Posted on 08/06/2007 12:56:08 PM PDT by Philistone
This is the third time I've run across this argument on some moonbat chat board in the last few weeks:
The most likely outcome of World War I sans our misguided participation would have been a stalemate with both sides exhausted from 5 years of trench warfare. The rise of Hitler and Mussolini probably would have been precluded. Thus there never would have been a second world war.
Playing with counterfactuals is always pointless as no logical conclusion can ever be drawn from them (since, by definition, one of the premises is false).
Despite the lack of historical or even philisophical rationale, these arguments keep popping up. Is this the way American History is being taught these days?
Oops. Too used to writing my screen name!
:blush:
Yes, it is mental masturbation, but when it starts to take the same form all over the moonbat web, you have to wonder where the porn originated.
I used to own PB, but for an old Apple II I think. It was a fun game. Victoria, by Paradox in Sweden is much more detailed.
I've tried to make that point. You know how hard it is to try to reason with people that think that the latter would have been a good thing?
Hitler needs the Depression to make the German middle class sufficiently desperate to try anything to escape the economic and political chaos they were living through. No depression, and a prosperous Germany is unlikely to be susceptible to Hitler’s xenophobic, antisemitic propaganda line. No Hitler, no “Gathering Storm” (as Churchill termed it) in Europe in the late 1930s and 1940s. Germany remains prosperous and eventually pays off the reparations it owes to France and Great Britain. Mussolini finds himself isolated politically in Europe and his overseas adventures are opposed by an effective League of Nations.
However ... does Germany continue to rearm (something it was already doing in secret during the Wiemar Republic) and how does France and the United Kingdom react when it is finally discovered/revealed? How does all of Europe react to the nascient power of the Soviet Union once it gets through the bloody throes of collectivizing and industrializing Soviet society? How does Europe react to the civil war in Spain? Is there even a civil war in Spain? Without Germany and Italy to take some of the diplomatic heat off of it, does Japan eventually yield to international diplomatic pressure and withdraw its forces from China? Does Chang Kai Shek (sp) finish hunting down and killing every last Communist he can get his hands on in China (as he had been before being so rudely interrupted by the Japanese)? Without the growing threat in Asia and Europe, does the United States embark on the most massive military buildup in its history? Even more important, do I get still get to be born if there is no Baby Boom following the non-WWII?
Yeah, you’re right. You can play this game all day and it is fruitless. Better to think about the future and how the "real" past continues to influence it.
I was talking about WWI where Germany was kicking the crap out of Russia but pulled back to send troops to the western front. If Germany had kept up the pressure Lenin would have never got back to Russia and the there would have been no October Revolution and no Red Army.
If the US had not entered WWII and helped supply the USSR, the USSR would have repulsed Germany but not have been able to finish Germany off.
Ummm...your history is a bit off there.
The GERMANS SENT Lenin back to Russia. Deliberately. To foment revolt.
The Russians, essentially, surrendered to Germany in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk - they gave up the Ukraine, Western Russia, etc. etc. The fighting Stopped. Then the Germans transferred troops to the Western front for the Spring 1918 offensives.
Without US involvement, the Germans would have won the war. Then the Germans would have eventually outbuilt the Britisn and defeated them at sea, and you likely would have had a long term cold (or hot) war for global domination between Germany and the US.
If you look at the Spring 1918 German offensives I think without the morale boost of knowing hordes of Americans were on the way, the Germans would have made a decisive breakthrough and won the war. As it was they did make huge gains.
You’re right about the effect on morale, and the American presence did cause Germany to put their attack window in the spring , knowing that by fall they would have no chance.
But you’re right, the author is an idiot.
Possible, even if I doubt it.
Britian would have been forced to come to an accommodation without US support. Without the increasing effectiveness of Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force, the Luftwaffe would not have been forced to pull back off of the Eastern Front in 1943, delaying the Red Army's offensive for as much as a year.
I do not see how the most effective aid (heavy trucks) that the US gave the USSR would not have gotten to them even without Lend Lease (would either have been bought on the open market, or given by leftists in US). The biggest wild card is what happens to Vichy France as the Wehrmakt is ground to hamburger in the east and stories of Soviet Atrocities are trumpeted by Germany throughout the non-communist world.
i liked how my WWI book ends:
It was over. The armistice went into effect at eleven A.M. on November 11. Not everyone on the Allied side was pleased. “No no no!” Mangin exclaimed when he learned of the terms. “We must go right into the heart of Germany. The armistice should be signed there. The Germans will not admit that they are beaten. You do not finish wars like this... It is a fatal error and France will pay for it!”
Okay, I get your point. However, there really was no Red Army in existence in 1917/1918, so I assumed you were referring to WWII, when it was very much in existence.
The hyperinflation peaked in 1923 and the depression started in 1929. The Weimar Republic had its best years in between.
You are correct that the depression led to the rise of Nazism to power, but the depression neither caused nor was caused by the hyperinflation.
(Ironically, in the interval between Hitler’s installation as Prime Minister in 1932 and his assumption of full dictatorial powers in 1934 (following Hindenburg’s death and the oh-so-convenient Reichstag fire), the economic reforms instituted by the Wiemar government finally took hold and began to turn the German economy around. But by then it was the Nazis that would get the credit.)
Hitler became Chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933. The Reichstag fire (which really wasn't planned by the Nazis, though they took full advantage of it) occurred on Feb. 27 of '33, and the Enabling Act giving Hitler dictatorial power was passed on March 23 of '33.
Rather than two years, all these events took place in less than two months.
But they didn't feel the need to do so until the USA was definitely entering the war. The October revolution and Treaty of Brest-Litovsk directly followed the return of Lenin and I postulate that this happened because of Germany's well founded worry over the entry of the USA into the war.
The Red Army (Russian: Рабоче-Крестьянская Красная Армия, Raboche-Krest'yanskaya Krasnaya Armiya; RKKA, full translation Workers' and Peasants' Red Army) were the armed forces first organized by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War in 1918 (Jan. 28) and that, in 1922, became the army of the Soviet Union. -Wikipedia
These were the forces led by Leon Trotsky against the White forces. Had Germany not been defeated in 1918 they would have been in Trotsky's rear as he tried to defeat the White forces.
Ludendorff was two days' march from Paris before the US became a factor.
Odds are quite good that he would have been able to take Paris.
Had he done that, all bets are off.
I’m sure they would have made a mistake which would have caused them to fail in their objective.. just like almost every other offensive had ended the same way.
But who knows.
It’s pretty easy to tell the future 90 years after it’s already taken place.
You can say it's all nonsense, and the people who indulge in it have a lot of time on their hands to waste, but "What if WWI never happened?" "What if the Germans won the 1914 war?" and "What if the US never entered WWI?" are classic counterfactuals, along with the ever popular "What if the South had won the Civil War?"
My guess is that these are the kind of questions people ask after particularly destructive wars. If it all seems like science fiction, it's very much that as well. The only SF I could stomach as a kid was the historical stuff: time travel and counterfactuals.
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