Hacker News Reader

Comment by newsgremlin | Hacker News Reader

>HEISENBERG: I am still convinced that our objective was really the right one and that the fact that we concentrated on uranium may give us the chance of collaboration. I believe this uranium business will give the Anglo–Saxons such tremendous power that EUROPE will become a bloc under Anglo–Saxon domination. If that is the case it will be a very good thing. I wonder whether STALIN will be able to stand up to the others as he has done in the past.

Another timeline that most can be glad we didn't go down. America would be even more dominant over the western world. Russia even more on edge.

View on HN

Not sure if you are being sarcastic - but isn't he in 1945 correctly predicting the development of the western world over the next 30-40 years, in which the US were clearly the dominating NATO power? I don't think Heisenberg meant that the US will threaten European nations with annihilation.

I'm having trouble parsing the quote, I think by 'Anglo-Saxon' he really means 'England and the US', and it's not really clear that England the US have true "power and control" over Europe. Instead what we see is a Europe dominated by England and Germany with large military influence by US.

It sounds like Heisenberg is predicting that the USSR would not be a major power in postwar Europe. And this didn't turn out to be the case.

Whether this was a good thing or not, I think newsgremlin should ask some Poles.

Nobody thought the USSR would develop nuclear weapons as quickly as they did. Had it taken them an extra decade or so I think there's a very possible future where the United States strikes, with nuclear weapons if necessary, any site where another state was developing their own nukes, in order to maintain sole possession of the weapons.

If you look at the period from 1945 to, say, 1975, though, which is the speaker's perspective, American political and economic influence were both extremely strong compared to today, in addition to the obvious military influence.

The thing is, from the 60's through the fall of the wall, you can say what you want, but I distinctly remember everyone MUCH preferring German Marks to any other European currency. (Probably the Swiss Franc was on par with it, you get the idea. No one wanted Lira, and, at times, even Pounds and French Francs were out of favor.) Germany, or Germany and France, were usually the driving force behind most European initiatives during that time.

Not only then, but still today. (If not even more today.) I remember the late unpleasantness with the PIIGs, and believe it or not, there was a little while there where people would try to determine where a Euro note came from...

and they wouldn't take it unless it was from Germany.

The Germans may not be vocal about dominating Europe, but they definitely dominate Europe. And they have in many ways for a long time. At least since the 60's.

correct. it's important to understand that 50% of the world GDP was inside the continental US at the end of the war. they were extremely correct in their predictions.

I don't know man?

Right now it's looking like Germany is clearly the power in Europe. With American military still there, and still largely based in Germany. I could be totally off, but it really does seem like Europe is dominated, in most meaningful ways, by Germany.

Next 30-40 years from 1945 on.

I thought by Anglo-saxons he specifically means English/England, as by the end of the war it would look like England being the remaining empire readying to take chunks out of Europe. Not American as they seem to differentiate in several conversations. America running NATO is intentional by European powers and is not the same as the colonial attitude at the time. The US was not as well known for foreign interventionism at this time, especially during the peak of colonial empires before their decline post-WW2

Reply on news.ycombinator.com