Honestly what killed the America first movement was Huey P Long getting shot he had plans to run under the Union party which supported America First and he was popular enough to get enough votes to possibly beat FDR. One of Longs campaign promises was to fight communism at every step of the way. After his death everything fell apart and The Union party was finished and His warnings of Communist infiltration went ignored.
Staying out really wasn’t possible Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and then when we declared war on Japan in retaliation Germany declared war on us for going to war with Japan. The only way we could’ve stayed out of that war was if we allowed Japan to get away with destroying Pearl Harbor which would have been highly unlikely due to the massive public demand for making Japan pay for all the Americans they killed that day.
If Japan left us alone we may have never gotten directly involved with World War II. Hell, If Hitler left us alone and didn’t declare war on us to defend Japan we probably only would’ve went after Japan and ignored Europe entirely.
Selling everything to everyone avoids this scenario. FDR squeezed Japan's oil to provoke an attack, so he would have the casus belli needed to invade Germany. We shouldn't have given anyone free shit either.
Selling everything to everyone really did not work though, Because the main reason the embargo happened was Japan invaded French Indochina and cut America off from all trade with China meaning everything we sold to China was cut off and we could not collect the money China owed us because of Japan, and all rubber we were buying from China and French Indochina were essentially cut off from us. It was sort of a tit for tat situation you block us from getting rubber we block you from getting oil.
On top of the fact that Japan has been threatening us for ownership of the Philippines for a while before the embargo and we could not give up the Philippines because it was a very important strategic point in the Pacific for our Navy. I have a strong feeling even if we never embargo Japan they would have still attacked us.
The implications of their socialism should be acknowledged, though. One sought policy that was socialist toward an ethnic group, including territories were the ethnic language was popular, while the other sought worldwide domination. Then you had Catholics.
No. Both the Nazis and the Soviets were a lot of authoritarian bastards. The mistake of WWII was that they stopped after Berlin. They should've kept going to Moscow and spread Stalin's cheeks with a Sherman.
Not really. Most germans were sick of Jewish bullshit, and fully supported the Nazi regime. Germany itself was authoritarian. That's why the Gestapo only had 7k members at its peak.
No, most Germans were sick of Communists, and I'm willing to bet you're going to tell me there isn't a difference. Most Germans were also not pro-Nazi, that's why they voted Hindenburg. Many Germans trusted the militarists of which the Nazis had stopped really being part of because of Hitler's personality cult.
The Fabian Socialist government had begun shifting rightwards and appeasing the NSDAP because they thought that they could control them, along with the military, and resist further Communist insurrections and rebellions.
But, it turns out you can't trust Socialists in any form, whether Fabian, National, or Revolutionary.
No, German anti-semitism saw a sharp increase towards the end WW1, and the subsequent color revolution in 19-20 had a lot of Jewish/Commie overlap, furthering that weariness. Hitler and the NSDAP were products of this time. German anti-semitism had very deep roots.
While you're correct that the NSDAP didn't come into power with overwhelming support, they quickly secured it through their robust social welfare programs and pogroms.
They never secured overwhelming support, they didn't even secure majority support. The best the outlook Germans had on the Nazis was immediately after France fell: "Apparently the Nazis know how to win wars, and the economy looks okay!" Neither was true.
Their Social Welfare programs were fucking insane, and tied directly to absolute party loyalty. When you've got girls coming home from Hitler Youth camps pregnant claiming Adolf Hitler is the father of the baby because it is a baby for Germany, and that Adolf Hitler will take care of the child (meaning the German welfare state), that's going to freak people the hell out. The insane propagandizing of every aspect of society being governed by ridiculous Nazi virtue signaling every second may have improved some support, but it would also polarize the rest of the country, even if it were silent.
The pogroms were even more unpopular as it genuinely stoked blowback against the government and sympathy for Jews, despite relentless anti-jewish propaganda. The fact that German Jews of mixed ancestry were also being relentlessly targeted as part of Nazi racial laws did not help. This is why the Nazis had to repeatedly lie about the actions taken against Jews. In many typical ethnic cleansings & genocides, the population participates in the extermination due to the radicalization of the population being fully successful. The Rawandan genocide was never hidden for a moment (it was actually disseminated by mass media in the country), and and the Indonesian genocide against the Chinese was also completely transparent. In many cases, ethnic cleansings are popular (at least locally if not nationally). Even in the United States. This was not the case in Germany as the Nazis had to claim that Kristallnacht wasn't even from their direction, but was a kind of 'grass-roots uprising'.
He basically argued the same thing a leftist today would use on CNN: 'This was just a righteous expression of communal anger, I'm not endorsing the riots... I'm just saying that this is the inevitable result of oppression.'
They never secured overwhelming support, they didn't even secure majority support.
