Was There Any Chance The Axis Powers Would Win WWII?

From a thread at Greg Cochran:

* Greg Cochran writes: In October, 1941, the Soviet Union was in trouble. The Germans had just taken another huge bite out of the Red Army, capturing half a million men in the Vyazma and Bryansk pockets. At this point the Soviets were badly outnumbered, for the only time in the war, and the Germans were about 75 miles west of Moscow.

On Oct 13, the Germans took Kalinin, northwest of Moscow.

On Oct 15th, Stalin ordered the evacuation of the Communist Party, the General Staff and various civil government offices from Moscow to Kuibyshev (now Samara). “October 16th became known as the Bolshoi drap in Moscow, the day of the “Great Panic.” The Soviet government began to evacuate across the Ural mountains to Kuibyshev, over 600 miles away. Party officials jammed the roads and railway stations while offices and factories emptied out; the general public took their cue and joined the exodus. Looting was extensive in the empty streets without any police force to keep order. ”

“Stalin himself had ordered his special railway car prepared for evacuation on the sixteenth. However, he did not leave the city. He pondered whether or not Hitler might not be willing to come to an agreement similar to the Brest-Litovsk treaty of 1918, in which Russia exchanged huge swaths of territory for peace with Germany and the continued existence of the Communist government. He rejected this remote. He called on Zhukov and implored him to give assurance that Moscow could be held. Gaining Zhukov’s assurance, he then made the decision to stay.”

He was thinking about leaving: that railway car wasn’t for decoration.

What if he’d run, like Darius?

There was a lot of trade going on between Germany and the USSR in the first half of 1941, flowing out of the Hitler-Stalin pact. The terms of trade were favorable to the Germans: the soviets, scared shitless of the Germans, thought that the Germans wouldn’t invade if they got everything they wanted. Towards the end, the Russians were shipping more and more stuff, over and above the agreed amount, because they were trying to placate the Germans. Grain, oil, lots of stuff. So much so that the Germans had trouble trans-shipping it all. While the Germans were shipping less and less: explaining that the check was in the mail. Every German ship left Russian ports before the attack.

If the Russians were planning an attack in the near future, they would have acted as the Germans eventually did – stiff the trading partner you’re soon going to be at war with. There were many other things that the Germans did in preparation for the attack – many recon flights into russia, sending in sappers to cut phone lines on Der Tag, etc – the Russians did none of those things.

* The USSR was just too big and too cold for the Germans. Good old General Winter, invaluable with both Napoleon & Hitler.

The Nazis did get as far as seeing the city in the distance. The part about Stalin ordering much of the government east but staying himself was well described in Simon Sebag Montefiore‘s book on Stalin. The engine kept running, Stalin pacing around the station.

Even if he had retreated, it’s hard to see the Nazis winning. But they might have forced Stalin out of the war. It worked in WW 1.

* People usually bring up Napoleon-Moscow as some argument why Germany taking Moscow in ’41 wouldn’t have been a war winner. But the economic/industrial/transportation/political situation in ’41 was completely different.

If somehow Germans had taken Moscow (and held it, very important given flank exposure, winter, and SU counterattacks), beyond huge propaganda morale blow to SU it also means Northen front is basically cut off, so Leningrad almost certainly falls soon thereafter as well as all Karelia (likely annexed by Finland).

And the Russian logistical situation would be a nightmare across the board whereas German would improve. With fall of Leningrad and Moscow it’s very hard to imagine SU not pulling back to behind Urals and suing for some Brest-litovsk style peace.

* Steve Sailer: My guess is that Stalin in 1939 had a pretty reasonable plan based on WWI: make a deal with Germany, wait for them to attack France and then get inevitably bogged down on the Western Front just like in 1914. After a few years of disastrous trench warfare, the tottering capitalist powers would be ripe for revolution, at which point the Red Army would invade Western Europe and pick up the pieces.

Unlike Hitler, Stalin was a worrywart and preferred to be opportunistic rather than adventurous. For the Soviets to attack the Germans before the Germans were severely weakened by years of war with the French and British would be suicidal. The Germans had proven themselves brilliant counterpunchers in the Great War, while the Russians had not distinguished themselves on offense. But if the Soviets sat out the first few years of WWII and built their strength, they could come in at the end like the Americans had in 1918 and prove decisive.

