Hitler: figurehead?

well, yeah. look what he did...

Yeah, he did what he did because he had a God complex, not because he was acting on behalf of anyone else.

well for someone acting on purely selfish motives, he got pretty far into world domination...

I don't think selfishness and megalomania are incompatable character traits.

of course they are. when your a megalomaniac, your being selfish.

How are they incompatable if when you're a megalomaniac you're being selfish?

oh. sorry. i misinterpreted what you said earlier. i missed the "in" in "incompatible" sorry.

my mistake.

Thank God for that. I thought I was talking to a nutter for a minute. I've done exactly the same thing myself. It's really easy to do. I'm going to bed now, but I'll leave you with this question. If Germany were to look for a WW2 hero would it be Wilhelm Canaris? A lot of people believe he's responsible for keeping Spain out of the war, and preventing an attack on Gibraltar.

what?

I believe part of the analysis on this thread should include whether someone like a Hitler could have risen to power amongst the Allied nations? I mean, was there something intrinsic about the German people that allowed Hitler to rise to power there? I am talking about the supposed "obedience to authority" that has been referred to as a national characteristic of Germany. Or, the willingness to follow a leader that had visions of making Germans a master race over Europe (for starters)?

In other words, for all the analysis about Hitler's intelligence or whatever, could it have only "flowered" in Germany. Are Americans too independent by nature? Are the British too tethered to Earth to believe conquering the continent would really be worthwhile? Are the French just content to be in France? Regardless, Hitler, I believe, has to be taken analytically in context of Germany, otherwise one is leaving out all the other actors in that Teutonic opera, so to speak.

NAPOLEON

wouldnt what he conquered become france as well?

No and that was one of his problems as the French people was becoming unhappy with him for viewing himself as the Emperor of Europe not just France with France just becoming one part of his empire.

ooohhh... the people of france were suffering denial...

Oh Jesus Christ . . . BIll, as usual, doesn't know what the **** he's talking about. I'd be interested to know what public opinion poll conducted in France before 1815 is the sourcce of his "wisdom." In the 20 years from 1794 to 1814, France was not invaded. France suffered no grain shortages--whether the harvest failed or not, 1793 was the last year in which there was a harvest failure, and the French navy, despite Royal Navy propaganda, won "the glorious first of June," because their object was to protect the grain fleet coming from America, and they succeeded--any crop failures causing shortfalls in succeeding years were made up from conquered lands. France suffered no shortage of specie (gold and silver coins) because conquered lands were routinely looted. Economically, France was booming because all imperial economic regulation favored French industry over any other. The attempt to close Europe to English goods was not uniformly successful, but enough that most people who wanted any manufactured goods had to buy French. Those 20 yearrs were years of prosperity and glory for the French naton. The French had few illusions about Napoleon, but this discontent that clown Bill is writing about is a figment of his imagination.

I agree with both joefromchicago and Setanta about the original question. Proof that the rapture is continuing to happen. I take no position on Hitler's smartness.

Let me give you a little lesson in how economics affects politics and nations. In 1788, there was a terrible hail storm which was general throughout northern France, and most of the grain crop was destroyed in the fields. Capitalists being what they are, men with money immediately began buying up as much of the grain supply as they could, and the price of bread began to skyrocket. The working poor of France were hit very badly--an adult male lived. literally on bread, eating three or four pounds of bread a day, five if he could get it. With the price of bread going up, the government of Louis XVI was threatened because of fiscal mismanagement. Not only was the economhy mismanaged by government, but they had gone heavily into debt at the time of the American revolution, when the French and the Spanish fought a naval war with England. I'm trying to keep this short, so, suffice it to say that the middle class demanded action, Louis fumble-fucked around, and got a revolution for his trouble.

By 1793, France was governed by the National Convention (actually, by the Committee for Public Safety within the Convention--but that's not germane to the economic issue). France was threatened by the armies of Brunswick, Prussia and Austria. The response was the levée en masse, similar to conscription. It would be regularized in a conscription law in 1794. To the surprise of Europe (who hadn't been paying attention to French military innovation), this army of "peasants" soundly defeated the professional armies of Brunswick, Prussia and Austria.

But there was another crop failure in 1793, and the Convention knew they were staring stark defeat in the face. Not on the battlefield, but in the bakeries. So, they sent off more than one hundred merchant ships to the United States to buy up all the grain they could, at just about any price, cash on the barrelhead. The Americans had long been selling grain to England, but that was an uncertain market, due to the Corn Laws in England, but i won't go into detail about that. But with the French offer, they could sell all the grain they could round up, and they wouldn't even have to transport it, because the French merchant ships were there to pick it up.

In March, 1793, the French sent off three ships of the line and some frigates to round up and escort the grain fleet. By late April, the grain convoy set sail. The Royal Navy was then given orders to intercept and capture or destroy the convoy. At that time, the Royal Navy didn't attempt to blockade the coast of Europe, they kept their main fleets in port, and sent out frigates to watch the French and the Spanish. So, in mid-May, 1793, when the main French fleet at the port of Brest sortied, the Channel Fleet under Admiral Lord Howe sailed to intercept them. The French Admiral was no dummy, though. He sailed into what the English called the Western Approaches, and "trailed his coat," meaning he sailed close to Howe's fleet as though he meant to fight, but then he wore (meaning the ships changed course 180 degrees by turning away from the wind) which actually moved them closer to Lord Howe, but with the weather guage (they were between the wind and the Royal Navy). Sucker that he was, Howe fell for the bait. He chased the French fleet for days, until, on June 1, 1794, he brought them to an engagement--an engagement which took place so far to the southeast of the grain convoy, that Howe could now never catch it. Howe sank one Franch line of battle ship, and captured seven more, and immediately declared a great victory. The government in London knew better, but they went along with the "Glorious First of June" myth to keep up public morale. But although Howe scored an impressive tactical victory (much less, though, then Camperdown, Cape St. Vincent or Trafalgar), it was a strategic defeat. The French Admiral had lured him away, and the grain convoy made it into Brest, where the Royal Navy could not follow, and the French government was saved.

