When Nicky Poasted Physique

So not only did Nicholas II have a cool dragon tattoo from his Japan trip…

… but was also ripped and looksmaxxed, esp. by 1900s standards.

Imagine trading that glorious physique for Der Untermensch made flesh:

Some wits on Twitter made the observation that perhaps the October Revolution, contingent as it was on a set of freak coincidences, may have been entirely ruled out had widespread audio-visual media such as the TV rolled out a generation earlier.

Ordinary Russians would have been too repelled by the dystrophic physiognomies and strange accents.

Anatoly Karlin is a transhumanist interested in psychometrics, life extension, UBI, crypto/network states, X risks, and ushering in the Biosingularity.

 

Inventor of Idiot’s Limbo, the Katechon Hypothesis, and Elite Human Capital.

 

Apart from writing booksreviewstravel writing, and sundry blogging, I Tweet at @powerfultakes and run a Substack newsletter.

Comments

  1. Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.

    If you are new to my work, start here.

  2. SteveRogers42 says

    Maybe he was a student of Eugen Sandow.

  3. another anon says

    I must admit this is the most innovative allohistorical idea how to save Russian Empire I ever saw. As delusionary as 99,99% of alternate histories, but original and creative.

    TL;DR summary of tweet threads linked above: Tsar Nicholas was big and strong pure Russian man, Bolsheviks were small ugly big nosed people with strange accents.
    If TV existed in Russian empire in 1917, all Russians would see big muscles of their imperator in the idiot box, immediately forgot about poverty, hunger, landlessness and pointless war and woved to fight for their Czar to their deaths.

    In reality, Bolsheviks were avid public speakers who were not ashamed to present themselves to the crowds, and there is no evidence that their accents held them back, while Czar, as sacred figure, was hidden from the vulgar mob.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Vladimir_Lenin_Leon_Trotsky_Lev_Kamenev_1920.jpg

    It is true there was no TV and cinema was in its infancy, but print and railroad existed.
    If Imperator Autocrator wanted, he could travel all over the empire and perform bear riding, tiger wrestling and other superhuman feats of strength stark naked to the adoring crowds. If he wanted, he could order to print millions of huge colored posters of his mighty physique and “poast” them in every village.

    Of course, making sacred ruler into democratic circus performer degrading himself before mob would be completely unthinkable, and this inability to create propaganda in modern propaganda age was indeed one of many reasons why the Empire was doomed.

  4. Blinky Bill says
  5. Kent Nationalist says

    Leninism was always Bio-

  6. Was it his gay relative Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, who took the pictures?

  7. Bisexual, not gay.

  8. Biocrappy!

  9. 4Dchessmaster says

    As far as optics go, yes, Tsar Nicholas II definitely had the edge. However, we have to remember that the average person in the Russian Empire was not as superficial as the modern day Westerner. Sure, appearance mattered, but some of the Bolsheviks like Stalin had the tough, badass rebel look, while people like Trotsky resembled basement dwelling nerds.

    As far as physiognomy went, the Bolsheviks on average were definitely more foreign looking. Trotsky, Kaganovich, and Yagoda were Jews, Stalin a Georgian, Beria a Mingrelian, Mikoyan and Shahumyan were Armenians, and Lenin was mixed from what I know. I have also wondered how comfortable average Russians were with these foreigners, but I would need to look into that more.

    However, just like one poster above mentioned, these men were not trolls posting on social media, but real life revolutionaries who were out and about among the people, so I am not sure how much the average person cared about how they looked.

  10. Marina Amaral does an excellent job reviving these pictures.

    https://marinamaral.com/the-romanov-children-1906/

  11. Bi, properly classified, is a type of gay. Though it seems difficult to make the distinction, back then, as social norms were different and many homosexuals had wives and children, like Eulenburg who had 8.

  12. another anon says

    Why do I feel that I start to warm towards Nazism when I look at this picture?

    The only right is MIGHT!
    The only law is law of TOOTH AND CLAW!
    The only thing that matters is STRENGTH!
    The BIG and STRONG and BEAUTIFUL must RULE, the SMALL and WEAK and UGLY must SUBMIT!
    HAIL VICTORY!

    Wut? We are losing? Small people with big ugly noses are winning?
    This could not happen to Master Race! Waaah! This is not fair! Waaah! This is cheating! Waaah! We were betrayed! Waaah! Someone help us! Waaah! Waaah! Waaah!

