In fact, we cannot make sense of history at all if we treat counterfactuals as unknowable nonsense, although therea re limits. There's no point in asking, for example, what would have happened if Hitler had teamed up with Ghengis Khan to attck the USSR from the East as well as the West. The possible worlds we discuss have to be relevantly close, whatever the the measure of closeness is. (If my old prof David Lewis is right, these possible worlds actually exist!) But a world without lend-lease, say because the Battle of Britain or the Battle of the Atlantic had been lost, is not too far in my judgment.
And like John, I am absolutely positive about the outcome in the case, but think it would be different from what John thinks it would have been, because I think the Eastern front was a lot more touch-and-go than John does, probably because I have a lot less confidence in the glories of the FSU. I am of course immensely grateful to them for saving the world at Stalingrad and Moscow and Leningrad . . . but they didn't (and couldn't) do it by themselves.
--- John Mage <jmage at panix.com> wrote:
> Justin on Roy Medvedev's opinion that:
> "[The USSR] would have won anyway. At the end of
> the day we
> would have won by ourselves. That was obvious by the
> end of 1943.
> But the Allies did help in some ways and diminished
> our casualties
> and shortened the war. But otherwise we would have
> managed
> ourselves."
>
> > I have a lot of respect for Roi Medvedev on lots
> of grounds, but this
> > is silly
>
> Arguing counterfactuals is without means of
> resolution. All opinions are
> equally true or false. But the lot of us know less
> than Roy Medvedev has
> forgotten about the history of the eastern front and
> the internal
> situation in the wartime USSR. Clearly he's not
> talking about some
> bizarre counterfactual in which the Brits were not
> at war with Germany,
> but rather whether Hitler would have been defeated
> by the USSR without
> Lendlease type aid or the second front. And his
> conclusion (to me evident)
> as to that question -however judged - is not
> "silly".
>
> Among the people who were worried about just that
> possibility in 1943-
> 1944 were Roosevelt, Churchill and the Wehrmacht
> officers who tried
> to kill Hitler on July 20th, 1944.
>
>
> john mage
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
>
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