AH Cliches: Stalinist Industrialization

[ObssesedNuker]

in part because they were first and foremost in pushing Hitler to take the risks he did,

But that simply is not true. Aside from Hitler's personally appointed todies (and even among them) voices of support among the German leadership were actually quite muted. But there were much stronger (and senior) voices in opposition within the military hierarchy - at least until Hitler silenced them by playing dirty pool.

Regarding one of Hitler's early policy debates with his military advisers in 1937, Megargee in "Inside Hitler's High Command," writes:

"As he frequently did, on this occasion Hitler went on at great length about the general situation. He spoke of the need to acquire more living space for Germany, since autarky was impossible and participation in the world economy did not offer the solution to the nation's economic problems. The nation would have to settle the issue of Lebensraum by 1943 or 1945 at the latest, he said, after which the other European powers would catch up in armaments... Thus the military had to be ready to strike as soon as the opportunity offered itself. To Hitler the question of timing was paramount..."
"No doubt Hitler was counting on support from his advisers. Their response must have been a shock and a disappointment. In the discussion that followed the Fuhrer's monologue, Blomberg (Wehrmacht Commander in Chief) and Fritsch (Army Commander in Chief) raised serious objections to his plans. They were not moral objections... What disturbed the generals was the possibility that Germany might become embroiled in a war with France and Britain before the Wehrmacht was ready. They disagreed with many specific points of Hitler's analysis, and they cautioned him against moving too quickly."
-Megargee, "Inside Hitler's High Command," p.38

Fritsch in particular took his objections to Hitler's ambitions very seriously and was public in his opposition and in trying to rally others in opposition - most particularly Chief of the General Staff, Ludwig Beck. Hitler got around these objections by simply getting rid of Blomberg (on charges that his wife had posed for pornographic pictures) and Fritsch (on trumped up accusations of homosexuality), after which he took the position of Commander in Chief for himself and appointed the toady Wilhelm Keitel as his Chief of Staff. By taking the post of Chief of Staff, Hitler had also done an end run around Beck's continuing opposition to his plans. By 1938 this came to a head over Czechoslovakia, where his opposition to Hitler's plans led Beck to resign, writing:

"In order to make our position clear to historians in the future and to keep the reputation of the high command clean, I wish, as Chief of the General Staff, to make it a matter of record that I have refused to approve any kind of National Socialist adventure. A final German victory is impossible."
-Megargee, p.52

But now, having steadily replaced all the senior military leadership who opposed him of the past two years, Hitler had a free hand to launch whatever adventure he wanted. Even so, on the eve of the Invasion of Poland, Hermann Goering - the second most powerful man in Germany - desperately and futily attempted to stave off war. But Hitler would not be swayed, and so it was war.

Without a man like Hitler steadily and ruthlessly removing all the checks and balances, including some very senior people who opposed a war, Germany wouldn't have got past their objections. The belief that war was a valid way to solve problems was widespread among the German leadership but the belief that Germany could win it was not. That being the case, a bevy of senior people were always going to advise - strenuously - against a war and without a leader as driven as Hitler, it's likely the political leadership of Germany would have backed off.

To be sure during the war, which is where the examples you appeal too come from, the German generals did show strategic myopia and a willingness to work with Hitler. But that stems from the fact that in the pre-war period Hitler had maneuvered and removed those military leaders who objected as I described above.

I think there might very well be some possibilities for a non-Nazi Germany that is more dangerous AND has the drive to actually set Europe on fire. I don't think we are in ASB territory if the revanchist are a little more cautious and patient.

And I don't see it. A Germany without the ideological drivers is going to be quite reluctant for the reasons I highlighted above to really set the world a-fire... or to do so when it has the best opportunity.

A more sensible foreign policy could still have allowed the Anschluss and something similar to OTLs Munich. The invasion of the crippled Czechoslovakia was one step too much. The rest is entirely possible.

This is little different from the foreign policy approach that would prompt Anglo-French and Soviet rearmament and reform programs of OTL. If the Germans push forward as far as Munich, then the Anglo-French power will wake up and begin their own full-scale rearmament that will quickly pass the more measured German one as it did IOTL. It's worth remembering that Anglo-French rearmament commenced months before the Munich crisis even began.

