the only thing stopping me from unironically repeating this is that I'm fairly doubtful that Stalin going after the west after the fall of the third reich would somehow result in a soviet victory
gah i got to stop posting when I'm drunk. What I meant was: If Stalin didn't stop at Berlin, the USSR would be destroyed by American and British forces by the early 1950s, probably. Which is not something I'm 100% sure about but I seriously doubt that the USSR had the capability to keep up war like that after all it had been through
The yanks were absolutely bursting with excitement to use a nuke on the communists. This absolutely would not have gone well for the USSR. The only thing stopping things from popping off immediately was war fatigue and the genuine wish of most common people for there to be peace, finally. If Stalin had pushed past Berlin capitalist propaganda would have made sure that the public asks for a "final solution" to the communist menace.
Exactly. The nazis fucking obliterated Eastern Europe in a way that they still haven't really recovered from today, meanwhile the UK got bombed quite a bit and the US had basically nothing happen to it. The idea that Stalin was ready to take on the west in 1946 is frankly ludicrous
I remember writing about this a few weeks back, but immediately after nazi germany capitulated and the allies were pivoting to finish of Japan, Stalin ordered the demobilization of teachers, construction workers, farmers, doctors, etc. to begin immediately helping the reconstruction efforts across the war-torn eastern front.
The great patriotic war was a gruesome defensive war that had brought the best and worst out of the Soviet peoples in the name of defending their motherland from the genocidal fascists. Any idea of conflict beyond that after such a war was unthinkable.
The Brits were on the ropes, but the US absolutely could have crushed the Soviets. They had the industrial capacity but didn't have enough men to spare at that point.
Also, Nukes. The USA would have totally used them as field weapons.
The alt right wave was a false start, the true face of new fascism is the liberals that follow.
Maybe this was just a myth, but I thought German people were pretty solidly against building up their military. Has their been polling over how popular/unpopular this is?
I thought their constitution prevented the army from leaving the nation's borders, which would make them pretty useless to NATO.
It's not useless: Germany will be buying a shit ton of weapons and military vehicles and bombs from the US. That's the point of the US military too.
even ignoring this, if NATO wants it, the bundeswehr will fully rearm with no restrictions. the JSDF is currently in this process, because having japan and germany as rabid attack dogs is more useful than having them disarmed.
Japan has been working up to it for a very long time and I'm surprised that it's even taken this long for them to go all out
there's enough of an anti-war sentiment here to stop the LDP from going full balls to the wall like Germany has suddenly decided it wants to do
Would be kinda funny if this means Germany spins up its own defence industry and starts eating Raytheon's pie.
Heckler & Koch already exist, there is a thriving arms manufacturing industry in germany.
H+K has already been mentioned, but besides massive amounts of small arms, Germany is already huge in manufacturing and exporting tanks (the Leopard II is widely used in Saudi-Arabia and the UAE, for example), main guns for tanks (i think the US army uses a Rheinmetal canon on their Abrams tanks) and submarines. The military-industrial complex is very definitely a thing here, germany is consistently among the 5 biggest arms exporters in the world. there's always a multitude of wars being waged in the world that directly line the pockets of our bourgeoisie.
no, that's japan. germany could have gone in that direction as well, but was already needed as a frontline state in the cold war when our constitution was written, so the us actively worked against this place becoming too pacifist.
just for context, losing two world wars in a row and then being told to fight your own relatives in the DDR in the early stages of an omnicidal thermonuclear war really did a number on people here. Germany in 1945 knew defeat to an extend that americans, who haven't known war within the boarders of their own country since the south got its ass kicked and who still cry ab losing a few of their boats in pearl harbor, cannot even begin to imagine. and in spite of this place still being deeply infected by fascism, the defeat at the hands of the USSR and its allies was so crushing, the sight of the bombed-out cities and the endless trails of PoWs returning home so overwhelming, that even the chuddiest people here became deeply vary of war. Consequently, germany had a massive peace movement from the 1960s onwards, and unlike america's it stayed relevant in german society throughout the 1970s and 1980s, where there were massive protests against us nukes being stationed here. this wasn't an exclusively leftist thing, either, even devout christian conservatives frequently had at least some anti-war sentiment.
today, none of that is left. our news sites celebrate the end of that era while they cheer on the azov nazis and it's absolutely terrifying to behold.
Any hope left for Germany? Or are they necessarily doomed like the US?
The state has sold itself to private companies, it is nothing but a shell left over to facilitate neo-liberlism. It has no capacity to actually organize anything.
That's not a thing. Foreign deployment isn't really mentioned at all in the GG AFAIK. The constitutional court sanctioned it in the 90's tho, if the mission is part of a "system of preserving peace and collective safety". Supposedly NATO, the EU, the VN are that.
Nah you probably just confused Japan with Germany like acidsmiley said
From what I can find, rn it seems to be around 70% in favor of more spending. 2018 it apparently was just 40%
Thats just what I could find from a few headlines tho, so idk how trustworthy that is.
Putin just became the perfect scapegoat for German hawks to froth at the mouth and convince moderates that increased militarization is imperative.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz pushed for rapidly increasing the military budget for years.
they are going to have a full nuclear arsenal in two years aren't they?
They bought F-35s for the sole purpose of carrying tactical nuclear weapons
really..?? did they sign the non-proliferation treaty? (and does that even matter anymore? i'm guessing they have plenty of nuclear material and obviously tons of technical knowhow)
Germany has been borrowing nukes from the us since the 1980s. i'm not making that up, that's actually a thing. it's called Nukleare Teilhabe (nuclear participation).
