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Topic: OT - Weird History

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MrNubbz

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Re: OT - Weird History
« Reply #182 on: February 01, 2022, 09:01:07 AM »
I'll admit I've never tasted groundhog, I was just goofing around.  I've also never tasted wool socks or boot leather or rancid fat (that I know of).
Such a sheltered life
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Cincydawg

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Re: OT - Weird History
« Reply #183 on: February 01, 2022, 09:11:42 AM »

Mdot21

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Re: OT - Weird History
« Reply #184 on: February 01, 2022, 10:06:25 AM »
I'm not sure lh320 is actually advocating that position.  Rather, I think he's just pointing out that if the USA were just an average ordinary nation "just chugging along," then there'd be less capability to deliver aid to foreign countries and we'd be best off just keeping whatever limited resources we'd have in that scenario, to ourselves.
Yeah, and there'd also be a lot less wars, killings, & bombings, meddling in foreign countries affairs, toppling of foreign governments, propping up dictators, and in general less horrific shit.

medinabuckeye1

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Re: OT - Weird History
« Reply #185 on: February 01, 2022, 10:56:41 AM »
Then the US would not have ramped up factory production in the 40s, might not have exited the Depression, would not have felt it necessary to develop the A-bomb, therefore would not have become a nuclear superpower and would have lost considerable influence in the world over the ensuing decades.  Would not really have engaged in the Cold War with Russia so likely would not have funneled money into the Space Race and so trillions of dollars worth of innovation would likely never have occurred.

Basically, become a vassal state to China at this point in history.

Far reaching consequences indeed. :)
A lot like China as their economy expands, military power is fundamentally a function of economic power and the US was already the world's largest economy even before WWI.  Just by quick google, it appears that the US became the world's largest economy in 1886.  Now I realize that economists aren't as precise as they think so I wouldn't argue one way or the other if you said it was 1891 or 1881 but I'm near certain that it happened sometime between say 1876 and 1896 so by the time WWI broke out the US had already been in that position for 20-40 years.  Even without the years of trench warfare (assuming a quick German victory over France in 1914) the war still took some toll on the economies of the warring powers.  

Per wiki, GDP in 1990 International Dollars (I have no idea what that means but the denominator isn't really important, I'm more concerned with the relative size):
  • $517 B, USA 
  • $241 B, China (large population, not a rich country)
  • $237 B, Germany
  • $232 B, Russia (cross between China and the rich countries)
  • $225 B, United Kingdom (excluding colonies such as India)
  • $204 B, India (large population, not a rich country much like China)
  • $144 B, France (excluding colonies such as modern Vietnam)
  • $95 B, Italy
  • $72 B, Japan
  • $41 B, Spain

Eastern Europe is listed as a conglomerate with $135 B so it is probably fair to guess that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was 8th, somewhere between France and Italy.  

China, India, and to a lesser extent Russia weren't nearly as wealthy as this makes them appear.  They were very populous so even with a very low per-capita GDP they still had an impressive looking total GDP but that didn't mean that they could actually afford to build and maintain substantial modern militaries to match Germany and the UK.  

Germany lost so much territory after WWII that there were actually MORE Germans living in post-war Germany in 1945 than there had been living in that same geographic area in 1939.  Germany lost a LOT of territory by losing two world wars in the twentieth Century which tends to happen when you invade people and lose.  

A related and interesting question is what would have happened to Austria-Hungary.  Here is a linguistic map of Austrio-Hungarian territory circa 1910.  There are areas with majority:
  • Germans:  Austria proper, the Sudetenland, parts of Hungary, Transylvania, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Galicia.  
  • Hungarians:  Most of Hungary.  
  • Czechoslovakian:  Most of what is now the Czech Republic.  
  • Slovak:  Most of what is now Slovakia.  
  • Polish:  Most of what is now West Galicia.  
  • Ukranian:  Most of what is now East Galicia.  
  • Slovenian:  Most of what is now Slovenia.  
  • Croatian and Serbian:  Most of what is now Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and part of what is now Serbia (the part that wasn't already Serbia).  
  • Romanian:  Most of modern Northern Romania.  
  • Italian:  The area around Tranto and Trieste along with a few parts of modern Croatia.  

