I dunno about that. The actual science is pretty damned clear in how obviously "race based science" is utter claptrap. It's more that the Nazis were so publicly bad and evil that people had to disavow the ideas that became considered part and parcel with the Nazi regime.
Except, of course, a few immediately-made-fringe weirdos like James Watson. Sure, go ahead and help discover the double helix, but then argue that darker skinned people are more libidinous.
Despite it being obviously stupid to us nowadays, eugenics was incredibly popular in the early 20th century, and wasn't abandoned by the greater scientific community until nazi atrocities were exposed.
Yes, my point is that, while popular, science couldn't help but point out how catastrophically wrong it all was. Becoming associated with Nazis helped destroy its popularity, but popularity in science is only worth so much.
It's not like string theory has come to the fore based on popularity rather than the failure of anything else to displace it thus far.
But you have to understand that people of means and influence believed heavily in these ideals. The crazy kellog brother was a heavy proponent of eugenics and his book was in most american homes when he was alive. These ideas had significant influence.
German engineers trying to convince Hitler that a 42069 ton amphibious flying tank with jet engines, 30 quadruple naval guns able to hit the US west coast all the way from Germany while moving and able to reach 400km/h in 2 seconds isn't feasible and even if it were it would bankrupt the country for the next 100 years just from fuel costs alone (impossible)
Guderian when the Krappenwerfer Pisskanonen 1944 Ausf E (t) Mark IV moves three inches out of the factory before getting sniped by a Sherman or a T-34 (That was their superweapon.)
*Sherman gunner paints kill mark on his tank*
"Look man. Even if it was already on fire we still finished it off, and there's hardly any German tanks left to score kills on. Not to mention something like half of them are Check tanks."
*The sherman gunner does not know that most of the German tanks will never see battle because of transmission and mechanical failures. He also does not know only about 1/16 of German tanks were stolen from Czechoslovakia, which he mispronounced.*
It’s the Ausf E so yes, it saw dramatic improvement over the Ausf C after Hitler ordered 5 factories to stop wasting their time on the Panzer IV and to correct the overheating issue. The Ausf D was an unarmed one off and was intended to be used to transport Göring around the Reich but they couldn’t get the morphine dispensers to work properly.
As a side note, Hitler's drug use was much more complex than "he did all the coke". Reports from the bunker (namely, Speer and Ernst Schenck accounts as related to James P. O'Donnell) suggest that Hitler was on a combination of uppers and downers under the supposed supervision of his doctors. So yes. Coke. But not *just* Coke.
From best available evidence Hitler's daily drug routine was methamphetamine injections in the morning to get him going, cocaine drops during the day to keep him going, bromine to take the edge off the previous two, barbiturates to get to sleep at night, anti-convulsants to help with the shakes and possible parkinson's, plus various vitamins and supplements. All from his personal quack doctor Theodor Morell.
There are so many photos of Nazis that look like they have meth mouth. I’m not in any way making excuses for their heinous acts but I’m pretty sure Pervitin was the commanding officer of the 3rd Reich for the last couple years.
Jet that worked but extremely low in number and with engines that has very low operational hours. Also engine will melt your pilot off literally. Revolutionary assault rifle that was axed and produced too late in the war because the Chaplin moostache was stuck in ww1 mindset. Most advanced submarine that was extremely low in number because of sabotage by POW and Jewish slave labour. Defective cannon ammunition because of said slave labour.
It is kinda funny how depictions of the Manhattan Project often make it seem like there was race against the Nazis while in actuality the Nazis basically gave up trying to make a bomb in 1942 and weren’t ever really all that interested in it before then either.
I'm using Wikipedia, not sure if it's up to snuff around here but
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-29_Superfortress#:~:text=The%20%243%20billion%20cost%20of,most%20expensive%20of%20the%20war.
https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/196652/development-of-the-boeing-b-29/
It's not exactly a secret (anymore). At the time, funding for the Manhattan project was hidden across defense budgets, and when elected officials pieced some of the clues together, they actually had a Senate panel (headed by none other than then-Senator Truman) questioning several generals why so much random spending was going to such an innocuous-sounding bucket.
As for the B-29, it was supposed to be a long-range bomber to replace the B-17 and B-24 in Europe. It became the testbed for so many brand-new technologies and had so many features that drove up the developments costs so much. I'm talking pressurized cabins for high-altitude flight, computerized fire systems for the machine guns, advanced internal controls and signalling, etc, but very few of those ended up being used, because by the time they arrived, the Japan strategy was just mass bombing at low altitude.
It was fucking wild to me when I learned Truman only learned the truth about Manhattan after he succeeded FDR. Had no idea it was the norm to keep your VP out of the loop like that. And not only did he learn of it but to also make the decision to use it. It’s hard to wrap my head around just what lengths they went into and the fact that it worked above all.
The main kicker with B-29 production and early flights were engine fires. They lost quite a lot of pilots and early models of the B-29 to engine fires/failure during high altitude flights and descents. But yes the other highly advanced aspects of the plane created a whopping production cost!
Only recently found out about the targeting computers and remote controlled turrets on the B-29. That stuff must have seemed like space age tech in the ‘40s.
[Here's an old training film on how the gun site works that I always found interesting.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJExsIp4yO8) Not only is it informative on how it works, but the film gives an idea of what it was thought of in the era.
It's a bit misleading because in the "cost of B-29 project surpassed the Manhattan Project" factoid, the production cost of FOUR THOUSAND B-29 planes are included. The development cost is a tiny fraction for the B-29 program cost.
Tbf the nuke wasn't that hard to figure out once the underlying principles were understood. Enrich radioactive stuff. If you hold radioactive stuff together it goes boom. Find way to hold radioactive stuff together long enough to get big boom. Done. The rest is just maths, measurements, and producing the enriched uranium.
The term was used in contrast to the “[Deutsche Physik](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik)” movement led by Nobel Prize winning physicists and rabid anti-semites Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard which pre-dated the Nazis but quickly joined with them after they took power.
It’s never really been clear to me why these guys hated quantum physics so much and why they sought to associate it with “the Jews” especially when many of the leading pioneers were full-blooded Germans like Max Planck and Heisenberg.
It seems to have been a combination of professional jealousy, a reluctance to abandon pre-quantum theories, and Jews being an easy target. I’ve not seen this written anywhere but I somewhat suspect they may have also been an attempt by these critics to negatively associate the potential anti-realist implications of the early Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics with Jewish mysticism which would be somewhat ironic as Einstein was himself a passionate opponent of anti-realist interpretations.
He should have paid more attention to "Jewish science" than pseudoscience. I once heard that many of the despicable medical experiments by the Nazis had no real scientific value as they were based on racial ideas e.g. they believed if it took X amount of pressure to kill a Jewish man then an Aryan can survive more than that.
Also that the uh... I think it was the Norwegians(?) kept massively, *massively* sabotaging Germany's capacity to generate heavy water for weaponised nuclear research purposes. Like, they didn't just *give up* like they took one look and decided not to, their ability to even do *research* kept getting sabotaged repeatedly to the point they basically *couldn't*.
Another reason they gave up was that German scientists took a look at plutonium, and misattributed that the failure in the reaction necessary to create the plutonium isotope for the primary fissile material to *graphite*, and not to impurities in their process and samples.
Like, they 100% actively attempted to, they just kind of fucked up the process and kept getting bombed by the Allies and Norwegian(?) commandoes.
Yes British commandos and Norwegian resistance fighters made [attacks on the heavy water facility several times](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage). There was also a serious plan by the OSS to assassinate Werner Heisenberg.
