The Old Hack

Certainly. I merely wished to state that even ordinary nonmagical propaganda can be terrifyingly effective when it comes to controlling and manipulating people. And that humans are capable of great evil without magic to force them. Very much true. It also did not help that the Great Leader grew more and more controlling and unreasonable as the war started to turn against him. (I should also be fair to France here. They did have some really good units of which no ill could be spoken. Just not enough of them.)

Conversely, they might also lack the impetus and individualism that made the historical example so terrifyingly effective in and off the battlefield. Yes, I know it sounds ironic. But the soldiers of the Wehrmacht were allowed a high amount of individual initiative to carry out their assigned tasks and this was part of what allowed them to enact such crushing defeat on so many of their enemies. It was precisely because they acted of their own free will they could be so effective. They were taught unit pride, reliance on each other and not only what to do but why they were supposed to do it. In comparison, many French troops were mere browbeaten conscripts with little more training than which way to point a rifle and how to use a shovel. They might possess national pride but were allowed no pride of their own. Often they would follow meaningless and stupid orders because they saw no alternative nor even any point to trying to think of one.Their abysmal morale contributed greatly to the utter breakdown that followed the diversionary assault on the Maginot line. Yes, diversionary. It wasn't actually supposed to succeed but it did. The French troops were that demoralised when the attack came. I am actually trying to imagine the bafflement in OKW when that happened. "Herr General, we have taken objectives A, B and C. We control the entirety of the Maginot line along this stretch and forces north and south of us are rapidly retreating. Now what?" "...errr. Please hold." *whisper* "Get hold of someone higher up. We've broken through and the French are routing and we have NO idea what to do next." "...you have GOTTA be kidding me." My point is, mind controlled troops with no personal initiative are stupid. They will cheerfully follow orders even when the orders make no sense because the sitiation has completely changed. They will march into death traps, stupidly hold positions that are under no threat whatsoever or let vital objectives fall to the enemy because they were not told to defend them. An army with only one directing mind will ultimately bog down and suffer the same destruction that has befallen every military ever commanded by power mad narcissists too distrustful to delegate. Obviously, the Wehrmacht eventually suffered the same fate because it suffered from the same kind of monomania on the political and strategic level that it had avoided on the tactical level. "Gröfaz" (Grösster Feldherr aller Zeiten, or Greatest Conqueror of all Time) ultimately lacked the scope he thought he had.

This is all part of the feline master plan to drive all humans bonkers.

*looks around* Where the hell is /me? He needs to take you down, stat.

The Moderator: Not to worry. I have merged your post into this one. ~tOH.

The army in question killed millions of people in its extermination camps alone, for no crime other than being what they were. At this point, I feel that doing some sort of Genocide Olympics to determine which is worse is not only superfluous but also in rather poor taste.

Several members of my family would not be in a position to tell the difference. They died in the most gruesome way imaginable in places full of indescribable human suffering. All of it inflicted by perfectly ordinary other humans, many of which did indeed plead that they were merely following orders when put on trial.

As you said, quickly followed. Clearly Mr. Norgay did not have the time to open one before the first guest arrived. Damn straight. They are so rare that we have to make the most of them.

I can testify that the passage of a mere four decades has enacted certain changes in my personality, too.

I'm not sure the latter is necessarily worse. I can think of at least one case of a guy who won an election and used that to take control of a country that built one of the finest armies in the world...

Sins of the father.

I should darn well hope so. I even spent an hour and a half explaining my entire master plan to him. With charts and diagrams and everything that my five-year-old advisor had all approved. I think even Mr. Verres would have afforded me a nod of approval for all the effort I put into those charts. The next day I learned that he had escaped my trap and thwarted my unstoppable master plan. I'm glad all that effort didn't go to waste. Especially since I had just put my monocle into place before asking my minions for their report. It takes long and hard training to properly make a monocle drop upon hearing that all one's meticulously laid plans have somehow utterly failed.

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2502

He didn't give it to me. I stole it from him, then left him in an overly complicated death trap with at least two dozen failure points, cackled madly at him and told him nothing could stop me now, then departed without making sure that the trap would actually kill him. I know how to properly villain, thank you. And before you ask, yes, I did twirl my moustache. Repeatedly. I grew one especially for the occasion.

This happened in Denmark, too, due to an expensive lesson. When they decided to connect our two main islands with a bridge across the Big Belt, they failed to take a few things into account, such as the time it would take to build the bridge, the cost of materials and the wages paid to the workers and entrepreneurs. As a result it took six years longer to build and went one and a half billion dollars over budget. The next step was to connect our easternmost main island to Sweden and amazingly the planners took the lessons from the Big Belt fiasco into account. As a result the bridge across the Sound was finished half a year ahead of schedule and almost a hundred million dollars under budget. An expensive lesson but at least they learned it.

You take that back! I worked hard to earn my Villain card!

I don't see it. Why in the world would Sirleck do anything as stupid as tell Magus where he had stowed his remaining wealth? Nope. He wouldn't. If Magus wants wealth, he is gonna have to earn it the hard way.

Really now. Bram Stoker wasn't that bad.

Also, it doesn't make you seem superior. It makes you seem insecure.

Possibly. We'll see. The big issue is that once you have demonstrated a willingness to commit mass murder of people whose sole crime was not believing in your godhood, you have pretty much sunk so far past the moral event horizon that there is really no coming back.

Hey, wild speculation has its place. I am all for the possibility of some hypothetical reality where Damien might be redeemed. In fact, one reason I loathe Damien as much as I do is how one-dimensional he was. I am not saying he is unrealistic as a character, mind you -- only that all his personality traits are Narcissistic and abhorrent.

I suspect we have to agree to disagree here. I do see your interpretation and it is valid, but it struck me more as denial than acknowledgment. Nonetheless, you have made your point.

No he didn't. What he said was that if he wasn't a god, existing would be pointless. That is not in any way or form acknowledgment of wrongdoing.

Well... sort of. The Heterodyne who first got the idea of making the Castle sentient (Faustus Heterodyne, I think) also shared his charming personality with it. I am not sure but I think the connecting apparatus was his design.

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2500 Page 2500. Wow. Also, you tell him, Ellen. He deserves it.