It wasn't sensible for Germany to not rearm at all.

Beyond a certain point, that isn't true. As late as 1937 there was support from certain segments of the political and industrial establishment for ending rearmament outright in favor of a export-trade scheme that would lead to German reintegration. Hitler trampled all over this plan because his dreams were set on European conquest.

Neither the Anglo-French nor the Soviets would have overtaken the Germans tactical/doctrinal wise for a while.

"Awhile" likely being 1941 for the Anglo-French and 1942 for the Soviets.

The Red Army prior to WW2 was incompetent and a political army. Similar to what the Arab states were fielding against Israel. Without the experience of a invasion threatening their vary existence I don't think the Red Army had the potential to turn into the professional force of the Cold War. And even OTLs Red Army in many areas wasn't as organized and well lead as its western counterparts.

The Soviets by mid-'41 had already initiated the reform program that would provide the basis for the skills of the 1942-43 Red Army. The German invasion actually set this evolution back by gutting many of the cadres and disrupting the training establishment. The Arab state analogy is flawed as what was holding the Red Army back was more transitional political-technical issues and not the much more permanent political-cultural ones (the fact that the Red Army was able to turn things around in just a year-and-a-half while the Arabs have remained stuck in the same rut for decades is strong evidence for this). It's true that they wouldn't become as skilled as they were towards the end of WW2, during their most crushing victories of 1944-45, without the hard experience of war but becoming reasonably competent enough to stave off a German assault is still well within their reach. And by 1945 OTL, the preponderance of the Red Army was very much as well organized and lead as its western counterparts.

France was still in a deep pacifistic mood. Just handwaving a rearmament and reform when the Germans follow a more sensible and cautious foreign policy isn't convincing.
Great Britain is more likely to advance but they still have a ton of other requirements diluting the resources they can spend on the military without a serious and immediate threat. Japan might convince them to reform their military though. I still don't see them overtaking Germany.

Anglo-French rearmament predates Munich and was based on the recognition of German rearmament and aggression. They were also already in the process of overtaking Germany in 1940 as it was so whether you can't see them overtaking Germany must be based on a abject lack of knowledge of what actually occurred IOTL.

Aye - I mean people have noted the Holocaust was irrational from a war perspective for the Nazis because they killed the Jews rather than using them for war work (even when it would have been beneficial). The entire thing was motivated by insane conspiracy theories. They would probably still have racism and prejudice but it would be of an exploitive master-slave kind rather than exterminationist.

The holocaust actually did serve a disturbingly practical purpose: it eliminated useless mouths the Germans couldn't feed as blockaded and looted Europe was too agriculturally destitute to provide adequate rations for all. The Germans did exploit Jewish labor... but only those which could work were utilized. If a Jewish slave became too weak to work then of course they were fed into the gas chamber and replaced with a new slave, but Adam Tooze shows that the fact that the Nazis managed to squeeze out as much as they did stemmed from their brutal policies. They derived a terrible strength from their hatred.​

 

[marathag]

Yes, because Egypt, Argentina, Spain and other capitalist economies have never had trouble with empty store shelves when they failed economically.

And how many of those had the totally empty shelves as an ongoing feature for years, like with the USSR?

Argentina, and Spain, was more from the neo-autarky policies on imports than an inability to even have basics, like toilet paper, from domestic sources

 

[fasquardon]

Okay, I looked at Sino-Soviet relations for an undergrad thesis. In the 1920's after driving out the White Army from Mongolia, The Soviets kept the monarchy under the Bodh Khan, after he died the Soviet let the Mongolian Communists take power, one of their first goal was to expand Mongolia's resource production cattle for expanded from 12.2 million per head to 22.4, half of which had to be sent to Soviet agents.

