Day by day? You'll be done watching it in about six years then.

Anyway, who's winning?

It starts by saying that WWII started 1 Sept. 1939. It started with the signing of the Versailles Treaty June, 1919. And it erupted into flames at various times and places before 1939.

I recommend this this book, if you want to know about WWII.

https://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Second-World-Winston-Churchill/dp/0395599687/ref=sr_1_6?crid=2DWTVI4MWIPJI&dchild=1&keywords=winston+churchill+books&qid=1624074525&s=books&sprefix=winston+churchill%2Cstripbooks%2C197&sr=1-6

American men when they turn 55 turn into either a World War II nut or a Civil War nut

Why would you recommend Churchill? Certainly not for reliable information, right?

I wonder if he talks about the holocaust famine he induced in India.

A day-by-day account doesn't appeal to me, but if you like it, great. Will it cover both the war in Asia as well as the war in Europe? The World War -- Part I and Part II (1914 to 1945) was a huge watershed; nothing was left untouched.

American men when they turn 55 turn into either a World War II nut or a Civil War nut — Maw

I didn't become interested in WWII until I was about 70. For the last decade or so I've been reading to fill in the large holes which high school and college left. There are many good books, television, film--even radio programs which cover the war.

The Thames Television program The World at War, must have been made in either the late '60s or 1970s; it was a many-episode history of documentary film and narration. I say it in 1980, about. Very good program.

Because world war is a watershed with endless political, financial, military, social, technical... consequences, there is no end to the topics and angles that can be pursued. It's a really rich area for study, which the war in the Crimea or the Franco-German war isn't, by comparison.

Day by day? You'll be done watching it in about six years then. — Apollodorus

Yes, the film goes on forever, just as the war did. Each daily segment is not a day long though. :-) Usually maybe five to ten minutes, depending on what happened that day.

Anyway, who's winning? — Apollodorus

At the moment the story has just reached the critical turning point. The Nazis have invaded Russia, an enterprise of Biblical scale. They've been doing great up until now, but problems are just starting to arise. Their tanks are out running their supply lines and supporting troops, so they are forced to slow down. This gives the Russians time to organize their reply and, we know how it goes from there.

American men when they turn 55 turn into either a World War II nut or a Civil War nut — Maw

There's truth in that. But I've been a WWII nut since childhood. In the fifties WWII was still very much a part of the cultural landscape.

It's just a great story. I mean, looking at it purely from a story telling perspective, as a novelist might. It has all the elements of an epic tale about good and evil etc. The Nazis played the villain role to perfection. There are too many hero stories to begin to count.

Here's an example, specifically suggested to the young folks among us. The guys who flew the bombers over Nazi Germany in the middle of the night, night after night after night, were your age. Twenty somethings. Usually early twenties.

You're up there in the dark, high above some enemy city. Flak is exploding all around you. Your pals in the plane on the left get hit and go spiraling towards the ground. The plane on the right of you gets hit and one of it's engines catches on fire. And you keep flying on towards the target.

And then you do it again the next night. And the next.

Balls of steel!!

Just kids. Barely out of high school. Sticking it to the man. In an incredibly impressive manner.

And then they had their own kids. Who turned in to hippies. What a let down!!! :-)

The WWII story is a horror show too, so it's not for everybody...

The German Army would race forward, typically crushing anything standing in their way. Normal warfare.

But right behind the German Army came the SS. While the German army fought other armies, the SS fought the civilians. They would round up anybody who posed the slightest threat to German rule and execute them.

As example, an order came down from on high to get rid of the gypsies. So the SS rounded up all of them, some 14,000 in one incident, and slaughtered all of them, men, women, children, everybody, without mercy. A tidal wave of such insane evil madness swept across Eastern Europe deep in to Russia. The scale of it is just breathtaking....

Will it cover both the war in Asia as well as the war in Europe? — Bitter Crank

As best I can tell, yes. But Pearl Harbor hasn't happened yet. Coverage of the war in China seems minimal so far. Mentioned, but few details.

The WWII story is a horror show too, so it's not for everybody... — Foghorn

I used to love horror movies when I was a kid but later they didn't scare me any more so they all started to just look silly and I gave up on them.

But, are you sure your movie isn't just Stalinist propaganda or something? Of course, it isn't right to kill civilians, but according to some sources there were communist guerrillas and agitators among them, so the Germans didn't have much choice. There was too much at stake to take any risks.