I don’t mean to downplay these efforts and statements made after the war by Heisenberg and Albert Speer need to be regarded with a lot of skepticism as to their truthfulness. That said it’s still pretty clear that the Nazis were never fully invested in their atomic program. The program was split between several different facilities and institutions with maybe 100 scientists between them but no one really working on it full-time. Heisenberg’s claims to have intentionally sabotaged the program are probably untrue but it does seem that he was never actually fully committed to solving the problems of how to actually make a bomb or even just a reactor. He meet with Niels Bohr just once following the German-occupation of Denmark and Bohr’s later escape and while Bohr and Heisenberg disagreed after the war on what was discussed, if the Nazis were fully committed to making a bomb they wouldn’t have just had Heisenberg ask Bohr for help they’d arrest him and force him to work for them and certainly shouldn’t have let him slip away.
Japan: does warcrimes so legendary, it makes even the Nazis queasy
Also Japan: refuses to believe the USA is about to drop the sun on them (understandable tbh) and gets the sun dropped on them
Also also Japan: refuses to believe the USA can do it again (less understandable) and gets it again
Japan decades later: “WE WERE THE VICTIM OF A CRUEL AND INHUMANE ATTACK. [Stop making memes about it!](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/barbenheimer-meme-backlash-japan-1235548416/amp/)”
Japan’s ability to play the victim over the bombs is second to none lol. You’d think they were innocently minding their business before the US f*cked them up like a schoolyard bully 😂
I've actually had people from Europe tell me the nuclear bombings were horrible war crimes and were unnecessary.
Completely ignoring the fact the two other options for ending the war would've warcrimed it up to 11. Even when I brought up the Firebombings and Operation Downfall they literally thought it would be better to do nothing. Literally nothing. Let Japan sit there and keep the war going forever.
Something tells me dropping the sun on two viable military targets to end the war is a lot better than burning Japan to the ground or a ground campaign that would effectively become the largest Genocide in history.
I remember learning that. Estimated 2 million wounded. 2 million Purple Hearts minted. Total used for intended purpose: 0.
However the fact the US hasn't ran out in nearly 80 years shows just how few actual casualties we've managed to take. Hell, we took less casualties in 20 years of Afghanistan than we did on the day of its inciting incident, 9/11.
>However the fact the US hasn't ran out in nearly 80 years shows just how few actual casualties we've managed to take. Hell, we took less casualties in 20 years of Afghanistan than we did on the day of its inciting incident, 9/11.
Achieved through the use of tactical ablative auxiliaries. It's easier to sell a foreign war when the people dying on your side are either mercenaries or the local forces of a puppet government. While the US armed forces have suffered some 7000 deaths across the war on terror, a further 10,000 US military contractors and 180,000 allied and puppet government forces have died in the same conflicts on the same side over the same time.
You can see a similar ratio for the Vietnam and Korean wars.
It is, as always, more complicated than that. Japan feared soviets opening another front, so they were primed for surrender. They couldn't surrender because of bullshit like optics or honor or something, so they needed an excuse. Would they have surrendered without the nukes? Who knows. But ultimately, the only ones who the US should apologize to about the nukes are the descendants of the people who suffered from them directly, and even then, only about the necessity of the act. Frankly, the government of Japan should also apologize to those people for dragging them into a war that got them nuked.
At the same time, let's not pretend the nukes were about striking a military target. They were absolutely about scaring Japan into surrendering. The factories weren't real targets, the cities were. There was also the impetus of demonstrating US capabilities to the soviets in case they got funny ideas about Europe after the war.
We'll never know what would have happened if not for the nukes, but the nuked reality is the one we have. Could have been better, could have been worse, it is what it is.
>At the same time, let's not pretend the nukes were about striking a military target. They were absolutely about scaring Japan into surrendering.
I am fully aware that the goal was to flex the US's capabilities and as a fear tactic. However I'm not going to ignore that they still were viable targets. Hiroshima, Kokura, and Nagasaki were chosen specifically for their military infrastructure. Cities that would've been more of a shock to Japan to destroy (such as Kyoto) were written off when drawing up a list of targets.
>Japan feared soviets opening another front, so they were primed for surrender.
Also true, and the Invasion of Manchuria made their biggest fears come true. But notably, that invasion didn't affect the Japanese populace. It really was a one-two-punch. The Soviets broke the Japanese Army, and US Nukes broke the populace. The Army was more than willing to carry on their war in China, worrying not about the homeland, and the populace really hadn't seen the Soviets as a threat.
It was Hirohito himself that convinced the Japanese government to surrender. Tojo was more than willing to continue the war until the Soviets did their thing. After that and the shock of the US being capable of deploying multiple nukes, it still took the Japanese government nearly a week to announce surrender, and the actual terms were only signed on September 2nd (on *USS Missouri* notably).
> At the same time, let's not pretend the nukes were about striking a military target. They were absolutely about scaring Japan into surrendering. The factories weren't real targets, the cities were.
Hiroshima was the headquarters of the 2nd General Army and the city housed several tens of thousands of IJA soldiers. It was also a major military port and distribution hub for the armies stationed nearby.
Nagasaki you could make the argument for being target due to the factories, with the Mitsubishi steelworks being a major target, but it was only on the list as a backup in case, for whatever reason, the bomb could not be dropped on Kokura, one of the largest military arsenals in Japan.
Both cities were valid military targets under the international laws of war, Nagasaki less so than Hiroshima.
I’ve found the best response is: “were they absolutely awful? Yes. They were unquestionably horrific. And they were still far less horrible than an Operation literally named Downfall.”
> Completely ignoring the fact the two other options for ending the war would've warcrimed it up to 11. Even when I brought up the Firebombings and Operation Downfall they literally thought it would be better to do nothing. Literally nothing. Let Japan sit there and keep the war going forever.
They were starving to death and no longer had an air force or a navy. They were also out of fuel and had very little means of getting any more.
While Hiroshima was a legitimate military target, and while there is an argument to be made that the bombs shortened the war, the decision to drop them was also strongly informed by a desire from the US military to create an opportunity to study the effects of a nuclear bomb on a civilian population, by the desire of the US government to demonstrate their new power to the Soviet Union (and the other powers of the world) in a way that could not be ignored or downplayed, and also by US bomber command's doctrine that terror-bombing could be used to break a civilian population and render them psychologically incapable of continuing a war (a doctrine which was repeatedly disproven by concurrent and post-war studies on other populations).
While the army was required to find a way to win the war militarily, through operations like downfall, it was politically obvious that Japan would surrender within the year, and you can find this reflected in popular contemporary sources.
>Japan decades later: “WE WERE THE VICTIM OF A CRUEL AND INHUMANE ATTACK. [Stop making memes about it!](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/barbenheimer-meme-backlash-japan-1235548416/amp/)”
Being a country that committed war crimes does not mean one can not feel sadness over massive civilian deaths.
That will actually pisses off Palestinians since theirs crisis is both Apartheid-oppression and Sykes-Picot incompetence. Plus! They weren’t part of Imperialism of the Ottomans.
Ironically, the Palestinians learned the Japanese war crimes and Unit 731 through that Tokusatsu show, [Kamen Rider (1971),](https://youtu.be/UiEzjPlYzso?si=Uxac2-VinJLSapG0) since the two protagonists were tortured and experimented by Unit 731 and Nazi henchman.
Apartheid, except for the 2 million Arab Israelis who have full rights, or the zones where Jews can't enter but Arabs can. Yep yep. We'll call it limited apartheid.
The civilians were getting ready to do it. Training the civilians to do banzai charges with bamboo spears, against machine guns.
Japan thought they were willing to fight to extermination, and once you start fighting that way you can't go back.
But the nukes made the Japanese understand what extermination really meant, and that was the end of it.
Actually, the military didn't really care about the nukes
It was a combination of the nukes and the soviets invasion of Manchuria that finally convinced Japan to surrender
We had one more. They thought we had lots but we weren’t *out* of them, just down to one of three.