A myth to help rehabilitate and reintegrate Germany after WW2. The reality was, German lives improved immensely under Nazi rule. Most modern European welfare programs are modeled on the Nazi welfare state. Germans were also quite fond of the exotic plundered goods that were routinely distributed to them. Granted, eventually they were going to run out of nations and Jews to plunder, so it was a completely unsustainable system, but those who lived through it seem to have remembered it fondly, as long as they weren't Jews. Summer camp for kids, free healthcare, guaranteed jobs, national pride. It was paradise after the post-Weimar/Depression hell they'd just been through.
A myth to help rehabilitate and reintegrate Germany after WW2. The reality was, German lives improved immensely under Nazi rule.
It's not a myth about reintegrating Germany, it's the reality of the German war machine's logistical and economic base combined with the Nazis monetary policies which were as shit as the Wiemar Republic's. There is a myth that has persisted to this day about the mechanization of the Wermacht, despite the fact that the majority of German logistics were being transported by horse. The blockades of Germany were always going to be an absolute death blow to German economy, but the Nazi plan was always to win as fast as possible, based off of sheer momentum alone, and then try to acquire as much industrial base as they could get their hands on. Part of the military's planning for the invasion of France in 1940 was the major concern that Germany simply could not defeat France in a protracted war, even without the Russians or Americans threatening. If the Germans were bogged down at any point in the invasion of France, Germany would be facing horrific logistical problems replacing the vast losses in men and material.
The German planners were wrong about their assessment of French strength, but they are absolutely accurate about German weakness. The economy never fully recovered even from WW1, let alone The Great Depression. Germany had some resources, but winning a war against France and Russia would require an impossible feat. No one really expected French morale, discipline, and command to be as absolutely broken as it was. The German performance in 1940 was only matched by the unpreparedness of the English, and the self-defeating stupidity of the French command and control structure. Hitler badly misinterpreted the Soviets experience in the Winter War and believed that Russia had demonstrated itself to be in nearly the same level of disorganized incompetence as the French, and had objectively worse equipment and training. He did not expect Stalin to adapt as quickly as he did. The purges of Stalin's military was thought to more devastating than it was because Stalin had just narrowly not executed one of the few remaining competent commanders he had left in the Army, who immediately set about re-organizing the Red Army's recruiting and organization. The experience of covert German economic support to the Soviet Union, the visible observations of Soviet movements under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and early successes in 1941 did nothing to dissuade the Germans of their initial analysis of Russia. They over-estimated France, and underestimated Russia, but they knew that a war against both was the absolute pinnacle of ambition.
By the end of the war, the manpower and resource shortfall that was absolutely obvious to everyone in 1940 had become painfully clear to everyone as resource shortages of every possible kind were prevalent in Germany, the Riech Mark was devaluing itself as the Deuch Mark had done previously, the loss of population required the importation of soldiers from puppet regimes, and the Germans were struggling to even feed themselves. Germany never had a chance to win in WW2, and the Germans knew that their Achilles heel was an economy that had never fully recovered. And anyone with a passing knowledge in economics can tell you why socialist welfare & entitlement programs don't create economic growth. What little recovery of the German economy there had been been taking place under the Wiemar government who had one competent person who was reversing their monetary policy before the Nazis took power
Most modern European welfare programs are modeled on the Nazi welfare state...
Socialist polices that were carried forward from German State Socialism & Militarism were carried forward by National Socialists, and whose programs were replicated by Fabian and Revolutionary Socialists. No shit. It's as if Socialists are Socialists.
but those who lived through it seem to have remembered it fondly, as long as they weren't Jews.
Those who lived through it remembered how insane and invasive it is, but didn't know how much had gone horribly wrong until people started to realize how much the Nazis had been lying to their faces about literally everything. Living under Nazi rule during the war was already significantly brutal, but they thought they were winning. Pre-war, Germans were never comfortable with how the Nazis conducted themselves, and they were just always told that the situation was better than their lying eyes told them.
Where the Nazis experienced actual overwhelming support was in places like Czechoslovakia where ethnic Germans had faced genuine discrimination, and they were told by their socialist press that Germany was experiencing the greatest resurgence anyone had ever seen. National Socialism and Fascism was a progressive, intellectual, and modern philosophy that was touted the world over. To the Germanic-Czechs, this was all the benefits of a welfare state, with the wildest riches of a Capitalist state, and national pride of a Militarist state... right up until they let the wolf into the hen house.
That economic perfection never seemed to show up, and for some reason "National Pride" was just "Cult-like worship of Adolf Hitler".
Summer camp for kids, free healthcare, guaranteed jobs, national pride.
"Summer camp": Highly politically radicalized children who turning their parent into the Gestapo for getting pregnant at 15 or 16 to some guy because Adolf Hitler.
"Free Healthcare": Shit healthcare, as is to be expected.
"Guaranteed jobs": Forced low-paid labor into the defense industry
"National Pride": Because an Austrian-born lunatic wearing silly pants is the essence of the German nation because that guy literally said so.
