Here’s the full quote “It takes the Navy three years to build a ship. It will take three hundred years to build a new tradition. The evacuation will continue.” -Adm. Andrew Browne Cunningham, Evacuation of Crete, 1941 It was in response to the British army general’s asking if he would lose too many ships and should abandon the evacuation attempt. The naval history TH-camr Drachinifel has a few videos on him, if anyone is interested.
The way the Imperial Navy was run is actually one of the most realistic things about Star Wars, as it more or less matches how real-world dictatorships tend to run their militaries. Dictators don't value competent officers: competent officers are a potential threat to their power. Instead they value people who are easily led, know that they owe their position to remaining on the good side of the dictator, and are just competent enough to do their job under normal circumstances while not being so competent they'd actually pose a threat if they decided to try overthrowing him. However, that tend to lead to a military mostly staffed by incompetent yes-men with zero initiative.
It's not so much Competent Officers.. EVERYONE required a few if you maintain your own forces of some kind BUT LOYAL ones.. is what everyone wants, expects and looks for
If it's the scene I think an remember wasn't that NOT JUST ANY group of "insurgents" but CLEARLY IDed as a small elite team of Mandos??? An even then they STILL lost
Ozzel was competent at SOMETHING (likely bureaucracy), or Vader would have killed him much earlier. The problem was when he tried to actually act as a combat officer...
It could just as easily have been a case of Vader not giving a fuck about incompetent fools until he had to work with them, and even then giving them a chance before removing them from the Empire's payroll.
@@jacoblansman8147 Vader had let Ozzel survive at least one failure (he said "you have failed me for the LAST time", Ozzel had already one major screw up). Vader forgiving his failure at least once means Ozzel was doing SOMETHING right, and until the immense cock up at Hoth it was something important enough to allow him to live.
Well under Thrawn, its probably because Thrawn has a character flaw of being unwilling to toss anyone even if they are starting to be a liability. It's actually bites him in the ass at the end of the Thrawn trilogy and ultimately leads to his death.
@@bostonrailfan2427 And Niles Ferrier pretty much constantly fucked up but Thrawn kept him around and oh look the smugglers teamed up with the New Republic aka the thing Thrawn very much DID NOT WANT TO HAPPEN.
Anytime a competent officer salvages a battle that an incompetent officer screws up, the incompetent officer uses his or her political connections and their allies to remove that person from the imperial navy or army or have them demoted. Unless those more gifted individuals have some political connections and allies of their own to help them out.
you have it partially right…over time tactics and strategies changed but the man behind it didn’t. his biggest weapons weren’t the biggest anymore, the enemy adapted and overcame it
In short, Imperial Army was like pre-WW II Red Army, which lacked experienced officers due to the Great Purge, and there was no good way to properly train soldiers, since new command staff (minus few generals) was inexperienced and soaked with ideology
The imperial navy was just the same as the rest of the armed forces. Poisoned by nepotism, even Vader was aware of it which is why most officers felt his disdain. However Palpatine seemed to like it.
Competent officers tend to be charismatic. Such officers in an authoritarian system may decide they should be in charge. They can led a coup. Such an ruler wants his officers fighting each for your favor rather than working together.
@@republicempire446 Many "president for life" countries tend to do exactly that, in order to keep themselves the most "competent" leader forever. Which of course runs into the small problem being that said country now no longer has competent people. In peace time it doesn't do as much, but when high stress situations happen, whether war, economic downturn, health emergency, etc, things start crashing.
Smart Palpatine: I will create the first Galactic Commonwealth, I as a constitutional monarch, will be the king of kings, emperor. Secretly has all the power, but not all the responsibility. (For me Republic and Separatist should both have used Clones because that’s a better reason to call it the Clone War, like the Toyota war, better explains the technological deficit we see in A New Hope, and the Sith get more power by death, etc) While the galaxy will be divided in two administrations inner and out rims with Palpatine as unifying monarch. Adopts Anakin as his heir, Padmé Palpatine knowing that changing the Senate and the new Parliament is hopeless, she will never be chancellor, opponents get the Putin treatment, and her opposition to her new father-in-law will be more consequential, She decides to accept her new role as Princess Consort of the Galactic Commonwealth, becoming Princess Diana, supporting charities, fighting corruption, being depressed and overworked, and raising the royal family, especially the heir Luke Palpatine, in the belief that she can influence the royal family to be better. Neglecting The other children. For the Inner-rim there’s Chancellor Mas Amedda and for the outer-rim is Prime Minister Sly Moore. Damask Holdings secretly turns the separatist council into subsidiaries, Trillions of dollars are invested into Pro-Palpatine candidates and politicians, secret projects, black sites, and more Business oriented projects, becoming the first Galactic Quadrillion, in secret. The Jedi are already a Army of darkness under Palpatine. So there’s no order 66, why brother when your enemy believes you’re an ally. Palpatine with the help of the Grand inquisitor kills all four assailants. Yoda makes a deal with Palpatine, Palpatine has more leverage because the Grand inquisitor has been sending documents of all the shady stuff the Jedi have been doing, it’s like the JW’s having documents of every criminal in their organization, called the Drake Files. Palpatine will keep the Jedi assailants, Drake Files and this deal a secret, the Jedi can keep their tax breaks, allow Sith into the order, quadruple there funding, there sacred worlds that have to share with the Sith, and total immunity for their Child abductions. Anakin will become an Master, Yoda will stay as Grand Master, Most of the Council as to publicly support the Commonwealth, and they can stay as General and peacekeepers. The Sith and Jedi will slowly become one order named the Jinn (after Qui-Gon Jinn) under Grandmaster Leia, as Luke was born first so he gets the Throne. 5 other sets of twins are born. Affectionately being remembered as the Queen Mother. One with the Middle name Qui-Gon Jinn joins Uncle Dooku in running Damask Holdings, while another becomes a Heir of Serreno, other becomes Prince Andrew coming back from conquesting the western reaches of a new galaxy like Thrawn, another complete operation stardust after finding a non-Jedi planet rich in crystals, because they couldn’t harvest lium. Another is a homebody and becomes queen of Naboo, taking care of the Thrown World, marking that new developments must be cast into orbit to keep Naboo serene. Etc. Hopefully, you can add to the story!
Allen, my man! You’ve done it again-breaking down the Empire’s officer corps like a Jedi slicing through battle droids! I guess when you have more ego than strategy, your fleet ends up like Constantine-rammed by Rebels and lost in space! Keep these brilliant breakdowns coming, you’re like the Yoda of Star Wars analysis… but without the backwards speech. May the Force (and your notifications) always be with us!
5:22 On why Palpatine replacing the clones the quickly. Like Order 66 to kill the Jedi, there was also Order 65 which would be to arrest and kill the leader of the Senate, which would mean Palpatine himself. Why it may be a military and economic waist Palpatine decommissioned the clone program due to a direct threat to himself and his power.
It'd be interesting to see a video on Firmus Piett. I'm not familiar with a lot of Legends material (and of course you may have already done such a video and I missed it), but from what I've seen Piett displayed very few of the characteristics pointed out here. He seemed like a Keep-Your-Head-Down-And-Do-The-Work type of fellow. Competent and loyal, but perhaps lacked the necessary tactical intelligence for his rank.
Quick glance at the wiki describes a backstory that kind of mirrors Luke Skywalker - he also grew up on impoverished, low population Outer Rim world. Only difference was that Piett's father actively encouraged him to enlist so that he could get out of there.
There would also be a lot of these guys in such a military, decent competent men lacking the institutional influence to rise quickly within the organisation and thus having to take the long route. Piett is an outlier of this effect via being the guy in the right place at the right time to rise on merit.
@@tba113 I think the thing is that many imperial officers are competent military men, but the system keeps them down in favor of bootlickers, ideological fanatics and those with enough pull through social rank and wealth. Many higher officers for example seemingly hold a noble title in the lore...
I see it as post republic British military without the checks in place. Aristocrats could buy military ranks up to a point, but needed merit to get control beyond a brigade leader. I see palpatines empire as not having the merit checks in place.
Yes, it definitely has that vibe, but Gen Tech is definitely wrong about the Sith connection, because the Republic's military and aristocracy had always had that level of control. The Clone Wars was an anomaly because the clones themselves were literally an out of this world army that just randomly appeared under Republic control, and was thus centrally controlled by the executive branch, but as time went on, the nobility and business people would obviously get more and more influence as this alien army integrates into the Republic.
Palpatine was a master manipulator and populist during the clone wars but then thought he could go full brute force once he brought in the Empire. I would understand the brute force idea if he forcefully took over the republic, but he didn't, he used manipulation and giving the people what they wanted. Palpatine could have saved resources and still had unlimited power if he just gave the people what they wanted and didn't oppress them randomly. If he stayed the "savior" who brought peace from the clone wars, the rebellion would have never started. I guess you're right, sith lightning reflected in his face just made him go crazy.
I think really that the rebellion in many ways are the continuation of the clone wars, with many of the rebel cells being holdouts of the separatists. Although defeated the core sentiment of the previous war would not die out simply with the death of the main leaders, but blame perhaps Palpatine himself for this as Sith probably like to take a Great Person view of galactic history rather than see social or economic trends...
