How Good Was the Good War?

[GDollars37]

[quote]Sifu wrote:
orion wrote:
Funny that the actual historians at that site treat Buchanan’s book with much more respect than you do.
One thing I learned when I lived in Germany is you Germans put a lot of value on titles. Just because I am not an “actual historian” does not mean that I can’t use the knowledge I have gained from studying history to formulate my own opinions and reach my own conclusions.

There is a real problem with trying to second guess history like Buchanan is doing. There were bad things that happened in WW2 but there is some good that came out of it also. ie It is bad that millions of people died, but it really gave us something to think about during the cold war.
[/quote]

Huh? “Second-guessing”, i.e. revising accepted wisdom, is basically how the study of history proceeds.

What would have been the result of the war not being fought then? How would Roosevelt have been able to finance and develop the Mahattan project in secrecy without the war going on? The peace that Buchanan suggests we would have enjoyed might have seen Germany become armed with atomic weapons and rockets to deliver them with and the US with nothing to match them with.

Especially the story of Munich is so incredibly wrong it is often laughable, and so is this remember Munich BS.

Do you remember Woodrow Wilson the guy that lead the US into WWI to make the world safe for democracy?

Well, part of his involvement in WWI was that the Germans in CS had the RIGHT to vote whether they wanted to join Germany or not.

I thought Czechoslovakia was a new country that was carved out of Austria Hungary at the end of World War 1. The Sudetenland was never a part of Germany. So you aren’t making much sense here.

Right. But remember that Hitler was an Austrian.

There was no question how they would vote.

Not only that, noone had the military capacity to stop Germany.

So what should they have done?

Ignore the narrative that had lead to the US joining WWI? Suddenly declare that people had the right to choose their own fate unless they did not like the outcome?

Munich was sensible diplomacy and the only one who did not like the result was Hitler.

I would not like to know who would have won the war when it had started 1-2 years earlier and all of Germany up and in arms because they were denied to vote whether or not the German Sudetes were to join Germany.

It would have gone badly for the Germans. The Czech had fortresses built into the mountains that the Germans would have had to fight uphill against. They would have made the Germans pay dearly for vitory. If the British and French had gotten in on it while the Germans were slugging it out with the Czechs it would have been bad for the Germans.

The actual scarier prospect would have been how things would have gone if the was had started a year later. That one year would have meant that the Germans would have had operational sooner in the war. The benefits to the navy of an extra year or two of peace would have been significant also. The Bismark and Tirpitz would have been operational sooner along with one or two sister ships and the follow on class of ships that was bigger and more advanced would have been building. More importantly they would have had at least one aircraft carrier which would have been a gamechanger.

Germany would only have been worse off the longer it took to go to war. German industry was never fully mobilized the way Britain’s, America’s and Russia’s were. Extra time for the West and USSR to rearm would only have made the Wehrmacht’s task that much harder.

And the naval stuff is irrelevant, a couple more commerce raiders or even a German aircraft carrier would not have changed anything, the Royal Navy was not in any real danger of losing control of the Atlantic’s surface.

[GDollars37]

[quote]Sifu wrote:
The Kaiser was a totalitarian dictator. France and Britain were democracies who had a lot more in common with the US than the Kaiser.
[/quote]

No offense, but your study of history is either minimal or from very questionable sources. The Kaiser was not a totalitarian dictator. In fact, he was almost a figurehead in the latter part of the war, when Ludendorff was essentially a military dictator.

And Britain and France’s ally Russia was far more of an autocracy than Imperial Germany ever was.

The US would not have been in a good position with the whole of Europe under a German dictatorship and all of the colonial possessions of the Europeans owned by the Kaiser.

America would not have been in a good position with the Kaisers army and navy stationed in Canada, Bermuda, Bahamas, Belize, Guyana, etc…

How do you get from American nonintervention to German troops ruling the world? Even if we assume that the Germans ended up with the unconditional surrender of all of their enemies (highly unlikely), we’re talking about a nation of 80 million people. The Germans didn’t have enough troops for their East African holdings, let alone Canada! The suggestion that America was in any real danger from Imperial Germany is laughable.

Even when Britain was at the peak of its power, with complete control of the seas and colonies or Dominions on our borders, the U.S. was never in any danger of a British invasion. It’s math + common sense. We have been blessed by geography.

