From the mouth of Aristotle

[Boron]

Arryn said:
BTW, I've been studying history, in particular Nazi Germany, for about 35 years and I'm still considering doing my Master's thesis on this subject.

Wow cool . I have history as a hobby and especially world war 2 is one of my most favourite areas . I am most interested there though in the military history .

The book of Machtan is iirc quite new ( 2000 or 2001 ) . Unfortunately because Hitler was so evil research on Hitler's private life was a taboo for many years and when Machtan wrote his book a lot of contemporary witnesses were dead already .
But during world war 1 and some years after Machtan had still so many examples that he prove i think good enough at the time he wrote the book ( he said that unfortunately some contemporary witnesses were e.g. in prison until e.g. 1980 and asked questions by historians but nobody asked them if hitler was gay and when he wrote his book they were dead already ) . Nonetheless i think his numerous examples are enough to prove it .
But future will hopefully bring even more clear results pro or contra .

When he became more popular then ( ca. 1928 + ) he concealed his sexuality very well then and when he was in power he eliminated most of those who knew his little secret .


Do you have more info about that dossier from Himmler when he started to make it or a source where i can read it ?
Göring was another of his companions who wanted to replace Hitler .
I think the problem of both but especially of Himmler was that he was not very liked in puplic . And Hitler had iirc always named a successor if something happens to him who never was Himmler .
And Himmler + Göring had both a lot of power and both wanted to become Hitlers successors so perhaps they decided to wait for the "endsieg" and get rid of Hitler after that by an assasination . Especially for Himmler since he was the chief of the Gestapo too iirc that should have been easy . This is just my personal speculation though and i would love to hear your thoughts about these speculations .

Arryn said: Had Hitler been gay why would he have bothered to marry his "window-dressing" just before he died?

Well this was only a few hours/days before he suicided . It was one of his Last in vain tries to glorify him and to conceal that he is gay .

He often said he is married to germany and can't care for a woman too . Iirc he never introduced Eva Braun to the public too and only after the war begun his inner circle who was with him on the "berghof" knew that Eva Braun was his "girlfriend" .

And there was a niece of Hitler who made suicide because she was in unhappy love with Hitler too .

Arryn said:
Had Hitler been gay, Hitler's inner circle would have had him killed immediately (and used his homosexuality in addition to his mismanagement of the war against the USSR as justification for their actions). If not Himmler, Bormann would have done it.

Göring was responsible for the disaster against the soviet union a lot too . With Himmler i am not totally sure but i guess he didn't get much fame too .
And a bit later Hitler made him i think it was called "Reichsfeldmarschall" but Himmler failed there catastrophically too .

But you are very right : If Himmler had such plans in late 1943 after the disaster of stalingrad and the failed counter offensive at kursk the opportunity for him to get rid of Hitler + Göring would have been quite well .
The question is why he didn't do that .
Perhaps he feared the chaos that would have happened then probably and perhaps even led to a civil war .
Only some days of chaos without one clear leader would have been perhaps enough for the Soviets to exploit this and break through the front and encircle large parts of the east armies .
I think during a war it is very hard to replace a dictator and become the new dictator .


A grim sidequestion : Who of these 2 do you think was even more evil and insane : Stalin or Hitler ?

[Arryn]

Boron said:
Nonetheless i think his numerous examples are enough to prove it .
But future will hopefully bring even more clear results pro or contra .

I have a book that asserts, and quite well-reasoned I might add (which includes detailed forensic evidence), that Hitler did not commit suicide (he was shot by an SS officer), and that the body alleged to be that of Eva Braun wasn't her, but someone else (Eva likely died attempting to escape Berlin a day or so later, and was never found in the rubble). I mention this because that book is at least as "thorough" as Machtan's book, yet that author, too, seems alone in his conclusions. One book, no matter how "good" it may appear, does not constitute "proof" of an assertion. Especially if other experts in the field fail to agree with the assertions.

Boron said:
Do you have more info about that dossier from Himmler when he started to make it or a source where i can read it ?

I'll see if I can dig up something for you Online. The actual dossier is, no doubt, buried in a top-secret vault in either the U.S. or Russian archives. The only "evidence" to its existence are the numerous people who knew Himmler quite well and who have alluded to it over the years.

Boron said:
Göring was another of his companions who wanted to replace Hitler .

Not really. But Goring was a highly decorated WW1 officer who thought Hitler was more-or-less inept (which Hitler was) and Goring's ego pretty much assured that he thought he could do a better job. Which he couldn't, as the Battle of Britain and Stalingrad's relief proved beyond any doubt. Though Goring couldn't have done worse than Hitler, either. (It's very hard to imagine anyone doing a worse job of managing the war than Hitler did.)

