{"id":99765,"date":"2026-03-26T01:00:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T05:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=99765"},"modified":"2026-03-27T07:52:42","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T11:52:42","slug":"qotd-instead-of-the-unsinkable-battleship-we-have-the-unsinkable-military-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/03\/26\/qotd-instead-of-the-unsinkable-battleship-we-have-the-unsinkable-military-expert\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: “Instead of the unsinkable battleship we have the unsinkable Military Expert …”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>One way of feeling infallible is not to keep a diary. Looking back through the diary I kept in 1940 and 1941 I find that I was usually wrong when it was possible to be wrong. Yet I was not so wrong as the Military Experts. Experts of various schools were telling us in 1939 that the Maginot Line was impregnable, and that the Russo-German Pact had put an end to Hitler’s eastwards expansion; in early 1940 they were telling us that the days of tank warfare were over; in mid 1940 they were telling us that the Germans would invade Britain forthwith; in mid 1941 that the Red army would fold up in six weeks; in December 1941, that Japan would collapse after ninety days; in July 1942, that Egypt was lost and so on, more or less indefinitely.<\/p>\n

Where now are the men who told us those things? Still on the job, drawing fat salaries. Instead of the unsinkable battleship we have the unsinkable Military Expert …<\/p>\n

George Orwell, “As I Please”, Tribune<\/em><\/a>, 1943-12-17.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Update, 27 March<\/strong>: Welcome, Instapundit<\/em> readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack<\/em> \u2013 https:\/\/substack.com\/@nicholasrusson<\/a> that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One way of feeling infallible is not to keep a diary. Looking back through the diary I kept in 1940 and 1941 I find that I was usually wrong when it was possible to be wrong. Yet I was not so wrong as the Military Experts. Experts of various schools were telling us in 1939 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,7,5,41,230],"tags":[156,354,213,1575],"class_list":["post-99765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-history","category-military","category-quotations","category-ww2","tag-fail","tag-georgeorwell","tag-newspapers","tag-strategy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-pX7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99765"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101576,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99765\/revisions\/101576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}