[quote]
America would have had no export markets and been facing a worldwide hegemony that could crush it.

Suggesting America could have survived staying out of world war one is ridiculous.[/quote]

Again, what are you basing this on? America’s prime competitor for market share pre-war was Britain, because they competed in similar areas, while the Germans stayed closer to home (Central and Eastern Europe).

[Zap_Branigan]

[quote]mharmar wrote:
Wait people actually take Pat Buchanan seriously?[/quote]

Serious people do not.

[Headhunter]

[quote]dhickey wrote:
Does anyone have any suggestions on good books on WW1. I haven’t found anything that gives conclusive evidence on what actually started WW1. From what I’ve read it appears to be a bit of a mystery and that seems bizzar to me.

[/quote]

Finding out what really happens is difficult or impossible. Mainstream historians won’t say anything outrageous, even if true, since it would lead to ridicule from colleagues/no tenure/no publication. Look what happens to scientists who even mention Intelligent Design.

Sometimes, the truth does leak through. In Churchill’s autobiography, he talks about arranging things so American sailors would be deliberatly put at risk to hopefully bring America into WWI. He talked about charging surfacing subs, to force German crews to always fire from underwater, so they’d hopefully make a mistake and hit an American vessel. He was a criminal.

[Sifu]

dhickey

The war on the western front was a stalemate until Russians pulled out. Then the Germans pulled a million battle hardened soldiers off of the eastern front and threw them at the western front where they were able to break through the British and French lines.

The American army had been in France for a while before this but they had not been fighting, because there was an arguement over who should lead the American troops in battle. The British and French wanted to use the Americans as replacement for all their troops they had lost.

The American position was that American troops would be under the command of American generals or they would not fight. The British and French gave in to this demand when the Germans unleashed their troops from the eastern front.

The American troops getting into the fight saved the situation for the allies. Without the American army the Germans most likely would have won.

Gdollars,

It is one thing to take a new look at history and revise our ideas. What Buchanan is saying though is that the war was unneccessary, that we instead could have had a peaceful coexistance with Hitler and everything would have been hunkydorry forever and ever. The end.

Hitler had symptoms of Parkinsons in the late thirties. It was a virtual death sentence then. It is thought that this was why Hitler accelerated his timeline for starting world war two and it is also why he rushed into Russia before he had the British finished off.

Buchanan is selling people a fantasy tale and idiots are giving him money for it. Hitlers ideology saw the conquest of the east as Germany’s destiny and he was going to be the one to fulfill that destiny. Some American isolationist group on the other side of the Atlantic was going to dissuade him.

In WW1 the Kaiser did lose a lot of power towards the end of the war to the generals. The point I was trying to make was that the Germans were not a democracy like the British or the French. Unlike Hitler the Kaiser had a massive navy that could have projected his power across the Atlantic.

It might to have been practical to put an army into Canada but he could have tried and enforce his ownership. Most likely the US would have invaded Canada, which would have caused problems with the Kaiser.

[dhickey]

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Does anyone have any suggestions on good books on WW1. I haven’t found anything that gives conclusive evidence on what actually started WW1. From what I’ve read it appears to be a bit of a mystery and that seems bizzar to me.

Finding out what really happens is difficult or impossible. Mainstream historians won’t say anything outrageous, even if true, since it would lead to ridicule from colleagues/no tenure/no publication. Look what happens to scientists who even mention Intelligent Design.

Sometimes, the truth does leak through. In Churchill’s autobiography, he talks about arranging things so American sailors would be deliberatly put at risk to hopefully bring America into WWI. He talked about charging surfacing subs, to force German crews to always fire from underwater, so they’d hopefully make a mistake and hit an American vessel. He was a criminal.

[/quote]

I’ve gathered this much and am not a Churchill fan. He sure played Wilson like a fiddle though.

I am having a hard time finding a plausable theory as to the start of WW1. It’s a little frustrating.

[orion]

[quote]Sifu wrote:
orion wrote:
Funny that the actual historians at that site treat Buchanan’s book with much more respect than you do.
One thing I learned when I lived in Germany is you Germans put a lot of value on titles. Just because I am not an “actual historian” does not mean that I can’t use the knowledge I have gained from studying history to formulate my own opinions and reach my own conclusions.

