luigi

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Reddit Chud demolished after claiming "Americans singlehandedly brough freedom, democracy, peace and prosperity to Germany" (www.reddit.com)
submitted 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
8 comments fedilink
 

The follow-up post.

The 2nd War started in September of 1939. After German aggression towards Great Britain was blunted by Germany losing the Battle of Britain, Germany opened the 2nd front against Russia in June 1941. America did not participate until Dec 8th, 1941 and that was the result of Japan bombing Pearl Harbor. Interestingly enough, Great Britain, Australia, and Canada all declared war against Japan before the US.

Seems the author is completely unaware that prior to and after the "lend-lease" program, the US supplied lubricants and fuel for German aircraft and submarines, through IBM provided the technology for the SS and Gestapo to run the secret police and the concentration camps.

I wonder if he knows that through Henry Ford's (a vocal anti-semitic & Hitler admirer) German Ford Motor company, the German military was supplied with vehicles used in the invasion of Poland & Russia. Or Alcoa who continued to supply Germany with its aluminum needs enabling them to produce their aircraft for war. And let's not forget General Motors who were just as guilty as Ford but were also perfectly OK with using slave labour to build military vehicles.

Coca-cola supplied them with their very own version of coke to get around sanctions. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, dropped any mention of "jew" from their movies and donated free films to the German War Relief Fund. Chase Manhatten, CitiBank, and JP Morgan were found guilty after the war of assisting Germany to steal millions from deported French Jews accounts. Dow Chemicals supplied them with new technologies and materials to increase their oil production.

Brown Brothers Harriman (grandfather to Bush Snr) sold war bonds throughout the world but particularly America to fund Germany's war efforts.

Woolworths in Germany fired all its Jewish employees and was awarded the coveted "Adefa Zeichen" award which was the highest award given to pure Aryan companies.

The war in Europe was won directly because on the Eastern Front Russia destroyed 17 entire German Divisions along with decimating 6 Armoured Divisions at Kursk. There was NO opportunity for Germany to move large numbers of troops or armour to France to stop the Normandy advances. Supporting this, the RAF flew literally thousands of sorties destroying bases, rail lines, parked armour and troop trains bringing military movement in Germany to almost a complete halt. The 8th Air Force did squat.

Yes, America did contribute through lend-lease as did Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The largest difference was there was always a price tag on any US generosity while others gave freely. Great Britain made its final repayment in 2006. American, British aid was paramount in enabling Russia to slowly turn the tide in the war. Part and parcel of the lend lease agreement was the transfer of technology worth literally billions to the US. Russia also supplied desperately needed rare minerals and gold, silver and platinum in huge quantities.

But Lend Lease was not done alone by America and the battles were not sacrifices of American blood.

If you think America rescued those trapped in the camps. Think again, the Russians liberated Janowska, Treblenkia, Wilno, Bronna Gora, Chelmo, Stanislawow, Luck, Polunka, Lwowo, Lodz, Trawniki, Sobibor, Auschwitz, Stutthof, Gross-Rosen, Majdanek, Sachsenhausen, & Ravensbrück, The American liberated Buchenwald, Mittelbau, Flossenbürg, and Dachau. Canada liberated Westerbork and the UK Bergen Belsen & Neuengamme.

The Normandy landing involved troops from 8 countries, Great Britain, France, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Australia, Norway, Poland and the US. There were 5 beaches, 2 under US control, 3 under GB control. The best results were shown by the Canadians who advanced beyond where they were expected to be on the 3rd day. The worst being the USA - Utah Beach where objectives were not even near accomplished. In addition, the US actually managed to get lost and land on the wrong beach. Compounding their problems was the fact they dropped their support tanks off 2 miles from shore and the majority sank before reaching shore. The US faced 8 understaffed, under-supplied divisions consisting of foreigners, the very young and old along with soldiers either previously retired or recovering from old wounds. They were poorly equipped and were estimated to be between 8,000-12,000 along the entire beachfront including the British beaches. The difference was the British was opposed by a newly outfitted 21st Panzer Group.

Probably the biggest battle that America had in Europe in which they claimed a victory was the Battle of The Bulge. That battle was in essence a victory by Germany although a strategic loss because of the unnecessary gamble taken by Hitler. Had the Germans not run out of fuel and supplies the story would have been much different and if Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who had taken charge of the situation on the northern flank, had not swung his reserves southward to forestall the Germans at the crossings of the Meuse a complete retreat would have occurred.