Xinjiang was an area that was rich in resources such as tin, oil, and metal. To gain control of the area the Soviets backed the governor Sheng Shicai against KMT forces. On top of that, the Soviets ran the Chinese Eastern Railway as ostensively joint enterprise with the Nationalists but used it more to support them than anything else. As for more unequal treaties, Stalin basically wanted concessions from Manchuria that dated back to 1904, in exchange for fighting Japan. When it came to getting an actual alliance with Mao when he won, which Stalin had initially seen as unlikely, Stalin would only accept that after concessions were granted as well.

The thing is all the above, dated back to and imitated Russian Imperial policies of influencing Mongolia, Manchuria and, Xinjiang if not name than in deed.

Stalin's interests in Sinkiang and Manchuria were a big reason why he wasn't happy to see Mao win. He really wasn't happy seeing the favourable treaty he'd signed with the Nationalists torn up in the name of Socialist Brotherhood (something which took some canny diplomatic brinkmanship on the Chinese Communist side, by the way - the Soviets tried to bully them into accepting the treaty).

However I meant that from a "win the war" perspective it was irrational. Even if they insisted on genocide then it would've made more sense to have the Jews work for the war effort then kill them once they'd won.

Well... If you were in a fight with someone and had a sickness, wouldn't you want to get rid of the sickness as quickly as possible so you could fight at your full strength?

We can see they were murdering human beings. They had convinced themselves that they weren't and that once the murdering was done, they'd somehow defeat the Soviets and the WAllies as the drag of Jewish sabotage was removed from their war effort.

Would you believe I only realized this myself in the last year? I've seen Nazi propaganda posters in textbooks since I was a child, but only recently started to consider: "how would someone act if they really believed such posters were true."

Without a man like Hitler steadily and ruthlessly removing all the checks and balances, including some very senior people who opposed a war, Germany wouldn't have got past their objections. The belief that war was a valid way to solve problems was widespread among the German leadership, but the belief that Germany could win it was not. That being the case, a bevy of senior people were always going to advise - strenuously - against a war, and without a leader as driven as Hitler, it's likely the political leadership of Germany would have backed off.

You are quite right. But I think it is quite possible that a dictatorship by Paul von Lettow Vorbek (so beloved by alternate historians) or a pseudo-democratic regime under President Hindenburg could have also selected for aggressive military thinkers who would tell the leader "yes, tomorrow!" when the leader asks "can Germany be a great power?"

And how many of those had the totally empty shelves as an ongoing feature for years, like with the USSR?

Argentina, and Spain, was more from the neo-autarky policies on imports than an inability to even have basics, like toilet paper, from domestic sources

The Soviets went through periods of empty shelves and periods of fuller shelves (never comparable to the fullness of shelves in the US - but quite comparable to the fullness of shelves in other medium-developed industrial economies, which is exactly what the Soviets were) and shortages would come and go on the regional level too. And while there is a component of bad policies to the Soviet problem, the same is true of empty shelf situations in capitalist states. Like the Soviets, empty shelf trouble tends to happen at a certain level of development for capitalist states (though even economies like the US and UK show similar phenomena that can last for days - there's a world of difference between all the shops in a city running out of sugar for a day and all the shops in a city running out of sugar for a week though, so those cases are so minor as to be something different, even though the causes of the shortage are the same as month-long shortages in less developed economies) and the state's shops also drift in and out of sufficiency over time and across distance.

One has to be developed enough to have shelves, but not so developed enough to have a really sophisticated distribution network yet. Sophisticated enough to have complex economic ideas, but not so sophisticated

So saying "the Argentine and Spanish situation was just neo-autarky" is I think too pat. Like saying "the Soviet problem was just bureaucratic socialism". It is mostly accurate, but doesn't really convey much understanding.

Now, my understanding is that the Soviet problem was more difficult, due to much greater political interests having reasons to perpetuate the problems that plagued goods distribution for their own benefit, but I really need to find more good examinations of what was going on in the capitalist states that have experienced empty shelf syndrome, but so far I've only been finding tantalizing hints, not crunchy detailed analysis over time.

You might want to read William Odom's "Collapse of the Soviet Military".

I've read some of his stuff on Iraq, which has always been interesting. I'll see if I can pick this book up.

fasquardon

 

[MernStahl]

Well... If you were in a fight with someone and had a sickness, wouldn't you want to get rid of the sickness as quickly as possible so you could fight at your full strength?

