The Russian Invasion of Ukraine

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I don't think that's accurate simply because a Hitler that would have stopped at the Suddatenland would have never lead the Nazi party and never been chancellor.

Well not necessarily lol. It's not really an imperative that his directive conscience couldn't have found more value in what Frustration is saying.

The rhetoric of conquest is what got him into power and without further conquest the Nazi economy would have choked and died.

I'm going to have to defer to Jonathan101 on this.

[Thebestoftherest]

I don't think that's accurate simply because a Hitler that would have stopped at the Suddatenland would have never lead the Nazi party and never been chancellor.

Well not necessarily lol. It's not really an imperative that his directive conscience couldn't have found more value in what Frustration is saying.

The rhetoric of conquest is what got him into power and without further conquest the Nazi economy would have choked and died.

I have to check, but wasn't Germany economy in the toilet basically after ww1?

[Madner Kami]

I have to check, but wasn't Germany economy in the toilet basically after ww1?

Kind of. It rebounded nicely during the twenties until this small global kerfluffle happened. They called it the Great Depression for some reason. You probably heard of it. Things went down the shitter for about 5 years, but were on an upswing already, as Hitler rode the wave of disappointed voters into office (seriously, the Autobahns weren't a project of Hitler, they were one of a number of counter-depression projects of the Weimar' Republic, which was co-opted by the Nazis for example).

[Riedquat]

If things keep going the current way, Russia will probably be out of Ukraine somewhen next year, because a few decided to not repeat the same mistakes the allies made in 1939 (and before), except for Putler, who apparently never read a history-book. You do not wage war against the (western) world and come out victorious.

He also doesn't appear to be learning from his mistakes, seemingly only being capable of trying to raise the stakes as a strategy (which is worrying). If Putin had recognised his initial invasion had screwed up and he shifted to concentration on holding on to bits of Donbas, and wasn't the type of thug who things "hurt people" is the answer to everything, the war might've ended and he could paint it as a success. Instead he pushed on anyway, and keeps committing atrocities that achieve sod all militarily but do harden resolve against him - those are a big part of why the West is willing to provide as much support as we are doing. Both extremely vile and extremely foolish and counterproductive for him. For some reason he seems very keen on shutting off his escape route. I expect he's scared of failure because that's him falling out of a window, but he's not making much effort to get something he could reaslistically get as a success.

[McAvoy]

I have to check, but wasn't Germany economy in the toilet basically after ww1?

Kind of. It rebounded nicely during the twenties until this small global kerfluffle happened. They called it the Great Depression for some reason. You probably heard of it. Things went down the shitter for about 5 years, but were on an upswing already, as Hitler rode the wave of disappointed voters into office (seriously, the Autobahns weren't a project of Hitler, they were one of a number of counter-depression projects of the Weimar' Republic, which was co-opted by the Nazis for example).

Germany's economy was in the toilet before the Great Depression. Like there is a story of a Mother carrying millions or billions of German paper money in a basket so she could get a loaf of bread. For some reason she left the basket of money but when she came back, the basket was stolen but not the money.

Yes at first Germanys economy also tanked during the start of the Great Depression because by that point they were digging themselves out of that Super Duper Mega Inflation.

Nazis did in fact drag Germany out of that faster than any country. But they did it by making the economy a military one.

[TGLS]

Weimar Germany* suffers from the same problem that the Roman Empire has. People compress "Augustus takes power" and "Rome Collapses" together, ignoring that there's literally four centuries between the beginning and end. Likewise, people compress Weimar Germany into the unstable early 1920s and the unstable early 30s, skipping over the relative prosperity of the mid to late 20s. It's a bit like examining American history and skipping right from the end of the cold war to the war on terror.

* Like the Byzantines, Weimar Germany didn't call themselves Weimar Germany. They called themselves Deutsches Reich like the German Empire before them. The person who started calling it Weimar Germany was literally Hitler.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Stories of hyperinflation as I understand them revolve around the Great Depression, with Germany getting hit hardest compared to others because they had to pay back everything having to do with the Great War.