Plus Stalin killed many more Russians than the Germans and then don't forget Hiroshima, etc.

In the old days it was common practice to wipe out a whole defeated tribe with maybe a few kept as slaves or wives for the leaders. Just read the OT and you'll get the idea.

World War II. Reminds me of this:

12 hours every year of legalized crime (well, actually 6 whole years 1939 - 1945) if we want to save our country, we must release all our anger in one night...tonight we'll see the good and evil in everyone...at the siren, all crime, including murder will be legal for the next 12 hours (6 suns) [...]your government thanks you for your participation. — Government Announcer (The Purge)

But, are you sure your movie isn't just Stalinist propaganda or something — Apollodorus

No, I really don't think so. It's more like the kind of social studies history lesson you might have seen in high school. I don't detect any agenda. But of course, this film was made in the West, so it's not exactly trying to be fair to the Nazis. So I'll do that.... :-)

Imho, the Nazis were clearly world class evil doers who needed to be shot on sight. Would posters, and especially mods, please read that sentence again. Thank you very much.

However, the Nazis were really just trying to do the same thing that the Brits and Americans did in the creation of their empires. I know the American story better. First we committed genocide of the native peoples, and then we brought in some slaves to improve the land which had been stolen. This is the same game plan the Nazis were working.

The problem the Nazis had was that they were late to the game, and they played the role of evil doers too honestly, thus mobilizing global resistance more than they should have.

One thing that interests me is the degree to which Americans truly and sincerely believed there was a complete total difference between America and Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, while the Nazis are getting rolling in the thirties, we're still lynching blacks in the South, and the Klan was on the march. We'd only finished our big genocide project a generation before.

But anyway, America has slowly moved beyond the worst of that, and I doubt Nazi Germany ever would have. So yea, death to all Nazis. Thank God for the Russians, cause we could have never done it on our own.

Food for thought: Whatever else wars have been about, it all boiled down to space. One of Hitler's (the alleged culprit behind WW2) main motivations was the so-called lebensraum ideology (living space for Germans/Aryans). A similar argument may apply to all other wars that were ever fought till date that is...conquest meant land i.e space

What if...just what if...WW3 will be fought over time? I know the idea seems outlandish but consider the following scenario: Imagine the global ecology has collapsed and the earth's ability to sustain life is damaged beyond repair. Some benevolent aliens come to the rescue and open a portal to an inhabitable planet where we can start afresh. However, this portal is open only for a short duration (say 30 minutes at some specified location). Barring some kind of agreement between the nations of the world to maximize the chances of a favorable outcome for the human race as a whole, there's a non-zero probability that a world war (WW 3) will erupt for that 30 minutes the portal will remain open. War, not for space but for time!

Come to think of it, this isn't as crazy as I thought it was. Don't we all compete (a "war" by any other name smells as "sweet") for each other's time? :chin:

I've always been more interested in World War I.

I think it's because of the complexity of Great Power politics back then. I find the Great Game conflict between Russia and the UK in Central Asia particularly fascinating.

By contrast, Germany in WWII was led by people who believes their own extreme ideology, and made them ignore military and economic realities. While Germany could conceivably win WWI without too many things changing, it's very hard to see a situation where they could win WWII. It was essentially hopeless.

So, I collect memoirs from around that period, mostly diplomatic. But selection is pretty limited, so I pretty much just grab all 19th and early 20th century diplomatic memoris I can find.

While Germany could conceivably win WWI without too many things changing, it's very hard to see a situation where they could win WWII. — Count Timothy von Icarus

One can speculate how victory for Germany in WWII might have been accomplished.

Instead of invading France and attacking England Hitler might have done this.

All the capitalist powers feared communism. Hitler could have told the Western powers that he was going to end that threat for them. Forget about WWI, make peace with the West, shower France with love notes, don't rock that boat, and attack Russia first. So long as England and France didn't have a target on their back, they may very well have quietly looked away while Hitler crushed communism.

And then, once Hitler has the vast resources of Russia in his pocket, and no more need to fear a two front war, he then can turn westward.

Hitler wasted vast resources bombing England and the Atlantic sea war. All those resources could have been aimed at Russia.

I don't see Poland and the Baltics letting the German army in for an invasion whose success would have been dubious.

