(Part 2) Top products from r/hoi4

> This article seems to have some interesting points

I'm sorry, but it's nothing but pop history and armchair general's what-ifs IMHO.

It doesn't account for potential potent counter-attacks on the South flank of the over-stretched AGC, it assumes that the Soviets would themselves surround at Bryansk, it assumes that one of the most regular meteorological event of the Russian climate wouldn't happen, it assumes that AGC somehow has enough fuel and supplie to actually lead such a battle, it assumes that the Soviet would stand still and don't counter-attack everywhere they can, etc.

If you want an excellent book to get a good grasp on the situation of the Easter Front, I strongly commend When Titans Clashed from David Glantz – US Army historian specialized in Soviet military history – which is a cheap and incredibly good source of informations.

You are p dumb and also you rely on Wikipedia for knowledge. The Roman (not Greek) emperor renamed the city after himself but to the Greek population until and after the fall of the city in 1453, thirteen centuries later, it remained Byzantium. and that was the name of their empire as a result.

I suggest that you first read John Julius Norwich's superb three-part history of the Byzantines:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Byzantium-Early-Centuries-v/dp/0140114475
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Byzantium-v-Apogee-Apogee/dp/0140114483/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Byzantium-Decline-John-Julius-Norwich/dp/0140114491/

Then a useful primary source to start with would be Anna Komnene's Alexiad, written about her father the Emperor and infused with first-hand knowledge of the city of Byzantium and its empire: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alexiad-Penguin-Classics-Anna-Komnene/dp/0140455272

Then perhaps something like Procopius' Secret History. Then come back and try and tell me that you don't cringe at that time you thought the Greeks called their city "Constantinople".

1. Happy Cake Day dude.
   
2. This is not an alt-history book.
   https://www.amazon.com/1421-Year-China-Discovered-America/dp/0061564893
   
   Don’t trust everything you read.
   

I'm trying to imagine Joseph Stalin leading the Allies....shivers...yeaaahhh, nope.jpg

​

On a related note, if anyone does want to actually see that, check out Joe Steele , that's a novel full of all kinds of shivers.

Generals:

Ferdinand Čatloš,
Rudolfa Viest,
Anton Pulanich,
Alexandr Čunderlík,
Jozef Turanc,
Augustín Malár, Štefan Jurech.

Slovak manufacturers:
Povážské strojírny
Zbrojovka Dubnica

wiki is a good source:
https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovensk%C3%A1_republika_(1939%E2%80%931945)#.C3.9A.C4.8Dast_ve_v.C3.A1lce

or even this:

https://www.amazon.com/Germanys-First-Ally-1939-1945-Schiffer/dp/0764305891


Regarding airforce...
Hitler calls Tiso:
"Situation on the Soviet front is critical! Send me all the planes you can spare!"
"Hm, and do you want one, two, or all three?"

This actually happened to Brazil when Napoleon was threatening Portugal. Haven't read it yet, but here is the book you could read on what happened. If you would like the spoiler read the summary of Pedro I of Brazil here

For a brief overview of all things Modern Europe, I'd go with this. It covers from the 1400's onward.

Bismarck, Life and Times if you want something for just Bismarck.

Europe and the Making of Modernity covers events from 1815-1914.

Nineteenth-Century Europe A Cultural History for the overview of the century from a different perspective.

And Nationalism in Europe for the more Imperial aspects of the century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_Leader_(book) autobiography by General-Colonel Heinz Guderian.
http://www.amazon.com/Panzer-Leader-Heinz-Guderian/dp/0306811014

>essentially fascist

Stop using that word like it has no historical definition. There are a lot of things you could critique about the current Turkish state but the idea that it's equivalent to some kind of mid-20th century form of militaristic nationalism is absurd.

https://www.amazon.com/Leon-Trotskys-Collaboration-Germany-Japan/dp/0692945733
Yeah fuck him, and exactly how was Lenin too authotorian? Because of dictatorship of proletariat? That's fucking prerequisite for democracy. You. Cannot. Build. Socialism. Within. Liberal. Democracy. And how conviently Trotsky discovered Lenins papers just as he got expelled for trying overthrow Soviet goverment and oh did western press buy it up because they wanted to keep up red scare. That's just Bourgeoisie 101.

And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove:
(1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production,
(2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat,
(3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

Marx, Letter to Weydemeyer (1852)

Freeing of proletariat must be done by proletariat. In liberal democracy the bourgeoisie has the power and they are never going to give it up no matter how nicely you ask them as it's against their class interest and don't even try to say but TrOtSkY it's almost as if literally everybody else actually understood what is to be done. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Otto W Kuusinen... I can go on.

If you're familiar with NATO unit symbols and want something in hard copy, this is a good resource: The Second World War: Europe and the Mediterrean Atlas (The West Point Military History Series) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0757001610/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apa_2oR6xbJJX9GGV

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0891418148/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1465013172&sr=1-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=Belton+Y.+Cooper&dpPl=1&dpID=51k4tqorPQL&ref=plSrch

"Death Traps" by Belton Cooper

Autobiography of a junior officer of one of 3rd armored division's maintenance battalion from Normandy to V-E. Critical of Patton (as you'd expect from anyone who saw the aftermath of nearly every Sherman knocked out in the division.

Talks about modifying Shermans for various tasks, including how they modified German beach obstacles and welded them to the tanks to bulldoze hedgerows. Fantastic detail about tank recovery ops and details about damage to both allied and axis armor.

What actually happened was quite disastrous, but I do wonder if the French would have even been able to hold back the Germans if they hadn't made the mistakes they did. Sure, they could have responded to reports of troops in the Ardennes, and fought at the French border instead of in Belgium (assuming a total rework of French strategy from top to bottom), but I think there's room for debate as to whether a properly-led French army could have taken on the Wehrmacht. It was superior on paper, but there were sure a lot of force multipliers going for the Germans. French morale was pretty bad at the time, and most of the troops were relatively poorly-trained conscripts, as opposed to the Germans just coming out of Poland. The French generals, with the possible exception of Weygand and de Gaulle, were completely inferior to their German counterparts. Naturally, the French people weren't nearly as enthusiastic about being at war as they had been at the beginning of WWI. Back then, they could look forward to reclaiming Alsace-Lorraine, but at the beginning of WWII, they found themselves at war for the sake of another country, and they still remembered the huge casualties from 20 years back.

The biggest problem, I think, would still have been the complete inferiority of French air assets compared to the Luftwaffe. Their planes were relatively modern, but there were very few of them. They realized by the late 30s that they really needed to start building up, but they just couldn't keep up with German production, and they especially couldn't compensate for things like the combat experience of units that fought in Spain and Poland.

The other thing is the French armor strategy. They dispersed their tanks for infantry support, instead of making schwerpunkt type armored breakthroughs. It's a failure in strategy, of course, but one that you don't really learn without being in combat and figuring it out for yourself.

All that having been said, you can identify several points where French command made mistakes that should have been obvious even at the time. They might not have been able to completely stop the Germans, but they at least could have significantly delayed them. It really is pretty astonishing that they allowed themselves to be defeated so quickly.

To Lose a Battle is a pretty good book about all this, for anyone who might be interested.