@Ducky:
@Obergruppenfuhrer:
…and you nailed it completely. One of the main reasons Germany lost WWII was preparing for a short war that ended up being a long one. Pride was their downfall.
It’s a character flaw a lot of Germans seem to possess. My German family generally all have the stubborn “my way, or the highway” philosophy….
Yeah. It’s funny how each culture, race or nationality (whatever you want to call it) has it’s own special gifts in certain areas a a collective whole. Of cousrse there are individual exceptions by the thousands but as a whole, Germans have been know for their dominant, regimented and calculated behavior. They are also a very industrious people with a history of producing the finest iron and steel the world has ever seen.
Himmler was adamant about restoring the practice of making damascus blades which took could take at least 10 years to master making. They produced those as swords and especially daggers for rewards to the SS. These blades were renouned as the finest in the world. Much like the Katana. The difference being, these blades had an amazing spectrum of colors that refracted off them becuase of the long, EXTREMELY difficult process it took to make one. Only a hand full of people in the entire world knew how to make them so Himmler set up shops and apprentice programs to keep this medieval practice alive. Today, I’m sure a genuine dagger could go for 10’s of thousands of dollars on e-bay but they dont even have genuine ones listed. The originals are about as rare as it gets. There’s lots of blades that carry tha label but none that I’ve seen are the genuine ones made by the Germans.
The Italians, as mentioned in a another thread, are not naturally gifted warriors. They are a people of the renaissance, connoisseurs and lovers. They fought like cowards on the eastern fron especially.
They deserted their SS comrades many times as soon as they came under heavy fire. As I’v noted before. The Luftwaffe, stuka pilots in particular returning from sorties, would strafe partisans and Italians running at full speed away from the front line out of pure digust for their cowardice.