There is a real problem with trying to second guess history like Buchanan is doing. There were bad things that happened in WW2 but there is some good that came out of it also. ie It is bad that millions of people died, but it really gave us something to think about during the cold war.

What would have been the result of the war not being fought then? How would Roosevelt have been able to finance and develop the Mahattan project in secrecy without the war going on? The peace that Buchanan suggests we would have enjoyed might have seen Germany become armed with atomic weapons and rockets to deliver them with and the US with nothing to match them with.

Especially the story of Munich is so incredibly wrong it is often laughable, and so is this remember Munich BS.

Do you remember Woodrow Wilson the guy that lead the US into WWI to make the world safe for democracy?

Well, part of his involvement in WWI was that the Germans in CS had the RIGHT to vote whether they wanted to join Germany or not.

I thought Czechoslovakia was a new country that was carved out of Austria Hungary at the end of World War 1. The Sudetenland was never a part of Germany. So you aren’t making much sense here.

There was no question how they would vote.

Not only that, noone had the military capacity to stop Germany.

So what should they have done?

Ignore the narrative that had lead to the US joining WWI? Suddenly declare that people had the right to choose their own fate unless they did not like the outcome?

Munich was sensible diplomacy and the only one who did not like the result was Hitler.

I would not like to know who would have won the war when it had started 1-2 years earlier and all of Germany up and in arms because they were denied to vote whether or not the German Sudetes were to join Germany.

It would have gone badly for the Germans. The Czech had fortresses built into the mountains that the Germans would have had to fight uphill against. They would have made the Germans pay dearly for vitory. If the British and French had gotten in on it while the Germans were slugging it out with the Czechs it would have been bad for the Germans.

The actual scarier prospect would have been how things would have gone if the was had started a year later. That one year would have meant that the Germans would have had jets operational sooner in the war. The benefits to the navy of an extra year or two of peace would have been significant also. The Bismark and Tirpitz would have been operational sooner along with one or two sister ships and the follow on class of ships that was bigger and more advanced would have been building. More importantly they would have had at least one aircraft carrier which would have been a gamechanger.

The logical conclusion is there are way too many variables to second guess the war with any accuracy. To be as adamant as Buchanan is that it would have worked out wonderfully if we had stayed out of the war is illogical.

[/quote]

The Sudetes were undeniably German. Whether they ever had been part of Germany or not is not the issue, the issue is that the narrative for the US entry in WWI was that people could choose their own fates.

According to the treaties after WWI minorities had the right to vote on to which state they wanted to belong to, that happened in Austria twice.

So the Sudetes had every right to join Germany, by the very conditions the winners of WWI had forced upon Austria and Germany.

Then noone in Europe was ready to fight a war, except for the Germans.

Germany practically routed the Polish in days and defeated France and the British expedition force in weeks.

To think that an ethnically and politically divided country with a large German minority would have been able to stop the German juggernaut is a fantasy, given that fascist organizations were only to eager to revolt at the first sign of a German attack.

[GDollars37]

[quote]Sifu wrote:
dhickey

The war on the western front was a stalemate until Russians pulled out. Then the Germans pulled a million battle hardened soldiers off of the eastern front and threw them at the western front where they were able to break through the British and French lines.

The American army had been in France for a while before this but they had not been fighting, because there was an arguement over who should lead the American troops in battle. The British and French wanted to use the Americans as replacement for all their troops they had lost.

The American position was that American troops would be under the command of American generals or they would not fight. The British and French gave in to this demand when the Germans unleashed their troops from the eastern front.

The American troops getting into the fight saved the situation for the allies. Without the American army the Germans most likely would have won.
[/quote]

You’re overstating the case. Strategically, yes, American entry compelled the Germans to launch Operation Michael and the following offensives that ultimately lost them the war. But on the ground, our soldiers played a valuable role, but it was the British Army that defeated the Germans in battle and won the war.

Gdollars,

It is one thing to take a new look at history and revise our ideas. What Buchanan is saying though is that the war was unneccessary, that we instead could have had a peaceful coexistance with Hitler and everything would have been hunkydorry forever and ever. The end.

Have you read Buchanan’s book? I’d suggest at least reading the articles I linked to, which explain that Buchanan’s point is that the USSR and Nazi Germany were destined to go to war, and that the war in the West was unnecessary.

