• agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I don’t think you can really compare pre and post industrial superpowers, especially measured specifically against the ridiculously advantageous position of the mid century USA (perhaps I should have said nuclear superpower, or space-faring). And pretty much everyone in the hemisphere “nearly” lost WW2

    • RidcullyTheBrown@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      pretty much everyone in the hemisphere “nearly” lost WW2

      I reread my comment and it was ambiguous. I meant nearly lost the war in the beginning due to lack of leadership which they basically executed early in the revolution.

      You’re right, nearly all of Europe lost in that war. The only two winners were USA and USSR

      • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        nearly lost the war in the beginning due to lack of leadership which they basically executed early in the revolution.

        The only two winners were USA and USSR

        A puzzling juxtaposition, that.

          • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            History is rife with "nearly"s. The USSR had to content with y’know, actually being in the middle of both world wars and suffering the material consequences. And then went on to go toe-to-toe with the golden child of capitalism (safely nestled on its distant continent, far from the material consequences of war, with all the post-war industrial economic advantages that wrought).

            The US had a freakish advantage, no one should have gotten even close. And the USSR got smacked down bad through both wars. And yet, they were stiff competition. It’s like gloating that your thoroughbred greyhound barely beat out a half-blind, 3-legged street dog in a race. The fact that it was close should be your sign.

            • RidcullyTheBrown@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              That’s a very narrow view of what happened after the second world war. URSS occupied half of the European continent. It basically was the last empire in Europe with all the resources and human capital at its disposal to do anything it wanted. Not to mention war reparations.

              And it lost. The ideology wasn’t working. It took 40 years for that empire to collapse, but collapse it did because it was built on the wrong principles.