> Guns, Germs, and Steel is a really good book. It really isn't. It's more mass market fiction than anything to sell books and take your money than a serious b

> Guns, Germs, and Steel is a really good book. It really isn't. It's more mass market fiction than anything to sell books and take your money than a serious book on history. Nobody in academia takes it seriously. > Another hypothesis I would posit about the evolution of world powers is that WWII Axis members later reached population maximums and declines before Allied powers, and that that somehow shaped their political and situational values to align them together. No. What aligned axis powers together was the existence of dominant empires like the US and Britain. Had nothing to do with population. When most of the world is controlled by the US and Britain and you are a small power wanting to create an empire of your own, it makes sense to join forces against much larger and stronger powers. > It's not obvious until you see population graphs of Japan, Italy and other Axis countries are nearly all in population decline unless other unqiue factors like immigration bolster their numbers. The same applies to the US, Britain, China, Soviet Union ( they were ultimately allies ), etc. The only thing keeping the US population growing is immigration and high immigrant birth rates. The native-born US birth rate has been below replacement since the 1970s.