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This article is especially interesting, given it was written before the the US entered the war and before the full extent of Nazi atrocities was known. I'm rem
by tcbawo 11y ago
This article is especially interesting, given it was written before the the US entered the war and before the full extent of Nazi atrocities was known.
I'm reminded of C.S Lewis's speech about the Inner Ring (1944):
http://www.mit.edu/~hooman/ideas/the_inner_ring.htm http://www.mit.edu/~hooman/ideas/the_inner_ring.htm
- arethuza 11y agoI wonder what would have happened if Hitler (who apparently didn't give the matter much thought) hadn't declared war on the US? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States_%281941%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_agai...
- neffy 11y agoThe US would have been spared the embarrassment of not having declared war on the Nazi's, when they did eventually enter the war a few months later. The US was ramping up to enter WW2 long before the end of 1941.
- Animats 11y agoDidn't matter. Pearl Harbor brought the US into the war. If Hitler hadn't attacked Russia, things could have been very different. Hitler thought Russia would be a fast, easy conquest. It wasn't, and Germany found itself in a two-front war. It cost the USSR 20 million dead to beat Germany, and cost Germany 5 million dead, 80% of German casualties. Germany was an ally of Russia until 45 minutes before the attack. Much of Russian paranoia comes from this. If Germany had consolidated its gains on the continent of Europe without trying to expand beyond that, we might today have a Greater Germany covering much of what's now the European Union. Britain would be on the outside, in the position Taiwan is now with respect to China. Russia would be the big power next door, just as it is to China now. Germany could have cut a peace deal with the US and Britain in that situation.
- ptaipale 11y ago> Germany was an ally of Russia until 45 minutes before the attack. Much of Russian paranoia comes from this. Germany was an ally of RUssia, and learned from Soviets much of how to run an extermination camp, and Russian provided Germany with space to practice armor warfare. However, there is considerable debate speculating that Germany's initial success in Barbarossa was simply because the Soviet army was planning to attack Germany on July 6, and therefore its formation was totally arranged for offense, and failed miserably when attacked. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controv... Anyway, the Russian paranoia didn't really need a German betrayal to develop. The Russian military had been internally wiped out in the paranoid purges of 1930's.
- BogusIKnow 11y agoHitler admired the US. One of the reasons to attack Russia was to colonize Eastern Europe the way America was colonized to stand a chance in the future with more agricultural land. With the support of facist governments against communisim around the world after WWII - especially in South America - indeed one could wonder how the US would have reacted without the Pearl and the German War declaration, or a much later German attack on Russia. Not sure it would have taken the communist side some years later.
- tcbawo 11y agoIt wasn't only Germany with plans for colonization. Take the history of Königsberg resettled into Kaliningrad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad_Oblast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad_Oblast), which remains Russia's western-most territory.