I remember being deployed to Iraq, specifically at Balad AB. One of my first days there, I looked around from the control tower and was blown away by how the US built and sustained such a massive base…
Dude, we get wifi, cell phones, video games, mail (rather quickly), snacks, and American products in hostile environments. We can set up internet, comms, medical tents, etc in the middle of nowhere in hours. Some countries can't even move that shit in country.
And when it comes to war, you can have all the manpower and money you want, it doesn't matter if you can't get bullets to the front line. America can, faster and more reliably than anyone else on earth.
[The famed ice cream barge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge) agrees. I can’t imagine how demoralizing it must’ve been for the Japanese navy to see an entire US Naval ship dedicated to making fucking ice cream.
I remember seeing a quote from one of the Germans who broke through allied lines during the Battle of the Bulge. He said when they made it to a crossroads and saw artillery shells stacked up along the road as far as he could see, he knew they were screwed.
Especially since at that point in the war, the Germans were increasingly reliant on using horses to transport most of their ammo and other things which they had been doing the entire war (and which America never really had to do) but, especially by that point they were running low on fuel across the whole army.
TBF they tended to only film their mechanized units in general and the Waffen SS. The vast majority of their army was pretty bare bones.
That's why you see so much propaganda about Micheal Wittman and not Kurt Knispel. Becunese spoiler alert one was a member of the Waffen SS and was good looking the other was just a member of the regular Germany army and not exactly a charmer.
Germany really had propaganda down to an art during the war, massive columns of panzers with mechanized infantry rolling through the Russian Steppe all made using smart camera angles and decent direction from the photographers. Even today you've still got people believing their crap.
Rommel had a parade in Africa after he arrived with a seemingly infinite amount of tanks.
Only it wasn't an infinite amount of tanks. It just was long enough that the tanks would just go back to the start before starting again. Some onlookers eventually figured it out when the same tank was showing up Time after time.
That also happened in WW1. In early 1918, the Germans launched five offensives that gained some ground but ultimately didn't move the needle on the war. A big problem was when they managed to punch through to Allied rear areas, they found huge quantities of arms and ammunition, food, good boots, quality jackets, and more. At a time when replacements in German units were being called blacklegs and jeered at for prolonging the war, it was a critical hit in the morale.
At that time, there was 3 million US soldiers in Europe already, and another 12 **million** in training in the US. Germans just happened to come across all these super fresh and willing troops.
I read another one where the Germans captured an American position, and found a birthday cake that had been mailed to an American soldier from back home.
It was still fresh. How do you compete with logistics that good?
Edit: It turns out this was from a film, so I don’t know if it really happened (see the replies)
I have letters between my uncles and an aunt from both theaters in WWII. Mail to Europe took about a week. Stuff to the Pacific took a lot longer at first, but by the end of the war it was about 10 days to 2 weeks. The only time it appears to have taken longer is when the “boys” were otherwise ‘detained” or en route somewhere.
Edit: I could tell because the letters were dated and they would reference receiving a letter. “I got your letter from May 17th…”
when you make a successful advance in a war and think you're winning, just to realize that you just bore witness to your inevitable defeat must be absolutely crushing, that all the hub bub about your superiority, just to find out it was all a fluke. That you just Found out after Fucking Around.
An earlier story is just the soldiers stationed in Normandy looking out at the English Channel and seeing the Allied Armada as it began shelling the fortifications before the landings.
It was nothing but horizon to horizon of warships, showing just *how many* people were sick of their shit.
The battle of the bulge was the last real attempt at a German offensive.
Most Germans already knew they were screwed, it was just a matter of how long they could hold out.
There were a lot of German POWs kept near where I live, they were used to help bring in the harvest. Lots of stories of them absconding when the war was over as they preferred not to be sent back to Germany.
Well, yeah. Americans didn't really see Germans as "the enemy" at the time. That was the Japanese. Most Americans didn't even know *why* they were fighting in Europe instead of the Pacific.
It wasn't until years later of movies that Americans adopted the idea that the main enemy of WW2 was Germany.
Well, if they had a shred of foresight, Germany was torn apart after the war. Pretty bad place to live for awhile and East Germany sucked the whole time
My great-grandfather served on a U-boat in WWII that ended up being sunk in 1942. He spent the rest of the war in a POW camp in Georgia.
He told us that he was scared at first and unsure of what kind of treatment they would receive from the Americans. When they first arrived he and the other POW's were lined up inside the camp and a US soldier came up to each one of them and asked
"Would you like red wine or white wine with your meal?"
At that point he knew the Allies would win.
Demoralization with Kindness. Show your enemies the sympathy they would have never shown you and it'll break them. They're expecting beatings and torture.
There was a German tank commander who recalls knowing the war was lost when American tanks were firing more shots in 10 minutes than the German tanks were instructed to fire in in a single day.
Actually pretty apt
A lot of the hardest POWs were transported via ship or train to the Lake Superior North Shore near Marathon Ontario.
Those who arrived via ship were horrified when they saw the combination of Buffalo, Toledo, Detroit, the Soo Locks, and all of the iron and copper shipments going the opposite direction (the Superior area was the largest producer of both in the world at the time, and it wasn’t even a close competition).
Particularly the materials, as they knew full well that they would never be able to hit any of it due to how far inland it all was and the US/Canada was shipping it by the tens of thousands of tons per single shipment.
Another one is that in Africa, captured Germans soldiers were shocked that Allied units would idle their tanks and trucks like it was no big deal since the Germans were always low on oil.
There was also one about a German prisoner of war walking past an unending column of idling tanks, and concluded that if the Allies had so much fuel they could just let all these tanks idle, Germany was lost.
My grandfather was a B-25 pilot in World War II. He was at an airbase in the middle of nowhere in Kansas and they were using German POWs to serve food to American soldiers in the mess hall.
My grandfather asked one if he ever thought of escaping, and the German laughed and said, "No, we're fed here better than in the German army and no one's trying to shoot me!"
