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steinrokkan posted:This post is gibberish. And Germany did not lose that? Half of their cities were burned to the ground by the Americans and British, and the other half were sacked and looted by the Russians. Both West Germany and the USSR benefited from temporary, massive capital infusions from outside (West Germany mostly from the United States, the USSR mostly from the territories it sacked to help rebuild itself). Both recovered during the 1950s and 1960s, but the Soviet Union could not keep it going--I suspect because of the sidelining of reformers like Khrushchev and Kosygin. Raubwirtschaft only works once, there is no way it would provide the USSR with over twenty years of economic growth. E: I wouldn't really want to live in the 1960s USSR or in Yugoslavia, but I kind of respect Khrushchev and Tito for running non-capitalist regimes that were functional and fairly prosperous considering how little they started off with. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Dec 13, 2015 |
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Dec 13, 2015 00:02
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Woolie Wool posted:And Germany did not lose that? Half of their cities were burned to the ground by the Americans and British, and the other half were sacked and looted by the Russians. Both West Germany and the USSR benefited from temporary, massive capital infusions from outside (West Germany mostly from the United States, the USSR mostly from the territories it sacked to help rebuild itself). Both recovered during the 1950s and 1960s, but the Soviet Union could not keep it going--I suspect because of the sidelining of reformers like Khrushchev and Kosygin. Raubwirtschaft only works once, there is no way it would provide the USSR with over twenty years of economic growth. Ultimately the West Germans were compensated for their losses and benefited from being part of the free trade club. Meanwhile the Eastern bloc was cannibalizing itself. The point is, you said the loss of territory was devastating. It was not since national power in modern Europe is not connected to landmass. You have been trying to deflect this point, which remains as it always was: The loss of Eastern territory didn't hamper Germany's ability to remain European economic powerhouse.
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Dec 13, 2015 00:07
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steinrokkan posted:Ultimately the West Germans were compensated for their losses and benefited from being part of the free trade club. National power is not connected to landmass? Amazing, how much more powerful Switzerland is than Germany, given its extremely intensified economy.
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Dec 13, 2015 00:14
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Effectronica posted:National power is not connected to landmass? Amazing, how much more powerful Switzerland is than Germany, given its extremely intensified economy. If we talk about post-WWII era, German's influence isn't derived from territory in any meaningful way, look up the Council vote distribution rule evolution for the EEC / EU.
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Dec 13, 2015 00:17
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steinrokkan posted:If we talk about post-WWII era, German's influence isn't derived from territory in any meaningful way, look up the Council vote distribution rule evolution for the EEC / EU. Do you understand that economic power is not unrelated to the size of the nation, and that Germany's power from its economy is related it having almost a fifth of the EU's population and being the fourth-largest nation by land area?
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Dec 13, 2015 00:21
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Effectronica posted:Do you understand that economic power is not unrelated to the size of the nation, and that Germany's power from its economy is related it having almost a fifth of the EU's population and being the fourth-largest nation by land area? Do you understand that Germany wasn't decimated in either regard by the WWII peace settlement? Well, besides the unfortunate DDR thing. Germany retained its population centres and its economically vital areas.
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Dec 13, 2015 00:22
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steinrokkan posted:Do you understand that Germany wasn't decimated in either regard by the WWII peace settlement? Please don't change the subject just because you've recognized your error.
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Dec 13, 2015 00:23
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Effectronica posted:Please don't change the subject just because you've recognized your error. I don't change the subject, the subject has been since the very first post in this sub-thread the (arguably off-hand) claim that Germany has been "decimated" by its territorial losses, which has since been twisted in every possible way. E: WW said "The territorial losses in 1918 were insignificant compared to 1945, where they lost all of Prussia except Brandenburg, which was absolutely devastating.", I made fun of that, that's all this debate has been about from my POV.
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Dec 13, 2015 00:25
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steinrokkan posted:I don't change the subject, the subject has been since the very first post in this sub-thread the (arguably off-hand) claim that Germany has been "decimated" by its territorial losses, which has since been twisted in every possible way. You said that "national power is not related to landmass", which is untrue.
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Dec 13, 2015 00:27
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steinrokkan posted:I don't change the subject, the subject has been since the very first post in this sub-thread the (arguably off-hand) claim that Germany has been "decimated" by its territorial losses, which has since been twisted in every possible way. They also lost millions of Germans. I think losing people is more devastating than losing territory.
