12 Replies to “Honey, I Finished The Internet”

  2. Absolutely fascinating, not only the tone of his normal voice, but more importantly the insights into his analysis of the grand strategic situation, challenges and importance of oil, logistics, and the distracting effect of the Italian-initiated campaign into Greece and subsequently Crete. The diplomatic tension with the USSR is fascinating. It’s like listening in to a conversation at Deny’s in which Hitler sits down and discusses the reasons for Germany’s failure on the eastern front.

  3. Fist time I saw a photo……..
    the site was owned by a broad in a skirt..
    I was like wow!!?
    then I thought it threw.
    this internet thing it’s not going to work.

  4. It’s notable that I am in France, where I’m advised, “This video is not available in your country.”

  5. Given the shear size of the tape recorders and microphones they used in those days it is astonishing that it could have been secretly recorded in that tiny dining car within the security environment that existed in WWII.

  6. Thanks for that. Even monsters can sound like intelligent, reasonable people. It leads me to believe that everything he did and said for public consumption was well thought out in advance and said and done for effect. Hard to be sure if he believed all or any of it himself but, German nationalism and personal power being his sole reason to be, found it all very useful to meet his ends.

  7. We tend to view the Nazi leaders as comedic caricatures. This was propaganda, originating in both government and media. They were for the most part WWI heroes who were quite intelligent. Goebbels had a PhD. Goering was awarded the Blue Max having shot down 22 aircraft. Goering’s IQ tested at Nuremburg was 138. Hitler earned a couple iron crosses. They tended to be ordinary people from a cross-section of German society.

  8. From what was said, it seems that Hitler believed they had already lost the war in 1942, or at least were in big trouble at that point.

  9. Hitler is often caricatured as always being this screaming, maniacal nut. He WAS a maniacal nut, but not one who always screamed like one. He to the contrary often came off as very reasonable to people. Academics in Germany were enthralled by him. There is a reason why he became so popular.
    He definitely believed what he said, hence why he wrote Mein Kampf. What he was saying though in the video was not at all surprising, as Germany was short of oil throughout the entire war. One of the main reasons for the creation of Blitzkrieg, i.e. “Lightning War,” was because of this oil shortage. The German military never had the amount of oil it needed so the idea was to go in and dominate quickly, not get into long, drawn-out conflicts. That was much more doable in Western Europe with the more mild weather and established road system than in Russia though, with the freezing cold in the winter and tons of snow, and the intense heat and mud in the summer. Also Germany never prepared their military for winter war.
    What is even more ironic in all this is that the German army was not this ultra-modern, fully-mechanized war machine that so many think it was at the time. In reality, about 80% of the German army in WW2 was horse-drawn. It for the most part looked like a 19th-century army, however this was hidden by the Nazi propaganda machine. But if it was short on fuel with 80% horse-drawn, one can imagine the problems that would’ve occurred had it been fully-mechanized!
    Nor did the German tanks run on diesel either (another common misconception), they ran on gasoline. The lack of knowledge about Soviet tank production is also very true. The Soviets had tank factories further inwards that the Germans had no idea about. The Germans also were stunned when they first came upon the T-34 tank, considered by many as the finest tank of the war. It had a diesel engine, was easy to produce, and could stand up to any weapon the Germans had at the time until they got some better tanks. The Germans could not believe that these lower life-forms (as they saw the Slavic peoples) had a tank better than them!
    A T-34 was captured and sent back to Germany, and some Nazis suggested that they copy it since the design was so good, but Hitler refused, saying the tank to fight the T-34 would be German. The Germans produced the Tiger tank, but this tank was a disaster from a mechanical and logistics standpoint. It’s transmission was too weak as it pushed the limits of structural steel at the time, it was too heavy to cross any bridges of the time, you had to take the tracks off of it completely to mount it on a train, it was very maintenance-intensive and broke down constantly in the field, it had things like power steering for example, which was unnecessary and an extra complication for a country fighting a war. It also took far longer to produce, and thus only around 2,000-some were ever produced I think.
    Also helpful to the Soviet Union was all of the aid from the United States in the form of food, steel, knowledge for manufacturing, and trucks and vehicles. What is amazing is that even with ALL of this, the Germans still came close to taking Russia, had Hitler not made some mistakes.
    As an interesting side note on the importance of oil in a war, had the Japanese in the Pearl Harbor attack knocked out the fuel tanks there, the U.S. Navy would have had to retreat back to California. They were able to continue fighting from Hawaii however because the Japanese failed to do this. Some Japanese pilots had seen the tanks and wanted to go back for a third wave of attack to knock them out, but the Japanese commander in charge at the time ruled against it, in hindsight, one of the biggest mistakes of the war.

  10. Exactly. All of the top Nazi leadership personalities had high IQs.
    I may be incorrect but I think that this was the meeting with Marshal Carl Mannerhiem and the Finnish President Ryti which took place in Finland in June 1942. Hitler was trying to convince Mannerheim to go beyond just taking back the land they lost during the Winter War and attack toward Leningrad and cut the rail lines to Murmansk.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fyRYvw_ilc

  11. Thank you for that link, Ken. I had never seen that before and I think you may be correct on the historic reference.

  12. Thanks for that, Ken. What’s amazing about those old news reels is the rapture of the crowds.
    Several years ago I was talking with my (late) friend Fritz about Obammy’s rise to the presidency of the US. Fritz had great English but he still retained his Austrian accent.
    “Ja, vell, I haff seen ziss before ven I was little boy in ze var. The women for Hitler ver everywhere their panties vetting.” Indeed….and for turdo a doo.

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