Austria-Hungary being on the winning side in WWI and the Hapsburg monarchy continuing beyond 1918 would not have stopped a substantial number of these people from wanting to join or form ethnic nation states with their co-ethnics in Germany, Serbia, Italy, the Ukraine, Poland, etc.  That pressure would have continued to exist and would undoubtedly have eventually led to more conflicts.  

The Germans wouldn't have had foreign ethnic majorities in the Sudetenland and parts of Poland to push them towards war but the Poles would have had that in Germany and a slew of ethnicities would have had that in Austria-Hungary.  It is impossible to predict when or how that would have blown up but I can predict with absolute certainty that it would have blown up.  


Germany, with everything they would likely have gained from victory in WWI would have consolidated their position as the dominant power in Europe and probably had a sufficiently large economy and industrial base to out-produce the UK such that they would have attained at least parity with the Royal Navy sometime in the 1920's or so.  That would have left the UK in quite a precarious position because they are absolutely dependent on imports to survive (they weren't food sufficient even then) and if Germany had a surface Navy large enough to threaten that, the UK would have been practically unable to stand up to anything the Germans wanted.  They'd have been forced to rely on alliances but the French economy isn't all that big, the Russian/Soviet economy isn't all that wealthy, and in this scenario it is safe to assume that the US is pretty strongly isolationist.  

For their part, the Germans would have bordered an explicitly hostile Communist regime to their East so they'd have, at a minimum, felt it necessary to maintain a military strong enough to take on the USSR.  

Still, the US would have had an economy roughly twice the size of the next tier (China, Germany, USSR, UK).  That gives the US an enormous amount of leverage whenever they decide they want to use it.  

If you study British History they had a longstanding internal debate as to whether their foreign policy should be:
  • To essentially act as the leader of Protestantism and help Protestants wherever they were in peril, or
  • To ally themselves with the second strongest power in Europe so as to maximize their influence and check the ambitions of the strongest power in Europe.  In Napoleon's time France was #1 and England was allied with #2 Prussia.  The Franco-Prussian War made it clear that Germany was #1 and the British made a significant shift between 1871 and 1914 to being allied with France and against Germany.  A Germany victorious in WWI is even more obviously #1 but #2 isn't really clear.  France?  Soviet Union?  Italy?  Austria Hungary?  In Napoleonic times this same issue arose as at various times there really wasn't a Continental challenger to Napoleonic France but the British cobbled together enough allies to keep Napoleon occupied and maybe they'd have done the same thing to the Kaiser.  

In short, Europe after a Central Powers victory in WWI would have had all kinds of potential flash-points to start up the next war.  Also, if WWI hadn't been so awful (a quick German victory in France in 1914 would have resulted in vastly less casualties for both sides) then they wouldn't have been so war-averse in the decades after so the next war would probably have come sooner rather than in 1939.  


utee94

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Re: OT - Weird History
« Reply #186 on: February 01, 2022, 10:58:56 AM »
Yeah, and there'd also be a lot less wars, killings, & bombings, meddling in foreign countries affairs, toppling of foreign governments, propping up dictators, and in general less horrific shit.
I don't believe that for a second.  It would just be different countries doing it.

As you are fond of saying, power corrupts.  USA with less power, results in someone else with more power, and therefore more corruption coming from that "someone else."

People are as predictable as the sun setting in the West, the tides, or OAM turning an innocuous discussion into something hateful and anti-religious.

MrNubbz

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Re: OT - Weird History
« Reply #187 on: February 01, 2022, 11:04:00 AM »
HATER,not that there's anything wrong with that
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Cincydawg

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Re: OT - Weird History
« Reply #188 on: February 01, 2022, 11:05:08 AM »
Before WW 2, the US was largely isolationist.  The notion after WW 2 was that we couldn't be any longer, we needed to step in and "help" the rest of the world remain peaceful etc.  Some of that was good, the Marshall Plan.  Then there was the Commie fear, they were taking over the world, so the US reacted to that, obviously.  That led to a number of bad things.  Then the USSR fell and it seemed world peace was upon us, and then it wasn't.