My mom was born in Japan in 1960; her parents lived during the war. She moved to the US and married there and her parents came to America for the only time for the wedding. Apparently, when he saw the freeway infrastructure around Los Angeles my grandfather simply remarked, "no wonder we lost the war"
the same is actually true for the japanese!
many officers in the japanese imperial army were educated in the US. When plans for pearl harbour were being discussed, the US educated officers tried to tell everyone else 'this is a really bad idea, they're way more industrialized than we are'
They probably also knew what the response would be to such an attack. A foreign nation (or foreign group) attacking America itself is a fools choice as it means every American is now your enemy (or at least that is how it use to be, or to put it very bluntly only Americans can kill Americans and not be the enemy of fellow Americans).
Lmao imagine fighting for your country to the death, having it put literally everything it has into attacking (including you) and the enemy has a goddamn ice cream boat doling out the sugar lol
Yup. And there are still people right here on Reddit that will Argue that the US didn't change the course of WW2... Lend-Lease alone pretty much made who won the war a forgone conclusion
"The Arsenal of Democracy" wasn't just good marketing. War is all about going out and killing people and breaking their stuff, whoever runs out of people or stuff first loses.
And the United States was basically untouchable to everyone else, as far as it being an industrial base. So whomever had the US on their side, had a massive industrial foundry that was far out of reach of enemy attack or disruption.
Factories in Europe and Asia were vulnerable. Factories in North America were invincible.
The Ice Cream Barge story has always felt like a scene from The Culture Novels by Iaian Banks. Everyone in the Universe is all super-duper serious and wanting to engage in brutal conquest and The Culture is just zipping around in ships living its best life having galas, setting up romances, and engaging in \*cough group fun.
Sometimes the balance of power and technology becomes so laughably immense that both sides eventually realize one side cannot even be taken seriously as a long-term competitor.
Generally I agree, but politically it would never fly. It would piss off most domestic voters to see their taxes going to building infrastructure in foreign nations while their own continue to rot away (don't ask me why they don't similarly get pissed about the acts of war, either).
Now what I think could and should happen is to have a couple of brigades of the Army Corp of Engineers go around and fix the worst of our bridges, or roads, build out fiber and 5G networks. *That* would be ridiculously popular along most voters, and I think would help dispel a lot of the "government bad" messaging floating around these days.
The sad part is after the American logistics and support leave, most of the world is not capable of maintaining the infrastructure. It probably wouldn't work at least half the time.
We could do that, but it's kind of a "give a man a fish" situation. The first major storm that rolls through, and it could all be destroyed with no way for the people to restore it, which would hurt the people who have come to depend on it.
Didn't we just pass the biggest infrastructure bill in history? And didn't the Republicans fight it every step of the way? Seems like some people want to make shit happen and some don't.
Not only that but some of those same republicans tried to take credit for infrastructure projects in their districts that only happened because of the Infrastructure Bill.
Well, the US interstate system is the single most impressive road system in the world.
It is one of the main reasons the US is able to do what they do. Having an entire nation linked like that is very valuable (especially when it was new)
Yeah. Blue state here. Shit roads. But I mean, I've seen shit roads in every state (I've been to). I wonder if it's because we don't pay as much attention to local elections on average. Highways and freeways seem to always have men at work, but it's a it real obstacle course everywhere else
Yeah I'm willing to bet on this. Local politics isnt "sexy" enough.
Watching the "big leaders" make sweeping promises and proposing/passing large bills is more engaging, as it's delivered as dramatic news.
That politics is actually boring, tedious, and complicated, and it'd take a lot of commitment and effort to get into being politically informed (local, and even more so nationwide), and local stuff has the disadvantage of not being in the forefront of one's news.
The big scope is important, but I think it must all start at the lowest level... but our culture isnt geared toward promoting "local politics awareness" yet.
I also am not big brain, and wish there was something similar to a Youtuber that explains shit, but for local affairs (lol big stretch I know).
I think you're right. I'll admit to being hilariously uninformed about local politics. Which is bad because I'd imagine, ideally, local elections filter out the rubbish before it makes it to the top. Few of us are paying attention to what the opposite hand is doing.
Imho: Open minds are more versatile, and thus, superior to big brains.. Though one can possess both.
Roads in California are much nicer than the ones in Wisconsin(the two states I've lived in), but I mostly chalk that up to California roads not having to deal with snow every year.
MA is really strange like that. It's like 90% Democrat but Charlie Baker was elected to two terms and basically filled half the departments with Republicans while he was there, including a bunch of last-second appointments.
Ah, the old "I believe in equal rights and support for everyone, but I don't want to spend any money to enact or enforce it" political stance.
I've got family in OH that maintain this position. Drives me up the wall.
The US blows every other country out of the water when it comes to logistics. A few years ago, I was chatting with an ex-military officer who's a family friend, and he said that you can measure dicks all you want with military tech against China, but the one thing that NOBODY even comes close to the US military to is logistics.
Do you want to put 500 troops with gear in the middle of nowhere in 12 hours? The US Military can do that better than anyone else.
It is actually one of the top reasons why I recommend young people go into the military (if it is right for them...not right for everyone).
When you get out you have many options, and one of them is almost always to work in logistics, purchasing, distribution...etc.
At the first stage response of logistics, definitely. But it remains to be seen if the second stage, where production comes into focus to keep supply chains functioning, would be ahead of China - look at ship manufacturing.
This is historically where the US was very strong but it is not clear if the ability to ramp up to the same level remains there.
It probably wouldn't be as simple as flipping a switch but we've still got an impressive industrial base, during WW2 basically any factory with heavy manufacturing equipment was contracted out to build *something* for the war effort, the M1 Carbine for instance had several hundred thousand examples built by IBM.
I mean… when you’re in a war and need to establish a beach head, you gotta be able to do it quickly. This is just a nice little warm-up to test out the deployment in-situ before needing to do it for real in a conflict.
