I blame the History channel. Before it turned into the garbage it is now, it spent a good couple decades basically being the WWII channel. And that entails a lot of shows like "Planes of the Third Riech". I don't know how many of those shows I watched when I was younger.
And for the many laughably impracticable 'super-weapons' the Nazi's turned out, they had the first jet fighter, the first theater ballistic missile, the first assault rifle, the best tanks(excepting maybe the T34), the best single artillery piece ever produced*, a machine gun so good(the MG42) that the US basically just copied it and called it the M60. *not saying its better than what we have now, but an anti-air, indirect fire anti-infantry, and direct fire anti-armor weapon. All in a single platform at its time is bonkers. The 88 is basically the antithesis of all the stupid 'super weapons' they made. One super flexible platform.
In addition to whatever historic truth there was about the German weapon superiority, it also is needed to fulfill the allies WWII narrative. Because 'well we sat on our asses for like the decade leading up to WWII and even the first year of the war, and then got our teeth kicked in' kinda makes you look like idiots.
I was in Denmark for vacation and one of the museums I was at had a part about the Nazi Invasion/Occupation and Resistance. It's a very weird version of WWII to see with a US perspective. Their entire armed forces took 41 casualties during the invasion. The collection took great pains to explain how much larger and better equipped the German forces were, and how Denmark had no choice but to surrender. The invasion was April 9th 1940 and lasted 6 hours before the Danes surrendered, Germany invaded Poland the previous September.
So 'Germans with massively superior weapons' is a more comfortable narrative to have rather than. 'We had plenty of warning and time to prepare and just decided it wasn't worth fighting against literal Nazis'
Personally I am a Britaboo, if there is such a thing. I am a huge fan of the British WW2. Chain Home radar, Enigma hackzors and the Dambusters bombs. The SOE and the SAS
Then there are the planes; Spitfire, Hurricane and the Mosquito. You want to talk about the P-51? It took a British Merlin Engine to make that happen bitch!
Battle of Britain, El Alamein and the sinking of the Bismark. Fascinating to read about.
Fuck, I still haven't forgiven Saving Private Ryan for taking a swipe at gen. Montgomery and the British. Especially since the movie took place when the British where facing a crack SS Panzer division. A battle they would win(with Canadian help).
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
Personally I am a Britaboo, if there is such a thing. I am a huge fan of the British WW2. Chain Home radar, Enigma hackzors and the Dambusters bombs. The SOE and the SAS
Then there are the planes; Spitfire, Hurricane and the Mosquito. You want to talk about the P-51? It took a British Merlin Engine to make that happen bitch!
Battle of Britain, El Alamein and the sinking of the Bismark. Fascinating to read about.
Fuck, I still haven't forgiven Saving Private Ryan for taking a swipe at gen. Montgomery and the British. Especially since the movie took place when the British where facing a crack SS Panzer division. A battle they would win(with Canadian help).
Why folks should take more swipes at Montgomery: A Bridge Too Far
Black lives matter.
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
Does having fond memories of playing Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe on my old 486 count? In my defense, I did complete a few tours of duty in a B-17 which helped to destroy the industrial backbone of the German War machine.
My fondest memory of Secret Weapons was the expansion that added this...
Number of games that have this aircraft since are about zero.
Germans with massively superior weapons' is a more comfortable narrative to have rather than. 'We had plenty of warning and time to prepare and just decided it wasn't worth fighting against literal Nazis'
Especially as, despite the idea of the Germans having advanced weapons most of their attacks (especially in the early war, when they were winning) were done with WW1 era weapons, bolt action rifles, horse drawn artillery etc. Sure, Blitzkrieg used tanks and aircraft to great effect, but those tanks and aircraft were not available for a lot of the attacks in early in the war.
I guess since this is a history thread I oughtta add in links.
The Mauser Karabiner 98k rifle was widely used by all branches of the armed forces of Germany during World War II. It saw action in every theatre of war involving German forces, including occupied Europe, North Africa, the Soviet Union, Finland, and Norway. Although comparable to the weapons fielded by Germany's enemies at the beginning of the War, its disadvantages in rate of fire became more apparent as American and Soviet armies began to field more semi-automatic weapons among their troops. Still, it continued to be the main infantry rifle of the Wehrmacht until the end of the War.
The great bulk of the German combat strength—the old-type infantry divisions—marched into battle on foot, with their weapons and supply trains propelled almost entirely by four-legged horsepower. The light and mountain divisions had an even greater proportion of animals, and the cavalry divisions were naturally mainly dependent on the horse.
Horse-drawn transportation was most important for Germany, as it was relatively lacking in natural oil resources. Infantry and horse-drawn artillery formed the bulk of the German Army throughout the war; only one-fifth of the Army belonged to mobile panzer and mechanized divisions. Each German infantry division employed thousands of horses and thousands of men taking care of them. Despite losses of horses to enemy action, exposure and disease, Germany maintained a steady supply of work and saddle horses until 1945. Cavalry in the Army and the SS gradually increased in size, peaking at six cavalry divisions in February 1945.
The German "war machine" was actually less gears and sheet metal, more flesh and bone. When World War II began, horses outnumbered vehicles in the Wehrmacht by a good 3 to 1, and that figure only got worse as the war progressed and vehicles crapped out. When we think of the German army, we think of panzer and tiger tanks, but even the famous panzer armies had 15,000 more horses than motors. And here you thought those fancy jackboots were just for style.
In what was quite possibly the only good thing anti-Semitism ever did for the world, the Third Reich ostracized the very scientists capable of developing the atomic bomb. In fact, the Reich was so disdainful of that type of work that they considered the whole field of study "Jewish physics." So-called "Jewish physicists" like Erwin "quantum mechanics" Schrodinger and Albert "motherfucking" Einstein booked it out of Germany, and their exit lit the fuse that sent the Nazis' atomic aspirations up in a disappointingly non-mushroom-shaped cloud.
While it's true that the Nazis had a ton of paperwork, no one ever said that they were any good at it. The Nazi government was all about a political agenda and not so much about administration; from its very beginnings, it was a bureaucratic nightmare that completely destabilized itself through extreme politicization, intergovernmental conflicts, and other problems that didn't even exist in Germany until the Nazis came to power. Even the very poster child of unfeeling bureaucracy, the Gestapo, was an absolute mess. They were consistently and embarrassingly understaffed, and if it wasn't for the German public pulling Gestapo horror stories out of their asses, they'd have seen their influence crumble quicker than a certain young artist's career.
A note about the Nazi bureaucracy: it sucked specifically because of Hitler and the Nazis. "intergovernmental conflicts" was considered a feature, not a bug. Which meant wasting a lot of resources on petty infighting. A far cry from the image of the Germans being incredibly efficient.