It’s certainly debatable, and I think one of the pieces linked, maybe the Cato guy, says that it would have been extremely risky to depend upon mutual exhaustion or a pyrrhic victory on the Eastern Front.

But that argument is very different from “we instead could have had a peaceful coexistence with Hitler and everything would have been hunkydorry forever and ever.” It really sounds like you didn’t read the original link, let alone Buchanan’s book (in fairness, I have not read the book yet either).

Hitler had symptoms of Parkinsons in the late thirties. It was a virtual death sentence then. It is thought that this was why Hitler accelerated his timeline for starting world war two and it is also why he rushed into Russia before he had the British finished off.

Buchanan is selling people a fantasy tale and idiots are giving him money for it. Hitlers ideology saw the conquest of the east as Germany’s destiny and he was going to be the one to fulfill that destiny. Some American isolationist group on the other side of the Atlantic was going to dissuade him.

In WW1 the Kaiser did lose a lot of power towards the end of the war to the generals. The point I was trying to make was that the Germans were not a democracy like the British or the French.

It’s an irrelevant point, given the restrictions on the franchise in Britain, the limited parliamentary nature of German government, and the fact that Allied Russia was the most authoritarian power in the war.

Unlike Hitler the Kaiser had a massive navy that could have projected his power across the Atlantic.

It might to have been practical to put an army into Canada but he could have tried and enforce his ownership. Most likely the US would have invaded Canada, which would have caused problems with the Kaiser.

Buchanan is dealing in large hypotheticals. You are dealing in absurdities.

[Headhunter]

[quote]dhickey wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Does anyone have any suggestions on good books on WW1. I haven’t found anything that gives conclusive evidence on what actually started WW1. From what I’ve read it appears to be a bit of a mystery and that seems bizzar to me.

Finding out what really happens is difficult or impossible. Mainstream historians won’t say anything outrageous, even if true, since it would lead to ridicule from colleagues/no tenure/no publication. Look what happens to scientists who even mention Intelligent Design.

Sometimes, the truth does leak through. In Churchill’s autobiography, he talks about arranging things so American sailors would be deliberatly put at risk to hopefully bring America into WWI. He talked about charging surfacing subs, to force German crews to always fire from underwater, so they’d hopefully make a mistake and hit an American vessel. He was a criminal.

I’ve gathered this much and am not a Churchill fan. He sure played Wilson like a fiddle though.

I am having a hard time finding a plausable theory as to the start of WW1. It’s a little frustrating.[/quote]

The British ambassador had a conversation with Wilson, telling him that sub warfare was starving Britain (documented), and Britain would soon have to ask for peace. Of course, bonds issued by Britain/France would fall in value and Germany would be the hegemon. The Morgan interests were horrified (documented), and arranged for a Cunard ship (the Lusitania) to take an eventful trip (again, documented).

Read Geffen’s Monster From Jekyll Island. He’ll be ridiculed by others on this site (remember, if the truth is outrageous, its attacked, for reasons I gave above.) The quotes are well-documented, but that doesn’t matter to the Kool Aid drinkers.

[Headhunter]

The goal of warfare is to keep every country, or bloc, about equal in strength. Then, the respective governments can keep endless wars going. War is the means by which governments convince citizens to surrender their wealth and freedoms, for the ‘common good’ (which is laughable).

Have none of you read ‘The Report from Iron Mountain’? And no, its not a hoax, its a leak.

[Zap_Branigan]

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
…

Have none of you read ‘The Report from Iron Mountain’? And no, its not a hoax, its a leak.[/quote]

The author admitted it was a hoax. You need to get off those conspiracy websites.

[PRCalDude]

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
…

Have none of you read ‘The Report from Iron Mountain’? And no, its not a hoax, its a leak.

The author admitted it was a hoax. You need to get off those conspiracy websites.[/quote]

Yes.

[Headhunter]

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
…

Have none of you read ‘The Report from Iron Mountain’? And no, its not a hoax, its a leak.

The author admitted it was a hoax. You need to get off those conspiracy websites.[/quote]

Why is him saying it was a hoax taken to be the truth, yet the huge report he wrote is false? He’s being honest when he says things you agree with?

