In article , DSK
wrote:

Peter Wiley wrote:
My knowledge of Euro history is pretty ordinary, but didn't Germany
take most of the land it lost at the end of WW1 from France in the war
of 1870?

Sure, and much of that was land that France managed to grab during
Napoleon's time, etc etc. Borders are changeable. It's one of the
ongoing problems between nations... for that matter, between states
within nations. For example there are several states borders here in the
US that are defined by rivers, which are constantly removing land from
one side & depositing it on the other, and vice versa. The big question
is, shall we kill people over it?

No, not these days :-) We're having an argument with East Timor ATM
over a sea bed boundary. Not the least worried about them attacking us
of course.

Seems to me it was the reparations that led to massive inflation and
economic chaos that led to the rise of Hitler more than the loss of
territory. Even the reparations were just playing by the same rules
Germany had used itself, previously.

Yep, that sound pretty close to right to me. Although the stolen land
was part of the Nazi's political sloganeering, as was the "stab in the
back" (their popular theory that Germany didn't really lose WW1).

Well they didn't lose militarily, it was a stalemate. They got starved
into submission which is evidence that sufficiently rigorous economic
sanctions backed by military force to enforce them can work.

Shows you what happens when countries try and formulate national policy
of wishful thinking and slogans basd on fantasy.



As for wars, dunno. Basically the Western powers can economically ruin
a country without taking military action. Is this preferable?

Yes. An economy in ruins is better, by definition, than an economy in
ruins with 100,000+ dead and all infrastructure destroyed.

Yeah, my feeling as well. However we have the example of Hussein using
the 'food for oil' exemption from economic sanctions to bribe other
nation-state leaders while simultaneously starving his people of food &
medicine and using the resultant deaths et al to convince people like
Donal et al that it was all the fault of the Western powers. That's a
good example of what happens if you're ruthless enough.

PDW