Re: Mephhead Maphhead All Governments are ...(@ MasterBollocks)
Hi, Matt, sorry for not answering your post before, I've been busy. I see you have changed your strategy and now are engaging in a variation of the famous Chewbacca Defence. Well done, Matt, keep on digging!
And now, to the fray:
"The French were the senior ally in the Great War, they had by far the largest number of forces involved in the first few years"
That's true, but doesn't have much to do with the issue at hand. The French were borrowing money from the UK and the USA, and later on the British were also borrowing money from the USA. Hell, at the beginning of the war, even the Germans were borrowing from American banks. The number of soldiers the French put on the battlefield and the amount of casualties they suffered is NOT THE POINT. The point is the amount of debt all involved parties incurred while financing the war. So your point is just another convoluted straw man argument.
None of which had anything to do with the French desire to cripple post-War Germany. The Brits and Yanks could have been bankrupt and it would still have done nothing to stop the French
The Brits and Yanks could have threatened France with getting TFO of continental Europe if sensible and reasonable conditions hadn't been negotiated, were it not for the fact that they were in debt up to they ears also, thanks to all the dough they borrowed through the Federal Reserve. Which was the point in my comment -and in Infernoz comment before mine.
Rubbish. Britain made a tiny amount from reparations compared to the income derived from the post-War colonies, especially India
India had been in a continuous state of turmoil for several decades, and keeping order there was becoming more expensive every year. As a matter of fact, the Brits trying to milk more wealth from India -by taxing salt, for Chrissake!- caused Gandhi's revolution, that for once was -quite miraculously- peaceful. Who knows? If the Brits had tried to extract more money from their colony from 1918 onwards, everything could have ended in a terrible bloodbath, and a terribly expensive one for Britain, to boot.
Again, rubbish. Germany was not invaded, her wealth was not looted by a conquering force, her factories were not bombed into ruin
Rubbish yourself, Matt. Germany had been four years under an almost complete blockade, with almost half of its workforce either enlisted, killed or producing weapons and ammo. Undernourishment and famine were common occurrences in the last half of the war. The difference between this and the situation after the armistice was that, during the war, the ruling classes were seen as the culprit, hence giving the proper growth medium for communism. After the Armistice, and due to its awful conditions -economic an otherwise-, the guilt was shifted to "everybody else" and "foreigners", at least in the eyes of the general population, giving the perfect growth medium for Nazism.
"Do you really want to claim 'Communism' was born in Germany only AFTER the Great War?"
Another huge straw man argument. Socialism and Communism were both born in the Nineteenth Century. Perhaps you should buy yourself a dictionary and learn what 'growth medium' means. Just saying.
Nope, they were caused by Germany going to war...
Yes, and before that by the Prussian-French wars, and before that by Napoleon, and before that... up to the Big bang itself. But the fact is that, for the German public opinion, the culprits were the allied powers and the goddamn awful conditions they imposed. Again, a little bit of generosity could have probably prevented WWII.
The post-War struggles against 'revolution' in Germany and the subsequent instability was the destroyer of wealth and of the living standards of the people
Da fuq?. Do you really believe that? Where did you take that funny idea from? Mein Kampf? So, for you, either the German Hyper-Inflation never happened or it was caused by the communists? Obvious Bullshit!
"It is very obvious you have never studied any history of Europe"
LOL. I was subscribed to 'Historia16' -a quite reputed History magazine in my country- for 6 years in the eighties and nineties, read occasionally "Historia y Vida" (another History magazine), I have read eight 'serious' History books covering the first half of the Twentieth Century, e.g. "Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War" by Max Hastings, one regarding the Rotenkapelle and another one covering the Russian Revolution and several others covering the Spanish Civil War - which is closely related to WWI and WWII.
Fuck!, I've even read 'Das Kapital' (in a Spanish translation, as my German is basically non-extant) and an English translation of Mein Kampf (well, the first eighty pages or so, as I couldn't swallow more of that crap). On a lighter note, I've also read Fall of Giants, by Ken Follet, which is fiction, but really well documented fiction. Studied them? No, I just read them. Did you 'study' European History? OMG, we have a professional historian here!
...by pretending you have done anything more than read Leftie pamphlets.
Frankly, I don't remember the last time I've read a leftie pamphlet. Not in this millennium, of that I'm quite sure. Anyway, I can recognize pamphlets -leftist or otherwise- from some distance.
PD.: How's your blood pressure, Matt? Be careful, you could burst a blood vessel!
PPD.: Chewbacca strikes back! ;-)