Personally I am a Britaboo, if there is such a thing. I am a huge fan of the British WW2. Chain Home radar, Enigma hackzors and the Dambusters bombs. The SOE and the SAS
Then there are the planes; Spitfire, Hurricane and the Mosquito. You want to talk about the P-51? It took a British Merlin Engine to make that happen bitch!
Battle of Britain, El Alamein and the sinking of the Bismark. Fascinating to read about.
Fuck, I still haven't forgiven Saving Private Ryan for taking a swipe at gen. Montgomery and the British. Especially since the movie took place when the British where facing a crack SS Panzer division. A battle they would win(with Canadian help).
Dude, I'm a Alliesaboo for one simple reason--what the SAS and early American espionage did to help make Operation Overlord take place. Codename Operation Bodyguard.
Basically, the Allies manage--with British espionage leading the operation--to convince the Germans that we had far greater amounts of troops and material than we did, that we were not going to attack Normandy, that we would actually be staging multiple small invasions, and so on. All because they knew they would be throwing our boys into the meat grinder, and establishing a beachhead in Normandy would be out best bet for winning the war, as it was much easier to move troops and material through England and the short trip over to France across the Channel than anything else but that the beaches of Normandy if fully defended would cost too much to take.
Supposedly the CIA was formed when American agents showed the files on Bodyguard to key members of Congress and basically said, "Hey, it could happen to us too."
User name Alazull on Steam, PSN, Nintenders, Epic, etc.
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Gabriel_Pitt(effective against Russian warships)Registered Userregular
The way I've heard it, Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time, he just killed everyone who complained about late trains.
Actually,they set their clocks to the trains,or that's how I've heard it.
Whatever time the trains actually showed up told you what time it was.
"Trains here, must be two o'clock."
"But the sun is setting, it's twil-"
"It MUST be TWO o'clock!"
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
The way I've heard it, Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time, he just killed everyone who complained about late trains.
Actually,they set their clocks to the trains,or that's how I've heard it.
Whatever time the trains actually showed up told you what time it was.
"Trains here, must be two o'clock."
"But the sun is setting, it's twil-"
"It MUST be TWO o'clock!"
Richard J. Evans is probably the best regarded source for WWII history, while the following sources are not-so-well-regarded:
- Robert Conquest
- Hugh Thomas
- Gertrude Himmelfarb
- Ernst Nolte
- Joachim Fest
- Geoffrey Elton'
- Andreas Hillgruber
- Michael Sturmer
- Hagen Schulze
- Imanuel Geiss
- Klaus Hildebrand
Oh, and special scrutiny must be reserved for David Irving. Some of Irving's work is fine, but you really need to have a good grasp of the history yourself before you approach any of Irving's work & hope to learn anything from it.
What you want to look out for in general is any work that takes a 'theme' of some kind and decides to wrap the war around that theme. If it's not just a clinical piece with figures & statistics and goes for a more narrative approach, it must follow the account(s) of actual people to be considered reliable (and even then, testimony - as always - should be taken with a grain of salt. Veterans are just as susceptible as anyone for not quite remembering things accurately).
It should be noted David Irving is literally a fascist who literally idolizes Hitler and literally hung out with actual Nazis.
No hyperbole.
This is all true. He apparently also walks around with stickers that he sometimes vandalizes road signs with that say shit like, "This way to Auswitz,"
However, it's also true that Irving is still a (heavily biased) historian (who demonstrably lies in his writing, exaggerates figures and engages in shameless Nazi cheerleading & holocaust denial), and until very recently was a go-to person for getting information, because his collection of materials is so large and because - when it comes to topics that are related to the war but do not impact his pet fetishes - he has made legitimate discoveries & has a keen eye. Honestly, I think it is a loss overall that Irving was effectively booted from the club (granted, he more or less did all the damage to himself).
I still recommend that anyone who has a good grasp of the period and wants to know more go and read Irving's material. You can filter out the noise from the content at that point, it comes from a rare perspective, it's surprisingly readable and you'll learn stuff about the American & British administrations of the time that you didn't know before (because, while nobody is as biased as Irving, our western historians do tend to look the other way when discussing the awkwardness of Churchill & especially Roosevelt).
That's a fair approach. I just personally can''t trust a word that man says.
I think the value in irving's work honestly comes from the way he frames certain events, because of his bias / perspective. If you read most western historical accounts of a given allied bombing campaign, for example, the condensed version will be something like:
[x] campaign was necessary to accomplish [y] objective. It was a success, but the campaign was brutal. [x] casualties were incurred by the aircrews, [y] civilians died in the firestorms. War is awful.
And hey, this is certainly fair. I don't have an issue with it.
If you read Irving's interpretation, the condensed version is more like this:
[x] campaign was necessary to accomplish [y] objective. It was a success, but the campaign was brutal. [x] casualties were incurred by the aircrews, [y] civilians died in the firestorms. War is awful, the bombing was a crime, there is no justice. Also the Jews control the world and Hitler was a great patriot and oh God German engineering... hnnnng... I just came.
If you can stomach the garbage, imho, Irving's accounts of (some) of the allied attacks are just refreshing. There's no caveats about how necessary the attack was or diversion into the stakes of the war effort - just a blunt (though often exaggerated) talk about how many people were brutally put to the flame while just trying to get through a daily routine.
Richard J. Evans is probably the best regarded source for WWII history, while the following sources are not-so-well-regarded:
- Robert Conquest
- Hugh Thomas
- Gertrude Himmelfarb
- Ernst Nolte
- Joachim Fest
- Geoffrey Elton'
- Andreas Hillgruber
- Michael Sturmer
- Hagen Schulze
- Imanuel Geiss
- Klaus Hildebrand
Oh, and special scrutiny must be reserved for David Irving. Some of Irving's work is fine, but you really need to have a good grasp of the history yourself before you approach any of Irving's work & hope to learn anything from it.
What you want to look out for in general is any work that takes a 'theme' of some kind and decides to wrap the war around that theme. If it's not just a clinical piece with figures & statistics and goes for a more narrative approach, it must follow the account(s) of actual people to be considered reliable (and even then, testimony - as always - should be taken with a grain of salt. Veterans are just as susceptible as anyone for not quite remembering things accurately).
To add to this, Richard Overy is another good choice.
I'll go out on a limb and suggest that you're pretty safe if you go into a bookstore or library and pick any random history book about WWII. The good authors honestly outnumber the bad ones by a pretty large margin.
Also, maybe this is obvious enough, but everyone who hasn't already done so owes it to themselves to find a translated copy of Goebbels's personal diary for reading. Not just for the quotes from it that everyone is already familiar with, but the surrounding body that contextualizes those quotes and demystifies most of the Nazi leadership. Anyone who reads that will be much less tempted to Godwin in the future, I think.
