If we believe Hollywood, Germany was a danger to the world during World War II and needed to be stopped. There was nothing that could be done by the US, but to enter the war and help defeat this dangerous foe.
As much as I like to believe in this German superiority (being one of them), historical facts, as they become more and more known, do not support this notion.
Starting with the fact that all Europe and Asia had been at war pretty much most of the time, so it was to no surprise that this newcomer among the war lords wanted to play and get a piece of the empire cake. But this young and inexperienced new kid on town – compared to the old masters like Britain which owned about a quarter of the world as well as Russia with another quarter – was no match.
Especially after it had been beaten into submission by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of WW I. It sure made them mad which was fertile grounds for WW II, but the fact remains that they had to start from scratch while their adversaries still had plenty of left-overs and the resources of half of the world.
Looking at the economics of war it becomes painfully obvious that the one who runs out of bullets and beans looses the war. This small Germany depended upon raw material from the rest of the world and as long as that world was not yet conquered, the flow of those materials could easily be stopped – and indeed were.
German innovation and creativity reared its ugly head when the initial surprise attacks were over and the war started to draw out. German stubbornness of improving and innovating war machines came at a huge cost. Hitler wanted only the best but research is expensive. This created a financial and resource shortage which in turn reduced the production of proven and reliable war equipment. It came to great surprise to me that, beside the Hollywood version of the well equipped German soldier, in reality the great majority of the German soldier was a foot soldier with wagons drawn by – yes – horses.
Why was the German soldier so completely mischaracterized by Hollywood and in the schools’ history books?
Combined with other historical facts, the only logical explanation was the FDR wanted to get in – he wanted to play with the other imperial leaders. Unfortunately the American people did not really want to, so he poked the Japanese so long that they had no other choice but to attack Perl Harbor. This so-called ‘unprovoked’ attack was used to change the mind of the American population, similar, by the way, to the ‘unprovoked’ attack on the twin towers which was used to get America behind Bush and his war.
Many facts have come to light since then that would indicate that an attempt had been made to minimize loss of material and life at Perl Harbor (again similar to the twin towers) but enough damage had to be done to enrage the population. The ships that had been destroyed were not even supposed to be in Hawaii and the fleet had been strategically weakened so that they would be beaten. An excuse was later made, when those facts came to light, that it was a necessary sacrifice in order to enter the war, and save the world. Hollywood was all behind it – apparently.
But America could have stayed neutral. Germany was more or less defeated when the US entered the war and Britain together with Russia would have been able to do the job easily. The biggest part of the war was the Eastern front and Germany had been beaten by a proven weapon – the Russian winter – something experienced by a previous imperialist – Napoleon.
How much different would the world be, had the US Government with Roosevelt at the top not entered the war? No, we would not all speak German now, but the cold war would probably never have happened as the German and Russian war machine would have annihilated each other. Russia would have never become a threat as quickly as it did.
Now imagine all that money that the military-industrial complex would not have made. I watched a documentary the other day describing the salvage of a Russian submarine during the height of the cold war. This was the Russian sub K-129 that had accidentally destroyed itself and had sunken in the Pacific. US military had better info on where that had happened and had been able to locate the ship without the Russians knowing. It was an engineering feat to get at least part of the sub raised from a depth of 17,000 feet in all secrecy – but this little bit of intell that had been extracted from the wreckage had cost the tax payer a whooping 350 Million Dollars – and that was 70s Dollars!
Imagine how many hungry children an Africa could have been fed with that!
So, are you still paying taxes without doing your utmost to drag your feet, making it as hard as possible to get anything out of you? Are you still quietly ‘in compliance’ – still not practicing civil disobedience?
(A very good run-down of the real events and economics can be found in Richard Maybury’s ‘Uncle Eric’ books – a ‘must-read’ for kids in public school to counter government indoctrination.)
One of my early Hollywood-experiences occurred in the late 80s – the place was the Irish pub ‘
This is history as we made it!
I got myself some nice Canon T4i but I can’t figure out where to put that film in, of which I still have a few rolls and which I don’t want to let go to waste.