It was paradise after the post-Weimar/Depression hell they'd just been through.
Initially this was because the communists were either dead of in hiding and could no longer try to burn down Berlin... again. After they got into power, the lack of any basic freedom, married with the utter lunacy of rabid socialism, did not make living in Nazi Germany even remotely present.
You tend to get lost in the weeds a lot, Giz. No one is defending socialist economics. Contemporary private correspondences and public interviews show a deliberate choice to support the Nazis in the pre-war years. And yeah, it wasn't pleasant to be a German in 44.
If the Germans were bogged down at any point in the invasion of France, Germany would be facing horrific logistical problems replacing the vast losses in men and material.
Sorry for necro'ing this one, Giz, but there's another point to this as well.
You can tell when you look at the actual German tech they went to war with that this was not a military structured around prolonged campaigns. A lot of German kit in WWII required lengthy, expensive maintenance to perform to spec - this is not a problem in a military optimised for brief lightning strikes where you are the aggressor and so can dictate the schedule to match your maintenance timetables and just use the brief window of combat to run out your maintenance intervals. It's also apparent in the lack of competence the German military of WWII had in providing necessary spares and equipment to return damaged vehicles to service.
Compare this to, say, US equipment which was built with maintainability very much in mind. Combine this with a US logistical train which would happily provide sufficient spares to built an entire new vehicle from parts and it's obvious which military is set up for lengthy campaigning - and had the industrial might necessary to pull this particular trick off.
You can also infer it from German practice regarding leave - for instance, during the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe simply didn't grant leave - they wanted all hands to be able to prosecute their air war. The RAF, having no idea how long the engagement was going to run for and presumably reluctant to run the main line of defence into the ground, still allowed airmen leave.
Germany was/is used to authority. The concept of democracy and freedom didn't naturally occur there and is anathema to the german mindset. Democracy was forced down their throats twice. And you can still see it today in that there is very little actual resistance to anything the government does because "the government is the law"
It wasn't really a mistake. There was no good causus belli to go to war with the Soviets so quickly, and there was certainly no way that the US could have reached Moscow, let alone the Ural Mountains. We got as far as we were going to get.
All we would have needed to do was stop shipping the Soviets arms and ammo on D-Day. By the time we reached Berlin, their own industry would have still been too far behind to put up an effective resistance.
The only reason the russians were able to produce something like 35k tanks is because they literally didn't have to produce anything since it was all coming from the US.
The Soviets wouldn't have been stupid enough to have assumed that wasn't anything except an act of aggression to halt the Soviet advance. I think you are grossly underestimating the Soviet's industrial capacity. Even if you manage to reach Berlin, you'll never get to Moscow, and the death toll for the US will skyrocket into the millions.
The Soviets were completely dependent on nominally allied nations' exports for half the war, and relied on them to fill gaps in production until near the end.
If the US and Britain had adopted a strict policy of 'not one bean, not one bullet, not one bandage' for exports to the USSR once Hitler committed to stabbing his former ally of convenience in the back, the Soviets would have been stretched too thin to put up an effective resistance - leaving the Nazis with too much ground to effectively hold. At that point, pushing the USSR out of Poland and the rest of its non-Russian holdings would have been simpler.
With the full might of the US economy backing the Soviet military for years, Stalin had staggering casualties. Imagine doubling those and then make the argument that the few survivors would have been able to hold everything east of Berlin.
I think you're grossly over-estimating American supplies to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was still a massive industrial giant with enormous natural resources. The Arctic convoys were helpful, but they weren't the only thing keeping the USSR afloat.
If not one thing had been sent to the USSR, which is different than what you originally said, it's possible that the Wermacht would have gotten a little further, or the Collapse of the German line would have been a little slower, but the Soviet Union still wins, and might even make it to Berlin before the US.
Imagine doubling those and then make the argument that the few survivors would have been able to hold everything east of Berlin.
I don't think that Russian casualties would have doubled. Not by a long shot. Maybe you get an extra million or two. There's no way the Germans are so successful that they kill 40 million Soviets. That would have depleted pretty much the entirety of their manpower supply.
One of the biggest lies ever promoted by the left is the fable that Hitler had grand ambitions of total world domination and conquering North America when in reality his geopolitical goals were the unification of all German speaking peoples in Europe and becoming the dominant Eurasian continental power while destroying the worlds sole communist state (the USSR.)
The West could have easily coexisted with a victorious Third Reich. The goal of Bolshevism has always been explicit world domination.
"The Socialists would never seek world domination. Not like the Socialists!"
Don't be ridiculous.