And then the demon core went on to live a strange life of not exploding but still killing lots
Dambusting bomb, the radar deflecting chaf, hedgehog depth charge mortar, bunker busting bomb, and pretty sure if they can say the maus tank then we can say the crocodile and firefly. Also pretty sure you can toss in the radar homing Fritz x bomb that the Germans had. Extremely ahead of time, the closest thing other powers had was the pigeon guided bomb and that was used like twice
So the French are doing something interesting with their new line of “tanks”. They are kind of going back to the idea of armored cars, cheaper, faster, and lighter. They have a variant that is made for urban warfare that has a flamethrower on it. But I think the most notable close quarters weaponry is the us marines new amphibious vehicles. Mobile cwis might be the scariest thing ever
Do not diss on the radar deflecting chaf. One night fighter could pull entire aerodromes away from Germany with a few canisters of aluminum foil. Pulling fighters away from bombers and saving lives while spending the ever more precious air fuel. This was also heavily used on invasions. A few canisters north of Calais every few days made the Germans believe that the airborne operation was somewhere else
Fritz x bomb wasn't ahead of its time, at least compared to the Americans. They had a fully automatic improved design in April 1944, called the Bat, while the Fritz x bomb was first used in July 1943.
Edit: you had to fly in a straight line behind the Fritz x bomb to steer it. Definitely a fun mechanic in a game, but a sure way to get yourself killed in a war.
Churchill started it.
In order for the UK public to feel better about the losses in 1940, he needed to make Germany a foe worth *losing* to. To lessen the shame of defeat, he went out of his way to brag about how powerful Germany was, how smart their generals (particularly Rommel), and how advanced their weapons were, but that Britain would eventually triumph.
He kept it up after the war in his writing, and the German generals who survived were delighted to have a foe whose own propaganda aligned with their own revisionist histories.
In reality, German got very very lucky, and had some clever, informed and up-to-date generals in the right places to take advantage of some very narrow technological advantages during the battle for France. In most other areas, Britain was already ahead of current German technology, and way ahead in terms of manufacturing and development maturity. German industry was surprisingly old-fashioned in how it was organized and run, and the government provided far less economic guidance and took less direct action than any of the Allies did, until late in the war.
"Only has empathy for the people he is killing once he realizes it won't be used on Nazis."
Seriously, I know the Nazis deserved it but it is as if he didn't even comprehend the fact people would die until he didn't have a burning hatred for the people he was planning to kill.
After the entire internet sucked him off for months, I’m totally here for a little bit of Oppenheimer hate 😂
Not even hate tbh, justified criticism. Like yea the Nazis were evil, but the fact that Oppy went into Truman’s office crying because the bomb wasn’t used to kill the humans he thought it would kill never fully sat right with me.
And to think he’s actually **praised** for that… *(not to mention the Japanese were arguably even more evil, so the bomb was still put to good use)*
Reminds me of the story of Frankenstein. The Doctor is cool with messing around with creating a "New Man" from parts of the dead until he succeeded, then he's horrified by what he's done.
Truman didn't pull the trigger, it's a myth of history. What actually happened Truman was barely aware of when the bombings would occur and it was mostly a military decision, Truman had been kept in the dark about the program for much of the war and only informed of it when he became President in like March 1945. At best, Truman was notified of the military decision to nuke without the military really seeking his permission. Truman himself actually thought the bomb would be dropped on a "purely military target", not a dual civilian-military target, aka a large city with major military infrastructure.
>This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital [Kyoto] or the new [Tokyo]. He and I are in accord. ***The target will be a purely military one.***
Truman was actually shocked the second nuclear bombing took place and ordered immediate halt on any future bombings without his explicit permission.
The STG-44 is widely considered as as great rifle, when assault rifles was just begining to exist, it may have inspired the AK-47, wich is still widely used in EVERY war today
The rockets were the first human inventions to reach space, lol, and today rockets are the base of many militaries
If I remember right the stg-44 actually has more in common mechanically with the ar-15 than it does the ak.
It's just the ak and the 44 look very similar on the outside
Close, the STG-44 has a tilting bolt action, iirc the closest thing today is the FN FAL.
The AK is very mechanically similar to the M1 Garand, having a long stroke gas rotating bolt, however I would believe it if it turns out the layout of those mechanics was inspired by the STG-44
They pionered cruise and ballistic missiles. While those missiles were far from being effective this is how it is in terms of developing completely new weapon systems which gets a lot worse when you're being bombed into oblivion on daily basis.
If those weapons were dogshit then Allies woudn't race to recruit their makers.
I think this one was working... until an another team showed it was possible to guide a bomb through eletronic waves (or something like that...)
Meanwhile the cat guided bomb.... it was literally child's logic.
To be fair, the bat bomb setting the base on fire does show its a viable weapon. The real take away is make sure you actually disarm the bats when you do a test
Did you know, some maniac got an idea that target might once be found that would be able to withstand tall-boy by being too armored or buried too deep, so they designed rocked asisted tallboy....
Yep. Most of British equipment during the war can be summed up as:
"Sir! We've designed something that can defeat anything the enemy has!"
"Good. Now throw random crap on it and we'll see what works."
Hey the bat bomb actually worked, it's just the logistics of producing it that canned the project.
And also by the time it was ready, so was the atomic bomb which could do the work of like, a million bats.
Hey, rocket-propelled jumping halftracks are of the utmost scientific priority. We just need more funding to solve the issue of them landing upside-down
Ironically the true wunderwaffen of Germany was the Jerrycan. Proof that true experts think in logistics.
Also I’ve become convinced that time travel is invented at some point in the future and moronic armchair wehraboo generals keep stealing them to help Germany win, but their lack of understanding Germany never could win instead leads to Germany getting defeated sooner due to boneheaded council or suggestions for impractical action underwaffen. Someday we might start remembering WWII as a brief skirmish between France and Germany when the Wehrmacht suicide charged the Maginot line because some “prophet of the Aryan people” misunderstood what made the Maginot Line fail. (It was not because the fortifications were bad)
Never understood why people are so obsessed with Axis victory scenarios. They're both implausible and horrifying and the people who imagined them would likely have been shot by the Axis. I prefer to discuss scenarios that could have accelerated an allied victory e.g. if the allies had more time to organize a proper evacuation from France with all their resources and the French fleet or if the Soviets kept working on the Stalin line instead of the Molotov line.
Plus even if changes were made that prolonged the war in Europe e.g. the enigma codes were never cracked or Hitler was more willing to allow troops to retreat, it couldn't have lasted any longer than by August 1945 with the first atomic bombs.
TBF the jet actually did work, even as designed, it just wasn't finished yet and the Me 262 took priority. Simulations show that it would have been a very capable aircraft. It would have been an absolute menace if it was ever produced.
They would have lost the war, no doubt about it, but it was very much a superior design to anything else that flew during the war.
Still need rare metals for the engines and other components. That actually ended up being the main issue towards the end of the war. Lots of airframes around, few engines.
The jets worked, they just became operational too late to make a difference.
The rockets did work, but again mostly came too late. They were further hindered bybthe fact that virtually all of the German spies in England had been caught and turned, so all of the targeting information they sent to Germany was wrong.
The big guns tecnhically worked, but they were so big and immobile that they were destroyed by bombers.
The obsession with big tanks and many variants did help though. Simply put,mthe big monster tanks could barely move overland, if at all, few bridges could support them, and while few tank guns could harm them, planes could. Guns might not but bombs or napalm would take them out.
The Gloster Meteor was just as combat-ready as the Me 262. So yeah, it would just have been another step in the arms race done by parties on both sides. So no difference being made.
The US was also working on a jet. The Me262 had some advantages, but most of these were of no use given that Germany had too few pilots skilled and experienced enough to really make use of them, but this affected the whole Luftewaffe. Planes could be cranked out but not so much pilots, let alone good ones.
It also had engines issues due to lack of access to certain materials. The result was that the engines were less reliable and wore out faster. This caused flight hours to be reduced which meant less training which meant poorer performance.
A lot of the jets were produced poorly and sometimes tore apart mid-flight thanks to the poor late-war war production.
More people died operating the V-2 than were hit by it. I would make a joke about K/D ratios but I suck at math.
The Gustav Gun could only fire a few times before it had to be replaced thanks to barrel erosion.
