[lbo-talk] James Heartfield's Unpatriotic History

Jordan Hayes jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com
Fri Mar 8 10:14:35 PST 2013


Wojtek writes:


> I do not think that nazi plans for Lebensraum extended
> to the US or even that island on the west coast of Europe.

The idea that the US and UK would simply allow Germany to expand to the size of Europe is just barmy. There's nowhere to even start to rail against such a thesis.


> They conquered France mainly to get even for the humiliation of
> Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, but their plans for Lebensraum
> extended eastward.

They conquered France for the same reason they conquered other countries: to try to deal with the fact that they didn't have enough raw resources or labor to conquer Europe. By 1942 something like 50% of all goods shipped by rail inside the occupied territories were shipped on French trains. The item that unobtanium was not oil -- it was electricity. There was no outbuilding

WWII was not a strategic decision; it was a decision made by a madman with poor arithmetic skills. The Germany that Hitler envisioned was never possible; the Eastern front was absolutely critical in stopping the carnage when and how it was, but without it we would not "all be speaking German" ...

And even this idea of excluding the SU from the fight is without support: under no theory would the SU have come to an arrangement with Germany that would both keep the Ukraine intact and invulnerable to attack; the eastern front was inevitable.

Carrol writes:


> I don't think Jordan allows for how
> precarious the position of the U.S. globally was in 1940.

Which was completely reversed by 1942.


> the U.S. would have been pretty helpless
> without even a toe hold in Europe

See "UK" above. But also: Africa->Italy.

The defense of a conquered continental Europe was impossible.

/jordan



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