23 Sep 06
2 edits
Just a thought crossed my mind while musing over some of the points raised on who won the war I started looking for some stats on US production VS the rest of the world. Someone had a reference once that during the course of the war the US produced some phenomenal figure fcompared to all the allies combined such that you would have to include the axis production just to even out the score.
Anyway couldnt really find it but this caught my eye,
"The wartime economy brought about full employment and, in doing so, achieved what New Deal programs had been unable to do. In 1940, there were 8 million Americans unemployed. By 1941, however, unemployment was almost unheard of. There were actually labor shortages in some industries."
http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/lectures/lecture21.html
This got me thinking. I watched the movie Reds by Warren Beatty a long time ago which suggested that after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution the neighbouring capitalist European countries acted as one to snuff out this proleteriat threat to their generational wealth and hereditary title.
Now I am sure I am not the first to suggest this but could Hitler and his national socialism have been a stooge and a cog in the wheel of a desperate exercise in survival strategy by the banking/industrial powerhouses of Europe to foment a war that would
a) further tax the USSR's capacity to grow and expand. Why else would Hitler have engaged with a second front when England was broke and a sitting duck.
b) get the US's production capacity up to speed. It wiped out US unemployment and built up a glut of savings which because of rationing created and unprecedented spending splurge after the war.
This spending by ordinary US citizens insured and entrenched the capitalist way of life and means of production.
Discuss.
24 Sep 06
Originally posted by kmax87imagine being in adolf's shoes ....
...a) further tax the USSR's capacity to grow and expand. Why else would Hitler have engaged with a second front when England was broke and a sitting duck.... Discuss.
option 1/ attack england, crossing the channel, fighting on english soil, supply lines will be limited by the sea, and risk a land based attack from ussr into berlin.
option 2/ attack ussr, train lines and horses and legs and a few trucks and tanks can move rapidly and be supplies easily. england can only attack over the sea.
i can imagine how this might have looked to be the safe/mad/aggressive option.
further to this ... the ussr became a huge production giant by the end of the war.
24 Sep 06
Originally posted by kmax87If ever a post exemplified a completely dotty hypothesis, this is it.
Just a thought crossed my mind while musing over some of the points raised on who won the war I started looking for some stats on US production VS the rest of the world. Someone had a reference once that during the course of the war the US produced some phenomenal figure fcompared to all the allies combined such that you would have to include the axis product ...[text shortened]... izens insured and entrenched the capitalist way of life and means of production.
Discuss.
Hitler came to power by popular majority vote as a result of the bankruptcy imposed on Germany by the French insistence on the payment of unrealistic war reparations.
Unfortunately the French subsequently made no attempt to stop him occupying the neutral zone between France and Gemany, and proved to be a paper tiger when it came to opposing Hitler after his invasion of Poland. The role of the British PM prior to this was equally cowardly.
Nothing to do with the looney 'thought' which crossed the mind of our 'Strilian contributor.
25 Sep 06
1 edit
Originally posted by flexmoreWiki and others say that from the start of the first five year plan in 1928 the USSR under Stalin went gangbusters, growing faster than Germany had done in the late previous century. During the early and mid thirties it grew steadily while the rest of the world experienced the Great Depression.
imagine being in adolf's shoes ....
option 1/ attack england, crossing the channel, fighting on english soil, supply lines will be limited by the sea, and risk a land based attack from ussr into berlin.
option 2/ attack ussr, train lines and horses and legs and a few trucks and tanks can move rapidly and be supplies easily. england can only attack ove ...[text shortened]... e option.
further to this ... the ussr became a huge production giant by the end of the war.
Stalin saw the buildup to ww2 as a golden opportunity to further the aims of universal communism. Bolshevism/communism was borne out of the chaos that was ww1 and Stalin saw an opportunity.
Why else did Hitler turn on a non aggressive partner with the ink on a ten year agreement hardly dry?
Why after the success of Barbarossa did he then challenge history and the Russian winter and try and starve out Stalingrad?
Why with all their expertise and proficiency and adeptness at Blitzkreig did the German designers and strategists omit to develop a long range bomber with which to crush its northern and western neighbours?
Why so often did Hitler dismiss the plans and advice of his generals and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?
BTW: Churchill was convinced as early as the twenties that communism was a threat that had to be strangled at birth. He warned at the end of ww2 that those that had ignored his insight over Hitler should take his advice over the USSR quite seriously. It has always been said that Hitlers greatest genius was the power of oratory and that in some respects he was a consumate actor. As an Overlord he sucked!
Maybe that was because he only ever was a good actor, dancing to a choreography not of his own making.
