Comments by "Ralph Bernhard" (@ralphbernhard1757) on "Drachinifel"
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Jefferson, Adams, color revolutions, and setting Europe alight from one end to the other...
Most Americans consider their founding fathers as "Americans".
They were in fact British. I'm not familiar with each any every bio, but I assume most of these elites were born in the British Empire, enjoyed a solid "Empire" education, and therefore "thought" British. Everbody "speaking English." They were therefore not "American," but "turncoats." The concept of Arminius as the "turncoat" who turned against those who had trained and educated him (Rome), springs to mind...
Once you can understand this concept of how perceptions are often involuntarily skewed, one can then go next level: these British lords had ambitions for the colonies they were in. These colonies were entrapped in multiple manners, both by geographical and technological restraints, as well as by neighbors. First and foremost by the British Empire of course, but also European and Native American neighbors. If any ideals of expansion were to be achieved, then a series of strategies would have to be implemented.
The fledgling USA (post-1776) was in danger of becoming surrounded and encroached upon, by European neighbors, who held it in their hands to forge alliances with agrieved Native American tribes, and the British Empire alike, still licking its wounds from its loss...
Color revolutions, the Barbary Wars, the Luisiana land "purchase," and other events, are all major parts of the USA's expansive drive in North America.
THE COLOR REVOLUTION 1.0
The USA's role in trying to break apart the failing Holy Roman Empire, in lieu of a "color revolution." The gist of it: A revolution bringing France and Holland closer together, and Holland still controlled Antwerp, the "pistol pointing at the heart of England." Strategist in the USA knew of the importance of this "red line" for London, even if not provably, at least instinctively as explained in the first paragraph: they were still "British" in their world view. Adams already knew that London would set Europe alight from end to end, if there was even the slightest danger of England becoming invaded by an alliance of continental powers. The small "chess piece" the still weak USA would contribute, was to ease a Franco-Dutch alignment of interests. How do we know Adams knew this? Because he wrote it down on a "scrap of paper" (letter). Should there ever be a (paraphrased)"constitution more popular than the own by London", then the despised "rich, proud, hectoring, swearing, squibbing" lords in London, his brethen, would set Europe alight (Napoleonic Wars).
In the shadow of this war, ...cough, cough... "extending" all its North American neighbors, the USA could grow.
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The French Fleet at Mers was no threat to the British Empire.
The British Empire was actually protected in Europe by uniquely "balancing powers" on the continent.
For more than 100 years, "balancing powers" on the continent, kept these powers opposing each other, unable to divert military or economic resources to affront the status of the British Empire as the nr.1 in the world...
According to the logic of this policy, completely ruining a power on the continent, would lead to an imbalance, which could then be directed at the British Empire...
After WW2, there was no strong Central Europe to "balance out" the rise of US corporate capitalism (Washington D.C.) and communism (Moscow).
France broken, still angered by Mers el Kebir and had slipped under Washington's wings...
Germany = alles kaputt
Eastern Europe = overrun by the commies...
GB was no longer the boss.
Nothing left to "balance" with...
https://www.britannica.com/topic/balance-of-power
Washington got tired of bailing GB out, and decided to become the "balancer of powers" in Europe herself.
So yes.
The superior geostrategists in Washington D.C. won.
No wonder, that the "smiling emperor" FDR was pleased with Churchill.
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After the collapse of France, ending the stage of WW2 in grand strategy of "three powers" on continental Europe (GB/France/empires + Germany/fascist states + SU/communism) , potentially morphing into "2 powers in Europe."
The fear in Washington DC, exposed as early as 1912, by such authors (strategists) like Homer Lea, that a united continental Eurasia could "strike in three directions" if Japan joined in, and common goals could be found and common objectives decided upon.
Washington DC's biggest fear being that the alliance between Berlin and Moscow might even hold up and deepen, in case common goals could be found against the British Empire, in case London decided on quitting and throwing in the towel (peace with Berlin, after the collapse of France.)
After Mers el Kebir, a massive sigh of relief must have been heard in Washington DC.
Roosevelt, I'm sure, smiled benighnly...
A naval man, I'm sure he understood such things.
The "bloodletting war" (John Mearsheimer) in Europe would continue, one stage at a time...
In geopolitics and grand strategy, citing the Italian East African Campaign actually supports the above: If Italy put pressure on GB/Empire in Africa in general, and Germany attacks London/England by air and sea, this could then intice Stalin to show more interest in "joining the winners", and to get lured into joining the Axis Powers, or at least gravitating closer towards them.
None of this precludes Italy from equally seeking to strike at "weak and demoralized" France, by equally striking into Tunesia or Algeria, or seaborne attacks (landings) in French North Africa in order to secure Axis bases on the Atlantic coast (end goal = Morocco), or threatening Gibraltar.
