gwern comments on Our society lacks good self-preservation mechanisms - Less Wrong

12 [deleted] 12 July 2009 09:26AM

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Comment author: CannibalSmith 12 July 2009 05:51:00PM *  3 points [-]

Nazi Germany only lost WWII because Hitler made very silly mistakes.

I can't find it, but there's an article explaining how the Axis was more or less doomed from the start. In short, United States had twice the production capacity than all other participants combined. I'm saying Hitler's mistakes only hastened the inevitable.

Comment author: gwern 13 July 2009 02:08:15AM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure we should argue politics but... American intervention was not inevitable. Even merely materiale supply wasn't inevitable. There were a number of ways America could've been out of the picture or impotent; one of the cited turning points/mistakes was the failure of the Battle of Britain to bring England to terms, or the escape of their army at Dunkirk.

Letting America into the war was arguably one of Hitler's greatest mistakes (either by commission or omission, and there was even a historical parallel warning against America that Hitler was intimately familiar with - WWI).

America may've been tops in industry, but it's hard to see it launching a transoceanic invasion into Europe with no allied powers closer than... Africa? Asia?