2 things:
1. Hitler was also famous for some of the heavy drugs he took at the behest of his doctor, which many people believe were one of the reasons for some of his catastrophically poor decisions throughout the war. That's hilarious.
2. "Don't smoke mein freuden, zat stuff vill kill you!" uh.... smoke up buddy I think you don't have anything to worry about.
1. Hitler was also famous for some of the heavy drugs he took at the behest of his doctor, which many people believe were one of the reasons for some of his catastrophically poor decisions throughout the war. That's hilarious.
2. "Don't smoke mein freuden, zat stuff vill kill you!" uh.... smoke up buddy I think you don't have anything to worry about.
> heavy drugs he took at the behest of his doctor
Interesting. Opiates?
Interesting. Opiates?
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https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/07/518986612/author-says-hitler-was-blitzed-on-cocaine-and-opiates-during-the-war
Opiates and cocaine. Sounds bad but (apparently I need to defend Hitler and prove my critics totally right) keep in mind that we took some time to really understand how bad all these drugs were. Sigmund Freud died in 1939 right before he started using and before he realized how dangerous it was and recanted he wrote a book called "on cocaine" which basically talks about how much he loved cocaine.
Also, "German supersoldier serum" was just methamphetamine, which powered the long journeys of the blitzkrieg. It wasn't until much later that it was really appreciated how dangerous drugs are.
https://time.com/5752114/nazi-military-drugs/
Opiates and cocaine. Sounds bad but (apparently I need to defend Hitler and prove my critics totally right) keep in mind that we took some time to really understand how bad all these drugs were. Sigmund Freud died in 1939 right before he started using and before he realized how dangerous it was and recanted he wrote a book called "on cocaine" which basically talks about how much he loved cocaine.
Also, "German supersoldier serum" was just methamphetamine, which powered the long journeys of the blitzkrieg. It wasn't until much later that it was really appreciated how dangerous drugs are.
https://time.com/5752114/nazi-military-drugs/
This is genuinely fascinating. I'd never heard of this, and never considered it.
Whatifalthist has suggested that one of the strengths of national socialism, it's dependence on masculine values like heroism, racial tribalism, and strength, also ended up being its single catastrophic weakness because without tempering such values with other values you end up with an empire everyone else hates and will work together to tear down, and your leadership ends up filled with people who are busy stomping all over each other for the potential for glory. That's in contrast to the Soviet union which he claims had a dependence on feminine values like community, redistribution, and a sort of toxic order that led to situations like the gulags.
I'd argue that it isn't masculine or feminine values that doomed those nations, but unalloyed purity of these values. Humans will die out of we follow only a narrow subset of our values no matter how good those values are. Heroism must be tempered by compassion. Supporting the ingroup must be tempered by charity for the outgroup. Valor must be tempered with humility. Your personal victory must be tempered by the victory of those around you. That's what ultimately destroyed both countries, and anyone who thinks they can live life ignoring core human values of any kind are in for a rude awakening as most humans values have been pounded into our DNA and our culture by their necessity. People and civilizations with failings in their value systems tend to be lost to history.
I'd argue that it isn't masculine or feminine values that doomed those nations, but unalloyed purity of these values. Humans will die out of we follow only a narrow subset of our values no matter how good those values are. Heroism must be tempered by compassion. Supporting the ingroup must be tempered by charity for the outgroup. Valor must be tempered with humility. Your personal victory must be tempered by the victory of those around you. That's what ultimately destroyed both countries, and anyone who thinks they can live life ignoring core human values of any kind are in for a rude awakening as most humans values have been pounded into our DNA and our culture by their necessity. People and civilizations with failings in their value systems tend to be lost to history.
War is a strange thing. On one hand, there's rules to war, and in that respect it almost looks civilized. POW exchanges and the like.
On the other hand, war is war, and in that respect it's utterly horrible and deranged.
Attacking cities -- not just early small scale raids like Tokyo or Berlin, but later large scale attacks like the firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo later on in the war which have even been compared to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in terms of the sheer toll on innocent life -- is just another tactic in a grand strategy, and the lives of the people in those cities are just chips on the board to be flipped or consumed as required to achieve victory.
In the case of Germany and Japan it is arguable that virtually any means may be acceptable to prevent final victory because their regimes would have made most of the worst excesses of western democracies look trivial in comparison for at least some of the conquered peoples should they have succeeded, but it's a heavy toll, and just because something is justifiable for practical reasons doesn't mean it isn't a horrible loss of innocence and doesn't mean it isn't a terrible evil.