@@emilspegel9677 I disagree with it being a holdout of the sepratists but agree with the sentiment there would always be resistance to the empire no matter how “nice” oalpatine decided to govern. The alliance to restore the republic really distanced themselves from the separatists intentionally. I would point towards corey’s data-pads video on the topic.
@@GAJake I agree that the later alliance did distance itself politically from the older separatist cause, but as we see in Andor many of the pre-alliance factions came from across the political spectrum, with several of them obviously separatist holdouts or remnants. This was I still think one of the flaws of Palpatine's plan, since imperial repression would reignite the still smoldering issues which where the catalyst of the separatist cause in the first place. This provides the ideological base for further rebellion which adopted a broader and more moderate political stance in order to co-opt as many of the before then disparate factions as possible.
Issue is typically those who take power by force care more about ensuring they stay in power than make their populace happy. Because what is he going to do if someone better at leading comes along? Let himself be replaced? Fuck no. Better make sure his underlings care more about backstabbing than ever risk someone ever get close to replacing him, and also ensure that they know they will only keep that position according to his will. This produces a culture that cares more about keeping Palps happy than being competent at their jobs.
I think the issue with Palpatine after order 66 was that he relaxed. If you think about it, it's like the ending to a movie, he did it. He got to live happily ever after. Except the story wasn't done with him.
If the Imp Officers were too competent the Rebellion would have failed very early on, Palpy wasn't a military tactician and delegated everything to others for the military
@aleccampbell7707 And with the rare exceptions of people like Thrawn and Veers, who were too few really, these pricks were more about keeping their station and even playing it safe or even undercutting fellow commanders. The Rebels did very well but the Empire really kicked their own ass 😆
@@darkhorse13golfgaming I bet that a lot of the competent officers joined the Rebellion as well. The Empire got rid of them and the Rebellion got highly trained and competent military officers to train and lead the Rebels.
Have You Ever Considered Doing Any What If Stories? I Feel Like Your Unique Perspective On Star Wars Politics/Economics And How You Compare Them To Real Life Economics And Politics Would Make A What If Story EXTREMELY Entertaining To Watch!
The Galatic Empire's drastic loss of skill can actually be seen in real world history: when the French Revolution happened the new La Marine Nationale lost alot of the experienced officers from the Bourbon era La Marine Royale. The French never recovered from this loss of officers (though at least for La Marine Nationale, they seemed to have better success rates at finding competent officers then the Galatic Empire) and while the British had always managed to be ahead of the french, this massive setback in skill is one of the key factors that guaranteed British dominance of the seas.
Plus, navies (including coast guards and marine corps, as naval branches) are typically driven by tradition and resistant to change. Unless the war and conditions forces it to change.
Expense can't be the reason the Palpatine decommissioned the Clones. Bringing Clones to maturity was crazy expensive; but once a Clone was ready for combat, he'd be no more expensive to maintain, then a normal human. In fact, they'd be much cheaper. Clones are all the same size, so all uniforms, armor footwear and the like will be cheaper due to economies of scale. They'll eat whatever you give them without complaint, so rations will be cheaper. They fully expect to serve until death, so no retirement plan is necessary. They're more loyal, with less experience of the outside world, so internal surveillance will be cheaper. They'll have less empathy for citizens, and will commit war crimes more willingly. Even in their later years, when they're no longer combat effective, you can move them into support roles, like Clone 99. So end the cloning program immediately, but keep the mature Clones until they die. I think it all comes down to trust, and expense was a cover story. Every Clone was programed with Order 65. The Kaminoans knew this, and had just been fired. He had to get rid of the Clones as quickly as possible, before someone triggered Order 65. He couldn't defeat the whole Clone Army.
It does make a certain sort of sense. The way the Empire purged the disloyal from their ranks reminds me of all historical purges by authoritarian regimes, which they are meant to mirror.
The one thing you didn’t even mention about Constantine is that it is implied that he used his intrigue experience to get his underlings killed by Vader for that mistake, instead of him.
If Constantine was SO BAD. Surprising he WASN'T reminded VERY strongly just how lucky he was to be keeping his life by Thrawn, Tarkin or Vader PERSONALLY since he was clearly high enough to regularly work with them..
I think the big thing that motivated the lack of trained clones teaching the officer Corps would be largely due to the fact that the trained clones were all ultimately infected with the malware of the Order System (many more than just Order 66). So the idea of them training new officers could be a risk, and Palpatine would have more knowledge of those side effects than anyone.
So Bane's Rule of Two, just led to the recreation of the Sith Empire he did away with, except now you have non-Force sensitives doing exactly what the Sith Lords were doing.
Iirc the essence of the rule of two was because the energy of the dark side should not be divided over too many Sith and should incentify getting more powerful to dethrone your master and prevent being dethroned by your apprentice
Nah, this is not a fair analysis. Allan has no real way of connecting the Empire's mentality to the Sith other than extreme amounts of speculation that is pretty straw-graspy. I feel like his fundamental flaw in his Imperial analysis is his constant attempt to distinguish the Empire from the Republic. The Empire was a continuation of the Republic in most ways. I don't know why he is comparing the training of the clones by the extra galactic Kaminoans to the Imperial training of officers despite them clearly not being analogous. The Empire's officer corruption problem comes from the Republic's more general corruption problem. As the Tarkin novel and SWTOR prove, the Republic's elite and military had always historically been plagued by corruption and inefficiency. In SWTOR, this involved the misappropriation of government funds by officers, the Senate's overbearing control of the military and corporate corruption. In the Tarkin novel, the links between corruption, businessmen and the aristocracy is portrayed, as the Republic Judicial culture is shown to be one of blatant elitism and paying your way to positions, exactly like the later Imperial military.
Jedi: destroyed because of their arrogance Palps: destroys Jedi because of his arrogance, and then gets destroyed as a result (loss of experience). Poetic.
So when the Third Republic rose to power after the war ended, what happened to these self-serving Imperial officers? Did they ran away with one of the Imperial Remnants or just surrender themselves to the Third Republic? Or maybe both?
One thing you often bring up is there was 25,000 Star destroyers. But if it's anything like a normal navy that's only 1/3rd of them available. The US for example has 11 carriers. Which really means 3-4. Standard operation is for every 3 ships, 1 is actively out on deployment, 1 is laid up with no crew really while they go home and rest and do some repairs and 1 the crew are back and they are training and preparing to replace the ones currently deployed. Obviously you could for short periods of high intensity rush the training and push out the preparing ships while extending for some period the existing deployment (not a great idea to rush maintenance much so better to still have the other 1 laid up) You can then do this one more time, sending home the extended deployment ships but extending the rushed ships and rushing the ones at home allowing you to get one year to a year and a half of 7-8 of our carriers at sea instead of 3-4. But that is a short term thing. It's actually realistic to believe the imperial navy had more like 8-12,000 ships actively manned and in service at any one time. Depending on how efficient you think they were.
Given the 25k number isn't terribly reliable and is based on a faulty foundation, and is likely far more, as well as the fact this is assuming modern wet navy precedents have any real relevance whatsoever, I fail to see your point.
It's such a paradox to me. Palpatine was an utter genius when it came to making plans to put himself in power. But when it came time to actually ruling the Empire he'd made for himself, he was just utterly inept. The only reason things didn't fall apart sooner was that he seemed to be holding it together by sheer force of will. Once he was gone, boom, so was his domain ^^;
Has it ever occured to you that it isn't the source material that's strange or 'incorrect', but the brain dead content creators and fanbase that's more or less completely unsalvageable due to years of Mandela-Effect brainwashing and social contagion's making people, like yourself, believe things like this that blatantly aren't true?
Sure, Stormtroopers are elite but they are normal people. When the main characters are powerful force users, elite means nothing. Rebels is the adventures of a rogue jedi that is disregards the jedi code and his student who is trained to be a gorrilla fighter.
The Empire reminds me of the Russian Navy during the battle of Tsushima a system that was out of date and no experienced leadership on the Russian side! It saw an imperial Japanese victory over a European navy
I think the best way to put the change in culture was that the Republic At War was defined by the Army, while the Empire was defined by the Navy. The Navy in both the Republic and Empire was led by Sideous’ political allies and toadies. In the thousand years of Sith infiltration and subversion, the mostly Coreworlds “Military Families”, nobility by function or outright title, s lost their purpose, their core identity. After the Ruusan Reformation disbanded the Republic Navy they mostly commanded, what were they to do? Descend into mercantile positions? Play petty politics? Whether they were in on the Sith game or not, they signed up for Sideous’ Empire because they saw Glory and Honor, but really them being put back in charge. And for most of the Clone Wars, this relic of an older time had kept the culture and institutional memory of conventional interstellar warfare pretty much intact. But after three years, the Military-Industrial Complex demanded more profit, more production, The Navy Must Grow. So when Imperial-class SDs were being churned out like sausage to garrison the galactic empire, they had to be commanded. And so the Military Families found their political allies being given ships… they hadn’t the slightest clue how to use. Unlike the Royal Navy in its Napoleonic heyday, you could bribe, buy, and hobnob your way to being the Master and Commander of the latest and greatest warship ever designed, no military merit required.
