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#15194687
late wrote:Late Stage Capitalism

Financialization (1980 to present) - Profiting without producing.

In the United States, the size of the financial sector as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) grew from 2.8% in 1950 to 22.3% in 2020.

Source: Statista, Percentage Added to U.S. GDP by Industry 2020



:)
#15194708
late wrote:
First, that's a dodge.

Second, what about Nuremburg? While it lacked grounding in actual law, it was a sight better than the slaughter that occurred elsewhere.



What am I allegedly dodging?

Don't you want to address the denazification of Germany?
#15194713
ckaihatsu wrote:
What am I allegedly dodging?

Don't you want to address the denazification of Germany?



What does Nuremburg have to do with the superpower competition of that era? Looks like a dodge to me.

How is denazification relevant to the discussion??
#15194723
late wrote:
What does Nuremburg have to do with the superpower competition of that era? Looks like a dodge to me.

How is denazification relevant to the discussion??



Hey, *whatever*, late -- participation here is all *voluntary*, so if you don't want to continue, that's perfectly fine.

Here are my previous points, whether you want to address them or not:


ckaihatsu wrote:
The USSR still had to be defensive in the *Cold War*,


ckaihatsu wrote:
Maybe that's because it was *Nazi* Germany just a moment earlier, and was basically taken into 'receivership' by the two postwar superpowers, the U.S. and the USSR.


ckaihatsu wrote:
So we might ask, today, what *would* have been the most-appropriate measures to exact on the Nazis, and on the collaborationists in the German population, and beyond, by extension.



viewtopic.php?p=15194514#p15194514
#15194759
ckaihatsu wrote:
Hey, *whatever*, late -- participation here is all *voluntary*, so if you don't want to continue, that's perfectly fine.

Here are my previous points, whether you want to address them or not:



I know what you said, I also know the history, and I did address the points that made sense.

Honestly, this is a goofy discussion. The idea behind the Cold War was defensive, contain Russia as much as we could, using economic methods as much as we could.

But both sides, as I have repeatedly proven with facts, made offensive moves. Which renders your thesis moot, at best.

As an old internet combatant, I am used to topics changing. So while I don't see what Nuremburg is doing in this discussion, I don't mind. I have studied it, and it's fascinating. We were making up law as we went. There was no precedent, and no legal excuse at all to do what we did.

But it killed a lot fewer Germans than were killed in some other places. And now we have a permanent international court, as limited as it admittedly is. So I call it a win/win/wince. :p
#15194795
The war of 1939 was between the UK and its Commonwealth, the French and the United States on the one hand and Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on the other. The United States and the Soviet Union were non belligerent allies. Roosevelt aimed to make the United States the arsenal of democracy. Stalin aimed to make the Soviet Union the gas station of Nazism. There is no way that Hitler could have achieved his victories in France and the low countries without Soviet oil and other scarce raw materials that the Nazi war machine desperately needed.

The Soviet defence against the Nazis was a shameful debacle, they massively outnumbered the Germans in tanks, planes and artillery. They only survived through massive western aid and the fact that German military was running down from the moment they launched Barbarossa. Without the oil and other raw materials quite quickly the Germans were forced to start de-motorising their forces. The majority of the German army had to rely on horses, while the Soviets were motorised with vast numbers of American made trucks.

The truth is that there was one war between the forces of freedom against the Nazi / Communist war machine that lasted from 1939 to 1991. Our struggle against the fascists, whether right or left wing was noble, righteous and often heroic. However it was also desperate. We couldn't afford to be choosy about our allies. We had to ally with fascist Saudi Arabia and the fascist Soviet Union after Hitler turned on his old friend Joseph Stalin. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and Japan, we had to ally with fascist Muslims and various right wing fascistic regimes like the one in Thailand. Many of these welcomed fleeing German Nazis with open arms. Later we had to ally with Mao's China, The Khmer Rouge and Robert Mugabe against the Soviet block and its allies.
#15194810
late wrote:
I know what you said, I also know the history, and I did address the points that made sense.

