Comments by "Ralph Bernhard" (@ralphbernhard1757) on "Intelligence Squared"
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At 16:40 mins
Hastings criticizes the "massive territorial demands" by Germany, yet at the same time, British politicians and diplomats were GRANTING massive territorial claims to countries like Japan, Italy, Greece, and later organisations and nations like the Arabs and Zionists, in order to coerce them to join the war on their side.
Arthur Balfour's opinion about Wilson, Llyod George, and Clemenceau : 'these three, all powerful, all ignorant men, sitting there and carving up continents, with only a child to lead them'
I couldn't agree more.
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So Arthur Harris was "just following orders" I heard...
We in the west shouldn't have had even the slightest inhibitions about "tweaking Lend-Lease" (to avoid the complete collapse of the SU, but not enough for communism to win). In other words, just as much Lend-Lease as needed, but not enough for the commie to storm all the way into Central Europe.
We should have "aided" the Nazis by as little strategic bombing as possible, but only as much as necessary to aid D-Day, but to avoid the complete collapse of Germany, the backbone of the Axis.
Why shouldn't it have bothered us in the least if the Eastern Front had settled somewhere between Leningrad and the Black Sea, with the two sides fighting until utter exhaustion?
Because we owed Stalin nothing.
Not single Jeep and not a single Studebaker truck, carrying commies into Central Europe by the millions.
Not a single drop of blood.
"Comrades! It is in the interest of the USSR, the Land of the Toilers, that war breaks out between the [German] Reich and the capitalist Anglo-French bloc. Everything must be done so that the war lasts as long as possible in order that both sides become exhausted. Namely for this reason we must agree to the pact proposed by Germany, and use it so that once this war is declared, it will last for a maximum amount of time."
Stalin 19th August 1939
So our leaders sacrificed own soldiers, own resources, and millions of own dollars, to hand over half the world to the commies. Only to end up fighting them in the other half for the next fifty years. Korea, Vietnam, the ME. Thousands of body bags of "our boys".
Rather silly to "help Stalin" don't you think, if we could have just let them "slug it out to utter exhaustion, and then march over the ruins, a fate Stalin had intended for us...
Ah...smart leaders.
Too bad we didn't have any...
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@MrPoot-cx9ez You are obviously struggling with your hatred of children, trapped in a dictatorial regime...
So, allow me to help you out...
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/concentration-camps-1933-39
In 1937, there were 4 ( four ) concentration camps, for political enemies, mainly "commies" (or people so-termed at the time).
The conditions here, were similar to Guantanamo. So, nothing wrong with that, in the context of the times . Correct?
Because a few years earlier, hordes of commie street fighters had made the streets of dozens of German cities unsafe. with plunder and random violence...cough, cough..."real terrorists".
So.
What was wrong with the average German thinking that it was about time to "get tough" on those commie crooks?
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@MrPoot-cx9ez My background is military.
"Revenge" might be a great motivator, but it is a terrible basis for a policy or military doctrine.
In end effect, Churchill sold British interests, because he couldn't see the big picture...
The big picture is that the USA's goal was destroying the British Empire, and they fought for their interests (global domination, Google The American Century).
On the other side, was Stalin, who fought for the communist takeover of the world (Google Comintern, and the Comunist Manifest).
Churchill finally woke up in 1944, and realized that the world was being turned into a 2 power system, and came up with Unthinkable...too late...
The resources of Empire had been squandered on a dumb military strategy of "flattening Germany".
You see, David. Churchill didn't understand the British Policy of Balance of Power for the continent, as a tool to ensure the safety of the British Empire. That meant, ensuring the balance of power, by avoiding the complete collapse a power one could ally with to avoid a bigger danger.
What had been done for 400 years to ensure the safety of Empire, was no longer possible in 1945, because on the continent "Alles Kaputt".
Germany kaput.
Italy kaput.
Poland, Czechoslovakia... sold off to the commies.
France, a Washington lapdog (understandable, after Mers el Kebir)
There was nobody left to ally with, and nobody to fight to uphold Empire.
Communism, and American corporate capitalism, would erode it away within a decade...
There was in fact a far better strategy possible, which I'll post below...
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@MrPoot-cx9ez There was an alternative option.
It meant letting the 2 evils of the world battle it out, while staying mainly on the sidelines, only supporting the losing g side sufficiently not to collapse completely.
That way, the Eastern Front would have stabilized between Leningrad and the Black Sea somewhere.
D-Day would then have resulted in all of Europe being liberated from the west...
But here's the thing.
When Churchill finally woke up, came up with Unthinkable (in end effect, the Policy of Balance of Power), there was nothing left to "balance" the SU with.
Now, if your answer is "Empire" and "US", my answer is "lol".
Because the USA, right from the start, had the intention to turn the world into a 2-power system, and by 1945 that "2nd power" was not "Empire"...
[Google the American Century, and the newer "Project for the New American Century" or PNAC]
"Empire" had exhausted itself, was in financial ruin, and would come in handy as a post-war "lapdog". The Suez Crisis made that perfectly clear = Washington whistled, the Lapdogs (London/Paris/Tel Aviv) cowered...
If you really understand global power, and geostrategy, you'd realize that appart from the German cities, and German people, that there was a third "victim" of the financially ruinous, and hugely ineffective, "Area Bombing Policy (carpet bombing of city centers)...The British Empire.
After WW2 it lacked the strength to stand up the Communism and US corporate imperialism.
The key to saving the Empire was change: turning it into a "Pound block of equals", and protecting it with a strong and united central Europe.
Churchill, was an advocate of the EU, but like conservatives, propagated it 20 years too late.
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@strugat Actually...no.
Hitler had given the military strict orders to withdraw at even the slightest hint of resistance.
And what then?
What should GB and France had done if the Nazis had withdrawn back behind the Rhine?
Note here, that this would have taken the Wehrmacht only a few hours, so that it would have been accomplished before the British were over the Channel.
Furthermore, the "should have" logic ignores the international situation.
At the time, Communism was expected to be a threat.
Google the Comintern, the rise of communist parties after the 1929 Depression, the Communist Manifest, the Soviet takeover in Mongolia, the Soviet invasion of China in 1934, the massive Soviet re-armament under the 5-year plans of 1928 and 1933, Deep Battle (the first ever "Blitzkrieg" doctrine), paratroopers, the Tupolev long range bombers....do you need more?
Allied leaders at the time didn't have a time machine, to figure out how history would unfold later on.
Western leaders obviously wanted to keep the option of allying with Germany in case of any aggressive Soviet expansion into their spheres of influence...
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