Just thought about this: the Imperial Navy at its height operated 25,000 ISD's to control an entire galaxy. That entire fleet of mile-long ships arranged end to end would only circle around Earth once....
I have to disagree with you once more. Again, most of the Galactic Civil War had the Rebellion running and hiding because the Imperial Navy was actually competent. And no, most of the Imperial Navy were former Republic captains who despised the disorder of the Old Republic and who got the system they wanted with the Empire.
I seriously question the logic of making the Jedi into generals in the Clone Wars. I know, let's make those space wizards, who have lived in an era of peace for the last 1000 years, and have ZERO battlefield combat experience, into the generals to lead our army! What could go wrong?!
In Legends they *did* gradually phase out the clone troopers over a number of years, slowly replacing them with recruited stormtroopers as they aged out, and many *did* become trainers for those stormtroopers. Disney just wanted the Empire to be cartoon villains from the instance Palpatine declared himself Emperor, despite it already being established in Episode III that he *couldn't* do that -- why he kept the Senate intact until nearly 20 years later, and the storytelling suffers from them ignoring established, *Lucas* plot points. It's so stupid. I recommend playing the original Battlefront games for the PS2, especially the story campaign for Battlefront II, if you'd like to see a transiting Imperial military that actually made sense!
Filoni you mean. Disney hasn't done anything to stop Filoni, but most of the major lore issues outside of the Sequel films come from stuff Filoni is either directly or indirectly involved in.
Do you know what I always wondered. Who exactly paid for the Grand army of the Republic. Because if the Republic didn't know about it until right before the first Battle of geonosis. Then the funding didn't come from Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas. And palpatine eventually found out about it. We're they working cash on delivery.
When you have a totalitarian state like the Empire, having your military leaders be too competent is potentially a danger to whoever is currently on top. Irl dictatorships often run into this, it's one of the numerous reasons Coalition forces dogwalked the Iraqi army in record time.
One problem with being imperial upper management is you were one wrong command away from being force choked to death. Best to do just enough so you can sit comfortably in middle management. 😂
"being a jedi doesn't give any major advantages vs your non force sensitive peers" hard disagree on that one. The jedi weren't going through a military academy like curriculum, yet were able to be effectively assigned as generals and commanders, this tells us that force sensitivity alone produces similar or better outcomes than specialized training. Now imagine if jedi were an actual military order, instead of warrior/diplomat/monks.
Not all Democracies ade majority rule. And not Majority rules are Democracy. Pergins Romans were majority rules enforcing monarchy. And 19 amendment wasn't voting rights wouldn't be gender based but were voter restrictions. And on race . We became a majority rule the very next year after movement to Individual rights based content of character .not by population of their demographic. .
Imagine he had kept the CW going, phasing out Jedi due to "unfortunately shrinking numbers" and having them train specialised officers and commandos. Next create the "one last big push" narrative after your phasing the jedi out of active duty, then pull them back to the front lines and "uncover their unfortunate betrayal" and "greatly regret that it came to the "loss of the most valuable asset of the Republic dur to corruption etc." i.e. blame the jedi order of becoming Sith in secret. Proceed as planned, with teh added bonus of more time to convert "young Skywalker" to your cause, or dispose of him if you couldn't controll him.
Palpatine became dumber after he gained power reflects, and is borderline based off of H!tlers dission making after he gained power. After the power was siesde, they became paranoid of losing it. Their rule was too rough on the people, and they became way too arrogant. They both also had an inherited level of psychotic insanity. This ultimately led to their deaths and their 3mepires collapsing.
Rare to hear so stright insult to Tarking being a fool. But you nailed it he stole lot of places from far more talented or at least dedicaded to their craft. Maybe he was so bully happy cause Emperor liked his terror tactics and over all brutal oppresive view of power.
Tarkin was a in essence an ideological politician wearing military uniform. His beliefs are classical authoritarian fascism wrapped in his own personal focus on using fear and oppression to maintain order in the larger populace. My personal take on it is that Tarkin and persons similar to him essentially created the ideological part of the imperial system, as Palpatine himself where by then content with being the "everlasting" top dog and it was only after Tarkins death that he was forced to take a more personal interest in the rebellion.
@@emilspegel9677 Ye And well his brutality impressed Palp enough to faevor to turn the imp more sith like that might have as well pleased Palp as well not knowing how that would long run bite in the ass
@@emilspegel9677 The Tarkin novel and most lore about the Republic military we have proves this idea wrong though. The corruptness of the Imperial military comes from longstanding Republic corruption, not from Tarkin. The ideas that would go on to form the Tarkin Doctrine was actually Tarkin's attempt to counter this corruption early in his career when he was a nobody in the Judicials when he earnt the begrudging respect of some his peers (who were mostly wealthier than him) through sheer efficiency and ruthlessness, but Tarkin never actually took any real initiative to flex his authority against the old money elites other than that for whatever reason, leading to Tarkin Doctrine combining with Republic corruption to form Imperial corruption.
@@FrostWolfPack The Tarkin novel and most lore about the Republic military we have proves this idea wrong though. The corruptness of the Imperial military comes from longstanding Republic corruption, not from Tarkin. The ideas that would go on to form the Tarkin Doctrine was actually Tarkin's attempt to counter this corruption early in his career when he was a nobody in the Judicials when he earnt the begrudging respect of some his peers (who were mostly wealthier than him) through sheer efficiency and ruthlessness, but Tarkin never actually took any real initiative to flex his authority against the old money elites other than that for whatever reason, leading to Tarkin Doctrine combining with Republic corruption to form Imperial corruption. The Sith have nothing to do with it.
@@tk-6967 Tarkin is old money elite in the new canon, being an planetary governor whom made himself a military career within the system after being commissioned at the start of the clone wars. As clearly stated in canon there was no republic military outside of the paramilitary Judicial forces, which are more akin to an Gendarmerie. I also do not question that endemic and systemic corruption is essentially an inheritance of the previous republics decline, although as seen there is a marked lack of political will within the new order to actually do anything about the issue. Going from what we see in the Clone Wars series, Bad Batch and other recent lore it is obvious that Tarkin is a leading member of the New Orders inner political clique, having long been a favorite of Palpatine and steadily risen in both military and political rank to the point that he is the governor of the outer rim and at least one of the empire's highest ranking military men. Tarkin is seen to profit from this by simply seizing assets in the name of state, for example farmlands of Lothal, so he is also using his position to enrich himself. Further it is also seemingly so that Tarkin is the driving force behind the ideological philosophy used to form the foundation of the imperial system as it evolved. The final dissolution of the senate and reveal of the Death Star is the culmination of the Doctrine of Fear, a doctrine which seemingly is the brainchild of Tarkin rather than Palpatine, whom nevertheless saw value in the doctrine.
I think the problem with the imperial Navy was two fold one they’re all political appointee and two the only war they would’ve fought in, will be the clone wars completely manipulated by the emperor with no chance of defeat
The Republic had a great advantage over the Empire in its core ethics and culture. Thousands upon thousands of years of tradition and culture, like the Russan Reformation period, giving up its military strength for galactic peace, welfare and benefit of the Republics society and people. The Empire had just a short life in the Allan’s of galactic history, it’s culture and traditions had the pathological self-destructive culture of nepotism and corruption and sycophancy and punishment of death for taking independant initiative or challenging your superiors. And the sheer focus and need for total strength at all costs did the Empire in, with the Emperor getting tossed down the Death Star II’s reactor shaft in ROTJ.
No they didn't. Allan's linking of Imperial culture to the Sith has no real basis. The Tarkin novel clearly links the Empire's military culture to the elitist culture of the Republic. Also, what 'peace, welfare, and benefit from society' are you talking about? The problem with all this analysis is that it refuses to look at the Empire for what it was - a continuation of the Republic. Yes, Sith influence didn't do the Empire any favours, but the fundamental flaws of the Empire were all present before its rise in the Republic. The Empire's short lifespan has nothing to do with it being worse than the Republic because it retained the same core issues as the Republic. Had the Empire gone further away from the Republic's Core-focused, elitist, corrupt mentality, it could have achieved far more. This is clear given the relative prosperity the Empire brought to the Outer Rim despite the heavy economic sanctions on the former CIS.
"Palpatine's first mistake was Order 66" mate the entire reason the armies are there is for Order 66. Arguably you could have the clone 2iC's teach the tactics and strategy as well, so the loss would be minimized if Palpatine wanted a competent army. The thing is, Palpatine had no need for a competent army.
Yeah, Order 66 wasn't a mistake. Gen Tech prioritises TCW and TBB's story telling over actual lore, which leads him to treat the Jedi as though they were super competent when that is clearly Filoni's exaggeration. I mean the lore clearly points to the Jedi being considered incompetent commanders by their clones.
"esprit de corps" if an army has that it is fine to a degree (Unless stupidity or lives are wasted), but once lost the army is lost. Think how the purges in the Soviet Union destroyed competance.
