re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

quote:

---

Dude, Hitler might be the biggest underdog to ever take true power in human history. If he isn’t, then he’s certainly in the debate. The coincidences were unbelievable.

---

What the frick are you talking about?

quote:

---

Here’s what I’m saying though: I doubt it would have been Hitler, but some nationalist, fascist, or communist would have inevitably taken over Germany due to what Britain and France did to them. It’s not a matter of if, it was just a matter of who and what would take them over.

---

You really need to read the history of that period before making such statements. Arguably, some concessions on the part of German conservatives and militarists with the SPD could have avoided the later decisions they made to try to form a possible coalition with the Nazis. The problem with a lot of Revanchism or any politics of revenge really, is that time moves forward, not backward, and looking to and being enamored with the past sometimes blinds you to new realities. The world will pass you by unless you adapt to those new realities. That's instructive with regard to both Putin and the German conservatives and militarists.

quote:

---

No, not necessarily and I don’t see the Germans in WWI as being the bad guys over the French and British. Make no mistake, if Germany did that to France after winning WWI, a figure that could be compared in some way to Hitler would have risen there. Try for some forgiveness. Shame, bitterness, and humiliation tend to be brought back up decades later.

---

This is straight up nonsense. While Versailles may have been misguided, you have to understand that part of it was designed to appease the public of the Allies. The original value of the reparations was 132 billion marks in cash. The reality was that Germany was expected to pay only 50 billion, with that value reduced to 40 billion due to loss of overseas possessions etc. Before a schedule of payments was made, Germany had paid 7 billion and offered to pay 20 billion at once.

German payments slowed to a trickle after the Allied Powers gave Germany control of their custom posts for delivering reparations. The French occupied the Ruhr in response. German economic officials pursued inflationary policies too, as those officials wanted to sabotage repayments. The Young-Dawes Plan set the final reparations figure at 118 billion, to be paid in full by the 1980s, and Germany was given access to foreign direct investment in the form of loans. The first loan they received was in excess of 300 million dollars, and by the end of the decade, Germany received more money than West Germany did in the Marshall Plan.

Placing too much emphasis on the terms of the Treaty of Versailles ignores that Germany immediately tried to work around sanctions through a rearmament program with the USSR and sank their own economy to get more favorable repayment terms. By the Great Depression, I believe they had the largest economy in Europe by GDP, no doubt fueled heavily by the foreign direct investment I alluded to earlier.

You seem to continually give the benefit of the doubt to bad-faith actors and you seem to do this repeatedly. And you rely on simplistic explanations where none exist for some reason.