The Italian landings and battles consisted mainly of efforts by Britain, Canada and the US with assistance from France, New Zealand, Algeria, India, Morocco, Poland. In both Sicily and Italy, the UK and Canada did the lion's amount of works whilst the US managed to get itself both the easier assignments and in the case of Italy needed huge help from Canada to not completely fail in the beginning. Again, in war courage is measured by sacrifice and the USA was at the bottom of the list. Unsurprisingly, the best performances by the US were the Combined Special Forces, the Black regiment and the Japanese regiment.

Throughout the European campaigns, the US was always looked upon as the junior partner because of the lack of professionalism within its army, navy and air force. With few exceptions (5) most of its leaders were inexperienced and certainly not battle-hardened by any stretch of the imagination. Consider this, between the Naval Academy and West Point, collectively they produced less than 12,000 professionally trained officers for the entire war. And these were the men up against German soldiers who in most instances had many campaigns to their credit. In the European theatre, it really became a numbers game rather than a battle of skills. Yes, the US CONTRIBUTED but once the Russians had pushed the Germans back of their heels the fate of Germany was set.

Overall France suffered 210,000 troop deaths, the British Commonwealth 563,000, Russia 11,470,000 and the US 407,000. Civilian deaths which were the direct result of military action were France, 407,000, Great Britain, Australia, Canada & India 156,600, Russia 16,000,000 and the US 12,100.

Edit: looks like they tried their shit in ShitAmericansSay after the initial thread was crossposted there.

Wow, what a nice wall of text. But I was not talking about contribution to war effort, but about the fact that freedom, democracy, rule of law and human rights are not authentic German values, the way they are American, British and French values; they were forced down Germany's throat after Germans fought against them twice.

It just seem bizzare Germans could muster enough pride to challenge the USA on moral grounds even though everything moral in modern Germany owes itself to American intervention.

You talking about the Asia-Pacific front is a brilliant point, because the USA also acted as an absolute arbiter and bringer of democracy in Japan as well. The difference is that an idea of inferiority of Japan vis a vis the USA developed quite naturally, and became the norm in Japan, the USA, and the whole world, the idea that Japan's authentic self is that of a brutal and amoral nation saved solely through America's tough love.

Lmao.

West Germany made up 180 billion marks worth of debt that East Gemany owed... but we're told the East German economy was just "inefficient" in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago

I didn't know this.

From the article TheLepidopterists posted, I came across this more in-depth article about reunification ("The economic Anschluss of the GDR"). Looks like the looting of the GDR wasn't dissimilar to that in the USSR.

This year’s commemorations of the fall of the Berlin Wall are less triumphalist than usual: the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won over 20% of the vote this year in several former East German Länder (:shocked-pikachu:); opinion polls suggest that 58% of East Germans ‘feel no better protected from state arbitrariness than in the GDR’ (Die Zeit, 3 October 2019); successful books tell the story of the 1990s from the viewpoint of the ‘losers’. Something no longer rings true in the noble history of a bountiful West Germany bestowing democracy and the Deutschmark on a neighbour ruined by four decades of Communist dictatorship.

 

With US backing, and no opposition from a weakened Soviet Union, West Germany under conservative chancellor Helmut Kohl took over within a few months, annexing a sovereign state, liquidating its economy and institutions, and transplanting a neoliberal capitalist regime.

 

Not only the currency but the whole market economy was transplanted. Sarrazin recalled, ‘We could only give them the Deutschmark in exchange for the complete transformation of the economic system.’ The terms of the treaty signed on 18 May confirmed this regime change. ‘The basis of the Economic Union shall be the social market economy as the common economic system of the two contracting parties. It shall be determined particularly by private ownership, competition, free pricing and, as a basic principle, complete freedom of movement of labour, capital, goods and services’ (article 1.3). ‘Provisions of the constitution of the German Democratic Republic relating to its former socialist social and political system shall no longer be applied’ where they clash with neoliberalism, free trade and ‘ownership of land and means of production by private investors’ (article 2).

Soon after the treaty came into force, East Germans became disenchanted. As consumers clamoured for products from the West, real prices of goods and services produced in the East went up 300-400% and business competitiveness evaporated. Businesses lost not only their domestic market to western companies, but their customers in the East, especially the Soviet Union, which had taken 60-80% of East German exports. Former Bundesbank president Karl Otto Pöhl admitted that the GDR had swallowed ‘horse medicine that no economy would be able to cope with’ (8). But convinced of the need for shock therapy, Bonn’s negotiators rejected supportive countermeasures, such as phased currency alignment, subsidies for East German manufacturing or a surtax on West German goods.