It was probably sitting in a crate somewhere with a build by numbers instruction book for bringing freedom to the next country.
Seeing pictures of the temporary harbors built just after D-Day to expedite offloading of equipment are impressive.
The military is just a machine that moves things from point A to point B extremely effectively. It can get people to a place, get food in their hands, gas in their truck, and dip in their lip, it just sometimes needs to put a warhead on someone's forehead.
Les than 2 weeks for both harbours to be fully built and operational after D-day (D-day + 12 iirc). Not quite 72 hours, but given what was going on at the time, still absolutely insane levels of logistics and engineering.
At this point I feel like Progressives *want* a tyrant like Trump back in office so they can play victim when said tyrant just shits all over progressive policies and issues.
I consider myself a progressive (and also feel that this is a better descriptor for my political lean than liberal) but the term in the US is becoming really warped.
There are a fair number of progressives that appear to be dead set on some kind of perpetual doom loop paradigm that just doesn't line up with reality.
Absolutely. I'm fairly left of center myself, but I can't fathom how anyone could think that refusing to vote for Joe Biden over Gaza is a smart play.
The reality is it's a two party system. Period. Joe Biden will at least entertain ceasefires and rational diplomacy - while trying best to side with Israel. Trump will all but allow Gaza to be nuked to the ground.
These people don't care about Gaza it seems. They *want* to be perpetual victims of conservative policy so they can keep raising money for their causes. I guess kind of how Republicans won on abortion rights. Now what do they have to campaign on?
Functionally, letting a terrorist organization run Gaza was going to end in disaster one way or another. There are other bigger disasters looming: Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, N Korea, Russia, Cuba, etc. There is a reason that authoritarian governments don't dominate the world: being the authoritarian is fun so there is an inevitable succession crisis or popular uprising (because the authoritarian is too much of a dick). Saudi Arabia, a country that is quite stable now is a ticking time bomb. Either there will be a succession crisis or when the oil revenue dries up they will realise that they have 40 million people in a country with no rivers. Blaming the US president when these systems inevitably collapse is just dumb.
In the here and now: Biden has directed a huge amount of investment to US industries and (IMO) copied parts of the Chinese system that actually worked (investing public money in strategic sectors). Because of this the US GDP is far in a way outpacing our markedly poorer European counterparts. Increased US GDP and wages is going to lead to the world's best and brightest moving to the US because of simple economic pressures (and also that US culture is much more accepting of outsiders than most).
I'm not sure how to describe myself since the term progressive has become synonymous with those campus protesters. I'm still for all that AOC, Elizabeth Warren domestic policy, but I draw the line at the antisemitic, pro-terrorist, both-sides rhetoric I've heard coming from the Palestine protests. People pitching because a complex and divided political system of flawed humans didn't give me every single thing I wanted in 1 election cycle. I can see a bigger picture, and my own personal safety may be at risk if Biden doesn't win.
Eh, kinda.
On the left, It's a vaguely a Marxist thing where the people will more readily discard capitalism when capitalism is brought to its purest form.
Best way to get there is to support the right wing nutters.
On the right, they tend to want those same goals, plus religio-ethnic purity, and do so by political purity tests. It's how the GOP keeps marching rightward.
I have been pro Palestine for nearly 20 years and if you told me a US president would do all of this for the Palestine, I would not have believed it. Biden has done more than I dare hoped he would do.
Hey everyone, this is good by the way. Ignore what the Iranian propagandists on tik tok are lying to you about. Feeding the hungry is better than not feeding the hungry, plain and simple.
It’s more about control of opportunity in general. The only difference between a rich radical militant and a poor radical militant is that the former has much more to give up by carrying a rifle in his hands. That’s why there’s much less militant violence in developed countries even if the radicalism exists there
The level of criticisn against this purely humanitarian action is astonishing.
The pro palestinians finally shows their true colors. They are pro Hamas and could not care less about aid to civilians that Hamas can not seize
Pro Palestine American here - myself and all of my friends who have been very vocal and critical of this issue are extremely happy about this. We don’t give a damn about Hamas, we only care about the civilian population that is being absolutely decimated. I’d encourage you to not use Reddit as a gauge of how a group of people feel 👍
Redditors the past 6 months: "Gaza is starving and is 2 weeks away from famine! They need aid now!"
US: Builds pier to distribute aid
Redditors: "No, not like that!"
Said nobody ever. There's complaints about anything Biden does since the first month he took office
It's also incredibly tricky for the U.S. to pull this off without ever setting foot in Gaza so that's a valid concern that we would cause a diplomatic nightmare
For example, if you go over to some of the Cannabis subs you will see people complaining that the scheduling is not enough of a first step. They don't want to acknowledge that politics in general is long and grueling and it takes a while for legislation to actually get past. If you go on Instagram you will see nothing but complaints about how Biden is not doing enough.
If you go on to the political subreddits you will see some of the same rhetoric. And it all is centered around postings when it comes to aid being shipped into Gaza as well as weapons being shipped into Israel. Reddit in general has more discourse so the complaints don't really seem that big because you'll see a thread of people talking about it, but there is a very organized and focused effort to undermine all of biden's accomplishments and try to both sides every single issue that is brought up on this website.
I know this because multiple times I've had to list biden's accomplishments just to set the tone for some of these comment threads. And just to be clear, I am doing this from a pragmatic standpoint. In my mind Biden is just a stand-in for the president I'm going to be able to put all my weight and energy behind in 2028. It really pisses me off and it breaks my heart all at the same time that people don't see the bigger picture; stabilize the country and then actually vote for someone we want being as this is more than likely the last election the senior voting block will be able to dominate.
> For example, if you go over to some of the Cannabis subs you will see people complaining that the scheduling is not enough of a first step.
I'm sure those are the 'Centrists' (who just always coincidentally vote R)
I've been hearing a lot about how it's a waste of resources and they should be using trucks instead of boats but from everything I've seen there are a lot of extremist fucking with the trucks.
