{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "tl;dr: Germany and their ally America won WWII in 1991", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/96225294118/", "html": "

Pretty much every country that fought in WWII used it as a crucible in which to reforge their respective nations, and so it\u2019s understandable that what we know now of the war is basically mythological. Not in terms of like, dates and names and locations, the who/what/when/where is mostly accurate, but in terms of meaning - the why.

In the last decade it\u2019s becoming more and more of a mainstream understanding that America didn\u2019t beat Germany in WWII, the fighting on the Western Front wasn\u2019t nearly as important as the Soviet effort on the Eastern Front. Yes, yes, correct. More than that though, America barely even fought on the Western Front. Our contribution wasn\u2019t in frontline combat but in logistics. Logistics is the least sexy (but most important) part of any war, and America was to the British Empire what the Urals were to the Soviet Union - an industrial base located beyond German bombing range.

Without American food, and the ability to build cargo ships with which to deliver food (including from the rest of the Empire - the British homeland hadn\u2019t fed itself since the 18th century) faster than U-Boats could sink them, the British population would have starved, revolted, and deposed any government that refused to sue for peace. The idea that American wartime food rationing was necessary to feed \u201cour boys fighting overseas\u201d was a polite fiction, better for morale than the truth that it was to free up food for export to essentially bribe allied civilians to stay on-side.

Remember that one of the sore points of interwar Germany was that the German surrender came with the field armies in decent and even advancing strategic position, under pressure from hunger-stoked socialist rebellion on the homefront - the \u201cstab-in-the-back\u201d or Dolchsto\u00df. Of course today you see that often dismissed as a myth, the \u201cDolchsto\u00dflegende\u201d. Dismissed, of course, by the mainstream historiographers aligned with the regimes which legitimized themselves against the regime that legitimized itself on it. (Let\u2019s call it the \u201cDolchsto\u00dflegendelegende\u201d, and then call it a day.)

To the extent the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s was deliberately induced and targeted by Stalin, I think it would have to have been a prophylactic against a Soviet equivalent - preemptively liquidating potential fifth columnists, cutting the numbers of mouths to be fed, and denying any German occupation a source of recruits or agricultural workers.

(Of course, the notion that Ukrainians might turn against Russia and in favor of Western Europe, under the influence of fascist sentiment stoked by local elites for personal gain is properly considered just another of those legenden, no less ridiculous than the notion that Japanese-Americans might hold loyalty to the former portion of their hyphenation over the latter.)

I\u2019m wandering a bit afield but I also want to say, when you hear said that Stalin\u2019s purges of the military were so stupid, didn\u2019t he know he was purging some of the best soldiers Soviet Russia had? Well, soldiers Russia had maybe, the question is in that counterfactual where they stuck around would, would Russia stay Soviet? The Russian Revolution was deliberately incited by Germany to knock Russia out of a World War.

Career army types - a lot of times, their loyalty is to the army. Maybe to the nation, but the government? Eh. A lot of the higher-ups purged had started off in the Imperial Army and had made one transition already. And lower ranks, well, their loyalty is to their superiors, as it should be, right? (The Russian Navy, by contrast, spent the early 1900s occasionally rebelling against everyone because their institutional continuity had been shattered by the near-total wipeout of the Russo-Japanese war.) Governments change, but any state needs an Army, after all. Vladimir Putin started off serving the Soviets.

Okay enough digression. Without American food, and Britain thus pressured to make peace, Germany not only could have shifted the resources, ground and air forces defending the Atlantic coast to the Eastern front but would have freedom of the seas, and thus access to supplies from the overseas colonies of Axis powers (including France and the Netherlands), and from the neutral countries of South America (which had considerable economic ties with Germany). It also would have been able to open fronts and supply troops from the Black and Levantine Seas, Persian Gulf, and Pacific coast of Russia.

Without American industrial production, the other Allies wouldn\u2019t have enjoyed nearly as much functional range from their resource bases. This would suck in general, most particularly it would limit the British ability to sustain their Northern African forces, and of the Soviets to operate in Azerbaijan, Iran, and the \u2019stans. With these forces weakened, it was concievable that Axis forces could gain control of the Suez Canal (greatly degrading Britain\u2019s connections with its colonies in India, Africa, and Oceania) and middle eastern oil fields (a huge coup, hydrocarbon shortages were the major limitation on German capabilities, resolving them would have allowed for significant gains in production and much improved ability to advance and supply forces eastward into Russia.)

