What’s really happened is we’ve had our global dominance thrown away. We took the lead because of WW1 and WW2. It’s not because we’re great. It’s not because we manifested our destiny to become the leader of the world. It’s because factories in Europe were bombed to smithereens. That’s what allowed the U.S to achieve financial dominance. Now we’re in the fall.
And the U.S. got all the money to build up their industrial base by the fact that they were they only country able to give out loans to the European nations fighting in the First World War since every european country spent everything they had and then some fighting each other.
World War One represented the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world. It was bigger than the economic exploitation by the British Empire of Africa, India and Asia combined. In four years, the U.S. basically held all the cards and (I know this is controversial) only ended up getting involved militarily when it seemed possible that the allies would lose and therefore be unable to pay off their loans.
And you know what…all credit to the Americans; they took that new found wealth and built up the strongest, most powerful industrial base the world had ever seen; an industrial base that, without which, the second world war would have been nearly impossible to win (Russian blood, British Strategy, American Industry…isn’t that the saying?)
It’s what they proceeded to do with that industrial base afterwards that lead us to where we are now.
What’s really happened is we’ve had our global dominance thrown away. We took the lead because of WW1 and WW2. It’s not because we’re great. It’s not because we manifested our destiny to become the leader of the world. It’s because factories in Europe were bombed to smithereens. That’s what allowed the U.S to achieve financial dominance. Now we’re in the fall.
And the U.S. got all the money to build up their industrial base by the fact that they were they only country able to give out loans to the European nations fighting in the First World War since every european country spent everything they had and then some fighting each other.
World War One represented the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world. It was bigger than the economic exploitation by the British Empire of Africa, India and Asia combined. In four years, the U.S. basically held all the cards and (I know this is controversial) only ended up getting involved militarily when it seemed possible that the allies would lose and therefore be unable to pay off their loans.
And you know what…all credit to the Americans; they took that new found wealth and built up the strongest, most powerful industrial base the world had ever seen; an industrial base that, without which, the second world war would have been nearly impossible to win (Russian blood, British Strategy, American Industry…isn’t that the saying?)
It’s what they proceeded to do with that industrial base afterwards that lead us to where we are now.