I mean ughh 🤷🏻♂️ idk. It depends what empire “timeline” we’re taking about because there is some inconsistencies on how the imperial army was affective. In a new hope, yeah we’re introduced to the empire as a menacing force that through sheer will accomplishes its goal and only gets destroyed via a lucky shot. In strikes back, it’s a fiercer force that yeah it has its dumb leaders but not as dumb as admiral Constantine from rebels with Darth Vader being the real dumb in killing men left and right when his plans aren’t fulfilled. In return we get a mix bag of competent with incompetent that contributes to the bad reputation of the empire. Then in legends, the imperial remnant is fierce enough to continue to engage a loosing battle… for 10 years? To the point of making the republic just sign an armistice basically. But in Disney Star Wars… we get them to be this bumping buffoon faction that makes you question “how the hell were they in control of the galaxy for 30 years?” Until andor came along and had answered some questions. As much as I like rogue 1, they also portrayed the empire as a Buffoon faction when why? And then rebels came out and it added more buffoonery that, granted it’s a kid-oriented show, just made the empire into a laughing stock of a faction. Then we had kenobi, the mandalorian, and whoever knows treating the empire as a laughing stock. Only the writers of andor and even Timothy Zhans “thrawn” trilogy treated the empire as a faction to reckon with but also adding the little hints here and there as to why the empire as a faction is also rotten without explicitly making them look like buffoons. So idk. I think that the empire was a faction that was strong but had its flaws that lured more on the style of war that the rebellion was vs what the video argues because yeah, we draw it and compare it to our modern day analysis and compare it to previous in-world conflicts… but what’s shown is just buffoonery. Great videos anyways because I really enjoy this type of deep-dive analysis into a faction that is just portrayed as buffoons
I can't understand the Kaminoans reasoning of hiring mercenaries and bounty hunters to train the GAR. People like that don't operate in large, organized militaries, the work, in the bounty hunters case, as individuals and, in the case of mercenaries, as small unit teams at best, squad levels only. They can't understand, unless they've already served in, ranks of platoons, companies, divisions or armies, so how can they possibly teach those tactics to the clones of the GAR? The Mandalorians might be able to do so, since they are basically, a military, already. But most operate as individuals or small teams as well Were the Kaminoans just so desperate to train the clones that they basically hired ANYONE who had ever fired a blaster at someone else to train the clones and hope for the best? It shows, because I've seen so many clones die from rushing into a fire fight in banzai charges rather than staying behind cover and picking off the battle droids one by one It is said that some clones HATED the jedi for getting so many of their brothers killed, when the sad truth of the matter is that the clones were JUST as guilty of getting themselves killed as the jedi ere
Sith ideology can only exist when the Jedi are in control because it needs something to thrive for. Sith are like a dog chasing its own tail. It loves to do so but doesn’t know what to do with itself once they get there.
From the Republic to the Imperial might, that would become the Galactic Empire, and the Emperor palpatine rise to power and dominates over the galaxy ruleing with an iron fist 👊 and the power of the Imperial Milltary ground forces aircraft forces of The Empire Imperial Navy with Star destroyers Super star destroyers with Tie fighters along stormtroopers soldiers of the Empire to serve and bring order to the galaxy until the battle of Endor where the Imperial forces had lost and the rebellion becoming the New Republic government and The survivors of the events of Endor and Imperial remnants along fleet of Star destroyers squadrons of Imperial Tie fighters under the command of the Empire Shadow Council chain of commanders with the likes of moff gidon Grand admiral Thrawn And others Imperial warlords Across the galaxy where The Imperial remnant forces are planning a final showdown on destert world of Jakku where the New Republic are victorious and the Empire is defeat some had surrender while the Imperial warlords and officers had gone into the unknown regions and became the First order more powerful and deadly and power hungry then the Empire with an alliance with the Sith cult a.k.a the Sith Enteral forces under the service and command of the resurrected clone Emperor palpatine himself and his Sith followers on execol in the unknown regions rey skywalker the resistance and rest of the galaxy finally took down the first order and Sith Enteral once and for All so the war is over and the galaxy can recover and rey skywalker new jedi order can begin may the force be with you all and you generation tech
In Legends the main target of The Imperial Navy was not the Rebelion but to fight off the Yuuzhan Vong. In that situation the idea of (Disney's)Operation: Cinder, destroying so much economic growth and industrial strength would go against the idea of a long lasting strong (Sith controled) Empire.
Clones had Order 66 in their heads, if he was exposed as a Sith they would immediately turn on him and no amount of force power would protect him from millions of clones going after him with the Senate being forced to see that they fell for a Sith plan forcing them to support the clones and hunt him down it was pure self-preservation by Sidius, the fact that the military was under his thumb and acting in their own self-interests was a secondary benefit
The Jedi as military commanding officers, proved disastrous. They continuously made very stupid tactical decisions based on Jedi dogma, instead of a realistic understanding of what was happening on the battlefield. This video has numerous shots of Ahsoka Tano --- that padawan is personally responsible for tens of thousands of needless deaths due to shear incompetence !!!
I feel like this analyse places way too much weight on The Bad Batch's and The Clone War's storytelling and not on the rest of the lore. I mean, you ignored the fact that a large of senior imperial leadership was in one way or another involved in the Republic during the Clone War and acted as though the Jedi were somehow more qualified military strategists than professional military officers despite Jedi incompetence being a major thorn in the Republic's side during the war. Also, I don't understand where you are getting the idea this is Sith related. The Tarkin novel straight up tells us that the wealthy Core families and the aspirational non-core nobility were the root of the Republic military's corruption and incompetence, with Tarkin actually being partially inspired by the Republic Judicial Force's incompetence to create his Tarkin Doctrine, as he believed that only through a projection of strength and domination that the corrupt elitism would be broken. I guess you could kind of argue that Tarkin's doctrine combined with Republic-era corruption and elitism is similar to Sith culture, but I haven't seen any tangible link between the 2. You'd have to go back to the Old Republic era to see the Sith Empire's nobility, but in SWTOR, the Republic's nobility is still corrupt and decadent as ever and this directly impacts their military's performance in various missions. I remember one side quest where a Republic Officer had been misappropriating military funds, and this was not implied to be a unique case whatsoever, as his superiors actually didn't do that much to punish him even when you do expose him.
“It takes the Navy three years to build a new ship. It will take three hundred years to build a new tradition.”
Wise word, those are
Run with hydrospanners, you should not
Here’s the full quote
“It takes the Navy three years to build a ship. It will take three hundred years to build a new tradition. The evacuation will continue.”
-Adm. Andrew Browne Cunningham, Evacuation of Crete, 1941
It was in response to the British army general’s asking if he would lose too many ships and should abandon the evacuation attempt.
The naval history TH-camr Drachinifel has a few videos on him, if anyone is interested.
So that’s where that quote from hoi4 came from
@@korhol2065Love the one from Hermann Meyer. The RAF likes to do a little trolling...
Incompetent Imperial Navy Officers: *exist*
Thrawn: "I miss Eli Vanto."
Don’t forget Commander Faro
I wonder how he's doing with the ascendancy
@@brockgundichright? I would totally love an Eli Vanto series.
we better get vanto on screen, but dave hates the new books...
@@advena996
Check Thrawn Treason. It goes more into him there.
The way the Imperial Navy was run is actually one of the most realistic things about Star Wars, as it more or less matches how real-world dictatorships tend to run their militaries. Dictators don't value competent officers: competent officers are a potential threat to their power. Instead they value people who are easily led, know that they owe their position to remaining on the good side of the dictator, and are just competent enough to do their job under normal circumstances while not being so competent they'd actually pose a threat if they decided to try overthrowing him. However, that tend to lead to a military mostly staffed by incompetent yes-men with zero initiative.
Also incompetent officers become scape goats, because Fearless Leader does no wrong.
Also sounds like Disney and Lucasfilm itself 😂
@@Hello-bi1pm Putin.
Sounds a lot like the current US military.
It's not so much Competent Officers.. EVERYONE required a few if you maintain your own forces of some kind BUT LOYAL ones.. is what everyone wants, expects and looks for
“The insurgents are in the cargo hold, sir.”
Imperial Captain, “Where?”
“The cargo hold…Aaahhh!” (Gets sucked out of the airlock)
Actually he said "Cargo control area", the officer and the troopers were the ones in the cargo hold.
@@broadside5994 oh yeah. But that was the most dumb move ever given to the Gozanti would have many consoles
If it's the scene I think an remember wasn't that NOT JUST ANY group of "insurgents" but CLEARLY IDed as a small elite team of Mandos??? An even then they STILL lost
Ozzel was competent at SOMETHING (likely bureaucracy), or Vader would have killed him much earlier.
The problem was when he tried to actually act as a combat officer...
Or was he a rebel operative / sympathizer?
It could just as easily have been a case of Vader not giving a fuck about incompetent fools until he had to work with them, and even then giving them a chance before removing them from the Empire's payroll.
@@chocolatemonk Maybe. He DID have the motivation.
@@jacoblansman8147 Vader had let Ozzel survive at least one failure (he said "you have failed me for the LAST time", Ozzel had already one major screw up).
Vader forgiving his failure at least once means Ozzel was doing SOMETHING right, and until the immense cock up at Hoth it was something important enough to allow him to live.
@@lordMartiya I'd forgotten about that line.
“Wrinkly McScrotum Face” would make a great name for a band.
It’s crazy to me how Constantine was never executed. He failed more huge operation than the initial llothal officers.