Honestly, this is a goofy discussion. The idea behind the Cold War was defensive, contain Russia as much as we could, using economic methods as much as we could.

But both sides, as I have repeatedly proven with facts, made offensive moves. Which renders your thesis moot, at best.



Well, I'm finding this rather-conventional treatment of yours to be quite *ahistorical* -- as though the Cold War just fell straight down out of the sky like a heavy gameboard and plopped down in front of all of us.

Were *both* sides really 'defensive', or does defensiveness on the part of *one* superpower actually imply 'offensiveness' on the part of the other -- ?

Are you forgetting why it's called a 'war' -- ?



Third World escalations

See also: 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, Dominican Civil War, Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, Vietnam War, 1973 Chilean coup d'état, 1973 Uruguayan coup d'état, 1976 Argentine coup d'état, Operation Condor, Six-Day War, Task Force 74, War of Attrition, Yom Kippur War, Ogaden War, Angolan Civil War, South African Border War, Indonesian invasion of East Timor, Re-education camp (Vietnam), Vietnamese boat people, and Stability–instability paradox

Under the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration, which gained power after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the US took a more hardline stance on Latin America—sometimes called the "Mann Doctrine".[246] In 1964, the Brazilian military overthrew the government of president João Goulart with US backing.[247] In late April 1965, the US sent some 22,000 troops to the Dominican Republic in an intervention, codenamed Operation Power Pack, into the Dominican Civil War between supporters of deposed president Juan Bosch and supporters of General Elías Wessin y Wessin, citing the threat of the emergence of a Cuban-style revolution in Latin America. The OAS also deployed soldiers to the conflict through the mostly Brazilian Inter-American Peace Force.[248] Héctor García-Godoy acted as provisional president, until conservative former president Joaquín Balaguer won the 1966 presidential election against non-campaigning Juan Bosch.[249] Activists for Bosch's Dominican Revolutionary Party were violently harassed by the Dominican police and armed forces.[249]

In Indonesia, the hardline anti-communist General Suharto wrested control of the state from his predecessor Sukarno in an attempt to establish a "New Order". From 1965 to 1966, with the aid of the United States and other Western governments,[250][251][252][253][254] the military led the mass killing of more than 500,000 members and sympathizers of the Indonesian Communist Party and other leftist organizations, and detained hundreds of thousands more in prison camps around the country under extremely inhumane conditions.[255][256] A top-secret CIA report stated that the massacres "rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s."[256] These killings served US strategic interests and constitute a major turning point in the Cold War as the balance of power shifted in Southeast Asia.[257][258]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War# ... scalations



---


late wrote:
As an old internet combatant, I am used to topics changing. So while I don't see what Nuremburg is doing in this discussion, I don't mind. I have studied it, and it's fascinating. We were making up law as we went. There was no precedent, and no legal excuse at all to do what we did.



And what did "we" -- meaning the U.S. ruling class elites -- do, exactly? (Please try to be less vague and more specific with your references in general. Thanks.)


late wrote:
But it killed a lot fewer Germans than were killed in some other places. And now we have a permanent international court, as limited as it admittedly is. So I call it a win/win/wince. :p



'Limited' how?

Were the Nuremberg Trials *sufficient*, given the Nazis, the Holocaust, etc., or what -- ?
#15194813
Rich wrote:
The war of 1939 was between the UK and its Commonwealth, the French and the United States on the one hand and Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on the other.



You're inaccurately making it sound as though Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were *allies*, somehow, though. They *weren't*. Look at the politics / ideologies, respectively, especially when they were on *opposing* sides in WWII.


Rich wrote:
The United States and the Soviet Union were non belligerent allies. Roosevelt aimed to make the United States the arsenal of democracy. Stalin aimed to make the Soviet Union the gas station of Nazism. There is no way that Hitler could have achieved his victories in France and the low countries without Soviet oil and other scarce raw materials that the Nazi war machine desperately needed.