You pointed out the entire point about Hitler's domination. If there were Germans then you take over the country and have it ruled by Germans because the Slavs, Czechs, Poles, Jews, Franks, English, Danes, Swiss, Italians, Austrians, Greeks, Romanians, Bulgarians, Rus, Latvians, Estonians, ect are all to stupid to govern themselves. In fact, they're just in the way! We can't waste progress on inferior peoples! Best of all, the perfect embodiment of the German Consciousness was Adolf Hitler himself! What luck! That's not a plan for world domination at all! Especially not when he was trying to create Fascist puppet states loyal to Nazi Germany everywhere else. Hitler was just a good boy who dindu nuffin because he was on his way to Art School and a Jew called him a goy! Czechoslovakia and Poland had it coming!
He was firstly hell bent on seizing power for himself, and using useful idiot Germans as a human shield to murder his way to success. Hence why the SA were all slaughtered. Once in power, he'd get to depopulate anyone that disagreed with him. That includes Fascist puppet states that exist only to serve the German Riech regardless of whatever 'nation' of people they claimed to represent.
I always find it funny when people think a Nazi regime would have been good because they themselves would be first-class citizens under such a regime (and not enslaved or dead).
Then these people turn around and ridicule commie LARPers who advocate for a revolution, because they think they themselves would be high-ranking party members under that regime (and not the first against the wall).
not quite true, Hitler wanted to the Germans to be a sort of land owning class with the slavs as serfs in the East, much like the tuteonic knights of old.
Welcome to the club. Now you know why Patton was eager to slug it against the Soviets after WW2, because he saw the danger on what would it become in the decades after the war AND THEN he conveniently "died" off a "car accident". Really makes you think, doesn't it?
We should have let Nazi Germany take out the Soviet government and then bulldoze them both to bring about the russian federation early, just like the soviets did to the poles so they could establish a puppet state with the local communist party.
Soviet Russia did fight the Nazis... after they allied with them. They're not the only reason why we aren't all Germans. The Germans would have done a lot better without opening up the Eastern Front, but unless they beat America to the atomic bomb it was only a matter of time until they lost.
Not necessarily, Americans might have voted for a president not hell bent on war and Britain might have caved in without American support.
Would US have joined the war if Japzn hadnt attacked and Hitler stupidly declared war on US? we will never know.
Was the Easter Front mistake, maybe, remember at one point Stalin was willing to give up 1/3 of Russia and sue for peace but Hitler would never agree to that.
Hell even the later offensive might have brought Russia to its knees if it hadnt been for Hitlers obession with Stalingrad.
Some say without war Germany was on the path to economic collapse so maybe this wouldve destroyed Nazi Germany.
No, America just had 3 enemies. National Socialists, Revolutionary Socialists, and Fabian Socialists. Killing off the National Socialists with firebombing wasn't a mistake. We just didn't have the resources to start fire-bombing the Revolutionary ones immediately after.
Yes we had the resources, they were used in Japan after conveniently letting them bomb Pearl Harbor. Also coincidentally, Patton suggested we glass the USSR then he "died".
No, we didn't have the resources. The industrial and manpower base of the USSR was absolutely massive. The conflict only divided our limits further, but a European war against the Soviets in 1945 even with nuclear weapons would not have been enough to get to Moscow, and would not have been enough to get to the Urals. We didn't have the manpower, we didn't have the money, we couldn't have struck at Russia's economic core, and the war would have dragged on at best in Poland for a few more years until both states would have been utterly exhausted.
We really didn’t have the resources, at the time Douglas MacArthur wanted to concentrate all American military activity to preventing the spread of communism in Asia, basically eastern Europe was viewed as a lost cause but Asia could still be saved, so large amounts of US military were being used to deal with the Korean Civil War and stabilizing Japan to ensure it doesn’t have communist uprising like in Korea.
Unfortunately Truman refused MacArthurs demand to militarily intervene in the Chinese Civil War to ensure the Communist lose. kinda sad to think how close Douglas MacArthur was to preventing the PRC from existing, only to be stopped because Truman was spineless.
I actually just thought of this but ignoring the USSR and concentrating on Asia, would’ve been the best call because if Truman went through with what MacArthur wanted, China would’ve been reformed under democracy and Mao would’ve been publicly executed and then in the 90s when the USSR collapses we could’ve been potentially living in a world with no communism or at least no major communist powers.
Communist sympathizers in the US can't change the sheer geographic, economic, and strategic reality of an invasion of Russia.
Even now, when the balance of power is clearly unequal, and the US has a massive economic and military edge over Russia, there's no situation where the US subjugates Russia without significant nuclear bombardment. If you wanted to defeat Russia in a war, you should have invaded in 1995 while you sill had a chance.
In 1945, the US does not have a clear tactical advantage, and is actually at a manpower deficiency compared to the USSR.
The enemy was never any one country, it is an ideology that is heavily financed by big bankers all over the world. Everytime they build a golem ie Germany, USSR, Japan...China. The US is drawn into war and loses liberties as a people and as a nation from the federal reserve. Watch and take note of what is happening with China.
It was essentially three socialist factions fighting each other for power and one of them dragged us in.