Well under Thrawn, its probably because Thrawn has a character flaw of being unwilling to toss anyone even if they are starting to be a liability. It's actually bites him in the ass at the end of the Thrawn trilogy and ultimately leads to his death.
He had semi plot armor... stopping Vader like that...
@@Hartzilla2007he can understand extenuating circumstances but there’s a point where it’s clear he was a huge liability for the empire
@@bostonrailfan2427 And Niles Ferrier pretty much constantly fucked up but Thrawn kept him around and oh look the smugglers teamed up with the New Republic aka the thing Thrawn very much DID NOT WANT TO HAPPEN.
@@Hartzilla2007 oh well, legends doesn’t bother with logic
Anytime a competent officer salvages a battle that an incompetent officer screws up, the incompetent officer uses his or her political connections and their allies to remove that person from the imperial navy or army or have them demoted.
Unless those more gifted individuals have some political connections and allies of their own to help them out.
The Imperial Navy officers are like Titans from Zeta Gundam in a nutshell: stupid evil, incompetent and tend to underestimate their enemies.
Just glad to find another person who knows gundam here!
@@MiguelCuevas-m2y Zeta Gundam attacked Titans before it was cool.
Before order 66, Palpatine was like Belichik with Tom Brady. After order 66, Palpatine was like Belichik without Tom Brady
you have it partially right…over time tactics and strategies changed but the man behind it didn’t. his biggest weapons weren’t the biggest anymore, the enemy adapted and overcame it
@@bostonrailfan2427 oh you didn’t get that at all
@@Tunda2 I did, i’m not a total ESPN simp and actually understand the team considering i live here and have followed them for 32 years
@@bostonrailfan2427 so you heard the part where in the video Alan said “Before order 66, Palpatine was like Belichik with Tom Brady”
In short, Imperial Army was like pre-WW II Red Army, which lacked experienced officers due to the Great Purge, and there was no good way to properly train soldiers, since new command staff (minus few generals) was inexperienced and soaked with ideology
The imperial navy was just the same as the rest of the armed forces. Poisoned by nepotism, even Vader was aware of it which is why most officers felt his disdain. However Palpatine seemed to like it.
Palpy's whole thing was disorder to generate fear.
Sidious was a idiot to build armed forces to rely on reward the incompetent and punish the competent
Competent officers tend to be charismatic. Such officers in an authoritarian system may decide they should be in charge. They can led a coup. Such an ruler wants his officers fighting each for your favor rather than working together.
@@patricknakasone9376 that may be the case happened in real world.
@@republicempire446 Many "president for life" countries tend to do exactly that, in order to keep themselves the most "competent" leader forever. Which of course runs into the small problem being that said country now no longer has competent people. In peace time it doesn't do as much, but when high stress situations happen, whether war, economic downturn, health emergency, etc, things start crashing.
Smart Palpatine: I will create the first Galactic Commonwealth, I as a constitutional monarch, will be the king of kings, emperor. Secretly has all the power, but not all the responsibility. (For me Republic and Separatist should both have used Clones because that’s a better reason to call it the Clone War, like the Toyota war, better explains the technological deficit we see in A New Hope, and the Sith get more power by death, etc) While the galaxy will be divided in two administrations inner and out rims with Palpatine as unifying monarch. Adopts Anakin as his heir, Padmé Palpatine knowing that changing the Senate and the new Parliament is hopeless, she will never be chancellor, opponents get the Putin treatment, and her opposition to her new father-in-law will be more consequential, She decides to accept her new role as Princess Consort of the Galactic Commonwealth, becoming Princess Diana, supporting charities, fighting corruption, being depressed and overworked, and raising the royal family, especially the heir Luke Palpatine, in the belief that she can influence the royal family to be better. Neglecting The other children. For the Inner-rim there’s Chancellor Mas Amedda and for the outer-rim is Prime Minister Sly Moore. Damask Holdings secretly turns the separatist council into subsidiaries, Trillions of dollars are invested into Pro-Palpatine candidates and politicians, secret projects, black sites, and more Business oriented projects, becoming the first Galactic Quadrillion, in secret. The Jedi are already a Army of darkness under Palpatine. So there’s no order 66, why brother when your enemy believes you’re an ally. Palpatine with the help of the Grand inquisitor kills all four assailants. Yoda makes a deal with Palpatine, Palpatine has more leverage because the Grand inquisitor has been sending documents of all the shady stuff the Jedi have been doing, it’s like the JW’s having documents of every criminal in their organization, called the Drake Files. Palpatine will keep the Jedi assailants, Drake Files and this deal a secret, the Jedi can keep their tax breaks, allow Sith into the order, quadruple there funding, there sacred worlds that have to share with the Sith, and total immunity for their Child abductions. Anakin will become an Master, Yoda will stay as Grand Master, Most of the Council as to publicly support the Commonwealth, and they can stay as General and peacekeepers. The Sith and Jedi will slowly become one order named the Jinn (after Qui-Gon Jinn) under Grandmaster Leia, as Luke was born first so he gets the Throne. 5 other sets of twins are born. Affectionately being remembered as the Queen Mother. One with the Middle name Qui-Gon Jinn joins Uncle Dooku in running Damask Holdings, while another becomes a Heir of Serreno, other becomes Prince Andrew coming back from conquesting the western reaches of a new galaxy like Thrawn, another complete operation stardust after finding a non-Jedi planet rich in crystals, because they couldn’t harvest lium. Another is a homebody and becomes queen of Naboo, taking care of the Thrown World, marking that new developments must be cast into orbit to keep Naboo serene. Etc.
Hopefully, you can add to the story!
Allen, my man! You’ve done it again-breaking down the Empire’s officer corps like a Jedi slicing through battle droids! I guess when you have more ego than strategy, your fleet ends up like Constantine-rammed by Rebels and lost in space! Keep these brilliant breakdowns coming, you’re like the Yoda of Star Wars analysis… but without the backwards speech. May the Force (and your notifications) always be with us!
5:22 On why Palpatine replacing the clones the quickly. Like Order 66 to kill the Jedi, there was also Order 65 which would be to arrest and kill the leader of the Senate, which would mean Palpatine himself. Why it may be a military and economic waist Palpatine decommissioned the clone program due to a direct threat to himself and his power.
Oh wow Allen's in a very beautiful place rn. To be fair, suits Allen
I love your window renditions with certain screens of special effects
It'd be interesting to see a video on Firmus Piett. I'm not familiar with a lot of Legends material (and of course you may have already done such a video and I missed it), but from what I've seen Piett displayed very few of the characteristics pointed out here. He seemed like a Keep-Your-Head-Down-And-Do-The-Work type of fellow. Competent and loyal, but perhaps lacked the necessary tactical intelligence for his rank.
Quick glance at the wiki describes a backstory that kind of mirrors Luke Skywalker - he also grew up on impoverished, low population Outer Rim world. Only difference was that Piett's father actively encouraged him to enlist so that he could get out of there.
There would also be a lot of these guys in such a military, decent competent men lacking the institutional influence to rise quickly within the organisation and thus having to take the long route. Piett is an outlier of this effect via being the guy in the right place at the right time to rise on merit.
Piett is actually competent, and Darth Vader respects competent officers.
Piett is probably more representative of the Imperial Navy officer corps than Ozzel.
@@tba113 I think the thing is that many imperial officers are competent military men, but the system keeps them down in favor of bootlickers, ideological fanatics and those with enough pull through social rank and wealth. Many higher officers for example seemingly hold a noble title in the lore...
I see it as post republic British military without the checks in place. Aristocrats could buy military ranks up to a point, but needed merit to get control beyond a brigade leader. I see palpatines empire as not having the merit checks in place.
Yes, it definitely has that vibe, but Gen Tech is definitely wrong about the Sith connection, because the Republic's military and aristocracy had always had that level of control. The Clone Wars was an anomaly because the clones themselves were literally an out of this world army that just randomly appeared under Republic control, and was thus centrally controlled by the executive branch, but as time went on, the nobility and business people would obviously get more and more influence as this alien army integrates into the Republic.
Palpatine was a master manipulator and populist during the clone wars but then thought he could go full brute force once he brought in the Empire. I would understand the brute force idea if he forcefully took over the republic, but he didn't, he used manipulation and giving the people what they wanted. Palpatine could have saved resources and still had unlimited power if he just gave the people what they wanted and didn't oppress them randomly. If he stayed the "savior" who brought peace from the clone wars, the rebellion would have never started. I guess you're right, sith lightning reflected in his face just made him go crazy.
I think really that the rebellion in many ways are the continuation of the clone wars, with many of the rebel cells being holdouts of the separatists. Although defeated the core sentiment of the previous war would not die out simply with the death of the main leaders, but blame perhaps Palpatine himself for this as Sith probably like to take a Great Person view of galactic history rather than see social or economic trends...
@@emilspegel9677 I disagree with it being a holdout of the sepratists but agree with the sentiment there would always be resistance to the empire no matter how “nice” oalpatine decided to govern.
The alliance to restore the republic really distanced themselves from the separatists intentionally. I would point towards corey’s data-pads video on the topic.