Richard J. Evans is probably the best regarded source for WWII history, while the following sources are not-so-well-regarded:
- Robert Conquest
- Hugh Thomas
- Gertrude Himmelfarb
- Ernst Nolte
- Joachim Fest
- Geoffrey Elton'
- Andreas Hillgruber
- Michael Sturmer
- Hagen Schulze
- Imanuel Geiss
- Klaus Hildebrand
Oh, and special scrutiny must be reserved for David Irving. Some of Irving's work is fine, but you really need to have a good grasp of the history yourself before you approach any of Irving's work & hope to learn anything from it.
What you want to look out for in general is any work that takes a 'theme' of some kind and decides to wrap the war around that theme. If it's not just a clinical piece with figures & statistics and goes for a more narrative approach, it must follow the account(s) of actual people to be considered reliable (and even then, testimony - as always - should be taken with a grain of salt. Veterans are just as susceptible as anyone for not quite remembering things accurately).
To add to this, Richard Overy is another good choice.
Why the Allies Won is probably my single favourite WWII book.
Although now that I think about it, it's been a decade since I read it, and I don't know if it holds up as well as I remember.
I've also generally enjoyed anything by John Keegan.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Richard J. Evans is probably the best regarded source for WWII history, while the following sources are not-so-well-regarded:
- Robert Conquest
- Hugh Thomas
- Gertrude Himmelfarb
- Ernst Nolte
- Joachim Fest
- Geoffrey Elton'
- Andreas Hillgruber
- Michael Sturmer
- Hagen Schulze
- Imanuel Geiss
- Klaus Hildebrand
Oh, and special scrutiny must be reserved for David Irving. Some of Irving's work is fine, but you really need to have a good grasp of the history yourself before you approach any of Irving's work & hope to learn anything from it.
What you want to look out for in general is any work that takes a 'theme' of some kind and decides to wrap the war around that theme. If it's not just a clinical piece with figures & statistics and goes for a more narrative approach, it must follow the account(s) of actual people to be considered reliable (and even then, testimony - as always - should be taken with a grain of salt. Veterans are just as susceptible as anyone for not quite remembering things accurately).
To add to this, Richard Overy is another good choice.
What about Shirer with Rise and Fall of the Third Reich?
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
I blame the History channel. Before it turned into the garbage it is now, it spent a good couple decades basically being the WWII channel. And that entails a lot of shows like "Planes of the Third Riech". I don't know how many of those shows I watched when I was younger.
And for the many laughably impracticable 'super-weapons' the Nazi's turned out, they had the first jet fighter, the first theater ballistic missile, the first assault rifle, the best tanks(excepting maybe the T34), the best single artillery piece ever produced*, a machine gun so good(the MG42) that the US basically just copied it and called it the M60. *not saying its better than what we have now, but an anti-air, indirect fire anti-infantry, and direct fire anti-armor weapon. All in a single platform at its time is bonkers. The 88 is basically the antithesis of all the stupid 'super weapons' they made. One super flexible platform.
In addition to whatever historic truth there was about the German weapon superiority, it also is needed to fulfill the allies WWII narrative. Because 'well we sat on our asses for like the decade leading up to WWII and even the first year of the war, and then got our teeth kicked in' kinda makes you look like idiots.
I was in Denmark for vacation and one of the museums I was at had a part about the Nazi Invasion/Occupation and Resistance. It's a very weird version of WWII to see with a US perspective. Their entire armed forces took 41 casualties during the invasion. The collection took great pains to explain how much larger and better equipped the German forces were, and how Denmark had no choice but to surrender. The invasion was April 9th 1940 and lasted 6 hours before the Danes surrendered, Germany invaded Poland the previous September.
So 'Germans with massively superior weapons' is a more comfortable narrative to have rather than. 'We had plenty of warning and time to prepare and just decided it wasn't worth fighting against literal Nazis'
I'm not disagreeing with you here.
But I would like to point out that the Denmark obsessively prepared for war loses only just a little bit slower than the Denmark that's not prepared for war.
Richard J. Evans is probably the best regarded source for WWII history, while the following sources are not-so-well-regarded:
- Robert Conquest
- Hugh Thomas
- Gertrude Himmelfarb
- Ernst Nolte
- Joachim Fest
- Geoffrey Elton'
- Andreas Hillgruber
- Michael Sturmer
- Hagen Schulze
- Imanuel Geiss
- Klaus Hildebrand
Oh, and special scrutiny must be reserved for David Irving. Some of Irving's work is fine, but you really need to have a good grasp of the history yourself before you approach any of Irving's work & hope to learn anything from it.
What you want to look out for in general is any work that takes a 'theme' of some kind and decides to wrap the war around that theme. If it's not just a clinical piece with figures & statistics and goes for a more narrative approach, it must follow the account(s) of actual people to be considered reliable (and even then, testimony - as always - should be taken with a grain of salt. Veterans are just as susceptible as anyone for not quite remembering things accurately).
Ahh man that asshole. i read Reflections on a Ravaged Century a bunch of years back for a poli sci class, the thesis was basically that radical political ideas were to blame for all the wars and social upheaval in the 20th century and not the people who believed them. he spent a grand total of like five pages on nazism and the entire rest of the book was about marxism. and for some reason he or his publisher thought it'd be a good idea to have the front cover of a book about how communsim is worse than nazism be Picasso's Guernica
I have to ask, the whole "Germans make stuff to perfection, as opposed to shoddy Chinese stuff", often advertised by German Companies like VW; was that a post war invention? I mean, I'm pretty sure by the end of the war, Germany was probably running on a shoestring budget, so their quality wouldn't be up to par with the Allies. That little diary entry earlier seems to lend credence to that.
Because it seems to me, that if a country projects that image (Like, say the Swiss and their watches), it would impact on how we perceive their war manufacturing back in the day.
Germans made alot of impressive inventions in WW2 but many of them were horribly impractical or too small a scale to make much of a difference
Like the Tiger tanks had massive firepower but were also very prone to mechanical failures and were huge gas guzzlers at a time where Germany was running out of oil
V2 were essentially a terror weapon that served little practical military purpose. More focus on conventional aircraft would've bene a better use of resources.
I have to ask, the whole "Germans make stuff to perfection, as opposed to shoddy Chinese stuff", often advertised by German Companies like VW; was that a post war invention? I mean, I'm pretty sure by the end of the war, Germany was probably running on a shoestring budget, so their quality wouldn't be up to par with the Allies. That little diary entry earlier seems to lend credence to that.