The Soviet defence against the Nazis was a shameful debacle, they massively outnumbered the Germans in tanks, planes and artillery. They only survived through massive western aid and the fact that German military was running down from the moment they launched Barbarossa. Without the oil and other raw materials quite quickly the Germans were forced to start de-motorising their forces. The majority of the German army had to rely on horses, while the Soviets were motorised with vast numbers of American made trucks.

The truth is that there was one war between the forces of freedom against the Nazi / Communist war machine that lasted from 1939 to 1991.



In terms of *international relations*, though, we could ask why the Allies in-crowd maintained its king-of-the-hill status at the expense of Russia and China, *both* of which hadn't industrialized yet, while all the Western European countries *had* industrialized by the beginning of the 20th century.



The T’ai-p’ing leadership’s abandonment of its ideals followed the pattern of previous peasant revolts in China. Illiterate peasants working land dispersed across vast areas were not a compact enough force to exercise control over an army and its leaders. Those leaders soon discovered the material resources simply did not exist to fulfil their visionary ideals of plenty for all. The easy option was to fall into the traditional way of ruling and the traditional privileges which went with it.

But in the last stage of the rebellion there were signs of something new. Effective leadership passed to a cousin of Hung’s who began to frame a programme which did imply a break with traditional ways, although not a return to egalitarian ideals. He pushed for the ‘modernisation’ of China’s economy through the adoption of western techniques—the opening of banks, building of railways and steamships, promotion of mining, and encouragement of science and technology. This suggests that the T’ai-p’ing rebellion had forces within it which could perhaps have broken with the pattern of past peasant revolts and swept away the social obstacles behind so much of the country’s poverty. But these forces had no time to develop. A reorganised imperial army financed by Chinese merchants, provided with modern weapons by Britain and France and assisted by foreign troops under a Major Gordon began to push its way up the Yangtze. Nanking finally fell, with 100,000 dead, in 1864.127

Western capitalist states had helped stabilise the old, pre-capitalist order in China, allowing it to survive another 50 years. By doing so, they helped ensure that, while western Europe and North American advanced economically, China went backwards.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 361



---


Rich wrote:
Our struggle against the fascists, whether right or left wing was noble, righteous and often heroic. However it was also desperate. We couldn't afford to be choosy about our allies. We had to ally with fascist Saudi Arabia and the fascist Soviet Union after Hitler turned on his old friend Joseph Stalin. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and Japan, we had to ally with fascist Muslims and various right wing fascistic regimes like the one in Thailand. Many of these welcomed fleeing German Nazis with open arms. Later we had to ally with Mao's China, The Khmer Rouge and Robert Mugabe against the Soviet block and its allies.



'Had to' -- ?

By what standards -- ? The standards of Western imperialist hegemonic geopolitics -- ?

What was so 'righteous' and 'heroic' about using military campaigns to crush popular uprisings -- even the proletarian revolution of 1917 -- in countries all over the world -- ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_in ... _Civil_War



American imperialism consists of policies aimed at extending the political, economic and cultural influence of the United States over areas beyond its boundaries. Depending on the commentator, it may include military conquest, gunboat diplomacy, unequal treaties, subsidization of preferred factions, economic penetration through private companies followed by a diplomatic or forceful intervention when those interests are threatened, or regime change.[1][page needed]

The policy of imperialism is usually considered to have begun in the late 19th century,[2] though some consider US territorial expansion at the expense of Native Americans to be similar enough to deserve the same term.[3] The federal government of the United States has never referred to its territories as an empire, but some commentators refer to it as such, including Max Boot, Arthur Schlesinger, and Niall Ferguson.[4] The United States has also been accused of neocolonialism, sometimes defined as a modern form of hegemony, which uses economic rather than military power in an informal empire, and is sometimes used as a synonym for contemporary imperialism.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism
#15194842
ckaihatsu wrote:
Are you forgetting why it's called a 'war' -- ?


