Re: Hitler's blame for the Reich's defeat?

"Alan Meyer" <ameyer2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:ha6e6i$6gg$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The point you are making here is that a nation becomes rich by
exploiting more natural resources, which essentially means taking
those resources from others. Without doubt, this was Hitler's
view. I believe he held that all of history was a struggle of
"races" for land (I think this is somewhere in Mein Kampf) and
that it is what we today would call a "zero-sum" game. The
winners get the land. Their race grows and thrives. The losers
lose the land. Their race shrinks, suffers and dies.

But there are problems with this view.

Some are practical problems, like the fact that exploitation
breeds resistance. The expenditures on military force to
suppress the resistance, and the losses both in casualties and in
economic destruction can, and in fact generally do, negate the
benefits of holding the resources.

Up until the early-mid 20th century acquiring resource rich land was a route to a prosperous country/empire/people. Resistance is a problem, but Hitler admired the British empire and how few people it took to police it - so the British must have been doing something very right in most cases. He held the empire as a model of how to do it properly, with trading cities and trade routes created. These benefited the people in those parts of the empire, so a two way street.

He failed to see that the British were expending more on the empire than getting back, if taking the wealth from the empire and siphoning it back home was the view of what the prime point of an empire is of course. He failed to see that Britain had stopped empire building in the 1890s and acquired more territitory reluctantly after WW1 - on behalf of the League of Nations. This new territory acquisition may have skewed Hitler's view. He failed to see that the UK was de-empiring by giving independence, or partial independence to many parts of the empire. India's self rule was being talked about from the mid 1930's.

Hitler's imperialist view to riches by "owning" land was becoming rapidly outdated. And ironically Germany was a reasonably wealthy nation by not owning land proving this point. Germany could have gone even better by modernising its antiquated agricultural industry.

And then there are serious questions that can be raised about the
whole theory of whether owning more territory is what makes a
society rich. Famous counter-examples to that theory include
modern day Norway, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Switzerland, and
others. And on the other hand, Russia, Brazil, Congo/Zaire, and
others are among the richest countries in the world in land and
resources, but stand much lower than the first named countries in
per capita income.

Up until the 1930's acquiring land and exploiting its resources did make counties rich. The USA was a great example when they pushed west into the resources rich land - Hitler held this up as an example of how to get rich quick, along with a western European approach to business and high educational levels of course. It took the UK hundreds of years to amass an empire and create the trading routes and trading areas. The UK did not just take they also improved many areas: took rubber from South America and made plantations in Malaya, tea from China to India, etc. The USA did it in short order when moving west. That appealed to Hitler.

The British were reassessing its empire in the 1930s and remoulding the model. Hitler was largely unaware of this. The British owned vast tracts of Argentina which was not in the empire. They also owned about 1/5th of American industry. These pointed that you do not need to own land or resources to become rich. Fast efficient steam ships could trade quickly and reliably. You can operate in foreign lands and be prosperous - the keys were friendly relations and both sides benefit. The British had a large foreign service to press the diplomatic buttons.

As to natural resouces, the UK has 60 years worth of coal under its land to generate power. Yet the coal industry was all but abandoned in favour of cheaper energy from elsewhere.

Hitler was not dumb, but he was certainly ignorant and poorly
schooled in economic and political affairs, as well being bigoted
and rather crazy. His bold and ruthless nature won him power but
it also made it impossible for him to use that power
intelligently and productively.

Hitler was in power at a time when the shift to prosperity from owning land to trading on a world-wide scale was changing. The British were instrumental in this shift, along with the US to an extent implanting branches of its corporations around the globe. Major keys of world-wide trading was cheap energy, instant communications and fast, reliable, large, cheap to run ships. You didn't even need to be self-sufficient in food to do it either, as the UK proved in importing most of its wheat from the USA and meat products from Argentina.

Hitler could not see what way the future was rapidly unfolding before his eyes, he could only go on what he knew was successful in the past - self sufficiency in natural resources. The USA's push west was only relatively recent, so that was the way for him.

Germany could have been a homogeneous nation/people and still been rich and no desires on other lands to do it.

A lot of this is being wise in hindsight, but indicators were clearly there to have taken a peaceful view to wealth creation. However, after the industrial revolution there was clear massive divisions in wealth distribution in societies. Despite much wealth and mass production, there was mass poverty, while other were super rich. Isims had emerged as ways of evening out this imbalance of a societies wealth distribution - giving a fairer distribution of the product of a societies wealth. These isms were on a collision course which would be difficult to avoid. Even today we have not found a way to evenly distribute the proceeds of a societies production. Free trade is seen as a way of keeping world peace. I go for Geoism, the views of American economist Henry George - business and trading behaviour remains the same - little state interference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism But that is slightly off-topic.

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