Because it seems to me, that if a country projects that image (Like, say the Swiss and their watches), it would impact on how we perceive their war manufacturing back in the day.
i'm pretty sure it was actually a pre-war invention. on top of a lot of important scientists being german and working in germany, german engineers did a lot of work on steam engines and early internal combustion engine in the late 19th and early 20th. they also did a lot of material science; for a long time "German steel" was a byword for "the good shit," and a lot of the industrial processes we even still use to one extent or another were developed there.
specifically talking about weapons, german engineers put together some really remarkable stuff, it's just stuff they were making, when it was better than everyone else's, wasn't all that much better. they also had a general tendency towards overcomplicating things, like the operating mechanism for the Luger pistol is completely elegant, but it's way more complex than it needs to be, and as a result it's much more prone to failure than say a 1911
so i think it's a case of the truth being overstated and also twisted
I have to ask, the whole "Germans make stuff to perfection, as opposed to shoddy Chinese stuff", often advertised by German Companies like VW; was that a post war invention? I mean, I'm pretty sure by the end of the war, Germany was probably running on a shoestring budget, so their quality wouldn't be up to par with the Allies. That little diary entry earlier seems to lend credence to that.
Because it seems to me, that if a country projects that image (Like, say the Swiss and their watches), it would impact on how we perceive their war manufacturing back in the day.
As far as car manufacturing is concerned, that actually comes via many years of customer reputation (some deserved, some not). Volkswagen had a very uncertain fate after the war, as companies were dismantled & absorbed (the USSR literally just stole a lot of the industrial equipment they found in East Germany; the west preferred 'merely' to buy up companies at pennies on the dollar), and German auto makers had to prove themselves in this incredibly harsh environment (it was no secret that Volkswagen was a Nazi pet project, and it's competitors / detractors were happy to let everyone know that driving a VW meant driving with Hitler). The old beetle design was the product of that period: a car that was incredibly robust given how inexpensive it was, endearing in style and lovingly designed / built by people who loved automobiles. It was a product that made it hard to hate the company behind it.
I mean, Christ, there are still beetles from that period - cars that rolled off of the assembly line in 1945 - that still run today, in the hands of regular car owners who aren't classic vehicle collectors, with only basic wear & tear maintenance done on them over the years. Not many vehicles can claim that sort of rugged reliability (though the VW van is certainly another contender).
So, the image that contemporary German automobiles are totally superior vehicles mostly stems from that period - when their vehicles were genuinely exceptional (special credit should probably also be extended to the Golf, which was a revolutionary design for it's time even if it doesn't look like much today and doesn't have the legacy of the Beetle. It was basically the first affordable, compact utility hatchback and people loved the shit out of it).
I dunno about the rest of German products (though I assume that at least some of VW's early reputation would've rubbed-off on them).
I have to ask, the whole "Germans make stuff to perfection, as opposed to shoddy Chinese stuff", often advertised by German Companies like VW; was that a post war invention? I mean, I'm pretty sure by the end of the war, Germany was probably running on a shoestring budget, so their quality wouldn't be up to par with the Allies. That little diary entry earlier seems to lend credence to that.
Because it seems to me, that if a country projects that image (Like, say the Swiss and their watches), it would impact on how we perceive their war manufacturing back in the day.
Germany has a pretty long and fairly well earned reputation for quality engineering. Conversely if you look at post war Japan their reputation was basically identical to China's current situation. For a good while they exported cheap, low quality goods and this is generally acknowledged despite them now being one of the major engineering power houses of the world.
And for something actually developed during WW2: the American Little David, also 36". They're both higher caliber than Gustav, but were never actually used in combat.
By 1944, it was expected that American forces would encounter extremely strong fortifications during the expected invasion of Japan. Studies began on using Little David as a siege mortar. The mortar was converted into a two piece mobile unit, consisting of the 80,000-pound (36,000 kg) barrel and the 93,000-pound (42,000 kg) base transported by two artillery tractors. In addition to the two main loads, the Little David unit would also include a bulldozer and crane with bucket to dig the emplacement for the mortar's base.[2]
The huge mortar could be ready to fire in 12 hours. The largest (800 mm) known German artillery weapons were hauled on 25 railway cars and required three weeks to put in firing position.[2]
Little David was one of the largest artillery pieces ever produced by calibre, although Dora fired a heavier shell. Little David's overall effectiveness would have been questionable because of its limited range and accuracy. When Japan surrendered, the invasion became unnecessary, and Little David (still in its trial phase) never saw combat.
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
If you're talking WW2 Japan they were literally making rifles in backyards by the end of the war
Afterwards, too. "Made in Japan" was the "Made in China" of yesteryear, mainly because the Chinese were busy dying of famine and purges.
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
Any notion that the Third Reich's leaders were faultless engineering and/or military geniuses should be laid to rest after looking at the Me-163 Komet. A rocket-powered interceptor that set airspeed records, the goddamn things went too fast to actually attack Allied bombers effectively, and ran out of fuel so quickly that they had to glide back to base. Not to mention the fuel was volatile enough that a bunch of them just exploded on the ground in accidents.
Richard J. Evans is probably the best regarded source for WWII history, while the following sources are not-so-well-regarded:
- Robert Conquest
- Hugh Thomas
- Gertrude Himmelfarb
- Ernst Nolte
- Joachim Fest
- Geoffrey Elton'
- Andreas Hillgruber
- Michael Sturmer
- Hagen Schulze
- Imanuel Geiss
- Klaus Hildebrand
Oh, and special scrutiny must be reserved for David Irving. Some of Irving's work is fine, but you really need to have a good grasp of the history yourself before you approach any of Irving's work & hope to learn anything from it.
What you want to look out for in general is any work that takes a 'theme' of some kind and decides to wrap the war around that theme. If it's not just a clinical piece with figures & statistics and goes for a more narrative approach, it must follow the account(s) of actual people to be considered reliable (and even then, testimony - as always - should be taken with a grain of salt. Veterans are just as susceptible as anyone for not quite remembering things accurately).
To add to this, Richard Overy is another good choice.
What about Shirer with Rise and Fall of the Third Reich?
Its an excellent first person account of what it meant to live in and under fire from the Third Reich. As history, its not that great, simply because of matters of perspective, documents that have come out since, objective analysis, etc. In the Garden of Beasts is a great companion novel.
As for the overall war, I think Nazi Germany is a case study that competence in politics far outweighs competence in engineering and military arms. The Nazi war machine was an excellent modern army ran by morons, so it never really had a chance of achieving its goals. Its early successes are really the story of a good army overextending itself then slowly collapsing.
Had there been a competent monster at the helm, the Nazis really could have taken most of Europe while keeping the Soviets and Americans out of the war. The history of the 20th century would have been one of alternating conflicts and Cold Wars instead of what happened. The whole world domination thing was always going to fall apart.
