Monday, June 26, 2017

Why the Nazi's could never win WWII

The Germans came damn close to winning World War II.  There has been a lot alternative history and speculation about how the Nazi's could have won the war by making a few slightly different decisions.   What if the panzers had been allowed to wipe out the British at Dunkirk? What if the RAF had lost the Battle of Britain?  What if the Germans had not invaded the Soviet Union in 1941? What if the Germans had treated the subjugated people in Eastern Europe better?

The list of potential 'what if' scenarios is nearly endless.  All of them offer a chance that history may not have turned out as it did had the Hitler and the Germans only done this one thing differently.

Leaving out of the discussion for the moment the fact that Germany possessed neither the manpower nor that resources to win the war in its final scope, we should focus on one simple truth: 

The Nazi-led Germans could never have won the war precisely because they were the Nazi-led Germans.  

The very nature of Hitler, the Nazi ideology, and the nature of totalitarian states was
such that they contained the seeds of their own destruction.  There is no scenario in which Hitler and the Nazis, acting within the bounds of their worldview, could have selected these alternative options.

The simplest example of this conundrum is the Battle of Dunkirk.   In the spring of 1940, the BEF lays defeated and prostrate on the beaches of France, and the Germans Panzer division are just a few miles away.   An hour's drive forward by the Wehrmacht and the British will be forced to surrender.  With their entire army destroyed and the Home Islands defenseless, the British would be forced to surrender, ensuring German victory.  But Hitler stops the Panzers and orders Herman Goering's Luftwaffe to complete the attack by air.   This effort fails, the British escape, and the rest is history. 


There has been endless speculation about what might have been if Hitler does not give this fateful order.  But the fact is that Hitler could not have done anything else.  There was never a chance that the Armee would be allowed to singlehandedly wipe out the British. 

Hitler ruled, as many tyrants do, through setting up competing factions and keeping them set against each other.  This balance of power is critical, and any one faction must not be allowed to become too strong for fear that it will topple the dictator.  Hitler feared, and rightly so, that the High Command generals would stage a coup.

Thus, as the German High Command was about to achieve complete strategic victory, it also became a threat to Hitler.  Who knows what might have happened if the glory of the victory over Germany's foes was credited to the Armee.  Hitler could not allow this to happen, and thus the Panzers were stopped in their tracks and the Luftwaffe was unleashed. 

This scenario repeats itself with virtually every one of these alternative history scenarios.  Each time the historian presents an alternative choice that in reality could never have been adopted by the Germans.

What if the Germans treated the Ukrainians and White Russians better and they joined forces with the Germans?  Doesn't matter.  By it's very nature, a Nazi-led war effort could never treat the 'under menschen" better.   While this seems like a rational choice that could have been made, it was not one that was actually available to the Germans.

What if the Germans treated the Jews better and developed the Atomic bomb instead of the actual history in which many Jewish scientists fled to the United States?  This is not a viable option in a country where the ruling party rose to power on largely on Nationalism and Anti-Semitism. 

What if the Germans had not attacked East in 1941, instead focusing on defeating the British before opening a fatal second front?  Again, this was not an option available to Hitler at this time.   He had risen to power quickly, and the demands of the war were beginning to place tremendous strain on the German economy.  Maintaining a massive army is extremely expensive, both in terms of gold and political capital.   Perhaps Hitler's grip on power could have survived a year of limited war time victories while the British were slowly starved into submission.  But this was not a risk Hitler could take.   Like a shark that can only breath while moving, the Germans war machine needed to strike somewhere in 1941, and the Soviet Union was the only real choice. 

We see that most of the alternative history timelines hinge on the Germans making choices that were not available to them at that time.  As long as Hitler and the Nazi's were in control, none of these alternatives could come to pass.

So what if Hitler was not the leader of Germany?  What if he was assassinated at some point early in the war?

This set of alternative histories fails as well.  Only Hitler had the charisma and the force of will to unite the German people to execute the war.   The German people loved this man, and followed him to the very gates of hell. 

By the end of the war, Hitler had made a series of catastrophic decisions, both major and minor.  All of the 'Hitler is taken out' alternatives take advantage of the fact that these disasters would be prevented without Hitler in charge.  But these scenarios ignore the fact that Hitler also made some very good decisions early in the war.   It was Hitler, for example, that over ruled the General Staff in 1940 and selected the Manstein plan to invade through the Ardennes.  Absent that decision, it is likely that the war would have played out exactly like WWI, devolving into static trench warfare. 

