1937: German argues against Panzer Divisions 

Hi, I noticed you used the word 'albeit' this word is pronounced 'all be it' it is simply these three words written as one word. I enjoy your videos and don't wish to appear hypercritical of your English, I just thought you may want to know.

Old books rule.

Haha ffs

Smaller Divisions are easier to deal with, logistics & movement but the downside is more officer's are required.

Easily countered by support AT...

"He wanted to put armor in each division to increase its hardness and make it hard for enemy divisions to pierce." On a certain level, this is what happened: German Panzer Divisions were always extremely infantry heavy, while most Infantry Divisions had organic armor in the form of Stgs.

Bruh haha

A wise thought. I think the Wehrmacht wanted to solve this problem with the "Schweren Panzerabteilungen" and the "Tiger" (Durchbruchswagen). In Stalingrad, the armored divisions were out of place anyway. It would have made more sense to go against the Soviet relief army with the armored divisions. Says the armchair general (:

@@aliasalias8433 yes, probably it would have been wiser to use romanian, italian and hungarian forces for Stalingrad street combat and keep armored units in reserve. Maybe, the Germans were soo eager to capture the city that they thrown against it whatever they had, and did not trust enough their allies. Anyway, tanks need open spaces to be effective..... assaulting cities and fortified positions is not their role.

@@Boney1992 That´s right. I remember reading that the OKH originally wanted to ignore the city and go straight to the Caucasus. That might have made the most sense.Then they would have used the mobility of the armored divisions optimally. But afterwards you are always smarter. The name of the city certainly played a role. For Hitler, Stalingrad was a kind of trophy. Have a nice evening and greetings to Italy (I pressume)

@@aliasalias8433 you are absolutely right. The original Fall Blau plan did not considered Stalingrad as a main goal. 6th Army's was to protect the German advance in Caucasus, not capturing the city. Hovewer, with the passing of time Wehrmacht committed more and more troops, diverted from Caucasus, to take the city Ironically, if Wehrmacht executed the original plan, probably it would have been able to seize Caucasus oil, delivering a terrible blow to Soviet war effort. Your guess about my country us correct too. Are you German?

@Marcelo Henrique Soares da Silva yes, both considerations make sense. However, cities are a type of terrain in which training and firepower are less relevant with respect to open fields.... so maybe Romanian, Italian and Hungarian forces would have been more useful in the city.

@menckencynic American divisions then and now also have a lot more vehicles at their disposal than German divisions did. No horse drawn units. Americans didn't have to walk until they got to the front. Does make a difference in speed of advance.

Schnaps

@@paterpatriae645 Both ways is correct.

Ya but Panzer Grenadiers Divisions are ok with you ?

🥃

@@scottyfox6376 Jawohl!

Around a hundred divisions or so could be motorised/mechanised I've read. All the other guys would be logistics to keep the vehicles rolling

Well they had 5200 half tracks at the start of the war , when the average 1941 panzer division had only 370 half tracks/APC. That suggest the start of war Wehrmacht could have fielded 14 /Mech divisions Panzer division . Meanwhile the Barbarossa Wehrmacht had three times as many APC/half-tracks, suggesting they could have had three times as many mechanized/divisions.

His argument was that since panzer divisions alone can win battles but could not "conquer" the battlefield, any breakthrough is meaningless if the Infantry divisions aren't there to hold it. In in the case of France, it was sheer luck and French incompetence that did most of the damage.

His best move was later founding Rammstein.

It's interesting to note that the US infantry division of 1944 had more tanks than the usual (not proposed) number of tanks in the average panzer division.

@@princeofcupspoc9073 american industrial freedom power at it's max expression

@@princeofcupspoc9073 All roads lead to combined arms.

@@princeofcupspoc9073 Well one tank batallion of a nation with arguably the biggest industrial capacity is more than an armoured division, which got it's amount of tanks reduced several times and belongs to a nation with limited industrial capacity and resources, that is fighting an exhausting war while getting it's industry bombarded. Also during the Battle of Kursk the SS-Panzergrenadier-Divisionen (which were basicly motorized infantry and had one tank regiment) had more tanks than the actual armoured divisions of the Wehrmacht.

@@princeofcupspoc9073 jeez, 1 tank regiment.... for an infantry division.