The French then overran the Netherlands (we would think Belgium and Holland), gaining the Dutch navy into the bargain. Dutch troops would later fight for Napoleon. In 1797, Napoleon, having defeated the Austrians in northern Italy, forced upon them the treaty of Campo Formio. Napoleon's men were in rags, many with no shoes, and hadn't been paid in months when the campaign began in 1796, but he looted northern Italy shamelessly to equip, feed and pay his men, and to put millions in the coffers of the Directory, which now governed France. Whether the harvest failed or not, France would not go hungry again. Whether the Directory's economic policies were madness or not, there would now always be plenty of cash circulating in France. At the same time that Napoleon was making his name in Italy, French armies plunged deep into Germany. Although one of them was defeated and both armies were forced back to the Rhine, it was now revealed that Prussia had signed a secret treaty with France the year before, ceding the left bank of the Rhine to France. It was only a matter of a few years before the French had overrun all of Germany. The first coalition had failed, and the second coalition was coming apart at the seams.

Napoleon took power in a coup d'état late in1799. Napoleon negotiated the treaty of Amiens, which effectively ended the war of the second coalition in 1801. He also began putting the screws to English imports. The English always like to claim that this made no difference, but they're lying. Modern economic studies, including those by English scholars, show a steady decline in the growth of English trade, which prior to 1794, had grown each year in double digits. By 1805, their economic growth had slowed into single digits, and the "old women" trading stock in London had panicked so regularly that many investors had been ruined, and would be ruined in years to come. In 1805, the Royal Navy defeated the Franco-Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar near Cadiz, the main Spanish naval base. Napoleon never really "got" naval warfare, but he responded by an embargo 0n English goods called the continental system. By 1807, the English GDP was not only not growing, it was starting to decline.

The lesson of "The Glorious First of June" (1794) had gradually dawned on the English, and they had begun to blockade all of Europe to stop trade and choke France economically. Well, it didn't work out that way. Denmark, Sweden, Russia and Prussia (no ****, the Prussians had pretentions to being a naval power--it was a joke) formed the "Armed Neutrality of the North." So, the Royal Navy sent off Admiral Hyde Parker with a fleet to "negotiate" with the Danes, which his second in command, Horatio Nelson, accomplished by a day long bombardment of the Danish fleet and the forts protecting Copenhagen. Severly pissed, but now lacking a navy, Denmark was forced to negotiate on English terms. Parker was relieved, Nelson was put in command, and he sailed east to confront the Russian fleet. He sailed along the south coast of the Baltic to avoid a suprise attack by Sweden, which gives you an idea of how much the thought of the Prussian "fleet." The Russian admiral told him he was not going to negotiate while there was a foreign fleet sailing on his coastline, but Nelson's point was made.

It was because of that blockade, and the disastous defeat at Trafalgar that Napoleon instituted him continental system. Smuggling was heavy, but, basically, the English blockade screwed the Germans, Austrians and Russians--imperial economic policies saw to it that French industry thrived. Eventually, that would lead to war with Russia, a major contributing factor to Napoleon's eventual defeat, but not the sole case as so many like to claim, oversimplifying things.

Napoleon's fatal mistake was made in 1808, when he removed King Ferdinand from the throne of Spain to make way for his (Napoleon's) brother Joseph. Spain and France had been allies for literally generations before that, especially their navies, but now that was all over. Spain became Napoleon's enemy, and was to become a bleeding wound that soaked up oceans of French and French-allied blood (chiefly Dutch and Polish troops) and mountains of French gold. It also enabled England to exploint markets in South America, which helped to offset their losses on the European continent and to get their economy growing again.

So the failure of the grain harvest in 1788 set up the conditions which prepared a successful revolution in France. Howe's failure to stop the grain convoy in 1794 allowed the revolutionary government to survive, and the superiority of French military doctrine allowed them to defeat the forces threatening France. The defeat of the Dutch fleet at Camperdown, the defeat of a Franco-Spanish fleet in the Gut of Gibraltar in 1801, the bombardment of Copenhagen in 1801 and the defeat of the Franco-Spanish fleet in 1805 at Trafalgar allowed the Royal Navy to blockade Europe. Napoleon's continental system assured economic prosperity for France, but screwed everyone else in Europe, eventually leading to the doomed invasion of Russia in 1812. From 1794 to 1814, France was neither invaded nor suffered food shortages nor economic turmoil. But in 1814, an English army invaded France from the southwest, and a Prusso-Russian army invaded France from the northeast. Napoleon's days were numbered. In fact, it came down to just one hundred days in 1815, which ended in Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo.

The suggestion that the French resented Napleon to any significant degree before 1814 can only arise from sheer ignorance.

Does this mean that you'll be floating up to Heaven in the near future?

uuuhhh...
how long did it take you to type this? im just curious...