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What WW2 actually was: a war between banking powers

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
After doing some re-reading (from a book entitled Dirty Little Secrets of World War 2), I'm considering that Chamberlain might have gotten a bit of a raw deal.

Well...my point wasn't that Chamberlain was complicit, but moreso that there is a tangled web of complicity.
There are plenty of less well-known individuals within the French government and command structures I could wave at too. However, I did find the linked information interesting, and would be more than happy to deep dive on it if you want to start a thread. I'm not sure this is the one to go too deep, but certainly I would say that any suggestion that Chamberlain is responsible for WW2 due to an unwillingness to stand up to the Nazis is completely overblown, which I think you'd agree with.

So, it was more of a case that Britain simply wasn't prepared to take on the Nazis in 1938. No one was, as the Germans had surpassed them somewhat in the arms race, particularly in terms of air power. Of course, the British can still be blamed for not keeping up and letting the Germans get ahead of them, but that wouldn't be entirely Chamberlain's fault.
Weirdly, perhaps, I've done much more of a deep dive on German arms/armour and production that on the Allied one. So at a broad level I wouldn't dispute what you're saying about Allied preparation, and I know the RAF in particular made good use of the extra time. French improvements were somewhat negated by their unwillingness to couple their improved position on paper with improved strategy, their willingness to fritter away their best units in small groups to bolster their worst ones, etc.

However, I think you're overselling German preparedness. You mentioned 5 panzer divisions being available in 1938. Technically, that's true, but the fourth and fifth panzer divisions weren't established until late '38 (November). Further, the personal for those divisions included large number of men from the Sudetenland, so talking about them as a viable force prior to that annexation is misguided.

Looking at the divisional preparedness further, it's worth noting that the vast majority of tanks in the five tank divisions by the end of 1938 were Panzer I and Panzer II tanks. These were next to useless against enemy tanks. It was actually German combined arms operations (including air force and artillery) that carried the day in France, rather than the sheer power of Panzers.
By the end of 1938, Germany had a nominal strength of roughly 3500 tanks (of course, not all were operational, but let's go with that). Of that, only about 10% were Panzer III or Panzer IV models.

In terms of air preparedness, there was a lot of messaging from the Luftwaffe indicating their superiority to all other European air forces, and the ability of the Luftwaffe to force Britain out of any conflict if required. However, Goring in particular was full of crap, and was playing internal politics to get more of the overall military budget.

Further, while the Luftwaffe were quite revolutionary in terms of their close support actions in Poland, and their integrated combined arms offence, it was as much accidental as planned. Goring in particular still favoured strategic bombing over tactical support, and the weather in Poland impacted on the initial invasion plans by the Luftwaffe. The engagements involving air support went so well that this tactic was left in place for the remainder of the Battle for Poland (basically - I'm oversimplifying here). This was made possible by the obsolete equipment of the Polish air force, and the inability of the Polish Air Force to mount a credible defence over time. Ground forces overrun enough of the Polish infrastructure that they ended up withdrawing considerable numbers of aircraft from the country entirely, further reducing opposition, and allowing Ju-87 dive bombers to swan around as mobile artillery. The reputation of that aircraft was enhanced beyond capability by a conflict where the Germans had complete air superiority, but the Stuka was not a credible weapon in a war setting of contested air superiority.

The Germans weren't ready for war in 1938. They weren't really ready in 1939, truth be told. But they were ready for a localised war, and they had convinced themselves that they could use a mix of politics, terror and actual armed capability (particularly aerial) to keep it localised.


I think it may have started at the Versailles Conference of 1919, or perhaps before then. When Wilson offered his Fourteen Points for peace, that's what the Allies should have stayed with, instead of turning it into a feeding frenzy of looting and willy-nilly redrawing of boundaries without any thought to the consequences. Placing all the blame on the German nation and people, while letting the Kaiser get away scot-free in his exile in the Netherlands, was also a serious mistake. The Kaiser and his extended family throughout Europe (including Britain) should have paid the reparations for that war, not the common people. Meanwhile, the Soviets saw the imperialist, racist, colonialist Western powers for what they were - which planted some toxic seeds in the relationship between east and west. The Western monarchists were probably pissed off that the Bolsheviks killed their Romanov cousins. They seemed to take that stuff pretty seriously.
I'd have to think about the Russian angle. But I agree that the Treaty of Versailles was a major contributing factor in the rise of the Nazis, and the move of the Nazis to initiate WW2. It was punitive in a way that didn't help stability at all, but it was also punitive in a way the German people were never going to be able to accept. For all of Germany's faults, there was plenty of shared responsibility for the commencement of WW1, but it was largely they who bore the brunt of it.