This is correct, however about the penetration and bypassing of fortifications, however, it must be noted that in France 1940 (perhaps the most obvious example of such a thing happening and rendering criticism of the tank division at the very least harder to sustain) several operational errors were commited by commanders in the field. From the allied airforces that managed to not spare a single bomber to that column of germans in the Ardennes, to the retreat from the Maginot Line near Sedan well before it could be considered "beaten". Combine this and the general chaos in the allied deployment in the low countries and you have a list of "mistakes" (and here I include the parts of the plan that weren't stricktly speaking mistakes or errors, but that nevertheless played into the german plan) that couldn't, or at the very least shouldn't have been relied upon beforehand.

@@MSNL123 Well, both the Royal Air Force and the Armée de l'Air were slaughtered in their bomber strikes. Reading the air war of the Battle of France is horrifying and it was probably only due to the imminent loss of their country that many of the French strikes were conducted at all their losses were so bad. They had the multiple misfortune of a fixation on level bombing at the expense of dive bombing, poor second-generation bomb sights, aircraft slightly behind the curve in performance, a total under-estimation of Nazi short range AA guns, woeful defensive armament and the loss of the air war leading to a lack of fighter cover. It's not uncommon to read sorties returning with only one damaged aircraft surviving. The may well of not had the aircraft and crews to send out.

@@jameslawrie3807 True, but the fact that "the fall of France" wasn't a thing when the germans initiated fall gelb and sent thousands of men and equipment through narrow roads in the woods remains. Only because of the failure of the allies to intercept this that the germans attacked with so much strenght against the maginot line near Sedan... and then, failure to reinforce the region, and even a retreat from fortifications that were buying vital time for the french allowed the encirclement to begin, with the disastrous results of the battle of France coming soon after.

The panzer div. Did not switch to using more stug they used them because there was not enough tanks available

Literally the exact oppossite of what happened. Soviet High command was constantly trying to get their Army commanders to stop employing tanks piecemeal against the Germans because it squandered their offensive strength. The Fedorenko order issued in 1942 stated that the armored division was the basic element not to be distributed, it was to be a Front asset and released to lower echelons for the accomplishment of strategic objectives as part of the main effort. Marshal of the tank troops Fedorenko spent the rest of the war trying to get commanders to follow this doctrine, and his eventual success is what led to operations like Bagration. The myth of the Soviets winning by just overwhelming with mass assaults is a mostly false narrative. While they did continue to make massive assaults all up and down the line these were largely ineffective and led to massive casualties. That is why even in the late war battle of Berlin they still suffered far higher casualties than the Germans did, even though by that point they were largely superior. The real victories were accomplished by concentrating their strength into a main effort in basically the same manner as the "schwerpunkt".

@@skylerblake1925 I never said anything about mass assault...

@@podemosurss8316 You implied that STAVKA sought to distribute tanks through all their forces. They didn't, they sought to do the exact opposite. Whether you realize it or not that idea stems from the false historiography that the USSR succeeded by sheer force of mass. They didn't they succeeded by concentrating their forces into a main effort.

@@skylerblake1925 I didn't say anything about that. The thing is that they used tanks both as organic infantry support and also in their own mechanised units.

@@podemosurss8316 Yes you explicitly stated that STAVKA intended to disperse its armor through both infantry and mech units via a meme format. "Do you want tanks on their own mechanised units or as organic part of the infantry divisions? STAVKA: Why not both?" This in turn implies the incorrect historiography that goes along with such a statement, namely that the Soviets won by simply overwhelming the Germans with mass. This is incorrect. The pervasiveness of this false historiography is evident in your rebuttals. "I didn't say anything about that. The thing is that they used tanks both as organic infantry support and also in their own mechanised units." Soviet tanks were not organic to the infantry. They were organic to armored divisions. The tanks were committed piecemeal against orders and against doctrine in support of infantry, and this led to squandering of their strength and massive losses.

Oberösterreichischer Akzent: zum Vergleich ru-vid.comvideos Bin 40 Jahre alt, in meiner Kindheit und Jugend gab es halt leider fast nichts mit englischer Sprachausgabe / Dual-Ton etc. Schwarzenegger hat einen steirischen Akzent.

@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Dann doppeltes Kompliment von mir: Für den Inhalt deiner Videos und dafür, dass du quasi autodidaktisch Englisch gelernt hast. Respekt. Hoffe ich bin dir nicht zu nahe getreten.

