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I've heard it said that the Nazis' plans to heavily promote childbirth during the lead-up to the war and the war itself was ultimately a further drain on the country's resources and should never have been attempted. Namely, given that even the youngest possible results of the program would be like 12 years old by the time the war ended, they could contribute about nothing to war efforts and sucked up a lot of time and money for education, feeding, et cetera. Has anyone done comprehensive writing on that topic?
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Jan 3, 2015 00:10
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feedmegin posted:Why? Appeasement was a mid-late 30s thing, generally, and Chain Home wasn't started until 1936. It seems pretty likely that the Germans would have been able to win against the Czechs, but then they'd need to spend significant time rebuilding and rearming to pre-war-with-Czechs strength. And they wouldn't have been able to easily seize a bunch of czech weapons and other materiel to use next year, like they did in history. To say nothing of if the Czechs were willing to sabotage their world class armaments factories to deny their use to the invaders. That could have, among other things, severely delayed invading Poland or anyone else,
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Mar 31, 2015 19:53
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I would think that any offers also included the Jews leaving most of their wealth and goods right in Germany.
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Apr 19, 2015 07:26
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The same tracks also provided what meager supplies they tended to receive for the prisoners.
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Apr 22, 2015 00:03
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Ghetto Prince posted:This has probably been covered somewhere upthread, but would handing over Danzig have done anything to improve Poland's situation / at least buy some time? No, because Danzig as an excuse for war was already tossed aside by Hitler in favor of his whole false flag radio station thing on the border.
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May 15, 2015 02:22
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Kanine posted:Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but seriously why does North Korea still exist? At least why is it allowed to continue existing in it's current state? If we leave it alone, it costs everyone else much less money than taking 'em down and then frankly being morally obligated to rebuild it. Plus they aren't a real military threat to anyone since the 80s, their best shot is literally just nuking themselves to try to spite the invaders because they can't manage to get a nuke into SK let alone over to Japan or the US. When North Korea finally collapses, China's going to have to spend a ton more on keeping people from fleeing across their non-total-minefield border, South Korea for certain and probably the US and others will have to pour money in to reintegrating it with South Korea, like we're talking trillions of dollars of economic impact spanning over a few decades minimum. Just look at former East Germany: it's still not doing as well as former West Germany with a full 25 years of official reunion and billions upon billions pent, and the two Germanies were way closer in infrastructure, wealth, etc than North and South Korea are today. So meanwhile we keep kicking the can down the road, with China applying the minimal stabilizing force to prevent the refugee rush and the US/China/SK together doling out pretty hefty but also rather cheap food aid so they don't completely starve.
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May 15, 2015 04:47
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PittTheElder posted:Actually, North Korea used to be the industrialized productive part. Not so much now though of course. It is widely believed that first their chemical and biological agents are heavily decayed or sold off to shady groups over time to raise money for the regime's luxuries, and secondly that their delivery systems would in event of real war fail spectacularly, especially as real chemical and biological weaponry can't just be left ready in artillery to be shot into Seoul, it has to be properly mixed and stored and only deployed right before you want to use it. A useful comparison might be the various wunderwaffe of the Nazis, in that they could only be deployed very sporadically if at all.
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May 15, 2015 13:20
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Veritek83 posted:Sure, but even if only a very small number of agents are delivered successfully it would be a nightmare for the South (and the world at large) to deal with on just about every level. No, not really. Please bear in mind that current estimates is that the North Koreans could only reliably hit the outer northern suburbs of Seoul, and then a bunch of mostly not that populated farmland across from the rest of the DMZ. Like I said, it's akin to the Nazi wunderwaffe in terms of effectiveness. The military threat is greatly overplayed and becomes more so by the year since the Soviets stopped handing out all the free support they could ask for in the 80s, while the economic costs of it finally going under keep getting way more important.
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May 15, 2015 17:11
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Veritek83 posted:I don't disagree that the absolute number of casualties and the military effectiveness of any sort of chemical or biological attack by the DPRK will probably be equivalent to the wunderwaffe, but that's not really the point, is it? The political cost of letting such an attack happen- or worse, being seen to provoke such an attack- factors into any sort of decision making about the North. No, really, most decision making going on is about the absolutely massive problems that come after their inevitable defeat, not about the relatively short amount of time they'd be able to fight. It's inevitable, and it's going to be one of the hugest humanitarian problems ever, including how to, essentially, restore a nation of 20 million plus people that's essentially already in ruins. Also, the North Koreans have already been shown to initiate attacks on the flimsiest possible pretexts, so there's really no appeasing them to prevent it. But you'll notice that especially since the 80s, they haven't dared to blast a single shell into Seoul because everyone knows what happens to their leadership within a few hours of that. They're in an unwinnable position, and they can't even make a meaningful first strike out of spite, but it's also one where they can sit and be the overlords all they please for probably another couple of decades before they have to fold. You might think of it like if Adolf Hitler had gone on to take over Lichtenstein instead of Germany. He couldn't really project force, but he could be a brutal tinpot dictator and live reasonably free of worry that anyone would bother to roll in and oust him.
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May 15, 2015 17:30
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