The unpopular opinions thread.

Here's one:


I really don't like the 'Up-incoming/Next Generation' (not to be confused with Star Trek: The Next Generation) shows or movies, especially super hero ones like Teen Titans or Young Justice.

For starters, nearly all these shows are try-hard hype shows who's whole reason for existing is to prove that: They are just as good as the previous generation was. Often-times spending the first half of their show/film's runtime saying that they are just as good rather than letting their actions speak for themselves.

The second part is most of the spark that made the original or previous generation characters so engaging is gone. Replaced either by the fingers on a chalkboard that is teenage drama, and/or the assumption that these new characters are automatically better simply because they espouse modern day social/political topics.

Call me a grumpy old man if you want, but I must have been a grumpy old man back when I was 8 and was rolling my eyes whenever I saw Superboy or Kid Flash on the screen wallowing in teen angst.

Playing some games, strategy games, I think I first realized this with Civilization II, (which I beat once - conquered the whole world - on the highest difficulty), is not fun or even meaningful to play on the highest difficulty settings. Because all your moves are forced. There is only one thing you must do at every stage, because if you don't you'll lose. So there's no freedom or variation left in the game.

It becomes a bit like 'Don't Starve'. The real gameplay is only about finding out exactly what you must do at every stage, by trial and error, play again and again, in order to survive a bit longer. 'Don't Starve' is fundamentally unwinnable and thus not good for your mental health, and should despite its charm and fun be avoided for that reason.

Bobby Fischer had a similar reaction to how Chess changed with later days' extensive mapping and analysis of the opening moves. He claimed it ruined Chess and that he now hated chess. Notable is maybe also that he won his World Championship by using very rare and - at that time - little analyzed openings.
It renders some credibility to some internet games he is claimed to have played in later years, but generally dismissed as fraud, because the start of every game was so crazy, aka incompetent, "it just couldn't be Fischer". Well, maybe not, but maybe that was the only kind of game he was interested in playing?

On somewhat similar note we have players who quit Chess, and later also Go, because it became impossible for humans to beat a computer. At some point, it's not fun anymore.

Do we need to invent more complicated games? Which are more beyond our intellectual capacity? (I don't, Chess is beyond enough for me.)

I still like Master of Orion 2, because the game is free from balancing improvements or fixes to avoid tipping points. It's a game that has a mid-game that can come early or late, depending on strategy and luck, where there is a desperate knife edge fight for winner takes all survival, but otherwise is just coasting. But that moment of gameplay, when it all hangs in the balance, is glorious.

The Grey wardens are a utter joke of an organization and deserve the scorn they get between blights.

Instead of having a very small select group of wardens you keep in reserve and bring out when the blight dragon is near death you kill off many man many really good high quality fighters, mages warriors all on a lie when you are recruiting them. A totally ridiculous waste of fighting power and people.

Breaking Bad isn't a great TV show

I have so many unpopular opinions in my head that would royally piss someone off.

So, going deeper into Hitler's real mistakes:

1: Persecuting Jews. He could sure have had use for all that brilliance in building a strong Germany.
2: 22 May 1939 - Military Alliance with Italy.
3: 1 September 1939 - Invading Poland.  (a stretch perhaps, if considering and accepting Hitler's vile goals)
4: 10 May 1940 - Invading France, Belgium and Netherland.  (obliterating any possibility of a peace treaty and cementing Churchill into power.) 
5: 27 September 1940 - Military Alliance with Japan.
6: February 1941 - Trying to save Italy's bacon in North Africa (following up mistake 2).
7: April 1941 - Saving Italy's bacon in Greece (following up mistake 2).
8: 22 June 1941 - Invading Soviet while still being heavily engaged in wars on other fronts.
9: 22 June 1941 - Going to war to exterminate and enslave, instead of liberating from Stalin and the Bolsheviks.
10: 22 June 1941 - invading too late in the seasons, and thus running straight into a winter.
11: 11 December 1941 - Declaring war on USA  (while following up on mistake 5, this was still not necessary).

At this point, Hitler has F* himself so thoroughly that nothing else will change the ultimate outcome.

