Posted on 08/15/2019 5:02:54 AM PDT by Kaslin
Some 80 years ago, on Aug. 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, formally known as the "Treaty of non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."
The world was shocked — and terrified — by the agreement. Western democracies of the 1930s had counted on the huge resources of Communist Russia, and its hostility to the Nazis, to serve as a brake on Adolf Hitler's Western ambitions. Great Britain and the other Western European democracies had assumed that the Nazis would never invade them as long as a hostile Soviet Union threatened the German rear.
The incompatibility between communism and Nazism was considered by all to be existential — and permanent. That mutual hatred explained why dictators Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin both despised and feared each other.
Yet all at once, such illusions vanished with the signing of the pact. Just seven days later, on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. World War II had begun.
After quickly absorbing most of Eastern Europe by either coercion or alliance, Hitler was convinced that he now had a safe rear. So he turned west in spring 1940 to overrun Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and the Netherlands.
Hitler accomplished all that relatively easily, failing only to conquer Great Britain with an exhaustive bombing campaigning.
During all these Nazi conquests, a compliant Stalin shipped huge supplies of food and fuel for the German war effort against the West. Stalin cynically had hoped that Germany and the Western democracies would wear themselves out in a wasting war — similar to the four horrific years in the trenches of the Western Front during World War I.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
They were weak. But.... The manpower the Soviets could summon was just eventually overwhelming, combined with an early commitment to total war against Germany. And geographical and environmental (General Winter was a Russian ally; not so for the Wehrmacht) advantages. And finally, if the Germans had come as liberators rather than savage conquerors... And finally finally, strategic blunders, like not withdrawing from Stalingrad when they could, but instead fighting on and ultimately losing over 200K men and supplies there.
Americans were mostly isolationist when it appeared that it was just going to be another stalemate.
But when France fell so quickly, people were suddenly alarmed that Nazi Germany might prevail, and along with their Axis partners, could eventually threaten the US, that was really when the tide began to turn away from Isolationism.
It might have made the difference, alright. For which the USSR thanked us in later years much as the French never forgave us for liberating them.
In fact German military is overrated and most of the time they solely blame Hitler it is covering their own incompetence.
It wasn’t Hitler who made all the wrong decisions.
As for Stalin if not for his purges I don’t think the German invasion had a chance to advance past border skirmishes.
“The German Army in fighting Russia is like an elephant attacking a host of ants. The elephant will kill thousands, perhaps even millions, of ants, but in the end their numbers will overcome him, and he will be eaten to the bone.”
- Colonel Bernd von Kleist, from the early days of Operation Barbarossa.
Agreed on all points.
I find it funny that the Germans were so quick to ridicule the Poles for using Cavalry, when they still were for the most part reliant on horses themselves.
Stalingrad wasn’t the breaking point. The battle of Moscow in winter 1941 was the official end of blizcrieg. And the Germans didn’t know another way to fight a war at this point.
They were only a partly mechanized military relying on 19th century logistics and simply had no chance in a big war.
The German success early in Europe was due to their brazenness and their opponents being sissies.
It also helps when you have another country invading the country you’re fighting from the other side.
Poles could have held out at least long enough to get the Brits and French to help them, had not the Russians invaded Poland from the East.
That’s German supremacism speaking. Poland gave them more troubles than France did relative to its size.
That’s given UK and France were willing to help which I doubt.
True, the September 1939 Campaign was not the cakewalk most think it was. 15,000 Germans were killed. The Poles had established a defensive posture in the Modlin region from which they could have held out for months, had the Russians not invaded.
Yes, but for the Russians it was imperative to invade in order to keep the Germans far from their borders. Didn’t work in a long run.
For the Germans the Polish campaign should have been a warning that things are getting rougher the more East you move.
Later on they were losing more than 15000 KIA a day sometimes.
Thank you.
Most people don’t realize Stalin killed many more people than Hitler did. Both countries should have killed each other, and their ideology off.
True but in terms of govt policy, as Zeihan points out, this is a 20 year “lag” at best. If enacted tomorrow, it wouldn’t change Japan til 2040.
Too late.
No way The Low Countries had the wherewithal to stand up against the Wehrmacht. And I think the Brits and the French were still fighting with World War I tactics, totally unprepared for blitzkrieg and massive armored columns.
And how many men and how much materiel did the French commit to the Maginot Line? Only to have the Germans simply bypass it. Same for the Belgians in some respects. They had huge underground forts. The Germans simply bypassed them or pounded the heck out of them from above, rendering them useless.
Blitzkrieg wasn’t an unknown concept. It was actually the Russians who first used it against the Japanese in China with sweeping success. It was all observed by everyone else. The Europeans who were readying for another WWI should have seen the writing on the wall.
True. Then again, that was the argument used by those who said we couldn't drill our way out of foreign oil dependence in time. And then we started drilling, and muddled our way through until the new oil came online.
I'm thinking a tax credit, both for being married (to encourage them to marry early) and for having kids.
I would propose something like giving the parents a (big) percentage of the tax revenues of the children as a supplement during their retirement.
Yes, this would favor "the rich", but that is PRECISELY the segment of the population which should be encouraged to have lots of children. Ok, so put a ceiling on the per-child tax credit, but not on the number of children you can have to claim it.
Personally, I would like to see the upper-middle-class have ten kids each. And the welfare class have none.
It was a matter of finding oil.
Kids take 20 years . . .
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