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Dec 13, 2015 00:30
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Effectronica posted:You said that "national power is not related to landmass", which is untrue. It is not. The UK can be more powerful than Ukraine, France can be more powerful than Russia... What matters is distribution of relevant production factors per the given level of economic structural development, not the raw number of square km occupied by a government. Germany was fortunate enough to retain its production factors ecept for capital for which it was renumerated during reconstruction. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Dec 13, 2015 |
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Dec 13, 2015 00:30
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Stalins such a nice guy, liberating countries from the woes of industrialization. By removing their industry.
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Dec 13, 2015 00:31
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My Imaginary GF posted:They also lost millions of Germans. I think losing people is more devastating than losing territory. Definitely. People are a rare resource, and the loss of people to DDR was the greatest loss of the FDR, arguably. I don't know what the distribution of the millions of exilees coming from Czechoslovakia and Poland was between the two Germanies, though. Also they got some migrants from Romania and hungary AFAIK and managed to attract a healthy foreign immigrant flow, eventually..
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Dec 13, 2015 00:33
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LeoMarr posted:Stalins such a nice guy, liberating countries from the woes of industrialization. By removing their industry. Stalin was a great guy for making political prisoners in "allied nations" mine uranium for the Soviet nuclear program (without offering these allies any ompensation).
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Dec 13, 2015 00:34
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steinrokkan posted:Definitely. People are a rare resource, and the loss of people to DDR was the greatest loss of the FDR, arguably. I don't know what the distribution of the millions of exilees coming from Czechoslovakia and Poland was between the two Germanies, though. Also they got some migrants from Romania and hungary AFAIK and managed to attract a healthy foreign immigrant flow, eventually.. Yeah Tourism doesnt go well when half of your country is occupied by the red hordes. Then again south Korea 
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Dec 13, 2015 00:35
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steinrokkan posted:It is not. The UK can be more powerful than Ukraine, France can be more powerful than Russia... What matters is distribution of relevant production factors per the given level of economic structural development, not the raw number of square km occupied by a government. Germany was fortunate enough to retain its production factors ecept for capital for which it was renumerated during reconstruction. Malta cannot economically outproduce the UK in any realistic scenario. Landmass is, in fact, a part of economic power. Sorry that the Will doesn't Triumph over material factors.
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Dec 13, 2015 00:37
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Effectronica posted:Malta cannot economically outproduce the UK in any realistic scenario. Landmass is, in fact, a part of economic power. Sorry that the Will doesn't Triumph over material factors. You aren't reading my posts, land is a production factor, with variable time / space value. There will always be an anchoring of national output to physical constraints, but it takes really extreme contrasts for these constraints to become insurmountable. In this way your example is the exception that proves the rule.
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Dec 13, 2015 00:40
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My point wasn't even strictly economic, and indeed it was examining the psychological and military factors that fueled German nationalism, so your attempting to attack it from a purely economic basis was completely off base to begin with. The loss of Prussia was an enormous national humiliation and a humanitarian disaster (on top of the five hundred simultaneous humanitarian disasters already unfolding in the reason, the majority of which were of course Germany's fault). The devastation may have even been necessary for the denazification process to work depending on who you ask (most of the Allied leaders at the time would have probably said yes) but 1945-1955 was a very, very bad time to be a German. And as for national power, Germany and the entire EU are basically pawns on the United States' board, whereas pre-WWII and especially pre-WWI Germany were great powers in their own right and not part of somebody else's sphere of influence. The United States benefited massively from World War II at the expense of all other great powers except the USSR, including its own allies France and Britain. Maybe that's why our political class seem to be permanently living in it. The average German now lives better than the average American, but Germany's ability to oppose American interests, even if it wanted to, amount to gently caress all. By contrast, the Kaiserreich had great leeway to pursue its own interests even against the interests of other great powers, and was able to do so for decades until Wilhelm II got a bit too comfortable testing the limits of German power and turned a war between a dying empire and a third-rate Balkan country into World War I. So again, this whole thing you're attacking is a strawman and I regret even engaging you on your terms and letting you dictate what's being debated. Germany, since 1918, through waging two idiotic, unwinnable wars, has lost about half of its entire area, which happened to contain its political and cultural heartland (Prussia), two generations of young men (thereby negating what would be an entire century of population growth), and their ability to act independently as a great power without having to respect the imperial ambitions of the United States (indeed, until the collapse of the USSR and subsequent decline of the US opened power vacuums, there were no independent great powers for a long time, and it was largely Germany's fault), as well as immeasurable material losses. The population of Germany has endured two bouts of national humiliation, "that DDR thing" (kind of a