By 1942 it was abundantly clear that the technologically lesser Nazi Germany would lose WWII.

And yet Hitler and his minions, connected through a hiding hole in Poland (“Wolf’s Lair” — Adolf is a derivative of wolf), remained delusional and genocidal.

Nowhere did Adolf Hitler spend as much time during the Second World War — the dictator passed around 830 days in the bunkers at Wolf’s Lair. […] Hitler lived in this tomb, he worked and slept there. “It seemed as if the seven-meter-thick concrete walls that surrounded him figuratively, separated him from the outside world and imprisoned him in his madness,” said Polubinski. …where Hitler, his generals and marshals not only planned campaigns but also discussed the genocide of the Jews in detail.

Here’s a map of the connections and communications, which used the broken Lorenz encryption system (when they weren’t using Siemens).

On the very far left is Rommel’s HQ (Army Group B), for example, which communicated through layers to Army HQ in the center-right.

The British labeled Lorenz machine communication channels as “fish”, which you can see here in detail.

After the war the Polish turned the Nazi HQ buildings at the heart of this map into a strangely “grotesque Disneyland” where locals would admire the concrete, fire toy German guns and play… things you rarely hear about.

All food for thought to those who ask me 1) can Putin avoid assassination and 2) when will he quit. The bigger question is how many generations will be lost for each month his delusions run in front of watchful eyes.

It’s no coincidence the extremist militant criminal partner of the Russian Army has been genocidally kidnapping children from occupied territory for indoctrination and servitude, after naming itself for the infamous Nazi “Wagner“.

…Wagner was the deputy commandant of the Sobibor extermination camp in eastern Poland. It was not a conventional concentration camp, because there was no work for those who arrived.

Sobibor was a killing center. Its production line was as sophisticated as a complex modern factory. In just 15 months, 250,000 men, women and children stepped off the train in the morning, were gassed by lunchtime and their corpses burnt before dawn the next day. By then their luggage had been sorted and packed for shipment to Germany. […]

He didn’t kill the same way as the other Germans. He didn’t shoot, he tortured…when he killed he smiled. Murdering was his pleasure — you could see it in his face. He didn’t consider it a duty, it was more his private matter.

Russia’s Wagner has always been a private criminal matter of ethnic cleansing by design and name, not like a duty-bound Army. It’s all in the communications with Putin, which someday may be exposed.

Basically the Nazi children (Hitler jugend) were indoctrinated with fear and hate. Then they were forced into the unjust war their fathers already had lost, told they would be killed if they refused or surrendered.

If you didn’t know, now you do.

Delays in stopping a dictatorship’s known war crimes and ignoring ethnic cleansing has a clear precedent.

I’ve seen several people make comparison between current Russian military tactics and WWI. Here’s a new one.

Waves of young under-equipped Russian soldiers were driven to their death in barren battlefields devoid of life or purpose.

…the total number of deaths since February 24, when Russia launched its invasion, [increased] to 116,950. If these figures are accurate, Russia has now lost more troops in Ukraine than the U.S. lost during its involvement in World War I.

Three differences.

One: America in WWI saw a casualty rate of approximately 10%, and many of its dead were not from combat (e.g. disease). Russia at the same time, however, recorded a whopping 1,700,000 dead and a casualty rate closer to 80%. That alone should put any American perspective in different context.

Two: The article goes on to say that Russian propaganda today blames all deaths on the soldiers themselves, or their targets. There’s no discussion allowed in Russia of its leaders failing at invasion, because there is only lies about defending something, anything. That really changes the framing for dying in a war. Ethnic cleansing and genocide of Ukrainians has been couched in bogus language of “defense”, which intends to mobilize every Russian into dying starved and alone in a muddy trench.

Three: Many Russian casualties are from shooting each other to achieve some criminal form of power, avoid accountability, and force direction… within a flaccid masculinity system that runs on graft and corruption. Russian cemeteries quickly are filling up today from a 20th century suicidal grind, by design.

Those three big points make it hard to say the historic American WWI experience or perspective, let alone 100K dead, are going to motivate anyone in Russia to listen. It’s perhaps safe to say instead that Russia is engaged in antiquated/primitive strategies of mass mobilization, leaning on heavy artillery and human waves of frontal assaults to reduce target areas into rubble without any meaningful gains (huge waste, which leads to weakness and then destabilization). That’s the better comparison to WWI.

Update January 25: Estimates for Russian soldiers killed are already much higher, closer to 200K.

Elon Musk allegedly has citizenship in three countries and has served in none of them.

And he’s known for being a self proclaimed dumb blowhard, never knowing anything about what he’s talking about and not caring about consequences for being dead wrong.

His lack of experience, coupled with his lack of knowledge, coupled with his lack of accountability is on full display again as he tries to swing Twitter to support Russia (by interfering with smart military aid to Ukraine).

