• OT: Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War

    From Rich Rostrom@21:1/5 to Byker on Tue Dec 3 16:45:09 2019
    "Byker" <byker@do~rag.net> wrote:


    Just think if Lord Halifax would have been PM instead of Churchill, which very nearly happened. When the BEF was pushed all the way back to the Channel, he'd probably have sued for peace, and Franco-Prussian War II would have lasted a grand total of eight months.

    And there would be further and bloodier wars when Nazi Germany renewed
    its career of aggression. Moral idiots like Buchanan imagine that Nazi
    Germany would have destroyed the USSR and then everything would be all
    rosy. That assumes Germany would win that war - not at all certain,
    since Germany would not be attacking with complete operational and
    and tactical surprise as in OTL.

    If Germany loses, the USSR would have the sole credit for doing it,
    and would "liberate" the whole of Europe. Communism's pose as the
    true enemy of Nazism would be a reality, not a fake. With Communist
    control of the home countries, Communism would be imposed throughout
    the French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies.

    Also, the USSR would develop the atomic bomb first. Britain couldn't
    afford to, and the peaceful US would never allocate the enormous
    budget. (Besides which, many American and British scientists had
    left-wing and pacifist sympathies; they worked on the Bomb only
    because they feared the Nazis might get it.

    So there's Buchanan's result: Soviet control of all Europe, most of
    Africa, major chunks of SE Asia, and a substantial beachhead in the
    Americas.

    But let's stay with Buchanan's preferred fantasy: Nazi Germany
    triumphant. We know the horrors Nazi Germany perpetrated in its
    short and territorially limited rampage. Those horrors would be
    expanded and extended. Nazi success would inspire imitation and
    alliance. The peace with Britain would soon dissolve as Germany
    moved against Britain in the Middle East. (Germany wants the
    oil, and the Arabs like Germany and want Germany to support them
    against Britain.)

    Germany would support Indian nationalists like Bose, so there
    goes the Empire. The Afrikaners in South Africa were pro-German
    already. Japan would mop up SE Asia.

    The US of course could ignore all this - until Latin American
    nations began veering into fascism, in imitation of the highly
    successful German model. (See Peronism in Argentina, and
    Integralism in Brazil.)

    Eventually, of course, the US would have to fight - on far worse
    terms than OTL's WW II. Or maybe the US could do what Buchanan
    might secretly want - become a fascist and explicitly racist
    state like Germany. (He doesn't want that? Well, there were lots
    of leftists who claimed they didn't want the US to go Communist,
    while opposing every effort to resist Communism. I never believed
    them.)
    --
    Nous sommes dans une pot de chambre, et nous y serons emmerdés.
    --- General Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot at Sedan, 1870.

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