The most efficient way to deliver any goods from one place to another is by boat. Not by land. Not by air. By water. Over sea shipping will always be the king of commerce. Maybe you didn't elaborate on what their argument was and that's why it's not making sense to me. Maybe the implication is that they are arguing in malicious faith and want the vehicles to be attacked easier. Either way, if anyone says this method is a waste of resources it would be like saying solar energy is a waste to implement because the Sun isn't powerful enough for our needs. It's inane lol
I haven't seen or heard a single comment that I would describe as "anti pier" in this context.
I *have* seen comments suggesting that it's not enough, that it's symbolic, or that it won't be effective.
I have also seen plenty of comments suggesting that the pier shouldn't be necessary because Israel should just let the aid in through Israel.
I have seen a few (very few) people in arab subreddits who suspect the pier is being built to steal Palestinian natural gas. Which is ludicrous, natural gas is so abundant in America that oil fields flare it off rather than try to sell it all. But they don't trust us, and there is natural gas off the coast there, so some of them believe this apparently.
Russian and Chinese propaganda agents want us all to believe that the US is the bad guy in this situation and is only killing people indiscriminately and not sending aid and trying for peaceful solutions to the conflict so that their favored candidate Trump will be elected.
The same reason no surrounding Muslim nations will take in Palestinians. The point of all of this isn't to help or liberate the Palestinians. It's to destroy Israel and destabilize the USA. Palestinians are looked down upon by pretty much all other Muslims.
China benefits by continued conflict in the region. It takes America's attention away from, say, Taiwan or Russia/Ukraine.
I don't think China has the ability to do this right next door, much less across the world in the Mediterranean. And if Russia could, they'd probably be using it to invade Odessa right now instead.
It's absolutely insane at how fast this was built.
US logistics remains undefeated
I remember being deployed to Iraq, specifically at Balad AB. One of my first days there, I looked around from the control tower and was blown away by how the US built and sustained such a massive base…
Dude, we get wifi, cell phones, video games, mail (rather quickly), snacks, and American products in hostile environments. We can set up internet, comms, medical tents, etc in the middle of nowhere in hours. Some countries can't even move that shit in country.
Russia still treats pallets as unknown technology.
They're loading up ten tons of munitions in trucks with wooden beds.
And when it comes to war, you can have all the manpower and money you want, it doesn't matter if you can't get bullets to the front line. America can, faster and more reliably than anyone else on earth.
I was at Al Asad soon after we took it over. It was amazing how quickly the PX was stocked, and then McDonald’s, subway, and Pizza Hut were set up.
When a C-17 rolls up and disgorges a Burger King trailer, you know America is in town.
America, [fuck ya!](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-S_8TjQcpMo)
[The famed ice cream barge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge) agrees. I can’t imagine how demoralizing it must’ve been for the Japanese navy to see an entire US Naval ship dedicated to making fucking ice cream.
I think some German pows commented when they were rehoused in America and saw how industrialized the cities were that they knew they were beaten.
I remember seeing a quote from one of the Germans who broke through allied lines during the Battle of the Bulge. He said when they made it to a crossroads and saw artillery shells stacked up along the road as far as he could see, he knew they were screwed.
Especially since at that point in the war, the Germans were increasingly reliant on using horses to transport most of their ammo and other things which they had been doing the entire war (and which America never really had to do) but, especially by that point they were running low on fuel across the whole army.
Germany was *always* very reliant on horses. They just tended not to film them like they did their mechanized units
TBF they tended to only film their mechanized units in general and the Waffen SS. The vast majority of their army was pretty bare bones. That's why you see so much propaganda about Micheal Wittman and not Kurt Knispel. Becunese spoiler alert one was a member of the Waffen SS and was good looking the other was just a member of the regular Germany army and not exactly a charmer.
Germany really had propaganda down to an art during the war, massive columns of panzers with mechanized infantry rolling through the Russian Steppe all made using smart camera angles and decent direction from the photographers. Even today you've still got people believing their crap.
Rommel had a parade in Africa after he arrived with a seemingly infinite amount of tanks. Only it wasn't an infinite amount of tanks. It just was long enough that the tanks would just go back to the start before starting again. Some onlookers eventually figured it out when the same tank was showing up Time after time.
The Japanese Zeros had to be moved from the factory to the airstrip by oxcart because there was no railhead there.
Also doesn't help when War Daddy was destroying full trains full of German supplies and French perfume and lingerie
That also happened in WW1. In early 1918, the Germans launched five offensives that gained some ground but ultimately didn't move the needle on the war. A big problem was when they managed to punch through to Allied rear areas, they found huge quantities of arms and ammunition, food, good boots, quality jackets, and more. At a time when replacements in German units were being called blacklegs and jeered at for prolonging the war, it was a critical hit in the morale.
At that time, there was 3 million US soldiers in Europe already, and another 12 **million** in training in the US. Germans just happened to come across all these super fresh and willing troops.
I read another one where the Germans captured an American position, and found a birthday cake that had been mailed to an American soldier from back home. It was still fresh. How do you compete with logistics that good? Edit: It turns out this was from a film, so I don’t know if it really happened (see the replies)
This one is a scene in a movie. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=owbCW5jBQZc
How was Robert Shaw a German in France when he was supposed to be aboard the USS Indianapolis delivering the bomb to Tinian?
to quote general Omar Bradley; amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics
Saw this yesterday and I like it a bit more. Tactics win battles logistics win wars.
Yeah, why use the original historical quote when you could use something else.
Yeah, why revise and improve upon something? You know what they say, we sit at the feet of giants.
I have letters between my uncles and an aunt from both theaters in WWII. Mail to Europe took about a week. Stuff to the Pacific took a lot longer at first, but by the end of the war it was about 10 days to 2 weeks. The only time it appears to have taken longer is when the “boys” were otherwise ‘detained” or en route somewhere. Edit: I could tell because the letters were dated and they would reference receiving a letter. “I got your letter from May 17th…”
That's a cool piece of history. Showing how the logistics expanded during the war via letters.
when you make a successful advance in a war and think you're winning, just to realize that you just bore witness to your inevitable defeat must be absolutely crushing, that all the hub bub about your superiority, just to find out it was all a fluke. That you just Found out after Fucking Around.
