• Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.ca
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    24 hours ago

    And the U.S. got all the money to build up their industrial base by the fact that they were they only country able to give out loans to the European nations fighting in the First World War since every european country spent everything they had and then some fighting each other.

    World War One represented the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world. It was bigger than the economic exploitation by the British Empire of Africa, India and Asia combined. In four years, the U.S. basically held all the cards and (I know this is controversial) only ended up getting involved militarily when it seemed possible that the allies would lose and therefore be unable to pay off their loans.

    And you know what…all credit to the Americans; they took that new found wealth and built up the strongest, most powerful industrial base the world had ever seen; an industrial base that, without which, the second world war would have been nearly impossible to win (Russian blood, British Strategy, American Industry…isn’t that the saying?)

    It’s what they proceeded to do with that industrial base afterwards that lead us to where we are now.

    • Turbonics@lemmy.sdf.org
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      21 hours ago

      And the Soviets were the main opposition in ww2 so they were also destroyed.

      America swooped in at the end, took the credit and used their position of barely having taken any damage to assert global dominance.

      • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.ca
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        21 hours ago

        True. But I’m going to give America some credit here. When they came in, they came in hard. Two of the hardest beaches in Normandy with the highest losses of any allied force during the landings. Front line in pretty much every major engagement from the moment they entered. I am anti-american in general, and no…I don’t think Germany would have won if they hadn’t gotten involved (the soviets bought our victory at the cost of 11,000,000 casualties…)

        They committed more troops than any other country except the soviet union and germany itself. I’ll criticise a LOT of what the United States has become, but I would never ever in a million years claim that they had “barely taken any damage”, and in fact kind of take offence to the statement even though I’m not American.

        • Turbonics@lemmy.sdf.org
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          17 hours ago

          I was talking about destruction of infrastructure. America was all the way across the ocean. It took a little damage at Pearl Harbor.

          Russia had their population and infrastructure gutted. Much of Europe did as well.