RE: China’s accelerating growth, implications?

“What bugs me a lot is when I read post such as “You guys won’t unable to survive without our protection” or this kind of stuff.”

Well, I’ve never said that. But to be truthful, if Germany had stopped after France in 1940 and had treated England as a nuisance, today’s Western Europe would consist of one big Germany and Spain and Portugal. America would not have gotten involved even after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (as long as Hitler was not dumb enough to declare war on the US).

Britain would be an American protectorate without any influence on the mainland.

There was no question of survival for Holland, Belgium, France, Norway, Sweden and Denmark under Germany rule. There was absolutely no intention on the part of the Nazis to eliminate the populations or cultures of those countries as they had intended for the Jews and the Slavs. In fact, the Germans of that period (it wasn’t just Hitler, he was democratically elected) actually believed they were protecting Western European culture.
As for sovereignity, well, these same states are giving it up now to the EU. There is little doubt in my mind that the Germans will eventually dominate Europe, in spite of French protests to the contrary. Another generation and the shackles of guilt that had kept Germany quiet and subdued would come off. They would then take the leadership role that really had been theirs since the 1960s.

RE: China’s accelerating growth, implications?

>Cyrus,
>
>I guess that your lecture of WWII history is quite “US
>centric”.
>Yes USA did participate and brought a huge contribution to
>victory but please Many other paid an heavy contribution in
>term of causulaties.
>
>Let me give 2 examples:
>
>Stalingrad battle. The red army fought the Wehrmacht and
>loss millions.
>

Not millions but close to a million. The Germans lost over 220,000 from Paulus Sixth Army in casualties and prisoners.

>D-Day in Normandy: American corps were there but many other
>who paid a lot and didn’ received the easiest beaches to
>land such as:
>Aussies , NZ , Canadians and Brits.

The vast amount of casualties on D-Day were suffered by Americans and much of those on one stretch of beach called Omaha.

But even Omaha was light in comparision to Stalingrad. There were about 2,500 casualties at Omaha with a little less than half of those being KIA. This was in spite of the massive numbers involved in the operation.

Americans simply don’t throw their troops into meat grinders unlike the Red Army.