Have you seen Triumph of the Will? I watched it for the first time recently. My mouth might literally have hung open during the initial footage featuring units from the National Work Service.Originally Posted by JMA
Have you seen Triumph of the Will? I watched it for the first time recently. My mouth might literally have hung open during the initial footage featuring units from the National Work Service.
If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)
Very good source for German officer training 1919-1944
A very good dissertation on the structure, selection, training and expansion of the German officer corps is:
Autor: Richhardt, Dirk
Titel: Auswahl und Ausbildung junger Offiziere 1930-1945
Titel (eng): Selection and trainig of young officers 1930-1945
Erscheinungsjahr: 2002
Fachbereich: Fachbereich Geschichte und Kulturwissenschaften, Philipps-Universität Marburg
Institut: Geschichte und Kulturwissenschaften
Format: Portable Document Format (PDF 2.2M)
URL: http://archiv.ub.uni-marburg.de/diss/z2005/0100/
URN: urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-z2005-01003
DDC-Sachgruppe: 943 Geschichte Deutschlands
This publication (only in German) gives a lot of hard numbers and describes in detail the dramatic chages of the officer training after 1941 due to the high losses at the ostfront. The combination with Muth's "Command Culture" and parts of Crevelt's "Fighting Power" gives a quite complete picture for the Greman side.
I sat through an IPR today where people talked about the CG going ballistic about "dog & pony" show type of stuff. Then I come home, read this thread and I have to just laugh.
The system is not going to change. It is what it is.
I wonder if there are any units that don't get distracted by the superfluous, garrison, limp-wristed crap.
Funny thing happened today to me, as well.
Was sitting through one of our twice a day production meetings (twice a day? WTF???) and someone mentioned the "80% solution".
"80%, I said... don't you mean 70% solution?" I mean, the basis for the phrase was that 70% was "passing".
But, no, some mouth breathing moron decided that if 70% was good, then 80% is better, so now we need to make sure our product meets the 80% solution, because it is better.
Of course, that doesn't stop the idiots at the top from taking several MONTHS to get an intel product out the door. MONTHS!!!! All in the moronic, risk averse attempt to get product "perfect".
80% solution my *ss....
Sounds like someone may have been indulging in the seven-per-cent solution.Was sitting through one of our twice a day production meetings (twice a day? WTF???) and someone mentioned the "80% solution".
"80%, I said... don't you mean 70% solution?" I mean, the basis for the phrase was that 70% was "passing".
But, no, some mouth breathing moron decided that if 70% was good, then 80% is better, so now we need to make sure our product meets the 80% solution, because it is better.
If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. – Mark Twain (attributed)
Having a clogged nose right now...what is so evil about mouth breathing?!?
There's some kind of political committee report on the Kundus bombing event in the German news now. It strikes me how self-evident it appears to be for everyone involved that an officer who makes one mistake has to be fired and isn't acceptable for further service.
The zero failure tolerance has set in and I didn't see it coming.
Shouldn't it be self-evident that learning from mistakes, not mistakes themselves is critical? We are all fallible human beings, after all!
Reminds me of the Theodore Rooseveldt quote:
Excerpt from the speech "Citizenship In A Republic", delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910
However, there is a line that needs to be drawn between an honest error and the result of incompetence.It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Zero tolerance? Frankly, I'd like to see the entire officer staff of RC-N relieved and reduced to begging on the streets.
The "fail" is strong with that group of bozos.
The hard part will be finding just one to fire.
I'm on both sides of this issue. At times "eyewash" is a way of putting a bit of snap and pop into a complacent unit. A bit of of it it isn't a bad thing if it causes guys to pay more attention to detail. There is a cross-over point though when too much if it is counter-productive and a waste of effort on non-productive things.
A certain amount of feeling sharp is a good thing. I never felt better than in '77 when we had starched cotton fatigues with highly shined jump-boots. The feel-good-factor went way down when the perma-press uniform came out, and fell even lower when the no-press BDUs were introduced. There was no feeling sharp any more.
Unfortunately that's long been SOP at HHQ and theater intel shops.Funny thing happened today to me, as well.
Was sitting through one of our twice a day production meetings (twice a day? WTF???) and someone mentioned the "80% solution".
"80%, I said... don't you mean 70% solution?" I mean, the basis for the phrase was that 70% was "passing".
But, no, some mouth breathing moron decided that if 70% was good, then 80% is better, so now we need to make sure our product meets the 80% solution, because it is better.
Of course, that doesn't stop the idiots at the top from taking several MONTHS to get an intel product out the door. MONTHS!!!! All in the moronic, risk averse attempt to get product "perfect".
80% solution my *ss....
Supporting "time-limited, scope limited military actions" for 20 years.
I did reply to this before but I think it got lost during the recent 'server issues' so I will repeat it.
I tend to avoid the political aspects of Germany of that era and focus upon selected aspects of military interest to me. The main one is how after Versailles they put in motion the rebuilding of their military under severe economic and other constraints. There are lessons to be learned there.
The FMS series is available online somewhere), but not for free.
The cheapest way to read one specific FMS study (IIRC 54) that I found was to travel to a distant German archive and read it there, followed by ordering photocopies for 80 bucks.
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