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Depends on the single event that led to their victory but you could easily argue that the British Empire would have been better off if it had never gone to war
by chr15p 11y ago
Depends on the single event that led to their victory but you could easily argue that the British Empire would have been better off if it had never gone to war with Germany in 1939. Its a war that basically bankrupted Britain, caused the collapse of the empire, pushed Britain from being the major superpower into second division status, led to the dominance of its major rival (America), and has generally blighted the last 60 years of British history.
Humanity is better off because Germany lost, but Britain? Not so much.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- clarky07 11y agoexcept for the small part you're missing where Britain wouldn't exist at all because it'd be called Germany?
- mrec 11y agoBased on what? The fact that Hitler was an Anglophile and never really wanted to go to war with Britain anyway?
- clarky07 11y agoOn the front page of HN today funny enough. I'm not sure Hitler liked Britain that much actually. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9608528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9608528
- greedo 11y agoActually, WW1 is what led to the demise of the UK, not WW2. WW2 was just the denouement. The generations that were lost on the Somme and Flanders crippled the empire.
- yellowapple 11y agoWWI was the cause of the demise of pretty much all of Europe, directly resulting in heavy generational damage to Western Europe, kickstarting the communist revolution in Russia (which might have been tolerable in and of itself under Leninist or Trotskyist rule, but was then classifiable as "demise" once Stalin was in power), and (in the end) imposing excessive punishments on Germany post-war that caused severe economic problems and spurred the desire for a return to glory - one promised (and briefly realized) by the Nazi party.
- greedo 11y agoIt also led to more centralized economies, and suppression of dissent in the U.S. as well.