You are basically arguing that if they didn’t use their bullets and bombs up faster than they could make them we wouldn’t have had to get involved in either wars and therefore they owe us.
You ar claiming that a continent that spent a good portion of the first half of the 20th century locked in devastating wars that drained entire economies and toppled empires because weren’t prepared in providing their own defense… so they owe us.
World War One would have ended with or without us.
It ended faster with us… but remember… the winter of 1916-1917 in Germany was known as the Turnip Winter. There were food shortages and rations were cut by a little over 30%. They were economically draining their entire nation to keep their heads above water.
There was fomenting social unrest, Sailors striking over poor rations… and when parts of your military are starting to fall apart… that is what we call not good.
So two major things really brought the US into the War. The fall of Tsarist Russia and the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by the Germans in the North Atlantic in early 1917.
It is sometimes fun to argue counterfactuals… but in the opinion of a good many historians by the time the US entered the conflict in April 1917, the writing was on the wall for Germany.
You are ignoring the specifics of what I said. I said that without the aid from the United States … of men, arms, equipment, and money … from the near the beginning of the 20th Century, the map of Europe would look very very different today. That is absolutely true regardless of whom you believe would have won either conflict. In fact, had WWII ended without US intervention, in a stalemate, WWII probably wouldnt have happened, at least not remotely as it did.
We can rewrite history all we want but I do find that arguing counterfactuals can be fun but it is in the larger sense completely meaningless.
There was no way that the US was not going to enter into World War 2.
Also… if the US had never entered into WW1 and ending it quicker than it would have… there is no way to know what the armistice agreement would have entailed.
Would it have been better or worse?
We don’t know because that never happened
What is really though is to argue that nations that were at total war didn’t spend enough on their defense and somehow owe us.
That is super stupid.
I mean… it’s not like the one nation to really come out on top of both wars was the Untited States or nothing.
You are getting carried away. I’m not trying to rewrite history, I merely pointed out the contribution of the US to Europe in the 20th century wars was immensely important to the final outcome of those wars. Modern Europe would be a very different place had we not supported the Allies. Perhaps some in Europe now want to sever that relationship, but should they do so, they do it to their own peril.
You are predicating your idea of what Europe would be like if the US would not have gotten involved and extrapolating from that they owe us money for some reason.
This, in my opinion, is ignoring all history around these events and is also dismissive of the benefit that the US gained on a world stage from both of those wars happening.
Example.
Would the US dollar ever had become the world reserve currency at Bretton Woods if we had stayed out of the wars and didn’t have nukes?
I am predicting nothing. There is not one historian who would not agree that the face of Europe (and the world) would be significantly different had the US not entered either/both WWI and WWII on the side of the Allies.