Some might point to the Locarno Pact of 1925 (Locarno Treaties - Wikipedia) (Chamberlain's half-brother was involved in that one) as an early step towards "appeasement," and that was even before the rise of Hitler. The key takeaway from that treaty was that finalized Germany's western border with France (Alsace-Lorraine), but left their eastern border with Poland left open-ended, subject to revision at a later date. It was that loose end which was never really resolved.
I suspect...but will obviously never know...that Hitler was looking for loose ends regardless of whether they existed, and would have manufactured them if they didn't. For all the way things are portayed now, the rise of the Nazis didn't fix the economic woes of Germany. What they did do was re-establish a strong national identity. But Hitler knew he needed more than that to fix the economy. Which is the main reason he was upset after Munich. Whether or not they were really ready for war, he knew they'd need access to Czech economic strength, along with various other items of consideration, be it Lithanian ports, or the Danzig Corridor. He would have 'stopped' only when German economic power was established. And one can only wonder if he would have stopped then, since at that point they would have been truly ready for war.
I think from the standpoint of a Western imperialist capitalist of that time, their bigger fear might have been the spread of the communist ideology, particularly in the colonial world which was starting to kick up some resistance - but also in Europe and America. I think some among that ilk might have looked at Hitler's Nazis as a staunch bulwark against communism and perhaps had thoughts of using them as a buffer state to protect against the possibility of the communists expanding into other countries. Considering how the U.S. has propped up numerous far-right dictatorships around the world in the name of anti-communism, it doesn't seem too much of a stretch that they might have considered Hitler for a similar purpose. Or if nothing else, they could have played off Hitler and Stalin against each other and let them fight it out (which did happen, to some extent, but with complications).
It's an interesting angle. It's also worth remembering that each of the capitalist countries had their own independent ideological forces to contend with, whether that was Mosley's fascists in England, or communist party operatives, or republicans in Ireland, or...
None of them operated in a vacuum, and the policies of individual countries could be as influenced by smaller domestic ideological conflicts as major international ones.
 

Stevicus

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Strong your faith is.
I wonder how they started wars before capitalism existed.
Time travel?

Human greed has existed for as long as humans have existed. It may have taken different forms over the centuries, just as politics, nations, and cultures have changed and evolved. But some things still remain relatively constant, such as the propensity to make war. They may have been Roman emperors or feudal warlords, but the one constant one can see is that the little people don't start wars.

Putin...the former socialist who wants to resurrect the Soviet empire?
He isn't practicing capitalism with his wars...it's conquest.

"Former socialist." It's still capitalism. Putin is actually quite wealthy and Russia's wealthy classes seemed to really revel in the bourgeois lifestyles of the rich and famous. I guess it probably still sucks for the lower classes, but maybe they'll have another revolution. That's something they do have a rich history of doing.

I suppose that you'll be defending Kim Jong Il as just defending
the workers' paradise in N Korea against evil capitalism.

Naah. It's hard to characterize exactly "what" North Korea actually is these days. I just thought of a possible analogy. I remember when I was a kid, I read a story about a Japanese soldier in World War II who never heard that the war had ended, and was surviving on this island for decades after the war. I think that's analogous to what North Korea is now. They act more like a military fortress under siege, and Kim Jong Un is like a fortress commander with the whole country essentially drafted into the military.

I don't defend that at all, and in fact, it's truly quite sad that it's come to this after such a long time since the Korean War. I think that if we reach out the hand of peace and try to come to some sort of understanding, we could have a more peaceful, stable world. I don't know if the two Koreas could ever reunify, but if we could at least get them to stop pointing nuclear weapons in our direction, that would be progress.

I suppose that if you were successful, & eliminated
capitalism on the planet, then no capitalist countries
would be the ones starting all the subsequent wars.