A significant French problem came from an oft-overlooked strategic disaster that occurred along with all the other failures. When the Belgians and Dutch pleaded for French help the French went to help them. This was a risky manouevre to pull in the face of the enemy. The Belgians and Dutch had the entirety of "The Phony War" to do this but waited right until hostilities started. As such the French over-extended their lines. This much is well known. However the Dutch command did something odd and this is the important part. They fell back to a National Redoubt without informing the French. The French kept extending their lines further and further to link up with the Dutch who were moving away from them. (Please note this is not to disparage the Dutch soldiers who fought like lions). The result in a strategic sense is obvious. If you send your troops galloping off towards the Dutch coast in the vain hope of helping an ally that has abandoned you it will inevitably lead to a serious thinning of the line. Units will be so far out of position that when the hammer falls they won't be able to concentrate to attack. Added that the commander in this area didn't even bother to concentrate at all, which may or may not have been due to this over-extension, the Nazis blew through them and defeated them in detail. This means that when the Ardennes strike went through the thinned-out line there was also a collapse at the other end of the line in Holland. In a stroke the Nazis had achieved something that had eluded every power in The Great War; a strategic victory in more than one area that was enough to cause a collapse.

@Heer Kommando i mean what he just described wasnt some masterful deception or an amazing strategic move by the german heer that allowed them to smash through french lines... he literally wrote an entire paragraph talking about how the dutch failed to inform the french of their strategy which caused the french to overextend and so on. the entire moral of the story was that the french were pretty much shafted due to their need/want to protect their allies, not out of the tactical brilliance of the german heer of the time... of course the french were done in for a myriad of other reasons as well, but those weren't the subject matter of his comment. though reading comphrension is not a skill i expect a wehraboo named "heer kommando" to have.

Uhh that is exactly the case france was woe fully underprepared and under trained they only started to turn their entire industry into a war footing in 1939

@@gotanon8958 But thats not why they lost. They lost, because they did not cover the Ardenne-area with enough forces or fortifications. And where the french did fight with sufficient numbers, they did okay or even better. The french army was not a pushover and the Wehrmacht was also not really a prepared army.

@@SergeantAradir hence the reason why they lost they only mobilised in 1939 not enough time to train and equip enough division to cover the front they had the fortification they did not have enough communication compunded by the fact that the french command was to rigid and the most ironic thing is a week before the germans crossed the sedan the french held an excersice just incase the german broke out of the ardenne and crossed sedan. Ps.english is not my first language

America had the advantage of a far more massive industrial complex though. One that was never being destroyed.

"Blitzkrieg" was combined arms warfare. The entire concept of the panzer division was to combine the tanks, artillery, and infantry all into one motorized package that could exploit breakthroughs. And yeah the US shamelessly copied the idea after our defining lesson at Kasserine pass. At Kasserine the armor and infantry were deployed separately with horrible results. The US learned from that lesson and did not repeat it. Once the breakout was achieved in Normandy the US very much did "Blitz" the hell out of the Germans, advancing as fast as possible across France in September until we reached the limits of our logistical capability. The main difference was that once we reached that limit we waited until the logistical issues were solved before attacking again.

Underrated comment 😜

I... sense fire. And pyrotechnics...

@Half life 3 most people are... Suffering from a lack of Till in thier lives... even if some of his work is... shall we say... odd?

"BuT sTugS ArnT taNkS!"

@@TheIfifi ThEy aRe tAnK DeStRoYeR DuFuSeS

The StuG is just a lesser tank. Thats why casemate assault guns are not arround anymore. If you are going to have a vehicle that weighs as much as a battle tank, with the armament of a battle tank and the maintainance of a battle tank you might aswell use a battle tank instead of an assault gun. StuG III F and Stug III G are just tanks with less capabilities than a PzIV F2 or PzIV G. The only notable higher cost is in aquisition as a StuG III is way cheaper. For the troops at the front the maintainance cost is not that much higher, but the presence of a turret and therefore the ability of 360° fire which is highly necesarry for leading a charge, gives far greater tactical value. Putting hard steel in front of squishy infantry is always a plus. And its even better when that piece of steel can shoot to the side aswell. StuGs make a lot of sense when you really have to economise on resources. (Mid war. If you are low on resources late war it means you have lost). But in times of peace, with full resource availability from international trade, it makes no sense to not just equip infantry divisions with some tank batallions. So yeah. Panzerdivisions are very good and succesfull. But infantry divisions should also have tanks instead of the StuGs. "Pz IV for everyone!"

