Americans as “agreement non-capable”.
Also, why would the Russians even agree to negotiate at this point?
For one, Ukraine and Russia still have vastly differing war aims and little desire to alter them. With Russian troops advancing slowly but steadily in Ukraine, the Kremlin has shown little inclination to negotiate, and has shown its willingness to escalate the conflict with hybrid attacks outside its borders, such as sabotage operations in Europe.
“The objectives of the special military operation remain unchanged and will be achieved,” Dmitry Medvedev, a top Russian official, posted Wednesday to X after learning of Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.
Zelensky is over a barrel:
Zelensky, whose country is heavily dependent on the U.S. for military and financial assistance, could — more easily than Putin — be forced by Trump to negotiate, but the Ukrainian leader would have to contend with a public that views ceding territory as capitulation to Moscow.
Trump has said that Ukraine’s survival is important to the U.S., but has repeatedly criticized Zelensky, calling him the “greatest salesman”, a stance that has worried some officials in Kyiv that a Trump-led U.S. might push for a settlement that favors Russia.
Zelensky on Wednesday congratulated the president-elect on his victory, appealing to their September meeting in New York and praising his “‘peace through strength’ approach in global affairs”.
Forcing Zelensky to concede land would open up the possibility of a coup d’etat in Kiev, and even civil war. Even if a deal were hammered out, Zelensky would be forced to try to sell it at home. There are may factions in Ukraine that have no desire to budge even one inch, and would happily take his head off of the rest of his body to make sure that no one signs away any Ukrainian land.
November 10, 2024
WW2 in Numbers
World War Two
Published 9 Nov 2024World War II wasn’t just the deadliest conflict in history — it was a war of unprecedented scale. From staggering casualty numbers to military production and economic costs, this episode breaks down the biggest statistics that defined the global conflict.
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