Well, at least in the sense of a one-world socialist government, there would be no individual national governments to fight over anything. Many early socialists intended it to be a world-wide thing, although when the world revolution failed to materialize after the Russian Revolution, Stalin embarked on a plan of socialism in one country, which also had some nationalistic elements, which is where it went bad.

If there had been a worldwide socialist revolution in all nations in 1917, then World War I would have quickly ended, and there would have been peace, justice, and freedom for all the people of the world. Unfortunately, only the Russians had a socialist revolution, while such did not happen elsewhere - at least not right away. So, things went south pretty quickly.
 

Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
I've also seen you acting as if Rockerfeller owned IG Farben. That's not true (there was at best collusion in the late 30s), but it was also a notable company in that it was one of the first large conglomerates worldwide where decision making was heavily controlled by management rather than ownership. However, that notwithstanding, IG Farban acted in concert with the German government, and in a manner that increased their value five-fold in ten years.
We Europeans, we Christians cope with the fact that fellow Christians killed our great-grandfathers in war. We accept the fact that Christians kill and commit a genocide against their fellow Christians.

Because I studied the IG Farben case in the Nuremberg trials...and they were found guilty.
And the IG Farben was owned by those banking dynasties, Warburg, above all. Not only Rockefeller.
Who were in the US, safe and far from Nuremberg.

 
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Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
"Former socialist." It's still capitalism. Putin is actually quite wealthy and Russia's wealthy classes seemed to really revel in the bourgeois lifestyles of the rich and famous. I guess it probably still sucks for the lower classes, but maybe they'll have another revolution. That's something they do have a rich history of doing.
He became who he is in a socialist society.
Russia is capitalist now, however business owners
must toe the line, or their company is nationalized.
A mixed economy, as they say.
When USSR invaded Afghanistan, how was it that
capitalists started this war?
Naah. It's hard to characterize exactly "what" North Korea actually is these days.
It's socialist.
I just thought of a possible analogy. I remember when I was a kid, I read a story about a Japanese soldier in World War II who never heard that the war had ended, and was surviving on this island for decades after the war. I think that's analogous to what North Korea is now. They act more like a military fortress under siege, and Kim Jong Un is like a fortress commander with the whole country essentially drafted into the military.
The No True Socialist fallacy, eh.
Could I claim "No True Capitalist" if I call Russia a "military fortress under siege"?
I don't defend that at all, and in fact, it's truly quite sad that it's come to this after such a long time since the Korean War. I think that if we reach out the hand of peace and try to come to some sort of understanding, we could have a more peaceful, stable world. I don't know if the two Koreas could ever reunify, but if we could at least get them to stop pointing nuclear weapons in our direction, that would be progress.


Well, at least in the sense of a one-world socialist government, there would be no individual national governments to fight over anything.
No disputes over resources across all the planet, eh.
Many early socialists intended it to be a world-wide thing, although when the world revolution failed to materialize after the Russian Revolution, Stalin embarked on a plan of socialism in one country, which also had some nationalistic elements, which is where it went bad.

If there had been a worldwide socialist revolution in all nations in 1917, then World War I would have quickly ended, and there would have been peace, justice, and freedom for all the people of the world.
Such certainty that your dream would've inexorably happen.
Unfortunately, only the Russians had a socialist revolution, while such did not happen elsewhere - at least not right away. So, things went south pretty quickly.
Ditching capitalism for socialism has never gone well.
 

Stevicus

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
He became who he is in a socialist society.
Russia is capitalist now, however business owners
must toe the line, or their company is nationalized.
A mixed economy, as they say.
When USSR invaded Afghanistan, how was it that
capitalists started this war?

It's socialist.

The No True Socialist fallacy, eh.
Could I claim "No True Capitalist" if I call Russia a "military fortress under siege"?

No disputes over resources across all the planet, eh.

Such certainty that your dream would've inexorably happen.

Ditching capitalism for socialism has never gone well.

Isn't it rather late in your time zone?
 

Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
Meine augen my eyes are failing.
I actually started thinking of the answer in German.
Been brushing up on it for some museum bizness.
Nite nite.
Don't let the IRS bite.
Meine Augen.
Remember, all nouns are capitalized auf Deutsch. ;)
If you wonder why, ask Luther.
 
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lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
My point is that there were banking powers behind the scenes who wanted the war.