So yes, to say that America\u2019s role in the European theater of WWII was really about making and shipping, not fighting isn\u2019t to short its contribution - it truly did provide the margin of victory. The Normandy landings and opening of a Western front of ground combat were dramatic, made for great stories, but they didn\u2019t change the outcome of the war. At least not in the sense of \u201cwill Germany win\u201d - that had already been decided in the negative. It just changed the details of who they lost to. And what difference did that make? Well\u2026


People say WWII should be considered as a continuation of WWI. There\u2019s something to that, there\u2019s something to that.

Here\u2019s another idea, though - WWII was continuous with the Cold War, and before even V-E Day, America had switched sides to fight with the Germans, and specifically the German right, against the Russians, and to a lesser extent France and the UK. It was a brilliant betrayal, the maneuver by which America came to rule the world.

I mean, we didn\u2019t side with the Nazis, per se, except to the extent that under Gleichschaltung everything in Germany not specifically anti-Nazi was officially Nazi. Rather, their coalition partners - the Christian democrats, the Junkers, the Heer, the industrial capitalists who had allied with the volkisch streetfighters to fight socialism and were perfectly willing to switch allegiance to the American strong horse for the same purpose.

That explains why long after it was obvious the war was a loss the German forces kept fighting on the eastern front - to hold off the Russians long enough for the Americans to reinforce Germany, or to fight westward to link up with (\u201csurrender to\u201d) American armies.

That explains why America never really pulled the trigger on \u201cdenazification\u201d, the attempt to purge German government and society of fascists and fellow travelers, and instead turned around and purged its own government and society of communists and fellow travelers in the Second Red Scare.

That explains the Marshall Plan - America rebuilt western Europe, because America had conquered it.

That explains Bretton Woods, pegging European currencies to the dollar, and thus subordinating their economies to the American economy. (and the \u201cEurozone\u201d as successor, subordinating European economies to Germany). How do you know Germany lost WWI? Because the Treaty of Versailles imposed punishing reparations on Germany, redirecting its economic output to Britain and France. The result of WWII was the redirection of Britain and France\u2019s economic output to America and Germany.

That explains American support for decolonization in Africa and Asia, most glaringly in the Suez Canal Crisis, where America used the whip hand on Britain and France to support Nasser\u2019s move to pry the canal - and Egypt generally - from their hands. By choking off their colonial empires, America blocked their ability to return to parity through primitive accumulation.

This explains de Gaulle - pulling out from NATO, fighting to hold on to Algeria and Vietnam, pursuing French nuclearization for energy independence and military sovereignty - he was pushing back, and since the Soviet collapse France has been subtly reassembling its African empire - in any potential American/Chinese/Islamic struggle for Africa, they\u2019re the wild card.

That explains the postwar American development of a conceptual vocabulary - \u201ctotalitarianism\u201d, \u201cauthoritarianism\u201d, \u201cstatism\u201d, \u201ccentral planning\u201d, horseshoe theory, \u201chuman rights\u201d - by which communism and fascism were positioned as varieties of a broader unitary category and America assured itself that it had always been at war with Eurasia.

(The \u201cCultural Marxist\u201d meme, that the Frankfurt School and their ideas represented a communist attempt to subvert America, is particularly ironic. The Frankfurt School and their ideas were embraced and actively promoted by the core of mainstream America - the government, businesses, universities, the Protestant churches - because at core their ideology was - liberal, yes - anti-communism.)

This doesn\u2019t, as far as I know, explain the (at the time, surprise) death of Franklin Roosevelt, and replacement by Harry Truman, a man whom power brokers had installed for the express purpose of lining up an anti-leftist succession. But wouldn\u2019t it be wild if it did?

This doesn\u2019t explain much about the Pacific theater - that was America and Japan competing over who would inherit the European imperial holdings in Asia. Japan did fight to the last, America did conquer it outright, and did purge it in the aftermath.

It does explain the later takeback of that purge in the name of anti-communism, and Truman\u2019s decision to use nuclear weapons. Not only as a demonstration and warning to Russia, but to hasten its surrender. You hear it said it was to pre-empt the need for a costly and painful invasion, that\u2019s not really true. America had total naval and air superiority and could have just starved Japan into submission - its infrastructure shattered, even with peace it was essentially in a state of famine until the late 1950s. America wanted Japan to surrender while they were still the only ones around to surrender to, rather than face a division with the Soviets like Korea and Vietnam.


So. All those teenagers from around the world who follow me for god only knows what, next time in History class you\u2019re asked how WWII ended, now you know. Falling back in the face of Soviet advances, Germany peeled off America from the Allies, decisively sewing up the Western Front. After negotiating a tense decades-long armistice, they eventually starved (and subverted) Russia into submission in the early 1990s. This completed, they realized their long-held dream of eastward expansion and hegemony over continental Europe.

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