Re: The same old shit!!!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Derek Fulton" <derekfulton@bigpond.com>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2002 5:20 PM
Subject: Re: The same old shit!!!

> At 03:15  30/05/02 -0700, Eric wrote:

> >And then they'll be back inside seventy years as the most powerful
military
> >on the planet, kicking the Germans out of France in the process. 
Twice.

> Unfortunately (for American ego's that's not entirely correct) As I
> previously mentioned the arrival of fresh American troops had brought
> forward the end of the war, but the war was lost to the Germans.

I'm sorry.  This claim simply is not transacting in reality.  Yes,
American
military presence and its effect on both World Wars and their eventual
outcome is debateable.	The effect of the American supply base and
industrial might on the Allied war effort as a whole is not.

Make Woodrow Wilson's America less sympathetic to Britain, such that we
_do_
actually appreciate that allowing our civilian passengers aboard a
certain
famous Cunard liner to be shamelessly used as human shields for British
munitions shipments is not particularly nice on the British's behalf,
and
remove us altogether from the supply and military effort in World War I,
and
the chances that the Allies would have won that war without _any_ help
from
us are remote.

Remove Adolf Hitler from his disastrous meddling in military and
diplomatic
decision making from about 1940 onward, and the chances of Allied
victory in
the European theatre of World War II would have been basically zero. 
That
stipulates three different crucial changes:

1.  German priorities in the air campaign over Britain in 1940 would've
remained on military targets instead of switching to civilian ones at
Hitler's insistence just as the Royal Air Force was on the edge of total
collapse in effectiveness.  This could have either brought Britain to
its
knees by itself or cleared the way for later invasion of the British
Isles
with German air supremacy keeping the British Navy from being an
effective
barrier.

2.  Germany would not have unilaterally declared war on the United
States
after Pearl Harbor, thus leaving us to fight the Japanese and likely
leave
the European theatre to the Europeans, without even giving them anywhere
near as much supply to help them out, because we would've been keeping
it to
fight our own war instead.

3.  One of two things would have happened differently on the Russian
front.

3a.  Germany would not have invaded the Soviet Union in the first place.

OR

3b.  Germany would not have squandered its best fighting force in the
most
important part of the Russian front:  Stalingrad.  The German armies,
under
the direction of the German generals instead of Hitler himself, would
have
turned around and fought their way back out of Stalingrad immediately
upon
their initial encirclement, which the Soviets would no more have been
able
to stop than they had been able to stop their taking of Stalingrad in
the
first place.  Then, after waiting out the horrible 1942 Russian winter
on
their _own_ side of the supply lines instead of surrounded and cut off
inside Stalingrad, they would've turned around and renewed their
offensive
in the spring of 1943, and severed the main supply artery from the
Allies to
the Soviet Union through the nearby Caucasus Mountains.... which, by
itself,
would have largely disabled the Soviet Union as an effective combatant.

There's a very good reason that Allied intelligence refused to make any
effort to actually assassinate Hitler, and why most of the efforts on
this
matter came from Hitler's own generals:  everyone with real brains on
the
matter knew that Hitler was doing our side more good than his own in the
overall war effort.  Take him and his blunders out of the equation and
the
Germans likely would've forced everyone arrayed against them in Europe
into
armistice by the end of 1943.  And one of the most important blunders
involved was bringing the United States into the war in Europe.  Take
American help out of that war and basically nobody was going to stop the
Germans on their own.

I am in no way agreeing with all of Mr. Atkinson's somewhat jingoistic
viewpoints in making these statements.	But it's a simple statement of
fact
that Allied victory in either World War with no American help in both
supply
and industrial power was far from a foregone conclusion and most
probably
wouldn't have happened at all.	Claiming otherwise, as I said, simply
isn't
dealing with reality.

E