Do you think there will ever be another war like WWII?

[Mr F.]

Yep, I think a war is coming.

A war on the same scale as the second world war.

Religious divisions within Islam are going to cause a conflict that is huge in scale and bloody in nature. Pakistan, Iran, Saudi, Hell the entire Arabian Peninsula. It will be huge and devastating. The fallout would not be nuclear, but economic, with rising oil prices and the collapse of world economies. That will drive further war, an ever increasing battle on ever increasing scales.

Or perhaps someone will go for Israel, dragging in the States (And by default, Nato) into a huge conflict which would once again spread.

The world might be interconnected now but that doesn't play into anyone's hands. We are, as a generation, Truly fucked.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I'm not an expert, but:

Oh it's without a doubt the two front's that ended Hitlers army, it just wasn't sustainable. It's likely that, had he focused on the west first, then the Russians afterwards, we'd be living in a very different world by now.

I very strongly disagree with that. The Germans had no chance at winning in the west as such, they couldn't defeat Britain. They simply didn't have the capability of transporting enough personnel and materiel across the English Channel. The plans for Operation Sea Lion involved using river barges that were totally unsuitable for open seas, under-crewed even after taking men from the Kreigsmarine (which then had to fight off superior Royal Navy forces) and dumping troops in the most defended part of Britain. Even gathering the barges together meant serious problems, as they were needed to keep the infrastructure going.

Similar in the east, the Germans couldn't move their men and equipment to where it was needed. The Soviets tore up the railways behind them as they retreated (of course), and they were made to different measurements to German stuff, they could either use their own engines and tracks, or captured ones, but not both.

The German's also developed a fixation on cities such as Stalingrad and wasted a lot of time and effort (not to mention lives) trying to snub out the last embers of resistance in those places. Had they just crushed the bulk of the russians resistance rather than focus on small resistance in ruined cities they could have been much more successful.

Small resistance in ruined cities? The Soviet plan was that everything was to be considered secondary to the cities.

Possibly both sides attached to much importance to the cities for symbolic value, but the propaganda benefit of taking them was no small thing.

The luftwaffe was just fucked after that, I don't quite understand how they thought aerial warfare that close to RAF bases was a good idea, surely they realised that they were basically in a hornets nest?

One problem the Germans had was they kept underestimating their enemies. During fighter battles, for example, in the confusion it was common for multiple pilots to think they'd killed the same plane, and each count them as a kill. Because of this, they thought they'd done much greater damage to the RAF than they had, and the RAF was rebuilding faster than they thought possible anyway, IIRC.

Likewise, in the east, they'd underestimated the numbers of Soviet troops. Because of that, they'd end up repeatedly thinking that the enemy was almost defeated, that one more big battle would see them run out of resources. That had obvious implications for their strategy.

 

[snekadid]

No - a war like WW2 would require a fight between two major powers. Major powers have nuclear weapons, so no. Nuclear powers will not fight other nuclear powers, except by accident. And if there was an accident and a nuclear war got started.... well, they'd be a war alright... but it would NOT be like WW2.

How did Tom Lehrer put it?

"Remember mommie,
I'm off to get a commie
So send me some salami-e
And try to smile somehow!
I'll look for you when the war is over,
An hour and a half from now!"

While i disagree with your post, i love that you quoted tom lehrer.

History is Cyclical because humans are either too stupid or too arrogant to learn from past mistakes, we are assured to find a way to screw up the same way we did before. WWII isn't unique by any stretch of the imagination, its a repeat of countless exact strings of events, the only difference is scale and that's not actually a difference because the scale has gone up every time its repeated itself as well. Even if it goes full nuclear during WWIII, there will be humans left and will start the same events over again only coming full circle and becoming small scale again.

 

[artanis_neravar]

OT: I actually do believe, in my life time, that if China continues to grow it will become imperialistic and attempt to invade the U.S.

They conceivably could win just based on the man power they have alone.

Not a chance. Yes, they have lots of soldiers, but that is totally irrelevant. They have to get their troops from China across a rather large ocean to the US. The US has the world's mightiest navy, and China hasn't invested much in the way of one (they might be looking to change that, though).

The US also has the two mightiest air forces in the world (USAF and USN).

Once the Chinese get to the US, it's a long walk from the coast.

Oh, and the US has a mighty nuclear arsenal as well.

And even if they did manage to defeat the US army, occupying the country is tactically inconceivable. The US has 88.8 privately owned guns for every 100 people, and estimated 270 million guns in the hands of private citizens. Our armed forces and police combined have a little under 4 million. That means that there are 67 times as many guns in civilian hands than there in this countries defenders.

On top of this Americans have a historical distaste for foreign involvement on American soil, or against American people (Sinking the Lusitania and attempting to get Mexico to invade, and Pearl Harbor lead to a change of stance from Isolationism to pro-war in the two world wars respectively)

In order to occupy the US and have it be worthwhile, they would need to largely keep the infrastructure intact, which makes Urban Guerrilla warfare extremely successful.

In short invading and conquering the US would cause more trouble than it would create advantage for China