this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
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[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 months ago (2 children)

There would be no way to stop. The German economy was really messed up by the Nazis. They essentially had no exports because they were producing mainly materiel for the war and were under an embargo anyway.

That means they had no way to get money besides literally taking it from conquered countries. The problem is, you can only loot once. This created a vicious cycle where they became more isolated and needed to conquer even more.

Honestly, before nukes existed, the Nazis could have been defeated by an embargo. But it would have cost more lives. Invading Germany saved lives and the nukes saved even more lives in Japan.

[–] SkyezOpen 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The problem is, you can only loot once. This created a vicious cycle where they became more isolated and needed to conquer even more.

Fucks sake Adolf, I learned this from a few hours of a total war game. You think you'd have figured it out at some point.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If only Adolf Hitler had played Total War, maybe he wouldn't have been such a lunatic smh

[–] UnderpantsWeevil 4 points 3 months ago

Nah, someone would have introduced him to Hearts of Iron and he'd have gotten worse

[–] Duamerthrax 1 points 3 months ago

He wanted to be an art major. What would you expect?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If anyone's interested in further reading the MEFO Bills are definitely interesting from an economic perspective.

I'm sure it wasn't the first army built on credit, but it was definitely the biggest.

[–] Bernie_Sandals 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The Nazis had about 4 million people in uniform at the start of the war, America has about 1.5 million today, but it's not a bad comparison considering the last time American debt exceeded the GDP was the end of WW2.

[–] Bernie_Sandals 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Yeah, by manpower Germany's was definitely larger, by budget though, our annual military spending blows theirs out of the water.

At the height of the war, Germany spent about 380 billion dollars adjusted for inflation to the year 2021

In 2021, the U.S. spent about 700 billion dollars on it's military.

Though to be fair, the U.S. has a lot more of an economy and population to work with and isn't investing nearly as much, far more was spent on the military by Germany as a percentage of their GDP, and their military had more people per capita than the U.S. does today.