***If they’d been smart they would have surrendered: they could have had fabric clothing, sanitary facilities, concrete aquaducts, civil law****
Interesting how you can look at the outcome of such a battle thousands of years afterward and see a different outcome if this or that had happened.
I have A book FIFTEEN DECISIVE BATTLES OF THE WORLD by Edward Creasy, written in 1851.
He said the Tutoberger forest battle was decisive in it allowed the Germans to progress and become a great nation and major influence in future Europe without being degraded and absorbed by the Romans.
Yet, just a few years ago a TV program bemoaned the Tutoberger forest battle because it eventually led to a modern Germany with Adolph Hitler and WWII. With Roman influence back then, WWII might not have happened.
Since the Germans of Roman times are not the modern Germans anyway, the whole argument is moot. :’) Not to mention that the Teutoberg defeat was a temporary setback for Rome — note the link about a Roman cemetery discovered a few years back in *Copenhagen* — the Teutoberg battle was glorified and revived for the purposes of modern German nationalism in the 19th c.