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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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There are times when fighting against the odds is wise and times where it is unwise. Let's examine the death toll for WW2 amongst various powers:

Denmark lost 0.16% of its population, barely a scratch. Surrendering quickly to Germany served them well. The US lost 0.3%. The UK, Belgium, France and Italy suffered around 1%. Czechoslovakia suffered around 2-3%, mostly Holocaust deaths as opposed to military deaths. Romania - 3%. Japan 3-4%. Hungary, 5-9% (a large number of Holocaust deaths plus they did a fair bit of fighting, like Romania).

Yugoslavia, 6-10%. Germany, 8%. Greece, 7-11%. The Soviet Union: 14%. But by far the hardest hit was Poland at 17%. Of course, all these countries faced widely different threats, some were luckier in their position than others, some took on much greater challenges.

However, nobody lost more than the Poles in WW2, nobody left that war in a worse position than Poland. Germany was partitioned but at least some got to escape communism. The Poles ended up being pushed westward, losing a fair few cities and enormous numbers of people. And they had to suffer another 45 years of communism.

Polish late interwar leaders faced a clear and unpleasant choice - Germany or Russia. They chose neither and got demolished by both. This was a terrible decision. Moral principles dealt them a crushing blow that the country has scarcely recovered from today. How many millions of people is standing up for freedom and independence worth? My country escaped lightly with 0.58%, yet 0.58% is still an enormous death toll! That was 60 COVIDs for us, targeting the young rather than the old. We in the Anglosphere suffered very little in the last 200 years, we were nearly always the strongest and won the most important wars. Yet we have a vast apparatus of war memorials and reverence for those sacrificed in war. Can we even imagine the sacrifices that others have made?

I have more sympathy for the Czech leaders who escaped total disaster than the Poles who plunged their country into catastrophe. Sometimes surrendering is the best course of action. We can only imagine the internal feelings of those who proudly chose death before dishonour, only to receive double portions of both.

Respect for agreements, obligation and one's reputation are secondary to the core health of the nation.

Polish late interwar leaders faced a clear and unpleasant choice - Germany or Russia. They chose neither and got demolished by both. This was a terrible decision.

That's certainly... a take. What exactly were they supposed to do? Their country had only recently been created- until recently their land was part of Russia and Germany, so it's natural that both of those countries wanted it back. Is there some alternative universe where they voluntarily surrender to the USSR and then Germany just leaves them alone?

Literally any other option would have been a better idea than putting trust in a British defense guarantee.

but you would trust a nazi or soviet defense guarantee? Sometimes there just aren't any winning options.

Also, correct me if in wrong but was it really resistance to the Nazis/Soviets that caused the deaths or that they ended up being a battleground between the soviets and Nazis as well as having a disproportionate number of Jews? Their disproportionate suffering was due to geography and demographics, not diplomacy.

It seems to me that much of the destruction would have happened either way, but there being a small outside chance that the soviets/Nazis would leave them alone and route around them if they got deterred by the British security guarantees.

Either of the parties routing around them seems like an unrealistic prospect considering their location. In hindsight, the strategy that would probably have preserved the most Polish lives (if perhaps not other things that the Poles valued) would have been to immediately and enthusiastically join one of the two warring parties, preferably the Nazis as they had the initial momentum behind them. The extra ~30m population and industrial base would have probably made enough of a difference to turn the Battle of Moscow into an Axis victory, rapidly putting us in an alternative history timeline where it does not seem so likely that Poland is turned into a primary battleground again anytime soon.

...and then American nukes hitting German cities, not touching Poland?

Nuke availability was nowhere near the point where you could just throw them out of spite without having an invasion army lined up to follow up, and a German victory in Russia surely would have put any Normandy plans at least a few years behind schedule - long enough for the German atomic bomb programme to catch up, at which point there would just be MAD.

at which point there would just be MAD.

Doubtful.

Even with a clean win on the eastern front Germany would be resource limited relative the US and without any real means of delivering the nukes, assuming they were built. German bombers and V-weapons were stretching thier legs just to hit London with an 1000 kg payload. Carrying 5 times that to US industrial centers like philidelphia Pittsburgh and Detroit would've been a non-starter. Meanwhile almost all of germany but most importantly Berlin would've been well within the range of nuclear-equipped B29s flying out of Reykjavik. The distances involved would actually be a couple hundred miles shorter (roughly 1,475 miles one-way vs 1,600) and with more favorable winds for most of the year than the historical strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Meanwhile the US and UK also enjoy a substantial advantage in the form of a meaningful surface Navies and an integrated air defence network where as the Germans were still dependent on visual spotting and individual radar equipped aircraft. In short individual allied raiders have a far greater chance of penetrating German terretory than induvidual german raiders do the US or UK. This disparity was the practical justification for the shift towards V weapons in the first place.

It'll be at least the late 40s maybe 1950 before Von Braun can build the Nazis an effective R-7 clone and thats assuming he doesn't drag his feet or the German industrial heartland isn't already sprouting mushroom clouds.

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