Thankfully, one of the constants of human history is that the more brutal a regime, the more likely the people in charge are to be mentally damaged. From the Mongols to the Nazis, its pretty clear that any brutal regime will end up filling its top ranks with the type of moral monsters who will turn on each other, punish subordinates for telling the truth and massively overinflate their capabilities.
Richard J. Evans is probably the best regarded source for WWII history, while the following sources are not-so-well-regarded:
- Robert Conquest
- Hugh Thomas
- Gertrude Himmelfarb
- Ernst Nolte
- Joachim Fest
- Geoffrey Elton'
- Andreas Hillgruber
- Michael Sturmer
- Hagen Schulze
- Imanuel Geiss
- Klaus Hildebrand
Oh, and special scrutiny must be reserved for David Irving. Some of Irving's work is fine, but you really need to have a good grasp of the history yourself before you approach any of Irving's work & hope to learn anything from it.
What you want to look out for in general is any work that takes a 'theme' of some kind and decides to wrap the war around that theme. If it's not just a clinical piece with figures & statistics and goes for a more narrative approach, it must follow the account(s) of actual people to be considered reliable (and even then, testimony - as always - should be taken with a grain of salt. Veterans are just as susceptible as anyone for not quite remembering things accurately).
Ahh man that asshole. i read Reflections on a Ravaged Century a bunch of years back for a poli sci class, the thesis was basically that radical political ideas were to blame for all the wars and social upheaval in the 20th century and not the people who believed them. he spent a grand total of like five pages on nazism and the entire rest of the book was about marxism. and for some reason he or his publisher thought it'd be a good idea to have the front cover of a book about how communsim is worse than nazism be Picasso's Guernica
That's a lower level designer going "Fuck this shit."
Germany didn't have a reliable radar yet, so their bombers relied on beam-riding - a tight radio beam that they followed to the target. In order to know when to actually drop bombs, another radio beam from a different angle was aimed at the target, and when the bombers detected both radio beams where they intersected, they were (somewhat) on target. This system was codenamed Knickebein.
Efforts in Britain to block the Knickebein system took some time to get started. British intelligence at the Air Ministry, led by R V Jones, was aware of the system initially because a downed German bomber's Lorenz system was analysed by the Royal Aircraft Establishment and seen to be far too sensitive to be a mere landing aid. Also, secretly recorded transcripts from German prisoner of war pilots indicated this may have been a bomb aiming aid.[10] Winston Churchill had also been given Ultra intelligence from decrypted Enigma messages that mentioned 'bombing beams'.
The British codename for Knickebein was Headache. Various politics happened and the British effort to detect and counter Knickebein was almost canceled.
The crew were not told any specifics, and were simply ordered to search for radio signals around 30 MHz having Lorenz characteristics and, if they found any, to determine their bearing. The flight took off and eventually flew into the beam from Kleve,on 31.5 MHz.[13] It subsequently located the cross beam from Stollberg (its origin was unknown prior to this flight). The radio operator and navigator were able to plot the path of the beams and discovered that they crossed right over the Rolls-Royce engine factory at Derby, at that time the only factory producing the Merlin engine. It was subsequently realised that the argument over whether the beams would bend round the earth or not was entirely academic as the transmitters were, more or less, in the line of sight to a bomber flying at high altitude.
British sceptics started regarding the system as proof that the German pilots were not as good as their own, who they believed could do without such systems. The Butt Report proved this to be wrong, when aerial reconnaissance systems started returning photographs of the RAF bombing raids, showing that they were rarely, if ever, anywhere near their targets.
Teehee, Butt Report.
Efforts to block the Knickebein headache were brilliant in their simplicity, and aptly codenamed "Aspirin". Initially, modified medical diathermy sets transmitted interference, but later, on nights where raids were expected, local radio transmitters broadcast an extra "dot signal" at low power.[15] The German practice of turning on the beams long before the bombers reached the target area aided the British efforts. Avro Ansons fitted with receivers would be flown around the country in an attempt to capture the beams' location, a successful capture would then be reported to nearby broadcasters.
The low-power "dot signal" was initially transmitted essentially at random, so German navigators would hear two dots. This meant there were many equi-signal areas, and no easy way to distinguish them except by comparing them with a known location. The British transmitters were later modified to send their dots at the same time as the German transmitters, making it impossible to tell which signal was which. In this case the navigators would receive the equi-signal over a wide area, and navigation along the bombline became impossible, with the aircraft drifting into the "dash area" and no way to correct for it.
Thus the beam was seemingly "bent" away from the target. Eventually, the beams could be inclined by a controlled amount which enabled the British to fool the Germans into dropping their bombs where they wanted them. A side effect was that as the German crews had been trained to navigate solely by the beams, many crews failed to find either the true equi-signal or Germany again.[16] Some Luftwaffe bombers even landed at RAF bases, believing they were back in the Reich.
Knickebein was never intended for long-range bombing, and Germany was already working on a more accurate, longer-range system called X-Gerät, "X-Apparatus".
X-Gerät used a series of beams to locate the target, each beam named after a river. The main beam, Weser, was similar in concept to the one used in Knickebein, but operated at a much higher frequency.[18] Due to the nature of radio propagation, this allowed its two beams to be pointed much more accurately than Knickebein from a similarly sized antenna; the equi-signal area was only about 100 yards (91 m) wide at a distance of 200 miles (320 km) from the antenna. The beams were so narrow bombers could not find them on their own, so a low-power wide-beam version of Knickebein was set up at the same station to act as a guide. The main 'Weser' antenna was set up just to the west of Cherbourg in France.
The "cross" signal in X-Gerät used a series of three very narrow single beams, 'Rhine', 'Oder' and 'Elbe'. At about 30 kilometres (19 mi) from the target, the radio operator would hear a brief signal from 'Rhine', and set up his equipment. This consisted of a special stopclock with two hands. When the 'Oder' signal was received the clock automatically started and the two hands started to sweep up from zero. When the signal from 'Elbe' was received the clock reversed, at which point one hand would stop and the other would start moving back towards zero. 'Oder' and 'Elbe' were aimed to be roughly 5 to 10 kilometres (3.1 to 6.2 mi) from the bomb release point along the line of 'Weser' (the exact distance depending on the distance from the transmitter), meaning that the clock accurately measured the time to travel between the first two beams along the flight path. Since the time taken to travel that distance should be the same as the time needed to travel the last 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from 'Elbe' to the target, the moving hand reached zero and the bombs were automatically released. To be exact, the 'Elbe' signal was adjusted to correct for the distance the bombs would travel between release and impact.