Have you seen it? Must have had nothing to do for those weeks/months…

[Zap_Branigan]

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
…

Have none of you read ‘The Report from Iron Mountain’? And no, its not a hoax, its a leak.

The author admitted it was a hoax. You need to get off those conspiracy websites.

Why is him saying it was a hoax taken to be the truth, yet the huge report he wrote is false? He’s being honest when he says things you agree with?

Have you seen it? Must have had nothing to do for those weeks/months…

[/quote]

I have seen it. I have read it. I have the .pdf on my hard drive somewhere. It is pretty blatant it is a satirical piece.

[The_Mage]

There is one thing we should know about WWII. And interestingly we have only learned of it recently.

Japan successfully detonated a nuke. It actually occurred between the dropping of our bombs.

Once they surrendered they went to work destroying all evidence of this. But some of the documents were saved, and actually brought to America. They were found at the death of a physicist who worked on the project.

We knew that Germany was sending 1,235 pounds of 77 percent pure uranium oxide to japan. (If the link I found is correct.) It was thought that they were planning on dropping a “dirty bomb” on America. But the reality was much worse.

Just think how close we came. Little changes or delays in history and the world would be a different place.

[Zap_Branigan]

[quote]The Mage wrote:
There is one thing we should know about WWII. And interestingly we have only learned of it recently.

Japan successfully detonated a nuke. It actually occurred between the dropping of our bombs.

Once they surrendered they went to work destroying all evidence of this. But some of the documents were saved, and actually brought to America. They were found at the death of a physicist who worked on the project.

We knew that Germany was sending 1,235 pounds of 77 percent pure uranium oxide to japan. (If the link I found is correct.) It was thought that they were planning on dropping a “dirty bomb” on America. But the reality was much worse.

Just think how close we came. Little changes or delays in history and the world would be a different place.[/quote]

I saw a History Channel special on that and wondered if it was true. Do you have any articles about it?

[etaco]

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
Sifu wrote:
dhickey

The war on the western front was a stalemate until Russians pulled out. Then the Germans pulled a million battle hardened soldiers off of the eastern front and threw them at the western front where they were able to break through the British and French lines.

The American army had been in France for a while before this but they had not been fighting, because there was an arguement over who should lead the American troops in battle. The British and French wanted to use the Americans as replacement for all their troops they had lost.

The American position was that American troops would be under the command of American generals or they would not fight. The British and French gave in to this demand when the Germans unleashed their troops from the eastern front.

The American troops getting into the fight saved the situation for the allies. Without the American army the Germans most likely would have won.

You’re overstating the case. Strategically, yes, American entry compelled the Germans to launch Operation Michael and the following offensives that ultimately lost them the war. But on the ground, our soldiers played a valuable role, but it was the British Army that defeated the Germans in battle and won the war.

It’s also important to note that the spring offensives were last-ditch efforts because of thedeteriorating conditions at home for the Germans. The civilians were experiencing much greater privations as the mobilization levels in Germany were considerably higher while its access to outside resources more limited. The political strength of the government was in sharp decline by mid 1917 and the regime understood that it would collapse if it couldn’t bring the war to a quick and victorious conclusion.

Another thing is that the logistical barrier which would have doomed the Schlieffen Plan (had it made it far enough) was never solved.[/quote]

[Sifu]

[quote]orion wrote:
Sifu wrote:
orion wrote:
Funny that the actual historians at that site treat Buchanan’s book with much more respect than you do.
One thing I learned when I lived in Germany is you Germans put a lot of value on titles. Just because I am not an “actual historian” does not mean that I can’t use the knowledge I have gained from studying history to formulate my own opinions and reach my own conclusions.

There is a real problem with trying to second guess history like Buchanan is doing. There were bad things that happened in WW2 but there is some good that came out of it also. ie It is bad that millions of people died, but it really gave us something to think about during the cold war.

What would have been the result of the war not being fought then? How would Roosevelt have been able to finance and develop the Mahattan project in secrecy without the war going on? The peace that Buchanan suggests we would have enjoyed might have seen Germany become armed with atomic weapons and rockets to deliver them with and the US with nothing to match them with.

Especially the story of Munich is so incredibly wrong it is often laughable, and so is this remember Munich BS.

Do you remember Woodrow Wilson the guy that lead the US into WWI to make the world safe for democracy?