We should have stayed out and sold, not lent or leased, everything to all of them. America First
Honestly what killed the America first movement was Huey P Long getting shot he had plans to run under the Union party which supported America First and he was popular enough to get enough votes to possibly beat FDR. One of Longs campaign promises was to fight communism at every step of the way. After his death everything fell apart and The Union party was finished and His warnings of Communist infiltration went ignored.
Staying out really wasn’t possible Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and then when we declared war on Japan in retaliation Germany declared war on us for going to war with Japan. The only way we could’ve stayed out of that war was if we allowed Japan to get away with destroying Pearl Harbor which would have been highly unlikely due to the massive public demand for making Japan pay for all the Americans they killed that day.
If Japan left us alone we may have never gotten directly involved with World War II. Hell, If Hitler left us alone and didn’t declare war on us to defend Japan we probably only would’ve went after Japan and ignored Europe entirely.
Selling everything to everyone avoids this scenario. FDR squeezed Japan's oil to provoke an attack, so he would have the casus belli needed to invade Germany. We shouldn't have given anyone free shit either.
Selling everything to everyone really did not work though, Because the main reason the embargo happened was Japan invaded French Indochina and cut America off from all trade with China meaning everything we sold to China was cut off and we could not collect the money China owed us because of Japan, and all rubber we were buying from China and French Indochina were essentially cut off from us. It was sort of a tit for tat situation you block us from getting rubber we block you from getting oil.
On top of the fact that Japan has been threatening us for ownership of the Philippines for a while before the embargo and we could not give up the Philippines because it was a very important strategic point in the Pacific for our Navy. I have a strong feeling even if we never embargo Japan they would have still attacked us.
The Federal reserve dragged us in.
It was one of them. They had many organizations pulling the strings.
The implications of their socialism should be acknowledged, though. One sought policy that was socialist toward an ethnic group, including territories were the ethnic language was popular, while the other sought worldwide domination. Then you had Catholics.
No. Both the Nazis and the Soviets were a lot of authoritarian bastards. The mistake of WWII was that they stopped after Berlin. They should've kept going to Moscow and spread Stalin's cheeks with a Sherman.
Not really. Most germans were sick of Jewish bullshit, and fully supported the Nazi regime. Germany itself was authoritarian. That's why the Gestapo only had 7k members at its peak.
No, most Germans were sick of Communists, and I'm willing to bet you're going to tell me there isn't a difference. Most Germans were also not pro-Nazi, that's why they voted Hindenburg. Many Germans trusted the militarists of which the Nazis had stopped really being part of because of Hitler's personality cult.
The Fabian Socialist government had begun shifting rightwards and appeasing the NSDAP because they thought that they could control them, along with the military, and resist further Communist insurrections and rebellions.
But, it turns out you can't trust Socialists in any form, whether Fabian, National, or Revolutionary.
No, German anti-semitism saw a sharp increase towards the end WW1, and the subsequent color revolution in 19-20 had a lot of Jewish/Commie overlap, furthering that weariness. Hitler and the NSDAP were products of this time. German anti-semitism had very deep roots.
While you're correct that the NSDAP didn't come into power with overwhelming support, they quickly secured it through their robust social welfare programs and pogroms.
They never secured overwhelming support, they didn't even secure majority support. The best the outlook Germans had on the Nazis was immediately after France fell: "Apparently the Nazis know how to win wars, and the economy looks okay!" Neither was true.
Their Social Welfare programs were fucking insane, and tied directly to absolute party loyalty. When you've got girls coming home from Hitler Youth camps pregnant claiming Adolf Hitler is the father of the baby because it is a baby for Germany, and that Adolf Hitler will take care of the child (meaning the German welfare state), that's going to freak people the hell out. The insane propagandizing of every aspect of society being governed by ridiculous Nazi virtue signaling every second may have improved some support, but it would also polarize the rest of the country, even if it were silent.
The pogroms were even more unpopular as it genuinely stoked blowback against the government and sympathy for Jews, despite relentless anti-jewish propaganda. The fact that German Jews of mixed ancestry were also being relentlessly targeted as part of Nazi racial laws did not help. This is why the Nazis had to repeatedly lie about the actions taken against Jews. In many typical ethnic cleansings & genocides, the population participates in the extermination due to the radicalization of the population being fully successful. The Rawandan genocide was never hidden for a moment (it was actually disseminated by mass media in the country), and and the Indonesian genocide against the Chinese was also completely transparent. In many cases, ethnic cleansings are popular (at least locally if not nationally). Even in the United States. This was not the case in Germany as the Nazis had to claim that Kristallnacht wasn't even from their direction, but was a kind of 'grass-roots uprising'.
He basically argued the same thing a leftist today would use on CNN: 'This was just a righteous expression of communal anger, I'm not endorsing the riots... I'm just saying that this is the inevitable result of oppression.'
