it’s worth pointing out that blitzkrieg wasn’t really a military doctrine so much as the organic movements field commanders made in the field when given loosey goosey orders from high command to the effect of “go west, idk, lol.” much of the failure in operation barbarossa can be attributed to:

• the basic core plan of nazi germany of increasing national wealth through war being really fucking stupid
• a fundamental miscalculation that the soviets would be just as feckless and limp wristed as the French and British
• a failure to take into consideration that the French and British were poorly coordinated because they had two high commands who fundamentally didn’t trust the other to try, so neither ended up doing much of anything. a contrast to soviet high command which was very centralized
• removal of initiative from field commanders and all orders coming from german high command

the thing to understand about nazi germany is that the things they got right aside from propaganda they mostly got right by accident. the only thing the nazis really understood was how to market and advertise the third reich. their propaganda was so effective that it would be the template for advertising and propaganda all the way until today, both in the first (capitalist) and second (soviet) worlds. next time you see a coca-cola commercial really pay attention to it and realize that it’s nazi propaganda in the service of getting you to remember coca-cola exists and getting you to experience some strong emotion in order for you to want to drink a coca-cola immediately. i even feel a little awkward saying their name since i’m playing into theis hand by doing it, but i need people to take a critical eye to ads the next time they see them and think about what it means that the world looked upon the horrors of world war ii and said “i bet we could use this to sell razor cartridges”

if you ever want to know how it was so easy for the nazis to come back under the name of the alt right, don’t look much further than madmen. that show explicitly gives us a glimpse into what america did with the nazi propaganda machine. some time, go look at some 1920s adverts for american products. you’ll notice they give you a long chunk of written prose making a compelling argument that the thing they’re selling will be a marked improvement over what you have now (it’s usually not a valid argument). but after wwii it’s much more just beautiful people holding the product with wide toothy grins. instead of saying “we must kill all the Jews” it says “you must buy the product to be happy”

i’ll also point out that israel has been using nazi propaganda techniques without recontextualizing the techniques for nearly 80 years now. only the untermensch is not the Jew, obviously, it’s the Muslim. ben gvir even uses nazi terms used to refer to Jews to refer to Palestinians.

we’ve had a few chances to listen and fix this shit. spoken word jazz, hippies, punks, and hip hop artists were screaming this shit at the tops of their lungs for 60 years at least. there’s even a chumbawamba song, nazi, that explicitly explains how the nazi ideology wormed its way into the post war society. and i’ll leave you, dear reader, whoever you are, with a couple lines from that song

The world is riddled with maggots; the maggots are getting fat
They’re making a tasty meal of all the bosses and bureaucrats
They’re taking over the boardrooms, and they’re fat and full of pride

And they all came out of the woodwork on the day the Nazi died

So if you meet with these historians, I’ll tell you what to say
Tell them that the Nazis never really went away
They’re out there burning houses down and peddling racist lies

And we’ll never rest again until every Nazi dies