As a French strategist, the first priority in Jun/July 1940 was the defense of French citizens and subjects, which GB through her own actions had actually PROVEN that they would not "defend to the last bullet" (Battle of France, which had just ended).
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@dovetonsturdee7033 ...tweak Lend-Lease to a bare minimum.
A Russian general once said (and I'm paraphrasing) that the Russian soldiers rode into Berlin with American boots on their feet, with bully beef in their bellies, on the backs of Studebaker trucks...
A good start to "stopping the commies" from taking over half the world, was by curbing Lend Lease to the most minimal level, and emoting Stalin to the status of "cobelligerent" (rather than a full alliance).
From wiki: "The United States delivered to the Soviet Union from October 1, 1941, to May 31, 1945 the following: 427,284 trucks, 13,303 combat vehicles, 35,170 motorcycles, 2,328 ordnance service vehicles, 2,670,371 tons of petroleum products (gasoline and oil) or 57.8 percent of the high-octane aviation fuel,[32] 4,478,116 tons of foodstuffs (canned meats, sugar, flour, salt, etc.), 1,911 steam locomotives, 66 diesel locomotives, 9,920 flat cars, 1,000 dump cars, 120 tank cars, and 35 heavy machinery cars. Provided ordnance goods (ammunition, artillery shells, mines, assorted explosives) amounted to 53 percent of total domestic consumption.[32] One item typical of many was a tire plant that was lifted bodily from the Ford Company's River Rouge Plant and transferred to the USSR. The 1947 money value of the supplies and services amounted to about eleven billion dollars.[61]"
British equipment:
Significant numbers of British Churchill, Matilda and Valentine tanks were shipped to the USSR.[67]
Between June 1941 and May 1945, Britain delivered to the USSR:
3,000+ Hurricanes aircraft
4,000+ other aircraft
27 naval vessels
5,218 tanks (including 1,380 Valentines from Canada)
5,000+ anti-tank guns
4,020 ambulances and trucks
323 machinery trucks (mobile vehicle workshops equipped with generators and all the welding and power tools required to perform heavy servicing)
1,212 Universal Carriers and Loyd Carriers (with another 1,348 from Canada)
1,721 motorcycles
£1.15bn worth of aircraft engines
1,474 radar sets
4,338 radio sets
600 naval radar and sonar sets
Hundreds of naval guns
15 million pairs of boots
Without this logistical support, the Eastern Front would have stabilized somewhere between Leningrad and the Black Sea.
By 1944, both sides would have been utterly exhausted, and D-Day could have rolled past Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, or Budapest...
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@dovetonsturdee7033 A delicate matter, because these strategists were plotting on taking over the nr.1 spot, from the British Empire.
The leaders of the British Empire seemed to have held the mistaken idea that closer relations with the USA would guarantee their Empire against "greedy continental rivals", but they were wrong.
Because, the type of rule or economy or political model chosen, plays little role in the outcome of whether one "rules the world" or not.
Geography plays a far bigger role.
So at the turn of century London "ruled the world" because geography isolated them from the continent and their island status gave them the upper hand at a time when war was still the common way to determine "top dog" or not. They could play out the ambitions of rulers on the continent against each other, always siding with the weaker waring state or empire, and thereby "engineer" solutions which they perceived would guarantee the survival of their Empire.
When development of weapons produced ever further reaching weapons of war, GB's island status did not offer the same measure of protection anymore...so they went down.
The weapons of 1900 couldn't harm the British Empire, but the weapons of 1945 could....
In that era around WW2, it was the USA which was (as the sole power) isolated from this "great game", and benefited as the result of its geographical isolation...
[Today, with nukes, that "logic" of using (or rather "misusing") conventional wars to become top dog does not apply anymore].
US leaders like Wilson (WW1) or Roosevelt (WW2) knew they just had to wait long enough for European leaders to dismantle what 500 years of empire building had achieved, and to pick up the pieces.
Washington D.C. "going west" started with the consolidation of power with the Civil War, and ended when US President Eisenhower forced GB and France (together with Israel) to stand down in the Suez Crisis. For all practical reasons ending the period in history when London or Paris got to decide on the defense or the expansion of their spheres of influence...
If it wasn't yet quite clear who the alpha male was, and who the beta males...that was it. Of course, all conveyed in very friendly manner, and very diplomatically, as usual...
In that respect, there were many visionary US leaders, and few in Europe...
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@thevillaaston7811 Lend-Lease did not "win the war on the Eastern Front" or "saved the SU from the Nazi invasion".
There was a limit to the potential maximum German penetration into the SU, set by many factors. Mainly, the tenacity of the Soviet soldiers, weather, crappy infrastructure, massive distances, and the lack of production by the Axis powers to overcome this.
In short, the Germans could never have achieved the "A-A Line", let alone hold it for any length of time.
