Ex-Nazis put both the Russians and the us in space. The much ballyhooed “Space Race” was mostly a question of whether our captured German scientists were better than the the Russians’ captured German scientists.
Then fifty years after WWII we finally caught on that the Germans had a better helmet design.
Point is, there’s plenty to learn from German (Nazi and otherwise) warriors and scientists. The German armed forces of WWII were simply the most proficient fighting machine in modern history. You’ll hear this from historians John Keegan to Liddell Hart (neither of them German.)
After the fiasco of Castro’s armed forces at the Bay of Pigs (where 1400 overwhelmingly civilian freedom-fighters with light arms and no air cover STOMPED 15,000 Castroites to the tune of 10-1 in casualties) who can blame Castro for wanting his forces better trained?
But where are the results? In the Congo the Castroites were again a laughing stock. In Bolivia Che seemed incapable of applying a ‘freakin compass reading to a map! On the Golan Heights in the Yom Kippur War the Israelis again stomped and humiliated the 500 Cuban tankers Castro had sent as “volunteers.”
Later in Angola came the biggest joke of all: while Castro had 50,000 troops in Angola, the South Africans never had over 4,000! And every clash was a hideous ROUT for the Cuban and Angolan Reds, especially Cuito Cuanavale where the South Africans lost 31 men and the Cuban-Angolans Reds lost 4700!
What accounts for such unconquerable imbecility? How does one explain so incessant a string of blunders by such an endless parade of donkeys as those who infest Castro’s military? Can’t a few competent commanders emerge? Wouldn’t the law of averages allow for it?
First off, Castro’s troops are hapless draftees who probably detest the regime as much as anyone in Miami. They have no stake in its wars. But mainly, it’s the rampant megalomania and paranoia of their commander in chief that accounts for the Cuban military’s astounding stupidities and failures.
Communist armies in general and Castroite armies in particular promote officers not on battlefield merit but strictly on political reliability, which is to say on lackeyism, cowardice and donkeyheadedness.
“Communist armies in general and Castroite armies in particular promote officers not on battlefield merit but strictly on political reliability, which is to say on lackeyism, cowardice and donkeyheadedness.”
The exception to that rule was General Georgi Zhukov, mastermind of the Soviet victory at Stalingrad and the march to Berlin.