Actually, that's the wrong way to do it. The author is advocating abolishing a standing military looking forward, so we have to consider not only what did happen in the past, but what might happen in the future. And in looking at those "might" scenarios, a little bit of historical tweaking and "what ifs" show what might be possible in the future.
They were under strength when they went into the Soviet Union in the first place. Because of this weakness they could not finish the job in 41.
They couldn't finish the job in '41 because they wasted six weeks in Czechoslovakia, which shortened the summer campaign season by the same period. Give the Wehrmacht six more weeks of summer in '41, and Moscow falls.
As far as cross Atlantic invasions go we were in a much stronger position in 44 but still we could not have pulled it off if we didn't have the land mass called England as a huge base and supply depot. Germany would have had no such advantage.
If successful in Europe, Germany would have had the shipbuilding resources of an entire continent. And instead of England, it would use Canada as the staging point. Which is far more convenient relative to an invasion of the U.S. than Britain was for an invasion of Europe.
The truth is that Hitler was too big an idiot to ever have pulled it off. But someone who is more savvy, who would try to work with people they have conquered, could have created a much larger military and been a much bigger military threat.
I might agree with the author that a policy of isolationism may have been prefereable if we'd followed it consistently since the 1800's. But we haven't. Adopting such a policy now, when then clearly are large numbers of extremists who really don't like us, and when Europe looks like it is slowly circling the drain, is dangerous.
We represent only 5% or so of the world's population. To think that we could stand alone, without a standing military, is laughable.
First:
>I might agree with the author that a policy of isolationism may have been preferable if we'd followed it consistently since the 1800's. But we haven't. Adopting such a policy now, when then clearly are large numbers of extremists who really don't like us, and when Europe looks like it is slowly circling the drain, is dangerous.
The old saying is tired but true " If you want out of a hole, first thing stop digging." I'm glad that you do see some error in our foreign policy over the last hundred years. Most I encounter here on FR refuse to admit that much. Since you do I'll engage. Starting with the term "isolation" that is a wide spread but malicious misnomer which has to be corrected. The founding fathers' and today's libertarians believe in "free trade with all and entangling alliances with none" and " not going abroad seeking monsters to destroy." That is not isolation. It is called peaceful interaction. Isolation is what the hermit nation of Japan was in before we sent some gun boats into Tokyo bay to force them open to our merchants.
>Most of the folk over there fall into the same intellectual trap; they confuse acting rationally with assuming that others will act rationally.
>The truth is that many people act irrationally, and you have to take that into account when making your own rational decisions. Too often, the ideologues at Rockwell don't do that. They come up with a nice plan, assume that it will work because other people will react to it based on pure reason and self-interest, and then assert that they've solved a problem. But when people are willing to blow themselves up to reach Paradise and 77 virgins, assuming rational responses to rational stimuli is a pipe dream.
Self interest is a basic instinct. It factors in everything we and others do. As for reason, yes we are capable of it. Even if others are unreasonable we can, using our reason, logically analyze a situation and plan our activities knowing how to handle others based on their M.O. As for foreigners willing to blowing themselves up that is how they believe, fact of the matter. It's only meaningful to us because they are attacking us. We can not properly proceed to deal with that reality without understanding why they attack us. Well the terrorists themselves said why - because we are stationed on their holy land, we war against their brother Arabs and they do not see us as honest brokers in the affairs of the mid east. The obvious conclusion to our troubles would be to remove our forces from their lands and stop meddling in their affairs. We can do business with them quite nicely without having our troops on the ground, toppling their governments, supporting oppressive regimes and interfering with their lives and culture in any way. But no, we will not do any of that as we have long standing plans of getting more involved in the region. Therefore we decide that the whole area needs to be subdued and the entire culture remade to our standards and values. Let me ask you, does the latter course of action really sound achievable and given the mind set of a billion people over there do you think the likely result from our actions will be anything other than more terror? (they use terror becasue they are not strong enough to directly war agaisnt us).
In summation if we are an economic powerhouse it is in other's self interest to have peaceful relations with us. Our size, geographic location and strength makes us so formidable no one would invade our nation as it is not feasible. While we will never live in a trouble free world our troubles would be reduced to practically nil if we did not have far flung military bases and feel the need to project force and meddle in other countries' affairs (which we frequently do to gain business advantage, see General Smedley Butler's War is Racket).
P.S. Not to mention that being a global meddler and policman is a direct threat to our own liberty. The blow back of our policies - terrorism, results in a greater police and survailance state at home which will only grow stronger with each new attack plus we must suffer the burden of higher and higher taxation, debt and inflation to pay for wars, far flund bases, arms races, action building, occupation and buying allies.