Trump, Bannon and the Coming Crisis

[Mikebert]

(02-17-2017, 03:29 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(02-17-2017, 01:31 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(02-16-2017, 10:41 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: Oh, and roughly 80% of German casualties were suffered on the Eastern Front.  Large Communist movements existed in France, Italy, and other places in Western Europe during that period.  Had the US not intervened, the Red Army probably would have pushed through to the Channel.

I disagree.  Without the US there would have been no Western front.  Germany was not a pushover and it would have taken the USSR quite some time to defeat them one-on-one. Britain might have tried something in the Balkans, and when they got bogged down maybe settle for recovering Norway.  As the USSR rolled back the German positions at some point I think Churchill would have grown fearful of exactly what you suggest.

Hitler came to power partly because German capitalist elites preferred the Nazis to the Communists.  In the end I think Churchill would have come to the same conclusion and made peace with Hitler.  But Churchill had gambled that the Americans would get involved, in which case his side would have the preponderance of the power and the capitalist West would in the end come out on top (as they did in 1991).

Good points, EXCEPT there is no such thing as making peace with Hitler.

There wouldn't be peace for Hitler. He would still by fighting the USSR. Peace with Britain would simply mean that the Brits would stop launching ineffective assaults against Germany, allowing them to deploy their full power against Russia. Leaving a still -powerful Germany intact could have resulted in an eventual Russian-German settlement that would put the "iron curtain" (to use Churchill's simile) further East than it ended up.  Hitler would eventually die, and his empire would as well, just as did the Soviet empire.

Over the years the Russians and Germans fought, the British could absorb the French and German overseas empires into their own.