big deal, don't you think?), the dispossession and dispersal of the Prussian people, and a total of at least 25 years of economic ruin (post-WWI, Great Depression, post-WWII). They have paid very dearly for their crimes and are nowhere near as powerful as they'd be if they hadn't committed them. LeoMarr posted:Stalins such a nice guy, liberating countries from the woes of industrialization. By removing their industry. There's like one tankie in all of D&D and he hasn't even posted in this thread, so I don't know why you even brought this up. Nobody here likes Stalin. steinrokkan posted:In this way your example is the exception that proves the rule. Europe alone has a large number of such "exceptions" who have very rich economies and very high standards of living and absolutely no way to leverage that prosperity into real power. Norway isn't going create a sphere of influence anytime soon, nor are the Netherlands, Monaco, Austria, Belgium, Estonia, or to go outside of Europe, Singapore, Taiwan, etc., etc. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Dec 13, 2015 |
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Dec 13, 2015 00:42
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Woolie Wool posted:My point wasn't even strictly economic, and indeed it was examining the psychological and military factors that fueled German nationalism, so your attempting to attack it from a purely economic basis was completely off base to begin with. The loss of Prussia was an enormous national humiliation and a humanitarian disaster (on top of the five hundred simultaneous humanitarian disasters already unfolding in the reason, the majority of which were of course Germany's fault). The devastation may have even been necessary for the denazification process to work depending on who you ask (most of the Allied leaders at the time would have probably said yes) but 1945-1955 was a very, very bad time to be a German. And as for national power, Germany and the entire EU are basically pawns on the United States' board, whereas pre-WWII and especially pre-WWI Germany were great powers in their own right and not part of somebody else's sphere of influence. The United States benefited massively from World War II at the expense of all other great powers except the USSR, including its own allies France and Britain. Maybe that's why our political class seem to be permanently living in it. The average German now lives better than the average American, but Germany's ability to oppose American interests, even if it wanted to, amount to gently caress all. By contrast, the Kaiserreich had great leeway to pursue its own interests even against the interests of other great powers, and was able to do so for decades until Wilhelm II got a bit too comfortable testing the limits of German power and turned a war between a dying empire and a third-rate Balkan country into World War I. This sort of aggressively romantic view of the war outcomes fortunately belongs firmly on the trash heap of history.
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Dec 13, 2015 00:45
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Woolie Wool posted:There's like one tankie in all of D&D and he hasn't even posted in this thread, so I don't know why you even brought this up. Nobody here likes Stalin. You're lucky, you must have skimmed over his earlier paranoid conspiracy theory about how Stalin was secretly ballin' up to invade the West in 1940 and so, by heavily implication, the Third Reich was correct to preemptively invade. Dude's got a massive hate-boner for the Soviets well out of proportion to what the Stalinist state ought reasonably provoke.
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Dec 13, 2015 00:49
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LeoMarr posted:Stalins such a nice guy, liberating countries from the woes of industrialization. By removing their industry. In light of the Greek crisis/EU, we really should have put the morgantheu plan into action.
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Dec 13, 2015 00:52
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steinrokkan posted:This sort of aggressively romantic view of the war outcomes fortunately belongs firmly on the trash heap of history. What is "aggressively romantic" about "world wars really suck and we keep losing them and getting humiliated, we should probably not wage world wars again", or "being evicted from the land your family called home for 400 years really sucks, we should not do things that will cause this to happen to us again"? The fact that I acknowledge that real humans who live in real countries are not beep boop robots and are affected in many ways by what their countries do and have happen to them? If none of these things would have affected Germany or the German people, why did Allies do them to Germany? Punishing the German state and even the German people was an essential part of the post-World War plans, to try to get them to stop being belligerent assholes all the time, and by all accounts the lesson eventually took. Raskolnikov38 posted:In light of the Greek crisis/EU, we really should have put the morgantheu plan into action. What makes you think, if the UK or France stepped into the power vacuum (or, God help Europe, the US did so directly) left by the Morgenthau Plan, things would be different? Ultimately austerity comes from global capital. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Dec 13, 2015 |
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Dec 13, 2015 00:56
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Woolie Wool posted:What is "aggressively romantic" about "world wars really suck and we keep losing them and getting humiliated, we should probably not wage world wars again", or "being evicted from the land your family called home for 400 years really sucks, we should not do things that will cause this to happen to us again"? The fact that I acknowledge that real humans who live in real countries are not beep boop robots and are affected in many ways by what their countries do and have happen to them? If none of these things would have affected Germany or the German people, why did Allies do them to Germany? Punishing the German state and even the German people was an essential part of the post-World War plans, to try to get them to stop being belligerent assholes all the time, and by all accounts the lesson eventually took. I'd dispute that the lesson took due to the actions of the allies in punishing Germany- if anything, it was the postwar generation's disgust at the actions of their parents that produced such a shift.
