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Germany wasn't in a position to continue fighting at the end of the war. The idea that the soldiers were betrayed by politicians and that they could've fought on longer is a myth: everyone was starving, troops were deserting en masse, Germany no longer had the materiel to supply them anyway and the entente had already made advances the Germans were powerless to resist. Had they wanted to roll into Germany they could've done it.
Additionally, Germany was still young and in many ways divided. Rhetoric about Prussia leading Germany into a destructive war it could not win may well have been effective in spreading disunity.
Leonism and Free market buisnesses
One small problem; Germany declared war on us. Also, declarations of war need to go through congress.
I know they did, I simply wouldent send any troops to fight that war. I mean it's not like the Germans were in any position to sail across the Atlantic and invade us. Also congress hasn't made a declaration of war since WW2 but weve been in plenty of conflicts since then. I'd say they've essentially lost that power to the presidency.
You may be right, but I'm sure such a demand would have continued the war for a few years longer. Also who would pay all those reparations the French wanted if Germany is divided up? The only reason they had to pay so much was because they were the only central power left. If Germany is destroyed then there goes a boatload of money.
Aye, WW1 was a complete boondoggle all the way around. If I was president at the time I would have straight up refused to send men to fight in it.
Hraban and Free market buisnesses
WW2 was great though, we got to show up when the winning started and it helped get us out of the Great Depression. Wars are fantastic for our economy.
That's because those weren't us "declaring war" it was just us "intervening in a communist uprising/peace keeping". Plus the draft from WW2 never expired. Also, just because they can't reach us doesn't mean they can't hurt us. They can still sink our civilian vessels and Germans are pretty good at industry and would've recently acquired quite a bit of size. With the Japanese on board with them we could be in trouble due to sheer quantity of resources and an inhibited ability to export/import with overseas nations.
I agree that we had a good reason to enter WW2, and all and all it really helped out our economy while doing some good for the world. However I know that from hindsight, if i had been alive at the time i would have been very hesitant to enter the war. Especially knowing how WW1 went for us, thousands of Americans dead in a European war for no gain whatsoever. I'd be a fool to repeat that mistake, especially during the great depression. And that's how most Americans thought at that time, if the Axis had never declared war on us its doubtful we would have entered the war at all.
Exactly. In this thought experiment your supposed to try and think about what you would do If you had been alive during that time. Since in not a time traveler, I dont know about how well America did in the post war years or what the Nazis were doing to the jews and political dissidents. So without that knowledge I'd be very reluctant to send men to there deaths to depose Hitler, instead I'd be a isolationist and want to focus on domestic politics. With the possibility of a opportunistic land grab against a weakened opponent if I saw the opportunity present itself, and I believed the rewards were worth the risk.
I wouldn't support the North Vietnamese. But I also wouldn't have gotten us involved in that war. I'm a bit of a Isolationist, I dont think we should be getting ourselves involved with wars on the other end of the planet. The logistics of doing so are extremely expensive for very little gain. If we get involved with interventionist wars, then they should at least be nearby.
New Rogernomics and Free market buisnesses
If we had to you'd support the north though, right?
It was kinda awful as after a certain point Vietnam just became a testing ground for both sides to test new weapons and tactics: the US with things like helicopter warfare, Agent Orange, and counterinsurgency tactics, and the USSR with things like air defense systems in Hanoi, insurgency tactics and training, and logistics practice.
New Rogernomics, New vedan, and Free market buisnesses
Nah m8 I'd support the South Vietnamese. They weren't perfect, in fact they were far from perfect, terrible allys actually. But they weren't communists and this was the cold war so...yea.
Being anti-communist led to only Soviet style communist states popping up. If we'd supported the north then they probably could've taken the south and we could have made sure that they were democratic, so end result one democratic Vietnam in the mid 1900s.
Just on the air defence of Hanoi: the USSR learned a hell of a lot from using Hanoi as a gigantic testing ground against the US aircraft. The USSR didn't allow Vietnam to have the latest equipment that the USSR had, in case it was compromised by the US, but the core tactics and methods were exactly the same as the USSR would have used in the event of a war with the US. From the Hanoi experience, the USSR learned that their current measures against jamming were inadequate (and created systems like the SA-2F that could use optical guidance to overcome that), as was their ability to track and engage multiple targets at once, which led to modification of the SA-2 and development of systems like the S-300. They also learned the value of mobile systems, to avoid the stationary air defense sites being targeted.
And then the communists would have taken root in the south and we would be back to square one. Or the north would win, and then they'd have another civil war over whether to be communist or democratic. The vietnam war was a proxy war, whichever side we chose to support the Soviets would have supported the other.
Oh it wasn't just a boondoggle. Let's not forget the Wes Anderson-esque circumstances in which in started.
There were multiple assassins, attempting to kill the archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary. His death would spark the war.
The first assassin throws a grenade at the archduke's passing car. But grenades at the time weren't the best, and instead it hit the car behind the Archduke's. The assassins split up in the chaos. The first assassin tries to swallow his cyanide pill, which doesn't work. So he tries to drown himself in the river, jumping off a bridge. Unfortunately, the water level was low due to the time of year, and he doesn't drown in the three feet river, he just breaks his legs.
The Archduke was determined to reach his destination, a charity event at a veteran's hospital. His car takes a wrong turn past a restaurant, where 19 year old Serbian Gavrilo Princip, another one of the assassins, had given up on the plot and decided to get a sandwich. He sees the archduke, drops his sandwich, and shoots him, and I believe the archduchess as well from ricochet if my memory serves.
Princip is apprehended, Austria-Hungary declares War on Serbia, Serbia's allies declare war on Austria-Hungary, and Austria-Hungary's allies declare war on Serbia's allies.
Thus, WW1
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New vedan, Leonism, Free market buisnesses, and Moaning Lisa
The Vietnam situation was rather complex and US policy makers refused to recognize the nuances AKA every communist group was the same in their eyes. The US could have prevented the war if it had been a neutral mediator, and not just taken the role of the French Empire. Ho Chi Minh actually admired the US before the war mentioning the US in some of his independence speeches. Vietnam and China rather than being best buds had conflicts, and Vietnam was closer to being more independent in position like Yugoslavia.
It's not a matter of blame or whether Germany deserved to be dissolved. The issue is that the two world wars were caused, on a geostrategic level, by the emergence of Germany. The appearance of a new military land power right in the middle of Europe made war inevitable. Had Germany been taken out of the picture before the second world war, the power of France and Britain might have been preserved.
It would probably have been less than a year. Germany was unable to suppress unrest at home, let alone a coordinated military offensive. When it comes to reparations, there are also questions about how much Germany was capable of paying anyway. Interestingly I think the French originally wanted Germany to pay fewer reparations in return for them annexing Saarland. I might've entertained that idea.
I could also say that if Napoleon hadn't invaded us we wouldn't have realised that we must band together in a unified Nation in order to protect ourselves against outside threats. And almost all (almost but not really all) of our neighbours hated at least a part of Germany. We have direct access to both the Rhine and the Danube, which are arguably some of the most important rivers in Europe both strategically and economically, we even built a channel to connect the two of them. It is also unlikely that France would have stopped with just the Saarland, they had an eye on the Rhineland for a long time.
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