Before WWI Germany was the strongest market economy in Europe from what I gathered.

[Frustration]

A comparison could also be made between Kaiser Wilhelm and Putin: deeply personally insecure with something to prove to himself and the world, rushing into an ill-conceived military adventure that ends up severely damaging his country.

[Jonathan101]

The rhetoric of conquest is what got him into power and without further conquest the Nazi economy would have choked and died.

That is in fact the reason why Poland was invaded in 1939. Their economic quasi-ponzi scheme was collapsing, which hastened the projected timeline. The war wasn't supposed to start before the later half of 1940.

Not quite It was collapsing as early as the mid-1930s, and the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland managed to stabilise the country...temporarily at least.

The invasion of Czechoslovakia and later Poland owed more to Hitler thinking that Britain and France were bloodless and would let him get away with it, more than immediate economic concerns which at the time weren't as much of an issue. In fact the German economy got far worse after the invasion of Poland and the later the conquest of Europe, even at the height of their power, because of mismanagement at home, self-inflicted disruption to global trade and the general costs associate with occupying an entire continent. Food and other resources were taken from other countries and sent back to Germany because the German people were starting to starve and freeze even as they were winning, and it didn't even help matters enough.

I don't think that's accurate simply because a Hitler that would have stopped at the Suddatenland would have never lead the Nazi party and never been chancellor.

Well not necessarily lol. It's not really an imperative that his directive conscience couldn't have found more value in what Frustration is saying.

The rhetoric of conquest is what got him into power and without further conquest the Nazi economy would have choked and died.

I'm going to have to defer to Jonathan101 on this.

Well, it wasn't "the rhetoric of conquest" that got him into power- the Nazi's became the largest party in the Reichstag (though not a majority) mostly through promising to solve Germany's economic woes and prevent a Communist takeover (though they did occasionally collaborate with the Communists to undermine the Republic wherever possible).

Their goals of waging war on other nations were downplayed for the public although it did depend on who their audience was. Heck, when Mein Kampf was published in France, the French edition was edited to remove as many references to his plans of having another war with them as possible (French officials went along with this out of anxiety about stoking fears of another war- like many, they hoped Hitler would be tamed by reality). Hitler himself said that if he actually thought he would be Chancellor one day he would never have written that book, and didn't like it when his followers were pressuring him to follow everything in it.

It's true that the Nazi economy depended heavily on conquest, but that was more because of decisions Hitler took after he came to power, not because of rhetoric- he didn't go around telling people "I'm going to make conquering our neighbours a matter life or death for Germany". It was less to do with the way the Nazi economy was structured under Hitler and more just because Hitler was a maniac who spent something like 70% of the national budget on re-armament, underestimating the problems this would cause for the country.

At times he privately talked about wars and conquests "his successors" would be responsible for, and I do think that he expected war with France or Russia might occur after his own death (he'd got it in his head that he wouldn't live past his 60s since that's when his father died, and his mother died even younger), but his own idiotic economic policies along with the perceived weaknesses of his enemies and surprise at how easily Germany was able to take Austria and the Sudetenland (both operations masterminded by Goering and Himmler as much more than Hitler himself) pressured and emboldened him to act sooner than he initially planned.

It's wrong to think that Hitler got to be Chancellor off the promise of Lebensraum- many people voted for him "in spite" of that, rather than because of it, and he often told people that he was a man of peace or downplayed the militarism if he thought that's what they wanted to hear, even within the Nazi party itself. Hitler himself had a broad outline of things he wanted Germany to achieve (whether it was him running the show or not), but preferred to be flexible on the timeline and the details, and he often made things up as he was going along and reacted to events beyond his control. The Third Reich being a dysfunctional "vampire economy" wasn't something Hitler intended so much as something Hitler caused through not understanding economics well enough in the first place, and being too proud to admit he'd made a mistake and could have been more pragmatic.