Were the Nuremberg Trials *sufficient*, given the Nazis, the Holocaust, etc., or what -- ?



It wasn't a war. It was historians used to call the Great Game, the struggle of empires. If we wanted a war, we could have ended Russia in short order.


After the second world war, we wanted to prevent a third. That meant using a new approach of making allies out of former enemies. So I would turn your question on it's head, was the slaughter really necessary? The success of Western Europe suggests it was not, that there is a better way...

On a personal note, in 1973 I was drinking what may have been the best beer in the world in Salzburg. I struck up a conversation with a retired Austrian. He told me he had been part of a bomber crew in WW2, and wanted to thank me and my country for conquering him. If you had studied the history of that era, that would not be a surprise.
#15194854
Re: The Cold War

late wrote:If we wanted a war, we could have ended Russia in short order.

And they, you.


:lol:
#15194867
ingliz wrote:

And they, you.




They didn't have nukes for years, and even then, they didn't have a delivery system for more years. Their Bear bombers didn't have the range to get here.

Russia was a hub and spoke system with Moscow at the center. Take out Moscow, and there is no Russia, not for years. Stalin built the military factories in the east, without the railways running through Moscow, there would have been no way to get their stuff to where the fighting was. In addition, take out Moscow means the bureaucracy is also gone, and since it was a top down system, all government and organisational functions would also be gone.
#15194886
ckaihatsu wrote:
Are you forgetting why it's called a 'war' -- ?


Were the Nuremberg Trials *sufficient*, given the Nazis, the Holocaust, etc., or what -- ?



late wrote:
It wasn't a war. It was historians used to call the Great Game, the struggle of empires. If we wanted a war, we could have ended Russia in short order.



It almost *did* happen, due to Cold War international armaments and tensions:



Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: Станисла́в Евгра́фович Петро́в; 7 September 1939 – 19 May 2017) was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces who played a key role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident.[1] On 26 September 1983, three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to five more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm,[2] and his decision to disobey orders, against Soviet military protocol,[3] is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in the Third World War and a large-scale nuclear war which could have wiped out half of the population of the countries involved. An investigation later confirmed that the Soviet satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned. Because of this incident, Petrov is often credited as having "saved the world".[4][5][6]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov



---


late wrote:
After the second world war, we wanted to prevent a third. That meant using a new approach of making allies out of former enemies. So I would turn your question on it's head, was the slaughter really necessary? The success of Western Europe suggests it was not, that there is a better way...



Why the rose-tinted glasses, late -- ?

You make it sound as though all international rivalries ended with the end of World War II -- they *didn't*, and that's why there was the Cold War, with actual *warfare* throughout the world.



The Cold War

The ‘Big Three’ powers celebrated their victory over Germany and Japan by establishing a new international organisation, the United Nations. Its founding conference in San Francisco in May 1945 promised the peoples of the world a new order of peace and cooperation which would vanquish war forever. It was claimed that this was going to be very different from its inter-war predecessor, the League of Nations, which had not been able to do anything to stop the Second World War. The claim struck a chord among people who had suffered and fought for what they genuinely thought was going to be a better world.

However, the ‘failure’ of the League of Nations had not been accidental—it followed from an intrinsic fault. It was set up by the victorious powers after 1918 as part of the Treaty of Versailles by which they parcelled out the world among themselves. Lenin described it as a ‘thieves’ kitchen’—and, as the saying goes, ‘thieves fall out’. The United Nations was no different, even if it had a ‘soup kitchen’ annexe in Geneva (comprising the children’s fund UNICEF, the World Health Organisation, and so on). Decision-making lay with four permanent Security Council members264—Britain, the US, France and Russia—and between them these dominated, oppressed and exploited the rest of the world.

