Perhaps John Maynard Keynes should have been promoted to General!

I may have mentioned before that a kindly neighbour passes me his old copies of The Times Saturday Review in exchange for my old copy of The Spectator - and yes, he is definitely getting the better of the deal!  Even so, I am always keen to peruse the book reviews and there was a particularly interesting one in my latest copy.  It deals with the latest book by Victor Davis Hanson entitled: The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict was Fought and Won.

According to Mr. Hanson, 'it woz the fact'ries wot won it!'  According to the review:

Victor Davis Hanson is a brutally pragmatic historian who cuts through myth and hype. Stripped of emotion, his war is reduced to simple equation: "Victory … was a morality tale of production besting killing: those who made more stuff beat those who killed more people".  Stated simply, 60 million people died "to confirm that the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain were far stronger … than Germany, Japan and Italy … a fact that should have been self evident".

Well, I am sure that Mr. Davis Hanson will be relieved to know that I agree with him entirely!  As I remarked a few days ago when I began reading Hitler's biography, it is extra-ordinary that none of the German 'intelligentsia', military or civilian, raised the economic weakness of Germany versus Great Britain (and its empire), America and Russia.  

What a bunch of 'Dummkopfs'!

And what is the Japanese for a 'Dummkopf'? 

 

 

 

Comments

[Whitewall]

Keynes is the departed Saint of the Western money tree. The departed Friedrich Hayek never made saint but he is standing at the base of the money tree holding the "I told you so" chain saw.

[David Duff]

What a pity, Whiters, that you can't turn that into a cartoon!

[Pat]

Wot Whiters said.

[Whitewall]

David I know...in that area I have zero talent.

[Whitewall]

Dummkopf---ダムコフ
No wonder the Germans and Japs couldn't talk to each other!

[Loz]

Even the Graun grudgingly acknowledges the NHS centralised state model sucks, whereas the decentralised insurance based Jerry model rocks ...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/germanys-devolved-logic-is-helping-it-win-the-coronavirus-race

Looks like Blitzkrieg logic and doctrine: decentralised all arms units with a self-dependent design and independent modus operandi, still kicks arse and hasn't been understood and adopted in Blighty's state sector. Yet the EU with its Confederate "compartmentalised ocean liner" able to open the compartments with a single market in business-as-usual times and slam them shut in a sinking crisis, and the Fatherland with its Federal structure, are both pissing all over Blighty.

Who's the Dummkopf now then, eh?

SoD