We can see they were murdering human beings. They had convinced themselves that they weren't and that once the murdering was done, they'd somehow defeat the Soviets and the WAllies as the drag of Jewish sabotage was removed from their war effort.

Would you believe I only realized this myself in the last year? I've seen Nazi propaganda posters in textbooks since I was a child, but only recently started to consider: "how would someone act if they really believed such posters were true."

Well indeed that is true. I get your last line though - when I began to consider how people in the past actually thought about things and the stuff they accepted as axiomatic, a lot of their actions made sense. The really nasty behaviour in past human history seemed more...understandable I guess is the word, in light of the fact that someone really did believe that all of X group had to die because Y deity said so.

People say you should avoid presentism and Whiggish historiography but it's actually quite hard to really put yourself in someone else's shoes and actually realise how they thought and not try and treat them like you would yourself

 

[fasquardon]

Well indeed that is true. I get your last line though - when I began to consider how people in the past actually thought about things and the stuff they accepted as axiomatic, a lot of their actions made sense. The really nasty behaviour in past human history seemed more...understandable I guess is the word, in light of the fact that someone really did believe that all of X group had to die because Y deity said so.

People say you should avoid presentism and Whiggish historiography but it's actually quite hard to really put yourself in someone else's shoes and actually realise how they thought and not try and treat them like you would yourself

We are like fish in the seas of our axioms.

fasquardon

 

[Napoleon IV]

Yet even then, people in the USSR still had places to live.
While back in the US,

No, the Soviets claimed to have eliminated homelessness. In reality there were homeless in the USSR, and a large number of them were alcoholics or former convicts. The Soviets also effectively criminalized homelessness by classifying the homeless as "social parasites" and declaring that systemic vagrancy (which meant getting caught more than once) could be punished by up to 2 years' imprisonment. Special detention centers were set up by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), which attempted both to exploit the homeless as a source of cheap labor and also train them to reenter society. Unfortunately, being labeled as a parasite/vagrant often meant retaining that label forever. Such a label made it hard to get a job or residence permits, and so the so-called parasites were trapped in a cycle of poverty and homelessness.

 

[longsword14]

though of course there were many differences between the Satellite states and the USSR, there were key similarities between them that were not shared with more successful Communist states like China and Vietnam

China and Vietnam only became better once they had ditched that system. Without a freer economy that showed surpluses, the Soviet malady would never go away.

Yes, because Egypt, Argentina, Spain and other capitalist economies have never had trouble with empty store shelves when they failed economically.

Not a chronic disease for these but was a feature of the Soviet system.
Countries like India and Egypt have little state capability and a poor base to work with. Putting in a state controlled/ communist economy is a step so drastic that it could never be implemented, and even if it did the result has always been inferior to a capitalist one.
One must compare like with like. People who contrast high literacy etc. of communist states with other poor countries which were not socialist do not do so. All communist countries have an immensely capable authority that can and does force enormous changes, but any other state with a similar central power operating within a free market would be far better.

 

[fasquardon]

China and Vietnam only became better once they had ditched that system. Without a freer economy that showed surpluses, the Soviet malady would never go away.

But you can say exactly the same thing about capitalist states that struggled with product distribution. They needed to change their systems - systems that had been implemented in the first place to try to cope with their low level of development in a world system where wealth had a strong tendency to pool in West Europe and Anglophone North America.

One must compare like with like. People who contrast high literacy etc. of communist states with other poor countries which were not socialist do not do so.

OK, tell me some high literacy poor capitalist states. Because of all the ones I can think of, the only one that did well between 1922 and 1989 was Japan.

Not a chronic disease for these but was a feature of the Soviet system.

No? Up until 2007-2008 it looked like there was some unique, chronic problem in Argentina.

All communist countries have an immensely capable authority that can and does force enormous changes, but any other state with a similar central power operating within a free market would be far better.

This is my biggest disagreement with what you say: I do not see any reason to characterize communist states as having "an immensely capable authority". Very much, I see the opposite. States saddled with weak institutions that were even more fatal than their bad economic choices.

