[HN Gopher] Economic history of World War II and the 18th Brumaire
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Economic history of World War II and the 18th Brumaire
Author : who-knows
Score : 35 points
Date : 2021-07-16 17:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (adamtooze.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (adamtooze.substack.com)
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| Hitler relied on risk, rhetoric, and gambling to achieve his
| modest conquests. Recall, he didn't actually conquer Austria and
| he used rhetoric to gain Czech lands, which would've offered
| great resistance in heavily fortified mountain forts. He gambled
| multiple times and got lucky. If the other Germans, French,
| Austrians, or Czechs had actually stopped him boldly, he would've
| received much more bad press long before Poland. This could've
| given Poland and France time to prepare for the Blitzkrieg, which
| they sorely were not.
|
| Hitler was increasingly poor as a leader over time. Megalomania,
| hubris, over confidence, narcissism, he definitively lost the war
| by invading USSR, a very stupid decision. Stalin's reaction
| wasn't even rapid, Hitler's enemies dithered and paused, it took
| Churchill and a delayed awakening by Stalin and that was enough
| to stop "mighty" Germany. It didn't hurt that the USA provided
| the material and the bulk of the final push, that was key.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "which would've offered great resistance in heavily fortified
| mountain forts"
|
| Hopefully we would've offered great resistance, but the belt of
| fortifications was far from complete and we had Hungary and
| Poland ready to jump on our throats as well. There is no way
| that a noodle-shaped country like Czechoslovakia of 1938 was
| can survive attack from _all sides simultaneously_ , with one
| of the attackers on very high military level.
|
| From the Allies' point of view, the fact that Hitler gained
| access to Czech heavy industry was probably worse than anything
| else. Subjugated Czech factories played a huge role in arming
| Germany for the coming war.
| rjsw wrote:
| Already manufactured Czech tanks played a big role in the
| early years of the war, it wasn't just the capture of the
| factories that was important.
| guythedudebro wrote:
| The idea that Germany came even close to winning the war has
| always seemed aggressively idiotic to me. We weren't lucky to
| win the war, Germany was lucky to even make it out of the 30's
| newsclues wrote:
| It wasn't luck.
|
| After two devastating wars look at where Germany is now. An
| economic and industrial superpower
| inglor_cz wrote:
| In May 1940, as the British were evacuating Dunkirk,
| Churchill met the Cabinet to discuss a possible armistice
| with Germany, mediated through Mussolini.
|
| At that point, UK was the only significant power fighting the
| Germans. Churchill prevailed against Halifax, but if the
| decision went the other way, Germans would have uncontested
| control over most of the continent either directly or through
| satellite states, with exception of the USSR and small
| holdouts like Malta.
| pomian wrote:
| Remember politics. Poland and neighbors knew of Germany's
| invasion plans, but were not allowed to mobilize or prepare, so
| they "wouldn't antagonize the Germans." The British were
| playing politics hoping that talks would solve everything. So
| in that sense, you are correct, his rhetoric prevented an
| appropriate response.
| sorokod wrote:
| The counterfactual is explored in Philip K. Dick's "The Man in
| the High Castle"
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