The GDR underwent an overnight economic liberalisation that had taken postwar West Germany a decade. In July 1990, industrial output had fallen 43.7% from 1989; by August, 51.9% and by the end of the year, 70%. The official unemployment figure rose from 7,500 in January 1990 to 1.4 million in January 1992, but was more than double that when short-time working, retraining and pre-retirement were factored in. No other country in Central or Eastern Europe suffered more economically by leaving the Soviet Union’s orbit.

This social demolition was deliberate: dozens of reports had explored its consequences. ‘Better to achieve unity with a ruined economy than remain in the Soviet bloc with a half-ruined one,’ said SPD politician Richard Schröder (9). His wish was more than granted. To Ossies (East Germans) the exterminating angel had a name: the Treuhand (Treuhandanstalt, trust agency), created on 1 March 1990, the tool to convert the former GDR to capitalism. It privatised or liquidated almost all of the ‘patrimony of the people’, the name for the GDR’s state businesses and assets, which it took possession of in July 1990. This made it the world’s biggest conglomerate, responsible for 4.1 million employees (45% of the workforce) working for 8,000 businesses at 32,000 sites, from steelworks to holiday camps, grocers to local cinemas.

By the time the Treuhand was wound up in December 1994, it had privatised or liquidated most of its portfolio with an impact unequalled in industrial history: a country deindustrialised, 2.5 million jobs gone and losses estimated at DM 256bn despite an opening balance sheet of DM 600bn, according to its own president’s estimate (10). This miracle of neoliberalism was, according to Christa Luft, ‘the largest ever destruction of productive capital in peacetime’ (11). Researchers Wolfgang Dümcke and Fritz Vilmar regard this as the key period in the structural colonisation of the GDR (12): West German investors and companies bought up 85% of East German production sites, East Germans just 6%.

 

When the Treuhand was created, it did not set out to privatise the old GDR economy. In the view of dissident circles and civic movements, this ‘trust agency for the preservation of East German citizens’ rights over the patrimony of the people of the GDR’ was expected to divide up state businesses among the people. The IG Metall union proposed that ownership should be transferred directly to workers. But the conservative victory in the East German election changed that. A fortnight before monetary union on 1 July 1990, East Germany’s parliament, the Volkskammer, passed an emergency law ‘for the privatisation and organisation of the patrimony of the people’. This ended any search for compromise between socialism and capitalism, the focus of reformist economic thought in the GDR since the fall of the Wall. Shock therapy prevailed.

The Treuhand was set up within weeks and improvised its work. As East and West Germany had no shared phone network, the Treuhand’s East German employees had to go to West Berlin phone boxes at a pre-arranged time to speak to colleagues in the West (14). This did not discourage West German business restructuring consultants from offering their services. The Treuhand’s first president, Reiner Maria Gohlke, a former CEO of IBM, handed over in August 1990 to Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, head of the Hoesch steel and mining group. Its oversight board was headed by a friend of Chancellor Kohl, Jens Odewald, CEO of the West German department store chain Kaufhof, which later acquired lucrative retail sites on Alexanderplatz. From summer 1990, Bonn supervised operations: the finance ministry appointed a cabinet of consultants from firms such as KPMG, McKinsey and Roland Berger, who determined (without explicit criteria) whether companies were destined for improvement, immediate privatisation or liquidation (15).

Absurd decisions — with collusion between the Treuhand, the conservative government and West Germany’s business leaders — produced a conviction in the East that has never been refuted: the Treuhand was principally acting to eliminate any competitor that would reduce West German groups’ profit margins. Though largely stagnant, East German industry did have some successes. On 2 October 1990 the Treuhand management decided to close the Pentacon camera factory in Dresden and export its Praktica model to western countries.

One of East Germany’s rare environmental achievements was Sero, a national recycling company. Local authorities asked for it to be turned into a network of municipal businesses, but the Treuhand broke it up and sold it off to West German companies. The agency’s zeal in destroying the Interflug airline, which was largely in the black, and transferring its routes and Berlin Schönefeld hub free of charge to its West German competitor Lufthansa, is almost beyond parody.

It was hard to sell ‘free and fair competition’ to the Thuringian mining village of Bischofferode. In 1990 the Treuhand bundled together all its potash mines and transferred them to a western competitor, K+S, which immediately closed them down. Dietmar Bartsch, a parliamentarian from the leftwing Die Linke party said, ‘Bischofferode is an example of a competitive business shut down because of West German competition. It was about showing that the GDR was over, that there was nothing of value in it.’