The USSR had a legal system that tended to be ignored, economic planners who made plans that factory managers could ignore as they liked, a parliament that had little ability to hold the executive to account, a constitution that did not reflect the real power structure and did not bind the peoples of the state together, was plagued by secret-keeping at every level and a had fractured economy with many undersized economic economic units that had the power to resist being amalgamated into more efficient sizes.

Capitalist states with similarly weak institutions tend to also not thrive.

fasquardon

 

[longsword14]

They needed to change their systems - systems that had been implemented in the first place to try to cope with their low level of development in a world system where wealth had a strong tendency to pool in West Europe and Anglophone North America.

Wealth pooled in Europe and N. America ? What does that have to do with stupid Argentinian policies ?
Argentina was hardly a proper example of a free market economy, we have other better examples. One the other hand, the best of a communist system is still abysmal.

OK, tell me some high literacy poor capitalist states. Because of all the ones I can think of, the only one that did well between 1922 and 1989 was Japan.

I do not understand this reply.
What I meant was that often people trying to mitigate the record of communist states do so by picking poor countries, which do not have a communist system, say India, then contrast the former with the communist ones (e.g. Vietnam), ignoring issues like state capability, historical structures etc.

No? Up until 2007-2008 it looked like there was some unique, chronic problem in Argentina.

Not at all. Argentina's problems were painful to fix but got done by defaulting. That it has continued with questionable policies does not change anything at all.
An ill functioning economy like Argentina still had a greater ability to provide its citizens their desired commodities than the USSR ever had.
Continuous increase in its output and simultaneous chronic scarcity are hallmarks of a communist state.

I do not see any reason to characterize communist states as having "an immensely capable authority".

I mentioned this for a very selective group of nations for which radical overhaul by a strong central power has often provided solutions for relatively simple issues, like basic education.

Capitalist states with similarly weak institutions tend to also not thrive.

My previous point, and the few before them are all meant to point out that for similar state capabilities, and for some with inferior ones, capitalist systems always outperform communist ones.
That weak institutions exist does not weaken everything in favour of a free market.

A communist system has issues that necessarily follow from its essence, which is not the case for a capitalist one.

 

[Don Draper]

Wealth pooled in Europe and N. America ? What does that have to do with stupid Argentinian policies ?
Argentina was hardly a proper example of a free market economy, we have other better examples. One the other hand, the best of a communist system is still abysmal.

You can't claim that Argentina is "hardly a proper example of a free market economy" while claiming that China and Vietnam's success is due to them embracing the free market, since by your own standard they haven't embraced the free market "properly" at all (they both have vastly higher degrees of state ownership/control over their economies than countries like Argentina). From Bill Hayton's book Vietnam: Rising Dragon:

But even at this point [meaning in the 90s], the state remained in control, and foreign investment was directed into joint ventures with state firms. In every other communist country that has embarked on economic transition, the proportion of the economy controlled by the state has fallen. In Vietnam it actually rose: from 39 per cent in 1992 to 41 percent in 2003 – and these figures exclude foreign-invested firms, which were usually joint ventures with SOEs.”

But unlike many other countries, state control did not mean economic torpor – growth rocketed to 8 per cent a year. The boom was particularly strong in the south. By the end of the decade [the 90s], state firms in Ho Chi Minh City contributed about half of the national state budget.

“Vietnam has not developed in the way it has – balancing rocketing economic growth with one of the most impressive reductions in poverty anywhere, ever – by completely liberalizing the economy.

In 2005, 122 of the 200 biggest firms in Vietnam were state-owned. The figure has changed only marginally since then, although some privately owned banks are now marching up the league. For the Party, a strong state sector is the way it can maintain national independence in an era of globalisation. It means the Party can still set the big goals – like its decision, in December 2006, to develop the country’s ‘maritime economy’ – a catch-all concept covering everything from oil to dish and ships. It is also determined to maintain high degrees of state control over strategically important sectors such as natural resources, transport, finance, infrastructure, defence and communications.”