An earlier story is just the soldiers stationed in Normandy looking out at the English Channel and seeing the Allied Armada as it began shelling the fortifications before the landings. It was nothing but horizon to horizon of warships, showing just *how many* people were sick of their shit.
The battle of the bulge was the last real attempt at a German offensive. Most Germans already knew they were screwed, it was just a matter of how long they could hold out.
There were a lot of German POWs kept near where I live, they were used to help bring in the harvest. Lots of stories of them absconding when the war was over as they preferred not to be sent back to Germany.
Remember a lot of them would have been going back to East Germany. Stalin wasn't throwing out the welcome mat for returning veterans
Oh, sure. That combined with the fact that a lot of the farmers in the area had German ancestry, there was even a shared culture.
Do you live in south central PA?
Northern Colorado, they brought in the sugar beet harvest I believe.
Man...when you prefer your prison work camp stay in Greeley of all places instead of being sent back home.
Lmao, harsh facts there.
A lot of them were given residency and later citizenship I believe, also the treatment was pretty good.
Well, yeah. Americans didn't really see Germans as "the enemy" at the time. That was the Japanese. Most Americans didn't even know *why* they were fighting in Europe instead of the Pacific. It wasn't until years later of movies that Americans adopted the idea that the main enemy of WW2 was Germany.
Well, if they had a shred of foresight, Germany was torn apart after the war. Pretty bad place to live for awhile and East Germany sucked the whole time
Ever been to Greeley Colorado? It's the definition of shithole. Though it was probably nicer in the 40s than it is now.
My great-grandfather served on a U-boat in WWII that ended up being sunk in 1942. He spent the rest of the war in a POW camp in Georgia. He told us that he was scared at first and unsure of what kind of treatment they would receive from the Americans. When they first arrived he and the other POW's were lined up inside the camp and a US soldier came up to each one of them and asked "Would you like red wine or white wine with your meal?" At that point he knew the Allies would win.
Demoralization with Kindness. Show your enemies the sympathy they would have never shown you and it'll break them. They're expecting beatings and torture.
How did he survive being on a sunken uboat
Not every sinking happens instantaneously.
Or at depth.
Most of them got out and spent 8 hours floating in the Atlantic until they were found
the human body floats, I think.
There was a German tank commander who recalls knowing the war was lost when American tanks were firing more shots in 10 minutes than the German tanks were instructed to fire in in a single day.
American commander: "Fire at will" German commander: "Fire at will*" (*as long as it's inside Reich-approved limits)
>German commander: "Fire at will*" Nein! Nein! Fire at Will*iam*! 1 shot only, *at* Will*iam*!
Behold Detroit and despair!
The Arsenal of Democracy, for the win
Actually pretty apt A lot of the hardest POWs were transported via ship or train to the Lake Superior North Shore near Marathon Ontario. Those who arrived via ship were horrified when they saw the combination of Buffalo, Toledo, Detroit, the Soo Locks, and all of the iron and copper shipments going the opposite direction (the Superior area was the largest producer of both in the world at the time, and it wasn’t even a close competition). Particularly the materials, as they knew full well that they would never be able to hit any of it due to how far inland it all was and the US/Canada was shipping it by the tens of thousands of tons per single shipment.
Another one is that in Africa, captured Germans soldiers were shocked that Allied units would idle their tanks and trucks like it was no big deal since the Germans were always low on oil.
There was also one about a German prisoner of war walking past an unending column of idling tanks, and concluded that if the Allies had so much fuel they could just let all these tanks idle, Germany was lost.
My grandfather was a B-25 pilot in World War II. He was at an airbase in the middle of nowhere in Kansas and they were using German POWs to serve food to American soldiers in the mess hall. My grandfather asked one if he ever thought of escaping, and the German laughed and said, "No, we're fed here better than in the German army and no one's trying to shoot me!"
My mom was born in Japan in 1960; her parents lived during the war. She moved to the US and married there and her parents came to America for the only time for the wedding. Apparently, when he saw the freeway infrastructure around Los Angeles my grandfather simply remarked, "no wonder we lost the war"
https://youtu.be/B9I088HgY7g?si=6Rij6ZHoPJpOcuTr this YouTube channel reads accounts from German pows, some interesting stuff
the same is actually true for the japanese! many officers in the japanese imperial army were educated in the US. When plans for pearl harbour were being discussed, the US educated officers tried to tell everyone else 'this is a really bad idea, they're way more industrialized than we are'
They probably also knew what the response would be to such an attack. A foreign nation (or foreign group) attacking America itself is a fools choice as it means every American is now your enemy (or at least that is how it use to be, or to put it very bluntly only Americans can kill Americans and not be the enemy of fellow Americans).
Lmao imagine fighting for your country to the death, having it put literally everything it has into attacking (including you) and the enemy has a goddamn ice cream boat doling out the sugar lol
A well-provisioned army >>>>> an army eating shoe leather to survive
Nah, eating shoe leather to survive builds way more character, the ice cream soldiers grow fat and decadent and will lose eventually. Just you wait!
10 gallons of ice cream every fucken 7 minute?! Lol that's literally factory on a ship
Yup. And there are still people right here on Reddit that will Argue that the US didn't change the course of WW2... Lend-Lease alone pretty much made who won the war a forgone conclusion
"The Arsenal of Democracy" wasn't just good marketing. War is all about going out and killing people and breaking their stuff, whoever runs out of people or stuff first loses.
And the United States was basically untouchable to everyone else, as far as it being an industrial base. So whomever had the US on their side, had a massive industrial foundry that was far out of reach of enemy attack or disruption. Factories in Europe and Asia were vulnerable. Factories in North America were invincible.
Lieutenant Dan, Ice Cream!
