History · Politics

Excesses of Dying Empires: WWII-Britain vs. Present-Day/Near-Future USA

I have been reading a lot about the two World Wars recently. What I have noticed is that the mainstream narrative is complete nonsense. Yet, there are many aspects where I would be interested in a proper explanation. Once such gap is the atrocities committed by Great Britain against Germany.

As a refresher, let me briefly summarize the problem Germany faced at the end of World War II. Essentially, Germany lost the war after the invasion of Russia, which may have been a preventive strike, failed. Afterwards, Germany was done. It was just a matter of time until they collapsed. Of course, once the Russians had beaten Germany in the Battle of Moscow in 1942, the United States joined in because there was no real risk anymore, which is just how that country likes their wars. In 1944, the Allies landed in Normandy and about a year later, Germany finally lost the war. Yet, Germany didn’t just lose the war. It was annihilated. The Allies carpet-bombed civilian cities. Germany was already defeated, yet the Royal Air Force conducted countless air raids. The biggest atrocity was the destruction of Dresden in 1945, a civilian city and arguably the most beautiful city in all of Europe. It was turned into rubble and ashes.

When you read up on Churchill, you get the impression that he was hardly the great hero your biased school textbooks made him out to be. Instead, he was a drunkard and a megalomaniac. His decision planning was poor. The outcome of World War II for Britain was that the British Pound lost its status as the world’s reserve currency. Britain also lost its colonies, most notably India. Instead of ruling the world, the British ended up being constrained on their gloomy little Island which, as it is jokingly described, is worth visiting neither for the weather, nor the food, nor the women.

I think once Churchill realized that his actions have set into motion the end of the British Empire, he went all out. He wanted the British to have their last hurrah. When would the Brits ever again strike fear into anybody after the end of World War II? Possibly never gain. However, for as long as they have the upper hand, they may very well exercise their military power. Don’t think like rational person, think like an insane, murdering psychopath! Imagine you’re on the way to death row. You’ve killed ten people already. You’re going to die anyway, so why wouldn’t you just kill as many people as you could?

Arguably, the British felt great inferiority towards Germany, a country which led the world in the 19th and early 20th century. Visitors from England were, for instance, flabbergasted that there were no beggars to be seen anywhere in Prussia. Taking care of one’s own was always seen as highly suspicious in a country like England with its deep status consciousness and concomitant disregard for the lower classes. There is no English painter of note. Their national painter is J.M.W. Turner, a man of such middling talent that he would have been completely forgotten had he been born in Germany. No English composer measures up to Beethoven or Johan Sebastian Bach. Germany also had the world’s leading universities. While Wilhelm von Humboldt in Berlin reformed tertiary education by introducing the German-style Ph.D. degree, which was copied all over the world, Oxford and Cambridge were little more than finishing schools for the sons of the idle rich. Altogether, Germany was the envy of the world. In contrast, in England things weren’t quite so rosy. Sure, they ruled the world by exploiting their colonies, but there was also this little upstart country called Germany, which only sprung into existence in 1871 that appeared to become a major threat.

At the latest at the end of World War II, Churchill was fully aware that the British Empire was over. The future of the British Empire was bleak. Would Britain ever return to glory? Churchill arguably didn’t see any reason to believe it, with the U.S. dollar slated to become the new reserve currency, Britain being saddled to the hilt with debt, and no colonies to exploit. I think that as a response to the coming gloom and doom of Britain, Churchill wanted to destroy Germany, and Europe, as a last vengeful act. It was unreasonable and entirely unjustified. As bad as it was, we can be thankful that Churchill had a few people who opposed him. For instance, I came across a rather shocking missive in which he had ordered the complete destruction of Rome. The Royal Air Force refused to carry out this plan, however. (The Allies did bomb Rome, but not nearly to the extent they bombed Germany’s most beautiful cities.)