  13. Constitutional Monarchy could have saved the House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov.

    Watching “the Crown” made me appreciate Walter Bagehot’s analysis of the English Constitution.

  14. I read before he’d have pull-up bars installed wherever he was working at the time. When he was at Stavka and waiting for reports from the front or Petrograd, he’d pass the time by compulsively doing sets and trying to top his personal best for the day.

  15. Kratoklastes says

    The ones of the children are spooky.

    The colourisation of old photographs has undergone a quantum leap in the last ten years. The first time I was astounded by a retouched photo was in about 2014, when I first saw the one below (Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain); that level of realism is now run-of-the-mill. In another few years photo-realistic colourisation will be a ‘filter’ on everyone’s phone.

    https://cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/twain-color.jpeg

  16. Kratoklastes says

    It strikes me (having not thought about it deeply) that ‘bi’ for men can involve men who just really like sticking their willy in moist holes. Female, male and artificial holes are functionally interchangeable, so if you are strongly motivated to find opportunities to stick your willy in a moist hole you might chase both genders.

    (Why not just buy a fleshlight? Same outcome, less effort).

    By stark contrast, getting a willy stuck up your bum (or elsewhere) is a qualitatively very different experience. That won’t appeal to most people who have other options. (The only time I ever had something stuck up my bum was a doctor’s finger when I had a twisted bowel. Never again).

    My intuitive take – little more than a guess – is that most soi-disant ‘bi’ men don’t get things stuck up their bum (or anywhere else).

    IOW: They’re “pitchers” who don’t care what team is at the plate.

    It strikes me as unlikely that “catchers” would have the same likelihood of ‘bi’-ness.

    ~

    Lesbians are easier to understand – they get to play with all the interesting squishy bits on a woman, and getting to do that is always pretty enjoyable.

    The butch types are not going to get their own bits played with by even median-quality men, so they have more incentive to munch the furry pie (an outdated joke, given that for some reason it is now mandatory that all women have external genitalia that mimic a 12 year old’s).

    I guess if a woman enjoys being penetrated, it matters little whether it’s a bloke or woman wielding a lump of flesh-like plastic: that would make sense, since the woman doing the wielding could also fulfil an emotional role (during and either side of the event), which women apparently appreciate for reasons that escape me.

    So maybe my prior would be that bisexual women would be at the feminine (‘receiver’) end of the lesbian spectrum: butch dykes would only be bisexual in the abstract – i.e., aspirationally.

    That said: women’s sexuality is a fair way outside of my range of things to make sensible guesses about.

  17. Small people with big ugly noses are winning

    Why are you so obsessed with the noses? Is it some Freudian thing?

  18. They had a parliament full of left leaning politicians. That didn’t help, quite the opposite. The Tsar should have used the fat-right (Black Hundreds) to keep law and order and prevent Revolution, but he was too mild mannered and cared too much about his European cousins opinions. He also was a man of honor and was unable to distrust and/or betray his Allies. He was a good man, but not fit for the job. The situation required someone less principled, more cunning and absolutely ruthless.

  19. Chrisnonymous says

    Yes. It’s interesting because it doesn’t quite look like watching “Downtown Abbey” or some period drama. The people still look more dignified than we do, but some of the romance is absent from colorized old photos.

  20. anonymous coward says

    A very brainlet take. Nicholas II wasn’t deposed by the commies, he was deposed by the forces of globalist liberal democracy, with full support from the Russian and European royal families.

    In the space of eight months from February to October liberal democracy managed to turn Russia into a wasteland, and the commies were an authoritarian reaction to that.

  21. Jon Halpenny says

    The physiognomies in the first photograph are interesting. It seems to indicate that Robert Wilton was correct in his claim about the ethnic composition of the early Bolshevik leadership.

  22. AltanBakshi says

    How impeccably well cut lawn and before the age of machine powered lawnmowers.

  23. So he was a functional analog of a modern hipster then, hardly surprising really. A fucking tramp stamp on an Emperor, holy shit.

  24. He was a very religious person and an excellent father. He was also absolutely devoted to his people. But when he was young he had some adventure and excitement, as any young man should do.

  25. Gerard1234 says

    Well Himmler, Goebbels, Goring and Von Ribbentrop together is like a gay parade- very effeminate. No surprise an anti-Russian like you “warms to them”

    Why do I feel that I start to warm towards Nazism when I look at this picture?