The Nazi's were a deeply factional party however much they tried to fool themselves otherwise, and every single member and supporter saw the parts they wanted to see and ignored the parts they wanted to ignore- not everyone in the party wanted wars of conquest, and even many who did thought that Hitler was being way too reckless and hasty in how he went about it; even Goering initially freaked out when Hitler told him they were going to invade Poland, as Goering had been carefully cultivating diplomatic ties with the Poles for years. Hitler kept a lot of his plans to himself and not infrequently just improvised or acted out of stress.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I don't think that's accurate simply because a Hitler that would have stopped at the Suddatenland would have never lead the Nazi party and never been chancellor.

Well not necessarily lol. It's not really an imperative that his directive conscience couldn't have found more value in what Frustration is saying.

The rhetoric of conquest is what got him into power and without further conquest the Nazi economy would have choked and died.

I'm going to have to defer to Jonathan101 on this.

Well, it wasn't "the rhetoric of conquest" that got him into power- the Nazi's became the largest party in the Reichstag (though not a majority) mostly through promising to solve Germany's economic woes and prevent a Communist takeover (though they did occasionally collaborate with the Communists to undermine the Republic wherever possible).

Their goals of waging war on other nations were downplayed for the public although it did depend on who their audience was. Heck, when Mein Kampf was published in France, the French edition was edited to remove as many references to his plans of having another war with them as possible (French officials went along with this out of anxiety about stoking fears of another war- like many, they hoped Hitler would be tamed by reality). Hitler himself said that if he actually thought he would be Chancellor one day he would never have written that book, and didn't like it when his followers were pressuring him to follow everything in it.

It's true that the Nazi economy depended heavily on conquest, but that was more because of decisions Hitler took after he came to power, not because of rhetoric- he didn't go around telling people "I'm going to make conquering our neighbours a matter life or death for Germany". It was less to do with the way the Nazi economy was structured under Hitler and more just because Hitler was a maniac who spent something like 70% of the national budget on re-armament, underestimating the problems this would cause for the country.

At times he privately talked about wars and conquests "his successors" would be responsible for, and I do think that he expected war with France or Russia might occur after his own death (he'd got it in his head that he wouldn't live past his 60s since that's when his father died, and his mother died even younger), but his own idiotic economic policies along with the perceived weaknesses of his enemies and surprise at how easily Germany was able to take Austria and the Sudetenland (both operations masterminded by Goering and Himmler as much more than Hitler himself) pressured and emboldened him to act sooner than he initially planned.

It's wrong to think that Hitler got to be Chancellor off the promise of Lebensraum- many people voted for him "in spite" of that, rather than because of it, and he often told people that he was a man of peace or downplayed the militarism if he thought that's what they wanted to hear, even within the Nazi party itself. Hitler himself had a broad outline of things he wanted Germany to achieve (whether it was him running the show or not), but preferred to be flexible on the timeline and the details, and he often made things up as he was going along and reacted to events beyond his control. The Third Reich being a dysfunctional "vampire economy" wasn't something Hitler intended so much as something Hitler caused through not understanding economics well enough in the first place, and being too proud to admit he'd made a mistake and could have been more pragmatic.

The Nazi's were a deeply factional party however much they tried to fool themselves otherwise, and every single member and supporter saw the parts they wanted to see and ignored the parts they wanted to ignore- not everyone in the party wanted wars of conquest, and even many who did thought that Hitler was being way too reckless and hasty in how he went about it; even Goering initially freaked out when Hitler told him they were going to invade Poland, as Goering had been carefully cultivating diplomatic ties with the Poles for years. Hitler kept a lot of his plans to himself and not infrequently just improvised or acted out of stress.

I falsely mistook what draco said to be more of a behavioral aspect of Hitler, though I think the middle of your posts sums up my thoughts nicely.