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Devoting 25% of their economy to the military was how they stuck around to begin with. You need a pretty big military to keep half of Europe under your thumb fo
by mannerheim 4y ago
Devoting 25% of their economy to the military was how they stuck around to begin with. You need a pretty big military to keep half of Europe under your thumb for half a century. Operation Danube involved about half a million men at its peak.
- jojobas 4y agoHalf a million is just the tip of the iceberg. Their workforce was around 100 million, the estimates were that >25 million were working for the military, including 83% of all research scientists/engineers.
- mannerheim 4y agoWell, that's the personnel involved in the operation, and you need supporting personnel as well, and of course you need to be able to run these operations should anybody else get the same idea as the Czechs and the Hungarians... Maintaining an empire ain't cheap.
- jojobas 4y agoWell maybe, if they didn't devote 25% of everything to keeping everybody under their thumb, they could maintain their living standards high enough for people to not want out?
- mannerheim 4y agoIf they didn't devote 25% of everything keeping everybody under their thumb, that would have shrunk their economy considerably if anyone actually escaped. Which we eventually witnessed.