[MRM]

Actually Hitler didn't get things done. Speer talks about it in his book and any reasonably well read political scientist wannabe knows that the myth of efficiency under a dictator is just a myth. The trouble is that when you have a dictator in charge, no one challenges the dictator, or even raises his head, because drawing attention to yourself is dangerous. Dictators (and all leaders to some extent) are surrounded by people who say what they think the big man wants to hear, so he never gets the straight scoop, and can't fix the problems that no one tells him about.

Speer in his book and Stephen Ambrose in Band of Brothers had remarkably similar passages discussing the war effort under a democracy versus a dictatorship. Both commented that the entire American versus Nazi way of life were pitted against each other, not just their militaries, because the war would be won in large part based on which society could outproduce the other in terms of men and materiel, and that the system that could do it more efficiently would prevail.

Speer complained that under the Nazi system of mandating orders from the top down resulted in every good soldier and factory worker doing exactly what he was told - nothing more and nothing less - regardless of whether what they were told was a good idea or not. As a result, Speer had to deal with getting stuff produced that was unusable, not what he needed, or just bad quality and men who couldn't think for themselves.

He wrote that he envied the American system where independent thought was encouraged and rewarded, where any person in the chain of comand or factory worker on the line could complain or make suggestions, and where a Private First Class could be made an NCO, any NCO could be made an officer and any officer could be promoted to staff or combat comand as needed, and the unit would be stronger for it. He deliberately "Americanized" and "Deomocratized" his industrial plants to take advatage of our system, inserting some chaos to the Nazi order, and seeing a tremendous increase in production. Speer joked that their spies told them that the US was busy imposing order on its chaotic industrial plant, making its production system more "German" at the same time as the Germans were making their system more American.

And as Ambrose dryly points out, history shows which system was superior, as measured by quality and quantity of materiel, men, and results.

Jim says it well. Spanky and the apologist Bernie should be goose-stepped into obscurity. They are unapologetic neo-Nazis and should not be allowed in motor sports, let alone polite society. European-style racing will fade into obscurity with them at the helm and they're doing a good job of it.