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Dec 13, 2015 00:58
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You mean the postwar generation that grew up under intense denazification?
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Dec 13, 2015 01:00
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Woolie Wool posted:You mean the postwar generation that grew up under intense denazification? Denazification on the part of the Allies only lasted until 1950 in the West, being very generous. Students in the streets in 1968 would have been toddlers when it was over.
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Dec 13, 2015 01:02
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Woolie Wool posted:Europe alone has a large number of such "exceptions" who have very rich economies and very high standards of living and absolutely no way to leverage that prosperity into real power. Norway isn't going create a sphere of influence anytime soon, nor are the Netherlands, Monaco, Austria, Belgium, Estonia, or to go outside of Europe, Singapore, Taiwan, etc., etc. Norway is a great example to prove my point being a fairly large Euro country with good natural resources. Woolie Wool posted:What is "aggressively romantic" about "world wars really suck and we keep losing them and getting humiliated, we should probably not wage world wars again", or "being evicted from the land your family called home for 400 years really sucks, we should not do things that will cause this to happen to us again"? The fact that I acknowledge that real humans who live in real countries are not beep boop robots and are affected in many ways by what their countries do and have happen to them? If none of these things would have affected Germany or the German people, why did Allies do them to Germany? Punishing the German state and even the German people was an essential part of the post-World War plans, to try to get them to stop being belligerent assholes all the time, and by all accounts the lesson eventually took. quote:What makes you think, if the UK or France stepped into the power vacuum (or, God help Europe, the US did so directly) left by the Morgenthau Plan, things would be different? Ultimately austerity comes from global capital.
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Dec 13, 2015 01:03
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Effectronica posted:Malta cannot economically outproduce the UK in any realistic scenario. Landmass is, in fact, a part of economic power. Sorry that the Will doesn't Triumph over material factors. Landmass is part, but definitely not the only factor, which is why the United States is a larger economic power than Canada even though Canada has a larger landmass. More landmass tends to correlate to more natural resources and gives you more space for population, but there's way more to it than just that. A small but industrially developed and densely populated country like Belgium or Austria is way more economically powerful than a large but industrially underdeveloped and sparsely populated country like Mongolia or Libya.
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Dec 13, 2015 01:03
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steinrokkan posted:Constructing this sort of narrative, while compelling, tends to be one-sided and leading to revanchism. On the other hand, completely rejecting it seems pretty narrow and even Eurocentric considering that displaced and dispossessed groups today frequently describe the territorial, cultural, and psychological depredations as being as bad as or worse than the strictly material ones. The fact that European nationalists used land, culture, language, and heritage to terrible ends does not mean they are utterly meaningless--I couldn't even imagine saying such a thing to an Indian community (I hate "Indian" but "indigenous American" and "First Nations" are North America-centric, "New World" is a colonial idea, and merely "indigenous" is vague, if anyone has a more appropriate word help me out) leader--and considering that the indigenous peoples of the Americas have basically lost everything, if they talk about the importance of their homelands and culture and rites that white people stole from them, who am I to question them?
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Dec 13, 2015 01:22
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steinrokkan posted:This sort of aggressively romantic view of the war outcomes fortunately belongs firmly on the trash heap of history. WW2 was the best thing to ever happen to Germany. It freed them from the legacy of authoritarian Prussian statism. Too bad Japan wasn't so lucky
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Dec 13, 2015 01:23
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icantfindaname posted:WW2 was the best thing to ever happen to Germany. It freed them from the legacy of authoritarian Prussian statism. Too bad Japan wasn't so lucky Well, we only have ourselves to blame for that one. Japan was doing OK until we let the nationalists back into power and they never let go.
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Dec 13, 2015 01:28
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It pisses me off that not only did we promise Unit 731 leaders amnesty if they shared their research with us, we actually gave it to them. If you're going to cut such an odious deal, at least do the decent thing and break it once they've given you what you want.