Boron said:
I think the problem of both but especially of Himmler was that he was not very liked in puplic .

Goring was actually popular. Himmler, OTOH, most assuredly wasn't.

Boron said:
And Hitler had iirc always named a successor if something happens to him who never was Himmler .

After the Hess fiasco, it was Bormann. At the end of the war, Hitler actually named Doenitz as his successor.

Boron said:
Especially for Himmler since he was the chief of the Gestapo too

The Gestapo chief was actually Heinrich Mueller, who in turn reported to Himmler.

Boron said:
And a bit later Hitler made him i think it was called "Reichsfeldmarschall" but Himmler failed there catastrophically too .

Himmler was "Reichsfuhrer SS", a unique and higher-ranking title (in essence, a "six-star" rank).

Boron said:
But you are very right : If Himmler had such plans in late 1943 after the disaster of stalingrad and the failed counter offensive at kursk the opportunity for him to get rid of Hitler + Göring would have been quite well .
The question is why he didn't do that .

Himmler's almost schizophrenic mindset on the subject of Hitler. On the one hand he adored Hitler and had immense personal loyalty to him. On the other hand, the cold, calculating part of him knew that Hitler had to go. In between, Himmler's fear of what would happen to him should Hitler find out that he was plotting against him. Days before the war's end, Hitler did find out and ordered Himmler's death, after stripping Himmler of all his titles and offices.

Boron said:
A grim sidequestion : Who of these 2 do you think was even more evil and insane : Stalin or Hitler ?

That is a VERY tough call. Stalin (by far) had more of his own people killed than all the deaths that Hitler caused. But (syphillis aside), Stalin was more ruthless than he was outright evil. Hitler, OTOH, was genocidal. And demented. And perverted. I'd have to pick Hitler.

Saddam Hussein is in the same league as Hitler, BTW.

[Boron]

Very interesting answers Arryn . You are right that one book can be very reasoned but maybe not correct . This is why i wrote but future will hopefully show more arguments pro or contra Hitler being gay .

Arryn said:
Himmler's almost schizophrenic mindset on the subject of Hitler. On the one hand he adored Hitler and had immense personal loyalty to him. On the other hand, the cold, calculating part of him knew that Hitler had to go. In between, Himmler's fear of what would happen to him should Hitler find out that he was plotting against him. Days before the war's end, Hitler did find out and ordered Himmler's death, after stripping Himmler of all his titles and offices.

Not really. But Goring was a highly decorated WW1 officer who thought Hitler was more-or-less inept (which Hitler was) and Goring's ego pretty much assured that he thought he could do a better job. Which he couldn't, as the Battle of Britain and Stalingrad's relief proved beyond any doubt. Though Goring couldn't have done worse than Hitler, either. (It's very hard to imagine anyone doing a worse job of managing the war than Hitler did.)

Göring at least tried to replace Hitler after his dead . Though it is so sad i find this always amusing that Göring really thought he becomes Germany's first "Bundeskanzler" when the war was off .
You are right probably that Himmler was more dangerous there .
If he would have had in addition to his "Waffen-SS" the Airforce which Göring had he would have perhaps killed Hitler already . But in the current state both had significant powers and both didn't want to grant the otherone more power so they "balanced" them .

Btw i am not that familiar with Stalin do you know if he had that significant opposition in his "inner circle" too with most of them only lurkering for a chance to get rid of him ? And do you know how many assasination attemps were made on Stalin ?

Arryn said:

That is a VERY tough call. Stalin (by far) had more of his own people killed than all the deaths that Hitler caused. But (syphillis aside), Stalin was more ruthless than he was outright evil. Hitler, OTOH, was genocidal. And demented. And perverted. I'd have to pick Hitler.

Saddam Hussein is in the same league as Hitler, BTW.

Stalin always seemed so pleasant in his productions like the good old uncle .
Hitler seemed always like a maladjusted child .
But Stalin had more time to let him look better and he had the "won the war" bonus .

I heard in a documentation some days ago for the first time that Stalin had made some really ugly things with his own population for which i even don't know a german similiar action :
Coming once 20-30 minutes too late to work was a crime . You got a few years prison for that . During the war it was modified : You had to go in a punishment batallion .
Your main job there was called euphemistically armed reconnoissance . That meant you had to attack the german lines and the generals observed then the german counter fire to evaluate if an attack was promising .
If you were seriously wounded you were allowed to retreat but if you weren't you were shot .