 

[Mackus]

Remember, the Nazis were Nazis. The Holocaust was perfectly rational if you accept their base assumptions.

They weren't insane. They really, truly believed that the Jews were a disease.

Yes, it's often overlooked.
Insane premise leads to insane conclusion, but their internal logic might be perfectly sound.

I assume their train of though went something like this:
"Jews back-stabbed us in 1918, causing us to lose war."
"We had to threw Jews in ghettos to stop them from backstabbing us ever again."
"We are losing war! Time to get harsher on Jews."
"We gave them fair chance, but Jews didn't stop sabotaging our war effort, we're still losing the war! They left us no choice..."

However I meant that from a "win the war" perspective it was irrational. Even if they insisted on genocide then it would've made more sense to have the Jews work for the war effort then kill them once they'd won.

I am not sure. See my conjecture above. I am pretty sure a lot of them though that each killed Jew was immediate boost to war effort, and any delay in extermination would only contribute to defeat.
It's the same as Bolsheviks killing kulaks. "If kulaks are to blame for hunger, then of course killing kulaks would relieve starvation. We wouldn't have to kill them if they didn't stop causing starvation by hoarding the grain."

 

[fasquardon]

Wealth pooled in Europe and N. America ? What does that have to do with stupid Argentinian policies ?

Because the bad Argentine policies were a reaction to how wealth tended to flow from Argentina to Europe and North America. Without some sort of state intervention, there would never be any sense to invest in any serious industrial development in Argentina during the 20th century because it would be more productive to invest those resources in already industrialized Europe and America. And since the Argentines didn't want to be an agrarian state with massive unemployed urbanites crowding the cities while foreigners treated them as a colony, they tried to find clever ways to funnel investment into local industries.

I do not understand this reply.
What I meant was that often people trying to mitigate the record of communist states do so by picking poor countries, which do not have a communist system, say India, then contrast the former with the communist ones (e.g. Vietnam), ignoring issues like state capability, historical structures etc.

...

OK, the point is not to mitigate the record of communist states. The point is to understand them correctly. To understand them correctly, one has to choose the correct basis of comparison. Which, as it happens, is to compare the Soviets with poorer countries, not richer ones (though I wouldn't say India is a good comparison in general, though some very specific aspects of the Indian economy are).

But comparing the Soviet Union to Mexico, rather than the United States does not excuse anything! Any more than comparing Hitler to Napoleon excuses either leader from trying to conquer Europe.

Just because someone has understandable reasons for messing up, doesn't excuse them from messing up (and I emphasise, "understandable" is not the same as "good"). Just because someone had a twisted rationale for their actions doesn't excuse them from responsibility from their actions.

Not at all. Argentina's problems were painful to fix but got done by defaulting. That it has continued with questionable policies does not change anything at all.
An ill functioning economy like Argentina still had a greater ability to provide its citizens their desired commodities than the USSR ever had.
Continuous increase in its output and simultaneous chronic scarcity are hallmarks of a communist state.

So in Argentina, you a run of different policies being tried and those leading to a series of unpleasant crashes.

The Soviet Union changed its policies many times between 1917 and 1989 and it eventually led up to one really big crash (that actually wasn't as bad as some of Argentina's crashes, but the political fabric was weaker so the state broke apart during the crash).

In both cases, bad choices yesterday contrived to make bad choices today more attractive. You can say there was something systemic that made it easy for the state to stay in a rut that had it sliding towards disaster. Equally you can argue that for both, the rut might have been hard to escape, but was at least always possible. The difference is in perspective.

I mentioned this for a very selective group of nations for which radical overhaul by a strong central power has often provided solutions for relatively simple issues, like basic education.

OK, what do you mean here? And how does it relate to your argument?

Which nations exactly? Which radical overhauls? And how do Chinese barefoot doctors demonstrate capability and authority better than the US supreme court demonstrates capability and authority?

fasquardon

 

[fasquardon]

My previous point, and the few before them are all meant to point out that for similar state capabilities, and for some with inferior ones, capitalist systems always outperform communist ones.
That weak institutions exist does not weaken everything in favour of a free market.