Then there's the Soviets who in my view were just on a completely different scale. Many people today look back and go "I don't even know why we were scared of the Soviets, obviously they were never actually military competitors to the west", but the sheer callous scale of the suffering imposed by Stalin on his own people to take Berlin is unthinkable. If history ended in 1946 perhaps it would have regarded them as selfless heroes, but in retrospect it should have been obvious that something like the gulags existed. The Soviet Union lost more soldiers in World War 2 than all the axis powers in the German theatre, as well as all the allied powers in the German theatre, combined. To give an idea, the Americans lost about 450,000 soldiers through the war, the Germans lost about 5.3 million, Germany's allies in the german theatre of the war lost about 1.5 million, while the Russians lost as many as 10.7 million soldiers.
tl;dr: war sucks, bro.
On the other hand, war is war, and in that respect it's utterly horrible and deranged.
Attacking cities -- not just early small scale raids like Tokyo or Berlin, but later large scale attacks like the firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo later on in the war which have even been compared to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in terms of the sheer toll on innocent life -- is just another tactic in a grand strategy, and the lives of the people in those cities are just chips on the board to be flipped or consumed as required to achieve victory.
In the case of Germany and Japan it is arguable that virtually any means may be acceptable to prevent final victory because their regimes would have made most of the worst excesses of western democracies look trivial in comparison for at least some of the conquered peoples should they have succeeded, but it's a heavy toll, and just because something is justifiable for practical reasons doesn't mean it isn't a horrible loss of innocence and doesn't mean it isn't a terrible evil.
Then there's the Soviets who in my view were just on a completely different scale. Many people today look back and go "I don't even know why we were scared of the Soviets, obviously they were never actually military competitors to the west", but the sheer callous scale of the suffering imposed by Stalin on his own people to take Berlin is unthinkable. If history ended in 1946 perhaps it would have regarded them as selfless heroes, but in retrospect it should have been obvious that something like the gulags existed. The Soviet Union lost more soldiers in World War 2 than all the axis powers in the German theatre, as well as all the allied powers in the German theatre, combined. To give an idea, the Americans lost about 450,000 soldiers through the war, the Germans lost about 5.3 million, Germany's allies in the german theatre of the war lost about 1.5 million, while the Russians lost as many as 10.7 million soldiers.
tl;dr: war sucks, bro.
That's a good point. Germany only surrendered when Berlin fell and it was totally conquered and Hitler enjoyed a saltpeter and sulphur surprise, and Japan surrendered after it was clear they'd lost totally and two of their cities just had the world's most powerful weapon used against them and a breaking of the declaration of neutrality by the Soviets. If the mass bombing of urban centers demoralized the enemy then they never would have fought to the last man.
I try to fact check my posts before I make them because I'm wasting everyone's time if I'm saying things that are just factually false. In the process of checking this post, I found out that Berlin fell on May 2nd and surrendered on May 7th (and again on May 8th because Stalin said "Surrender harder!"). I find it interesting that the second nuke hit Japan on August 9th, but the unconditional surrender didn't take place until September 2nd. I guess there was actually an internal power struggle and an attempted coup against the emperor, and after the emperor made a radio broadcast explaining the decision to surrender the military tried to confiscate all copies of the broadcast.
I try to fact check my posts before I make them because I'm wasting everyone's time if I'm saying things that are just factually false. In the process of checking this post, I found out that Berlin fell on May 2nd and surrendered on May 7th (and again on May 8th because Stalin said "Surrender harder!"). I find it interesting that the second nuke hit Japan on August 9th, but the unconditional surrender didn't take place until September 2nd. I guess there was actually an internal power struggle and an attempted coup against the emperor, and after the emperor made a radio broadcast explaining the decision to surrender the military tried to confiscate all copies of the broadcast.
That's a good point. Germany only surrendered when Berlin fell and it was totally conquered and Hitler enjoyed a saltpeter and sulphur surprise, and Japan surrendered after it was clear they'd lost totally and two of their cities just had the world's most powerful weapon used against them. If the mass bombing of urban centers demoralized the enemy then they never would have fought to the last man.
I try to fact check my posts before I make them because I'm wasting everyone's time if I'm saying things that are just factually false. In the process of checking this post, I found out that Germany fell on May 2nd and surrendered on May 7th (and again on May 8th-9th because Stalin said "Surrender harder!"). I find it interesting that the second nuke hit Japan on August 9th, but the unconditional surrender didn't fully take place until September 2nd. I guess there was actually an internal power struggle and an attempted coup against the emperor, and after the emperor made a radio broadcast explaining the decision to surrender the military tried to confiscate all copies of the broadcast.
I try to fact check my posts before I make them because I'm wasting everyone's time if I'm saying things that are just factually false. In the process of checking this post, I found out that Germany fell on May 2nd and surrendered on May 7th (and again on May 8th-9th because Stalin said "Surrender harder!"). I find it interesting that the second nuke hit Japan on August 9th, but the unconditional surrender didn't fully take place until September 2nd. I guess there was actually an internal power struggle and an attempted coup against the emperor, and after the emperor made a radio broadcast explaining the decision to surrender the military tried to confiscate all copies of the broadcast.