@@GAJake I agree that the later alliance did distance itself politically from the older separatist cause, but as we see in Andor many of the pre-alliance factions came from across the political spectrum, with several of them obviously separatist holdouts or remnants.
This was I still think one of the flaws of Palpatine's plan, since imperial repression would reignite the still smoldering issues which where the catalyst of the separatist cause in the first place. This provides the ideological base for further rebellion which adopted a broader and more moderate political stance in order to co-opt as many of the before then disparate factions as possible.
@@emilspegel9677 I agree with the early rebels before the “alliance” was established
Issue is typically those who take power by force care more about ensuring they stay in power than make their populace happy. Because what is he going to do if someone better at leading comes along? Let himself be replaced? Fuck no. Better make sure his underlings care more about backstabbing than ever risk someone ever get close to replacing him, and also ensure that they know they will only keep that position according to his will.
This produces a culture that cares more about keeping Palps happy than being competent at their jobs.
For all the shit Palpy talked about the Jedi's "blind arrogance" being their downfall... Like, bruh.... Pipe down and have a seat.
"faith in your friends" Palpy friendless
I think the issue with Palpatine after order 66 was that he relaxed. If you think about it, it's like the ending to a movie, he did it. He got to live happily ever after. Except the story wasn't done with him.
Why were the Ewoks so impressed by 3po flying if they have more advanced magic that makes things fly as well
Too much politics and good old boy-ing and not enough real training and competence. I mean basically they are bullies lol.
If the Imp Officers were too competent the Rebellion would have failed very early on, Palpy wasn't a military tactician and delegated everything to others for the military
@aleccampbell7707 And with the rare exceptions of people like Thrawn and Veers, who were too few really, these pricks were more about keeping their station and even playing it safe or even undercutting fellow commanders. The Rebels did very well but the Empire really kicked their own ass 😆
@@darkhorse13golfgaming I bet that a lot of the competent officers joined the Rebellion as well. The Empire got rid of them and the Rebellion got highly trained and competent military officers to train and lead the Rebels.
Have You Ever Considered Doing Any What If Stories? I Feel Like Your Unique Perspective On Star Wars Politics/Economics And How You Compare Them To Real Life Economics And Politics Would Make A What If Story EXTREMELY Entertaining To Watch!
The Galatic Empire's drastic loss of skill can actually be seen in real world history: when the French Revolution happened the new La Marine Nationale lost alot of the experienced officers from the Bourbon era La Marine Royale. The French never recovered from this loss of officers (though at least for La Marine Nationale, they seemed to have better success rates at finding competent officers then the Galatic Empire) and while the British had always managed to be ahead of the french, this massive setback in skill is one of the key factors that guaranteed British dominance of the seas.
Plus, navies (including coast guards and marine corps, as naval branches) are typically driven by tradition and resistant to change. Unless the war and conditions forces it to change.
Expense can't be the reason the Palpatine decommissioned the Clones. Bringing Clones to maturity was crazy expensive; but once a Clone was ready for combat, he'd be no more expensive to maintain, then a normal human. In fact, they'd be much cheaper. Clones are all the same size, so all uniforms, armor footwear and the like will be cheaper due to economies of scale. They'll eat whatever you give them without complaint, so rations will be cheaper. They fully expect to serve until death, so no retirement plan is necessary. They're more loyal, with less experience of the outside world, so internal surveillance will be cheaper. They'll have less empathy for citizens, and will commit war crimes more willingly. Even in their later years, when they're no longer combat effective, you can move them into support roles, like Clone 99. So end the cloning program immediately, but keep the mature Clones until they die. I think it all comes down to trust, and expense was a cover story. Every Clone was programed with Order 65. The Kaminoans knew this, and had just been fired. He had to get rid of the Clones as quickly as possible, before someone triggered Order 65. He couldn't defeat the whole Clone Army.
What Order 65? Order 65 is pre-Filoni lore. It doesn't exist anymore unless you are willing to side-line the inhibitor chips.
It does make a certain sort of sense. The way the Empire purged the disloyal from their ranks reminds me of all historical purges by authoritarian regimes, which they are meant to mirror.
Great job Adam!
You’re looking fit, brother. Keep it up!
The one thing you didn’t even mention about Constantine is that it is implied that he used his intrigue experience to get his underlings killed by Vader for that mistake, instead of him.
If Constantine was SO BAD. Surprising he WASN'T reminded VERY strongly just how lucky he was to be keeping his life by Thrawn, Tarkin or Vader PERSONALLY since he was clearly high enough to regularly work with them..
I think the big thing that motivated the lack of trained clones teaching the officer Corps would be largely due to the fact that the trained clones were all ultimately infected with the malware of the Order System (many more than just Order 66). So the idea of them training new officers could be a risk, and Palpatine would have more knowledge of those side effects than anyone.
So Bane's Rule of Two, just led to the recreation of the Sith Empire he did away with, except now you have non-Force sensitives doing exactly what the Sith Lords were doing.
Iirc the essence of the rule of two was because the energy of the dark side should not be divided over too many Sith and should incentify getting more powerful to dethrone your master and prevent being dethroned by your apprentice
Nah, this is not a fair analysis. Allan has no real way of connecting the Empire's mentality to the Sith other than extreme amounts of speculation that is pretty straw-graspy. I feel like his fundamental flaw in his Imperial analysis is his constant attempt to distinguish the Empire from the Republic. The Empire was a continuation of the Republic in most ways. I don't know why he is comparing the training of the clones by the extra galactic Kaminoans to the Imperial training of officers despite them clearly not being analogous.
The Empire's officer corruption problem comes from the Republic's more general corruption problem. As the Tarkin novel and SWTOR prove, the Republic's elite and military had always historically been plagued by corruption and inefficiency. In SWTOR, this involved the misappropriation of government funds by officers, the Senate's overbearing control of the military and corporate corruption. In the Tarkin novel, the links between corruption, businessmen and the aristocracy is portrayed, as the Republic Judicial culture is shown to be one of blatant elitism and paying your way to positions, exactly like the later Imperial military.
Jedi: destroyed because of their arrogance
Palps: destroys Jedi because of his arrogance, and then gets destroyed as a result (loss of experience).
Poetic.
So when the Third Republic rose to power after the war ended, what happened to these self-serving Imperial officers? Did they ran away with one of the Imperial Remnants or just surrender themselves to the Third Republic? Or maybe both?
One thing you often bring up is there was 25,000 Star destroyers. But if it's anything like a normal navy that's only 1/3rd of them available.
The US for example has 11 carriers. Which really means 3-4.
Standard operation is for every 3 ships, 1 is actively out on deployment, 1 is laid up with no crew really while they go home and rest and do some repairs and 1 the crew are back and they are training and preparing to replace the ones currently deployed.
Obviously you could for short periods of high intensity rush the training and push out the preparing ships while extending for some period the existing deployment (not a great idea to rush maintenance much so better to still have the other 1 laid up)
You can then do this one more time, sending home the extended deployment ships but extending the rushed ships and rushing the ones at home allowing you to get one year to a year and a half of 7-8 of our carriers at sea instead of 3-4.
But that is a short term thing.
It's actually realistic to believe the imperial navy had more like 8-12,000 ships actively manned and in service at any one time. Depending on how efficient you think they were.
Given the 25k number isn't terribly reliable and is based on a faulty foundation, and is likely far more, as well as the fact this is assuming modern wet navy precedents have any real relevance whatsoever, I fail to see your point.
It's such a paradox to me. Palpatine was an utter genius when it came to making plans to put himself in power. But when it came time to actually ruling the Empire he'd made for himself, he was just utterly inept. The only reason things didn't fall apart sooner was that he seemed to be holding it together by sheer force of will. Once he was gone, boom, so was his domain ^^;
Has it ever occured to you that it isn't the source material that's strange or 'incorrect', but the brain dead content creators and fanbase that's more or less completely unsalvageable due to years of Mandela-Effect brainwashing and social contagion's making people, like yourself, believe things like this that blatantly aren't true?
as for the clones: something something the last one placing a flag on mount ararat
McScrotum face! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤘
Stormtroopers are elite. That’s why I hate it when shows like rebels make them look stupid
Sure, Stormtroopers are elite but they are normal people. When the main characters are powerful force users, elite means nothing.
Rebels is the adventures of a rogue jedi that is disregards the jedi code and his student who is trained to be a gorrilla fighter.
The Empire reminds me of the Russian Navy during the battle of Tsushima a system that was out of date and no experienced leadership on the Russian side! It saw an imperial Japanese victory over a European navy
The Jedi wouldn't go along with Palpantine
Am I the only one who hits with stone edge more than I miss?
The Jedi and clones look out for each other, the Galactic imperials are byzantine.
It's amazing Pellaeon survived all this...