X-Gerät was eventually defeated in another manner, by way of a "false 'Elbe' " which was set up to cross the 'Weser' guide beam at a mere 1 kilometre (0.6 mi) after the preceding 'Oder' beam — much earlier than the expected 5 kilometres (3.1 mi). Since the final stages of the release were automatic, the clock would reverse prematurely and drop the bombs kilometres short of the target. Setting up this false beam proved very problematic as the Germans, learning from their mistakes with Knickebein, did not switch the X-Gerät beams on until as late as possible, making it much more difficult to arrange the "false 'Elbe' " in time.
Next system: Y-Gerät!
As the British slowly gained the upper hand in the Battle of the Beams, they started considering what the next German system would entail. Since Germany's current approaches had been rendered useless, an entirely new system would have to be developed.
British monitors soon started receiving intelligence from Enigma decrypts referring to a new device known as Y-Gerät, which was also sometimes referred to as Wotan.[25] Jones had already concluded the Germans used code names which were too descriptive. He asked a specialist in the German language and literature at Bletchley Park about the word Wotan. The specialist realised Wotan referred to Wōden, a one-eyed god, and might therefore be a single beam navigation system.[25] Jones agreed and knew it would have to include a distance-measurement system.[26] He also concluded it might well work on the system described by an anti-Nazi German mathematician and physicist Hans Mayer, who while visiting Norway, had passed a large amount of information in what is now known as the Oslo Report.[27]
Y-Gerät used a single narrow beam pointed over the target, transmitting a modulated radio signal. The system used a new piece of equipment that received the signal from the beam and immediately re-transmitted it back to the ground station. The ground station listened for the return signal and compared the phase of its modulation to the transmitted signal. This is an accurate way of measuring the transit time of the signal, and hence the distance to the aircraft. Coupled with the direction of the beam (adjusted for a maximum return signal), the bomber's position could be established with considerable accuracy. The bombers did not have to track the beam, instead the ground controllers could calculate it and then give radio instructions to the pilot to correct the flight path.
The British were ready for this system even before it was used. By chance, the Germans had chosen the operating frequency of the Wotan system very badly; it operated on 45 MHz, which just happened to be the frequency of the powerful-but-dormant BBC television transmitter at Alexandra Palace.[29] All Jones had to do was arrange for the return signal to be received from the aircraft and then sent to Alexandra Palace for re-transmission. The combination of the two signals modified the phase shift — and thus the apparent transit delay. Initially, the signal was re-transmitted at low power, not powerful enough for the Germans to realise what was happening, but enough to spoil the accuracy of the system. Over subsequent nights, the transmitter power was gradually increased.
As Wotan 's use went on, the aircrew accused the ground station of sending bad signals and the ground station alleged the aircraft had loose connections. The whole scheme appealed to Jones as he was a natural practical joker, and remarked that he was able to play one of the largest practical jokes with virtually any national resource that he required. The gradually increasing power conditioned the Germans such they did not realise that anyone was interfering with the system, but believed that it suffered several inherent defects.[30] Eventually, as the power was increased enough, the whole Wotan system started to ring with all the feedback.
The Luftwaffe, finally realising that the British had been deploying countermeasures from the very first day that the system was used operationally, completely lost faith in electronic navigation aids (as the British had predicted) and did not deploy any further system against Great Britain,[31] although by this time Hitler's attention was turning toward Eastern Europe.
While this was going on, UK was hard at work developing their radar system that would make beam-riding obsolete.
German command was very much a boy's club of people jockeying for the Fuhrer's attention. Hence all the impressive sounding but impractical weaponry. Basic troop stuff that actually wins wars isn't as cool.
I have to ask, the whole "Germans make stuff to perfection, as opposed to shoddy Chinese stuff", often advertised by German Companies like VW; was that a post war invention? I mean, I'm pretty sure by the end of the war, Germany was probably running on a shoestring budget, so their quality wouldn't be up to par with the Allies. That little diary entry earlier seems to lend credence to that.
Because it seems to me, that if a country projects that image (Like, say the Swiss and their watches), it would impact on how we perceive their war manufacturing back in the day.
From the 18th century on, German engineering was top notch. The modern fields of chemistry and engineering were nurtured and, some cases, basically created in Germany. That image of German precision and perfection predate both of the wars, but they are also a root cause.
By the turn of the 20th century, the recently unified German state felt massively aggrieved that their scientific contributions essentially paved the way for the modern world, but the global economy favored nations that had captive colonial populations pumping cheap resources into their factories. Italy was in the same boat, recently unified and without colonies. This also explains the Japanese predicament, since they modernized in a region already colonized by the Europeans.
Since German was late to the colonizing game, the Kaiser was convinced to press WWI in order to extract colonial possessions as part of the surrender terms. That was the main war aim for Germany - to beat its neighbors and then retreat in trade for overseas colonies.
The Nazi's big idea was to go "fuck it" and just colonize Europe, with all the brutal colonial ethnic cleansing, concentration camps and collective punishment that were previously only used on colonial subject populations. Japan and Italy also saw the chance to become colonial powers.
World War II is, in some respects, a world-wide replay of the American Civil War. A capitalist economy cannot directly compete with an economy that gets cheap resources/labor by force, so any nation that doesn't have slaves and colonies will find itself at a perpetual disadvantage to one that does. So, that nation either has to embrace slavery/colonialism or go to war to get the other side to abandon those practices.
German command was very much a boy's club of people jockeying for the Fuhrer's attention. Hence all the impressive sounding but impractical weaponry. Basic troop stuff that actually wins wars isn't as cool.
see also the modern American military
History would have been a lot different if Germany had focused its initial war efforts on effective gear to fight in heavy winter, instead of super cool tanks and planes.
Posts
And for the many laughably impracticable 'super-weapons' the Nazi's turned out, they had the first jet fighter, the first theater ballistic missile, the first assault rifle, the best tanks(excepting maybe the T34), the best single artillery piece ever produced*, a machine gun so good(the MG42) that the US basically just copied it and called it the M60. *not saying its better than what we have now, but an anti-air, indirect fire anti-infantry, and direct fire anti-armor weapon. All in a single platform at its time is bonkers. The 88 is basically the antithesis of all the stupid 'super weapons' they made. One super flexible platform.
In addition to whatever historic truth there was about the German weapon superiority, it also is needed to fulfill the allies WWII narrative. Because 'well we sat on our asses for like the decade leading up to WWII and even the first year of the war, and then got our teeth kicked in' kinda makes you look like idiots.
I was in Denmark for vacation and one of the museums I was at had a part about the Nazi Invasion/Occupation and Resistance. It's a very weird version of WWII to see with a US perspective. Their entire armed forces took 41 casualties during the invasion. The collection took great pains to explain how much larger and better equipped the German forces were, and how Denmark had no choice but to surrender. The invasion was April 9th 1940 and lasted 6 hours before the Danes surrendered, Germany invaded Poland the previous September.
