Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (86134)	8/23/2000 7:32:32 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

You have no doubt that the result would have been the same as the peace they had made with the Russians. At the time, plenty of people would have doubted, and considered it likely that an anti- communist crusade would have solidified an alliance with Germany. The British did not know they were next in line. What they knew was that they were being bombed at the time. The thesis about picking up the pieces assumes two things that are not difficult: the continuation of Lend- Lease and the usefulness of greater lead time to prepare ourselves. Once Hitler decided to attack the Soviet Union, the idea that they would bleed each other to exhaustion was not far- fetched at all. Japan attacked us, there was no reason to rush to the North African theater. There were no Japanese there. Hitler's declaration of war was a big blunder: it gave the Roosevelt administration the pretext it needed to get into the war in Europe. Roosevelt had been looking for that pretext for a long time. There was no clear- cut survival reason to become engaged in World War Two, and arguments could be made for waiting or even accommodating Germany. We fought because we would not do business with the Devil, as it were. On the invasion question: in the Pacific, we essentially waged war from ship platforms, and could have done so in Europe, as well........ You may be right that the Kuomingtang was too corrupt and without support, and Mao would have inevitably won. But mischaracterization is not irrelevant...... Well, Steve, I think we won. Since I elaborated some in a different post, I will hold off here. I will say that I do not see calls for Cold War II against the Chinese: I see calls for prudence in dealing with a potential adversary, which is an altogether different thing.........

To: Dayuhan who wrote (86134)	8/23/2000 2:00:20 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Respond to of 108807

>I don't think anybody in Britain doubted for a moment that Hitler would have used such a peace to consolidate and prepare for an invasion.< It is quite a game one can play with the premises, no? If the USA hadn't materially aided the UK in both the Battle of Britain and the Battle of the Atlantic, Hitler could have closed his Western front and thrown his full might against the Russians. If Moscow and the Caspian region had fallen, Hitler would have been almighty tough to root out. Even with our rapidly-building involvement, Nazi Germany almost won the Battles of Britain and the Atlantic. It didn't make as close a contest of things in the East, but imagine if the Nazis hadn't squandered all that amazing material and intellectual capital on fast but short-legged two-engine bombers and the ill-starred Me 110 "destroyer" concept. If they'd simply valued a four-engine strategic bomber in the Lancaster or Fortress mold, I wager that the Eastern campaign would have gone differently. It is not at all hard to construe a scenario in which Adolf Hitler would have been by 1944 the unchallenged despot of the territories from Gibraltar to the Bering Strait. Of course, Pearl Harbor would still have happened, and the battles of the Pacific against two very capable foes would have been really something. We'd have had to drop dozens of Fat Men and not just the one over Nagasaki before resolving the war in our favor.