But when the Germans conquered the French in 1940, this prospect evaporated and Stalin was left without much of a plan other than being nice to Hitler in the hope he wouldn’t attack.

My vague impression is that Russians/Soviets aren’t that good at coming up with a Plan B until desperation forces them. Stalin had a pretty decent Plan A — wait for Germany to exhaust itself fighting in the West. But when Plan A became untenable, Stalin went into a funk for a year.

* Axis victory where Germany puts its industry on total war footing near the beginning of the war instead of waiting until 1943 to begin the process, which was not consummated until the summer of 1944 (even then it was still ‘in-process’ but could not advance any further on account of the accumulation of strain from the war). If I remember correctly German tank production peaked in August 1944, more than a year after the near-complete destruction of Hamburg by Allied bombers, not to mention the ongoing Allied naval embargo of occupied Europe and bomber raids targeting the Ruhr. That the Germans reached the peak of their industrial capacity – at least in terms of tank production – under these circumstances is so goofy it would seem implausible if it weren’t true, and shows you how much they were fucking the dog for the first half of the war. So the “what if” here is something like, what if Operation Barbarossa had substantially more Panzer and motorized infantry divisions to work with? Like how about twice as many? In that case, the blow should have been hard enough to knock the Soviets down; it almost was even so.

It doesn’t seem so implausible; it’s 1939 or 1940, you’re at war with France and England, you’re thinking long-term about invading the Soviet Union, you’re in what most sensible people would consider a “serious situation.” You’re Nazis, so you have the necessary control over society and the economy to accelerate the production of war materials. Why the hell didn’t they do it? In the first half of the war, Nazi Germany made less effort and less sacrifices to put the economy on a war footing than democratic Great Britain.

* Oddly enough, the Nazis thought that homefront morale was fragile and needed cossetting; – they blamed morale collapse for the loss in WWI. And then they thought winning would be easy.

* There’s a book full of scenarios for a Nazi victory: Third Reich Victorious, ed. Peter G. Tsouras.

Posted in War | Comments Off on Was There Any Chance The Axis Powers Would Win WWII?

#106 11-9-18 The Fever Rises: The Coddling of the American Mind

00:00 Andrew Sullivan’s column on the mid-terms
10:00 What’s going on in Broward County? Who’s Brenda Snipes? Fox: Brenda Snipes, Broward elections official at center of ballot storm, has history of controversy
24:00 Does Bibi Netanyahu have influence with American Jews?
25:00 Michelle Obama’s new book
35:00 RBG to step down in January because of recurrence of cancer?
37:00 Are California’s fires a repercussion of the state’s moral degradation?
45:00 Thousand Oaks shooter was a tattooed freak
47:00 Public profanity
50:00 Trump calls April Ryan a ‘loser,’ threatens to revoke more press credentials
51:00 No sexts please, we’re Canadian (Tony Clements sexting scandal)
1:02:00 Richard Spencer says you should never send a dick pic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDZYk7V4F9o&index=5&list=PLPuwf9vQikNI4q_lsQFeumxX6nhXY2bkr&bpctr=1541808248
1:05:50 Book Club: The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

* Andrew Sullivan: America’s Fever Is Still Rising

* Trump calls April Ryan a ‘loser,’ threatens to revoke more press credentials

* Book Club: The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

* Canadian conservative Tony Clement in sexting scandal More More

* Private Eye’s old jokes

* Michelle Obama rips Trump in new book

* Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 85, misses Trump attending Brett Kavanaugh’s formal investiture after she is hospitalized with three broken ribs after fall Retire in January? More More

Posted in Alt Right | Comments Off on #106 11-9-18 The Fever Rises: The Coddling of the American Mind

Steve Sailer: Matthew Yglesias Sympathizes with Terrorizing Tucker Carlson’s Four Children

From Steve Sailer:

* This ain’t all that new. Anyone remember how gays chased down donors to Prop 8 at their homes and workplaces and posted all of their addresses online?

* From Heavy: Matty Yglesias Has Deleted His Entire Twitter Feed

* I have been noting for some time that Matthew Yglesias has gone to a Dark Place.

