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Trump insists it's very normal for the winners of wars to pay billions to the losers
(www.thebeaverton.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2026
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Sure but the title of this article doesn't work if you know WW1s lack of nation building/stabilization caused Hitler in the first place.
In that sense, if we paid Hitler and other vets after WW1, he wouldn't have ended up homeless in a crashed economy and there wouldn't have been a Hitler/WW2 situation.
That's the big thing that the world learned. Then the US forgot and caused ISIS. So the title is still a fail. Americans need to remember this lesson more than anyone.
Hitler's experience being homeless in Vienna influenced his antisemitic views, but just to be clear, he was homeless prior to WWI.
After the war he was sent by his military superiors to spy on a German Workers party in 1919, and the leader of the party, Anton Drexler, ended up taking Hitler under his wing. Hitler eventually took over the movement that begun under Drexler, before turning it into the Nazi party. At one point, Hitler threatened to abandon the party unless Drexler handed over complete leadership.
Drexler remained a party member in name only, and seemed to basically serve as a propaganda tool to help retain pre-nazi membership. For some odd reason Hitler even ended up adopting Drexler's unique little mustache.
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/adolf-hitler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Drexler#CITEREFEvans2003
So after WWI an already antisemitic Hitler with a reputation in the army as unfit to lead due to psychotic tendencies, felt strongly that Germany had been greatly betrayed. But so did the military superiors who first sent Hitler to spy on Drexler and the Workers party, before eventually ordering him to join the party's leadership when Drexler took an interest.
Despite his experience in Vienna homeless shelters influencing his antisemitic views, Hitler's superior, and head of German Intelligence's "Education and Propaganda Department," Karl Meyer, was allegedly the person who first instructed Hitler to write about those views.
As the Nazi party grew, it seems a bit unclear when (if?) Hitler's superiors stopped providing him with official commands/communications, but Meyer would later state that he had been instructed by General Erich Ludendorff to have Hitler join the workers party.
TLDR: Is there a chance preventing a German economic crash also could have prevented a Hitler situation/WWII? That's difficult to say.
You are assuming that the German populous would follow hitler equally and only hitler would be influenced by the changed economics. The lack of economic opportunity drove Germans towards the right and made Hitler message more appealing
It might not have had prevented Hitler leading the Nazi party, but it probably would have prevented that much support in the population for it.
I agree the circumstances 100% led to the public support, but the war/power hungry military higher ups who picked Hitler for an oddly specific mission and helped launch his political career, raise two questions.
Even if you could go back in time and prevent Hitler from being born/make him be a more talented artist, would the most powerful General of WWI have just found some other unstable loyalist for the mission?
The General's view on war vs. peacetime, doesn't seem too dissimilar to the neoconservative views we see in modern America. The belief that the only real justification any war needs is America is #1, so if you have something we want, it's ours to take. Plus war is good for business.
I have to wonder how long the practice of manipulating public sentiment and even intentionally undermining economic circumstances has been accepted as an honorable military strategy. We're seeing it happen again now, and they're not even bothering to really disguise what they're doing.
Considering how embarrassed the General was following WWI, it almost reminds me of what many people believe were the actual causes of America's war in Iraq under George W. Bush. Vengeance for daddy. (Somewhat unrelated sidetrack. It's kind of a fascinating coincidence that Skull and Bones, the Ivy League secret society Bush Sr. and many other powerful neoconservatives belonged to, was created by an American who had been allowed to partake in the rituals of a German secret society while living abroad, and was inspired by their antidemocratic elitist legacy of a few chosen men destined to control the rest of society from the shadows).
Anyway, getting back to Hitler/Ludendorff (who coincidentally was born to a noble German bloodline): When General Ludendorff sent Hitler to infiltrate the Worker's party in 1919, or more specifically, when Ludendorff instructed the intelligence head of the "Education and Propaganda Department," to send Hitler, what was the purpose of the mission?
At first, Hitler was allegedly just sent to spy/be on the lookout for political agitators. But pretty soon he was joining and climbing his way to top leadership, while the head of the department of propaganda, helped him begin writing about economic anxiety and the antisemitic beliefs that had allegedly caused Germany's defeat in WWI. So what was Ludenhorff's end goal?
looks at present-day Germany
yeah... about that...
Capitalism is quite capable on its own of generating crises that radicalize people who can then be recruited for fascism by the rich to increase exploitation further.
Even if Germany had been supported, the Great Depression would still have happened. And like the US, UK, France, Spain, Netherlands, and many other "winners" and neutral parties in WW1, Germany would have had a thriving fascist movement.
Maybe Germany wouldn't have been the first nation to take fascism to the point of rabid invasion of white countries and make all the other white countries retroactively frame fascism as an unconscienable foreign enemy, but some nation would have been.
(This time the US seems the most likely bet. They have the bloated and quickly-getting-outdated military, the fascist wrecking the local economy, the establishment of a post-truth society, etc.)
The last two videos of this playlist seems to suggest that hyper inflation in Germany could have been avoided... and that's a lot of what fueled Hitler's rise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AM2pncU4rs&list=PLMUzeMKhbl10X-XzH-6q4iU0Ysul7cC4c&index=13
It's been said "Fascism is Capitalism's immune system".... Hitler used the "Jewish backstabbing" mythology because of the mass poverty. Hitler went after "degenerate culture" in Berlin because mass poverty caused all sorts of sex acts and drugs to be sold as part of the city's underbelly/gray market. According to the documentary below, whole families went into prostitution:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWqnnUeD6cw
I think it's playing it up a bit in that documentary, but I do believe a lot of this stuff related to mass poverty, caused by economic destruction, and a lack of care post WW1. I'm a believer in the theory that fascism is a product of failed economics, and political disenfranchisement. I meant, I might even argue that Donald Trump's first term came off the back of the 2008 financial crisis, and his more recent term came after COVID's economic disruptions.
I'm not disagreeing with about economic disruptions and how anxiety around those disruptions influenced public perception and support leading into WWII.
Just wondering how long powerful men in the military and government have been manipulating public perception.
Especially given the stab-in-the-back myth seemed to be Ludenhorff's excuse for Germany's failure under his military leadership following WWI.
I don't think the USA just forgot about it, ISIS was never a real issue, just a anther cause for endless proxy wars, it's a machine.1.
"Nation building" after WWII wasn't free or benevolent at all (USA or USSR), the tactic was to control the nations instead of letting them regain full independence - as much as/in a form a post-British-empire world can allow imperialism.
Nation building = funding german rebuilding efforts so they don't go into hyper inflation again.
Not carving up captured territory. That's not national building.
One is more literally building a "nation" than the other. I was more pointing out that USA just occupied a territory & stayed there forever.
(You don't leave your military in a nation after the war is over. Sovereign nations don't allow that. Eg Mexico iirc.)
Both in their (USA) image.
Yes you do.
The occupied usually surrender territorial control, and all the allied nations stayed in Germany for a number a years... hence the whole east west divide.
Anyways, I get to say what I meant by Nation Building in my comment. I don't know what you're on about. Are you trying to point out that the US is corrupt? Because buddy, that's already apparent to most people.
I was saying that after the nation building the military usually leaves, not stays for 70+ years.