I think the best way to put the change in culture was that the Republic At War was defined by the Army, while the Empire was defined by the Navy. The Navy in both the Republic and Empire was led by Sideous’ political allies and toadies. In the thousand years of Sith infiltration and subversion, the mostly Coreworlds “Military Families”, nobility by function or outright title, s lost their purpose, their core identity. After the Ruusan Reformation disbanded the Republic Navy they mostly commanded, what were they to do? Descend into mercantile positions? Play petty politics? Whether they were in on the Sith game or not, they signed up for Sideous’ Empire because they saw Glory and Honor, but really them being put back in charge. And for most of the Clone Wars, this relic of an older time had kept the culture and institutional memory of conventional interstellar warfare pretty much intact. But after three years, the Military-Industrial Complex demanded more profit, more production, The Navy Must Grow. So when Imperial-class SDs were being churned out like sausage to garrison the galactic empire, they had to be commanded. And so the Military Families found their political allies being given ships… they hadn’t the slightest clue how to use. Unlike the Royal Navy in its Napoleonic heyday, you could bribe, buy, and hobnob your way to being the Master and Commander of the latest and greatest warship ever designed, no military merit required.
I always thought it was that you couldn't read a clone's mind as to why they were all removed. Palpatine was a very paranoid man
How come no cared about Duku's incompetence
Cos he was working for Palpy the whole time
People who cared too much got stabbed. Then Dooku got killed when Sidious had no more need of him.
@@Appletank8 cos he'd done what he was recruited for, and had just been useful as a tool.
Russia during ww2 was the same as the empire special during the frist years love your channel
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Just thought about this: the Imperial Navy at its height operated 25,000 ISD's to control an entire galaxy. That entire fleet of mile-long ships arranged end to end would only circle around Earth once....
This is why you don't replace your entire military ASAP.
I have to disagree with you once more. Again, most of the Galactic Civil War had the Rebellion running and hiding because the Imperial Navy was actually competent. And no, most of the Imperial Navy were former Republic captains who despised the disorder of the Old Republic and who got the system they wanted with the Empire.
I seriously question the logic of making the Jedi into generals in the Clone Wars.
I know, let's make those space wizards, who have lived in an era of peace for the last 1000 years, and have ZERO battlefield combat experience, into the generals to lead our army! What could go wrong?!
Allen making football and car references is insane. Does he just enjoy all the shit I enjoy? Is this a personal Star Wars tutor?
In Legends they *did* gradually phase out the clone troopers over a number of years, slowly replacing them with recruited stormtroopers as they aged out, and many *did* become trainers for those stormtroopers. Disney just wanted the Empire to be cartoon villains from the instance Palpatine declared himself Emperor, despite it already being established in Episode III that he *couldn't* do that -- why he kept the Senate intact until nearly 20 years later, and the storytelling suffers from them ignoring established, *Lucas* plot points. It's so stupid.
I recommend playing the original Battlefront games for the PS2, especially the story campaign for Battlefront II, if you'd like to see a transiting Imperial military that actually made sense!
Filoni you mean. Disney hasn't done anything to stop Filoni, but most of the major lore issues outside of the Sequel films come from stuff Filoni is either directly or indirectly involved in.
Do you know what I always wondered. Who exactly paid for the Grand army of the Republic. Because if the Republic didn't know about it until right before the first Battle of geonosis. Then the funding didn't come from Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas. And palpatine eventually found out about it. We're they working cash on delivery.
Yo Allen.
Have you ever consider doing a collaboration with Ekhartsladder for a Star Wars content?
When you have a totalitarian state like the Empire, having your military leaders be too competent is potentially a danger to whoever is currently on top. Irl dictatorships often run into this, it's one of the numerous reasons Coalition forces dogwalked the Iraqi army in record time.
Please make a video on 200 FO Stormtroopers vs 200 Clone Troopers
Hello there
One problem with being imperial upper management is you were one wrong command away from being force choked to death.
Best to do just enough so you can sit comfortably in middle management. 😂
It’s far easier to destroy an empire than build one. He claimed his empire would last 10K generations but fell after 1.
"being a jedi doesn't give any major advantages vs your non force sensitive peers" hard disagree on that one. The jedi weren't going through a military academy like curriculum, yet were able to be effectively assigned as generals and commanders, this tells us that force sensitivity alone produces similar or better outcomes than specialized training. Now imagine if jedi were an actual military order, instead of warrior/diplomat/monks.
IOW, The Knights Templar IN SPACE!
They should have had more officers like grand admiral thrawn and not these dumb incompetent elites
Not all Democracies ade majority rule. And not Majority rules are Democracy. Pergins Romans were majority rules enforcing monarchy. And 19 amendment wasn't voting rights wouldn't be gender based but were voter restrictions. And on race . We became a majority rule the very next year after movement to Individual rights based content of character .not by population of their demographic. .
Imagine he had kept the CW going, phasing out Jedi due to "unfortunately shrinking numbers" and having them train specialised officers and commandos. Next create the "one last big push" narrative after your phasing the jedi out of active duty, then pull them back to the front lines and "uncover their unfortunate betrayal" and "greatly regret that it came to the "loss of the most valuable asset of the Republic dur to corruption etc." i.e. blame the jedi order of becoming Sith in secret. Proceed as planned, with teh added bonus of more time to convert "young Skywalker" to your cause, or dispose of him if you couldn't controll him.
Interesting.
Actually, it would be ATE - Acute Traumatic Encephalopathy, as it happened suddenly, and not over time (as happens to football players and boxers).
The competitive nature of imperial command is similar to that of nazi command where they encourage support to compete in order to gain favor
Palpatine became dumber after he gained power reflects, and is borderline based off of H!tlers dission making after he gained power. After the power was siesde, they became paranoid of losing it. Their rule was too rough on the people, and they became way too arrogant. They both also had an inherited level of psychotic insanity. This ultimately led to their deaths and their 3mepires collapsing.
Rare to hear so stright insult to Tarking being a fool. But you nailed it he stole lot of places from far more talented or at least dedicaded to their craft.
Maybe he was so bully happy cause Emperor liked his terror tactics and over all brutal oppresive view of power.
Tarkin was a in essence an ideological politician wearing military uniform. His beliefs are classical authoritarian fascism wrapped in his own personal focus on using fear and oppression to maintain order in the larger populace.
My personal take on it is that Tarkin and persons similar to him essentially created the ideological part of the imperial system, as Palpatine himself where by then content with being the "everlasting" top dog and it was only after Tarkins death that he was forced to take a more personal interest in the rebellion.
@@emilspegel9677 Ye And well his brutality impressed Palp enough to faevor to turn the imp more sith like that might have as well pleased Palp as well not knowing how that would long run bite in the ass
@@emilspegel9677 The Tarkin novel and most lore about the Republic military we have proves this idea wrong though. The corruptness of the Imperial military comes from longstanding Republic corruption, not from Tarkin. The ideas that would go on to form the Tarkin Doctrine was actually Tarkin's attempt to counter this corruption early in his career when he was a nobody in the Judicials when he earnt the begrudging respect of some his peers (who were mostly wealthier than him) through sheer efficiency and ruthlessness, but Tarkin never actually took any real initiative to flex his authority against the old money elites other than that for whatever reason, leading to Tarkin Doctrine combining with Republic corruption to form Imperial corruption.
@@FrostWolfPack The Tarkin novel and most lore about the Republic military we have proves this idea wrong though. The corruptness of the Imperial military comes from longstanding Republic corruption, not from Tarkin. The ideas that would go on to form the Tarkin Doctrine was actually Tarkin's attempt to counter this corruption early in his career when he was a nobody in the Judicials when he earnt the begrudging respect of some his peers (who were mostly wealthier than him) through sheer efficiency and ruthlessness, but Tarkin never actually took any real initiative to flex his authority against the old money elites other than that for whatever reason, leading to Tarkin Doctrine combining with Republic corruption to form Imperial corruption. The Sith have nothing to do with it.
@@tk-6967 Tarkin is old money elite in the new canon, being an planetary governor whom made himself a military career within the system after being commissioned at the start of the clone wars. As clearly stated in canon there was no republic military outside of the paramilitary Judicial forces, which are more akin to an Gendarmerie. I also do not question that endemic and systemic corruption is essentially an inheritance of the previous republics decline, although as seen there is a marked lack of political will within the new order to actually do anything about the issue.
Going from what we see in the Clone Wars series, Bad Batch and other recent lore it is obvious that Tarkin is a leading member of the New Orders inner political clique, having long been a favorite of Palpatine and steadily risen in both military and political rank to the point that he is the governor of the outer rim and at least one of the empire's highest ranking military men. Tarkin is seen to profit from this by simply seizing assets in the name of state, for example farmlands of Lothal, so he is also using his position to enrich himself.
Further it is also seemingly so that Tarkin is the driving force behind the ideological philosophy used to form the foundation of the imperial system as it evolved. The final dissolution of the senate and reveal of the Death Star is the culmination of the Doctrine of Fear, a doctrine which seemingly is the brainchild of Tarkin rather than Palpatine, whom nevertheless saw value in the doctrine.
I think the problem with the imperial Navy was two fold one they’re all political appointee and two the only war they would’ve fought in, will be the clone wars completely manipulated by the emperor with no chance of defeat
The Republic had a great advantage over the Empire in its core ethics and culture. Thousands upon thousands of years of tradition and culture, like the Russan Reformation period, giving up its military strength for galactic peace, welfare and benefit of the Republics society and people. The Empire had just a short life in the Allan’s of galactic history, it’s culture and traditions had the pathological self-destructive culture of nepotism and corruption and sycophancy and punishment of death for taking independant initiative or challenging your superiors. And the sheer focus and need for total strength at all costs did the Empire in, with the Emperor getting tossed down the Death Star II’s reactor shaft in ROTJ.