A communist system has issues that necessarily follow from its essence, which is not the case for a capitalist one.

Well, try framing it differently.

The Soviet Union, Maoist China, Communist East Germany, all were capitalist states in the Marxist sense of the word. State capitalist for sure. And with some very odd rules that crippled their internal market systems. So not free market capitalist in the sense we are familiar with in the West.

Yet some of these state capitalist states would successfully reform into more mixed economies like China and Vietnam today, while a slew of these states would experience catastrophic political failure during their reform processes. So how do these states compare to each-other and how do they compare to states like Peronist Argentina and Francoist Spain?

So you are absolutely correct, the system designed by Lenin and Stalin had issues built into its very nature. But so did the system Peron built and the system Franco built.

It is a general truth of economic history that as human society grows and develops, the systems governing it break and have to be replaced. Heck, if we look at the Great Depression, one could cast the whole mess as the growing pains of the US banking system growing from a national banking system to a world banking system after WW1 devastated all their competition. So the US system broke (in a way that wiped out about as much production and wealth as the fall of the Soviet Union 60 years later) and had to be replaced during the New Deal and the post-WW2 formulation of a new international order. Yet you'll note that the US didn't have bits of it declaring independence and the ideological concept of what the US was did not see wrenching change. So why did so many Communist states fail when they were inevitably forced to change systems? One could argue (it's too simplistic an argument to trust too far, but it's certainly a useful mental exercise) that all the important 20th century economic systems are variations of capitalism, but one very oddball bunch of revolutionaries went and relabelled their brand of capitalism to be "communism". So while other capitalist systems could fail and be replaced by new capitalist systems imported from abroad in the process of creative destruction, the Communist brand of capitalism could not import large changes without experiencing brand failure, so many Communist-capitalists put off reform until they exploded.

One of the problems with that simplistic argument is that we don't yet know whether or not Chinese communism or the other surviving Communist regimes have experienced brand failure yet - the West thinks it has, the East thinks it hasn't. Like the French revolution, we won't really know the answer for at least another 200 years. The rubble still hasn't stopped bouncing. In the current uncertain moment one could argue that surviving communist regimes are walking dead, doomed by the dead hand of Lenin. Or one could argue that they are at the most basic level simply disadvantaged capitalist states, and that they can evolve towards functionality by destroying and rebuilding their systems like any other state can.

I guess what I am arguing is that sometimes it is useful to think of a spade being a spade and at other times it is useful to think of a spade being a digging implement. Sometimes one can just say "the spade failed to do this job because it is a space" and also say "the spade failed to do its job because its long handle makes it more prone to snapping and any long handled digging implement would suffer the same problem".

See what I am getting at here?

fasquardon

 

[Tanc49]

Yes, it's often overlooked.
Insane premise leads to insane conclusion, but their internal logic might be perfectly sound.

I assume their train of though went something like this:
"Jews back-stabbed us in 1918, causing us to lose war."
"We had to threw Jews in ghettos to stop them from backstabbing us ever again."
"We are losing war! Time to get harsher on Jews."
"We gave them fair chance, but Jews didn't stop sabotaging our war effort, we're still losing the war! They left us no choice..."



I am not sure. See my conjecture above. I am pretty sure a lot of them though that each killed Jew was immediate boost to war effort, and any delay in extermination would only contribute to defeat.
It's the same as Bolsheviks killing kulaks. "If kulaks are to blame for hunger, then of course killing kulaks would relieve starvation. We wouldn't have to kill them if they didn't stop causing starvation by hoarding the grain."

Although, if one of your long term goal is murdering all the Jews to preserve your race but that you are losing the war, well you better hurry up and get more efficient.
Imagine, you end up losing the war and your country still has Jews because you weren't efficient enough or fast enough. That just means you'll just be having the same problems next time around. Really, accelerating your extermination is the rational thing to do, for the sake of the future of your country.

Regarding shortages. I work in supply chain, there's so many things than can go wrong which gives you empty shelves. If you have one big actor for everything, it does tend to increase risk of shortages as you're exposing yourself to process or localised quality issues