Continuing on Hitler's mistakes, I'll delve on some that are more often narrated:


Goering and Hitler didn't build up any strategic bomber force.
That's not the mistake! They didn't build any long range air superiority fighter. You need something like the P-38, P-47, P-51 to escort your bombers, or it just becomes a mass suicide. Closest thing the Germans came was the Bf 110. Not a bad try, but they settled for a number of insufficient choices. Not long enough range. Too many crew, a pilot is enough. Speed is essential for a heavy fighter and the Bf 110's performance development was abandoned much too early.

Hitler is supposed to have delayed the Me 262 jet fighter, by ordering it to be modified into a bomber.
Nope. The mistake was building jet fighters at all. The delays were due to the very bad engines. The modifications to allow it to carry bombs were already made when Hitler asked about it. If anything, Hitler's interest meant more resources were poured into jet engine and aircraft developments.
Someone is supposed to have calculated that a million men in total were working on various parts of the Me 262 project, to ultimately produce only a handful of fighters with engines that only lasted 7-10 hours. Complete madness!

"V1, V2, V3 could have changed the war, if bla bla".
No, they bloody well could not. They amounted to another grotesque waste of resources and manpower. Seriously, what about delivering only a single ton of explosive on some random spot in England, justifies the insanely advanced, complex and expensive V2 rocket?

And on massive waste of resources, lets not forget some other things. Like the guns, Schwere Gustav and Dora.
Then we have the big, useless tanks. Maus, Elephant, King Tiger, Tiger. These are tanks that you lose wars with.
The best tank of WWII is the M4 Sherman. That is what a tank that win wars look like. Easily built, easily transported, reliable.

While precious resources were poured into these "megalomanic Bond-villain projects", they couldn't be bothered to ensure they had something as essential as a competitive successor to their main fighter, the Bf 109. Or a mass produced medium tank.
The Me 309 fighter focused on heavy gimmicks, like pressurized cockpit, tricycle landing gear (on a front engine fighter), instead of easily produced and all out performance, in anticipation of meeting future enemy planes. And they didn't bother to finance its engine, DB603, much either, a low priority item.
The Panzer V, aka Panther, was changed from a neat little replacement for Panzer IV (which continued to trade positively against Soviet tanks through the war) to yet another overweight, cumbersome, expensive tank with too thick armor, ...as if they didn't already have enough of those models.

Another narrative I'm tired of. It was a mistake to let the British escape at Dunkirk. Well, yes, but it wasn't as obvious as typically presented. The German soldiers had marched on amphetamine for days and needed rest badly. You can only do that for so long, then things start to go seriously wrong. The tanks, the same, they needed maintenance. They could have continued though, but without support from infantry and with escalating attrition to mechanical problems.
And of course, they stopped because Goering had promised that Luftwaffe would make sure the Brits didn't escape.
Silly Goering, right? Luftwaffe did nothing of the kind, right?
...Well, ...actually, Luftwaffe did indeed bomb the Dunkirk harbor to rubble! They couldn't get out that way.
How the hell was Goering to know that they would be evacuated by thousands of fishing boats and leisure yachts? Directly from the beaches? Not even Churchill knew that.

Well, no. I think the framing I put this in, belongs in 'unpopular opinions', not history.
This is sort of “What If” -territory. I think the History thread should be kept for history, i.e. facts, not speculation?

Basically, I easily get annoyed with various popular history media. Hitler was a bloody idiot, even dumber than Mussolini who actually had some education. The warmongering of both were foolish. But if we're going to talk about “mistakes” and even “mistakes that lost the war” it seems to me that we should at least start from somewhere where there was a chance the goals actually could have been achieved?

Seen from a 'what if' -position of actually being able to defeat Soviet, what are the mistakes? Both Italy and Japan were completely delusional. Their war goals could simply not be achieved. No hope in hell. But Germany could perhaps defeat Stalin.

“By itself”, allying with Italy is not a mistake. That may be true, ...but:

Soviet, Japan, Italy and Germany all had the same idea, conquer & steal & enslave (+ exterminate for Germany), and shared the basically same revolutionary, collectivist, progressive, social-justice (except for Japan), authoritarian ideology, but had vastly different goals, nothing in common, in fact.

It's quite clear from Hitler himself that he didn't want or plan war with either Britain or USA, and for that reason not with France either, at least not for a long time, and not until after an eastern conquest.
Not going to war with Britain or/and USA is also an absolute requirement for success in the east.