Furthermore no russian soldier was allowed to go into war captivity . After the war most of the freed russian soldiers were sent into "gulags" for lots of years because they made the crime of becoming a war captive .
And after the war Stalin once again murdered most of his officers . He would have murdered even Schukov but he was too popular .

So i really don't know who of the 2 was even worse .

Saddam is of course evil too but he isn't in the same league as Hitler and Stalin . He couldn't do as much damage fortunately only local and not semiglobal like Hitler and Stalin .
To make a dominioncomparison : Saddam would be a devil while Hitler + Stalin would be Arch demons .

If Saddam would have had really a nuke i am quite convinced that he wouldn't have had a rocket to shoot it only into germany and definitely not to shoot it far enough to hit the usa . Basically only the soviet union and the usa have this knowledge . France e.g. has no ICBMs they need to workaround this by putting them on submarines .

[Arryn]

Boron said:
Btw i am not that familiar with Stalin do you know if he had that significant opposition in his "inner circle" too with most of them only lurkering for a chance to get rid of him ?

He didn't. Beria made sure that there were no threats to Stalin. Not even minor ones. Stalin's regime was by far more ruthless and efficient than Nazi Germany at quashing any dissent. Also, you must remember that, unlike Germany, Russia at this time lacked a (well-educated) noble class, especially one that was highly skilled at the arts of war and politics as was Germany's.

Boron said:
And do you know how many assasination attemps were made on Stalin ?

I don't know offhand. I could look it up if you need me to.

Boron said:
Your main job there was called euphemistically armed reconnoissance . That meant you had to attack the german lines and the generals observed then the german counter fire to evaluate if an attack was promising .
If you were seriously wounded you were allowed to retreat but if you weren't you were shot .

The Russians elevated the concept of "cannon fodder" to all-time lows.

Boron said:
Saddam is of course evil too but he isn't in the same league as Hitler and Stalin .

If you take the time to study the rise of Saddam, and his rule, you will learn that he's as wicked as Hitler (and as perverse in his own ways), and as ruthless as Stalin (perhaps even more so). The ONLY thing that has kept him from joining Hitler and Stalin's ranks is that as the leader of a (relatively) small nation (as far as industrial might and population goes) he never had the chance to commit crimes on the same scale. But he most assuredly would have had he been able to.

Boron said:
Basically only the soviet union and the usa have this knowledge . France e.g. has no ICBMs they need to workaround this by putting them on submarines .

You left out China, India, and Pakistan. As well as the UK and North Korea. And Israel. France does have ICBMs. Their subs carry 64 of them, each missile with a 6000km range and 6 MIRVs with a 100-150Kt yield. 6000km is more than enough range to qualify as an ICBM.

[The Panther]

So, Zen returns and we start talking about Hitler? What gives???

[Arryn]

The Panther said:
What gives???

The usual. You're fairly new here, so you aren't used to it ... yet.

[Boron]

The Panther said:
So, Zen returns and we start talking about Hitler? What gives???

Yeah that happens unfortunately always too quick that the topic drafts away from the main topic .
The only thread which i remember where it didn't draft for 200 Posts was when norfleet was caught cheating

[Boron]

Arryn said:

You left out China, India, and Pakistan. As well as the UK and North Korea. And Israel. France does have ICBMs. Their subs carry 64 of them, each missile with a 6000km range and 6 MIRVs with a 100-150Kt yield. 6000km is more than enough range to qualify as an ICBM.

Yeah i left them out with purpose
Israel has them from the Usa .
Great Britain is now more or less the little ally of the Usa . Blair is like Bushs dog .
In ancient times ( before the american civil war ) Britain was still like the caring father for the Usa .
Now they have gotten old and the Usa cares for them .
Sure any patriotic British citizen will hate me for saying this but Great Britains great times are long over . Now it is just another european country like France or Germany . Still remarkable but not any longer a big power .
Basically they have only the choice wheter join the EU as an rather important country ( like france and germany the 2 historic arch enemies ) or become the Ally of the Usa if they still want to play a major role in the world .
Afaik China has only "shortrange" missiles which can target japan or huge parts of russia . In some years they may become the successor of Russia as second big power in the world .
Pakistan and India have mainly short range missiles too which can target each other but not much farer .

With North Korea i didn't know that they possess good enough ICBMs to target the Usa .