I do not want to make any excuses for Nazi Germany, however. Nazi leadership was aware that the war was over once the Battle of Moscow was lost. A diplomatic solution could have been on the table. It would arguably not have been a pretty one, but compared to the eventual destruction of Germany, it would have been much preferable. Yet, Hitler wasn’t having any of it. Instead, the Nazis chose to run their country completely into the ground over the next two to three years. It was the same kind of madness that was exhibited by the Allies, yet it was directed inward, not outward. Once you cross the Rubicon, there is simply no turning back for a man possessed, it seems.

Now, let us move from 1944-45 to the present day and have a look at the United States, which succeeded Britain as the world’s leading power after World War II. Just like the British used to employ military force for their own gain, so have the United State engaged in all kinds of dubious wars. Changing regimes has been a staple of US foreign policy. In recent years, they’ve become a lot more subversive, with their CIA-instigated “color revolutions”, but the effect is the same. Just like the Brits, the Yanks surely also think, or used to think, that their reign will never end and can do whatever the eff they want.

However, the United States has been massively overplaying their cards. Sure, due to the dollar being the world’s reserve currency, they could enjoy a fiscal gravy train. Yet, this is coming to an end and in the not too distant future, the U.S. may have a difficult time finding buyers for their debt certificates. U.S. power is backed by the military. Too bad that it has gotten too expensive. As of now, the United States can barely keep the lights on due to the poor health of its public finances. It’s quite tough funding a huge military under such conditions.

If you’re the only bully on the playground, life is seemingly sweet. You just do whatever you want: beat up anyone for fun, take the lunch money of whomever you want. In the long run, it’s not a winning strategy, however, because people may show up who refuse to be pushed around. This is where China and Russia enter. In particular, China is interesting here. A big difference between China and the United States is that the former is a country that is run for the benefit of its people, and the latter for the benefit of a kleptocratic elite. Thus, it is perhaps not surprising that China is trying to improve the world where it can. They are on friendly terms with Russia, and they invest in Africa and Europe. What you can already witness, if you follow the news, is that China has been tying Africa, Europe, and Asia closer together. They have a top-notch military, too.

As great as the United States may be, it is quite tough to compete with 1.4 billion people if you only have 300 million. It’s not just numbers either. In China, corrupt politicians get executed. In the United States, we’d have to first look at the color of their skin to decide how transgressions get handled. There is also a lot of disunity in the United States: ever-increasing numbers of pressure groups want to get their hands on “gibs”. They focus on the here-and-now. In contrast, the Chinese also know where they want to go, and every Chinese views themselves as part of something much greater, as opposed to maximizing their own personal gains.

I suspect that sooner or later, the United States will realize that they have squandered their status as the world’s superpower. This is where things will get tricky. You better hope that we won’t have someone like the former bartender Alexandria “Occasional” Cortez as a U.S. president, or any other Democrat or, worse, female Democrat. The problem with those is that they want to prove to the world that they are not pussies and are therefore quick to hit the red button to launch an all-out nuclear war. The climate is there already: just look at all the warmongers in the U.S. who push for attacking Iran.

Sitting on a huge pile of nuclear weapons, it is quite conceivable that the United States will not just quietly abdicate. Instead, they may very well decide to take the entire world down, Churchill-style, once their reign is over. The Chinese embarrass the Americans already just like the Germans embarrassed the Brits. Look at American subways, trains, and airports and compare them to Chinese ones. Look at Chinese manufacturing (how many products do you have at home that were made in China versus products that were made in the US). Look at education and healthcare in China versus the US: STEM Ph.D. programs in the US are full of Chinese nationals. Is it because the Yanks just love the Chinks so much or is the issue that the U.S. is not able to properly educate their own anymore? Look at Chinese versus U.S. politicians: the former are the best of the best of the best. The Chinese elites probably have an average IQ well above 140. In contrast, in the U.S. you are qualified to be a high-ranking politician even if your post-college experience consisted of little else than working as a bartender and taking dick.

If anything has been clear over the last few decades, then it is that the US is a bad actor, starting wars all over the world. They will not be willing to give up their position as the world’s bully lightly. Should they ever decide to go full Churchill, we can only hope that the combined might of Russia and China will contain them. In any case, the risk that the United States will do something colossally stupid we, or our children, will suffer from is high.