    That multi-ethnic photo is not worse than the US where even Christmas is more Jewish than Yom Kippur .Every single well-known Christmas song written by a jew, often with a jewish subtext ( apparently the song Rudolph ), every bit of Christmas advertising, even the placing of the phrase “happy holidays ” there instead of a Christmas greeting is probably jewish lead. That is not to criticise jews – Russian empire created Jews are what created Modern America.

  26. Göring used to be a WWI ace but he certainly let himself go a bit later.

  27. It is a well known and a thoroughly obfuscated story. The early Soviet elites were absolutely disproportionately non-Slav and completely skewed towards Jews and Caucasus ethnic groups. The European looking faces in the picture are probably Latvian. The Latvian and Chinese mercenaries were the first Red Guard troops alongside the Anarchist leaning Kronstadt navy men.

    By October 1917, Russia was so thoroughly disorganized by the Kerensky’s masonic cabal (put in power with the help of the British and the French) that a tiny, but absolutely ruthless gang of political criminals seized the power with initially no backlash at all. The bourgeois revolutionaries responsible for overthrowing the monarchy, and who for the most part enjoyed a dignified career and the high society life under the Tsar, were completely inept and thoroughly corrupt.

    It took tofficer voluntary militias to start opposing the Reds. The White Army was mainly made of officers of the Imperial Army, despite this fact it has never proclaimed itself monarchist. I believe that it is one (among many other) reasons that the White movement lost in the Civil War struggle.

  28. AltanBakshi says

    Actually it was fashionable among the European male aristocrats of the end of the 19th century to have one or two small tattoos, but it was seen criminal or not reputable by the Victorian middle classes.

    You bet that Nick utterly regretted his tattoo when the war with the Japan began, how idiotic he must have felt when hearing of news of lost battles and at the same time having a fricking Japanese dragon stamped on your hand.

  29. Gerard1234 says

    I know that- in that way he shouldn’t be conflated with Himmler and Goebbels……but wasn’t there credible rumours about him being a transvestite?

  30. Why do I feel that I start to warm towards Nazism when I look at this picture?

    Have you considered the possibility that you might be a Nazi?

  31. No, I am not a Socialist. I just dislike degenerate people who force suffering upon those they come to dominate. I think that Hitler and his clique were also degenerates, just like Lenin/Trotsky and their clique. Disgusting scum all of them.

  32. AltanBakshi says

    But Albert Speer seemed to be a genuinely likable and smart guy. Unlike the rest of the Nazi leadership.

  33. “globalist liberal democracy” didn’t even exist back then.

    Russia was wrecked to shit because of 2+ years of total war which was in no way less savage than big fiesta held in France and hard to sustain as they had not yet managed the passage to industrialization yet. (I just though about the Spanish Flu but this just came in ’18, late to the party)

    Said war then kept going after the February revolution.

    Could have told the allies to “thanks but no thanks”.

    Wikipedia coyly says this “happened under pressure from the allies”.

    That “pressure” was the promise to get a chunk of the Ottoman Empire. Playing piggy isn’t healthy for empires.

  34. Nick

    https://foma.ru/20-let-nazad-kanonizirovali-rossijskih-novomuchenikov-vo-glave-s-carskoj-semej.html

    A facetious tone is inappropriate given the suffering that the Tsar and his family have been through, and their horrible execution on the orders of the bloodthirsty and degenerate antichrist Judeo-Bolsheviks.

    http://www.uraledu.ru/files/images/%20%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BC%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B9%20%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8%20%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B0.jpg

  35. The same Allies that assisted and applauded the February revolution?

  36. Well, Bogdanov Malinovsky was also a very intelligent and somewhat likable Bolshevik. An interesting philosopher and a good SciFi writer too. One of the leaders of the informal Bogostroiteli faction in the Bolshevik party.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Bogdanov

    There are exceptions to any rule.

  37. Almost Missouri says

    As I recall, Göring had the highest IQ among those taken prisoner by the statistic-obsessed Yanks. Goebbels was probably smart too, but killed himself before capture, so no IQ data for him, (but he was the only Nazi leader with an advanced degree and had classic egghead physiognomy). Though last time I saw the list, I was kind of surprised how middlingly intelligent much of the Nazi leadership was: above average, but not that much above average. Like, given a notoriously clever nation of 70 million, this was the best they could get? No wonder they lost. Everything was being run by the B-team.