A myth to help rehabilitate and reintegrate Germany after WW2. The reality was, German lives improved immensely under Nazi rule. Most modern European welfare programs are modeled on the Nazi welfare state. Germans were also quite fond of the exotic plundered goods that were routinely distributed to them. Granted, eventually they were going to run out of nations and Jews to plunder, so it was a completely unsustainable system, but those who lived through it seem to have remembered it fondly, as long as they weren't Jews. Summer camp for kids, free healthcare, guaranteed jobs, national pride. It was paradise after the post-Weimar/Depression hell they'd just been through.
It's not a myth about reintegrating Germany, it's the reality of the German war machine's logistical and economic base combined with the Nazis monetary policies which were as shit as the Wiemar Republic's. There is a myth that has persisted to this day about the mechanization of the Wermacht, despite the fact that the majority of German logistics were being transported by horse. The blockades of Germany were always going to be an absolute death blow to German economy, but the Nazi plan was always to win as fast as possible, based off of sheer momentum alone, and then try to acquire as much industrial base as they could get their hands on. Part of the military's planning for the invasion of France in 1940 was the major concern that Germany simply could not defeat France in a protracted war, even without the Russians or Americans threatening. If the Germans were bogged down at any point in the invasion of France, Germany would be facing horrific logistical problems replacing the vast losses in men and material.
The German planners were wrong about their assessment of French strength, but they are absolutely accurate about German weakness. The economy never fully recovered even from WW1, let alone The Great Depression. Germany had some resources, but winning a war against France and Russia would require an impossible feat. No one really expected French morale, discipline, and command to be as absolutely broken as it was. The German performance in 1940 was only matched by the unpreparedness of the English, and the self-defeating stupidity of the French command and control structure. Hitler badly misinterpreted the Soviets experience in the Winter War and believed that Russia had demonstrated itself to be in nearly the same level of disorganized incompetence as the French, and had objectively worse equipment and training. He did not expect Stalin to adapt as quickly as he did. The purges of Stalin's military was thought to more devastating than it was because Stalin had just narrowly not executed one of the few remaining competent commanders he had left in the Army, who immediately set about re-organizing the Red Army's recruiting and organization. The experience of covert German economic support to the Soviet Union, the visible observations of Soviet movements under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and early successes in 1941 did nothing to dissuade the Germans of their initial analysis of Russia. They over-estimated France, and underestimated Russia, but they knew that a war against both was the absolute pinnacle of ambition.
By the end of the war, the manpower and resource shortfall that was absolutely obvious to everyone in 1940 had become painfully clear to everyone as resource shortages of every possible kind were prevalent in Germany, the Riech Mark was devaluing itself as the Deuch Mark had done previously, the loss of population required the importation of soldiers from puppet regimes, and the Germans were struggling to even feed themselves. Germany never had a chance to win in WW2, and the Germans knew that their Achilles heel was an economy that had never fully recovered. And anyone with a passing knowledge in economics can tell you why socialist welfare & entitlement programs don't create economic growth. What little recovery of the German economy there had been been taking place under the Wiemar government who had one competent person who was reversing their monetary policy before the Nazis took power
Socialist polices that were carried forward from German State Socialism & Militarism were carried forward by National Socialists, and whose programs were replicated by Fabian and Revolutionary Socialists. No shit. It's as if Socialists are Socialists.
Those who lived through it remembered how insane and invasive it is, but didn't know how much had gone horribly wrong until people started to realize how much the Nazis had been lying to their faces about literally everything. Living under Nazi rule during the war was already significantly brutal, but they thought they were winning. Pre-war, Germans were never comfortable with how the Nazis conducted themselves, and they were just always told that the situation was better than their lying eyes told them.
Where the Nazis experienced actual overwhelming support was in places like Czechoslovakia where ethnic Germans had faced genuine discrimination, and they were told by their socialist press that Germany was experiencing the greatest resurgence anyone had ever seen. National Socialism and Fascism was a progressive, intellectual, and modern philosophy that was touted the world over. To the Germanic-Czechs, this was all the benefits of a welfare state, with the wildest riches of a Capitalist state, and national pride of a Militarist state... right up until they let the wolf into the hen house.
That economic perfection never seemed to show up, and for some reason "National Pride" was just "Cult-like worship of Adolf Hitler".
"Summer camp": Highly politically radicalized children who turning their parent into the Gestapo for getting pregnant at 15 or 16 to some guy because Adolf Hitler.
"Free Healthcare": Shit healthcare, as is to be expected.
"Guaranteed jobs": Forced low-paid labor into the defense industry
"National Pride": Because an Austrian-born lunatic wearing silly pants is the essence of the German nation because that guy literally said so.
Initially this was because the communists were either dead of in hiding and could no longer try to burn down Berlin... again. After they got into power, the lack of any basic freedom, married with the utter lunacy of rabid socialism, did not make living in Nazi Germany even remotely present.
You tend to get lost in the weeds a lot, Giz. No one is defending socialist economics. Contemporary private correspondences and public interviews show a deliberate choice to support the Nazis in the pre-war years. And yeah, it wasn't pleasant to be a German in 44.