That Russia had no

(well-educated) noble class, especially one that was highly skilled at the arts of war and politics as was Germany's.

is not so surprising since Stalin killed with his Great Officer Purge the Last remaining onces .
I think it was Schukov who wanted to make a preventive strike on germany when they massed their troops in spring 1941 for operation Barbarossa . Stalin refused because he didn't believe it .
Really sad because i think this preventive strike would have perhaps ended World war 2 a lot earlier .
Russia had at that time lots of KV-1 series tanks and already lots of T-34/76 ( Both about 1000 each ) .
The only question is if the at that time still relative impressive german air force would have been enough to stop the russian advance to Berlin .
So if Stalin hadn't executed most of his good officiers but studied the german blizkrieg strategy really only the german air force would have been between him and Berlin in 1941/42 already i think given how inferior the german army was at that time to the russian army technically and equipmentwise .
Only the good german tactics / strategies combined with Stalins officiermurdering + his own military incompetence similiar to Hitlers made the german "success" in 1941 and early 1942 possible .
He gave away the command to the army then to his generals and the success hadn't to wait long and was already great in stalingrad .

Btw are you familiar with german/russian tanks ?
Do you think that Steel panthers world at war is a really superb/realistic simulation of that or rather not ?
If you think not please say why .

[Arryn]

Boron said:
Israel has them from the Usa .

You really should check your facts before you speak/write. Israel developed its own nuclear devices, with the clandestine assistance of the then-racist South African government.

Boron said:
Afaik China has only "shortrange" missiles which can target japan or huge parts of russia .

Quit guessing, please, or making assumptions without actually doing any research. Repeating my advice above, check your facts BEFORE you post. China has 20 ICBMs with 13000km range. That's enough to hit the continental US.

Boron said:
With North Korea i didn't know that they possess good enough ICBMs to target the Usa .

They can hit Alaska and Japan. That's more than sufficiently dangerous. But even short-range missiles versus South Korea are a big problem.

Boron said:
The only question is if the at that time still relative impressive german air force would have been enough to stop the russian advance to Berlin .

Easily. The Soviets lacked the logistical capability to support massive operations against Germany in 1941. It's questionable whether they even could have done it in 1942 assuming they had attacked first in 1941 and kept the fighting away from their own factories. Russia had more men and tanks, but they had a bad organizational structure and poor morale. Even after the Finnish Winter War and the lessons they learned from it.

Boron said:
Btw are you familiar with german/russian tanks ?

Very much so.

Boron said:
Do you think that Steel panthers world at war is a really superb/realistic simulation of that or rather not ?
If you think not please say why .

They've done the best that can be done given the limitations of that game's scale and design. There are more realistic games, but they are not turn-based overhead-view. You have to go to the 3D-style games to get better realism, such as Combat Mission.

[Boron]

My assumptions about nuclear missiles were only from an extreme viewpoint i fear which i tried to "simulate" .
The book/film The Sum of All Fears from Tom Clancy has impressed me there .
The scenario seemed pretty realistic to me when the Usa thought about a preventive strike on Russia . And in a few years if Bush keeps the power and gets another likeminded republican successor with better technics and his new anti-missile programs when they show results i guess it is even more realistic .

So if China would really shoot all their 20 long range nukes on the Usa the Usa would strike back , China would not exist anymore .
Since the newest military development is always kept secret i am not sure how it would exactly be but even with the current technic perhaps Patriots and other anti-missile missiles would even destroy 30 , 50 , 70% ?? of the incoming 20 nukes . A few would still hit and do some harm .

My fear is that in a few years some fanatic militarists may calculate the risk of being hit as worthy doing a preventive strike . If the new SDI Bush lets develop now in 5-10 years can kill 95/99% of all incoming missiles this might get a big problem .

And there is always the other problem mentioned in The Sum of All Fears that terrorists may get a small bomb and smuggle them to New York / Berlin etc. , just to the most important city with which nation they are "at war" atm.



Do you have played combat mission yourself ? I made a quick google search and saw it is from CDV .
I have Sudden strike this is one of their earlier WW 2 games and totally unrealistic . From my short glance at a few screenshots Combat mission 3 just looks like a sudden strike in 3d .
I don't care if the game is turn based or RTS but i want an as realistic penetration model like in steel panthers . If Combat mission 3 has this and you can convince that i am interested in it
But in sudden strike it didn't matter if you attacked a Tiger or a Panzer II with a small anti tank rifle . The Tiger just needed 2-3 more hits .
And 3-4 Panzer II could still kill a Josef Stalin 2/3 tank. So if this is still true with combat mission 3 or another such game you suggest i think it is not realistic