@@schullerandreas556 The stug was created as mobile armored close support artillery, although its role did change during the war, and as such fits into Lindemann's idea of how the "motor" should be used organically in infantry formations.

@@schullerandreas556 The StuG was meant to support the infantry attack, not lead it, just pop up to deal with any strongpoint/machine gun nest/pillbox and then disappear, and also to defeat enemy tanks as mobile ATG. In fact, they were to be open topped to ensure communications and battle-awareness... armor was not essential. But, as always, things get muddled and the Germans ended up with the overweight and under-gunned StuG III in 1940 instead of a cheaper vehicle like the Marder in 1938, which would have made more sense IMHO. Yet, I do agree with you point, if you are going to use the hull of a 20t tank... better get and use the 20t tank.

We also have a proportionately much smaller army than the Germans had, because we aren't preparing to conquer the world. If we had to expand to a similar size because of say, war with China we would have to do the same thing, limit the armored/mech to only certain formations. The German principles of concentration of force into a main effort (the Schwerpunkt) is in fact modern US doctrine. Simply look at Desert Storm, the majority of the fighting was carried out by only a small number of spearhead units while trail elements, especially foreign elements did the mopping up.

Russians have armored/ and mechanised brigades or divisions which combine tanks and APCs.

Most countries aren’t vehicle strapped and have oil reserves, while still employing armor divisions (or I guess, brigades)

He most likely did know about it, since it had been talked about since the first world war, and had started development a year or two before he wrote this. But they didn't even have prototypes ready at this point, much less any actual testing or experience. So he didn't really have anything tangible to go by. I would say his ideas were based on the best data available to him at the time. It made sense!

thx, added to the pinned comments. As mentioned the author's first name was not given in the article.

:D

@zain mudassir I know or you make a Kampfgruppe. :)

You need fuel for Panzers though.... too bad it that would become scarce....

J. Zingler you run Panzers on the fuel of the enemy's supply depots if you just blitz krieg hard enough

@@yorneustein7851 The germans tried that at tha "Battle of the Bulge". They failed. Loads of brand new tanks blown up by their own crews... :(

He did not touch that at all, so no.

Len Deighton, in "Blitzkrieg" writes that a major reason that SS units were incorporated into the armed forces was that they were fully motorized at a time when motorized infantry was in very short supply.

????

There was a shortage of trucks and of motorized infantry to accompany the Panzers into battle, and the fully motorized-SS units fit the bill exactly. It is a key point that Len Deighton makes in his (non-fiction) book "Blitzkrieg". I unfortunately do not have a copy at hand, or I would quote you the chapter and pages on it.

it has nothing to do with the article.

It would not had worked due to poor infrastructure. In order to be able to beat Russian mud, all vehicles needed to be tracked, not wheeled and such vehicles are a lot more complicated to produce and to maintain. Not to mention that logistical chain would had grown exponentially so as an engine eats up a lot more fuel than a stomach eats up rations. In the end, Germany had struggled severely with fuel as it was.

Rommel: “lalalala I can’t hear you you’re too far away at the friendly lines”

Hogwash you seriously think that leading from the front was limited to the Panzerwaffe.

Did they? Generals rarely if ever are found on the frontlines. It is lesser ranking officers who gets a privilege to do that. If you talk about their careers then vast majority of people led from the front. Even our beloved Adolf was fighting on a front as any other upcoming leader, this is especially true in German tradition which promotes through seniority and meritocracy.

Supply problems are inherently tied to armored formations. Supply APC, self propelled artillery, tanks or anything else you will encounter into same troubles. Few shitty roads being grinded into mud, because thousands of vehicles need to pass for decisive operation.