    Speer recognized Göring was talented too, but Göring’s drug addiction made him ineffectual (except at self-enrichment) during most of WWII. Speer was outraged to discover towards the end of the war that Hitler knew of Göring’s addiction but left him in authority anyway, dooming many German efforts and many Germans. Speer was doubly outraged when Göring kicked his drug habit overnight while in US captivity, just in time to launch his own legal defense.

    But yeah, a lot of the head Nazis were kinda simple—Borman and Himmler and their minions come to mind—who just fanatically followed the logic of kissing up and sh*tting down (and sideways when they could get away with it), but then you’ve probably met people like that if you’ve worked in any big hierarchy. They could only be described as “likable” in a nefarious way, i.e. if they had ulterior motives in mind, which they always did, Speer mostly excepted.

    Even Hitler thought Speer was likable and smart, continuing to confer with him privately even as Speer was secretly plotting to assassinate him.

  38. AltanBakshi says

    My apologies, you are correct.

  39. AltanBakshi says

    Speer was part of the highest elite, you are talking about oranges when I’m talking about the apples.

  40. AltanBakshi says

    I don’t have a time or interest to correct your numerous mistakes, but the smartest Nazi leader in Nurnberg trials with the highest IQ was Seyss-Inquart, with his 141, Ribbentropp too had a high IQ of 129 and Speer 128.

  41. Bogdanov Malinovsky was one the founders of the Bolshevik party and competed for the leadership with Lenin before retiring from active politics and devoting himself to science.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tektology

    If he would have become the leader of the Bolshevik instead of Lenin a lot of horrors of the Civil War would have been avoided. BTW, he was the one who suggested the Red Star as a Communist symbol. He was also the first one to describe a spacecraft propelled by the “decay of matter” (nuclear energy) and operated by the “grey” Aliens in his Red Star novel.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_(novel)

  42. Even Hitler thought Speer was likable and smart, even as Speer was secretly plotting to assassinate him

    I consider this to be a white lie Speer told in response to de-Nazification. Perhaps, he once had the fantasy or dream that he would kill Hitler, and become a hero to the victorious allied forces. His telling of it is very surreal, IMO.

    And doesn’t he hint that Hitler was a closeted gay that was romantically attracted to him? Seems like a spurious narrative, common to (((people))) trying to smear him.

  43. Blinky Bill says

    1 Hjalmar Schacht 143
    2 Arthur Seyss-Inquart 141
    3 Hermann Goering 138
    4 Karl Doenitz 138
    5 Franz von Papen 134
    6 Eric Raeder 134
    7 Dr. Hans Frank 130
    8 Hans Fritsche 130
    9 Baldur von Schirach 130
    10 Joachim von Ribbentrop 129
    11 Wilhelm Keitel 129
    12 Albert Speer 128
    13 Alfred Jodl 127
    14 Alfred Rosenberg 127
    15 Constantin von Neurath 125
    16 Walther Funk 124
    17 Wilhelm Frick 124
    18 Rudolf Hess 120
    19 Fritz Sauckel 118
    20 Ernst Kaltenbrunner 113
    21 Julius Streicher 106

  44. Blinky Bill says
  45. AltanBakshi says

    Hjalmar Schacht was not a Nazi nor a member of the Nazi party.

    “smartest Nazi leader in Nurnberg trials”

  46. YetAnotherAnon says

    Pretty sure most aristocrats/royals who served on a ship of the (British) Royal Navy had a tat. It was just something you did if you served.

    It was a truism sixty years ago that tats were reserved to sailors, bikers or criminals.

    … the tradition of tattooing in the British Navy, which began with the first voyage of Captain Cook in 1769 (Polynesians were big on tattoos). During the decades that followed, many British seamen returned home bearing souvenirs of their travels in the form of exotic tattoos. Sailors learned the art, and by the middle of the 18th century most British ports had at least one tattoo artist in residence.

    Tattooing gained royal sanction in 1862 when the Prince of Wales visited the Holy Land and had a Jerusalem Cross tattooed on his arm. In later life, as King Edward VII, he acquired a number of traditional tattoos. When his sons, the Duke of Clarence and the Duke of York (later King George V), visited Japan in 1882, Edward VII instructed their tutor to take them to the tattoo master Hori Chiyo, who tattooed designs on their arms. On their way home, the two Dukes visited Jerusalem and were tattooed by the same artist who had tattooed their father 20 years before.

    Following the example of the Dukes, many wealthy Britons and naval officers acquired tattoos from Japanese masters.

    http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/tattoo_museum/england_tattoos.html

  47. Blinky Bill says

    I know.