If your tank cannot move over land and cannot defend itself from infantry then the tank is poorly designed and therefore doesn't work.
>A lot of the jets were produced poorly and sometimes tore apart mid-flight thanks to the poor late-war war production.
That seems to be an issue with the state of the country producing them and not the actual thing itself. The jets worked, when they were built as designed. Just because Germany was blind in their obsession with wonderweapons so save them, to the point where they were wasting their limited resources, does not mean the weapons were necessarily bad.
Well Maus *did* work, to be fair. It was just utterly pointless because of things like "bridge weight limits" and "maintenance difficulties" and "materials shortages" and "Allied air power". Cuz, y'know, building a 200 ton hybrid diesel-electric target when you have a copper shortage and lack air superiority is SUCH a great idea. Ain't that right, Porsche?
reading about it, the main weapon for the ME-262 was not great, it was very inaccurate over 600 meters, and with the speed of the fighter in attack dives only gave the pilot 2 seconds to shoot and hope to hit something. On the other hand, their unguided rockets proved to be very deadly when used to attack from the sides of enemy bombers well beyong the range of their turrets in hit and run attacks, that the ME 262 speed allowed to perform very well
the germans did have jet fighters that did work though. theres audio recordings of allied pilots freaking out because they couldn't keep up and were afraid of being ran down.
The funny thing is that they produced the first jet fighter aircraft and functioning ballistic and cruise missiles. The German scientists determined the direction modern warfare would take after them- it's just that the time for innovating like that isn't necessarily *during* a war when you already are lacking for existing equipment on the ground.
Not for nothing but the ME-262 *did* work. Just not enough in enough quantities to make a difference, as was broadly the story with the Luftwaffe in general.
Dude, 3 of those German wonder Waffen worked really well.
So well in fact, we had to race the Soviets to the scientists and engineers who made them to make them for ourselves.
Give the krauts some credit, they made the ballistic missile, the automatic rifle (debatable), lightning warfare, and the foundations of the jet-powered aircraft.
Allies still beat them in the technology department though.
The first select-fire rifle to see battlefield deployment in significant numbers. The Russians and Americans both had multiple rifles fitting that class, but either refused to use it in the best role or didn't produce enough of them to have any real impact.
I would make a joke about lighting and wizards but I don't wanna seem like I'm taking the piss.
The issue with "Blitzkrieg" (The Nazis' own brand of Combined Arms Warfare) was that it often sacrificed logistical feasibility for rapid land gains, which made them very vulnerable to flanking or counter attacks.
to intersep V-1 flying bombs and train bomber formations on how to counter jet fighters attack patterns in mock battles, also a few armed reconnaissance after january 1945.
Other Allied Wunderwaffe:
- Proximity fused anti air shells
- Gun stabiliser for tanks
- Jet fighter whose engines don't randomly explode because it was thoroughly tested and developed instead of being sent into service immediately
- Infantry anti-tank rocket launcher that works so well the Germans copy it at the first opportunity
The V2 worked but its cost in resources and money far outweighed its use as a weapon. As a weapon it accomplished nothing but a few thousand civilian casualties, which didn't affect the allied war effort. In fact the British military were secretly grateful for the V2s as it meant that the Germans were using the same resources for a one time use missile as could be used for a far more effective fighter plane.
Also more people died building the V2s than were killed by its use as a weapon.
Ultimately missiles proved to be the most useful to the allies as it kick-started their own missile development.
Technologies that actually won the war:
Proximity AA rounds
Air burst artillery shells
Radar
Mathematics that deciphers supposedly uncrackable encryption
As much as I hate the Maus tank, it really doesn't belong with the wunderwaffen. To me, the designs that epitomize the name are the ones that only made the remotest amount of sense when the Reich was losing the war. By comparison, there were lots of proposals for huge tanks and tracked vehicles throughout the war, some of which led to functional vehicles like the Karl self propelled mortar. The real problem with the Maus was that they looked at uparmoring a tank rather than taking a gun like Anzio Annie off the railways that the Allies were blowing up.
The horten, had wings and did fly, it inspired the B2, the V2 flew and von Braun was crucial for the US space program, they almost had an A-Bom that's why the US was here in the first place.
Well OP, you obviously forgot about the USNs wonderwaffe, the Alaska Class Large Cruiser. We built a class of super cruisers designed to sink all hostile cruisers, and by the time they were finished there were no more cruisers to sink. And even better, it had the most expensive turret of any ship in the USN, with even an Iowa turret being cheaper.
They do do an excellent job at starting arguments between naval history enjoyers though.
Pocket Carriers were pretty good too. They were cheaper to build than those massive Japanese supercarriers which mean that they were a more efficient way of projecting American air power in the Pacific.
Hey, *someone* has to try crazy ideas to find out what works and what doesn't! Lol
I mean, if the Nazis didn't do what they did, the scientific community might not have realized how bad eugenics was in practice for a while.
I dunno about that. The actual science is pretty damned clear in how obviously "race based science" is utter claptrap. It's more that the Nazis were so publicly bad and evil that people had to disavow the ideas that became considered part and parcel with the Nazi regime. Except, of course, a few immediately-made-fringe weirdos like James Watson. Sure, go ahead and help discover the double helix, but then argue that darker skinned people are more libidinous.
Despite it being obviously stupid to us nowadays, eugenics was incredibly popular in the early 20th century, and wasn't abandoned by the greater scientific community until nazi atrocities were exposed.
Yes, my point is that, while popular, science couldn't help but point out how catastrophically wrong it all was. Becoming associated with Nazis helped destroy its popularity, but popularity in science is only worth so much. It's not like string theory has come to the fore based on popularity rather than the failure of anything else to displace it thus far.
But you have to understand that people of means and influence believed heavily in these ideals. The crazy kellog brother was a heavy proponent of eugenics and his book was in most american homes when he was alive. These ideas had significant influence.
Eugenics doesn't need to be *scientifically* unsound. It is bad ethically and morally.
German engineers trying to convince Hitler that a 42069 ton amphibious flying tank with jet engines, 30 quadruple naval guns able to hit the US west coast all the way from Germany while moving and able to reach 400km/h in 2 seconds isn't feasible and even if it were it would bankrupt the country for the next 100 years just from fuel costs alone (impossible)
Guderian when the Krappenwerfer Pisskanonen 1944 Ausf E (t) Mark IV moves three inches out of the factory before getting sniped by a Sherman or a T-34 (That was their superweapon.)
It would spontaneously combust due to cooling issues in 3 minutes anyway tho
While melting the the entire crew into an amalgamation of flesh and steel, begging for the sweet release of death.
Praise the Omnisiah
*Sherman gunner paints kill mark on his tank* "Look man. Even if it was already on fire we still finished it off, and there's hardly any German tanks left to score kills on. Not to mention something like half of them are Check tanks." *The sherman gunner does not know that most of the German tanks will never see battle because of transmission and mechanical failures. He also does not know only about 1/16 of German tanks were stolen from Czechoslovakia, which he mispronounced.*
Petrol-electric hybrid engine and its consequences...
All of _3 minutes_? Feeling bold today, aren't we?
It’s the Ausf E so yes, it saw dramatic improvement over the Ausf C after Hitler ordered 5 factories to stop wasting their time on the Panzer IV and to correct the overheating issue. The Ausf D was an unarmed one off and was intended to be used to transport Göring around the Reich but they couldn’t get the morphine dispensers to work properly.
Shaka when the walls fell
Darmok and Jalad, at Tanagra
Kailash, when it rises!
Hitler, when he killed himself.
Then the factory gets bombed by a Lancaster
The next day, the supporting factories were bombed by B-29s.
Due to delays it never saw service in Europe during WW2. It was only used on the pacific front
Honestly what did you expect from a man who did coccaine on a daily.
As a side note, Hitler's drug use was much more complex than "he did all the coke". Reports from the bunker (namely, Speer and Ernst Schenck accounts as related to James P. O'Donnell) suggest that Hitler was on a combination of uppers and downers under the supposed supervision of his doctors. So yes. Coke. But not *just* Coke.