​@@REgamesplayer "Getrennt marschieren, vereint schlagen!" - is the motto of the German army. And it means that armies should be spread out and walk independently from each other. And "vereint schlagen" means that armies should only come together at the last possible moment and combine their forces and strike against a common target. Helmut von Moltke who said those words this use this recipe for victory when he won a crushing victory against Austria at Königgrätz in 1866. His three Prussian armies did all walk on their own paths so they would not overburden their supply lines. And then did he push against the Austrian army at Königgrätz from 3 different directions - north, north-west, and west - and the overwhelming force in combination with better weaponry and other factors did create a hopeless situation for the Austrian army that day. Spreading out troops have always been military wisdom. In the pre-industrial age was it easier to feed an army by spreading it out corps over different areas on the map, instead of having the entire army sitting on the same spot on the map and eating up all food in an area in just a single day. Having armies starving to death and then fall victim to diseases would be disastrous. The catholic forces learned this the hard way in their invasion of northern Germany during the 30-years war. Northern Germany had already been plundered and destroyed previous years of the war when the Catholics started their invasion. And after just a few months had the superior force been so badly decimated that its numbers no longer outnumbered the Swedes, but instead did the Swedes now had the upper hand and was able to defeat the catholic army and drive it back home, and turn around the situation completely and snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat. The only problem with spreading out forces is of course that they can be defeated in piecemeal by the enemy. It is always desirable to use concentration of force before launching an offensive against the enemy. Moltke knew this at Königgrätz, and that is also the reason why he did let his 3 armies always stay near enough to each other so one of them could support another, if the enemy would suddenly choose to attack any of his armies. I modern warfare does supply lines still matter. Only the 6th army used 13 railway wagons of small arms ammunition per day during the battle for Stalingrand. And then would the army also need to get supplies like fuel, food, artillery shells ammunition, etc. And then the amount of supplies needed quickly grow so large that you need railways to get them, since there are no other realistic way to give the army what it needs otherwise. But the railroads do of course also got limits to how much troops it can support at a certain location, before the transport system becomes overburdened. So it is therefore a good idea to spread out forces a bit so that each unit more easily can be supplied.

@@nattygsbord Times had changed. Men and horses can walk freely. This is why in most difficult terrain you see no mechanized units, but donkeys...Modern warfare is waged across logistical lines like major bridges, roads and offensives are supported by train rails. You can't just spread around your railroad infrastructure. In a same way you can't just spread your forces around during operation as corresponding concentrations of armor has to go through suitable terrain. It has to be open and easy enough to traverse. It has to allow accumulation and delivery of supplies during offensives. Using 4 armies instead of usual 4 merely means that you are battering defenders in more places with less potency to break their lines and to exploit gaps resulting from that. Also, if you spread your armored vehicles around the front, you do not have necessary equipment to create an sufficient gap and later to exploit said gap with armored elements as they are dispersed around your theater.

@@REgamesplayer I do not believe in the idea of "punching through the enemy lines". Frontal attacks are costly. Outmaneuver and encircle the enemy and starving an enemy army to death with few losses of your own seems like a more ideal solution to me. It is however good that you agree with me that railroads, canals are the veins that provides army with the lifeblood that it needs to survive. And if you cut this vein of, then the blood supply gets lost and the army gets strangled to death. I think normal peoples perception and military experts views on modern warfare differs very much when it comes to logistics. Average Joe do think that roads and railroads don't matter since armies got airplanes, helicopters and halftracks that can cross difficult terrain. But experts however know that even the best equipped modern armies are just as dependent on roads and supply lines as in past centuries. It is not possible to air transport a tank army with 70 tonnes Abrams or Leopard2 tanks. The transport capacity of planes are very tiny, and helicopters can often only carry half a ton of supplies. So it is simply not possible to supply a huge army from the air alone. Just a single American infantry Division did needed 800 tonnes per day during world war II. And in modern warfare are ammunition expenditure at even much higher levels than that. So it is therefore hard to supply just a single Division from the air today. And supplying an entire army would probably be both impractical and impossible for nearly all military's in the world. So cutting off an armies supply lines are therefore still today a very hard blow towards its ability to fight. Without ammunition do guns stay silent. Without fuel do vehicles become immobilized and useless. Without food do soldiers starve, no matter how tough elite warriors they may be. The combustion engine have made armies less reliant on railroads and locomotives. You can load supplies on trucks that hand them over to your troops instead. However, this do have its limits. Trucks ability to cross difficult terrain is limited, and therefore cannot tanks and soldiers get supplies that they need if they choose to sit in difficult terrain. And the capacity to move supplies by trucks are limited compared to railroads. Which in turn means that you can only supply a limited concentration of force in an area. War is still mostly a 2 Dimensional warfare game. It is still not possible to move armies in the air by the 3rd dimension. Air planes can carry too little weight, and they are vulnerable to enemy fire, and even modern airplanes are not good at handling bad weather, night flying, winter, sandstorms, tropical climate, landing zones with rocks and trees etc etc. Paratroops and air mobile helicopter units can be useful for closing encirclements of enemy armies, do raids and capture bridges and such. But they are worthless when they are alone going face to face against enemy armies. They do simply lack heavy equipment and are too short on supplies to be effective. Without tanks and heavy artillery do they lack a hard punch.