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42 thoughts on “Excesses of Dying Empires: WWII-Britain vs. Present-Day/Near-Future USA

  1. Again, this a very interesting article. It is true that the intricacies of the „German question“ of the 19th and 20th century offer many highly illuminating insights into the true workings of world politics, particularly once people realize that Germany/Prussia was NOT the main culprit for WW I (Christopher Clark and others have compiled unassailable evidence for this). Quite to the contrast the German second reich was most likely the best state Germans ever had, economically, culturally and scientifically.

    Still there are a few aspects in your essay where one might be tempted to differ:

    – I do disagree that J.M.W. Turner is a somewhat mediocre painter.

    – The very comparison you drew between British composers (I happen to rever Gustav Holst quite a lot) and Ludwig van Beethoven or J.S. Bach is valid. But let us keep in mind, that it would be depressing depressing for almost any other musician or composer (be he German or non-German) since those two guys are among the greatest geniuses of all times and cultures, and this is even more striking with Bach himself, who IS the greatest and the cardinal teacher of all other musicians. Even LvB admitted that (“Urvater aller Harmonie”; “nicht Bach, sondern Meer müßte er heißen…”)

    – The U.S. is not a warmongering force unto itself. In fact, it was founded on a violent revolution against the British Empire and on the idea of “no foreign entanglements”. Never forget: the U.S. population did NOT want to enter the Eorpean theatre in WW I & II. It had to be coerced/tricked into doing so. In the U.S. the libertarian/capitalist non-interventionist idea is quite strong among its citizens, Trump is partially a symbol and spearhead for/of it.

    – The PRC is not „China“, it is a COMMUNIST dictatorship with the communist elite happening to look asian. But despite their outward appearance they are not „Chinese“, they are communists and they follow Communist doctrine to the T. The PRC is not a free-market-capitalist system, it is a state-controlled mercantilist system, which „grew“ on forced technology transfer from the West, currency manipulation and technological espionage. And the domestic problems of China are manifold, but the Communists and their President „Winnie the Pooh“ were never interested in really solving them. After Deng Xiaoping and 1989 the PRC had to pacify the population by raising the living standard and somehow making them accept the communist prison, but the worl’s largest open-air prison it is nevertheless. Now they are instituting the most perfect system of digital surveillance and mass control the world has ever seen and the power struggle is currently playing out in Hong-Kong of all places.

    – I find your outlook (at least within this essay) to be unneccessary bleak with regard to the U.S.. Despite all visible signs of liberal societal decay I still would not underestimate the U.S. and I would not overestimate China. The U.S. is a still a society with freedom of expression and freedom of scienntific endeavour, both in stark contrast to the PRC.
    Also the PLA is neither an effective nor a war-tested army. It also is not the army of China, but the army of the Communst Party of China – big differency. Neither its troops nor its equipment nor its leadership strategy have ever seen real battle so far. Once again a massive contrast when compared to U.S. forces.

    If the Chinese politically and culturally are going to have a bright future, it might be heralded from the former Hong Kong elites and/or from Taiwan, but certainly not from the Beijing of Mao Zedong’s successors.
    Communists are the scum of the earth and they are the bane of any civililization of which they manage to get hold of.

    1. I was going to make a point against the Chinese and their exploitative ways (towards their own and towards their colonies… I mean, the poor countries they establish close relations with), but you made it better. Thanks.

      In the tug of Empires between the US, Russia and China, I’m not sure who to root for, but I’m sure it’s not the Chinese.

      1. In contrast, the US wage regime-changing wars, install a puppet government and extract resources. In contrast the Chinese seek collaborations with local companies and governments.

      2. You know, my country in the last few years has both “collaborated” with China (to build a white elephant of an Interoceanic Canal) and has been supposedly subjected to a regime change “coup” by the US.

        Guess which of the two above is actually true, Aaron. 😀

        BTW, Putin is also helping out our stupid idiot of a “president”, so I hate him as much as the Dog-Eating Empire.