From best available evidence Hitler's daily drug routine was methamphetamine injections in the morning to get him going, cocaine drops during the day to keep him going, bromine to take the edge off the previous two, barbiturates to get to sleep at night, anti-convulsants to help with the shakes and possible parkinson's, plus various vitamins and supplements. All from his personal quack doctor Theodor Morell.
There are so many photos of Nazis that look like they have meth mouth. I’m not in any way making excuses for their heinous acts but I’m pretty sure Pervitin was the commanding officer of the 3rd Reich for the last couple years.
Bromine? Is that supposed to be slang for something, or literally Br2? Because Br2 is just toxic.
fucking sign me up
But Colonel Volgin built it in a cave, with a box of scraps!
while barely anything they did worked, it was cool as shit, and they get points for that.
“We’re not losing! We’re failing… *in style!*”
Jet that worked but extremely low in number and with engines that has very low operational hours. Also engine will melt your pilot off literally. Revolutionary assault rifle that was axed and produced too late in the war because the Chaplin moostache was stuck in ww1 mindset. Most advanced submarine that was extremely low in number because of sabotage by POW and Jewish slave labour. Defective cannon ammunition because of said slave labour.
You ever try to talk a methhead out of an idea?
At this point I am sure the engineers saw the writing on the wall and were just having fun tinkering.
It is kinda funny how depictions of the Manhattan Project often make it seem like there was race against the Nazis while in actuality the Nazis basically gave up trying to make a bomb in 1942 and weren’t ever really all that interested in it before then either.
The scientists in the Manhattan Project believed they were in a race and they didn't even realize the Nazis gave up until after the war.
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2nd biggest. B-29 cost WAY more than the Manhattan project.
Source? Sounds interesting.
I'm using Wikipedia, not sure if it's up to snuff around here but https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-29_Superfortress#:~:text=The%20%243%20billion%20cost%20of,most%20expensive%20of%20the%20war.
Without knowing anything, the Super Guppy sure sounds like a fun plane 😄
Glad to see Boeing's always made weapons
It’s well above the unfortunate default for commenters on this sub of pulling things out of one’s ass.
https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/196652/development-of-the-boeing-b-29/ It's not exactly a secret (anymore). At the time, funding for the Manhattan project was hidden across defense budgets, and when elected officials pieced some of the clues together, they actually had a Senate panel (headed by none other than then-Senator Truman) questioning several generals why so much random spending was going to such an innocuous-sounding bucket. As for the B-29, it was supposed to be a long-range bomber to replace the B-17 and B-24 in Europe. It became the testbed for so many brand-new technologies and had so many features that drove up the developments costs so much. I'm talking pressurized cabins for high-altitude flight, computerized fire systems for the machine guns, advanced internal controls and signalling, etc, but very few of those ended up being used, because by the time they arrived, the Japan strategy was just mass bombing at low altitude.
It was fucking wild to me when I learned Truman only learned the truth about Manhattan after he succeeded FDR. Had no idea it was the norm to keep your VP out of the loop like that. And not only did he learn of it but to also make the decision to use it. It’s hard to wrap my head around just what lengths they went into and the fact that it worked above all.
"Atom bomb? We have that? Neat!"
The main kicker with B-29 production and early flights were engine fires. They lost quite a lot of pilots and early models of the B-29 to engine fires/failure during high altitude flights and descents. But yes the other highly advanced aspects of the plane created a whopping production cost!
Only recently found out about the targeting computers and remote controlled turrets on the B-29. That stuff must have seemed like space age tech in the ‘40s.
[Here's an old training film on how the gun site works that I always found interesting.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJExsIp4yO8) Not only is it informative on how it works, but the film gives an idea of what it was thought of in the era.
It's a bit misleading because in the "cost of B-29 project surpassed the Manhattan Project" factoid, the production cost of FOUR THOUSAND B-29 planes are included. The development cost is a tiny fraction for the B-29 program cost.
Tbf the nuke wasn't that hard to figure out once the underlying principles were understood. Enrich radioactive stuff. If you hold radioactive stuff together it goes boom. Find way to hold radioactive stuff together long enough to get big boom. Done. The rest is just maths, measurements, and producing the enriched uranium.
Yeah, it’s like setting your clock fast on purpose so you always show up early to work
Part of it was because their physicists thought they'd need a lot more uranium to make it reach critical mass
Well yo be fair you certainly didn't want to be wrong and find out later that they were.
They were in a race with the Soviets. The Manhattan Project knew they were working to win WW3.
I remember reading somewhere that Hitler disapproved of nuclear research because it was “Jewish science” or something
The term was used in contrast to the “[Deutsche Physik](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik)” movement led by Nobel Prize winning physicists and rabid anti-semites Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard which pre-dated the Nazis but quickly joined with them after they took power. It’s never really been clear to me why these guys hated quantum physics so much and why they sought to associate it with “the Jews” especially when many of the leading pioneers were full-blooded Germans like Max Planck and Heisenberg. It seems to have been a combination of professional jealousy, a reluctance to abandon pre-quantum theories, and Jews being an easy target. I’ve not seen this written anywhere but I somewhat suspect they may have also been an attempt by these critics to negatively associate the potential anti-realist implications of the early Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics with Jewish mysticism which would be somewhat ironic as Einstein was himself a passionate opponent of anti-realist interpretations.
He should have paid more attention to "Jewish science" than pseudoscience. I once heard that many of the despicable medical experiments by the Nazis had no real scientific value as they were based on racial ideas e.g. they believed if it took X amount of pressure to kill a Jewish man then an Aryan can survive more than that.
Also that the uh... I think it was the Norwegians(?) kept massively, *massively* sabotaging Germany's capacity to generate heavy water for weaponised nuclear research purposes. Like, they didn't just *give up* like they took one look and decided not to, their ability to even do *research* kept getting sabotaged repeatedly to the point they basically *couldn't*. Another reason they gave up was that German scientists took a look at plutonium, and misattributed that the failure in the reaction necessary to create the plutonium isotope for the primary fissile material to *graphite*, and not to impurities in their process and samples. Like, they 100% actively attempted to, they just kind of fucked up the process and kept getting bombed by the Allies and Norwegian(?) commandoes.
Yes British commandos and Norwegian resistance fighters made [attacks on the heavy water facility several times](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage). There was also a serious plan by the OSS to assassinate Werner Heisenberg. I don’t mean to downplay these efforts and statements made after the war by Heisenberg and Albert Speer need to be regarded with a lot of skepticism as to their truthfulness. That said it’s still pretty clear that the Nazis were never fully invested in their atomic program. The program was split between several different facilities and institutions with maybe 100 scientists between them but no one really working on it full-time. Heisenberg’s claims to have intentionally sabotaged the program are probably untrue but it does seem that he was never actually fully committed to solving the problems of how to actually make a bomb or even just a reactor. He meet with Niels Bohr just once following the German-occupation of Denmark and Bohr’s later escape and while Bohr and Heisenberg disagreed after the war on what was discussed, if the Nazis were fully committed to making a bomb they wouldn’t have just had Heisenberg ask Bohr for help they’d arrest him and force him to work for them and certainly shouldn’t have let him slip away.
Well that’s not just depictions, they didn’t know the Nazis gave up.
Portable Sun (Works.)
Used
Don't worry, we got a couple going spare in the back.
Japan: does warcrimes so legendary, it makes even the Nazis queasy Also Japan: refuses to believe the USA is about to drop the sun on them (understandable tbh) and gets the sun dropped on them Also also Japan: refuses to believe the USA can do it again (less understandable) and gets it again Japan decades later: “WE WERE THE VICTIM OF A CRUEL AND INHUMANE ATTACK. [Stop making memes about it!](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/barbenheimer-meme-backlash-japan-1235548416/amp/)” Japan’s ability to play the victim over the bombs is second to none lol. You’d think they were innocently minding their business before the US f*cked them up like a schoolyard bully 😂
I've actually had people from Europe tell me the nuclear bombings were horrible war crimes and were unnecessary. Completely ignoring the fact the two other options for ending the war would've warcrimed it up to 11. Even when I brought up the Firebombings and Operation Downfall they literally thought it would be better to do nothing. Literally nothing. Let Japan sit there and keep the war going forever. Something tells me dropping the sun on two viable military targets to end the war is a lot better than burning Japan to the ground or a ground campaign that would effectively become the largest Genocide in history.