So 'Germans with massively superior weapons' is a more comfortable narrative to have rather than. 'We had plenty of warning and time to prepare and just decided it wasn't worth fighting against literal Nazis'
Then there are the planes; Spitfire, Hurricane and the Mosquito. You want to talk about the P-51? It took a British Merlin Engine to make that happen bitch!
Battle of Britain, El Alamein and the sinking of the Bismark. Fascinating to read about.
Fuck, I still haven't forgiven Saving Private Ryan for taking a swipe at gen. Montgomery and the British. Especially since the movie took place when the British where facing a crack SS Panzer division. A battle they would win(with Canadian help).
Why folks should take more swipes at Montgomery:
A Bridge Too Far
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
My fondest memory of Secret Weapons was the expansion that added this...
I guess since this is a history thread I oughtta add in links.
Buisness site, but facts are facts
http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-wwii-german-army-was-80-horse-drawn-business-lessons-from-history/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_World_War_II
This cracked article (yeah, yeah) covers misconceptions about ww2. Most of which (surprise surprise) revolve around the Germans being totally badass and high tech (spoiler: nope).
http://www.cracked.com/article_21091_5-bullshit-facts-everyone-believes-about-wwii.html
A note about the Nazi bureaucracy: it sucked specifically because of Hitler and the Nazis. "intergovernmental conflicts" was considered a feature, not a bug. Which meant wasting a lot of resources on petty infighting. A far cry from the image of the Germans being incredibly efficient.
Also, Mussolini did not make the trains run on time.
It's not Germany specific, but that phrase or others like it are usually brought up and no, they are not true.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Actually,they set their clocks to the trains,or that's how I've heard it.
Dude, I'm a Alliesaboo for one simple reason--what the SAS and early American espionage did to help make Operation Overlord take place. Codename Operation Bodyguard.
Basically, the Allies manage--with British espionage leading the operation--to convince the Germans that we had far greater amounts of troops and material than we did, that we were not going to attack Normandy, that we would actually be staging multiple small invasions, and so on. All because they knew they would be throwing our boys into the meat grinder, and establishing a beachhead in Normandy would be out best bet for winning the war, as it was much easier to move troops and material through England and the short trip over to France across the Channel than anything else but that the beaches of Normandy if fully defended would cost too much to take.
Supposedly the CIA was formed when American agents showed the files on Bodyguard to key members of Congress and basically said, "Hey, it could happen to us too."
"Trains here, must be two o'clock."
"But the sun is setting, it's twil-"
"It MUST be TWO o'clock!"
Basically, yeah.
Hastings is a good source.
Richard J. Evans is probably the best regarded source for WWII history, while the following sources are not-so-well-regarded:
- Robert Conquest
- Hugh Thomas
- Gertrude Himmelfarb
- Ernst Nolte
- Joachim Fest
- Geoffrey Elton'
- Andreas Hillgruber
- Michael Sturmer
- Hagen Schulze
- Imanuel Geiss
- Klaus Hildebrand
Oh, and special scrutiny must be reserved for David Irving. Some of Irving's work is fine, but you really need to have a good grasp of the history yourself before you approach any of Irving's work & hope to learn anything from it.
What you want to look out for in general is any work that takes a 'theme' of some kind and decides to wrap the war around that theme. If it's not just a clinical piece with figures & statistics and goes for a more narrative approach, it must follow the account(s) of actual people to be considered reliable (and even then, testimony - as always - should be taken with a grain of salt. Veterans are just as susceptible as anyone for not quite remembering things accurately).
No hyperbole.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
This is all true. He apparently also walks around with stickers that he sometimes vandalizes road signs with that say shit like, "This way to Auswitz,"
However, it's also true that Irving is still a (heavily biased) historian (who demonstrably lies in his writing, exaggerates figures and engages in shameless Nazi cheerleading & holocaust denial), and until very recently was a go-to person for getting information, because his collection of materials is so large and because - when it comes to topics that are related to the war but do not impact his pet fetishes - he has made legitimate discoveries & has a keen eye. Honestly, I think it is a loss overall that Irving was effectively booted from the club (granted, he more or less did all the damage to himself).
I still recommend that anyone who has a good grasp of the period and wants to know more go and read Irving's material. You can filter out the noise from the content at that point, it comes from a rare perspective, it's surprisingly readable and you'll learn stuff about the American & British administrations of the time that you didn't know before (because, while nobody is as biased as Irving, our western historians do tend to look the other way when discussing the awkwardness of Churchill & especially Roosevelt).
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
I think the value in irving's work honestly comes from the way he frames certain events, because of his bias / perspective. If you read most western historical accounts of a given allied bombing campaign, for example, the condensed version will be something like:
[x] campaign was necessary to accomplish [y] objective. It was a success, but the campaign was brutal. [x] casualties were incurred by the aircrews, [y] civilians died in the firestorms. War is awful.
And hey, this is certainly fair. I don't have an issue with it.
If you read Irving's interpretation, the condensed version is more like this:
[x] campaign was necessary to accomplish [y] objective. It was a success, but the campaign was brutal. [x] casualties were incurred by the aircrews, [y] civilians died in the firestorms. War is awful, the bombing was a crime, there is no justice. Also the Jews control the world and Hitler was a great patriot and oh God German engineering... hnnnng... I just came.
If you can stomach the garbage, imho, Irving's accounts of (some) of the allied attacks are just refreshing. There's no caveats about how necessary the attack was or diversion into the stakes of the war effort - just a blunt (though often exaggerated) talk about how many people were brutally put to the flame while just trying to get through a daily routine.
Teaboo
To add to this, Richard Overy is another good choice.
Also, maybe this is obvious enough, but everyone who hasn't already done so owes it to themselves to find a translated copy of Goebbels's personal diary for reading. Not just for the quotes from it that everyone is already familiar with, but the surrounding body that contextualizes those quotes and demystifies most of the Nazi leadership. Anyone who reads that will be much less tempted to Godwin in the future, I think.
Why the Allies Won is probably my single favourite WWII book.
Although now that I think about it, it's been a decade since I read it, and I don't know if it holds up as well as I remember.
I've also generally enjoyed anything by John Keegan.
What about Shirer with Rise and Fall of the Third Reich?
I'm not disagreeing with you here.
But I would like to point out that the Denmark obsessively prepared for war loses only just a little bit slower than the Denmark that's not prepared for war.