    2. “But let us keep in mind, that it would be depressing depressing for almost any other musician or composer (be he German or non-German) since those two guys are among the greatest geniuses of all times and cultures, and this is even more striking with Bach himself, who IS the greatest and the cardinal teacher of all other musicians. Even LvB admitted that (“Urvater aller Harmonie”; “nicht Bach, sondern Meer müßte er heißen…”)”

      Maybe JSB and LvB are tough to beat, but on a country wide level, what does Britain have to offer that comes even close to composers from Russia or Italy?
      Not even one single name. Edward Elgar maybe, but how does he fare against Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Paganini, Verdi and Puccini?
      Leave the German compsers out entirely and GB can still not compete with other nations’ composers.

      1. Well, apart from Elgar one might name Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan-Williams, Arthur Bliss and Benjamin Britten. And it can be said that they fare in a comparable league to the composers you mentioned. But it is true, the British Isles had a real dry spell in home-born quality music inventors between Purcell and Elgar (no, G. F. Handel/Händel doesn’t count, since he was from Halle in Thuringia).

      2. Britain might not have produced great composers or painters but we have produced lots of great literature:

        Chaucer, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Wordsworth, Blake, the Brontë sisters, Dickens, Stoker, Orwell, Tolkien, Huxley…

        We also seemed to be quite good at popular music in the 20th century.

    3. “The U.S. is not a warmongering force unto itself. In fact, it was founded on a violent revolution against the British Empire and on the idea of “no foreign entanglements”. Never forget: the U.S. population did NOT want to enter the Eorpean theatre in WW I & II. It had to be coerced/tricked into doing so. In the U.S. the libertarian/capitalist non-interventionist idea is quite strong among its citizens, Trump is partially a symbol and spearhead for/of it.”

      Fully agree, but you are totally ignoring the zionist infiltration of the US. They are the true warmongers and from what I read they are not even jewish but descent from the Turks. All US wars since the creation of the FED have served Israel. The big winner of WW2 was Israel. They went from a shithole area in the desert to a nuclear power. These inbred foreskin sucking jokers with funny hairstyle would’ve never gotten there without US support.

      1. Spot on. The Zionist leverage over US resources, currency and war power certainly is a shame. It needs to end for good.

      2. This is true. To me it seems that, collectively, the Jews are the biggest mass murderers in history, considering their pivotal role in the escalation of both world wars as well as their involvement in the Russsian Revolution. Of course, Mao was influenced by Jewish ideologies as well.

      3. @ Aaron: I think it is noteworthy that you mentioned the “Jewish element” within the Bolshevik revolutionaries in Russia. Solshenitzyn wrote a great two-volume analysis on the ambivalent dynamics between Jews and Non-Jews in Russia (“Two Hundred Years Together”) and how this also influenced the ethnic Jews who were actively participating as bolsheviks in the revolution. These books are best read in the original Russian publication, because the German translation is a) hard to get and b) an English translation doesn’t yet (!) exist.

      4. Not surprising that Jewish underhanded participation in events like the Bolshevik Revolution is such an obscure subject these days. Who knows how much supression of publications and translations has been going on since 1948

      5. What is most amazing is that Jewish involvement in the Russian revolution was common knowledge back in the day. It was widely known that a large number of Bolsheviks were Jews, and even that they put up some non-Jew faces in order to improve the optics.

      6. The American Revolution was a proxy war between England and France. The main principle of the founding of the US is that property is the highest value and the primary concern of government. Which suits the propertied class that revolted against Britain rather nicely. Even things like “it’s bad to kill someone” are framed in Americanese as an offence against a “right” (the “right to not get murdered”, presumably) which is an entitlement that people *have*.

      7. Yes, it is quite sad. Americans don’t architect their own immigration policy, foreign policy or culture anymore. Those who must not be named do.

    4. Very good points!

      – I profusely disagree on Turner. I think it is laughable that he gets an entire wing in the British National Gallery. Sure, they have nobody better, but if this is all the talent they could muster, then maybe they should not put it on display at all.