  48. Russia was wrecked to shit because of 2+ years of total war which was in no way less savage than big fiesta held in France and hard to sustain as they had not yet managed the passage to industrialization yet.

    That’s really not true. Russia’s military losses at the end of 1916 were near demographically irrelevant relative to its population and TFR, there was no famine and less dearth than in Germany, industrial production was 25% above prewar levels, the munitions crisis of 1915 had long been resolved.

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EdI9qA6X0AA6RB0.jpg

    The Central Powers also hadn’t conquered any of its core territories.

    In other words, the situation was vastly and drastically better for it than it was in, say, 1942. The real failing of the Tsarist regime was that it was nowhere near brutal enough towards malcontents amongst the elites. For all their other failings, the Bolsheviks didn’t suffer from that problem.

  49. Speer was an excellent self-promoter, but not the organizational genius he portrayed himself as. It was other people who laid the basis for Germany’s “armaments miracle” in 1944.

    The Nazis seem to have been around typical in their intellectual status relative to other elites. High placed figures being 1-2 SDs above average is typical.

  50. You prefer Roehm and his boys?

  51. Too bad Fritz Todt was never measured.

  52. Almost Missouri says

    If Speer was an excellent self-promoter, he was a very late bloomer. He forewent many opportunities to ingratiate himself with Hitler, allowing Göring, Goebbels and Borman to outflank him time and again in cabinet infighting. And he forewent opportunities to defend himself at Nuremberg, even accepting guilt he could credibly have contested.

    I agree he wasn’t the org genius that his post-war publisher made him out to be, but in his memoir he is not actually so conceited as his book jacket implies. He portrays himself more as happening to be at the crossroads of logistics and crisis and trying to do his best to manage it, rather than as a wizard-savant. At one point, he concedes that despite the Third Reich’s supposed efficiency, the administrative overhead of armaments procurement in WWII was something like quadruple that of the supposedly archaic and inefficient procurement of WWI.

    High placed figures being 1-2 SDs above average is typical.

    True, and obviously there is more to leadership than just being clever. As mentioned though, the Nazis had better than average raw material to work with, and they worked within a nation that traditionally esteemed intellectual achievement, yet they still ended up with, at best, average brain elites.

  53. Like Nicholas II, Franz Ferdinand of Austria also got a dragon tattoo while on a visit to Japan.

  54. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    I think Hjalmar Schacht scored the highest, at 143. Julius Streicher scored the lowest at 106, which is still pretty high all things considered.

    I suspect Hitler would have had an even higher IQ score than Schacht, if they had gotten the opportunity to test him.

  55. IQs of captured Nazi leaders (and others such as Schacht and von Papen) were measured:

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFWyjFdXsAIULEM.png

  56. What was the IQ of top German generals? Like von Manstein, Guderian, or Kesselring?

  57. If he was so smart, why was he so stupid with regards to the strategic direction of the Luftwaffe, like he should have switched production almost entirely to fighters and fighter bombers from the start of 1942 onwards, or the genius insight that the Stalingrad pocket could be resupplied from the air, when even a college graduate from Fresno state could whip out a calculator and see this was not the case, plus choosing to getting addicted to morphine does not remind one of a genius move either. Plus Raeder made the massive strategic error of emphasizing battleships and cruisers over U-boats.

  58. Makes perfect sense that Bolsheviks would be an uglier group. They were a revolutionary group, which started out as low status and sought to kill off the original, high-status regime. Low status people don’t get first pick of women – so their ancestresses were not pretty.

  59. Almost Missouri says

    Though we know we should defeat you,
    we have not the time to meet you.

    That’s kind of an odd response considering I was basically agreeing with you.

    the highest IQ was Seyss-Inquart, with his 141

    Yes, Seyss-Inquart scored well, and though he was quite destructive to those people unfortunate enough to be under his administration, he wasn’t particularly influential in Nazi policy. I.e., not one of the “highest elite”, as you put it.

    Ribbentropp too had a high IQ of 129 and Speer 128

    Yeah, that was my point, and I thought yours too: Speer was fairly smart, if not outstanding.