Sorry for necro'ing this one, Giz, but there's another point to this as well.
You can tell when you look at the actual German tech they went to war with that this was not a military structured around prolonged campaigns. A lot of German kit in WWII required lengthy, expensive maintenance to perform to spec - this is not a problem in a military optimised for brief lightning strikes where you are the aggressor and so can dictate the schedule to match your maintenance timetables and just use the brief window of combat to run out your maintenance intervals. It's also apparent in the lack of competence the German military of WWII had in providing necessary spares and equipment to return damaged vehicles to service.
Compare this to, say, US equipment which was built with maintainability very much in mind. Combine this with a US logistical train which would happily provide sufficient spares to built an entire new vehicle from parts and it's obvious which military is set up for lengthy campaigning - and had the industrial might necessary to pull this particular trick off.
You can also infer it from German practice regarding leave - for instance, during the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe simply didn't grant leave - they wanted all hands to be able to prosecute their air war. The RAF, having no idea how long the engagement was going to run for and presumably reluctant to run the main line of defence into the ground, still allowed airmen leave.
Germany was/is used to authority. The concept of democracy and freedom didn't naturally occur there and is anathema to the german mindset. Democracy was forced down their throats twice. And you can still see it today in that there is very little actual resistance to anything the government does because "the government is the law"
It wasn't really a mistake. There was no good causus belli to go to war with the Soviets so quickly, and there was certainly no way that the US could have reached Moscow, let alone the Ural Mountains. We got as far as we were going to get.
All we would have needed to do was stop shipping the Soviets arms and ammo on D-Day. By the time we reached Berlin, their own industry would have still been too far behind to put up an effective resistance.
The only reason the russians were able to produce something like 35k tanks is because they literally didn't have to produce anything since it was all coming from the US.
The Soviets wouldn't have been stupid enough to have assumed that wasn't anything except an act of aggression to halt the Soviet advance. I think you are grossly underestimating the Soviet's industrial capacity. Even if you manage to reach Berlin, you'll never get to Moscow, and the death toll for the US will skyrocket into the millions.
The Soviets were completely dependent on nominally allied nations' exports for half the war, and relied on them to fill gaps in production until near the end.
If the US and Britain had adopted a strict policy of 'not one bean, not one bullet, not one bandage' for exports to the USSR once Hitler committed to stabbing his former ally of convenience in the back, the Soviets would have been stretched too thin to put up an effective resistance - leaving the Nazis with too much ground to effectively hold. At that point, pushing the USSR out of Poland and the rest of its non-Russian holdings would have been simpler.
With the full might of the US economy backing the Soviet military for years, Stalin had staggering casualties. Imagine doubling those and then make the argument that the few survivors would have been able to hold everything east of Berlin.
I think you're grossly over-estimating American supplies to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was still a massive industrial giant with enormous natural resources. The Arctic convoys were helpful, but they weren't the only thing keeping the USSR afloat.
If not one thing had been sent to the USSR, which is different than what you originally said, it's possible that the Wermacht would have gotten a little further, or the Collapse of the German line would have been a little slower, but the Soviet Union still wins, and might even make it to Berlin before the US.
I don't think that Russian casualties would have doubled. Not by a long shot. Maybe you get an extra million or two. There's no way the Germans are so successful that they kill 40 million Soviets. That would have depleted pretty much the entirety of their manpower supply.
One of the biggest lies ever promoted by the left is the fable that Hitler had grand ambitions of total world domination and conquering North America when in reality his geopolitical goals were the unification of all German speaking peoples in Europe and becoming the dominant Eurasian continental power while destroying the worlds sole communist state (the USSR.)
The West could have easily coexisted with a victorious Third Reich. The goal of Bolshevism has always been explicit world domination.
"The Socialists would never seek world domination. Not like the Socialists!"
Don't be ridiculous.
You pointed out the entire point about Hitler's domination. If there were Germans then you take over the country and have it ruled by Germans because the Slavs, Czechs, Poles, Jews, Franks, English, Danes, Swiss, Italians, Austrians, Greeks, Romanians, Bulgarians, Rus, Latvians, Estonians, ect are all to stupid to govern themselves. In fact, they're just in the way! We can't waste progress on inferior peoples! Best of all, the perfect embodiment of the German Consciousness was Adolf Hitler himself! What luck! That's not a plan for world domination at all! Especially not when he was trying to create Fascist puppet states loyal to Nazi Germany everywhere else. Hitler was just a good boy who dindu nuffin because he was on his way to Art School and a Jew called him a goy! Czechoslovakia and Poland had it coming!
He was firstly hell bent on seizing power for himself, and using useful idiot Germans as a human shield to murder his way to success. Hence why the SA were all slaughtered. Once in power, he'd get to depopulate anyone that disagreed with him. That includes Fascist puppet states that exist only to serve the German Riech regardless of whatever 'nation' of people they claimed to represent.
