Keep in mind, that’s Guderian telling you Guderian was smart, and everyone else was an idiot.
Speer was the one who actually vetoed the Ratte supertank. Also, check out this entertaining bit from the discussion of the Maus supertank, of which a couple prototypes actually did get built:
“It had the same design flaw that made the Elefant unsuitable for close combat. In the end, the tank will inevitably have to wage a close combat since it operates in cooperation with the infantry. An intense debate started, and except for me, all of the present found the ‘Maus’ magnificent.” -Heinz Guderian
I liked Guderian and Speer both. They seemed sensible.
Aqarius@lemmy.world 7 months ago
mo_ztt@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Next you’re gonna tell me Speer’s book where he explained that he had no idea about all that holocaust stuff, and just liked building fancy buildings and getting hang out with this bunch of snappy dressers, was a little bit self serving.
dumdum666@kbin.social 7 months ago
As sensible as war criminals can be
mo_ztt@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Bro I’m from the US. If I stopped supporting people just because they were war criminals, I’d never be able to vote or talk politics ever again.
(Also, Speer actually talks about this in his book – he said at his trial in Nuremberg, his lawyer wanted to bring up that he tried to kill Hitler as a factor in his defense. He said, no, by that point in Germany you could just walk up to any random person on the street and say “I’m working on a plan to kill Hitler” and if they had courage, they’d say “Thank God how can I help.” Basically, he was happy laying out some good things he did late in the war, but said yeah maybe I am a war criminal, I don’t want to weasel out of any of my earlier conduct. But, also, I just read a little more of his Wikipedia page at least according to that he took pains to present himself as more blameless than he actually was, made specific revisions to how things were presented in his English-language autobiography as compared with the German one, and was definitely a POS of the highest order.)