They use tactical nuclear weapons from the USA under some lending agreement. The F-35 is the only modern plane that can carry them, the US won't let Germany put it on other planes
A janky piece of overengineered trash that's prone to crashing from fairly ordinary weather will be carrying nuclear weapons.
:agony-4horsemen:
Hey it's either that or the ancient tornado fighters lmao
Every day I inch closer to becoming a Posadist. I remember growing up in Mexico and hearing people of the POR say this shit was eventually going to happen.
This is not a good idea why the fuck are they doing this.
because the us told them that lockheed-martin needs the money. all of this will be wasted on shit like the f-35, which has already been anounced to replace the tornado fighter-bombers germany uses to carry the nukes our government has permantly borrowed from the usa. other projects won't be any better, germany's military-industrial complex is just as much of a giant, hyper-corrupt money sink as america's.
i mean, it's obviously a good thing that this place isn't going full wehrmacht even with that much money being thrown around, i'm just putting into context what germany will do with 100 billion euro on top of the normal annual 50 billion we already flush down the drain every year for arms.
The SPD got back in power and well, you gotta.
On a bit more serious notes: The Bundeswehr being absolutely dogshit on all fronts is a sort of lingering topic that pops up again and again and it's generally been pretty accepted that it's a clownshow with no real use. Depending on where you fall on the political spectrum you either think this is good, bad or - majority opinion i'd wager - a tremendous waste of money. WEll then Ukraine and suddenly people thought "oh dang we might actually need these guys". Which I don't think so, but I suppose it's understandable when your view is very eurocentric and you have literally no knowledge of history and this is the first time you noticed a war is happening.
We already have a budget comparable to other western european nations who actually have functioning armies but then I think this is where it gets german, because this state like no other has absolutely lost the ability to literally do anything in the 16 years of being ruled by the CDU. And not like, do good things, literally do anything. Every state part is run by a skeleton crew of underpaid lackeys who do not understand the world and they can't do anything except try to give out contracts, then get duped, then do the same thing again because bureaucracy and that bridge still ain't built.
There's been pretty widespread corruption with large amounts of money being basically funneled directly to McKinsey for nebolous "consulting" (par for the course) and nothing ever improves as apparently basically the majority of the administrative part of the Bundeswehr is de facto done by McKinsey morons and turns out when the answer isn't "just fire lots of people and/or outsource it" they're apparently kind of at the end of their wit.
But you know, can't do anything anymore. Instead of restructuring any of this or using the pretty large funds to do anything, you just throw money at the problem and hopes it solves itself. Latest plans is to buy F35s because remember the Starfighter and those goddamn pilots had it too good for too long, I guess. In all honesty, I expect they will not actually manage to do more with the money than wheelbarrow it directly into McKinsey, because no structural changes have been made. It's just a pit you throw money into to look serious and geopolitical now and sometimes it accidently spits out a working tank, but mostly not.
Germany needed to become a million different city states so that it never rises again
The "Versailles was too harsh" narrative is the biggest fucking lie in all of history
Versailles was too harsh though. WW1 was not Germany's fault, The Bolsheviks are pretty explicit about no annexations or indemnities. I'm reading about that stuff thanks to a soviet textbook another thread brought to my attention funnily enough. From 1935
New Russia wanted peace, certainly the Soviets wanted peace, and the latter, on March 27, 1917, issued their historic 14 Address to all Peoples of the World ” declaring that the war was an Imperialist war, that the working classes every¬ where should agitate for an immediate peace, and that the peace treaties should be based on the principles of no an¬ nexations and no indemnities. It is more than probable that the members of the Coalition Government and its successors, when trying to negotiate a settlement of post-war problems with the German and French Governments and the satellites of the latter in Eastern Europe have often cursed their own short-sightedness at not having seized the Russian proposal as a means of bringing the war to a conclusion in April 1917*
from the 2nd Congress report on peace
The workers' and peasants' government, created by the Revolution of October 24-25 and basing itself on the support of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies, must start immediate negotiations for peace. Our appeal must be addressed both to the governments and to the peoples. We cannot ignore the governments, for that would delay the possibility of concluding peace, and the people's government dare not do that; but we have no right not to appeal to the peoples at the same time. Everywhere there are differences between the governments and the peoples, and we must therefore help the peoples to intervene in questions of war and peace. We will, of course, insist upon the whole of our programme for a peace without annexations and indemnities. We shall not retreat from it; but we must not give our enemies an opportunity to say that their conditions are different from ours and that therefore it is useless to start negotiations with us. No, we must deprive them of that advantageous position and not present our terms in the form of an ultimatum. Therefore the point is included that we are willing to consider any peace terms and all proposals. We shall consider them, but that does not necessarily mean that we shall accept them. We shall submit them for consideration to the Constituent Assembly which will have the power to decide what concessions can and what cannot be made. We are combating the deception practised by governments which pay lip-service to peace and justice, but in fact wage annexationist and predatory wars. No government will say all it thinks. We, however, are opposed to secret diplomacy and will act openly in full view of the whole people. We do not close our eyes to difficulties and never have done so. War cannot be ended by refusal, it cannot be ended by one side. We are proposing an armistice for three months, but shall not reject a shorter period, so that the exhausted army may breathe freely, even if only for a little while; moreover, in all the civilised countries national assemblies must be summoned for the discussion of the terms.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/25-26/26b.htm
Germany ended up this unforgivable, in no small part because Versailles made it clear that you cannot lose or call for peace in an imperial war without being ravaged and desecrated. Lenin was one of the biggest advocates of the idea that Versailles was a criminal imperialist act ensuring another war
