4 ms·

> dictating a new European peace at Versailles, would not have credited that Adolf Hitler, a destitute, neurotic would-be artist and gassed veteran of the trenc

> dictating a new European peace at Versailles, would not have credited that Adolf Hitler, a destitute, neurotic would-be artist and gassed veteran of the trench warfare, would within two decades undo their new order and plunge the wo Well, when you're too timid to occupy defeated enemies, you get another war. That's why Russia insisted on occupying Berlin in WW2. A little-known fact is that the USA proposed enslaving Germany, which leaked out and is why there was no chance of peace talks. The USA wanted to decimate the population, deindustrialize Germany and make them peasant farmers. Russia subsequently succeeded in doing that. In a way it's a backhanded compliment to how much the Allies feared them.

mirimir 7y ago
> Well, when you're too timid to occupy defeated enemies, you get another war. The US occupied Germany for decades. At first, very clearly, killing substantial numbers of resistance fighters. And then more subtly and covertly. Its occupying force was ostensibly to ward off the Soviet Union, but there was a domestic role as well. And its policies in Japan were similar. That's the thing about the US. While there are numerous well-known examples of ham-handedness, US interventions have generally been so subtle and covert that their mention is readily discounted as conspiracy theory.