    The high elite of the Nazi government who mattered for policy were:

    smart but drug addled Göring (already mentioned),

    probably smart Goebbels (Nazi propaganda still enjoys a notoriously high reputation),

    maybe Dönitz (he was better at carrying out orders than at influencing them; anyhow the German Navy did pretty well despite being massively outnumbered),

    fairly intelligent Speer (already mentioned),

    middlingly intelligent Hess (bizarrely parachuted out at beginning of war), and

    notorious dummies Himmler and Borman, who both had huge influence and personal writ.

    So yes, Speer was towards the top of the functional smart guys, and was more “likable” than the rest if only owing to his dispassionate, technocratic role and personality compared to the rabid ideologues like Goebbels and Himmler and the monstrous self-aggrandizers like Göring and Borman.

  60. Almost Missouri says

    If he was so smart, why was he so stupid with regards to [everything]

    Drugs, as mentioned.

    This is one of the many reasons employers drug test you nowadays.

    choosing to getting addicted to morphine does not remind one of a genius move either

    Agreed. I’m just reporting, not justifying.

  61. AltanBakshi says

    I really dont believe that German leadership in ww1 had any better average IQ than the Nazis had. People like Wilhelm II, Ludendorff and Hindernburg dont seem geniuses to me.

  62. Almost Missouri says

    Speer was a bit of a spergster, so it’s not really implausible that he would concoct an elaborate industro-mechanical way to assassinate Hitler and his cabinet. Plus he conspired with the head of one of the German chemical firms in this, and so far as I know that guy never denied or contested the story, so it’s not like a spur-of-the-moment fabrication.

    And doesn’t he hint that Hitler was a closeted gay that was romantically attracted to him?

    If so, I missed it.

  63. I do not understand how physical looks has anything to do with it, to undertake a successful revolution, one side just needs to stock up on lots of arms, train properly on them, get enough of the armed forces and lower ranked officers to defect, seize vital objectives like rail heads, dams, highways, airports, factories, power plants, etc.

  64. The Revolutionaries must first and foremost acquire enough funding to start the whole thing going. The Bolsheviks received money from Germany, UK and USA. Germany only financed the final phase of the preparation for the Coup. Americans added some money, but the bulk of funding of the Russian revolutionaries originated in the UK.

    The British were happy to use the revolutionary terror tool to weaken their Great Game competitor . They spent a few decades preparing the Russian revolution. Although formally allied to the Russian Empire during the WW1, the British continued to sow sedition in the Tsarist Empire. They wanted Russia to come out as weakened as possible from the war and to avoid transferring the Ottoman territories that have been promised to Russians after Antanta wins the war.

    Great Britain also served as a safe haven for Russian revolutionaries for half a century before the October revolution.

  65. GazaPlanet says

    Go through the strain of 1945 and being captured and tell me what you’re going to score on some pea-brains psychometric evaluation.

    Imagine the beatings Streicher had taken.

    (I wonder if the IDF gives IQ tests to its tortured prisoners?)

  66. AltanBakshi says

    I was too harsh and clearly wrong when i claimed that you had numerous mistakes. You had only two mistakes, but those were kinda big in my opinion, the highest IQ, but you explained your point, and that the Speer planned to murder Hitler. I have also read his memoirs, they were very enjoyable, but I got the impression that he tried his best in building of image of a conscious and repenting man who had by chance ended into a position of the Reichsminister, and he possibly lied to the allies investigators as much as he could, so that they wouldnt execute him or that he wouldnt get a life sentence in a prison. Yes the Speer of his memoirs is a very likable man, but its not like he didnt know about slave labour and he even started to cheat on her wife who had 20 years loyally waited for his release from the prison. So I somewhat question his honesty.

    Also who knows how intelligent guy Bormann was, he seemed to be quite secretive by nature.

  67. Russians were the victims of their own success. They grew a class of aristocrat that thought too much of them selves and when the time came to perform they fell on their face.

    Communism ended up performing the job of a purging force despite all the bad it caused too.

  68. AltanBakshi says

    I too didnt notice anything of such in his memoirs, they had manly camaraderie and frienship, something that would nowadays be called by the stupid name of bromance.

  69. YetAnotherAnon says

    I don’t often agree with the anti-IQ camp, but just having a decent IQ doesn’t mean you’re bound to succeed, or I’d be richer than I am. There’s application, willpower, nerve, attention to detail, curiosity/questioning, likeability/’emotional intelligence’ – all sorts of factors.

    Having a high IQ just increases the likelihood of success, that’s all – and I imagine much beyond maybe 150 it might even put a ceiling on your success outside of maybe pure science or mathematics.