They were already falling out behind the scenes by the time of San Francisco. Churchill discussed drawing up plans for the ‘elimination of Russia’, arming defeated German troops for a surprise attack ‘to impose on Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire’265—a suggestion which, it seems, his own generals would not take seriously. The US did more than just talk: its decision to use the nuclear bomb against Japan in August 1945 was clearly motivated, at least in part, by a desire to show Stalin the enormity of the destructive power at its disposal.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 543



---


late wrote:
On a personal note, in 1973 I was drinking what may have been the best beer in the world in Salzburg. I struck up a conversation with a retired Austrian. He told me he had been part of a bomber crew in WW2, and wanted to thank me and my country for conquering him. If you had studied the history of that era, that would not be a surprise.
#15194890
late wrote:
After the second world war, we wanted to prevent a third. That meant using a new approach of making allies out of former enemies. So I would turn your question on it's head, was the slaughter really necessary? The success of Western Europe suggests it was not, that there is a better way...



ckaihatsu wrote:
Why the rose-tinted glasses, late -- ?



late wrote:
You were wrong.



No, I wasn't -- about *what*, anyway, allegedly -- ?

Over at this other post you seem to know WWII-era *military* strategy rather well:


late wrote:
Take out Moscow, and there is no Russia, not for years. Stalin built the military factories in the east, without the railways running through Moscow, there would have been no way to get their stuff to where the fighting was. In addition, take out Moscow means the bureaucracy is also gone, and since it was a top down system, all government and organisational functions would also be gone.



Are you a *nationalist*, late -- ?
#15194892
late wrote:
You can't tell offense from defense.



I'd say that the following was fairly *offensive* / 'proactive':



By 1947, US president Harry S. Truman was outraged by the perceived resistance of the Soviet Union to American demands in Iran, Turkey, and Greece, as well as Soviet rejection of the Baruch Plan on nuclear weapons.[81] In February 1947, the British government announced that it could no longer afford to finance the Kingdom of Greece in its civil war against Communist-led insurgents.[82] The US government responded to this announcement by adopting a policy of containment,[83] with the goal of stopping the spread of Communism. Truman delivered a speech calling for the allocation of $400 million to intervene in the war and unveiled the Truman Doctrine, which framed the conflict as a contest between free peoples and totalitarian regimes.[83] American policymakers accused the Soviet Union of conspiring against the Greek royalists in an effort to expand Soviet influence even though Stalin had told the Communist Party to cooperate with the British-backed government.[84] (The insurgents were helped by Josip Broz Tito's Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia against Stalin's wishes.)[85][86]

Enunciation of the Truman Doctrine marked the beginning of a US bipartisan defense and foreign policy consensus between Republicans and Democrats focused on containment and deterrence that weakened during and after the Vietnam War, but ultimately persisted thereafter.[87] Moderate and conservative parties in Europe, as well as social democrats, gave virtually unconditional support to the Western alliance,[88] while European and American Communists, financed by the KGB and involved in its intelligence operations,[89] adhered to Moscow's line, although dissent began to appear after 1956. Other critiques of the consensus policy came from anti-Vietnam War activists, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and the anti-nuclear movement.[90]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War# ... %80%931953)
#15194901
ckaihatsu wrote:
I'd say that the following was fairly *offensive*



late wrote:
Thanks for proving my point.



Nice attempt at triumphalism / oneupmanship, but you're being *vague* and obtuse, as usual.

You still think that *all sides* in the Cold War were somehow 'defensive' -- ?


late wrote:
After the second world war, we wanted to prevent a third. That meant using a new approach of making allies out of former enemies. So I would turn your question on it's head, was the slaughter really necessary? The success of Western Europe suggests it was not, that there is a better way...



viewtopic.php?p=15194842#p15194842



I'll note that there'd *be no* 'Western Europe' if the Nazis had taken over -- so, yes, the slaughter *was* really necessary, in the sense of defeating the Nazis.

