To be fair, Deng Xiaoping's reforms were based on the older New Economic Policy or NEP from the 1920s USSR, so it had been tried at that point. It was scrapped in the USSR for other reasons, not because it failed.
Just like there was no Bronze age, Middle Ages or Third World. It doesn't mean that we cannot use the terminology or that it's necessarily wrong, it's just limited and we need to understand the limits
They did exist the same way people and goods did travel across Eurasia, but it wasn't some defined political or economical entity and they did not call themselves "the third world"
Unlike "the Silk Road" or "the Middle Ages", "third world" was a term in contemporary use at the time it applies to, including among non-aligned states and NGOs that worked on third world cooperation.
It was pretty well-defined as political classifications go, and people involved in actual "entities" related to it were aware of and sometimes used the term.
When originally coined (circa 1950 around the Korean War), the First World was the US aligned block of countries, the Second World was the USSR aligned block of countries, and the Third World was all of the countries not part of either. Egypt, India, Yugoslavia, Ghana and Indonesia viewed themselves as leaders of the broader political movement during the 1960's and 1970's.
Even into the 1960's there were few industrialized nations outside of those two main blocks, so "Third World" quickly lost its explicitly political meaning and became more a description of the level of capital investment and worker productivity.
I heard it argued that Germany didn't have the raw resources and production capacity to go for quantity. Especially later in the war. So quality it was.
I suggest reading Len Deighton's Blitzkrieg (among other WW2 books by him) because it goes into unusual detail on the industrial design and resource allocation decisions that went into tank production leading up to WW2.
Except that the "quality" of their tanks was not exactly top notch, worse they used a lot of resources.
At that point it was just a desperate gamble: "if we can make an invincible tank, then it won't matter how few we have", we both know it did not pay off, not even close.
That's not true. They could have standardized on a few rugged platforms -- and in fact, some in Nazi Germany advocated for that -- but their industry and engineering were generally self-sabotaging and a mess.
They actually did standardize pretty quickly. Panzer III and Panzer IV were the workhorses in Russia, paired up with the StuG (which used the Pz III chassis). I think that it's arguable that no production strategy could have led to German success. Had they tried to produce T-34 or Sherman type tanks (and the Panther was kind of intended to be that tank), they still would have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of tanks built buy the Allies. The Soviets at their peak year produced over 29K tanks, with the US contributing around 21K. The Germans maxed out at around 8k.
IMHO, the Soviets alone could have eventually defeated Germany, thought at much greater cost (as if over 20m casualties wasn't already incredible).
Agreed that arguably no strategy could have helped them against the Soviet Union, it was a major blunder going to war with them.
But the Nazis self-sabotaged constantly. The Panzer IV and the Stug III (with the outdated Panzer III chassis) were arguably the closest standard for armor, but they were constantly diverting effort to alternative platforms that were too complex to mass produce and maintain. And the same for other weapons.
Not really, the tanks were both inefficient to operate and inefficient to build (lack of standardization, constantly changing plans, have to redesign every single part..)
When people say things like the GP, they are talking about German early war tanks, not the late ones.
The problem is that the early WWII arms race was so fast that I don't know how anybody can say with confidence that Germany lost to worse tanks than theirs. By the time the allies got any volume into battle, they also got better designs than their earlier ones.
Not necessarily worse, just different design philosophies. German design philosophies changed throughout the course of the war too.
And people don't really know much about the tanks the Germans were using in France and in Barbarossa. The Pz 2 was used extensively in Barbarossa and it was intended as a training tank! The Pz 3 was woefully underarmed compared to T-34 and god forbid come up against a KV1.
But at the end of the war, the Panther was one of the best tanks on the battlefield. Good crew ergonomics, a gun that was perfect, optics that allowed it to be used well. Comparing that to even a Firefly Sherman? Not a fair fight.
Depends what type of models you look at. There were many German designs that were much less prone to technical breakdowns due to pragmatic and mission focused design choices e.g. many of the Jagdpanzer ("tank destroyer") class like StuG II and Herzer were produced en masse and was very successful. Also, the Jagdpanther was a strong design.
You know that you don't have to do whatever Americans say, right? It will come with its own downsides, but it is a choice. Maybe it's the Dutch people who died for your freedom and independence who are rolling in their graves right now?
Normally I would understand our reluctance. But you know, old sentiment takes a long time to be overriden by new information.
The idea they have is "if we cooperate, we might not get hurt". But modern America will use you, empty you and then still turn their back on you.
So yes, I agree, better to cut ties now and start rebuilding without them. Now I just need to convince the people in power with all their investments in the USA.
Somerhing is finally happening. A consultant came talking about software choices. We asked for non US possibilities and he gave a few. While talking about ut, he mentioned the question came up a lot now, typically from governements and bigger corporations dealing with entities outside the EU. Discussion was done on management levels, not just on IT levels. It seems everyone is testing the waters.
Children of the people who fought for your freedom? Trump’s family coming from Germany, Rubio is of Cuban origin, … children of the people who fought in the war are in the “they took my job” boat.
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