    I don’t imagine it was high IQ which got you Hitler’s approval and high rank in the Party in its streetfighting days.

  70. Almost Missouri says

    I don’t know or say that WWI German leaders were smarter than in WWII. (The Kaiser was a plonker, for one thing.)

    My point was that Speer himself never claimed to be the organizational genius that his book promoters claimed he was, and that Speer admitted that despite his best efforts, arms procurement was was much less efficient than in the previous war. That is hardly the statement of “an excellent self-promoter … the organizational genius he portrayed himself as”. On the contrary, it is the admission of a perceptive and rather humble man.

  71. Almost Missouri says

    According to them, they took the tests seriously and earnestly tried to outcompete one another on them. (There wasn’t a lot to do in prison for these formerly very busy men.)

    In any case, I don’t base my opinion solely on these tests, but also on what they wrote, said and did, so far as we know. Göring, for example, acted much stupider than his test score would indicate, probably for reasons already covered.

    Obviously, you can draw your own, different, conclusions from the same evidence, if you prefer.

    Whatever its relevance, I wouldn’t be surprised if the IDF does test its prisoners in various ways, but I have no knowledge one way or the other about that, though I do have an IDF book somewhere way down on my reading list, so if I ever learn anything about it, I’ll try to remember to circle back here.

  72. The Spirit of Enoch Powell says

    See post #58 by AP,

    I don’t think those generals were tried at Nuremberg so we don’t have their IQ scores.

    Dönitz had a very high IQ, while Keitel and Jodl would not have got into Mensa.

  73. another anon says

    Why are you so obsessed with the noses? Is it some Freudian thing?

    Because, as every old gamer understands, the nose knows!

    https://i.imgur.com/WTkm7Da.jpg

    https://i.imgur.com/gmbrFpX.jpg

  74. another anon says

    The real failing of the Tsarist regime was that it was nowhere near brutal enough towards malcontents amongst the elites. For all their other failings, the Bolsheviks didn’t suffer from that problem.

    It was not few “malcontents” but nearly whole educated and intelligent strata that hated the whole system with burning fury of thousands suns.

    At this stage, only thing that could save the Empire would be massive Stalin-style purge.

    https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/10/suicide-of-the-liberals

    Between 1900 and 1917, waves of unprecedented terror struck Russia. Several parties professing incompatible ideologies competed (and cooperated) in causing havoc. Between 1905 and 1907, nearly 4,500 government officials and about as many private individuals were killed or injured. Between 1908 and 1910, authorities recorded 19,957 terrorist acts and revolutionary robberies, doubtless omitting many from remote areas. As the foremost historian of Russian terrorism, Anna Geifman, observes, “Robbery, extortion, and murder became more common than traffic accidents.”

    How did educated, liberal society respond to such terrorism? What was the position of the Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) Party and its deputies in the Duma (the parliament set up in 1905)? Though Kadets advocated democratic, constitutional procedures, and did not themselves engage in ­terrorism, they aided the terrorists in any way they could. Kadets collected money for terrorists, turned their homes into safe houses, and called for total amnesty for arrested terrorists who pledged to continue the mayhem. Kadet Party central committee member N. N. Shchepkin declared that the party did not regard terrorists as criminals at all, but as saints and martyrs. The official Kadet paper, Herald of the Party of People’s Freedom, never published an article condemning political assassination. The party leader, Paul Milyukov, declared that “all means are now legitimate . . . and all means should be tried.” When asked to condemn terrorism, another liberal leader in the Duma, Ivan Petrunkevich, famously replied: “Condemn terror? That would be the moral death of the party!”

    Not just lawyers, teachers, doctors, and engineers, but even industrialists and bank directors raised money for the terrorists. Doing so signaled advanced opinion and good manners. A quote attributed to Lenin—“When we are ready to kill the capitalists, they will sell us the rope”—would have been more accurately rendered as: “They will buy us the rope and hire us to use it on them.” True to their word, when the Bolsheviks gained control, their organ of terror, the Cheka, “liquidated” members of all opposing parties, beginning with the Kadets. Why didn’t the liberals and businessmen see it coming?

  75. James Forrestal says

    The real failing of the Tsarist regime was that it was nowhere near brutal enough towards malcontents amongst the elites.

    Imagine if someone had caused anything like this amount of trouble for the Bolsheviks. I’m sure they would have just been sent off for a nice rural vacation for a couple of years… right?

