Tuesday, December 10, 2002

[Colin Glassey 6 PM] A Winning Strategy for Nazi Germany Obviously the Nazi's lost and this is a very good thing for the world. In case anyone cares this is a scenario for the Nazis to win the 2nd World War (and let me say again how glad I am that they lost). In June of 1940, upon signing a peace treaty with the new government of France (creating Vichey France), the Germans should have almost immediately violated the terms of the agreement by deploying their forces to the Spainish border. In July of 1940 Franco is given a stark choice: become an ally of Germany and allow free passage of German troops, or face invasion. It is likely that Spain would have refused (as they did in reality though with less troops on their border) and so Germany invades Spain. England had no army worth speaking of at this time and Spain, with no anti-tank weapons, would have been crushed rapidly by the German army. Gibralter's defence would have been gallent but unavailling and so the key base of the English Mediterranean fleet would have fallen by the end of 1940. It is likely that Egypt falls to Italian attack sometime within the next year. All of 1941 is spent on laying the ground for the invasion of Russia. Eastern Europe is conquered either politically or militarily by June of 1941 (which is what happened historically). With German armies sitting on the border of Turkey, the government of Turkey is given the same choice as Franco was given one year earlier: join the German alliance, or be conquered. I don't know if Turkey would have stuck to their neutrality in this situation. I'm not sure that it matters. Either way German forces end up being deployed on Russias southern border by the end of 1941. The same sort of choice is given to Finland: accept German forces stationed in your country or else. It is hard to imagine Finland refusing this demand from a Germany that had just invaded two major neutral nations that denied this same request. 1942. With German forces in Finland, central Europe, and Turkey, the invasion of Russia starts on May 1st, 1942. Russia loses control of the Baku oil fields early, and German forces over-run Leningrad by the start of the summer. While the additional year (all of 1941) is a help to Russia, the additional year is even more helpful to the Germans now that they control Spain and the entire Mediterranean through their Italian proxy. No panzer divisions have to be redeployed to North Africa, lots more tanks and trucks are available to motorize the Germany infantry divisions, more railroad equipment is ready at the border so the Russian railroads can be converted to the German guage just behind the Germany front lines. Under these conditions, I think Germany would have beaten Russia by the time the fall rains made Russia impassible to German tanks. Maybe the Russians could have held on till the middle of 1943 but without Leningrad, Moscow, Baku, etc. I don't see how they can beat back the Germany army. Once Russia is beaten, its hard for me to imagine a successful invasion of Europe by the United States and Britain. Even defending England is tricky once Russia is beaten. Would the war have continued? If we continued the war we would have built the atomic bomb and been in a position to nuke German cities. Or we could have opted to fortify England and try to contain the Nazis to Europe. Either way, this is as close to victory as Germany was going to get. As I see it, the bottom line for Germany was that they were too nice to the neutral nations. Failure to get Spain and Turkey to join (or be conquered) cost Germany the war. In a real sense, Franco's refusal to bow to Hitler's demands at their meeting in 1940 helped to save Europe. While it is true is that England was (and still is, 60 years later) very unhappy with Turkey for refusing to join with them against Germany during the war, things could have been worse. Turkey as an active ally of Germany in 1941 is a frightful thing to contemplate. So, there is is, the winning scenario for the Nazis in World War II. Its an ugly thought and I every time I think about it I'm glad we won and the Nazi's lost. 5:53:54 PM     [Colin Glassey 5 PM] Money is the Measure of All Things As I was growing up I was told money doesn't buy everything. The idea behind this statement is that there are things, important things, which are beyond the role of money to control. It was said: You can't buy love; you can't buy honor; you can't buy respect; you can't buy happiness. Living now in the United States in 2002 I don't hear this idea much any more, because it no longer seems to be true. It is quite obvious you can buy love for what else is happening when a rich man marries a new young trophy wife? You can buy honor, for that is exactly what happened when the U.S. Navy honored Carl Vinson by naming one of its 12 active aircraft carriers after him. Carl Vinson's only claim to fame is that he was the chairman of the House Naval Affairs committe for 29 years (i.e. he passed buckets of money to the Navy reliably for 29 years). Mr. Vinson may be worthy of some respect but to see his name in the same collection as Nimitz, Eisenhower, Roosevelt, Lincoln, makes me sick. You can buy respect for what else is happening when Michael Milken can go from being convicted of securities fraud to being lionized by the TechLearn Association (1999)? While you can't buy happiness, it is also true that rich people are unhappy about very different things than poor people. Rich people are unhappy because they can't buy that wonderful beach house on Maui as well as the mansion in Vail. Poor people worry about paying the doctor. Now, we see in this article from the New York Times sunday magazine that most of the victims of 9/11 are doing their best to get as much money out of the U.S. government as they can. To quote the lawyer and author Phillip K. Howard: We have made money the surrogate for tragedy. But we learn and relearn that it is not a very good surrogate. It is sad that the United States culture should have come to this point. It was, perhaps, unavoidable given our nature (to wit we are a country based not on a common ethnic heritage but instead based on the quest for freedom and happiness). Still, I regret seeing money, the accumulation of wealth, as the final judge on a person's character. I'm going to come out and say it: the highly paid people of Cantor Fiztgerald who died on 9/11 were not better people than the cooks in the Windows on the World restraunt. The families of the highly paid Cantor staff who died do not deserve any more (nor any less) money than the cooks or the administrative assistants who died and left families behind. The government shouldn't be giving money to the 9/11 survivors by the same logic as the government did not give special money to the survivors of Pearl Harbor. We are at war. The dead on 9/11 were not the first casualties of that war, and they were not the last. 9/11 was a defining moment, just like Pearl Harbor was 60 years earlier, but the United States can not be in the habit of giving millions of dollars to every person who dies due to the actions of terrorists. We are all in this together and either every family gets money when a member dies due to terrorism, or no one does. 5:29:04 PM

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