* That is the image of a hardened man, the type of man who is shaped by toiling to survive in an extreme environment. A fighter, a pioneer, a frontiersman, a man of steely resolution. How does he ever find the time, outside of all of that, to produce all of that tremendous intellectual output? Truly a man of whom we are unworthy of being in his company.

* How’s that Civic Nationalism working out, Steve?

How’s that attempt at getting American Jews to feel some noblesse oblige toward their fellow gentile White American citizens coming along, Steve?

My apologies, but you’re fighting the last war. I think the world of Steve, but the writing is on the wall, and he refuses to read it. The game is over, people. The only question is what comes next, and how do we protect ourselves and scratch out a place for Whites who want to live among and be ruled by their own kind.

We can’t save what was the United States – though that entity in another form will exist for a very long time to come – but we can look to start building something else.

You mock Yglesias, but he’s the future. Your children – my children – will be facing his kind of hatred on a daily basis when they’re our age. What are you going to do about it?

I’m working on my plans. They may not succeed, but, at least, I’m trying.

The iSteve community feels like a debate team going into a gang fight.

* LF: Steve posts strategically. Citizenism isn’t necessarily what he believes, it is the most effective thing to advocate in the service of what he believes. Every comment has a context. Steve lives in Los Angeles. He has a wife and kids. He’s not on a suicide mission.

* I think Steve sees it—he’s no dummy—but it’s beyond the scope of this blog to muse about hot war strategies and tactics. Most obviously—one could get shut down, arrested, etc. But secondly, individuals have differing thresholds on when war, or violence in general, is justified or desirable. Steve, being non-anonymous, is wise to be mum on that topic as a matter of practical discussion.

* For civilization to flourish people need clear boundaries and there need to be consequences for overstepping those boundaries.

There are no negative consequences for a lefty like Yglesias to advocate violence against Republicans. Instead there is prestige and job security in doing so. There aren’t even negative consequences for antifa. However, if like the Proud Boys you fight back, you will be crushed by the powers that be including Trump’s FBI and DOJ.

Thus my main beef with Trump. He has never cared about censorship of, calls to violence against or actual violence against his supporters. Trump is silent now. Trump was largely silent in the election when his supporters were physically attacked going to and from his rallies. He only cared when people were disrupting the rally.

* One of the unintended consequences of these types of incidents including the Kavanaugh affair, is that some of the more cucked out whites are beginning to realize they cannot hide. Many have felt relatively safe in the burbs because they can limit physical contact with vibrants. Likewise, going to “good schools”, behaving professionally, being married once, having a black friend, etc. could have warded off trouble in the past, but the Soros mobs are no longer worried about polite society and will break every barrier to get what they demand until they are taught a lesson. They are going to keep using fake accusations of racism and sexism, bullying, outing, doxing and the rest until it no longer works. Americans will eventually stop being worried and just become pissed.

Posted in Alt Right | Comments Off on Steve Sailer: Matthew Yglesias Sympathizes with Terrorizing Tucker Carlson’s Four Children

#105 11-8-18 RBG Down

00:00 Implications of RBG’s three fractured ribs, is Trump about to get another Supreme Court pick?
17:00 ‘No Empathy’: Vox’s Matt Yglesias Defends ‘Terrorizing’ Tucker Carlson’s Family: ‘No Empathy’: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/11/08/vox-matt-yglesias-defends-terrorizing-tucker-carlsons-family/
19:00 Sinema takes slim lead in too-close-to-call Arizona Senate race
25:00 To the media, Antifa violence does not exist, but America is overrun by white nationalists
28:00 Robert Mueller probe wrapping up, nothing in it or it would have been leaked already
38:00 MSNBC’S MADDOW ORGANIZING STREET MARCHES TO PROTEST SESSIONS FIRING
40:00 Where did Jeff Sessions go wrong?
42:00 Tattooed ex-Marine who killed 12 people in country music bar massacre had PTSD: Gunman, 28, ‘terrified’ his mother and neighbors after returning from Afghanistan tour before he opened fire on student night
48:00 Trudeau Apologizes for Canada’s Turning Away Ship of Jews Fleeing Nazis
1:01:00 The State of Hate: Researchers at the Southern Poverty Law Center have set themselves up as the ultimate judges of hate in America. But are they judging fairly?
1:10:00 KMG’s Roman Catholicism
1:35:00 ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ CAN’T AFFORD WASHINGTON, D.C., UNTIL CONGRESSWOMAN’S SALARY ACTUALLY HITS
1:43:00 THEATER THURSDAY: Sullivan’s Travels (1941) by Preston Sturges

* Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 85, breaks ribs in fall

A taste of post-RBG hysteria from Reddit:

* Tattooed ex-Marine who killed 12 people in country music bar massacre had PTSD: Gunman, 28, ‘terrified’ his mother and neighbors after returning from Afghanistan tour before he opened fire on student night

* Trump reviewing his answers to Mueller as he changes who oversees the Russia investigation

* Manchin: We’re ‘on the verge’ of a constitutional crisis due to Sessions’s firing

* MSNBC’S MADDOW ORGANIZING STREET MARCHES TO PROTEST SESSIONS FIRING

* Facing national microscope again, Florida braces for several recounts

* DC Antifa Publishes Home Addresses of Tucker Carlson and His Brother — As Well As Ann Coulter, Neil Patel, and Sean Hannity

* AJC: Trailing but close, Abrams pushes to keep campaign alive

* Washington Post on SPLC

* HIV-infected Thai man accused of raping scores of teenagers

* NYT: Trudeau Apologizes for Canada’s Turning Away Ship of Jews Fleeing Nazis

* ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ CAN’T AFFORD WASHINGTON, D.C., UNTIL CONGRESSWOMAN’S SALARY ACTUALLY HITS

Posted in Alt Right, America | Comments Off on #105 11-8-18 RBG Down

#104 11-7-18 Divide And Conquer – Post Mid-Terms Analysis 2018

00:00 KMG leaves Edmonton for Victoria
06:00 Jim Acosta loses his hard press pass to White House
08:00 Trump’s first 22 months was mixed
12:00 KMG on mid-terms
20:00 Bill Kristol says demography is destiny
26:00 David Brooks in NYT: “Over the next few decades, America will become a majority-minority country. It is hard to think of other major nations, down through history, that have managed such a transition and still held together.”
35:00 Bill Sammon/Fox News call House for Democrats around 6:30 pm CA time, with 90 minutes of open polls on the West Coast.
41:00 Trump thrives on confrontation
1:00:00 Jeff Sessions is out as AG
1:02:00 Q-Anon destroyed
1:08:00 No progress on Wall, no second term for Trump
1:13:00 Mid-terms death blow to Trump agenda?
1:20:00 Why no talk about e-verify?
1:28:00 At Last, Israel Recognizes Ethiopian Spiritual Leaders
1:33:00 Bill Kristol says demography is destiny
1:38:00 How did Kris Kobach lose in Kansas?
1:39:00 DT says to Democrats two can play the investigation game
1:40:00 Trey Gowdy grandstands, accomplishes nothing
1:44:00 Antifa riots outside of Tucker Carlson’s home
1:50:00 LAT: “[Adam] Schiff…has big brown puppy dog eyes, apple-red cheeks and the mildest manner you’ve ever seen in a former prosecutor with a killer instinct.” Sounds like Teen Vogue.
1:52:00 Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon. CNN seems gay.
1:53:00 Homo-erotic MSM crushes on Trudeau (father Pierre and son Justin)
1:58:00 Mueller on the brink: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-mueller-russia-investigation-20181107-story.html
2:00:00 Ecce Lux joins discussion about internet blood sports with Brundlefly
2:17:00 WEHT to Frame Game?
2:27:00 Richard Spencer/Mike Enoch have taken the most pressure and not cucked, everyone under similar pressure has disappeared

* JF Gariepy kicks Jim Goad within 2 minutes last night.

* Bill Kristol chortles at the browning of America:

* Trump warns Democrats: Two can play that game.

* It’s hard to tell the difference between Teen Vogue & the Los Angeles Times: “[Adam] Schiff…has big brown puppy dog eyes, apple-red cheeks and the mildest manner you’ve ever seen in a former prosecutor with a killer instinct.”

* Jeff Sessions resigns.

* ‘CNN Should Be Ashamed’: Jim Acosta Hogs Mic at Trump Midterm Presser

* Jake Tapper: Lots of GOPers losing tonight — Coffman, Curbelo — have been critical of POTUS ….meaning the next GOP House conference will be much more Trump-supporting.