Due to the massive destruction of factories, infrastructure, shelter, etc. by the war, Russian scorched earth measures during their retreat, and German scorched earth measures during their retreat, the entire Eastern Front was a wasteland.
Similar to North Africa, where the ability to supply the front line made or broke any attempts at deep advances, so was the SU in the massive land area between the Baltic and the Black Sea.
According to David Glantz, the American military historian known for his books on the Eastern front:
Although Soviet accounts have routinely belittled the significance of Lend-Lease in the sustainment of the Soviet war effort, the overall importance of the assistance cannot be understated. Lend-Lease aid did not arrive in sufficient quantities to make the difference between defeat and victory in 1941–1942; that achievement must be attributed solely to the Soviet people and to the iron nerve of Stalin, Zhukov, Shaposhnikov, Vasilevsky, and their subordinates. As the war continued, however, the United States and Great Britain provided many of the implements of war and strategic raw materials necessary for Soviet victory. Without Lend-Lease food, clothing, and raw materials (especially metals), the Soviet economy would have been even more heavily burdened by the war effort. Perhaps most directly, without Lend-Lease trucks, rail engines, and railroad cars, every Soviet offensive would have stalled at an earlier stage, outrunning its logistical tail in a matter of days. In turn, this would have allowed the German commanders to escape at least some encirclements, while forcing the Red Army to prepare and conduct many more deliberate penetration attacks in order to advance the same distance. Left to their own devices, Stalin and his commanders might have taken twelve to eighteen months longer to finish off the Wehrmacht; the ultimate result would probably have been the same, except that Soviet soldiers could have waded at France's Atlantic beaches.[45]
Fact remains, that similar to North Africa, no side would have had the ability for large scale operations far away from the home fronts.
Any German attempt to advance would have run out of steam after a few hundred miles advance to the east, and (without the key aid in logistics), the same would have applied for the SU until around 1945.
A 30% total of trucks (Lend Lease) is significant.
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@thevillaaston7811 The only thing I'm "pro" is for the values of freedom, liberty, and self-determination (that is both on the micro level of individual human beings, as well as on the macro level of countries and empires).
I'm not pro-Nazi, even if you repeat it 1,000 times.
I'm as anti-Nazi as I'm anti-Communist.
Wishing that one lost, doesn't mean wishing the other won.
That is a dumb accusation.
I'd have preferred if both lost, by playing them out against each other, by "tweaking" Lend-Lease (no logistical support at all) and "aiding" Berlin by less Strategic Bombing.
The combined effect of that, would have meant the the Eastern Front would have stabilized somewhere in the middle, leading to both systems strained to a breaking point.
By your own logic of "Stalin hero worship", I could say you are a commie. Or is it that you don't like either?
In case you are a "Stalin fanboy", do you like systems of collectivism, Gulags and "bullets in the back of the head" as state measures?
So stop the bs.
Or do you prefer debates in which I accuse you being a commie all the time? Hmmmm?
I also don't like the British Empire (colonialism) or US Corporate Imperialism, but I realize that in WW2 they were simply the best of all the worst systems.
They were not "fighting for freedom, liberty or self-determination".
I'm not a fool.
But still better than the worst, which was Communism and Fascism.
So, the Western Allies would have had my support.
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Allow me to educate you with a brief overview of the GEOPOLITICS ensuring the future of the British Empire (and by extension, the French Empire) at the end of WW1.
In other words, the "logic" which dictated Versailles.
Remember the policy of Balance of Power?
And the Heartland theory? Hmmmm?
Let's put it another way.
History for 2 dimensional little brains which can't compute in 3 dimensions :-)
In very simplistic terms, one could say that in 1939 "Germany had the industry and the technology", while the SU had the "manpower and the raw materials". Of course, this is just a very simple way to explain a complex geographical situation.
According to the British policy of "Balance of Power", London would never have allowed any continental alliance or hegemon to control all of it.
According to this binding policy, London (dragging along France as the "lapdog"), always have allied against the stronger power, to avoid a single hegemon control all of Central and Eastern Europe (in a nutshell "German brains and Russian muscle").
This policy had the intention to protect the Empire.
If, Poland fell to either Berlin or Moscow, then that could only lead to Nazi forces storming into Moscow (German victory, and gain of raw material), or Soviet forces storming all the way to the Rhine (Soviet victory, and gain of industry and technology).
Proof of this is Operation Unthinkable. When Soviet did enter Central Europe, London wanted to (again), ally with the weaker side to "balance the power"...
The entire idea behind the policy of Balance of Power was to avoid any of these scenarios, and as the policy dictated, the Empire would always ally with the weaker alliance/country to keep the balance.
In a nutshell.
Survival of the British Empire = keep "German brains" and "Russian muscle" separated.
Get it?
Do you finally get it?
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