You went further than that, suggesting that they orchestrated it, and were pulling Hitler's strings. I roundly reject that. If you are merely suggesting that they saw opportunity in the war, then I have little doubt some did. Some do today. That doesn't make WW2 a 'war between banking powers'.

 

Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
You went further than that, suggesting that they orchestrated it, and were pulling Hitler's strings. I roundly reject that. If you are merely suggesting that they saw opportunity in the war, then I have little doubt some did. Some do today. That doesn't make WW2 a 'war between banking powers'.
And I confirm it, of course. They pulled his strings.
Because I have a reliable source. A professor who has been honorary member of the Nuremberg trials.
And I won't reveal her name on a public forum to preserve her incolumity.

Because those people are dangerous.
 

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
We Europeans, we Christians cope with the fact that fellow Christians killed our great-grandfathers in war. We accept the fact that Christians kill and commit a genocide towards fellow Christians.
Meh...sometimes. But more often secular issues amongst Christians come complete with judgement on which Christians are the right kind.

Why won't Jews admit that Jews can do the exact same thing to fellow Jews?
Because I studied the IG Farben case in the Nuremberg trials...and they were found guilty.
And the IG Farben was owned by those banking dynasties, Warburg, above all. Not only Rockefeller.
Who were in the US, safe and far from Nuremberg.

You're kind of all over the place with this stuff though.
There were Jews on the board of IG Farben at the time the organisation began making donations to the Nazis (25% of the board).
I said as much earlier. They were all gone by 1937. So if they are your proof, then Jews were involved in collusions with Nazis, but that is a fair way from 'committing genocide', so by all means, state why you think they did so.
If you're talking purely around capability, then...great...all groups of humans are capable of evil, depending how you define evil.

More specifically about IG Farben and it's management, as I've already stated it was a somewhat modern and revolutionary company structure in that the management of the company was largely independent of the shareholders in terms of day to day operations. If you're suggesting Warburg was involved in day-to-day operations, and should have been indicted, then you'd need to say on what charges, and how you'd establish guilt.

As a recap, here are the charges IG Farben executives were indicted on;
  1. Planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of wars of aggression and invasions of other countries.
  2. War crimes and crimes against humanity through the plundering and spoliation of occupied territories, and the seizure of plants in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, France, and Russia.
  3. War crimes and crimes against humanity through participation in the enslavement and deportation to slave labor on a gigantic scale of concentration camp inmates and civilians in occupied countries, and of prisoners of war, and the mistreatment, terrorization, torture, and murder of enslaved persons.
  4. Membership in a criminal organization, the SS.
  5. Acting as leaders in a conspiracy to commit the crimes mentioned under counts 1, 2, and 3.
Not all were indicated on all those charges, but as a sum total, that's the charges.
Of those, only 2 and 3 were upheld in ANY CASES.
And for item 3, it was upheld only in strict relationship to Auschwitz. Not the construction of Auschwitz itself, but the deliberate planning of a factory near Auschwitz so as to take advantage of slave labour to construct the factory.

So...based on what was proven, you seem to be suggesting that Warberg was involved in planning of the factory near Auschwitz. Or an active participant in seizing plants in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, France, and Russia. Are you suggesting either of those things?

Apart from me finding it generally interesting, that video does nothing to support your arguments.
What were you hoping to demonstrate with it?
 

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
And I confirm it, of course. They pulled his strings.
Because I have a reliable source. A professor who has been honorary member of the Nuremberg trials.
And I won't reveal her name on a public forum to preserve her incolumity.

Because those people are dangerous.
It's a little hard for me to respond to 'a reliable source who can't be named'.
I can respond only to the arguments you have set forth. They're inconsistent with the facts as I understand them, and opinionative.
Perhaps, as you say, that opinion is from an informed source. But they remain opinionative, and not all informed sources share the same opinion.
 

Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
It's a little hard for me to respond to 'a reliable source who can't be named'.
I can respond only to the arguments you have set forth. They're inconsistent with the facts as I understand them, and opinionative.
Perhaps, as you say, that opinion is from an informed source. But they remain opinionative, and not all informed sources share the same opinion.
In private I can provide you with all the information you need.
 

Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
Meh...sometimes. But more often secular issues amongst Christians come complete with judgement on which Christians are the right kind.



