[lbo-talk] James Heartfield's Unpatriotic History

[Carrol Cox]

Wojtek is closer to reality here. I don't think Jordan allows for  how
precarious the position of the U.S. globally was in 1940. Germany, to begin
with, having conquered all of Europe, had a _much_ largaer industrial base
than did the U.S. Hitler, true, was not going to "conquer" (occupy) the U.S.
as Cortez conquered Mexico, but the U.S. would have been pretty helpless
without even a toe hold in Europe and Japan 'ruling' the Pacific. Japan
would have had Indonesian oil; Germany would have had the oil of the
Ukraine.

And don't forget that the SU fought a short and victorious war with Japan in
1939 (or 1940?) and still moved its army back west in time to meet the
German onslaught.

Carrol


> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Jordan Hayes
> Sent: Friday, March 08, 2013 12:48 AM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] James Heartfield's Unpatriotic History
> 
> Wojtek writes:
> 
> > I do not want to sound as being a Russophile here, but
> > the fact remains that if it were not for
> > them, we would not have this conversation today.
> 
> Not sure how you claim that as "fact" -- it was always going to be a
> hard problem for anyone, even the mighty Wehrmacht, to conquer the
> world.  France and Benelux, sure; Austria, Czech, Poland ... okay.
> 
> But really: England is hard without a massive beach influx.  North
> America?  Not with such a vulnerable (and limited!) industrial base.
> 
> One way or another, Hitler was going to bite off more than he could
> chew.
> 
> /jordan
> 
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