      – I think that, in general, the common man does not want a war. It’s always the elites, or their handlers, pushing for it.

      – The PRC is Communist in name only. In reality, the country is a streamlined fascist operation; you may even be able to draw parallels to National Socialism with its focus on improving the quality of life of the common man. Note that I’m using these terms without the negative undertones the Left associates with them. We are rapidly heading towards a future where the Chinese will enjoy better and cheaper healthcare, housing, and education than Westerners. It is already the case that Chinese professionals in the big cities enjoy more material success than their counterparts in the big Western cities. On paper, the salary may not be as high as in the West, even though this is not the case for top-income earners, while taxation is lower and purchasing power higher.

      – China is not an “open-air prison”. People can just leave. Those living behind the Iron Curtain could not.

      – The social credit system is often misunderstood. It’s about limiting the damage the worst of society can do. In the Middle Ages, we did something even more effective: we simply executed criminals. In contrast, in China the dipshits simply don’t get to enjoy high-speed train travel and a few other perks. Hong Kong is a color revolution, staged by the CIA.

      – In China, you can say anything you want, with the sole exception that you cannot criticize the government. In contrast, here’s a brief but by no means complete list of what you can’t properly discuss, let alone criticize, in the West: women, minorities, the ‘racial achievement gap’, the role of Jews in instigating wars, trannies, homosexuals, the Holocaust, Islam. On my travels in Asia I am able to speak much more freely than I ever could in the West, where the police will raid your home if you post something mean on Facebook [German].

      1. – “China is not an “open-air prison”. People can just leave. Those living behind the Iron Curtain could not.”
        As far as my Chinese friends tell me, this is not entirely true. It is apparently not the easy to emigrate from the PRC. And it is particularly difficult to permanently leave the PRC and also take your private funds with you, should you own some. And what good is emigration if a government threatens to take all your assets and you thus become a social liability of the new country you’d like to become part of (i.e. indirectly thwarting the emigration>.

        – “The PRC is Communist in name only.”
        This is a very dangerous misconception. Not only because they still call themselves Communists and employ all the known communist symbols and colours. The CPC is following its own doctrine religiously – the military doctrine whitebook “Unrestricted Warfare” by PLA officers Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui dating from 1999 or so outlines a clear path of unrestricted warfare except for conventional warfare, because the PLA knew/knows that they could not win militarily.

        – “In China, you can say anything you want, with the sole exception that you cannot criticize the government. … On my travels in Asia I am able to speak much more freely than I ever could in the West…”
        I cannot talk about freedom of speech in the PRC, since I haven’t been to the country myself. However I surmise that at least in China you as an European foreigner might have got cut some slack in that respect. With the sophisticated penal system of the PRC I’m not sure that this would apply the same way to an actual Chinese. But then again, I might be wrong. I just cannot say.

      2. I’m assuming you’re saying the Hong Kong thing is staged based on the fact that the cia has done similar things in the past? Is Hong Kong’s autonomy being threatened a ruse and part of a ploy to turn international outcry against China?

        Also, and this is slightly tangential, what is the root of the low trust dynamics we see in Chinese people? It is known that kidnapping videos are released daily, and people just walk on by as it’s happening.

      3. The riots were allegedly sparked because the Hong Kongers didn’t like that some dude who killed his girlfriend in China could be extradited. This is absolutely ludicrous.

  2. “A big difference between China and the United States is that the former is a country that is run for the benefit of its people, and the latter for the benefit of a kleptocratic elite. ”

    Oh come on… China runs its country for the benefit of its people?
    It’s about the same socialist kleptocracy as is Russia and the US.

    1. This is of course a bit of an oversimplification. However, the Chinese government has made great strides in lifting people out of poverty. They are also relentless innovators. In terms of infrastructure, there are some aspects where China has far outclassed the United States. A great example are high-speed trains. Why don’t the US have them? If you ask the average US-American if his life has improved significantly over the last two decades, he’ll be either neutral or negative in his response. In contrast, the average Chinese has been doing better and better. Granted, they started from a much lower baseline, but fact shouldn’t be used to denounce the great successes of their government.

