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 19, 2024
QotD: Replacing the outdated “left” and “right” with more accurate terms
Keeping the simple spectrum approach of “Left” and “Right”, I’d divide the world into the fundamentally incompatible camps of “Theory” people and “Reality” people. We all know all about the Theory People, so just one quick example: J.B.S. Haldane. Indisputably a great scientist, and not just a great scientist, a great evolutionary biologist. If there’s anyone on this earth who should’ve been convinced, right down to the very marrow of his bones, that human beings are NOT blank slates, it was J.B.S. Haldane. And yet, he was a Marxist — and not just a Marxist, a really loopy one, even by the standards of the early 20th century.
It was guys like Haldane who caused Stove to write a great essay about “The Ishmael Effect”. He said something like (from memory) it’s a striking fact about powerful minds, that even though they know better than everyone else some fact about the physical world — the conservation of energy, say — their powerful minds cause them to get caught up in all the fascinating implications of their pet theory, such that they fail to see their pet theory requires energy not to be conserved. Thus (said Stove), a guy like Kant: After telling us that no human mind can access the Thing-in-Itself, he gives us four hundred pages of extremely detailed information about the Thing-in-Itself. Or Karl Marx, who was able to soar so far above his own economic class situation as to tell us, with oracular certainty, that no one is able to transcend the cognitive limits of his economic class situation. I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say that “the Ishmael Effect” pretty much IS 19th century philosophy … and thanks to entropy, 20th century politics, and now 21st century culture.
Such are the Theory People who, however many raw IQ points they have, will really see five lights if The Party tells them to, because The Party controls the Theory and the Theory is never wrong, facts be damned. Call them Rubashovs if you like (and are feeling literary), but let’s move on to the Reality People. If Rubashov is the ultimate Theory Person — marching willingly off to his destiny in the dreaded Lubyanka, because The Party requires it and The Party is never wrong — so the ultimate Reality Person is Niccolo Machiavelli.
Much hooey has been written about The Prince, that it’s ACK-shully a biting satire (you could call the Rubashovs’ junior varsity the ACK-shully kids), but Ol’ Nick meant every fucking word. Politics was a contact sport in his day — he picked the wrong side of a political dispute, and got the strappado for it. He knew exactly what he was talking about, and had the disjointed shoulders to prove it.
Machiavelli is often called a cynic, but just as everything in Clown World always turns out faker and gayer than the most jaded can imagine, so even the hardest-bitten cynic can’t touch Ol’ Nick. The Prince is beautifully written, but it’s one of the toughest reads you’ll ever have, because surely he can’t mean what he just wrote … he just can’t. But he does, and it’s true — that for example a man will more quickly get over the murder of his father than the loss of his patrimony. And you know it’s true, if only in the darkest watches of the night when you toss and turn in the coldest of cold sweats. There aren’t more than a handful of sentences in The Prince that won’t give you insomnia, if you really start thinking them through …
But just as (one hopes) even Rubashov would balk at shooting his children on The Party’s orders, so even Machiavelli marvels at the truth that no one is thoroughly, consciously evil, even when it’s in his obvious best interest to be. A man will always convince himself he’s doing good, even when he’s obviously, objectively doing the most heinous evil, and that — Nick implies — is the way to manage a tyrant. Even when doing X is the obviously advantageous thing to do, and doing Y is obviously disadvantageous, you can convince someone to do Y by changing the moral frame.
There’s obviously a spectrum here, which like all human behavior bends in on itself at the extremes. One imagines Rubashov, for instance, going through an “if only Comrade Stalin knew!” type thought process if The Party ordered him to shoot his infant children. Yes, The Party is never wrong … but even though Comrade Stalin IS The Party, The Party is, finally, the historical manifestation of a metaphysical necessity, and therefore, in the light of the Highest Truth, Comrade Stalin — though never wrong!! — is perhaps misinformed in this case … Just as Francesco Sforza or whomever balks at murdering those infants in their cribs, though it’s clearly the very best course of action, politically.
Rubashov vs. Machiavelli. That’s the best I can do.
Severian, “Mail / Grab Bag”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-09-10.
December 18, 2024
QotD: Western shaming – the grass is always greener overseas
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.
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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 10, 2024
QotD: Nuclear deterrence and the start of the Cold War
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.
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December 6, 2024
QotD: Herbert Hoover in the Harding and Coolidge years
Hoover bungles it. He plays hard-to-get by pretending he doesn’t want the Presidency, but potential supporters interpret this as him just literally not wanting the Presidency. He refuses to identify as either a Democrat or Republican, intending to make a gesture of above-the-fray non-partisanship, but this prevents either party from rallying around him. Also, he might be the worst public speaker in the history of politics.
