Posted on 05/08/2008 12:52:50 PM PDT by PurpleMountains
We were prepared and planning in the early 70s.
Without oil, would they have the ability to export their brand a Sharia to the entire world?
Oh please.
For Germany, World War II was about revenge and regaining Germany's "rightful" place in the world.
Japan did not attack Pearl Harbor because of severe pineapple shortages. Japan already had built a raw-material empire in the 1937-1939 period. Widening the war was an ideological decision based on the Shinto nationalist policy of Hakko ichiu.
Wouldn’t taking out Comex be easier? /s
Ditto to the response by thackney.
A. Japan saw the United States as a threat to the continuation of their strategy.
B. Drang Nach Osten. what you state was the excuse Hitler used.
“For Germany, World War II was about revenge and regaining Germany’s “rightful” place in the world.”
There was some of that, yes, but don’t forget that whole “Lebensraum” thing in the east.
probably not. I am only taking issue with the author’s assumption that it is solely about oil. It is the confluence of oil and a thirst for conquest. Without oil, the thrist would still be there, just impotent.
The US/Britain/Holland (Exile)/& Australia briefly formed something called ABDA (America, Britain, Dutch, Australia) to defend the islands & a mixed naval task force was organized. Incidentally, a move against US forces in the Philippines was also expected since those islands sat astride the sea lanes to Japan.
US war plans were geared toward a relief of the Philippines from bases at Pearl & the US west coast. That was until the Japanese turned naval strategy on its head by first raiding Hawaii & destroying the US battlefleet. Once the US Fleet was sunk they could take Indochina, the Philippines, Singapore & the Dutch East Indies without having to worry about US naval intervention.
Japan expected that the US might sue for Peace as the Russians had done in 1905. They also underestimated the rapidity with which the US was able to reconstitute its naval & air power.
Japanese Combined Fleet commander, Yammamoto, said he would "run wild for 6 months, after that, he could guarantee nothing". The elapsed time between Pearl Harbor & the Battle of Midway -- the first major US victory -- almost exactly 6 months.
Fair enough, they would still be dreaming, we just wouldn’t care anymore.
Go to war? How about DRILLING FOR THE STUFF RIGHT HERE?????
That was a slogan - not a reality.
Germany was not overpopulated and desperate for space. Germany was no more densely settled than the UK.
Backward.
Hitler's excuse to the West was that his people needed land because they were unconscionably crowded into the narrow borders imposed on them by the victors of WWI.
At home, his argument was restoring the original boundaries of the German Empire, to undo the humiliation of Versailles and to reassert German greatness.
And that was his motivation - Hitler wasn't driven by a desire for natural resources, he was driven by his ideological demons.
I think you’re largely correct in your assessment of Hitler, but the General Staff of the German Army was mindful of the importance of oil. This is why they shifted the bulk of their mobile forces to the caucuses region when they should have seized Moscow & Leningrad.
As to restoration of the German Empire, there were ethnic Germans living in settlements all through eastern & central europe, all the way to the Volga River. Remanents of communities that got their start during the medievel period when dynastic considerations were more important than ethnicity.
A friend of mine is German. His family traces its roots to the Harz Mountains in Saxony, I believe. Further back his ancestors were ‘guests’ of the Hungarian King somewhere in the Kingdom of Hungary. Taking Hitler’s dream of uniting ethnic Germans under the German State, & his military’s practical need to have oil (Romania), you got what you got.
“Germany was not overpopulated and desperate for space. Germany was no more densely settled than the UK.”
Yes, but they had *plans*.
And the Brits had an empire to populate.
“Without oil, would they have the ability to export their brand a Sharia to the entire world?”
With the help of the MSM, anti-American Americans, and just plain stupid & crooked politicians- yes.
Exactly.
No empire has ever survived without the force of arms and the willingness to use them in its own interests.
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