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Dec 13, 2015 01:31
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steinrokkan posted:E: WW said "The territorial losses in 1918 were insignificant compared to 1945, where they lost all of Prussia except Brandenburg, which was absolutely devastating.", I made fun of that, that's all this debate has been about from my POV. That statement is completely true though? The two largest industrial and demographic centers in Germany behind the Rhineland were Saxony and Silesia, and Saxony ended up behind the Curtain and Silesia got the full ethnic cleansing treatment. They were both less important than the Rhineland, but that was major blow to West German economic capacity Effectronica posted:Well, we only have ourselves to blame for that one. Japan was doing OK until we let the nationalists back into power and they never let go. Well, we could certainly have done more, but it should be pointed out that by 1945 the machinery of the old Imperial Prussian state had already mostly been demolished, with no action by the occupying powers needed. Plus the fact that Germany from the beginning had a much more vibrant and successful political opposition to the aristocratic state bureaucracy. There was no Japanese equivalent of the Center Party and SPD you could just throw the keys of the country to because the Meiji and Showa states had crushed all political opposition to a degree the Prussians could only dream of. The leftists were fractured and there never actually existed any rival conservative center of power in Japan like the Catholics in Germany icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Dec 13, 2015 |
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Dec 13, 2015 01:32
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Unit 731 is just the tip of the iceberg, the Japanese systematically murdered something like 30 million people in China alone in their anti-Communist pacification campaigns. On the other hand the American government was quite happy to support the KMT which was about as brutal in their treatment of the civil population (Yellow River flooding, anyone?), so there were hardly winners in that theatre.
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Dec 13, 2015 01:37
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icantfindaname posted:That statement is completely true though? The two largest industrial and demographic centers in Germany behind the Rhineland were Saxony and Silesia, and Saxony ended up behind the Curtain and Silesia got the full ethnic cleansing treatment. They were both less important than the Rhineland, but that was major blow to West German economic capacit Uh, do you have sources for this? I find it hard to believe Saxony was more important than, say, Bavaria.
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Dec 13, 2015 01:40
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icantfindaname posted:That statement is completely true though? The two largest industrial and demographic centers in Germany behind the Rhineland were Saxony and Silesia, and Saxony ended up behind the Curtain and Silesia got the full ethnic cleansing treatment. They were both less important than the Rhineland, but that was major blow to West German economic capacity Just give it to the JCP. They were independent of Moscow. Of course, that would have never happened, but eh. steinrokkan posted:Unit 731 is just the tip of the iceberg, the Japanese systematically murdered something like 30 million people in China alone in their anti-Communist pacification campaigns. On the other hand the American government was quite happy to support the KMT which was about as brutal in their treatment of the civil population (Yellow River flooding, anyone?), so there were hardly winners in that theatre. The Japanese killed 10 million more civilians than the total people who died in China as a part of WW2, and 60% of the total civilian population slain in WW2? Uh-uh.
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Dec 13, 2015 01:41
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steinrokkan posted:Unit 731 is just the tip of the iceberg, the Japanese systematically murdered something like 30 million people in China alone in their anti-Communist pacification campaigns. On the other hand the American government was quite happy to support the KMT which was about as brutal in their treatment of the civil population (Yellow River flooding, anyone?), so there were hardly winners in that theatre. Don't forget the British Empire, which killed something like 100 million people in Asia, and set India back 300+ years through its parasitism. When your skull count makes Hitler's look pathetic, you're really something. In Europe, you had Britain, in the Pacific you had the Empire.
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Dec 13, 2015 01:42
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steinrokkan posted:Uh, do you have sources for this? I find it hard to believe Saxony was more important than, say, Bavaria. Imperial Germany population density:  Imperial Germany major industries:  Bavaria was an impoverished backwater well into the postwar era. Plus they were the wrong religion which made them bad subjects of the Prussian state
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Dec 13, 2015 01:42
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Effectronica posted:Just give it to the JCP. They were independent of Moscow. Of course, that would have never happened, but eh. The idea that only 20 million people died in China and Manchuria during the Second Sino-Japanese war is quite optimistic.
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Dec 13, 2015 01:44
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I've heard Bavaria described as Germany's Texas and those maps go a long way towards explaining that.
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Dec 13, 2015 01:44
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icantfindaname posted:Imperial Germany population density: Interesting. i knew Saxon cities were the industrial backbone of the DDR, but I suspected they were insignificant compared to the West. Thanks.
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Dec 13, 2015 01:45
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