And even if we allow this, which is a pretty huge leap, negotiating to invade Russia through other countries means losing the element of surprise, which was Germany's only hope. Once they got into a war of attrition they were doomed against the USSR.

Maybe if they get material support from the Western Allies? But that seems fanciful.

And even if we allow this, which is a pretty huge leap, negotiating to invade Russia through other countries means losing the element of surprise — Count Timothy von Icarus

There really was no surprise, everybody knew the Germans were about to invade Russia, except apparently Stalin.

Once they got into a war of attrition they were doomed against the USSR. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, the key all along was a quick knock out blow. They came pretty close. A few changes here and there, and we'd be typing these comments in German.

You would have to define "accurate." In his preface Churchill makes clear he knows who he is, and that it is not a history he is writing - although what he wrote is history - that having to wait on historians. But he observes he was unique in being there since the beginning and before the beginning, through to the end, and having had close relations with most of the major actors.

There are to be sure other histories, but none have the "I was there" feel and sense that Churchill's does. It's considered by some people smart to criticize for bias, but in my opinion it's more candid and evenhanded than most. Also, the book is a deliberate condensation of five books into one - not having read the five, I don't know what was omitted in the one.

Finally, Churchill is one of the English language's best writers. Every paragraph, if you're attuned, a lesson in how to write. It's a pleasure to read, and it has at all points the ring of truth.

There really was no surprise, everybody knew the Germans were about to invade Russia, except apparently Stalin. — Foghorn

:rofl: The last one to find out was supposed to have been the first one to find out! How ironic!

While Germany could conceivably win WWI without too many things changing, it's very hard to see a situation where they could win WWII. It was essentially hopeless. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Literally just a few Paris Taxis away from victory :wink:

Instead of invading France and attacking England Hitler might have done this. — Foghorn

In a way, Germany had won a war after the Munich agreement without firing a shot. Versailles overturned, a greater Germany realised. Of course it could only get there because it was planning a wider war.

Yes, the key all along was a quick knock out blow. They came pretty close. A few changes here and there, and we'd be typing these comments in German. — Foghorn

Or so everyone thought at the time. In reality, a knock out blow would have to have been political, in the sense that the Soviet Union simply looses the will to fight. In retrospect, this seems unlikely.

There are to be sure other histories, but none have the "I was there" feel and sense that Churchill's does — tim wood

Yeah, maybe, though of course there is no shortage of memoirs about the war.

Yeah, maybe, though of course there is no shortage of memoirs about the war. — Echarmion

Your point? If you do not care to read a book, usually you do not have to.

Or so everyone thought at the time. In reality, a knock out blow would have to have been political, in the sense that the Soviet Union simply looses the will to fight. In retrospect, this seems unlikely. — Echarmion

Yea, good point. But once all your tanks and factories have been destroyed, the will no longer matters. I still think German victory was within reach, but obviously they blew it.

This is the same game plan the Nazis were working. — Foghorn

That tends to be my view too. If we leave aside the issue of which side murdered more people than the other side, it seems to me that this was simply a struggle for resources, i.e. a continuation of the imperial expansions of the 1800s and early 1900s.

Basically, the Allies couldn't afford to let the Germans grab the oil fields of North Africa and the Mid East just as they were not prepared to let the Japanese seize oil and other resources in the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina. This is why the Germans were hoping at least to get their hands on Russian oil. But for some strange reason they messed up that opportunity.

But I agree that Hitler made the same classical mistake as Napoleon. Taking France that was just next door was a good move but Russia was a totally different thing altogether. You need to have serious logistics for that and I'm not sure the Germans were really prepared for it.

If the Germans had taken French North Africa and its oil fields, it might have been different but as it was, how do you conduct a war of that magnitude without oil to fuel your tanks and planes?

I don't know much about the war to be honest, but I think a lot of questions remain unanswered. The Soviets had been planning to conquer Germany in the 1920s when they invaded Poland and Stalin had similar plans in the 1930s. Both Hitler and Stalin were strategic chess players. Did Hitler think he could beat Stalin before Stalin made his own move on Germany? The way Hitler and Stalin divided Poland between themselves looks very suspicious to me. They must have had a reason for that and that could only have been that both of them planned to invade one another. What do you think?

You need to have serious logistics for that and I'm not sure the Germans were really prepared for it. — Apollodorus

Yes, the scale of the effort was breathtaking. You have to feed millions of soldiers, and keep fuel in thousands of tanks. And both keep getting ever farther away from home.