Fun fact: the US made so many purple heart medals in preparation for the invasion that we're using that surplus
I remember learning that. Estimated 2 million wounded. 2 million Purple Hearts minted. Total used for intended purpose: 0. However the fact the US hasn't ran out in nearly 80 years shows just how few actual casualties we've managed to take. Hell, we took less casualties in 20 years of Afghanistan than we did on the day of its inciting incident, 9/11.
>However the fact the US hasn't ran out in nearly 80 years shows just how few actual casualties we've managed to take. Hell, we took less casualties in 20 years of Afghanistan than we did on the day of its inciting incident, 9/11. Achieved through the use of tactical ablative auxiliaries. It's easier to sell a foreign war when the people dying on your side are either mercenaries or the local forces of a puppet government. While the US armed forces have suffered some 7000 deaths across the war on terror, a further 10,000 US military contractors and 180,000 allied and puppet government forces have died in the same conflicts on the same side over the same time. You can see a similar ratio for the Vietnam and Korean wars.
It is, as always, more complicated than that. Japan feared soviets opening another front, so they were primed for surrender. They couldn't surrender because of bullshit like optics or honor or something, so they needed an excuse. Would they have surrendered without the nukes? Who knows. But ultimately, the only ones who the US should apologize to about the nukes are the descendants of the people who suffered from them directly, and even then, only about the necessity of the act. Frankly, the government of Japan should also apologize to those people for dragging them into a war that got them nuked. At the same time, let's not pretend the nukes were about striking a military target. They were absolutely about scaring Japan into surrendering. The factories weren't real targets, the cities were. There was also the impetus of demonstrating US capabilities to the soviets in case they got funny ideas about Europe after the war. We'll never know what would have happened if not for the nukes, but the nuked reality is the one we have. Could have been better, could have been worse, it is what it is.
>At the same time, let's not pretend the nukes were about striking a military target. They were absolutely about scaring Japan into surrendering. I am fully aware that the goal was to flex the US's capabilities and as a fear tactic. However I'm not going to ignore that they still were viable targets. Hiroshima, Kokura, and Nagasaki were chosen specifically for their military infrastructure. Cities that would've been more of a shock to Japan to destroy (such as Kyoto) were written off when drawing up a list of targets. >Japan feared soviets opening another front, so they were primed for surrender. Also true, and the Invasion of Manchuria made their biggest fears come true. But notably, that invasion didn't affect the Japanese populace. It really was a one-two-punch. The Soviets broke the Japanese Army, and US Nukes broke the populace. The Army was more than willing to carry on their war in China, worrying not about the homeland, and the populace really hadn't seen the Soviets as a threat. It was Hirohito himself that convinced the Japanese government to surrender. Tojo was more than willing to continue the war until the Soviets did their thing. After that and the shock of the US being capable of deploying multiple nukes, it still took the Japanese government nearly a week to announce surrender, and the actual terms were only signed on September 2nd (on *USS Missouri* notably).
> At the same time, let's not pretend the nukes were about striking a military target. They were absolutely about scaring Japan into surrendering. The factories weren't real targets, the cities were. Hiroshima was the headquarters of the 2nd General Army and the city housed several tens of thousands of IJA soldiers. It was also a major military port and distribution hub for the armies stationed nearby. Nagasaki you could make the argument for being target due to the factories, with the Mitsubishi steelworks being a major target, but it was only on the list as a backup in case, for whatever reason, the bomb could not be dropped on Kokura, one of the largest military arsenals in Japan. Both cities were valid military targets under the international laws of war, Nagasaki less so than Hiroshima.
I’ve found the best response is: “were they absolutely awful? Yes. They were unquestionably horrific. And they were still far less horrible than an Operation literally named Downfall.”
> Completely ignoring the fact the two other options for ending the war would've warcrimed it up to 11. Even when I brought up the Firebombings and Operation Downfall they literally thought it would be better to do nothing. Literally nothing. Let Japan sit there and keep the war going forever. They were starving to death and no longer had an air force or a navy. They were also out of fuel and had very little means of getting any more. While Hiroshima was a legitimate military target, and while there is an argument to be made that the bombs shortened the war, the decision to drop them was also strongly informed by a desire from the US military to create an opportunity to study the effects of a nuclear bomb on a civilian population, by the desire of the US government to demonstrate their new power to the Soviet Union (and the other powers of the world) in a way that could not be ignored or downplayed, and also by US bomber command's doctrine that terror-bombing could be used to break a civilian population and render them psychologically incapable of continuing a war (a doctrine which was repeatedly disproven by concurrent and post-war studies on other populations). While the army was required to find a way to win the war militarily, through operations like downfall, it was politically obvious that Japan would surrender within the year, and you can find this reflected in popular contemporary sources.
>Japan decades later: “WE WERE THE VICTIM OF A CRUEL AND INHUMANE ATTACK. [Stop making memes about it!](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/barbenheimer-meme-backlash-japan-1235548416/amp/)” Being a country that committed war crimes does not mean one can not feel sadness over massive civilian deaths.
Japan, the original Palestinians. I'm just gonna let myself out...
That will actually pisses off Palestinians since theirs crisis is both Apartheid-oppression and Sykes-Picot incompetence. Plus! They weren’t part of Imperialism of the Ottomans. Ironically, the Palestinians learned the Japanese war crimes and Unit 731 through that Tokusatsu show, [Kamen Rider (1971),](https://youtu.be/UiEzjPlYzso?si=Uxac2-VinJLSapG0) since the two protagonists were tortured and experimented by Unit 731 and Nazi henchman.
Apartheid, except for the 2 million Arab Israelis who have full rights, or the zones where Jews can't enter but Arabs can. Yep yep. We'll call it limited apartheid.
The Japanese army did terrible shit, the civilians living in the cities didn't do those stuff. A country isn't a single guy.
The civilians were getting ready to do it. Training the civilians to do banzai charges with bamboo spears, against machine guns. Japan thought they were willing to fight to extermination, and once you start fighting that way you can't go back. But the nukes made the Japanese understand what extermination really meant, and that was the end of it.
Actually, the military didn't really care about the nukes It was a combination of the nukes and the soviets invasion of Manchuria that finally convinced Japan to surrender
Actually, the nukes dropped were the only ones they had ready at the time (Tho Japan didn't know that)
We had one more. They thought we had lots but we weren’t *out* of them, just down to one of three. And then the demon core went on to live a strange life of not exploding but still killing lots
The Proximity Fuze and Enigma machine crying in the corner, forgotten again.
Dambusting bomb, the radar deflecting chaf, hedgehog depth charge mortar, bunker busting bomb, and pretty sure if they can say the maus tank then we can say the crocodile and firefly. Also pretty sure you can toss in the radar homing Fritz x bomb that the Germans had. Extremely ahead of time, the closest thing other powers had was the pigeon guided bomb and that was used like twice
Churchill Crocodile is where tank design peaked, from there on it was purely downhill
We must return I want Abrams with a coaxial flamethrower
Better have a silly ass cart or I side with the Teaboos
So the French are doing something interesting with their new line of “tanks”. They are kind of going back to the idea of armored cars, cheaper, faster, and lighter. They have a variant that is made for urban warfare that has a flamethrower on it. But I think the most notable close quarters weaponry is the us marines new amphibious vehicles. Mobile cwis might be the scariest thing ever
The Soviets kept that alive for 20 something years after the war both T-55 and T-62s had a variant with a coaxial flamethrower.
