What’s great about this, and Stephen Fry is brilliant, is not that he’s absolving Musk, or that he’s criticizing Tesla, but that it is an argument likely leading to Elon Musk protesting,

‘No, my cars are good enough that I can be a Nazi!’

  • droplet6585
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    7 小时前

    Hur hur. I’d wish people would stop assigning hyper-competence to Nazis. They never were. Hitler was a drug addict and the trains didn’t run on time.

    • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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      3 小时前

      Hitler was a drug addict and the trains didn’t run on time.

      German trains still don’t run on time. Can’t blame that one on the Nazis, that’s just a German thing.

        • VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          3 小时前

          I had four long distance ICE journeys in the last two months. Three where thirty minutes late, one was two hours late.

          Also had four long distance TGV journeys, of which one was about 20 minutes late, and one was an hour late, though that delay happened in Germany.

          Apparently, DB is currently working on the infrastructure, but those renovations haven’t been fully funded, and it looks like the conservatives will get in next.

    • Fuckfuckmyfuckingass@lemmy.world
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      7 小时前

      Exactly this. My grandmother lived under the Nazis and she said they were fucking idiots. Exactly the same type of incompetent blowhards. The whole hyper scientific ubermensch BS in the cultural zeitgeist is so frustrating. I blame all the WWII video games and movies that played up the myth to have more interesting villains than the sleazy shit stains that they actually were.

      • Eatspancakes84@lemmy.world
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        25 分钟前

        The strength of the Germans was that I.) they had a really good industrial base, and ii.) the traditions within the army meant they had extremely well trained soldiers. Both of these predate nazi-rule. For instance, Germans also arguably had the best (equipped) army in WW1.

    • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      6 小时前

      A small country took on the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD (TWICE) and very nearly won. The second time with a lunatic at the helm.

      What does it take to impress you? To what would you assign their disturbing success?

      • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 分钟前

        Nazis took on world in one war, and lost.

        “WE ARE THE GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD! THE PUREST OF THE PURE! STRONGEST OF THE STRONG!”

        [Fights one (1) war]

        “Guess we’ll shoot ourselves in a bunker and lose in a big lopsided defeat.”

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        1 小时前

        At no point did they “nearly win” against the world. In World War 1 they made desperate attempts to break out of trench warfare because the blockade was obliterating their wartime economy. In World War 2 they were cooked the second they invaded the USSR and the USA landed in the UK. Those were unwinnable areas for them. Even if they eventually managed to wear down the British, the Americans were right behind them manufacturing 100 tanks a day and 15 Aircraft Carriers in 1943 alone. Which means all of those tanks are getting to the European theater.

        And once the USSR got it’s production under way the Germans were on the defensive all the way back to Berlin.

      • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        3 小时前

        Germany was always the second strongest imperial power in Europe behind Britain from 1871 onwards, and without the English channel that would be debatable.

        The Nazis’ initial success in WW2 is entirely dependent on France falling apart the second they were invaded and the Reich getting to loot the entirety of it and the low countries to keep their economy alive. Had France put up even token resistance Germany would have imploded within a few months and the European half of the war would’ve been a minor footnote in the history books next to Japan invading all of Asia.

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        5 小时前

        At no point were the Nazis close to winning. After the Soviets won the battle of Stalingrad in 1943 the Nazis were on full retreat until Berlin got captured.

        Even leading up to up 1943, Germany had its oil nearly cut off. They became dependent on Romania for their supply. This may sound like a cartoon, but Nazis were dragging their tanks to the frontline using horses.

        Germany simply did not have the industrial or logistic capacity to win WW2 at any point. The Nazis had already ransacked the German economy through privatization reforms and selling off anything that wasn’t nailed down. Invading Poland incurred a bunch of sanctions and embargos that resulted in Germany’s only primary oil trade coming from uhhh…the Soviet Union, so the Nazis had the brilliant idea of declaring war on their main source of gasoline.

      • TankieTanuki [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        6 小时前

        To what would you assign their disturbing success?

        Material support from the Western ruling class who wanted Hitler to destroy communism for them.

        • Bloobish [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          5 小时前

          This, the biggest mistake Germany made was interfering with dominant western European capital (i.e. the US, UK, and France). If they had just devoured the eastern European countries and fought Russia then capital would not have batted an eye.

      • droplet6585
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        6 小时前

        Small country? They were a highly industrialized, highly educated and still quite materially wealthy colonial power going into the wars. They didn’t need to be competent. Enough people went along with them and there was plenty of residual wealth to burn on the war machine.

        You don’t need to be an architect to burn down a building.

      • Bloobish [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        5 小时前

        What does it take to impress you? To what would you assign their disturbing success?

        Meth chocolate, fascism, and taking on armies using WWI tech and tactics

          • Bloobish [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            4 小时前

            Yup, biggest thing is that their attack, though expected by quite a few powers, came out of left field and add in the rushing forward on armies still using cavalry units and the early massive land grab via Germany makes sense

      • Sonori@beehaw.org
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        3 小时前

        Do Japan and Italy just not count as part of the world? I mean Japan took over half of Asia and the Pasific while Italy took the Mediterranean countries. Germany took over part of northern Europe and helped a bit of North Africa.