Nuklear bomb

[Dozer_EAF19]

Originally Posted by Igo kyu

Nuclear power is available now, as is wind power. These can be as cheap as oil, just not delivered in quite such a piecemeal fashion.

Nuclear and wind power costs next to nothing - after you spend $£€billions on building the plant... Oil isn't running out. There's enough to last for centuries in places like the Athabasca tar sands; it just costs about $100/barrel to refine it. What is running out is oil that costs $10/barrel

Originally Posted by Splitter

Example: Did Hitler fear France? Did he respect France's sovereignty? Answers are no and no. Hitler takes France.

Example: Did Japan fear the US? Did Japan respect US sovereignty enough to prevent them from attacking US territories? The answers are more vague. No they did not respect US sovereignty within their sphere of influence, but they did fear US might.....just not enough.

Example: Did Hitler fear Britain? Did he respect their sovereignty? While he did not respect their sovereignty, he did fear them enough (after being shown) to not throw his troops away on an invasion.

Hitler didn't respect anyone's sovereignty - he was prepared to kill millions of eastern Europeans to ensure the 'survival of the German race'; I don't think international law was pressing strongly on his mind. Because he feared France, he attacked them before they could rearm (or receive American aid) and be stronger than Germany.

In his paranoid crazy mind, there was an International Jewish-Bolshevik-Liberal Conspiracy with Roosevelt at its head, operating in Washington, London and Paris, that would ensure that Germany would never become as prosperous as the United States. If Germany was to become powerful, it would become a threat to the British Empire and to the USA, and they would act to suppress Germany either economically or militarily. So, it was necessary for Germany to expand eastwards, driving out the 'racially inferior' indigenous people as had happened in the Americas and Australia, to create a greater Germany that could match up to the USA and to the British Empire - that was Hitler's thinking. He had to act to contain the threat he perceived from the USA, Britain, and France.

He deliberately started a world war in 1939, because that was the point when Germany had the greatest advantage over the Western allies in the rearmament race. He had to act before France received much American aid. Germany was expecting to fight World War 1.5 in France, and cut all the rearmament programmes in 1939 in order to use all their scarce resources to produce the vast amount of ammunition needed for trench warfare. The speed which France fell was a huge surprise to everyone, especially the German leaders. It wasn't anything to do with 'Blitzkreig', Stukas or Panzers - that was a propaganda lie that suited both sides to believe. The defeat of France was classic Napoleonic concentration-of-force. The Allied battle line formed, the Germans feinted an attack at the north end. The Allies dutifully moved the bulk of the centre of the line to the north, to reinforce, and a massed force of the German army moved through the 'impassable' Ardennes to overwhelm the Allied centre and encircle the bulk of the Allied forces at the north of their lines. It only worked because the Germans advanced only a short way to do this, 100km or so, and didn't overstretch their horse-drawn supply lines. But the result was that Hitler believed that the Werhmarcht were invincible and could easily defeat the Red Army in a short campaign. And that France would drain coal, oil and animal feed from the German economy in exchange for very little usable war material for the rest of the war

Hitler was never able to invade Britain. In his mind, there was an inevitable air war with Britain and the USA which he had to prepare for. He thought he had to take out the USSR, before the USA could get its rearmament programme into gear, to get the oilfields of Romania and the grain of the Ukraine (incidentally, deliberately starving to death the 30 million civilians in Leningrad and Moscow who relied on Ukrainian grain), to sustain the German economy for war with the USA.

In short, WW2 began because Hitler was a racist ****head who thought he could build his own USA or British Empire between the Rhine and the Urals, wiping out the 'racially inferior' people who thought they had a right to live there. He thought that if he didn't, Germany would forever end up as a second-rate sweatshop on the periphery of the USA's economy and suffer 'race death', whatever that means. He perceived that the democracies would prevent him doing this, so he acted in 1939 because he thought that was his best or only chance of success. He did fear the democracies, which is exactly why he attacked them - to eliminate them - and attacked his neighbours - to take their resources, to defeat the democracies.

Incidentally, his plan to defeat Britain - such as it was - wasn't to invade. I think Operation Sealion was more for propaganda purposes than anything else, more pressure on Britain to seek peace. With 80 Royal Navy destroyers defending the British coast, the German surface navy all sunk by Norway, and the ineffectiveness of the Luftwaffe against RAF-defended ships, there was no way to bring an invasion force to Britain. The plan to defeat Britain was to conquer enough of Russia and Eastern Europe to have the resources to defeat the RAF and eventually the USAAF and make the defeat of Germany by the Allies impossible, therefore bringing peace.

edit - I don't know much at all about the Pacific side of things!