25 Sep 06
Originally posted by kmax87These conspiracy theories never seem to stop. Would you like to hear my conspiracy theory? The Jews are God chosen people and, therefore, Satan is out to destroy them, hence he possessed Hitler and then subsequently came to power with the ultimate plan to do so. Not only did Satan end up killing off a bunch of those pesky Jews, he also threw the entire world into war and ended up killing off a large number of those pesky Gentiles as well. Now its the Islamist fundamentalists turn. Crazy huh?
Wiki and others say that from the start of the first five year plan in 1928 the USSR under Stalin went gangbusters, growing faster than Germany had done in the late previous century. During the early and mid thirties it grew steadily while the rest of the world experienced the Great Depression.
Stalin saw the buildup to ww2 as a golden opportunity to furth ...[text shortened]... that was because he only ever was a good actor, dancing to a choreography not of his own making.
25 Sep 06
Originally posted by kmax87a) further tax the USSR's capacity to grow and expand. Why else would Hitler have engaged with a second front when England was broke and a sitting duck.
a) further tax the USSR's capacity to grow and expand. Why else would Hitler have engaged with a second front when England was broke and a sitting duck.
b) get the US's production capacity up to speed. It wiped out US unemployment and built up a glut of savings which because of rationing created and unprecedented spending splurge after the war.
This spend ...[text shortened]... itizens insured and entrenched the capitalist way of life and means of production.
Discuss.
Hitler opened up a second front because he was under the influence of amphetamines. Having received daily injections from his 'doctor'. he was undoubtedly suffering from an amphetamine induced psychosis, causing him to think irrationally.
b) get the US's production capacity up to speed. It wiped out US unemployment and built up a glut of savings which because of rationing created and unprecedented spending splurge after the war.
An interesting theory, but feels like conspiracy to me. I do not believe that anyone could seriously predict this as an outcome for the war. Don't forget that the big banks at the time were quite often British owned. Britain never fully recovered from the war and her status as a World power was almost completely reversed. I find it unlikely that British money men would see this as advantageous. Also, how many Americans died in the War? One would imagine that a vast amount of unemployed persons would have ended up in the armed forces. Whether they were holding guns or filling the vacancies left by people holding guns, times of war generally require the literal support of the whole nation....
25 Sep 06
Originally posted by Bosse de NageThere's a favourite quote of mine that goes along the lines of because they rejected his art, Hitler went away got some friends and returned to tell them what they could do with their's.
Hitler was a cat's paw and dupe of the tightest, most savage mob in town: the art critics.
25 Sep 06
Originally posted by whodeyYes you are.
These conspiracy theories never seem to stop. Would you like to hear my conspiracy theory? The Jews are God chosen people and, therefore, Satan is out to destroy them, hence he possessed Hitler and then subsequently came to power with the ultimate plan to do so. Not only did Satan end up killing off a bunch of those pesky Jews, he also threw the entire wor ...[text shortened]... number of those pesky Gentiles as well. Now its the Islamist fundamentalists turn. Crazy huh?
26 Sep 06
Originally posted by MarinkatombThis also from wiki
An interesting theory, but feels like conspiracy to me. I do not believe that anyone could seriously predict this as an outcome for the war. Don't forget that the big banks at the time were quite often British owned. Britain never fully recovered from the war and her status as a World power was almost completely reversed. I find it unlikely that British money men would see this as advantageous.
"Conspiracism serves the needs of diverse political and social groups in America and elsewhere. It identifies elites, blames them for economic and social catastrophes, and assumes that things will be better once popular action can remove them from positions of power. As such, conspiracy theories do not typify a particular epoch or ideology"
What I find interesting is the readiness for people to dismiss anything as conspiracist that may involve a suggestion of hidden plans drawn up by elite groups, yet we are quite happy to acknowledge the power of developing secret strategies when they are deployed by governments or corporations to gain a winning edge of their competitors.
The construction of national identity has been such a successful exercise that we as ordinary citizens still feel appalled at the notion that the elites of our particular nation may be anything but true and loyal citizens. But why would the elite be beholden to any flag? Their position is that precarious that it would be naive to suggest that they would have any loyalties to anyone or anything but their own interwoven common interests.
A brilliant military strategy having been conceived of and implemented with stealth suggests a conspiracy of sorts. Success in bussiness suggests the well timed release of a well researched and realised product, which also harks of a conspiracy; one that operates against their competitors and one which by catering to your the consumers needs, conspires to make you part with your hard earned to possess it.
So if a plan is subtle and circumlocutous and succeeds, then its success should not be dismissed as implausible if one suggets that it had arrived as a result of conspiracy.
Like any 500 mile Indy race, the odds of anyone winning are astronomical, yet the same teams conspire to grid vehicles that have an advantage over the rest of the field(whether those advantages are legal or not). If the teams conspire well enough and hide their advantage, they can readily overcome the other teams for weeks before they catch up, if they manage to effectively conceal the areas of performanc that they have tweaked
