Re: Guest Post - Quem sabia que era tão complicado?

1

Marmalade of Madness would make a good Ben & Jerry's flavour.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 07-12-19 9:10 AM
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Fuck, I haven't had marmelada in like 8 years. Have to remedy that.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 07-12-19 9:21 AM
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I think worth reviving this subthread here.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 07-12-19 9:25 AM
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On the other side of the elected-American-presidents-ideology spectrum, how's AMLO doing on his social agenda? Doesn't look great on foreign policy / organized crime, though of course all Mexican presidents are in a bind there. And his finance minister just resigned.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 07-12-19 9:27 AM
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4.2 linkfail?
IDK shit about Mexico, but AMLO basically looks to me like business as usual. Which is a very low bar, but what do you expect?
Whereas Bolsonaro seems to be just straight off the cliff edge.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 07-12-19 9:38 AM
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3: I was really hoping for a marmalade subthread and 1 was basically my response. In the larger sense, 5.last is my response I suppose.


Posted by: Thorn | Link to this comment | 07-12-19 11:26 AM
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Cracks me up that the Steve Bannon type figure in that government is a flat-earther who lives in Virginia.


Posted by: Michael Vanderweele, B.A. | Link to this comment | 07-12-19 1:09 PM
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5: Yes, linkfail, but you can find that news anywhere.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 07-12-19 1:14 PM
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My main thought after reading the article in the OP is that Brazilian conservatives are either more self-aware or less hypocritical than American ones.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07-12-19 4:56 PM
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Any place with a Minister of Celebrity Justice is doing at least one thing right.


Posted by: Todd | Link to this comment | 07-13-19 7:27 AM
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"Not to mention a series of bizarre gaffes - including sharing a pornographic video with his 3.4 million Twitter followers - that have led some to question whether Bolsonaro will even see out his four-year term."

I suspect most of his followers are in it for the ride and enjoy him showing up the hypocrisies of liberalism and so this kind of critique falls flat on its face.


Posted by: chris s | Link to this comment | 07-14-19 11:36 PM
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5: Three thoughts on the general theory of far-right incompetence. First, Hitler did many things that his senior generals (and before that, other senior advisors) begged him not to do, and succeeded wildly. Even Barbarossa came awfully close. (Well ok, Napoleon (and the Poles before him) proved that taking Moscow is one thing, but keeping it is quite another. Even so.) So he had good reasons and numerous examples why listening to senior generals would have been full of fail.

Second, do Franco and Salazar count as modern?

Third, the theory needs a pithy name.


Posted by: Doug | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 1:40 AM
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12: Oh argh, I was responding to 3 and not to 5.


Posted by: Doug | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 1:41 AM
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The dogsbody politic. After Orwell.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 2:42 AM
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And FFS no-one needs any more talking about Hitler, but Ajay started it. He was wildly successful, yes, but against wildly long odds. The Wehrmacht could very easily have been shattered in June 1940, or December 1941 (or 1939, or 1938, with outside intervention); nor did he ever come close to success - neither GB nor USSR ever considering settling, much less surrendering. Even at the operational level, Barbarossa fell hundreds of km short of its objective line, Arkhangelsk-Astrakan.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 3:23 AM
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15: actually Stalin did consider settling with Hitler - giving up the Baltics, Ukraine, and part of Belarus - in November 1941, but he was talked round by the Bulgarian ambassador, who said don't be silly, you're going to beat him. (Beevor, "Stalingrad"). An unsung hero. If Stalin had gone ahead with his plan, the Allies would still have won, but it would have taken a lot longer.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 3:45 AM
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At the right point though Stalin would have reneged and dolchstossed for real. Besides, ost of that territory was ocupied into 1944 anyway, right? And freeing up some army divisions doesn't do anything to win the global war by sea or air.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 3:51 AM
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16: Bulgarian? As in, Axis member? Heroic indeed.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 3:52 AM
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17 is right. There's no way Hitler sticks to any deal with Russia unless he's dead or all of the Russians.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 4:09 AM
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18: As far as I remember from Beevor - don't have it at hand right now. Bulgaria was in the Axis but not very enthusiastically.
17: I think more likely what happens is that Stalin makes the deal with the intention of reneging in, say, 1944, once Hitler has beaten the real enemy (the UK and USA) for him, but Hitler beats him to it and invades and conquers the rump USSR in about 1943, which has by this point lost most of its coal and iron ore and a big chunk of cropland, because Stalin wasn't very bright. Freeing up some army divisions means that the men in them can be furloughed back to the civilian economy (as happened in 1940 and 1941 anyway) to build more airframes and AA guns and U-boats. The war ends in 1945 or so anyway with Berlin and a few other cities getting the instant sunshine treatment.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 4:21 AM
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20: I find that unconvincing (except the last). Stalin in real life was denied the resources you mention, and more, but was bright enough to produce/allow enough economic mobilization and military professionalization to win anyway.* Meanwhile in Germany whatever resources are going into the unwinnable air/sea war aren't going into the mechanization and logistics construction needed to win in the east; I don't see why Germany would be much better placed to win in alt-1943 than actual 1943.
*With, granted, a lot of Allied aid, direct and via other fronts; but in your scenario the latter at least would have been available anyway.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 4:42 AM
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What we need is a scenario where Bulgaria beats both Germany and Russia in 1944.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 5:18 AM
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22 would, no kidding, be a far better postwar world than the one we actually got.


Posted by: Ajay | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 5:27 AM
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I don't have a time machine.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 5:44 AM
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24: They are suprisingly affordable in 2634.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 6:19 AM
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25: So, by implication, 2019 is as good as it gets. Thanks, I really needed that.
Anyway, I think much of the analysis about Hitler's decision-making is beside the point. By at least the later stages of the war I'm not convinced he planned or expected or even wanted to win; he was just writing his own tragedy. He wasn't trying to win the war but to perform it, and for a performer a defeat is at least as attractive as a victory.
I'm reminded also of the Iranian conduct of their war from 1982-88; with the fight for their lives won, they indulged their preferences, and that proved to be unsupported human-wave assaults, producing no progress but plenty of martyrdom; no reality, lots of performance.
Likewise Trump doesn't rule or lead or succeed, he just performs what he thinks those things look like. I don't know, but Bolsonaro looks to be the similar.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 6:28 AM
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26: No, I'm just here visiting some old friends.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 6:30 AM
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22: My friends and I played a fair bit of that Rise and Fall of the Third Reich board game back in the day. We had some pretty strange outcomes (like Great Britain being successfully invaded and the last remnants being a few divisions holding out on Malta). But never that one.

Anyway Barbarossa called for the red army to destroyed west of the Dnieper river, which didn't come close to happening.


Posted by: AcademicLurker | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 8:21 AM
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@12 You could make an argument that Hitler hoped to repeat what Germany had successfully done in 1918 and pushed the SU to collapse.



Posted by: chris s | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 9:16 AM
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29: So make it. Germany brought Russia to collapse with four years of slugging in the Polish borders. In 1918 they didn't get to the AA line while advancing unopposed. Hitler wanted to reach that line in one season. I don't see the parallel.


Posted by: Mossy Character | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 9:30 AM
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You could make an argument that Hitler hoped to repeat what Germany had successfully done in 1918 and pushed the SU to collapse.

"We only have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down." - Adolph Hitler

That seems to have been the plan.


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 9:41 AM
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25: the biggest problem is getting hold of the horse box. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjcrpjRDNsQ


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 07-15-19 11:09 AM
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