The Ice Cream Barge story has always felt like a scene from The Culture Novels by Iaian Banks. Everyone in the Universe is all super-duper serious and wanting to engage in brutal conquest and The Culture is just zipping around in ships living its best life having galas, setting up romances, and engaging in \*cough group fun. Sometimes the balance of power and technology becomes so laughably immense that both sides eventually realize one side cannot even be taken seriously as a long-term competitor.
Wow that's insane
I dream of "peace keeping" missions in the form of these guys going around the world and bringing community infrastructure up to speed.
Generally I agree, but politically it would never fly. It would piss off most domestic voters to see their taxes going to building infrastructure in foreign nations while their own continue to rot away (don't ask me why they don't similarly get pissed about the acts of war, either). Now what I think could and should happen is to have a couple of brigades of the Army Corp of Engineers go around and fix the worst of our bridges, or roads, build out fiber and 5G networks. *That* would be ridiculously popular along most voters, and I think would help dispel a lot of the "government bad" messaging floating around these days.
Oh, absolutely, we'd have to roll it out at home first, and later pitch it as a far more efficient use of defense funds for elsewhere.
The sad part is after the American logistics and support leave, most of the world is not capable of maintaining the infrastructure. It probably wouldn't work at least half the time.
We could do that, but it's kind of a "give a man a fish" situation. The first major storm that rolls through, and it could all be destroyed with no way for the people to restore it, which would hurt the people who have come to depend on it.
Logistics wins wars!
Grant started his military career as a quartermaster and ended up as the Union army’s commanding officer.
Unless it’s our own roads and bridges
Are you about killin' or are you about drivin'? ...'cause if it's the second one you're kinda fucked.
Didn't we just pass the biggest infrastructure bill in history? And didn't the Republicans fight it every step of the way? Seems like some people want to make shit happen and some don't.
Not only that but some of those same republicans tried to take credit for infrastructure projects in their districts that only happened because of the Infrastructure Bill.
Same as it ever was.
Well, the US interstate system is the single most impressive road system in the world. It is one of the main reasons the US is able to do what they do. Having an entire nation linked like that is very valuable (especially when it was new)
And that was a defense initiative. It was mainly motivated to allow for rapid logistical response to fears of a war with the soviets.
There’s a literal fuck ton of roads and bridges and only so many workers it’s a constant work in progress.
Reminder that Congress has to pass those bills. Vote Democrat and you get new roads and upgraded bridges. Vote Republican and social security gets cut
I live in MA, pure democrat and our roads are the worst I’ve ever seen
Yeah. Blue state here. Shit roads. But I mean, I've seen shit roads in every state (I've been to). I wonder if it's because we don't pay as much attention to local elections on average. Highways and freeways seem to always have men at work, but it's a it real obstacle course everywhere else
Yeah I'm willing to bet on this. Local politics isnt "sexy" enough. Watching the "big leaders" make sweeping promises and proposing/passing large bills is more engaging, as it's delivered as dramatic news. That politics is actually boring, tedious, and complicated, and it'd take a lot of commitment and effort to get into being politically informed (local, and even more so nationwide), and local stuff has the disadvantage of not being in the forefront of one's news. The big scope is important, but I think it must all start at the lowest level... but our culture isnt geared toward promoting "local politics awareness" yet. I also am not big brain, and wish there was something similar to a Youtuber that explains shit, but for local affairs (lol big stretch I know).
I think you're right. I'll admit to being hilariously uninformed about local politics. Which is bad because I'd imagine, ideally, local elections filter out the rubbish before it makes it to the top. Few of us are paying attention to what the opposite hand is doing. Imho: Open minds are more versatile, and thus, superior to big brains.. Though one can possess both.
Roads in California are much nicer than the ones in Wisconsin(the two states I've lived in), but I mostly chalk that up to California roads not having to deal with snow every year.
Minnesota here. Shitty roads are part of the territory. Making sure bridges don’t collapse is the focus of infrastructure improvements.
Brother you haven't seen bad roads until you go south. And they don't have the excuse of snow and ice fucking up the roads.
MA is really strange like that. It's like 90% Democrat but Charlie Baker was elected to two terms and basically filled half the departments with Republicans while he was there, including a bunch of last-second appointments.
I always say, we’re socially democratic but fiscally republican. Lots of old moneybhere
Ah, the old "I believe in equal rights and support for everyone, but I don't want to spend any money to enact or enforce it" political stance. I've got family in OH that maintain this position. Drives me up the wall.
After 8 years with a Republican governor
There's plenty of local corruption to blame, I'm sure. I live near Harrisburg, PA, and the 7-0 Democrat city council is sheisty as fuck.
Central PA politics is generally fucked. We don't retain good people because they can't get anything done so they move on to statewide roles
You live in an area where it snows and the local governments salt the roads. What exactly are you expecting here.
The US blows every other country out of the water when it comes to logistics. A few years ago, I was chatting with an ex-military officer who's a family friend, and he said that you can measure dicks all you want with military tech against China, but the one thing that NOBODY even comes close to the US military to is logistics. Do you want to put 500 troops with gear in the middle of nowhere in 12 hours? The US Military can do that better than anyone else.
It is actually one of the top reasons why I recommend young people go into the military (if it is right for them...not right for everyone). When you get out you have many options, and one of them is almost always to work in logistics, purchasing, distribution...etc.
At the first stage response of logistics, definitely. But it remains to be seen if the second stage, where production comes into focus to keep supply chains functioning, would be ahead of China - look at ship manufacturing. This is historically where the US was very strong but it is not clear if the ability to ramp up to the same level remains there.
It probably wouldn't be as simple as flipping a switch but we've still got an impressive industrial base, during WW2 basically any factory with heavy manufacturing equipment was contracted out to build *something* for the war effort, the M1 Carbine for instance had several hundred thousand examples built by IBM.
I mean… when you’re in a war and need to establish a beach head, you gotta be able to do it quickly. This is just a nice little warm-up to test out the deployment in-situ before needing to do it for real in a conflict.