I don't think we will ever step back, though in many ways it makes sense to me as well.  A lot of our military spending is to be able to project power, a lot of power, in a way no other country can match at all.  That means aircraft carriers and a large Navy, plus transports, and a large air force, etc.  The air wing of a carrier costs more than said carrier.  My idea would be to step back and take a long look at where our security needs actually are and then match the military to them, it might well be cyberwar is where we're deficient.  But this isn't going to happen of course.

medinabuckeye1

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Re: OT - Weird History
« Reply #189 on: February 01, 2022, 11:10:48 AM »
People always seem to leave the British Crown off of the hook,prolly because we speak English and German sounds grating .What was it the one Holy Roman Emporer said "I speak Latin to God,Italian to men,French to women and German to my horse." According to the history I've been told is the Royal Navy in WWI had blockaded the Northern German ports and cut the trans atlantic telegraph line to the USA.Hampering communication efforts between the two countries as the US was fed the British version of everything.Between being starved for food and supplies and the reparations from the treaty of Versailles had horrendous consequences for the Central powers and Germany in particular.It greased the skids for the economic collapse that followed leading to civil unrest.The countries children born after 1919 were famished and indeed the coming years grew up much smaller than previous generations.These are the kids that grew up to be soldiers in WWII
This is an interesting take and mostly correct.  Literally the first British act of war in WWI was to cut the transatlantic telegraph cable that didn't run through Britain thus forcing all messages from Europe to run through them.  That allowed them to intercept and decode all German diplomatic cables which ultimately led to their intercepting and publicizing the Zimmerman Telegram.  

According to the rules of war then in effect the British blockade in the manner that it was conducted was theoretically "illegal".  The Germans made the argument that their use of submarines without warning (also "illegal") was a response to the "illegal" blockade.  If the Germans were better at diplomacy they might have been able to present this point in a way that would have been more convincing in the United States and kept the US out of the war.  That absolutely would have led to the German side winning WWI.  

The thing is that there was a lot of support for this position in the US.  There were a LOT of first and second generation Germans, Austrians, etc who still felt sympathy toward their cousins.  Additionally, there were a LOT of first and second generation Irish with NO love for the British.  Outside of Otto von Bismarck, diplomacy just isn't a German strength.  Further, there were a lot of Americans who just wanted to make as much money as possible by selling everything we could make to both sides.  In the event, it turned out that the British and their allies basically bought everything we could make so we didn't really need the Germans and their allies as customers and the British are REALLY good at diplomacy so they painted the submarine as a "illegal" terror weapon murdering noncombatants while downplaying their blockade as strictly military in nature.  

Another thing about the navies in both wars is how completely ridiculously wasteful German production of major Capital Ships was.  The Germans had the world's second largest navy at the outset of WWI but it was so substantially smaller than the British that they had no real chance and only ventured out of port to try to take on elements of the British fleet a couple times.  One of these was Jutland of course which was a tactical German victory (their ships were very good and they sunk a lot more than they lost) but a strategic British victory (because they had more to lose).  Similarly the German Capital ships in WWII were also very good (Bismark sunk Hood) but so insanely outnumbered as to be basically useless (the British sent something like a dozen BB's and a bunch of CV's and other ships out to get Bismark and sunk it).  If the Germans had used the massive amount of resources that it took to build those capital ships to build submarines instead they probably would have had enough submarines to starve the British into submission.  

medinabuckeye1

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Re: OT - Weird History
« Reply #190 on: February 01, 2022, 11:12:05 AM »
The Guns of August is a very readable book about the origins of WW One.  Part of the issue, a large part, were the security agreements between various nations that collided.  Britain for example had guaranteed Belgium, and the German Schlieffen plan involved a wheel attack through Belgium into the French proper.  Russia had guaranteed Serbia, Austria wanted to punish Serbia.  Germany was on the side of Austria.  France was on the side of Russia.  Dominoes. 

A weird thing is that the King of England, the Kaiser, and the Tsar, had the same grandmother, they were first cousins. 

The Terms Kaiser and Tsar come from Caesar, which in latin is pronounced with a hard C, Kaiser.
One of my all-time favorite books.  As @Cincydawg stated, it is very readable.  Also, it doesn't concern itself much with the military part of things.  Rather, the book is mostly about all the diplomatic efforts to avoid the war.  

medinabuckeye1

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Re: OT - Weird History
« Reply #191 on: February 01, 2022, 11:12:43 AM »
😎 never knew that Hatfields/McCoys.Speaking of McCoy got a book on DB Cooper and I'm convinced this was the guy.
DB Cooper,The Real McCoy only a few pages in but picked it up after watching quite a few YT videos
That is a fascinating story isn't it.  Nobody knows if he survived the jump or not but if he did that is outright amazing.  