Warren D. Harding, a nondescript Senator from Ohio, wins the Republican nomination and the Presidency. Hoover follows his usual strategy of playing hard-to-get by proclaiming he doesn’t want any Cabinet positions. This time it works, but not well: Harding offers him Secretary of Commerce, widely considered a powerless “dud” position. Hoover accepts.
Harding is famous for promising “return to normalcy”, in particular a winding down of the massive expansion of government that marked WWI and the Wilson Administration. Hoover had a better idea – use the newly-muscular government to centralize and rationalize American In his first few years in Commerce – hitherto a meaningless portfolio for people who wanted to say vaguely pro-prosperity things and then go off and play golf – Hoover instituted/invented housing standards, traffic safety standards, industrial standards, zoning standards, standardized electrical sockets, standardized screws, standardized bricks, standardized boards, and standardized hundreds of other things. He founded the FAA to standardize air traffic, and the FCC to standardize communications. In order to learn how his standards were affecting the economy, he founded the NBER to standardize government statistics.
But that isn’t enough! He mediates a conflict between states over water rights to the Colorado River, even though that would normally be a Department of the Interior job. He solves railroad strikes, over the protests of the Department of Labor. “Much to the annoyance of the State Department, Hoover fielded his own foreign service.” He proposes to transfer 16 agencies from other Cabinet departments to the Department of Commerce, and when other Secretaries shot him down, he does all their jobs anyway. The press dub him “Secretary of Commerce and Undersecretary Of Everything Else”.
Hoover’s greatest political test comes when the market crashes in the Panic of 1921. The federal government has previously ignored these financial panics. Pre-Wilson, it was small and limited to its constitutional duties – plus nobody knows how to solve a financial panic anyway. Hoover jumps into action, calling a conference of top economists and moving forward large spending projects. More important, he is one of the first government officials to realize that financial panics have a psychological aspect, so he immediately puts out lots of press releases saying that economists agree everything is fine and the panic is definitely over. He takes the opportunity to write letters saying that Herbert Hoover has solved the financial panic and is a great guy, then sign President Harding’s name to them. Whether or not Hoover deserves credit, the panic is short and mild, and his reputation grows.
While everyone else obsesses over his recession-busting, Hoover’s own pet project is saving the Soviet Union. Several years of civil war, communism, and crop failure have produced mass famine. Most of the world refuses to help, angry that the USSR is refusing to pay Czarist Russia’s debts and also pretty peeved over the whole Communism thing. Hoover finds $20 million to spend on food aid for Russia, over everyone else’s objection […]
So passed the early 1920s. Warren Harding died of a stroke, and was succeeded by Vice-President “Silent Cal” Coolidge, a man famous for having no opinions and never talking. Coolidge won re-election easily in 1924. Hoover continued shepherding the economy (average incomes will rise 30% over his eight years in Commerce), but also works on promoting Hooverism, his political philosophy. It has grown from just “benevolent engineers oversee everything” to something kind of like a precursor modern neoliberalism:
Hoover’s plan amounted to a complete refit of America’s single gigantic plant, and a radical shift in Washington’s economic priorities. Newsmen were fascinated by is talk of a “third alternative” between “the unrestrained capitalism of Adam Smith” and the new strain of socialism rooting in Europe. Laissez-faire was finished, Hoover declared, pointing to antitrust laws and the growth of public utilities as evidence. Socialism, on the other hand, was a dead end, providing no stimulus to individual initiative, the engine of progress. The new Commerce Department was seeking what one reporter summarized as a balance between fairly intelligent business and intelligently fair government. If that were achieved, said Hoover, “we should have given a priceless gift to the twentieth century.”
Scott Alexander, “Book Review: Hoover”, Slate Star Codex, 2020-03-17.
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December 1, 2024
“Huntziger must be shot!” – WW2 Commentary 1939-1940
World War Two
Published 30 Nov 2024Today Indy and Spartacus sit down to answer all kinds of questions about the first year of WW2. How phony was the Phony War? How do you go around the Maginot Line? And much more! Also, Indy sings a song about Charles Huntziger.
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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 24, 2024
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
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.
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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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November 9, 2024
Did US Indecision Encourage Stalin in Korea?
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 8 Nov 2024In March 1950, Stalin finally approves Kim Il-sung’s plans for an invasion of South Korea. But why now? Today Indy looks at the wider Cold War context that fed into Stalin and Mao Zedong’s decision making. He also examines whether the lack of a clear and public commitment from the US to defend the Asian theatre helped to invite the invasion.
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