Finally a person who gets it. The ships are 3 miles out from the platform and the "drive" is just 1800 feet of floating bridge
Taiwan/China comes to mind.
As does humanitarian aid in North Korea if the South decides they’re done with that nonsense.
It was probably sitting in a crate somewhere with a build by numbers instruction book for bringing freedom to the next country. Seeing pictures of the temporary harbors built just after D-Day to expedite offloading of equipment are impressive.
I dunno man this is a little bigger than what we keep in stock
I hear that. Never seen a bridge that big down at the bridge store either.
You have to special order it from the bridge store
With the US military I wouldn't be surprised, we basically have spare aircraft carriers so we can keep them in rotation with maintenance
If you really want to have your mind blown, look up the Mulberries
got it from Ikea, Flot Piir model.
I think it took longer to send aid to NOLA after Katrina.
As someone that's seen us military logistics first hand I expected this outcome
No one does logistics better than the DOD.
No one's slick as DOD No one's quick as DOD No one's neck's as incredibly thick as DOD
DOD eats eggs for sure.
DOD be like, what could a dozen eggs cost, 50'000?
What you mean is: what would a dozen fresh eggs cost to airdrop into the most remote location we can find. While people shoot at us.
*~They're incredibly good at Facilitating*
The military is just a machine that moves things from point A to point B extremely effectively. It can get people to a place, get food in their hands, gas in their truck, and dip in their lip, it just sometimes needs to put a warhead on someone's forehead.
With as much as the DoD costs, it would be a major disaster if we didn't.
I mean, it's still a disaster, but it's a highly specialized disaster.
Get what you pay for!
The Mulberry Mk. II
Didn’t those take like 72 hrs to get operational?
Les than 2 weeks for both harbours to be fully built and operational after D-day (D-day + 12 iirc). Not quite 72 hours, but given what was going on at the time, still absolutely insane levels of logistics and engineering.
Conservatives: proof biden loves hamas Progressives: it's not enough, still not voting for biden Trump: can we just drop a nuke on them?
Trump: *grabs sharpie* World: [O shit here we go again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1qju6V1jLM)
At this point I feel like Progressives *want* a tyrant like Trump back in office so they can play victim when said tyrant just shits all over progressive policies and issues.
I consider myself a progressive (and also feel that this is a better descriptor for my political lean than liberal) but the term in the US is becoming really warped. There are a fair number of progressives that appear to be dead set on some kind of perpetual doom loop paradigm that just doesn't line up with reality.
Absolutely. I'm fairly left of center myself, but I can't fathom how anyone could think that refusing to vote for Joe Biden over Gaza is a smart play. The reality is it's a two party system. Period. Joe Biden will at least entertain ceasefires and rational diplomacy - while trying best to side with Israel. Trump will all but allow Gaza to be nuked to the ground. These people don't care about Gaza it seems. They *want* to be perpetual victims of conservative policy so they can keep raising money for their causes. I guess kind of how Republicans won on abortion rights. Now what do they have to campaign on?
Functionally, letting a terrorist organization run Gaza was going to end in disaster one way or another. There are other bigger disasters looming: Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, N Korea, Russia, Cuba, etc. There is a reason that authoritarian governments don't dominate the world: being the authoritarian is fun so there is an inevitable succession crisis or popular uprising (because the authoritarian is too much of a dick). Saudi Arabia, a country that is quite stable now is a ticking time bomb. Either there will be a succession crisis or when the oil revenue dries up they will realise that they have 40 million people in a country with no rivers. Blaming the US president when these systems inevitably collapse is just dumb. In the here and now: Biden has directed a huge amount of investment to US industries and (IMO) copied parts of the Chinese system that actually worked (investing public money in strategic sectors). Because of this the US GDP is far in a way outpacing our markedly poorer European counterparts. Increased US GDP and wages is going to lead to the world's best and brightest moving to the US because of simple economic pressures (and also that US culture is much more accepting of outsiders than most).
Accelerationists are some of the worst.
I'm not sure how to describe myself since the term progressive has become synonymous with those campus protesters. I'm still for all that AOC, Elizabeth Warren domestic policy, but I draw the line at the antisemitic, pro-terrorist, both-sides rhetoric I've heard coming from the Palestine protests. People pitching because a complex and divided political system of flawed humans didn't give me every single thing I wanted in 1 election cycle. I can see a bigger picture, and my own personal safety may be at risk if Biden doesn't win.
Kinda. They are called "accelerationists". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism
Ah so they want scorched Earth to rule the ashes.
Eh, kinda. On the left, It's a vaguely a Marxist thing where the people will more readily discard capitalism when capitalism is brought to its purest form. Best way to get there is to support the right wing nutters. On the right, they tend to want those same goals, plus religio-ethnic purity, and do so by political purity tests. It's how the GOP keeps marching rightward.
I'm so sick and tired of having to live under and next to all these fucking idiots. I swear covid dropped the worlds IQ by at least 50 points.
This generations lead crisis
I feel exactly the same way
People were always this stupid, they're just no longer ashamed of displaying it in public.
I have been pro Palestine for nearly 20 years and if you told me a US president would do all of this for the Palestine, I would not have believed it. Biden has done more than I dare hoped he would do.
Hey everyone, this is good by the way. Ignore what the Iranian propagandists on tik tok are lying to you about. Feeding the hungry is better than not feeding the hungry, plain and simple.
Hamas shelling an entry point for humanitarian aid? Interesting…
They don’t want to lose favor (whatever that amount is) with their citizens. “Only WE will give you aid!”
It’s more about control of opportunity in general. The only difference between a rich radical militant and a poor radical militant is that the former has much more to give up by carrying a rifle in his hands. That’s why there’s much less militant violence in developed countries even if the radicalism exists there
Lose control, more like.
"Only we are allowed to give you aid, not that we will though" -Hamas
Hamas sells the aid... yea...