Postwar, look at who took the 'offensive', or geopolitical initiative, and what it was for:



[T]he Truman Doctrine [...] framed the conflict as a contest between free peoples and totalitarian regimes.[83] American policymakers accused the Soviet Union of conspiring against the Greek royalists in an effort to expand Soviet influence even though Stalin had told the Communist Party to cooperate with the British-backed government.[84]



And:



It was not the resistance fighters in Greece, Italy and France who decided Europe’s destiny, but meetings such as this. At conferences in Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, Stalin agreed with Churchill and Roosevelt to divide Europe into spheres of influence. The US was not happy with this division at first. It hoped to use its massive industrial superiority to transform the whole world into a single US sphere of influence, free trade providing it with open markets everywhere.251 Churchill, committed as ever to maintaining an empire run exclusively from London, would not countenance this, and neither would Stalin, who had the sheer size of Russia’s army to counter US economic power. Between them they persuaded Roosevelt to accept the division they wanted.

The deals were a death blow to the hopes of the resistance movements. They gave Stalin’s armies a free hand in Eastern Europe. Stalin was not going to let Communists elsewhere upset the arrangement by attempting to lead revolutions, however favourable the mass of people might be. His former foreign minister Litvinov spelt it out bluntly to US representatives in Italy in September 1944: ‘We do not want revolutions in the West’.252

This was not just a matter of words. In the spring of 1944 the Italian Communist leader Togliatti had returned to Italy from Moscow. He announced that his party was joining the despised Badoglio government and was prepared to leave the monarchy untouched until the war was over.253 The French leader, Maurice Thorez, insisted from Moscow that the biggest resistance group, the Communist-led FTP, should integrate into and accept the leadership of de Gaulle’s smaller FFI. After his return to Paris in January 1945, Thorez called for militants to abandon all resistance to the institutions of the old state. He insisted that there had to be ‘one state, one army, one police’.254

In Italy and France the restoration of the old order occurred more or less peacefully. In Greece the eventual outcome was civil war, although this did not result from any serious attempt by the resistance leaders to carry through revolutionary change.

The retreat of the German army at the end of 1944 left EAM-ELAS in control of virtually the whole country. It would have required minimal movement on the part of its forces to occupy Athens. It knew that Britain’s intention was to impose the old monarchy and a government run by politicians from the old discredited ruling class. Britain had already used force to break an attempted mutiny against this arrangement by thousands of exiled Greek troops in Egypt. Yet it allowed British troops and the new government to take over the city.255 The only forces the government could rely on were the police and right wing groups, which had collaborated with the Nazis and were intent on humiliating the resistance. Early in December the government demanded the immediate disarming of the resistance throughout the country, and its forces opened fire with machine-guns on a huge protest in Athens, killing 28 and wounding many others.256 EAM-ELAS had no choice but to fight back, and the British generals found themselves hard-pressed. Field Marshal Alexander warned Churchill that he would not be able to reconquer more than the Athens-Piraeus area.

Churchill had already told Anthony Eden, ‘I hope the Greek brigade will not hesitate to shoot when possible,’ and he ordered the British commander on the spot, Scobie, ‘Do not hesitate to act as if you were in a conquered city where a local rebellion is in process’.257 At this point Churchill flew to Athens to announce that the British operation had ‘the full approval of President Roosevelt and Marshal Stalin’.258 The EAM-ELAS forces withdrew from the capital, and formally disbanded a month later in return for an agreement which the government had no intention of keeping. On 8 March Stalin told Churchill at Yalta, ‘I have every confidence in British policy in Greece’.259

Soon government forces were hunting down anyone who had been part of the resistance. At least 50,000 EAM-ELAS supporters were imprisoned and interned during 1945, while right wing paramilitary groups operated with government protection. C M Woodhouse, a British representative who was to become a Tory member of parliament, later wrote, ‘Up to the end of 1945…the blame for bloodshed lay primarily on right wing forces’.260

Many historians argue even today that the leaders of the resistance organisations in all three countries had no choice but to accept the restoration of the pre-war ruling classes. If they had tried to overthrow these, it is argued, they would have been crushed by the might of the British and US armies. Paul Ginsborg accepts this in the case of Italy, and Eric Hobsbawn insists more generally, ‘The Communists…were in no position anywhere west of Trieste…to establish revolutionary regimes’.261 Yet as Gabriel Kolko rightly argues, such judgements ‘entirely disregard the larger context of the war with Germany, the purely military problems involved, as well as the formidable political difficulties that sustained counter-revolutionary wars would have encountered in England and the US’.262