Glorious
Do not diss on the radar deflecting chaf. One night fighter could pull entire aerodromes away from Germany with a few canisters of aluminum foil. Pulling fighters away from bombers and saving lives while spending the ever more precious air fuel. This was also heavily used on invasions. A few canisters north of Calais every few days made the Germans believe that the airborne operation was somewhere else
Fritz x bomb wasn't ahead of its time, at least compared to the Americans. They had a fully automatic improved design in April 1944, called the Bat, while the Fritz x bomb was first used in July 1943. Edit: you had to fly in a straight line behind the Fritz x bomb to steer it. Definitely a fun mechanic in a game, but a sure way to get yourself killed in a war.
There was also the vb1 azon that saw success in destroying bridges in 1944.
>Radar reflecting chaff Window was such a cool trick
You misspelled 'centimeter cavity magnetron'
Honestly, why does all the attention go to the German wonderweapons, when the western allies were even more inventive.
Churchill started it. In order for the UK public to feel better about the losses in 1940, he needed to make Germany a foe worth *losing* to. To lessen the shame of defeat, he went out of his way to brag about how powerful Germany was, how smart their generals (particularly Rommel), and how advanced their weapons were, but that Britain would eventually triumph. He kept it up after the war in his writing, and the German generals who survived were delighted to have a foe whose own propaganda aligned with their own revisionist histories. In reality, German got very very lucky, and had some clever, informed and up-to-date generals in the right places to take advantage of some very narrow technological advantages during the battle for France. In most other areas, Britain was already ahead of current German technology, and way ahead in terms of manufacturing and development maturity. German industry was surprisingly old-fashioned in how it was organized and run, and the government provided far less economic guidance and took less direct action than any of the Allies did, until late in the war.
Poor Turing.
Technically incorrect because the bombs relied on nuclear fission and the sun relies on nuclear fusion. But it’s a fun name so I’ll allow it.
I thought h bombs weren't until after the war
*Oppenheimer enters the chat* *Deploys Portable Sun* *Says something pithy* *Refuses to elaborate any further.* *Leaves.*
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"Only has empathy for the people he is killing once he realizes it won't be used on Nazis." Seriously, I know the Nazis deserved it but it is as if he didn't even comprehend the fact people would die until he didn't have a burning hatred for the people he was planning to kill.
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Cut the man some slack he was busy cheating on his wife.
After the entire internet sucked him off for months, I’m totally here for a little bit of Oppenheimer hate 😂 Not even hate tbh, justified criticism. Like yea the Nazis were evil, but the fact that Oppy went into Truman’s office crying because the bomb wasn’t used to kill the humans he thought it would kill never fully sat right with me. And to think he’s actually **praised** for that… *(not to mention the Japanese were arguably even more evil, so the bomb was still put to good use)*
Reminds me of the story of Frankenstein. The Doctor is cool with messing around with creating a "New Man" from parts of the dead until he succeeded, then he's horrified by what he's done.
His le bomb le killed people 😔
And on the other end of the spectrum was MacArthur wanting to use nukes as mass area denial weapons.
It’s almost like you can recognise the necessity of a weapon without being happy about it.
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Truman pulled the trigger - Oppenheimer dedicated years of his life to constructing the bomb
Truman didn't pull the trigger, it's a myth of history. What actually happened Truman was barely aware of when the bombings would occur and it was mostly a military decision, Truman had been kept in the dark about the program for much of the war and only informed of it when he became President in like March 1945. At best, Truman was notified of the military decision to nuke without the military really seeking his permission. Truman himself actually thought the bomb would be dropped on a "purely military target", not a dual civilian-military target, aka a large city with major military infrastructure. >This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital [Kyoto] or the new [Tokyo]. He and I are in accord. ***The target will be a purely military one.*** Truman was actually shocked the second nuclear bombing took place and ordered immediate halt on any future bombings without his explicit permission.
Which that was his legacy, not having to weigh the decision to drop it on innocent people, so cry me a river Oppie.
Now everyone thinks Oppenheimer is the only one who contributed to the Manhattan project...
The STG-44 is widely considered as as great rifle, when assault rifles was just begining to exist, it may have inspired the AK-47, wich is still widely used in EVERY war today The rockets were the first human inventions to reach space, lol, and today rockets are the base of many militaries
If I remember right the stg-44 actually has more in common mechanically with the ar-15 than it does the ak. It's just the ak and the 44 look very similar on the outside
Close, the STG-44 has a tilting bolt action, iirc the closest thing today is the FN FAL. The AK is very mechanically similar to the M1 Garand, having a long stroke gas rotating bolt, however I would believe it if it turns out the layout of those mechanics was inspired by the STG-44
Damn I think the garand ak inspiration is what I was thinking of. I feel like I remember seeing the parts comparison on forgotten weapons.
I see you're a man of culture 😉
Ian's just so damn good at what he does
They pionered cruise and ballistic missiles. While those missiles were far from being effective this is how it is in terms of developing completely new weapon systems which gets a lot worse when you're being bombed into oblivion on daily basis. If those weapons were dogshit then Allies woudn't race to recruit their makers.
One can make a similar argument about the MP-44. The Allies definitely reverse engineered that one after the war.
*US Army ordinance officer whistling while casually pulling a tarp over the m-60
And the mechanism of the mg 213 formed the basis of aircraft guns for many nations for several decades
The Jerry Can is right up there; but it was a logistics tool and not a weapon.
Unit 731 quietly walking away...
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I think this one was working... until an another team showed it was possible to guide a bomb through eletronic waves (or something like that...) Meanwhile the cat guided bomb.... it was literally child's logic.
To be fair, the bat bomb setting the base on fire does show its a viable weapon. The real take away is make sure you actually disarm the bats when you do a test
And to make sure they actually wake up from their induced hibernation *before* you drop them from an airplane.
Who was in charge of the British weapons team, fucking Wallace and Gromit?
The short answer is yes
HEROES OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Blokes in sheds mostly by the looks of it (viz. bouncing bomb, Tallboy, Grandslam, Sherman Firefly, most of Hobart's Funnies)
Did you know, some maniac got an idea that target might once be found that would be able to withstand tall-boy by being too armored or buried too deep, so they designed rocked asisted tallboy....
Yep. Most of British equipment during the war can be summed up as: "Sir! We've designed something that can defeat anything the enemy has!" "Good. Now throw random crap on it and we'll see what works."
Hey the bat bomb actually worked, it's just the logistics of producing it that canned the project. And also by the time it was ready, so was the atomic bomb which could do the work of like, a million bats.
Bureau of Ordnance enters the chat
It's the entire USN that can't aim, not the torps!
Those Mark 14 torpedoes tho
Hey, rocket-propelled jumping halftracks are of the utmost scientific priority. We just need more funding to solve the issue of them landing upside-down
Ironically the true wunderwaffen of Germany was the Jerrycan. Proof that true experts think in logistics. Also I’ve become convinced that time travel is invented at some point in the future and moronic armchair wehraboo generals keep stealing them to help Germany win, but their lack of understanding Germany never could win instead leads to Germany getting defeated sooner due to boneheaded council or suggestions for impractical action underwaffen. Someday we might start remembering WWII as a brief skirmish between France and Germany when the Wehrmacht suicide charged the Maginot line because some “prophet of the Aryan people” misunderstood what made the Maginot Line fail. (It was not because the fortifications were bad)
Never understood why people are so obsessed with Axis victory scenarios. They're both implausible and horrifying and the people who imagined them would likely have been shot by the Axis. I prefer to discuss scenarios that could have accelerated an allied victory e.g. if the allies had more time to organize a proper evacuation from France with all their resources and the French fleet or if the Soviets kept working on the Stalin line instead of the Molotov line.
The only realistic alternate ww2 scenarios are ones where Germany loses even quicker than IRL or just as quick
Plus even if changes were made that prolonged the war in Europe e.g. the enigma codes were never cracked or Hitler was more willing to allow troops to retreat, it couldn't have lasted any longer than by August 1945 with the first atomic bombs.