    “Returning to Russia with a stash of illegal revolutionary publications, he travelled to various cities distributing literature to striking workers.[47] While involved in producing a news sheet, Rabochee delo (“Workers’ Cause”), he was among 40 activists arrested in St. Petersburg and charged with sedition.[48]”

    “In February 1897, he was sentenced without trial to three years’ exile in eastern Siberia. He was granted a few days in Saint Petersburg to put his affairs in order and used this time to meet with the Social-Democrats, who had renamed themselves the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.[51] His journey to eastern Siberia took 11 weeks, for much of which he was accompanied by his mother and sisters. Deemed only a minor threat to the government, he was exiled to a peasant’s hut in Shushenskoye, Minusinsky District, where he was kept under police surveillance; he was nevertheless able to correspond with other revolutionaries, many of whom visited him, and permitted to go on trips to swim in the Yenisei River and to hunt duck and snipe

    Or this:

    “He found employment at the Rothschild refinery storehouse, where he co-organised two workers’ strikes.[56] After several strike leaders were arrested, he co-organised a mass public demonstration which led to the storming of the prison; troops fired upon the demonstrators, 13 of whom were killed.[57] Stalin organised another mass demonstration on the day of their funeral,[58] before being arrested in April 1902.[59] Held first in Batumi Prison[60] and then Kutaisi Prison,[61] in mid-1903 Stalin was sentenced to three years of exile in eastern Siberia.[62]”

    Or this:

    “Trotsky helped organize the South Russian Workers’ Union in Nikolayev in early 1897. Using the name “Lvov”,[21] he wrote and printed leaflets and proclamations, distributed revolutionary pamphlets, and popularized socialist ideas among industrial workers and revolutionary students.[22]”

    “In January 1898, more than 200 members of the union, including Trotsky, were arrested… While in the prison in Moscow, in the summer of 1899, Trotsky married Aleksandra Sokolovskaya”

    “In 1900, he was sentenced to four years in exile in Siberia. Because of their marriage, Trotsky and his wife were allowed to be exiled to the same location in Siberia. They were exiled to Ust-Kut and the Verkholensk in the Baikal Lake region of Siberia. They had two daughters, Zinaida (1901 – 5 January 1933) and Nina (1902 – 9 June 1928), both born in Siberia.”

    OK, maybe storming the prison is a bit much, but surely the proles have a right to strike? To produce and distribute subversive literature? How would the enlightened dictatorship of the proletariat have dealt with this sort of minor political dissident during the Red Terror?

    “On 16 March 1919, Cheka stormed the Putilov factory. More than 900 workers who went to a strike were arrested, of whom more than 200 were executed without trial during the next few days. Numerous strikes took place in the spring of 1919 in cities of Tula, Oryol, Tver, Ivanovo and Astrakhan. Starving workers sought to obtain food rations matching those of Red Army soldiers. They also demanded the elimination of privileges for Bolsheviks, freedom of the press, and free elections. The Cheka mercilessly suppressed all strikes, using arrests and executions.[25] ”

    “However, strikes continued. Lenin had concerns about the tense situation regarding workers in the Ural region. On 29 January 1920, he sent a telegram to Vladimir Smirnov stating “I am surprised that you are taking the matter so lightly, and are not immediately executing large numbers of strikers for the crime of sabotage”.[29] ”

    They never would have made past the basement of the Lubyanka (or the local equivalent) — if they got that far.

  76. James Forrestal says

    the bulk of funding of the Russian revolutionaries originated in the UK.

    Oy vey! Those evil… Anglo banksters, funding the judeobolsheviks. Terrible.

    Then again, they were just trying to help out their fellow Englishmen Russia, who were so horribly poisecuted by the Tsar and his minions. Looks like that tribe of British White Christian bankers really wanted to sacrifice the Tsar and his family (and a few million other goyim) for their sins…

    https://i.postimg.cc/4N2kf76X/Tsar-Nicholas-Chicken.jpg

    Context:

    https://i.postimg.cc/QthnkhQ6/Jew-Chicken-Twirling.jpg

  77. The Brits used the Yids and vice and versa. They were together into this. That was one of the many among their common successful joint ventures. You know British Israelism and all…

    https://images.app.goo.gl/7a4tdihudN3ev4Db7

    Anthony Sutton detailed it in his book…

  78. There is a huge difference between holes. Like one is for shitting. Those who find anuses appealing lack disgust.

    And are themselves disgusting people.

    If plague takes them out. I will not weep for such people.