It is extremely unlikely that another, less capable and charismatic politician could have united the people in the same manner.  Without this unifying force, the Germans would have fallen back into the pattern of petty internal bickering and infighting that marked the post-WWI era under the Weimar Republic.

The Germans could never have fought the way they did for a lesser leader.  They would not have prevailed under lesser Nazi's. 

In summary, Germany would never had the success it enjoyed during the Second World War without the charismatic and unifying leadership of Adolf Hitler.  But the inept military leadership of Hitler and the evil influence of Nazi ideology doomed the Germans to lose from the very outset of the war. 









Sunday, June 25, 2017

The Problem with Un-Enforcement


The purpose of laws is to guide human behavior by placing certain actions out of bounds.  We make illegal the things that which we do not want done.

Occasionally, we pass some truly moronic laws:
    Be sure to take these down before January 15th!

  • We banned the incandescent lightbulb in favor of crappy expensive lightbulbs that contain a deadly neurotoxin.
  • In New York has banned pistol magazines that hold more than 10 rounds but there are no exceptions for police officers and no compliant magazines available for use.
  • In Maine, It's Illegal To Have Christmas Decorations Up After Jan. 14
  • In Nevada, It Is Illegal For A Man To Buy Drinks For More Than Three People At A Time
  • In Arizona, it is illegal to have more than 2 dildos at a time in your home
When it becomes obvious that these laws are asinine and unworkable, the proper solution is to repeal them. 

The more laws the more offenders. ~Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732

The problem is that the political forces that got the law passed in the first place prevent them from being repealed.

So the government simply decides not to enforce the laws that it has passed.  The government ignore the laws that are on the books. 

This is not a solution.

It merely create the situation where the specter of government persecution hangs over everyone's head.  How can you be free citizen when you violate dozens of laws everyday, and the police will only prosecute you if you don't fall into the protected classes.  This is a recipe for corruption and abuse of power.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. ~Edmund Burke

One of the problems we have in this country is that we have too many laws. So many things are illegal that the law is virtually unknowable. Every man woman and child in this country is in violation of one or more Federal laws and regulations.

This creates a situation that allows the government to punish virtually anyone it wants at any time that it wants.  This is a recipe for tyranny.

Indingenous Stupidity

The good folks up in Canada want us to know that Western Civilization has reached peak stupidity.

The are now introducing indigenous learning into the curriculum at the University of Saskatchewan. Founded on the model of the great British universities, the University was imagined as a grand preserve of Western thought for the children of Canadian settlers.

From the NYT article:

"Now, all that has changed. The powwow graduation in May was one example of how universities across Canada are “indigenizing” — a new, elastic term that means everything from drawing more aboriginal students and faculty members onto campuses built largely for white settlers, to infusing those stodgy Western institutions with aboriginal belief systems and traditional knowledge"

Yes.  The lore and the superstitions of the indigenous people will be infused into the curriculum because the University is "committing to change in areas including scholarship and governance, and envisioning itself as an institution of “knowledge-keeping,” as well as research and learning."

Why do we need to infuse our institutions of higher learning with indigenous lore?  Well, Peter Stoicheff, the university’s president explains it as follows:

“Universities are so inherently white and Western, when you start to push against it, you realized how intractable a lot of that is,” Mr. Stoicheff said.
 
“Everything is based on reading stuff,” he explained. “Everything is laid out in a hierarchical and linear fashion. Look at the aboriginal ways, from visual expression to the wampum belt, dances and oral storytelling. It’s not linear. Everything is based on the circle.”
 
This is perhaps the stupidest thing uttered by a human adult.  Ever. 
 
Everything is based on structure and knowledge??  Of course it is!  These are the foundational elements of Western thought and Western Civilization. 
 
The 'aboriginal ways' he is so fond of produced exactly ZERO human achievements.  Oral history and Wampum belts?  This is peak technology for the aboriginals??  There is a very good reason that oral story telling was a core of aboriginal thought:  they never developed written language.
 
That's right.  He is infusing the curriculum with the brilliance of a culture that is at least 5,000 years behind the West.  This is profoundly stupid and self destructive.   We have nothing to learn from indigenous lore because they never invented anything.   Ok, wait, a belt. We can learn to make a leather belt like we are at a $40,000 a year summer camp. 
 
Interestingly, he identifies the reason for this gap in achievement in his statement.  Aboriginal thinking is based on the circle;  Western thought is linear.   In other words, Western thought goes somewhere, and indigenous thought goes in circles. 

