What if after WW2 we decided to annex Western Europe

Bonus. The French would have been turned into real men

I don't even wanna think about all the extra bull shite we'd have to deal with. Y'all bitch about immigrants now? Imagine trying to fold all of western Europe into the American way of life. Hard pass.

No. Too many nationalistic factions owned by a country that would theoretically want to support western democracy.

quote:

---

As the Russians did in the East. Would we still control the area?

---

The Soviet Union didn't annex all of Eastern Europe. They only annexed the Balkans and parts of the caucaus

They set up puppet governments much like we did for much of europe

I just read a great book on the Berlin airlift that provides a solid back background to the USSR's expansion.

The USSR had been planning for a push west (all the way through France and Italy) before the war began. Lots of clandestine, and not so clandestine support of Communist parties in each country, fabricated agitation against existing government etc. The political structures were so well developed that once the USSR occupied eastern Europe setting up the puppet government was a breeze. That was their intent in Berlin to force out the Rueter led mayorship.

Annexation is not the right word for what we did in western Europe, but if we had wanted to repel the Soviets it would have been bad..

Back home the US populace was extremely war weary, Truman struggled to get a commitment to even fund parts of reconstruction in Europe for fear of angering the Soviets. If the US decided Europe needed a little Manifest Destiny, they would have gone head to head with an entrenched, veteran Soviet Army content to win by a war of attrition. Britain was broke, France was France, and Germany still needed to be occupied lest guerrilla forces take up arms (a very real concern in 1945-48).

The only way to beat the Soviets would have been to nuke them into oblivion, which in turn would eliminate America's "moral mandate" to establish governments throughout Europe, forcing us to govern the place by force.

To annex

Who said we didn't? We still have a major military presence in Germany, Italy and Great Britain.

They’d all vote Democrat and the Muslim flood would be sweeping over the 48 states now

quote:

---

We still have a major military presence

---

We still have a major military presence in Cuba, so did we annex Cuba too?

Having a base somewhere is not the same as annexing a country.

quote:

---

As the Russians did in the East. Would we still control the area?

---

Well they had the Warsaw Pact and we had NATO.

We occupied Great Britain with our bombers about 10,000 personnel, Germany with our bombers and army about 35,000 right now. Italy about 13,000 air force and naval.

In Cuba we have about 800

If you want to speak of real occupation, look at Japan we still have 45,000 stationed there mostly in Okinawa, but we have a sizeable amount at Yokahama