05-30-2016, 11:19 AM
War solves problems such as unsuitable borders. Hitler complained often about the small piece of Polish terrain separating East Prussia from Pomerania and about the German minority in the Sudetenland being oppressed. After World War II, the Allies solved the problem of the Polish Corridor by taking East Prussia and almost the whole of Pomerania (and a slice of Brandenburg and almost all of Silesia) from Germany. The Allies signed off on the expulsion of Germans from the Sudetenland.
World War I at the least brought some countries into existence for anywhere from a year to twenty years... and all of those are now in existence. Except that Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia have split, what had been part of Romania is no longer part of Romania, Germany has been truncated at the Oder-Neisse line, a few swatches of Finland have been returned to Russia (through the Soviet Union) ,Poland has a squarish shape, the Russian Federated Soviet Socialist Republic has become the Russian Federation, the map of Europe now looks much like that of 1920 -- and not 1935 or 1950.
World War II brought forth the ugliest manifestations of racism to have ever have existed, racism that made Jim Crow and even Apartheid look humane by contrast. It also discredited racism, making possible the struggles against Jim Crow and Apartheid. The war in the Pacific Basin was mostly over colonial empires; after WWII few countries were able to fight to hold 'their' colonies.
Fascism (including Nazism and Ku Kluxism), which once touted itself as the Wave of the Future, has become a sick joke attracting mostly sociopaths with delusions of grandeur.
World War I at the least brought some countries into existence for anywhere from a year to twenty years... and all of those are now in existence. Except that Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia have split, what had been part of Romania is no longer part of Romania, Germany has been truncated at the Oder-Neisse line, a few swatches of Finland have been returned to Russia (through the Soviet Union) ,Poland has a squarish shape, the Russian Federated Soviet Socialist Republic has become the Russian Federation, the map of Europe now looks much like that of 1920 -- and not 1935 or 1950.
World War II brought forth the ugliest manifestations of racism to have ever have existed, racism that made Jim Crow and even Apartheid look humane by contrast. It also discredited racism, making possible the struggles against Jim Crow and Apartheid. The war in the Pacific Basin was mostly over colonial empires; after WWII few countries were able to fight to hold 'their' colonies.
Fascism (including Nazism and Ku Kluxism), which once touted itself as the Wave of the Future, has become a sick joke attracting mostly sociopaths with delusions of grandeur.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.