This University is utterly failing it's mission.   Envisioned as a grand preserve of Western thought, it is now in the vanguard of the utterly stupid and destructive drive to undermine Western thought and ultimately Western Civilization.

 

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Climate Change Theory is Dead. Again.

Once again a paper has been published claiming that the Climate Change computer models do not predict the future very well.  The paper claims that the last 18 years represent a 'hiatus' in the actual temperatures around the world, and that this pause is not predicted or replicated in any of the models.

This claim is not shocking -- many observers and scientists have been saying this for years, including some politicians like Ted Cruz.

What is shocking is who is admitting that the computer models are wrong and are predicting roughly 2.5 times the observed warming, and by extension, that the whole theory of man made global climate change is about to be blown into pieces. 

The latest paper on this comes from climate scientist Benjamin Santer.  Santer is famous for being once of the most vocal and aggressive climate doomsayers, having once threatened to punch noted skeptic Patrick Michaels in the mouth. 

So we are now at the point where  even the most ardent AGW supporters are admitting that the models do not align with the actual results from the past 18 years.  While there have been a number of attempts to 'fix' the data, or claim that 18 years is not a long enough time frame, the stubborn fact remains that the models do not accurately predict current conditions over the past 18 years. 

If there is a near-twenty year slowdown in warming that cannot be accounted for by the models, then there is zero chance the models are accurate 80-100 years out. 



Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Ignorant, Stupid, or Evil?

During the 19th Century, there was room for legitimate debate about the most effective way to organize society in order to create the best outcome.   Marx had recently published the Communist Manifesto, and Adam Smith's Capitalism was still struggling to lift the masses out of abject poverty.  It was an area in which reasonable people could differ -- would free markets do better than planned economies? Would capitalism prevail or communism?

Well, that debate is now over.  We are at the dawn of the 21st Century, and the answer is in: communism has failed and capitalism has exceeded everyone's wildest dreams of prosperity and abundance. 

And yet, there are those that still persist in hailing the virtues of socialism and communism.  This, despite the overwhelming evidence of the past 150 years.  How is this possible?

I can only think of three possible explanations:

Ignorance:  They are simply unaware that socialism has failed wherever it has been tried. They have never been told about the starvation, oppression, and death that follow in the wake of socialism.  They haven't read a history book., and therefore are not aware of the millions that died at the hands of their own governments, or the complete lack of consumer goods, or the fact that poor people in capitalist countries have so much food that the single biggest health risk in poor communities is obesity.

Stupidity:  They are aware that communism killed millions of people through starvation, and that vast networks of concentration camps and gulags were set up to hold hundreds of thousands of political prisoners, but they don't see the connection between the socialized medicine they are stumping for and the gulags.    They know that Che Guevara killed people, but see no link between his sociopathy and the murderous end stage of all communist governments.   They are aware of the fact that Venezuela is circling the drain after 17 years of socialism, but don't understand why Venezuelans are reduced to eating pigeons and rats due to communist mismanagement of the food supply.


Evil:  They know full well that the history of communism is a blood soaked trail of tears and the inevitable oppression of the people.   They are aware that North Koreans are fully 3" shorter than their South Korean brothers after a few generations of socialist starvation diets. They know that free college tuition is the first step into an economic and political nightmare that will result in the death of millions.  And yet they advocate for these policies anyway. 

So when college kids demand free tuition, and women demand free birth control, and when Antifa thugs roam the streets with hammer and sickle flags, ask yourself, are they Ignorant, Stupid, or Evil?

Monday, June 5, 2017

Scary Charts are Lies

The Climate Change Government Science Complex is in full panic mode now that President Trump has announced his intention to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord

They continue to claim that this is the end of civilization as we know it, and that we are all going to die.  They reinforce these hysterical claims with scary charts that reinforce the idea that global temperatures are out of control. 

This is the latest fear mongering chart to show up on my Facebook and LinkedIn timeline:

Purporting to show that warming is completely out of control, this chart shows the change in average global temperature from 1880-2015.

There is no legend or other explanation of what temps are blue, and what temps are red, but the implication is clear: we are burning up!

This chart is then used to justify the expenditure of billions of dollars on green energy and the creation of a strangling thicket of regulations.

This chart lacks perspective. 

If you take the actual temperature values used to create this visual and graph them with reasonable parameters, you get a very different perspective.   


What this chart shows is that average  global temperatures have been remarkably stable over the past century+. 

Why do the alarmists use the scary red and blue chart to hide the actual data? 

Because if you saw the actual facts in the proper perspective, you would realize the utter fraud that is being perpetrated on the world by the Climate Change Charlatans.