Democrat males wear the Soylent Grin:

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* I like the guy and appreciate what he’s done with immigration but he shouldn’t have recused himself. Democrats don’t play by the rules but a lot of Republicans like Sessions still do, even though the Kavanaugh farce woke some of them up. Republicans need to stop playing by rules that their opponents ignore.

Also, Trump was an immigration patriot before he hooked up with Sessions and will stay one, so all the commenters who are going to say he’ll cave on immigration are wrong.

* Good riddance.

Two years ago, when the liberals had their collective panties in a knot over Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, the drawling Southerner from Alabama, I was cheered.

Turns out their hatred and my optimism were misplaced. Sessions failed to sue blue states for Second Amendment civil rights violations; he failed to sue colleges and businesses for anti-white affirmative action practices in violation of the 14th Amendment; he failed to effectively prosecute both illegal aliens and the employers who hire them; he failed to prosecute antifa and other leftist mobs for interstate gangsterism and racketeering; he failed to discipline the FBI for its role in the attempted coup against Trump.

If only the caricature of Sessions as the redneck Southern sheriff had been true…

* Sessions, like Graham when McCain was alive, is a principled gentlemen who truly wishes to be an upstanding member of society and to “do the right thing” and play by the rules. Too bad because guys like that get taken advantage of by two-faced, amoral sociopathic liberals; you know, nice guy finishes last. Graham got a taste of this during the Kavanaugh hearing. Sessions probably honestly thought he should play by a set of rules his enemies are tearing up. Remarkable naivety. Boomers like Sessions and Graham come from a generation that valued civic virtue, principles, and the rule of law. But guys like them also let in a bunch of foreigners who think those things are quaint abstractions invented by racists to keep them down, changing the country into something alien in the process. Something similar happened with Israel. Russian immigration change the country’s character into something totally different from Oslo. People make countries. Not lines on a map or ideological abstractions.

MORE COMMENTS:

* State Rep. Ilhan Omar made history, becoming the first Somali-American elected to the U.S. House by defeating Republican Jennifer Zielinski in the Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District.

But is she the first person elected to the House who married a sibling? (I’m combing through wiki’s West Virginia entry as I type.)

* “too soon and polls still open – they’re trying to throw it”

Reminds me of a great article that appeared on TAC years ago. It alleged that Dan Rather purposely misstated Florida’s poll closing time on election night 2000 a number of times in an attempt to throw the election to Gore, the rival of the family he personally hated. It was noted in the article that Rather was 1.) unlikely to have made this mistake on accident considering the number of times he said it (he had producers after all) and 2.) likely intended this time zone fallacy to spread. It did, being picked up and repeated by multiple networks. Although, in their cases, the anchors in question only said it a few times after a producer had probably corrected them.

* The United States is a RED NATION with BLUE ISLANDS of high-density urban populations on the coasts and within the large cities of the interior. Since this was a mid-term election, urban population density mattered, especially with respect to congressional districts apportioned on population.

Oklahoma voted RED … while Oklahoma City and Norman voted BLUE.
Kansas voted RED … while Kansas City, KS, voted BLUE.
Missouri voted RED … while Kansas City and St. Louis voted BLUE.
Indiana voted RED … while Indianapolis voted BLUE.
Tennessee voted RED … while Nashville voted BLUE.
Virginia voted RED … while the urban buildups voted BLUE.
Pennsylvania voted RED … while Pittsburg and the Philadelphia urban buildup voted BLUE.
Colorado voted RED … while the Ski Slopes voted BLUE.
etc.

The Electoral College and Senate based on state sovereignty and geography rather than apportioned based on voter majorities means that the RED STATES will continue to exert a major influence on national politics. The urban Democrats will continue to cry foul; that is, that the United States is not a democratic nation and will not be one until the Electoral College is done away with and the number of Senators is apportioned based on population. Then, the East Coast and Left Coast (with a little help from select large cities in the interior) can, by themselves, elect the President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives.

This will never happen short of a violent civil war/revolution won by the urban centers. In the meantime, it is a standoff between urban and rural populations.

Posted in Alt Right, Jeff Sessions | Comments Off on #104 11-7-18 Divide And Conquer – Post Mid-Terms Analysis 2018