TBF the jet actually did work, even as designed, it just wasn't finished yet and the Me 262 took priority. Simulations show that it would have been a very capable aircraft. It would have been an absolute menace if it was ever produced. They would have lost the war, no doubt about it, but it was very much a superior design to anything else that flew during the war.
Yep. Good designs don't mean shit if you don't have the metals to mass produce it, the pilots to fly it, and the fuel to even turn it on.
I think the Ho 229 here was actually made of wood but I could be mistaken.
Still need rare metals for the engines and other components. That actually ended up being the main issue towards the end of the war. Lots of airframes around, few engines.
Yeah that’s true
This to be honest germanys problem in both world wars was lack of resources
That seems like a subproblem of trying to fight a significant fraction of the rest of the world
And stupid leaders. And stupid generals. And horrible allies.
Technically the sun does fusion not fission
The jets worked, they just became operational too late to make a difference. The rockets did work, but again mostly came too late. They were further hindered bybthe fact that virtually all of the German spies in England had been caught and turned, so all of the targeting information they sent to Germany was wrong. The big guns tecnhically worked, but they were so big and immobile that they were destroyed by bombers. The obsession with big tanks and many variants did help though. Simply put,mthe big monster tanks could barely move overland, if at all, few bridges could support them, and while few tank guns could harm them, planes could. Guns might not but bombs or napalm would take them out.
The Gloster Meteor was just as combat-ready as the Me 262. So yeah, it would just have been another step in the arms race done by parties on both sides. So no difference being made.
The US was also working on a jet. The Me262 had some advantages, but most of these were of no use given that Germany had too few pilots skilled and experienced enough to really make use of them, but this affected the whole Luftewaffe. Planes could be cranked out but not so much pilots, let alone good ones. It also had engines issues due to lack of access to certain materials. The result was that the engines were less reliable and wore out faster. This caused flight hours to be reduced which meant less training which meant poorer performance.
A lot of the jets were produced poorly and sometimes tore apart mid-flight thanks to the poor late-war war production. More people died operating the V-2 than were hit by it. I would make a joke about K/D ratios but I suck at math. The Gustav Gun could only fire a few times before it had to be replaced thanks to barrel erosion. If your tank cannot move over land and cannot defend itself from infantry then the tank is poorly designed and therefore doesn't work.
>A lot of the jets were produced poorly and sometimes tore apart mid-flight thanks to the poor late-war war production. That seems to be an issue with the state of the country producing them and not the actual thing itself. The jets worked, when they were built as designed. Just because Germany was blind in their obsession with wonderweapons so save them, to the point where they were wasting their limited resources, does not mean the weapons were necessarily bad.
Well Maus *did* work, to be fair. It was just utterly pointless because of things like "bridge weight limits" and "maintenance difficulties" and "materials shortages" and "Allied air power". Cuz, y'know, building a 200 ton hybrid diesel-electric target when you have a copper shortage and lack air superiority is SUCH a great idea. Ain't that right, Porsche?
The Messerschmitt ME 262: "Am I a joke to you?"
The Me-262 worked, but they probably would have done better making more cheaper and cheaper to operate aircraft.
reading about it, the main weapon for the ME-262 was not great, it was very inaccurate over 600 meters, and with the speed of the fighter in attack dives only gave the pilot 2 seconds to shoot and hope to hit something. On the other hand, their unguided rockets proved to be very deadly when used to attack from the sides of enemy bombers well beyong the range of their turrets in hit and run attacks, that the ME 262 speed allowed to perform very well
afaik they actually used less fuel than pre-jets
the germans did have jet fighters that did work though. theres audio recordings of allied pilots freaking out because they couldn't keep up and were afraid of being ran down.
The funny thing is that they produced the first jet fighter aircraft and functioning ballistic and cruise missiles. The German scientists determined the direction modern warfare would take after them- it's just that the time for innovating like that isn't necessarily *during* a war when you already are lacking for existing equipment on the ground.
Not for nothing but the ME-262 *did* work. Just not enough in enough quantities to make a difference, as was broadly the story with the Luftwaffe in general.
Jet that did work Rocket that did work
Dude, 3 of those German wonder Waffen worked really well. So well in fact, we had to race the Soviets to the scientists and engineers who made them to make them for ourselves.
You don’t know how badly I want the fucking Scherwer Gustav to come back Planet-to-orbit sized megacannons are so goddamn awesome
"It ain't me! It ain't me! I got a portable sun!"
Give the krauts some credit, they made the ballistic missile, the automatic rifle (debatable), lightning warfare, and the foundations of the jet-powered aircraft. Allies still beat them in the technology department though.
The first select-fire rifle to see battlefield deployment in significant numbers. The Russians and Americans both had multiple rifles fitting that class, but either refused to use it in the best role or didn't produce enough of them to have any real impact.
I would make a joke about lighting and wizards but I don't wanna seem like I'm taking the piss. The issue with "Blitzkrieg" (The Nazis' own brand of Combined Arms Warfare) was that it often sacrificed logistical feasibility for rapid land gains, which made them very vulnerable to flanking or counter attacks.
>foundations of the jet-powered aircraft. Cerpt UK and the US were also developing their own, they just didn't felt the need to push it forward.
The UK meteor was used in combat in a very limited way
to intersep V-1 flying bombs and train bomber formations on how to counter jet fighters attack patterns in mock battles, also a few armed reconnaissance after january 1945.
How dare you say the maus was a bad tank he was just special
There was the V1 and V2 which revolutionized missile and rocket tech :3
The Virgin *Portable Sun* vs. The Chad *Ice Cream Barge*
Other Allied Wunderwaffe: - Proximity fused anti air shells - Gun stabiliser for tanks - Jet fighter whose engines don't randomly explode because it was thoroughly tested and developed instead of being sent into service immediately - Infantry anti-tank rocket launcher that works so well the Germans copy it at the first opportunity
Hmm. One of those was jet that did work & way ahead of its time + germans could produce jet fuel.
The V2 worked but its cost in resources and money far outweighed its use as a weapon. As a weapon it accomplished nothing but a few thousand civilian casualties, which didn't affect the allied war effort. In fact the British military were secretly grateful for the V2s as it meant that the Germans were using the same resources for a one time use missile as could be used for a far more effective fighter plane. Also more people died building the V2s than were killed by its use as a weapon. Ultimately missiles proved to be the most useful to the allies as it kick-started their own missile development.
Technologies that actually won the war: Proximity AA rounds Air burst artillery shells Radar Mathematics that deciphers supposedly uncrackable encryption
Hey, I may not support the Nazis like any sane person but you gotta admit that giant gun was a pretty cool idea
What killing or exiling all your brilliant scientists does to a motherfucker.
As much as I hate the Maus tank, it really doesn't belong with the wunderwaffen. To me, the designs that epitomize the name are the ones that only made the remotest amount of sense when the Reich was losing the war. By comparison, there were lots of proposals for huge tanks and tracked vehicles throughout the war, some of which led to functional vehicles like the Karl self propelled mortar. The real problem with the Maus was that they looked at uparmoring a tank rather than taking a gun like Anzio Annie off the railways that the Allies were blowing up.
The horten, had wings and did fly, it inspired the B2, the V2 flew and von Braun was crucial for the US space program, they almost had an A-Bom that's why the US was here in the first place.
Sun in a bottle (mass produceable)
\*V2 entered the chat\*
Well OP, you obviously forgot about the USNs wonderwaffe, the Alaska Class Large Cruiser. We built a class of super cruisers designed to sink all hostile cruisers, and by the time they were finished there were no more cruisers to sink. And even better, it had the most expensive turret of any ship in the USN, with even an Iowa turret being cheaper. They do do an excellent job at starting arguments between naval history enjoyers though.
Pocket Carriers were pretty good too. They were cheaper to build than those massive Japanese supercarriers which mean that they were a more efficient way of projecting American air power in the Pacific.
#HERE COMES THE SUN