I’ve written before on this blog about air superiority and tank combat in Ukraine, easily proving Musk wrong on both those points below. And he’s wrong in comparing it to WWI.

The mistakes Musk makes here are similar to all his mistakes. He tries to rush into shortcuts and drive at high speed off a cliff to the wrong conclusion.

Reports out of the Bay Area this morning say that a man and his 2014 were found at the bottom of a cliff off the 1A in Sonoma county north of San Francisco. The man was pronounced dead at the scene and represents the first owner fatality of a Model S driver. It isn’t clear yet if the crash was an accident. […] The crash represents the first owner fatality behind the wheel of a Tesla Model S though a stolen Model S that hit a pole at over 100mph and split in half killed the suspect who was then revived and died a few days later in Los Angeles. Tesla previously boasted how safe its Model S was including the 0 fatality record which will obviously have to be revised.

Tesla’s CEO “boasted… the 0 fatality record” in its first year with cars on the road. Since then it has gotten worse every year, allegedly killing more than all other EV companies combined. A death trap, by the numbers:

Deaths from a Tesla as of today have reached 348 (when using autopilot, 19), which is truly shocking when you consider just how fast that toll increases.

What is a death trap?

Ok, let’s start with what is a death trap in war?

Everything can be one in theory, because… it’s a war and by definition someone is turning everything they can into a trap.

A vehicle OR the lack of that very same vehicle could be a death trap.

It’s like Eisenhower recognized that under General Fredendall tanks were a death trap, so he dismissed him and promoted General Patton who turned the same exact tanks into a victorious revelation.

Even more to the point, when the Sherman light tank first showed up in 1942 Africa, it quickly turned German tanks into a deathtrap and Rommel was completely outclassed.

The Bradley “fighting vehicle” shipping to Ukraine thus looks to be extremely wise — opposite of a deathtrap — in a repeat of canonical military history strategy. The brilliant General Grant would cheer such a move, as would light tank namesake and American hero General Sherman.

This is where experience and expertise matter. Many factors are required beyond a yes/no question (is it a tank), and nobody should be satisfied with such simplicity.

And yet an anti-democratic con-artist like Musk thinks he can step in and manipulate uninformed public sentiment for some political reason.

But this isn’t a game, and Musk’s right-wing extremism repeatedly shows up as though he’s intentionally using his social media platform to get Ukrainians killed by Russia.

Musk should be shamed for soiling himself everywhere in public on Putin’s behalf, making actual experts clean up all their mess.

The recent clarion calls were meant to prevent exactly this kind of defecation from Musk.

…the idea that tanks won’t have a place in future wars is incorrect, said Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe, commander of the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning. They absolutely will, he said, but they won’t be working alone. As Doland said, a “tank is really good, but a tank by itself, in some woods? Not really good.” […] “[Combined arms] is what prevents the lunacy we’re watching of what the Russian Army is doing,” Donahoe said. “I mean, you’ve just got to watch some of the videos of their forces being ambushed — they apparently are a poorly trained army that cannot fight as a combined arms team.”

The tank isn’t an inherent trap, any more than a plane or a building is inherently in all cases a trap after they are shot down and bombed.

When does something become a trap?

Hint: the answer has to do with being prevented from successful operation in any other capacity. That’s the nature of the brain-dead Tesla being centrally planned and controlled, definitely not the case with a properly deployed Bradley.

Suffice it to say that Tesla has provably been trending towards being classified a death trap since at least 2016 — worse year after year.

Any EV on the road is likely far safer, which is why for example a best-selling EV on the road for a decade (e.g. Nissan LEAF) reported zero recalls and zero crashes compared with Tesla’s growing lawsuits, complaints, investigations and funerals from far too many preventable deaths.

The Tesla CEO, as if aiming to repeat the worst chapters from the past, has rushed dangerous shortcuts and repeatedly wrong decisions with zero care for human life; delivering perhaps the worst engineering in history.

The Ford Pinto killed half as many people in fires as Tesla, for example.

You’d be safer in a Pinto because Ford was forced by regulators to stop making deathtraps, whereas Musk clearly ignores the definition, flaunts safety rules and doesn’t care about truth or consequences.

He told everybody he’s buying Twitter because he wants it to be sort of apolitical, and on the eve of the election he says you should vote for Republicans,” Lasoff told Insider. “He can have his opinion, but the thing I really despise in people is hypocrisy.”

John Byrne, a software CEO in Maryland, hadn’t been a huge fan of his 2020 Model X SUV for some time. He said it was creaky, vibrated at times, and was of an overall build quality that didn’t justify its $95,000 price tag.

But Musk’s behavior since the Twitter saga — particularly his broadcasting of right-wing views and attack on Anthony Fauci — was the final straw. Byrne traded in his car for an electric Audi in late 2022. 

At this point, someone surviving death in or around a Tesla is headline news.

And that’s why Twitter and Tesla both are tanking. Musk knows tanks.