​@@nattygsbord With industralization of 19'th century came a massive boom of birthrates. In early 20'th century most countries had experienced immense social-economic shifts where producing equipment was becoming relatively easy with new machinery and practices. Population also had exploded to the point that mass poverty and even starvation had became not an unusual sight. In this environment we had seen wars transform to massive endeavors where a major nation can fill entire frontline with troops. During WW1 we had seen what these new found resources could do, never ending trenches, equipped infantry with artillery and machine guns. This trend had remained true and in WW2 as where entire frontline was full of combatants and there wasn't room to maneuver. Remember this video and author's reasoning. Thus your idea that you can simply circumvent the enemy through moving over unprotected fronts while he does nothing does not hold true. First, you assume that there are unprotected gaps which wasn't the case in last century. Secondly, you assume that enemy will allow you to maneuver around him without taking critical logistical areas. Good luck trying to outmaneuver army size formation of a million men with handful of tanks and men. You need proper force and for that force you need proper infrastructure. Enemies take up defensive positions there and you either allow them to harass you or attack them directly. You can't just transport handful of panzers over a river without supplies or further assistance. This is why attack on Stalingrad was so crucial and necessary. It was crucial in terms or railroad connections and as a major river passing. Quite often you are left with no option, but to brute force through thick of enemy defenses, such attacks are costly, but realistically there isn't any other practical way. Combustion engine had made armies more reliant on infrastructure than before. Take a look at Military History video about feeding Tiger. Or investigate how much fuel Abram tank eats. All armored formations require extensive supply chain to fuel their offensives otherwise they will grind to halt. Only light vehicles under 20 tons are efficient and capable of great autonomy and we have very few of such vehicles. As for WW2, rampant mechanization and development of armored vehicles had meant that this war was just about as transporting supplies to the front as fighting the actual enemy. When you have operational objectives you must take specific roads and those roads become mud holes with thousands of vehicles traversing said road. Trucks wear down and break down further contributing to said problem. You can look at this channel's video about Werhmarcht's supply situation. It is true for western paratroopers. Look into Russian paratroopers. They come equipped with IFV and tanks. I think there are SPG too in there deployed by the air. Such formation can maneuver hundreds of kilometers deep, engage enemy armor and enemy formations behind the lines.

That question is worth an entire book if you want it answered. The thing is, only panzer divisions can encircle the enemy. When you tied any vehicle to infantry, they will go as fast as infantry goes on foot. Such formations are inherently incapable of encircling anything. Better thing is with motorized formations, but those were rare as being only partly motorized negates most of advantages of being motorized in a first place. Secondly, motorized divisions tend to get stuck in Russia's roads as they become mud and wheeled vehicles do exceptionally poorly in poor off road conditions. Only armored divisions with infantry riding in APC can effectively encircle enemy formations. Thus later evolution of Soviet doctrine of putting everybody in some sort of armored vehicle, would it be BTR for motorized divisions or BVP specifically made for armored divisions. Pay attention that motorized division gets a vehicle with wheels and mechanized/armored gets a vehicle with tracks.

Generalleutnant

The Chieftain does a really good summary of the French Tank Doctrine: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gH76zz9jq_A.html

I don't have MSN whatever that is.

@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Messenger. In your FB account (MHV). In short, some other guy in YT is stealing your content. I thought right to inform you.

I guess you meant facebook, thank you!

I remember MSN. Ah, high school 😆

Oof

Actually, from Rommelists, using their Cloaking Devices....#PanzerTrek

I say this with compassion and humility: It's probably more effective to take a deep breath and practice mindfulness when encountering personal hangups, rather than placing the burden of change on a person who is already doing quite a lot of work. Speaking a second language is hard, man.