--- Warren Ockrassa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > No; it's faulty and arguably inferior. There are two > proofs of that, > one historical fact and the other a bit more > feel-goodish but still > valid (IMO). One, the Nazis lost the war. That > happened at least in > part because of their arrogance and belligerence, > but possibly too > because of the sense of outrage that formed when it > was realized what > was really going on over there. Unfortunately that > didn't seem to > really gather steam until after the war, but it's > also possible that > the Nazis themselves were demoralized by what was > going on, and a > demoralized army doesn't fight very well. Not all > who sieg heiled were > bad people.
Maybe not (arguable, though). But we have some empirical evidence that we can use to test that hypothesis. Damon's military history is a lot better than mine, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that he would agree with me that the German armies fought really, really, really well during the Second World War - man for man, they were probably the best of any of the major combatants (possible exception for the Finns). Indeed, I know that in the standard US army wargames simulating the Western Front in the Second World War, German units are rated as considerably superior to their American counterparts. While you can argue that American elite formations (the 101st Airborne, some historians argue Patton's 3rd Army) fought as well or better than their German counterparts, I don't think there's any question that of all the reasons that the Germans lost the war, the fighting abilities of their armies (on a one for one basis) is dead last on the list. > > Two, any social system that attempts to quell > diversity will suffer and > probably fail when it is forced to compete with > another, more > cosmopolitan social system. For instance the > collapse of Communism in > Russia was more or less preordained; as soon as it > became a > thought-control, monotonous experiment, all original > thinking -- which > is crucial to keep a society going artistically, > technologically and so > on -- was crushed. (The ridiculous attempts to force > Lysenkoism into > agriculture are an extreme example of how backwards > such systems can > become.) I think that's a little optimistic. A simple historical "what-if". What if FDR had died in, say, mid-1944 instead of mid-1945? This is eminently plausible - his health was poor throughout 1944. If he had, Henry Wallace would have become President of the United States, and presumably won reelection in 1944. Henry Wallace had, at one point in his career, named the people he would have picked for several senior positions in his Cabinet. We now know his choices for both Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury were paid Soviet agents. Wallace himself was not, but was so ludicrously sympathetic to the Soviets that it seems virtually certain that, had he been President instead of Harry Truman, Stalin would have been able to secure a dominant global position after the war. Controlling the two most important people in the Cabinet might have helped as well. It seems at least possible, to put it mildly, that this would have changed the outcome of the Cold War. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