      1. “However, the Chinese government has made great strides in lifting people out of poverty. They are also relentless innovators.”

        I cannot comment purely on the “innovation” aspect, because I’ve never been to China myself and get most of my information on it and the CPC from Hong-Kong- and Taiwan Chinese friends living abroad.

        But as far as the “lifting out of poverty” stance is concerned: yes, this is true and the statistics bear this out. Despite all Communist miracleworking of the “Great Leap forward” and the “Cultural Revolution” the Chinese people remained abhorrently poor all the way even during the 1980s. The big question remains: WHY were the CPC & “the great” Deng Xiaoping suddenly interested in this time actually for real raising the living standard of the masses. And it’s the very same reason V.I. Uljanov (i.e..Lenin) introduces the NEP in the 1920s: the rejection of everything Communist (i.e. living misery) by the overwhelming part of the Sowjet population had grown so intense that the Communist parasites were in danger of losing their hosts. So they did what they always do when they find themselves cornered by reality: they temporarily change the tune, mollify and allow for a bit of private enterprise until after some time of laissez-faire they can tighten the bloody screws all the more tightly and this time for good.
        The same holds true for this move by Deng. They had to give their beat-down population something to not lose their power, to garner at least some minimal consent of their governed. If you want to prevent the prisonders from taking your prison down in a revolt, you give them better food, a bit less surveillance and less ordering them around.
        But, if Deng’s and the CPC’s objective had been to really improve the living conditions of their population throughout, they’d have instituted a real free-market-system, allowed for private property, private ownership of precious metals and kept away from government intervention.

      2. “However, the Chinese government has made great strides in lifting people out of poverty.”

        Aaron, I know what you’re saying. But my point is that, and this is in line with Lucretius Carus’ reasoning, that you have to give a people something, otherwise you will get a revolution.
        Heck, Bulgaria was a nice place before the late 1980s from what I hear from my relatives. Everybody had a job, you got retired by age 55, you could afford a house and a decent lifestyle. Where do you think the high ownership rates come from in Bulgaria and other surrounding countries? (and these are true home ownership rates, paid off, unlike the Swiss jokers who just roll over 65% of their mortgage all life long).
        Now, could you get in jail for saying the wrong stuff there? Hell yes. Was there a Stasi equivalent? Of course! “Dyrjavna Sigornost”, which literally means “Staatssicherheit”. Did people disappear? Yes! My great uncle died in Belene camp.
        What I’m trying to say is that China and all these other oh-so great emerging countries do a lot for their people, because they have to, carrot-and-stick style.
        BUT: There’s a huge difference between a prosperous society where government creates a good living standard (which is a ridiculous idea in the first place, because government never produces anything; all it does is steal and redistribute, they just call it “taxation” and “solidarity”) vs. a nation with maximum individual freedom, which is enabled to create a high standard of living through free markets and minimal government intervention. The latter is sustainable, the former isn’t. Why? You can only re-distribute so much, and you can only print so much money. China has a gigantic shadow banking sector, which, I believe, proves my point.
        Plus, what about the whole demographics thing? China is said to grow old before it grows rich.
        Also, this whole social credit system, is just a crazy stupid way of creating order, if that was what they ever aimed for. So many wrong incentives…
        Let people fail in real life. It’s not that much of a big deal. If there’s a modicum of intelligence, then people will become self reliant and will start to take care of themselves. I must say, I do not fully trust the oh-so-high Chinese IQ stats at all, but that’s a different story. It makes you lazy to have a big government fix your life. Look again at Bulgaria: They, and many other ex Soviet countries are suffering (still!) from the same symptoms: “Somebody, please fix my problems.” That’s their attitude, 30 years after extensive nanny-state politics. These people are not free.