You're kind of all over the place with this stuff though.
There were Jews on the board of IG Farben at the time the organisation began making donations to the Nazis (25% of the board).
I said as much earlier. They were all gone by 1937. So if they are your proof, then Jews were involved in collusions with Nazis, but that is a fair way from 'committing genocide', so by all means, state why you think they did so.
If you're talking purely around capability, then...great...all groups of humans are capable of evil, depending how you define evil.

More specifically about IG Farben and it's management, as I've already stated it was a somewhat modern and revolutionary company structure in that the management of the company was largely independent of the shareholders in terms of day to day operations. If you're suggesting Warburg was involved in day-to-day operations, and should have been indicted, then you'd need to say on what charges, and how you'd establish guilt.

As a recap, here are the charges IG Farben executives were indicted on;
  1. Planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of wars of aggression and invasions of other countries.
  2. War crimes and crimes against humanity through the plundering and spoliation of occupied territories, and the seizure of plants in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, France, and Russia.
  3. War crimes and crimes against humanity through participation in the enslavement and deportation to slave labor on a gigantic scale of concentration camp inmates and civilians in occupied countries, and of prisoners of war, and the mistreatment, terrorization, torture, and murder of enslaved persons.
  4. Membership in a criminal organization, the SS.
  5. Acting as leaders in a conspiracy to commit the crimes mentioned under counts 1, 2, and 3.
Not all were indicated on all those charges, but as a sum total, that's the charges.
Of those, only 2 and 3 were upheld in ANY CASES.
And for item 3, it was upheld only in strict relationship to Auschwitz. Not the construction of Auschwitz itself, but the deliberate planning of a factory near Auschwitz so as to take advantage of slave labour to construct the factory.

So...based on what was proven, you seem to be suggesting that Warberg was involved in planning of the factory near Auschwitz. Or an active participant in seizing plants in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, France, and Russia. Are you suggesting either of those things?


Apart from me finding it generally interesting, that video does nothing to support your arguments.
What were you hoping to demonstrate with it?

This is just dancing around a basic concept:
if you know that in your industries slave labor is employed, yes, you are a criminal.
Period.
Why shall we provide with an edulcorated and rosy version of the most awful crime committed in the history of mankind?

First of all, the billionaires are the ones who fund the politicians who have no money.
It's not the other way around.
Secondly, they did need to seize all the oilfields in Baku, and in fact the strangest aspect of the so called Operation Barbarossa is that the Axis were heading to the Caspian Sea, not to Moscow, which was much closer.
Weird, isn't it?

Thirdly, I have provided with those articles who clearly say that in 1915 already someone else was planning the destruction of six million Jews.
And Hitler was still poor and insignificant.
And nobody has debunked this yet.


To conclude: if you don't believe in the distinction between good and evil, and if you cannot provide me with an objective definition of evil, I can never explain you why those people are evil.
 
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Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
Mussolini was a socialist but was then expelled from the Socialist Party for his support for World War I and later became a fascist. Fascism, as pomulgated by Mussolini, is heavily hierarchical, racially supremacist, and inherently at odds with socialism from an ideological standpoint because of its strong emphasis on social stratification.

Mussolini's governments was filled with socialists. Socialist ministers.
I don't understand why you find socialism and white nationalism (or white supremacism, its degeneration) mutually exclusive.
Mussolini was both a Socialist and a believer in White Nationalism.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
Indeed. But the great majority of the Jews who died in the Holocaust came from Soviet Russia, Poland, and the other countries of Eastern Europe. So they did guess right...because they wanted that extermination. They planned in advance.
That is just not accurate


They came from pretty much everwhere where the nazi's were.
The only reason why the number of deaths were higher in eastern europe, was because jewish populations there were higher as well.
 

Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
The article does not say that at all.
There are tens of articles. Already photographed and authenticated by that member of the Nuremberg trials.
A reliable source who has lived through the fourties.
And most of them say: "Jews of Europe, do move out from Europe. Six million Jews are to be exterminated"
1915-1936 articles.
 
There are tens of articles. Already photographed and authenticated by that member of the Nuremberg trials.
A reliable source who has lived through the fourties.
And most of them say: "Jews of Europe, do move out from Europe. Six million Jews are to be exterminated"
1915-1936 articles.

I’ve only read 2 of the ones you posted but neither said that.

Can you link to one that actually says that?
 

Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
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