I always find it funny when people think a Nazi regime would have been good because they themselves would be first-class citizens under such a regime (and not enslaved or dead).
Then these people turn around and ridicule commie LARPers who advocate for a revolution, because they think they themselves would be high-ranking party members under that regime (and not the first against the wall).
"The Night Of The Long Knives didn't real. It's all just Judeo-Bolshevist lies!"
not quite true, Hitler wanted to the Germans to be a sort of land owning class with the slavs as serfs in the East, much like the tuteonic knights of old.
But yeah the world domination is a myth.
Then why did they attack The Netherlands, Belgium and other Western Nations if their enemy was the USSR?
Welcome to the club. Now you know why Patton was eager to slug it against the Soviets after WW2, because he saw the danger on what would it become in the decades after the war AND THEN he conveniently "died" off a "car accident". Really makes you think, doesn't it?
Yeah try telling the Poles they saved Europe
We should have let Nazi Germany take out the Soviet government and then bulldoze them both to bring about the russian federation early, just like the soviets did to the poles so they could establish a puppet state with the local communist party.
Soviet Russia did fight the Nazis... after they allied with them. They're not the only reason why we aren't all Germans. The Germans would have done a lot better without opening up the Eastern Front, but unless they beat America to the atomic bomb it was only a matter of time until they lost.
Not necessarily, Americans might have voted for a president not hell bent on war and Britain might have caved in without American support.
Would US have joined the war if Japzn hadnt attacked and Hitler stupidly declared war on US? we will never know.
Was the Easter Front mistake, maybe, remember at one point Stalin was willing to give up 1/3 of Russia and sue for peace but Hitler would never agree to that.
Hell even the later offensive might have brought Russia to its knees if it hadnt been for Hitlers obession with Stalingrad.
Some say without war Germany was on the path to economic collapse so maybe this wouldve destroyed Nazi Germany.
So many ways history couldve played out.
No, America just had 3 enemies. National Socialists, Revolutionary Socialists, and Fabian Socialists. Killing off the National Socialists with firebombing wasn't a mistake. We just didn't have the resources to start fire-bombing the Revolutionary ones immediately after.
Yes we had the resources, they were used in Japan after conveniently letting them bomb Pearl Harbor. Also coincidentally, Patton suggested we glass the USSR then he "died".
No, we didn't have the resources. The industrial and manpower base of the USSR was absolutely massive. The conflict only divided our limits further, but a European war against the Soviets in 1945 even with nuclear weapons would not have been enough to get to Moscow, and would not have been enough to get to the Urals. We didn't have the manpower, we didn't have the money, we couldn't have struck at Russia's economic core, and the war would have dragged on at best in Poland for a few more years until both states would have been utterly exhausted.
If that was the case our entire history wouldn't have been written to cover up the crimes of the USSR. At some level the truth was/is not being told.
We really didn’t have the resources, at the time Douglas MacArthur wanted to concentrate all American military activity to preventing the spread of communism in Asia, basically eastern Europe was viewed as a lost cause but Asia could still be saved, so large amounts of US military were being used to deal with the Korean Civil War and stabilizing Japan to ensure it doesn’t have communist uprising like in Korea.
Unfortunately Truman refused MacArthurs demand to militarily intervene in the Chinese Civil War to ensure the Communist lose. kinda sad to think how close Douglas MacArthur was to preventing the PRC from existing, only to be stopped because Truman was spineless.
I actually just thought of this but ignoring the USSR and concentrating on Asia, would’ve been the best call because if Truman went through with what MacArthur wanted, China would’ve been reformed under democracy and Mao would’ve been publicly executed and then in the 90s when the USSR collapses we could’ve been potentially living in a world with no communism or at least no major communist powers.
Truman wasnt spineless. If you follow the money you will see that he was a puppet. Just like the Republican and Democrat parties are today.
Communist sympathizers in the US can't change the sheer geographic, economic, and strategic reality of an invasion of Russia.
Even now, when the balance of power is clearly unequal, and the US has a massive economic and military edge over Russia, there's no situation where the US subjugates Russia without significant nuclear bombardment. If you wanted to defeat Russia in a war, you should have invaded in 1995 while you sill had a chance.
In 1945, the US does not have a clear tactical advantage, and is actually at a manpower deficiency compared to the USSR.
Walter Duranty's opinion is simply irrelevant.
The enemy was never any one country, it is an ideology that is heavily financed by big bankers all over the world. Everytime they build a golem ie Germany, USSR, Japan...China. The US is drawn into war and loses liberties as a people and as a nation from the federal reserve. Watch and take note of what is happening with China.
Sure, the problem is Leftism & Socialism generally, Fabian Socialism in particular.
The damage that China is suffering from the trade war with Trump is costing a lot of money to the Fabians who had heavily invested in the country
In b4 domitous takes this down
Yes lol