There seems to be a repeating topos in history, where powers on the loosing side of a war try to turn its tide by inventing new, secret and/or super weapons. The misguided hope seems to be that these new wonder weapons will be enough to totally surprise their enemies, dominate the battlefield and/or shock the enemy into submission – and thus bring by victory in short order.

历史似乎有个重复的主题,战争失败的一方试图通过秘密发明新的、超级武器来扭转局势。失败方错误地认为这些新式神奇武器完全可以打敌人一个措手不及、能主导战场和震慑敌人,让敌人不得不投降,从而在短时间内取得胜利。

The examples I know of, however, all failed rather miserably. To my (unscholarly) eye a plausible reason for this appears to be because wars seem to be, more often than not, won through logistics and economics – and powers on the loosing end of a conflict seem to be operating on already stretched resource/logistics budgets, and will therefore be doubly taxed by the R&D efforts for new "super weapons", even given that those weapons would actually prove effective in the field.

然而,我知道例子的结局都是悲惨的失败。在我这个无知的人看来,一个合理的原因似乎是因为战争取胜往往受物流和经济影响,冲突失败方的资源操作、物流预算似乎已经不堪重负,如果这个时候再去研发新式超级武器,即便最后证明这些武器在战场上起到了作用,也相当于多花了一倍的钱。
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Some examples that were (quite) unsuccessful:

下面是一些(相当)不成功的例子:

Japan building submarine aircraft carriers towards the end of WW2.
Hitlers ambitious (or rather: illusionary) Wunderwaffen programs, such as the Maus Panzer, Landkreuzer Ratte and many many more…

日本在二战末期建造了潜艇、航空母舰。
希特勒野心勃勃的(或者更确切地说:幻想的) 奇迹武器,比如重战车计划、超重型坦克给还有很多很多……

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