Allying Italy, which have its own goals of going to war with Britain and Britain's allies, can only become a burden for Germany, not an asset. Allying Japan, which is far away and have its own goals of going to war against Britain and USA and their allies, can only become a burden for Germany, not an asset.
Not being allied with Italy or Japan, should actually help with keeping Britain and USA preoccupied and Germany's back free.

Victory in North Africa is not really in the realm of the possible. Sending more forces would only make the logistic problem even worse, and that was the part of the puzzle Rommel never got right.

Germany lost ~150,000 men in North Africa. And ~1760 aircraft, ~6,200 guns, ~1370 tanks, ~300 tank destroyers, ~70,000 trucks. They also lost ~200 Ju52-3M transport aircraft. And 60% of all supplies and reinforcements they tried to ship across the Mediterranean were lost, as Britain sunk them. All of this, particularly the trucks and air transports, could have been of great use in the East. And we're not even considering the ammunition and fuel.

The other Italian adventure, Balkan and Greece, was maybe not quite as expensive in material, but also costly in supplies, and on Crete alone 13,000 of Germany's most elite troops were slaughtered.

A burden and a waste.

It would get much worse, as a consequence of being in war with Britain, and later USA. Being forced to withdraw almost all combat aircraft units from east, from summer 1943, to home, where they were promptly shot down, doomed their entire eastern campaign. It didn't help to also get all their railroads and factories bombed to rubble either.

But I digress. The main objective must be to not get embroiled in a war with Britain.
Hitler gambled on that Britain and France would not deliver on their guarantees to Poland. But once the war declarations came, the focus should be to cool the situation. After Soviet took their part of Poland, that should have become even more doable.
Not being allied with Italy, and Italy starting a war in North Africa, should have improved Germany's chances of getting a peace treaty with Britain and France.

The smart course of action should have been to do nothing. And Hitler was actually half-ass into that option. Unfortunately, Doenitz, horny for his submarine war, sent submarines to sink a British passenger liner and a Battleship. That didn't help at all, to defuse the situation and undermine Churchill. But, of course, after the invasion of France, the situation changed even more radically.

I think you might have skipped over my starting point.  If we accept yours, then the only mistake that counts is that he went to war at all.  That is the invasion of Poland.
Because all the rest is just Hitler's delusions.

I'm accommodating the possibility that he might have won in the East.  I think Germany could have managed that.  Thus those of his actions, which then made that impossible, are his mistakes.

The Italian navy could never win against the British in the Mediterranean.  And it didn't.  They got clobbered badly.  So they could not be of any help to the Germans, and the North African campaign was a logistic disaster, just as it must be.

IMO, there are three things that stand out about Hitler's campaigns.
His political cleverness and instincts.
That his goals and ambitions were essentially driven by an artistic vision.  The 'Third Reich' was an art project.  He didn't care shit about the German people.  They were just tools and building material to him.
And finally that he maybe had some kind of superstitious feeling, conviction, that he would always be successful, that there was some kind of higher power, "fate", guiding and watching over him.

The last thing, his feeling of having destiny on his side, is what I believe made him careless at crucial moments.  One such crucial moment is when Britain and France declare war after the invasion of Poland.
Because IMO war is not certain even then.  Britain and France are not in any way ready for war, and don't want to.  They have made guarantees to Poland though.  But what of those guarantees, when Stalin then takes the eastern part of Poland some days later?  Are they going to declare war against Soviet too?

I don't think Hitler planned war with Britain and France then.  He believed they would chicken out and abandon Poland.  And they still could.  All he has to do now is to do nothing, because France and Britain do nothing.  And he does give notes to Doenitz and Raeder to take it easy.  IMO hoping for negotiations and a peace treaty.  But he was not clear and emphatic enough to his admirals.  So then just days later U-30 sinks a passenger liner Athenia.  Hitler is reported to have been furious.  But he also seem to have accepted the war from then on. Because then the ship sinkings start in earnest.  Churchill moves to First Lord of Admiralty and then later Prime Minister. My point was that before this it was maybe possible to avoid shooting war, and that that is what Hitler should have attempted, if he wanted his plans in the east to succeed.