No they didn't. Allan's linking of Imperial culture to the Sith has no real basis. The Tarkin novel clearly links the Empire's military culture to the elitist culture of the Republic. Also, what 'peace, welfare, and benefit from society' are you talking about? The problem with all this analysis is that it refuses to look at the Empire for what it was - a continuation of the Republic. Yes, Sith influence didn't do the Empire any favours, but the fundamental flaws of the Empire were all present before its rise in the Republic.
The Empire's short lifespan has nothing to do with it being worse than the Republic because it retained the same core issues as the Republic. Had the Empire gone further away from the Republic's Core-focused, elitist, corrupt mentality, it could have achieved far more. This is clear given the relative prosperity the Empire brought to the Outer Rim despite the heavy economic sanctions on the former CIS.
The grunts will always pay the price for officers who are chosen for political reasons instead of competency.
"Palpatine's first mistake was Order 66" mate the entire reason the armies are there is for Order 66. Arguably you could have the clone 2iC's teach the tactics and strategy as well, so the loss would be minimized if Palpatine wanted a competent army. The thing is, Palpatine had no need for a competent army.
Yeah, Order 66 wasn't a mistake. Gen Tech prioritises TCW and TBB's story telling over actual lore, which leads him to treat the Jedi as though they were super competent when that is clearly Filoni's exaggeration. I mean the lore clearly points to the Jedi being considered incompetent commanders by their clones.
Nice city, it's in the US ?
Simps are good but, too many and it destroys you.
"esprit de corps" if an army has that it is fine to a degree (Unless stupidity or lives are wasted), but once lost the army is lost. Think how the purges in the Soviet Union destroyed competance.
Everything is better than Jedi officer..so it was an upgrade
The clones were so good because they practically had a PHD in warfare
They really weren't that good.
so your telling me if you gave napoelon an army of klingons he could easily conquer the galactic empire.
I mean ughh 🤷🏻♂️ idk. It depends what empire “timeline” we’re taking about because there is some inconsistencies on how the imperial army was affective. In a new hope, yeah we’re introduced to the empire as a menacing force that through sheer will accomplishes its goal and only gets destroyed via a lucky shot. In strikes back, it’s a fiercer force that yeah it has its dumb leaders but not as dumb as admiral Constantine from rebels with Darth Vader being the real dumb in killing men left and right when his plans aren’t fulfilled. In return we get a mix bag of competent with incompetent that contributes to the bad reputation of the empire. Then in legends, the imperial remnant is fierce enough to continue to engage a loosing battle… for 10 years? To the point of making the republic just sign an armistice basically. But in Disney Star Wars… we get them to be this bumping buffoon faction that makes you question “how the hell were they in control of the galaxy for 30 years?” Until andor came along and had answered some questions. As much as I like rogue 1, they also portrayed the empire as a Buffoon faction when why? And then rebels came out and it added more buffoonery that, granted it’s a kid-oriented show, just made the empire into a laughing stock of a faction. Then we had kenobi, the mandalorian, and whoever knows treating the empire as a laughing stock. Only the writers of andor and even Timothy Zhans “thrawn” trilogy treated the empire as a faction to reckon with but also adding the little hints here and there as to why the empire as a faction is also rotten without explicitly making them look like buffoons. So idk. I think that the empire was a faction that was strong but had its flaws that lured more on the style of war that the rebellion was vs what the video argues because yeah, we draw it and compare it to our modern day analysis and compare it to previous in-world conflicts… but what’s shown is just buffoonery. Great videos anyways because I really enjoy this type of deep-dive analysis into a faction that is just portrayed as buffoons
i want vanto on screen.... but dave hates the new books....
Dave hates the lore in general lol.
I can't understand the Kaminoans reasoning of hiring mercenaries and bounty hunters to train the GAR. People like that don't operate in large, organized militaries, the work, in the bounty hunters case, as individuals and, in the case of mercenaries, as small unit teams at best, squad levels only.
They can't understand, unless they've already served in, ranks of platoons, companies, divisions or armies, so how can they possibly teach those tactics to the clones of the GAR?
The Mandalorians might be able to do so, since they are basically, a military, already. But most operate as individuals or small teams as well
Were the Kaminoans just so desperate to train the clones that they basically hired ANYONE who had ever fired a blaster at someone else to train the clones and hope for the best?
It shows, because I've seen so many clones die from rushing into a fire fight in banzai charges rather than staying behind cover and picking off the battle droids one by one
It is said that some clones HATED the jedi for getting so many of their brothers killed, when the sad truth of the matter is that the clones were JUST as guilty of getting themselves killed as the jedi ere
Corruption and connections.
Sith ideology can only exist when the Jedi are in control because it needs something to thrive for. Sith are like a dog chasing its own tail. It loves to do so but doesn’t know what to do with itself once they get there.
More untrue lore to make the empire seem weak and explain why the rebels beat them 😭😭
@@saac0937 why are you such a butthurt weirdo
From the Republic to the Imperial might, that would become the Galactic Empire, and the Emperor palpatine rise to power and dominates over the galaxy ruleing with an iron fist 👊 and the power of the Imperial Milltary ground forces aircraft forces of The Empire Imperial Navy with Star destroyers Super star destroyers with Tie fighters along stormtroopers soldiers of the Empire to serve and bring order to the galaxy until the battle of Endor where the Imperial forces had lost and the rebellion becoming the New Republic government and The survivors of the events of Endor and Imperial remnants along fleet of Star destroyers squadrons of Imperial Tie fighters under the command of the Empire Shadow Council chain of commanders with the likes of moff gidon Grand admiral Thrawn
And others Imperial warlords Across the galaxy where The Imperial remnant forces are planning a final showdown on destert world of Jakku where the New Republic are victorious and the Empire is defeat some had surrender while the Imperial warlords and officers had gone into the unknown regions and became the First order more powerful and deadly and power hungry then the Empire with an alliance with the Sith cult a.k.a the
Sith Enteral forces under the service and command of the resurrected clone Emperor palpatine himself and his Sith followers on execol in the unknown regions rey skywalker the resistance and rest of the galaxy finally took down the first order and Sith Enteral once and for
All so the war is over and the galaxy can recover and rey skywalker new jedi order can begin may the force be with you all and you generation tech
In Legends the main target of The Imperial Navy was not the Rebelion but to fight off the Yuuzhan Vong. In that situation the idea of (Disney's)Operation: Cinder, destroying so much economic growth and industrial strength would go against the idea of a long lasting strong (Sith controled) Empire.
Its almost like disney has no idea ehat are theyre doing
O teall6 have to admire the amount of creativity that fans and even non-film writers have used to explain George Lucas's poor writing!
Too bad the imperial remnant doesn't have Thrawn
This vid sounds familiar
@Generation Tech So you just want to stat a history channel already, you clearly want to
Clones had Order 66 in their heads, if he was exposed as a Sith they would immediately turn on him and no amount of force power would protect him from millions of clones going after him with the Senate being forced to see that they fell for a Sith plan forcing them to support the clones and hunt him down
it was pure self-preservation by Sidius, the fact that the military was under his thumb and acting in their own self-interests was a secondary benefit
Why would they care? The clones were loyal to the Republic government first and foremost.
The Jedi as military commanding officers, proved disastrous. They continuously made very stupid tactical decisions based on Jedi dogma, instead of a realistic understanding of what was happening on the battlefield.
This video has numerous shots of Ahsoka Tano --- that padawan is personally responsible for tens of thousands of needless deaths due to shear incompetence !!!
Imperial military / navy put politicians and their kids as commanding officers. What could go wrong....
You know what destroy the Imperial Navy? Disney
Filoni more like
@tk-6967 yeah cuz shows like the acolyte were written by filoni..
All of them are guilty.
@@despeckt Leslie Headland literally went to Filoni for advice on the show and he heavily endorsed it.
Allowing competent officers, that is a threath!
I feel like this analyse places way too much weight on The Bad Batch's and The Clone War's storytelling and not on the rest of the lore. I mean, you ignored the fact that a large of senior imperial leadership was in one way or another involved in the Republic during the Clone War and acted as though the Jedi were somehow more qualified military strategists than professional military officers despite Jedi incompetence being a major thorn in the Republic's side during the war.
Also, I don't understand where you are getting the idea this is Sith related. The Tarkin novel straight up tells us that the wealthy Core families and the aspirational non-core nobility were the root of the Republic military's corruption and incompetence, with Tarkin actually being partially inspired by the Republic Judicial Force's incompetence to create his Tarkin Doctrine, as he believed that only through a projection of strength and domination that the corrupt elitism would be broken.
I guess you could kind of argue that Tarkin's doctrine combined with Republic-era corruption and elitism is similar to Sith culture, but I haven't seen any tangible link between the 2. You'd have to go back to the Old Republic era to see the Sith Empire's nobility, but in SWTOR, the Republic's nobility is still corrupt and decadent as ever and this directly impacts their military's performance in various missions. I remember one side quest where a Republic Officer had been misappropriating military funds, and this was not implied to be a unique case whatsoever, as his superiors actually didn't do that much to punish him even when you do expose him.