The way Hitler and Stalin divided Poland between themselves looks very suspicious to me. They must have had a reason for that — Apollodorus

Yes, Hitler wanted to lock down Poland before he took on Russia. Russia was hoping the Germans would be happy with Poland, or least that the Russians could buy time. Even after the German invasion of Russia Stalin was still hoping he could negotiate. The irony is that ever a person as ruthless as Stalin didn't fully grasp how utterly ruthless the Nazis were.

It reminds me of the movie Independence Day, where the President asks the alien what he wants from us. The alien answers, "Die!"

But once all your tanks and factories have been destroyed, the will no longer matters — Foghorn

Didn't they move all those behind the Urals? Also I think the Soviet field armies were destroyed twice over, but were replaced regardless.

That tends to be my view too. If we leave aside the issue of which side murdered more people than the other side, it seems to me that this was simply a struggle for resources, i.e. a continuation of the imperial expansions of the 1800s and early 1900s. — Apollodorus

I think it'd be a mistake to ignore the extend to which Hitler's ideology motivated the course of the war. Resources were but one part of the equation.

Did Hitler think he could beat Stalin before Stalin made his own move on Germany? — Apollodorus

He just thought it was the natural course of events. To Hitler, nature ordained that Germany and Russia would be enemies and that the superior Germans would win.

However, the rhetoric about Russia being England's weapon on the mainland suggests a lot of resentment about the UK's stubborn refusal to yield was part of the equation. To Hitler, that probably was a betrayal of their "race" just as the declaration of war over Belgium in WW1.

the rhetoric about Russia being England's weapon on the mainland suggests a lot of resentment about the UK's stubborn refusal to yield was part of the equation. To Hitler, that probably was a betrayal of their "race" just as the declaration of war over Belgium in WW1. — Echarmion

Well, we can't ignore the fact that England had its own agenda. After all, we are talking about the largest empire in history and I'm sure there were plans to recover or at least save some of that past glory. And resources like oil were definitely a large factor in the equation. Conflicts of this type are always over resources.

I think it's difficult to establish Hitler's exact thinking. He had only come to power recently and he was probably still developing a coherent strategy. Stalin had been in power from the 1920s, so he had a long history and is much easier to read. Also, he had a comprehensive Marxist ideology to back up his actions.

In a way, when two big guys like that decide to fight it out some might be inclined to think "fair enough, let's sit and watch" or something. But the tragedy is that there are many smaller guys that get dragged into it and they just get squashed for no fault of theirs.

Also, Mao came to power and that was another big tragedy for Tibet, Vietnam and other smaller guys. A big and tragic mess really. It isn't just about Hitler and Stalin.

I think it'd be a mistake to ignore the extend to which Hitler's ideology motivated the course of the war. Resources were but one part of the equation. — Echarmion

Yes, Nazi ideology, built on top of resentments over WWI, the Versailles treaty, and a decade of weak government and economic problems during the Weimar Republic drove German policy from the early 1930s.

Germany had a number of critical resources (land, coal, iron ore, industrial know-how) but 20th century technology required a lot of materiél that it didn't have--various metals, rubber, petroleum, and so on. If it was going to feed itself and a large military, it needed more food production. (A good share of German agriculture was not very efficient or was conducted on heavy wet soils.). If it were to be independent of imported food, it would need more agricultural land.

It is open to question whether Germany ever had the resources to win the war it attempted. Take population: in 1939, there were 12,000,000 German men between the ages of 15 and 34. A large portion of these were already in the military. Granted, some soldiers would come from acquired lands, but the pool had definite limits. By the end of the war, children were being pressed into service.

Suppose the USSR had collapsed, or at least retreated east of the Ural Mts; world peace a la Deutschland uber alles would not have been the instant result. Generals in both Japan and Germany warned their leaders about the untapped military power of the United States. The USSR had resources east of the Ural range, and (presumably) an intact and effective government. .

Still, had the USSR collapsed or retreated, it would have been exceedingly bad news for the rest of the world.

starts by saying that WWII started 1 Sept. 1939. It started with the signing of the Versailles Treaty June, 1919. And it erupted into flames at various times and places before 1939. — tim wood

I put the start of the war before then. Maybe at the time of the destruction of the Tower of Babel.

Nice analysis Crank, quite informative and detailed. Good work.