      3. In order for a country to improve the quality of life for their citizens, they first need to be able to create value. The German Democratic Republic, for instance, could not produce such a carrot, so they needed to build a wall. That China is able to improve the quality of life of its citizens is proof that the country is doing well. Sure, you can object that this may be misleading due to ghost towns and whatnot, and I certainly think that part of the story we are told is bogus, but if I had to pick a position between Western doom-mongering such as The Economist, which has been running stories on China’s impending demise for over two decades, and the CPC glorifying its achievements, I am biased towards the latter.

  3. One more thing about the DDE (Dog-Eating Empire). Is the smog in Shanghai and their other major cities just Western propaganda? Because I haven’t seen complaints about smog in North American or European cities since I was a kid, so it seems a “nouveau riche” problem nowadays.

    If the DDE doesn’t care about their own people that way, why are we supposed to believe they’ll take care of their “partners” in a non-exploitative way? Hint: we can’t. Maybe abducting stray (and sometimes not stray) dogs for food in our countries true story is seen by them (and some Koreans) as a kindness.

    1. Of course, susbtitute DEE for DDE here. And in the last line, “true story” was supposed to be in parentheses. Too bad I didn’t proof-read my own derogatory term…

  4. The completion of the Battle of Moscow in 1942 had nothing to do with the US entry into WW2, which happened in December 1941 in response to a little event on December 7 called Pearl Harbor. Notably, the December 8 US declaration of war did not include Germany, only Japan, but then Hitler preemptively declared war on the US, which of course reciprocated. War with Germany was probably inevitable (see lend lease program and FDR) but let’s not act like the US sat back and waited to see who would win before jumping in and choosing a side.

    1. The US tried to bait Japan into attacking them so that they would have an excuse to join WWII. If it hadn’t been Pearl Harbor, then a false flag attack would have done the job just as well.

      I would argue that the US only really got involved in WWII with D-Day. This massive offensive came only after Germany was effectively defeated. Thus, I’d argue that my point stands: The US only got involved once victory was certain.

      Another note is that Germany was taken by surprise by the massive armaments the Russians had been building up, with tens of thousands of tanks, for instance. See the Hitler-Mannerheim recording for some interesting details. It seems they didn’t really know what they had gotten into. Thus, pushing forward in Operation Barbarossa and trying to take Moscow was probably partly an act of desperation.

      1. Good point! One should not forget that the Soviet position during the second half of the 1930s was, that they would willingly let the European powers figt each other an get depleted in the process so that they could ultimately get overrun by the red army and thus initiate the world revolution by overtaking Europe (core communist doctrine, who’d have guessed). Ever since the treaties of Brest-Litowsk and Pocarno this used to be the Soviet position. So they did not anticipate the German attack at all. Historic irony indeed, that in 1945 they at least managed to cloud the eastern half of Europe in their darkness…

  5. I fear we’re getting off topic from the original point of the thread at the risk of detracting from it’s main point but here goes…

    My main point was the US didn’t just sit back and calculate “hey Germany is beaten, let’s go”. You say they baited Japan into attacking (I agree the oil embargo was designed to start shit) but also waited to join until it was certain. Well, which is it?

    As far as when the US forces participated, it takes a shitload of time to transition from a peacetime army (due to the convenience of being bordered by two giant oceans protecting from the shitstorm in Europe) to a war time army and US forces fought in Africa in late 1942 and Italy in 1943. Of course US forces did not fight on mainland Europe until 1944 because of the English channel and Rommel’s Atlantic wall. It takes a bit of time to plan and equip an invasion of the size. Plus the US was throwing substantial resources at the Pacific front.

    Finally, to say that it was obvious Germany was beaten in 1942 is employing tremendous hindsight. At the time, it very well may have turned into a stalemate on the Eastern front. Hell, even after D day in 1944 it took almost a year of brutal fighting to defeat the Germans on the Western front.

    1. Japan was a side theater in WWII. We can ignore it for the sake of the argument. The main theater was Europe. The United States supplied the British and the Russians with material via the Lend-Lease Act. I think it is not a stretch to say that they leaned back, let the British and the Russians weaken Germany, and only get involved once German opposition was assumed to be weak.