Ahh man that asshole. i read Reflections on a Ravaged Century a bunch of years back for a poli sci class, the thesis was basically that radical political ideas were to blame for all the wars and social upheaval in the 20th century and not the people who believed them. he spent a grand total of like five pages on nazism and the entire rest of the book was about marxism. and for some reason he or his publisher thought it'd be a good idea to have the front cover of a book about how communsim is worse than nazism be Picasso's Guernica
hitting hot metal with hammers
Because it seems to me, that if a country projects that image (Like, say the Swiss and their watches), it would impact on how we perceive their war manufacturing back in the day.
WoW
Dear Satan.....
Like the Tiger tanks had massive firepower but were also very prone to mechanical failures and were huge gas guzzlers at a time where Germany was running out of oil
V2 were essentially a terror weapon that served little practical military purpose. More focus on conventional aircraft would've bene a better use of resources.
i'm pretty sure it was actually a pre-war invention. on top of a lot of important scientists being german and working in germany, german engineers did a lot of work on steam engines and early internal combustion engine in the late 19th and early 20th. they also did a lot of material science; for a long time "German steel" was a byword for "the good shit," and a lot of the industrial processes we even still use to one extent or another were developed there.
specifically talking about weapons, german engineers put together some really remarkable stuff, it's just stuff they were making, when it was better than everyone else's, wasn't all that much better. they also had a general tendency towards overcomplicating things, like the operating mechanism for the Luger pistol is completely elegant, but it's way more complex than it needs to be, and as a result it's much more prone to failure than say a 1911
so i think it's a case of the truth being overstated and also twisted
hitting hot metal with hammers
As far as car manufacturing is concerned, that actually comes via many years of customer reputation (some deserved, some not). Volkswagen had a very uncertain fate after the war, as companies were dismantled & absorbed (the USSR literally just stole a lot of the industrial equipment they found in East Germany; the west preferred 'merely' to buy up companies at pennies on the dollar), and German auto makers had to prove themselves in this incredibly harsh environment (it was no secret that Volkswagen was a Nazi pet project, and it's competitors / detractors were happy to let everyone know that driving a VW meant driving with Hitler). The old beetle design was the product of that period: a car that was incredibly robust given how inexpensive it was, endearing in style and lovingly designed / built by people who loved automobiles. It was a product that made it hard to hate the company behind it.
I mean, Christ, there are still beetles from that period - cars that rolled off of the assembly line in 1945 - that still run today, in the hands of regular car owners who aren't classic vehicle collectors, with only basic wear & tear maintenance done on them over the years. Not many vehicles can claim that sort of rugged reliability (though the VW van is certainly another contender).
So, the image that contemporary German automobiles are totally superior vehicles mostly stems from that period - when their vehicles were genuinely exceptional (special credit should probably also be extended to the Golf, which was a revolutionary design for it's time even if it doesn't look like much today and doesn't have the legacy of the Beetle. It was basically the first affordable, compact utility hatchback and people loved the shit out of it).
I dunno about the rest of German products (though I assume that at least some of VW's early reputation would've rubbed-off on them).
Germany has a pretty long and fairly well earned reputation for quality engineering. Conversely if you look at post war Japan their reputation was basically identical to China's current situation. For a good while they exported cheap, low quality goods and this is generally acknowledged despite them now being one of the major engineering power houses of the world.
the British Mallet's Mortar, 1854. 36" caliber.
And for something actually developed during WW2: the American Little David, also 36". They're both higher caliber than Gustav, but were never actually used in combat.
Like Jet bombers were impressive but frankly British radar was a fuck of a lot more immediately useful
Its an excellent first person account of what it meant to live in and under fire from the Third Reich. As history, its not that great, simply because of matters of perspective, documents that have come out since, objective analysis, etc. In the Garden of Beasts is a great companion novel.
As for the overall war, I think Nazi Germany is a case study that competence in politics far outweighs competence in engineering and military arms. The Nazi war machine was an excellent modern army ran by morons, so it never really had a chance of achieving its goals. Its early successes are really the story of a good army overextending itself then slowly collapsing.
Had there been a competent monster at the helm, the Nazis really could have taken most of Europe while keeping the Soviets and Americans out of the war. The history of the 20th century would have been one of alternating conflicts and Cold Wars instead of what happened. The whole world domination thing was always going to fall apart.
Thankfully, one of the constants of human history is that the more brutal a regime, the more likely the people in charge are to be mentally damaged. From the Mongols to the Nazis, its pretty clear that any brutal regime will end up filling its top ranks with the type of moral monsters who will turn on each other, punish subordinates for telling the truth and massively overinflate their capabilities.
That's a lower level designer going "Fuck this shit."
Oh man, I love that story about the Brits trolling German beam-riding bombers. Pardon my laziness as I quote from Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams
Germany didn't have a reliable radar yet, so their bombers relied on beam-riding - a tight radio beam that they followed to the target. In order to know when to actually drop bombs, another radio beam from a different angle was aimed at the target, and when the bombers detected both radio beams where they intersected, they were (somewhat) on target. This system was codenamed Knickebein.
The British codename for Knickebein was Headache. Various politics happened and the British effort to detect and counter Knickebein was almost canceled.
Teehee, Butt Report.
Knickebein was never intended for long-range bombing, and Germany was already working on a more accurate, longer-range system called X-Gerät, "X-Apparatus".
Next system: Y-Gerät!
While this was going on, UK was hard at work developing their radar system that would make beam-riding obsolete.
see also the modern American military
From the 18th century on, German engineering was top notch. The modern fields of chemistry and engineering were nurtured and, some cases, basically created in Germany. That image of German precision and perfection predate both of the wars, but they are also a root cause.
By the turn of the 20th century, the recently unified German state felt massively aggrieved that their scientific contributions essentially paved the way for the modern world, but the global economy favored nations that had captive colonial populations pumping cheap resources into their factories. Italy was in the same boat, recently unified and without colonies. This also explains the Japanese predicament, since they modernized in a region already colonized by the Europeans.
Since German was late to the colonizing game, the Kaiser was convinced to press WWI in order to extract colonial possessions as part of the surrender terms. That was the main war aim for Germany - to beat its neighbors and then retreat in trade for overseas colonies.
The Nazi's big idea was to go "fuck it" and just colonize Europe, with all the brutal colonial ethnic cleansing, concentration camps and collective punishment that were previously only used on colonial subject populations. Japan and Italy also saw the chance to become colonial powers.
World War II is, in some respects, a world-wide replay of the American Civil War. A capitalist economy cannot directly compete with an economy that gets cheap resources/labor by force, so any nation that doesn't have slaves and colonies will find itself at a perpetual disadvantage to one that does. So, that nation either has to embrace slavery/colonialism or go to war to get the other side to abandon those practices.
History would have been a lot different if Germany had focused its initial war efforts on effective gear to fight in heavy winter, instead of super cool tanks and planes.