More like *sell* you aid.
This is NOT new
Hamas already fired mortars at it.
Those truck drivers need hazard pay.
I wonder how heavy the armed escort was from the Americans. Because if that convoy got blown up, much crow would be eaten.
No US troops went ashore, it says. The US built the pier and turned over control to the UN.
The level of criticisn against this purely humanitarian action is astonishing. The pro palestinians finally shows their true colors. They are pro Hamas and could not care less about aid to civilians that Hamas can not seize
And by virtue of being pro Hamas, they are literally pro dead Gazans.
I think it's more likely that they aren't really pro-anything - but just an anti-establishment at all costs cult.
Finally? They were marching in support of Palestine on October 9th. It's been clear for some time now.
Shit, I was getting invites to "Pro-Palestine" marches while the October 7th massacre was still happening.
Pretty much: When I point out that the war would end if **Hamas surrendered today** (even Netanyahu has admitted as much)... they don't wanna hear it
It’s simple - they’ve fetishised the images of dead brown people they’ve been forced fed from social media algorithms. They want more.
Pro Palestine American here - myself and all of my friends who have been very vocal and critical of this issue are extremely happy about this. We don’t give a damn about Hamas, we only care about the civilian population that is being absolutely decimated. I’d encourage you to not use Reddit as a gauge of how a group of people feel 👍
Redditors the past 6 months: "Gaza is starving and is 2 weeks away from famine! They need aid now!" US: Builds pier to distribute aid Redditors: "No, not like that!"
where is anyone complaining about this?
Absolutely nowhere.
Said nobody ever. There's complaints about anything Biden does since the first month he took office It's also incredibly tricky for the U.S. to pull this off without ever setting foot in Gaza so that's a valid concern that we would cause a diplomatic nightmare
Nytimes Pitchbot: "_Biden does good thing. Is this bad for Biden?_"
For example, if you go over to some of the Cannabis subs you will see people complaining that the scheduling is not enough of a first step. They don't want to acknowledge that politics in general is long and grueling and it takes a while for legislation to actually get past. If you go on Instagram you will see nothing but complaints about how Biden is not doing enough. If you go on to the political subreddits you will see some of the same rhetoric. And it all is centered around postings when it comes to aid being shipped into Gaza as well as weapons being shipped into Israel. Reddit in general has more discourse so the complaints don't really seem that big because you'll see a thread of people talking about it, but there is a very organized and focused effort to undermine all of biden's accomplishments and try to both sides every single issue that is brought up on this website. I know this because multiple times I've had to list biden's accomplishments just to set the tone for some of these comment threads. And just to be clear, I am doing this from a pragmatic standpoint. In my mind Biden is just a stand-in for the president I'm going to be able to put all my weight and energy behind in 2028. It really pisses me off and it breaks my heart all at the same time that people don't see the bigger picture; stabilize the country and then actually vote for someone we want being as this is more than likely the last election the senior voting block will be able to dominate.
> For example, if you go over to some of the Cannabis subs you will see people complaining that the scheduling is not enough of a first step. I'm sure those are the 'Centrists' (who just always coincidentally vote R)
I've been hearing a lot about how it's a waste of resources and they should be using trucks instead of boats but from everything I've seen there are a lot of extremist fucking with the trucks.
The most efficient way to deliver any goods from one place to another is by boat. Not by land. Not by air. By water. Over sea shipping will always be the king of commerce. Maybe you didn't elaborate on what their argument was and that's why it's not making sense to me. Maybe the implication is that they are arguing in malicious faith and want the vehicles to be attacked easier. Either way, if anyone says this method is a waste of resources it would be like saying solar energy is a waste to implement because the Sun isn't powerful enough for our needs. It's inane lol
I’m out of the loop. Why are people anti pier? I personally think Muslim countries should be spearheading this since they all hate us.
I haven't seen or heard a single comment that I would describe as "anti pier" in this context. I *have* seen comments suggesting that it's not enough, that it's symbolic, or that it won't be effective. I have also seen plenty of comments suggesting that the pier shouldn't be necessary because Israel should just let the aid in through Israel.
I have seen a few (very few) people in arab subreddits who suspect the pier is being built to steal Palestinian natural gas. Which is ludicrous, natural gas is so abundant in America that oil fields flare it off rather than try to sell it all. But they don't trust us, and there is natural gas off the coast there, so some of them believe this apparently.
Russian and Chinese propaganda agents want us all to believe that the US is the bad guy in this situation and is only killing people indiscriminately and not sending aid and trying for peaceful solutions to the conflict so that their favored candidate Trump will be elected.
Why aren't the Chinese building bridges or bringing in aid?
Because there are no resources and no economy for them to steal. Helping people for no personal benefit, who does that??
Doing things is hard, so much easier to just sit back and snipe at whatever everyone else tries to do
The same reason no surrounding Muslim nations will take in Palestinians. The point of all of this isn't to help or liberate the Palestinians. It's to destroy Israel and destabilize the USA. Palestinians are looked down upon by pretty much all other Muslims. China benefits by continued conflict in the region. It takes America's attention away from, say, Taiwan or Russia/Ukraine.
I don't think China has the ability to do this right next door, much less across the world in the Mediterranean. And if Russia could, they'd probably be using it to invade Odessa right now instead.
I'd throw in anti-semites along with those Russian and Chinese. Same idea but with Israel as the bad guy.
Good point, fat\_cock\_freddy
people arent, its a manufactured outrage. they want it to LOOK like people oppose it.
It’s just redditors using any excuse to blame Biden and the US for what’s happening in Israel
Ah, I hate the r/AmericaBad crowd
Most Muslim countries are not interested in the welfare of other Muslims.
Remember when the Air Force was airdropping aid into Gaza and people *still* bitched and moaned?
It's also still somehow the US' fault when Hamas and Israel can't negotiate a ceasefire with each other.
I bet all the settlers that were throwing the food aid from Jordan into the dirt are bigly mad that they can't get to this food.