Well, part of his involvement in WWI was that the Germans in CS had the RIGHT to vote whether they wanted to join Germany or not.

I thought Czechoslovakia was a new country that was carved out of Austria Hungary at the end of World War 1. The Sudetenland was never a part of Germany. So you aren’t making much sense here.

There was no question how they would vote.

Not only that, noone had the military capacity to stop Germany.

So what should they have done?

Ignore the narrative that had lead to the US joining WWI? Suddenly declare that people had the right to choose their own fate unless they did not like the outcome?

Munich was sensible diplomacy and the only one who did not like the result was Hitler.

I would not like to know who would have won the war when it had started 1-2 years earlier and all of Germany up and in arms because they were denied to vote whether or not the German Sudetes were to join Germany.

It would have gone badly for the Germans. The Czech had fortresses built into the mountains that the Germans would have had to fight uphill against. They would have made the Germans pay dearly for vitory. If the British and French had gotten in on it while the Germans were slugging it out with the Czechs it would have been bad for the Germans.

The actual scarier prospect would have been how things would have gone if the was had started a year later. That one year would have meant that the Germans would have had jets operational sooner in the war. The benefits to the navy of an extra year or two of peace would have been significant also. The Bismark and Tirpitz would have been operational sooner along with one or two sister ships and the follow on class of ships that was bigger and more advanced would have been building. More importantly they would have had at least one aircraft carrier which would have been a gamechanger.

The logical conclusion is there are way too many variables to second guess the war with any accuracy. To be as adamant as Buchanan is that it would have worked out wonderfully if we had stayed out of the war is illogical.

The Sudetes were undeniably German. Whether they ever had been part of Germany or not is not the issue, the issue is that the narrative for the US entry in WWI was that people could choose their own fates.

According to the treaties after WWI minorities had the right to vote on to which state they wanted to belong to, that happened in Austria twice.

So the Sudetes had every right to join Germany, by the very conditions the winners of WWI had forced upon Austria and Germany.

Then noone in Europe was ready to fight a war, except for the Germans.

Germany practically routed the Polish in days and defeated France and the British expedition force in weeks.

To think that an ethnically and politically divided country with a large German minority would have been able to stop the German juggernaut is a fantasy, given that fascist organizations were only to eager to revolt at the first sign of a German attack.

[/quote]

The Sudetenland was very strategic because it is a mountainous area. It is extremely difficult to fight uphill against an entrenched enemy. Watch the movie Hamburger hill sometime and you will how hard it is going up a mere hill. The invasion of Italy is another good example. The seige of Monte Casino was brutal for the allies. Neither of those examples was against purpose built fortresses.

The German juggernaut was only a juggernaut against those who were caught unprepared and thrown into a headlong retreat and even then they weren’t unstoppable. Against those who were not intimidated and who were willing to stand up to them the German juggernaut failed. ie The Siberians defeated the sixth army at Stalingrad, The Desert Rats defeated the Afrika corps, The Airborne at Bastogne. Even the Poles were starting to stabilize their position and take a toll just before the Russians blindsided them.

The Germans might have defeated the Czechs but they would have paid a very heavy price getting through the defenses of the Sudetenland.

[DrSkeptix]

[quote]dhickey wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
dhickey wrote:
In Churchill’s autobiography, he talks about arranging things so American sailors would be deliberatly put at risk to hopefully bring America into WWI. He talked about charging surfacing subs, to force German crews to always fire from underwater, so they’d hopefully make a mistake and hit an American vessel. He was a criminal.

.[/quote]

Please post the citation for me from “Churchill’s autobiography.” Not from a screwy website. It should be in the public domain, say in Gutenberg.
Title and page number will do nicely.

Thank you.

[Sifu]

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
Sifu wrote:
dhickey

The war on the western front was a stalemate until Russians pulled out. Then the Germans pulled a million battle hardened soldiers off of the eastern front and threw them at the western front where they were able to break through the British and French lines.

The American army had been in France for a while before this but they had not been fighting, because there was an arguement over who should lead the American troops in battle. The British and French wanted to use the Americans as replacement for all their troops they had lost.

The American position was that American troops would be under the command of American generals or they would not fight. The British and French gave in to this demand when the Germans unleashed their troops from the eastern front.

The American troops getting into the fight saved the situation for the allies. Without the American army the Germans most likely would have won.