      Regarding your other point, the Battle of Moscow was a massive military effort that failed. You don’t need to know more than that to know that it decisively weakened Germany as it was a small country compared to the combined might of the Allied forces. Their numbers were not great when they started, so after suffering heavy losses, they, of course, had to be worse.

      Regarding D-Day: Didn’t leading US generals believe that they’d only need about two weeks of fighting to defeat the Germans? I haven’t looked much into the US perspective on WWII, but I vaguely remember coming across such a statement once. In any case, that it took about one more year of fighting was a testament to the tenacity of Nazi Germany. Many fought to their death. This was part of the esprit de corps of the SS, by the way. Meanwhile, in Russia you had NKVD agents in the rear, ready to shoot any Soviet soldier who wanted to retreat or surrender.

      1. Still, the US army had one of the greatest soldies of all time at their helm, i.e. George S. Patton. His campaigns are legendary and if he hadn’t been murdered, most likely post-war European history might have been different.

  6. Aaron, how dangerous do you deem these leftist/antifa idiots? Do you think they can pull off an SS type of “Schlägertrupp” action? I mean, they have no training, but heck, they believe this shit of green/diversity/trans/etc.

    Like, can this movement grow uncomfortably big for us normal people?

  7. On a side note of the US overplaying their hand:

    Aaron, have you seen the recent sales of the S-400? First it was Turkey, and now Serbia:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-threatens-sanctions-serbia-scrambles-thwart-s-400-acquirement

    Seems like he US is pretty pissed, because they can’t sell their overpriced wanna-be stealth bombers. And Russia is just selling defense against their funny not-so-stealth jets.

    “You know, when you have such a weapon, no one would attack you. Neither US nor any other pilots fly where S-400s are operational: Israeli pilots do not fly either over Turkey or Syria, except for the Golan Heights. (…)”

    This is getting interesting. It’s definitely popcorn time.
    Imagine the Balkans and the Middle east getting hard to attack for the US. I mean, I’m no expert, but simply seeing how hard the US tries to make potential buyers of the S-400 (and I understand the S-500 is on its way) abandon and buy their bombers instead is very telling. During the Balkans war, I believe older versions (maybe S-200 it was) did shoot down US stealth bombers. The joke went, that the ones shooting it down used to say “oh, we’re sorry. We didn’t know it was a stealth aircraft” 😀

    1. I wasn’t aware of that, but in a similar context I remember Putin jokingly offering some of their weapons for sale. The technological edge of the US has been lost. I think they are struggling quite a bit, evidence of which is, for instance, that instead of waging all-out wars like in Vietnam or Iraq, they nowadays send small contingents of soldiers and otherwise fund terrorist groups like ISIS, hoping that things will, somehow, turn out in their favor. Had D-Day been carried out like their involvement in Syria, they would have dropped supplies in Spain to arm the communists and hoped for the best.

      1. I think it must be noted that most Western countries simply cannot afford to fight brutal and lengthy wars (as opposed to their colonial days), and this is not only due to the financial strains but in particular due to the lack of young men which could be “spent” for such wars.

        On the contrary many second and third world nations (and the muslim ones in particular) have a large surplus of rather unproductive men which could be easily get disposed of in warfare.

        Kinetic warfare is barbaric anyway as opposed to winning without having to fight, i.e. by means of deception, ideological subversion, disinformation and “Zersetzung”.

      2. “due to the lack of young men which could be “spent” for such wars.

        On the contrary many second and third world nations (and the muslim ones in particular) have a large surplus of rather unproductive men which could be easily get disposed of in warfare.”

        Russia is building robots, so I say, yeah bring it on… If they want to turn their unproductive youth into “Kanonenfutter”, then…

  8. Excellent comment on zerohedge, summing it all up:

    “America thinks Russia is the successor to the Soviet Union. Soviet Union was run by Jews, Georgians and Ukrainians.

    Russians call the shots in Russia….at least militarily. And the military is getting impatient with Putin looking rhe other way whenever Israel wants to do some **** measuring over Syria.”

    The article is good, too:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/escobar-you-say-you-want-russian-revolution

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