Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

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> I wonder how many Civil War technologies remained dominant in WWII; probably not much in the navy.

The US civil war was not a particularly maritime war, so indeed not much in the navy.

But that war pioneered two interesting logistical elements: first, it was the first war to permit rapid movement of material via rail (a surprising amount of rail was constructed during the war). Second is that it was the first economy vs economy war.

By and large the Europeans ignored the lesson, because they figured the details of what was going on in the US just weren't that interesting (big mistake). WWI was an economy-vs-economy and rail war (one problem is that both sides built rail heads to their fronts, so if they could move forward they couldn't supply their new front while the enemy could). The only European power that paid attention was Russia who therefore chose another rail gauge.

WWII was economy-vs-economy on a global scale: the US poured huge sums (mostly in kind) into the UK & the Soviet Union so Germany had to battle a large economy on both sides. In the Pacific the trigger for Pearl Harbor was the US cutting off Japanese access to raw materials (what are bizarrely called "sanctions" today) in the hope of ending prior Japanese aggression in Korea and Manchuria: again, economic struggle.

Big Napoleonic set piece field battles and ship-of-the-line battles appear to have faded into history, but most of the military spending in the US, Russia and China seems to continue to focus on that obsolete model. These carriers and attack subs aren't that useful in the asymmetric fronts we have today.

By the way another good lesson was the American Revolution, which was mostly won via lobbying/payments in Whitehall. Both sides have conveniently ignored that for their own political reasons :-)

I don't have time to go into much detail but this

>>But that war pioneered two interesting logistical elements: first, it was the first war to permit rapid movement of material via rail (a surprising amount of rail was constructed during the war). Second is that it was the first economy vs economy war. By and large the Europeans ignored the lesson, because they figured the details of what was going on in the US just weren't that interesting (big mistake).

Is basically all wrong. The Crimean war was fought before the American civil war and contained all these modern elements and was in many ways the first WW1 style war.

Before WW1 two majors wars were fought in Europe, the Austro-Prussian war and the Franco-Prussian war which pretty much set the stage for WW1.

The crimean war was indeed quite an industrialized war, used rail, and was a siege war; but personally I don't see it of the same magnitude as the us civil war (but there's no need to have a long argument about in in the HN comments!). I'll just say that the magnitude was _significantly_ lower than USCW and WWI; certainly it was not total war economy-vs-economy -- if best it was one of the first modern technology-vs-technology wars (I assume that was also a factor in the iron/bronze age, and in the colonial wars too).

But to paraphrase Stalin, magnitude has a quality all its own. Which is why I don't consider the brief Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars, while of incredible political significance, to be of great significance in the discussion I raised. Neither mobilized an entire economy much less both sides'.

(Big exception to what I just wrote: they did prove the value of the Prussian General Staff model).

Disclaimer: I do have a degree in European military history, but my scholarship, for what little it might be worth, is over 30 years out of date.

I really don't have time to discuss with you, but I just have to ask, magnitude of what? Magnitude of economy? How do you measure that?

How could you possibly compare the total, unprecedented industrialized warfare of WW1 with the American civil war?

It bears no resemblance whatsoever.

>In the Pacific the trigger for Pearl Harbor was the US cutting off Japanese access to raw materials (what are bizarrely called "sanctions" today) in the hope of ending prior Japanese aggression in Korea and Manchuria: again, economic struggle.

Building on your point about WWII being economy Vs economy and the economic underpinnings of the war in the Pacific, I have a memory of reading a similarly economics-centric analysis of the start of the war in Europe. I do not have a link but from memory Germany had insufficient farmland relative to its population and little access to important resources, especially oil. This set them up to be dependent on their neighbors indefinitely, neighbors who could turn off the food/oil tap at any time. That was not an appealing idea to the Nazis.

Not sure how well accepted that theory is or isn't but it certainly seems to hold a lot more credence than "the war in Europe started because Hitler."

You're spot on, but it actually didn't start with the Nazis; Hitler just adopted it as part of his foreign policy (I believe he even writes about it in Mein Kampf although I haven't looked it up). The official name for this philosophy is Lebensraum [1] and it's widely recognized as having started in the late 19th century, decades before WWI errupted, when Germany had a growth spurt and started to feel the pain of over population. However, how much Lebensraum had to do with the first war is unclear, since the Princip/Ferdinand situation was the huge spark that started it. That said, there was a whole plan assembled during WWI based on it called Septemberprogramm [2] with the goal of expanding German territory for resources.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septemberprogramm

I would hope that theory is accepted because it is what actually happened. The Nazis planned to exterminate all of the Slavs and use their land for growing food (Lebensraum and Generalplan Ost), and the Caucasus for oil.

The former goal failed thanks to the Soviets putting up a good fight, the huge size of Russia, and bad weather. The latter because Hitler really wanted to defeat the Soviets at a city named after Stalin instead of just driving past it. He wasted his entire invasion force (~800,000 casualties) when the Soviets encircled and destroyed it.

The Soviet commander in charge of the defense of Stalingrad, Zhukov, escaped Stalin's purges because he was stationed in the middle of nowhere, and soundly defeated the Japanese in Mongolia when they tried to invade in 1939. Japan gave up it's plans to invade the USSR for resources (permanently, as communicated by the spy Sorge, which allowed USSR to transfer all of their soldiers to the European front), and instead invade European colonies instead, which directly led to Pearl Harbor.

> Not sure how well accepted that theory is or isn't but it certainly seems to hold a lot more credence than "the war in Europe started because Hitler."

I've read a lot of WWII history. Especially focused on the ETO and Germany. In my mind, it seems beyond clear that Hitler was the reason that war broke out, the single prime key motivating force, his desires, his influence, his decisions, his cult of personality, his charisma, his quirks, his obsessions, etc. He existed and acted within a framework of other facts, within a certain context, and there were plenty of others who failed to act against him, enough, early enough, when it would have been more effective. But I've been confident of the "because Hitler" idea for a long time.

If you can point me at a history book or analysis which you think contradicts that, definitely share it with me, I always love to learn different angles. If I were to give you just one that aligns with "because Hitler" I'd recommend Shirer's Rise & Fall.

I haven't read as much on the topic as you, but I've always heard that WWII was effectively a continuation of WWI; the root cause being the punitive measures in the Treaty of Versailles.

I'd therefore assumed that Hitler was just a product of the era and there was a certain inevitability to WWII.

In many ways yes, it was one long war from 1870-1945 that flashed very hot a few times.

I've never been a fan of the "great man" view of history -- easy to teach but barely illustrative -- but there is no question our actions have consequences. The importance of taking the large view is that you can see the larger forces that someone can harness (or that can thwart them). But the claim "if not Julius/Napoleon/Hitler than someone else" is at best hard to prove -- what someone else did would have been quite different. Most likely it would instead have been the usual muddle -- the default state is muddle, with from time to time some demagogue able to weave some strands together and cause general excitement.

This is no different from, say, science. What would Newton have done had he been born 100 years later, or earlier, or 1000 miles east? On the other hand it's easy to see that if he'd not been born we'd have much of the same physics as today.

Germany's interest in certain land masses was based in oil, but that was only one of a suite of rationales. Given the basic nature of the Nazis as a group, it's not likely that was the only reason.

WRT Japan, this was called an embargo in response to the Rape of Nanking.

Ship-of-the-line has faded, but fleet-in-being was invented(?) around battle of Jutland and has remained important aspect to stifle the enemy from maritime trade.

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