You’re overstating the case. Strategically, yes, American entry compelled the Germans to launch Operation Michael and the following offensives that ultimately lost them the war. But on the ground, our soldiers played a valuable role, but it was the British Army that defeated the Germans in battle and won the war. [/quote]

The event that broke the Germans was the Kiel mutiny, where the Kaiser ordered the fleet to go out and fight the British and they refused. After that the whole country mutinied.

[quote]

Gdollars,

It is one thing to take a new look at history and revise our ideas. What Buchanan is saying though is that the war was unneccessary, that we instead could have had a peaceful coexistance with Hitler and everything would have been hunkydorry forever and ever. The end.

Have you read Buchanan’s book? I’d suggest at least reading the articles I linked to, which explain that Buchanan’s point is that the USSR and Nazi Germany were destined to go to war, and that the war in the West was unnecessary.

It’s certainly debatable, and I think one of the pieces linked, maybe the Cato guy, says that it would have been extremely risky to depend upon mutual exhaustion or a pyrrhic victory on the Eastern Front.

But that argument is very different from “we instead could have had a peaceful coexistence with Hitler and everything would have been hunkydorry forever and ever.” It really sounds like you didn’t read the original link, let alone Buchanan’s book (in fairness, I have not read the book yet either). [/quote]

Even if a war in the west could have been avoided such an outcome raises other serious problems. It was the Battle of Britain that broke the Luftwaffe. It was the invasion of Greece that doomed the invasion of Russia. It was an American steel mill that was given to the Russians that produced the high quality steel that made the T34 Stalin tank so tough. The convoys to Murmansk etc… Without help the Russians would most likely have been defeated in a war with Germany.

With Russia defeated the Germans would have had all the raw materials of Russia and hundreds of millions of slaves. With the oil fields of the Caucuses under their control the Germans really would have been dangerous. They would have been in a position to move into the Persian gulf. With all of Russia defeated they would have been able to link up with the Japanese. With the help of the Japanese navy they could have invaded Alaska.

There is a whole slew of possibilities that Buchanans thesis opens up. Buchanan is seriously delusional if he thinks it would have worked out well for everyone. It most likely would have worked out well for the Axxis. They would have had all the resources of Russia and been able to provide mutual support. ie The Japanese lost all their experienced carrier pilots in the first year of the war, but they still had carriers. If they could have gotten 400 pilots from the Luftwaffe they would have been back in business.

The very worst thing that could have happened in world war two is the Japanese helping the Germans by going after the Russians. With the Russians taken out it would have been a very different war. Without a war in the west that most likely would have happened.

[quote]
Hitler had symptoms of Parkinsons in the late thirties. It was a virtual death sentence then. It is thought that this was why Hitler accelerated his timeline for starting world war two and it is also why he rushed into Russia before he had the British finished off.

Buchanan is selling people a fantasy tale and idiots are giving him money for it. Hitlers ideology saw the conquest of the east as Germany’s destiny and he was going to be the one to fulfill that destiny. Some American isolationist group on the other side of the Atlantic was going to dissuade him.

In WW1 the Kaiser did lose a lot of power towards the end of the war to the generals. The point I was trying to make was that the Germans were not a democracy like the British or the French.

It’s an irrelevant point, given the restrictions on the franchise in Britain, the limited parliamentary nature of German government, and the fact that Allied Russia was the most authoritarian power in the war.

Unlike Hitler the Kaiser had a massive navy that could have projected his power across the Atlantic.

It might to have been practical to put an army into Canada but he could have tried and enforce his ownership. Most likely the US would have invaded Canada, which would have caused problems with the Kaiser.

Buchanan is dealing in large hypotheticals. You are dealing in absurdities.[/quote]

I should have proofread that. I meant to say: It might NOT have been practical to put an army into Canada. America invading Canada is not absurd at all. There were those who wanted the US to side with Hitler and invade Canada during the Battle of Britain. So I am not absurd at all.

A glaring point that noone has pointed out about Buchanan is his bias. Buchanan is Irish and a lot of Irish Americans have a bug up their ass about the British. This is why Churchill had to tell Roosevelt to recall the American ambassador because he could not work with him because he wanted to see Britain lose the war. So it is no surprise an Irishman come up with a thesis that villifies the British