The popular mood in Britain and the US in 1944-45 was not such that it would have been easy for them to mount massive repression. The British actions in Greece caused major political storms both in Britain and the US, and there was massive desire in the ranks of their armies to return home as soon as possible—a mood which was to find expression in mutinies among British forces stationed in Egypt. Above all, it is highly unlikely that a revolutionary movement would have been confined to a single country. Churchill’s great fear was that revolution in Greece would inspire moves in the same direction in Italy—and if that had happened it is hard to imagine France would not have been affected. Indeed, even in Germany, the collapse of the Nazi regime in May 1945 saw workers flocking to their old socialist and Communist allegiances, setting up popular anti-Nazi committees and taking over the running of factories from which pro-Nazi managers had fled—until the occupation armies restored ‘order’ with the help of politicians who had returned from exile with them.

The re-establishment of the old order in Greece, Italy and France meant that those who had prospered under the fascist and collaborationist regimes were soon back to their old ways. In Greece the ‘truce’ between the government and the resistance fighters was soon forgotten. Fascist sympathisers and former collaborators were to be found at every level of the army and police, and they began systematic persecution of the left until open civil war broke out. US arms ensured that the right won the civil war, governing via rigged elections through the 1950s and early 1960s. Then, in 1967, the fascist sympathisers and former collaborators in the army seized power through a military coup rather than risk an electoral victory by left of centre politicians. Not until after the military regime collapsed in the mid-1970s did anything like a normal capitalist democracy exist in Greece.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 536-539
#15194928
ckaihatsu wrote:

You still think that *all sides* in the Cold War were somehow 'defensive' -- ?



I'll note that there'd *be no* 'Western Europe' if the Nazis had taken over -- so, yes, the slaughter *was* really necessary, in the sense of defeating the Nazis.



Not what I said, if you're going to lie, I'm not going to be nice.

The slaughter I am referring to was after the war, mostly conscripts, not Nazis.

Be less pathetic.
#15194941
late wrote:
After the second world war, we wanted to prevent a third. That meant using a new approach of making allies out of former enemies. So I would turn your question on it's head, was the slaughter really necessary? The success of Western Europe suggests it was not, that there is a better way...



ckaihatsu wrote:
I'll note that there'd *be no* 'Western Europe' if the Nazis had taken over -- so, yes, the slaughter *was* really necessary, in the sense of defeating the Nazis.

Postwar, look at who took the 'offensive', or geopolitical initiative, and what it was for:


[T]he Truman Doctrine [...] framed the conflict as a contest between free peoples and totalitarian regimes.[83] American policymakers accused the Soviet Union of conspiring against the Greek royalists in an effort to expand Soviet influence even though Stalin had told the Communist Party to cooperate with the British-backed government.[84]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War# ... %80%931953



late wrote:
Not what I said, if you're going to lie, I'm not going to be nice.

The slaughter I am referring to was after the war, mostly conscripts, not Nazis.

Be less pathetic.



Not lying or "pathetic" -- be less insulting, and more clear about what your point is, that you're trying to make.

*My* point is that the U.S., Britain, and the USSR were practically *collaborationists* with the Nazis, postwar, because of actively fighting to repress the *resistance* movements that had just *put down* the Nazis in Greece, Italy, and France, and the monarchy, earlier, in China.



Soon government forces were hunting down anyone who had been part of the resistance.



viewtopic.php?p=15194901#p15194901




A reorganised imperial army financed by Chinese merchants, provided with modern weapons by Britain and France and assisted by foreign troops under a Major Gordon began to push its way up the Yangtze. Nanking finally fell, with 100,000 dead, in 1864.127



viewtopic.php?p=15194813#p15194813
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