Cincydawg

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Re: OT - Weird History
« Reply #192 on: February 01, 2022, 11:19:45 AM »
The German navy in WW 2 was in part finger in the eye and in part a PR campaign.  Hitler liked BIG stuff, and he liked the prestige of BIG ships.  They did build "surface raiders", basically battlecruisers intended to intercept British shipping, and they were somewhat effective early.  But, yes, the U boats were far more tactically effective and efficient.  Their one aircraft carrier was a silly expense (never finished).


MrNubbz

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Re: OT - Weird History
« Reply #193 on: February 01, 2022, 11:23:31 AM »
That is a fascinating story isn't it.  Nobody knows if he survived the jump or not but if he did that is outright amazing. 
One retired Agent thinks he did.He was on Expedition Unknown about 2 yrs back and he thinks DB jumped in the desert outside of Reno.There were letters sent to the Newspapers at the time - he got out of Dodge 1st.There is a lot of brush and the desert would have provided a much softer landing with lights seen for miles to make a safe get away.Made a very plausible case.Another guy was an airline emplyee named kenny Christiansen
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medinabuckeye1

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Re: OT - Weird History
« Reply #194 on: February 01, 2022, 11:28:46 AM »
I don't know much about WWI or what led to it outside of the ArchDuke Ferdinand getting whacked in the Balkans.But it was explained to me by a history teacher years ago that WWII sprung fom WWI which sprang from centuries of European Kingdoms colliding, reforming and colliding again and so on and so forth.So not sure one side was all right or all wrong but one was definitely left to foot the butchers bill .So when the chattering ebola chimp Adolph weaseled past the Proletariat telling the digruntled things they wanted to hear as the economy started picking up they were all ears.They couldn't know at the time little by little he was leading them to Dante's Inferno
WWII most definitely sprung from WWI.  The highly punitive Treat of Versailles provided Hitler with an enemy that nearly all Germans hated.  Hitler didn't make up the Sudetenland, for example.  Rather, it was an ethnically German-majority area of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire that had been given to the Czechs at the end of WWI.  The German majority that lived there wanted to be aligned with their co-ethnics in either Austria or Germany.  This isn't to say that Hitler was right, just that the victorious allies in WWI gave him a LOT of ammunition.  

Similarly, at the end of WWI when the Hapsburg Empire collapsed all of the nationalities that made it up mostly got their own nation-states or got attached to pre-existing neighboring nation-states.  Interestingly, the Germans in Austria proper, the Sudetenland, and a few other majority-German areas initially created "The Republic of German Austria" with the express intention of merging with their co-ethnics in Germany.  The victorious allies vetoed the merger, chopped the Sudetenland out of their territory, and made them drop the "German" from the name.  Less than 20 years later Hitler's Anschluss accomplished the merger and his Munich Agreement with the British and French got the Sudetenland.  

I've read about strongly anti-Nazi Germans for whom this caused a lot of problems.  They hated the Nazi's but nearly all of them wanted the merger with Austria, to get the Sudetenland, to remilitarize the Ruhr, etc.  Those things made Hitler and the Nazi's very popular in Germany which helped to limit the possibility of any kind of coup to take them out.  

Yes, he was leading them into Dante's Inferno but it certainly didn't seem like it in 1938 and early 1939 when the rest of the world was in an Economic Depression and Germany had a fast-growing economy and massive territorial gains reversing many of the losses of WWI.  Very few people could look deeper and see that their economy was a house of cards built on massive unsustainable military spending and that their enemies were starting to catch up militarily and prepare for a fight in which Germany would be hopelessly outnumbered.  

All the way until the end of 1942 the Nazi regime's decade in power seemed to have been great for Germany and even in 1943 only people who had a really good understanding of world events could see the coming catastrophe.  By 1944 it was far to late to do anything about it.  Even if the July 20 plot had succeeded the Allies had already hardened their stance and it is doubtful whether anything less than Unconditional Surrender would have been acceptable.  

Cincydawg

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Re: OT - Weird History
« Reply #195 on: February 01, 2022, 11:31:54 AM »


The War with Germany, A Statistical Summary, Chapters 8-10, Appendix, Index. (gwpda.org)

A very sobering sight in every French town or village is a marker with the names of the dead on it.  They lost massively in this war.

 

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