hippio

And this is all not even to mention the American "assistance" during and after WW1. Though, Americans tend not to mention WW1 other than in passing as another "war where America 'saved' Europe", as they tend not to know anything about it, and American history books don't really cover it as their main contribution was not military but financial.

@HippioScipio I devote a whole paragraph to how the United States swindled Britain. The American objective was to take possession of Europe by defeating not only the Axis powers, but also the two rival Allied powers, France and the UK.

As tensions between Europe and the United States grow sharper, the old rhetoric according to which America generously saved Western Europe out of pure benevolence is being wheeled out again by Americans. It needs to be understood clearly: THIS IS A COMPLETE FABRICATION. Entry was forced, not chosen •Neutrality maintained from September 1939 through December 1941, despite the fall of Poland, the fall of France, the Battle of Britain and the onset of the Shoah. •The US entered only after Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941) and Hitler’s declaration of war on the US (11 December 1941). No American initiative. •House vote to extend the draft on 12 August 1941: 203 to 202. One vote. •Gallup polling 1939 to 1941: a consistent majority opposed entering the war. The America First Committee reached around 800,000 members. Britain paid cash before getting aid •“Cash and Carry” (November 1939) required belligerents to pay in gold or dollars and to ship in their own bottoms. •“Destroyers for Bases” deal (2 September 1940): 50 obsolete WWI destroyers in exchange for 99-year leases on eight British bases (Newfoundland, Bermuda, Caribbean). •Britain was forced to liquidate US-held assets (American Viscose sold to a Morgan Stanley syndicate in March 1941) before Lend-Lease was enacted. •Lend-Lease Article VII (Master Agreement, 23 February 1942): British commitment to dismantle Imperial Preference as a condition of aid. War aims: dismantling the British Empire and seizing its succession •Atlantic Charter (14 August 1941): Roosevelt inserted self-determination and equal access to raw materials, directly targeting the Ottawa Preference system of 1932. •Bretton Woods (July 1944): the dollar became the reserve currency, Keynes’s “bancor” plan was rejected, sterling was subordinated. •Council on Foreign Relations War and Peace Studies (1939 to 1945, Rockefeller-funded): explicit planning for US succession to British hegemony. Roosevelt betrayed France repeatedly •Treaty of Guarantee signed by Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George on 28 June 1919. France surrendered the Rhine frontier in exchange. The US Senate refused to ratify (Versailles rejected on 19 November 1919 and again on 19 March 1920). The British guarantee, tied to US ratification, lapsed automatically. France had traded the Rhine for nothing. •June 1940: Reynaud’s telegrams of 14, 15, 18 June begged Roosevelt for intervention or at least a public commitment. Roosevelt’s 13 June reply offered material aid and explicitly refused military commitment. He forbade publication. •The US maintained full diplomatic recognition of Vichy until November 1942 (Admiral Leahy as ambassador to Pétain). •Operation Torch (November 1942): a deal with Darlan, the Vichy collaborationist, then with Giraud, deliberately excluding de Gaulle. •Casablanca / Anfa conference (January 1943): Roosevelt tried to impose Giraud, a docile military figure, over de Gaulle. •Roosevelt’s “Wallonia” project: in 1942 and 1943 the President proposed to Anthony Eden and to Lord Chandos the creation of a new buffer state, “Wallonia”, carved out by detaching Alsace-Lorraine and parts of northern France from French territory and merging them with French-speaking Belgium and Luxembourg. France, the country that had been invaded, was to be amputated by its own ally. The plan was dropped only because of British opposition and de Gaulle’s establishment of facts on the ground. •AMGOT plan: a US military government envisaged for liberated France, with its own occupation currency printed in advance. A pure denial of French sovereignty. •Recognition of the GPRF withheld until 23 October 1944, more than four months after D-Day, while the GPRF was already administering liberated France. •France excluded from Yalta (February 1945). The French occupation zone in Germany was carved out of British and American zones at Churchill’s insistence, against Roosevelt’s preference. Strategic priorities served US interests, not liberation •“Germany First” (ABC-1 plan, March 1941) was set before Pearl Harbor to protect the Atlantic and the hemispheric position, not to rescue Europeans. •The second front was delayed from 1942 to 1944 despite Soviet demands, in favor of Mediterranean operations covering imperial sea lanes. •Quincy Pact (14 February 1945, USS Quincy): the Roosevelt and Ibn Saud agreement secured Saudi oil before the war was even over. Continued business with the Reich •Ford-Werke, Opel (a GM subsidiary), IBM via Dehomag, ITT via Focke-Wulf: American-owned industrial assets operated inside Nazi Germany throughout the war. •Standard Oil of New Jersey and IG Farben agreements on synthetic rubber and aviation additives are documented into 1941 and 1942. •Union Banking Corporation (Prescott Bush) was seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act only in October 1942. Indifference to the persecuted •Évian Conference (July 1938): the US refused to raise immigration quotas for Jewish refugees. •SS St. Louis (June 1939): 900 Jewish refugees were turned away from US shores. •The rail lines to Auschwitz were not bombed in 1944 despite War Refugee Board requests and the available range of bombers based in Italy. American soldiers were not ideological crusaders •Around 16 million Americans were mobilised, of whom about 10 million were conscripted under the Selective Training and Service Act (September 1940), the first peacetime draft in US history. •Samuel Stouffer, The American Soldier (1949, around 500,000 surveys): the primary combat motivation was small-unit loyalty and wanting to go home. Abstract ideological motives (“Four Freedoms”, the defeat of fascism) ranked low. •The extermination of the Jews was not publicly known at the scale we now understand until the camp liberations of spring 1945. “The war to save the Jews” is a post-1960 retrospective construction. •GI Bill (June 1944): around 8 million beneficiaries. This was the real domestic payoff, a middle-class expansion program, not a liberation crusade. Postwar result: American primacy, not European freedom •US GDP rose from around 27 percent of world output in 1941 to around 50 percent in 1945. The only major economy enriched by the war. •Marshall Plan (1948) conditioned on market opening, the exclusion of Communist parties from government, and purchases of US goods. •NATO (1949) under permanent American command (SACEUR). US bases installed in Europe to the present day. •The empires of the allies (British, French, Dutch) were dismantled within twenty years. The US emerged as the sole Western hegemon. Conclusion None of this is a moral indictment. It is, in truth, perfectly normal. In the long history of nations, it is exceedingly rare for a country to send its children to die out of altruism. States send their sons to fight to defend their interests. That is the rule, not the exception. The Americans behaved as any serious power behaves. The fault lies partly with us, for having believed otherwise. But it lies also with the Americans of today, who sincerely believe their own propaganda, who have ended up taking the Hollywood version of their own history at face value, and who now lecture us from the height of a fable. We would like, finally, to talk to them as adults talk to adults, between people who understand the real nature of things. We were fortunate that, for a moment in history, American interests partly coincided with our own. That coincidence was real, but only partial. It meant the defeat of Germany and the holding at bay of Soviet Russia, both of which served us. It also meant the deliberate weakening of Britain and France, the dismantling of their empires, and the subordination of their currencies and industries, none of which served us. The same hand that pushed back the Wehrmacht also pulled down the pillars of European power. We benefited from the first half of that movement and were diminished by the second. We can still be grateful to the young American soldiers buried in Normandy, Lorraine and the Ardennes. Most had not chosen to be there. They were fighting first for their own, not for ours. Their deaths remain tragic, and we did partially benefit from their sacrifice. Gratitude toward them is owed and should be plainly expressed. It is a separate question from the strategic intentions of the government that sent them. The choice facing Western Europe in 1945 was real: vassalage to the Germans, vassalage to the Soviets, or vassalage to the Americans. Of the three, American tutelage was by far the least brutal, the least extractive, and the most compatible with the survival of parliamentary institutions and a measure of prosperity. That is not in dispute. But the lesser of three evils is not generosity. Vassalage is not liberation. The two should never be confused. The lesson is ours to draw. No one but Europeans will ever defend the interests of European children. It is time to reclaim our independence, so that our children inherit a future of their own, and not one held hostage to the shifting interests of Washington.

You do not "give" NATO 1 trillion dollars. You spend 1 trillion dollars on your own military and that is what is counted as your "contribution". Which is to say, you are currently reaping the benefits of that "contribution" right now with your war in Iran. If you want to say that all that spending was because of NATO, go right ahead, as surely that means you should really be thanking NATO, given how well you're doing?

America First bros are all bent outta shape cuz we give Israel around $4 billion every year. Meanwhile we give NATO nearly $1 trillion! Both sums are eligible for scrutiny, but there’s no doubt that Israel has done more to forward our interests abroad. Or that their values more closely match ours.

I mean... Elon Musk, the owner of this platform, goes on nearly daily rants about UK Grooming Gangs, or who he does and does not like in British politics, and I see almost constant posts from MAGA people about how Europe is going to shit etc etc. Yeah, America is talked about by foreigners, but you guys do plenty of that yourselves.

i am so tired of people from other countries posting their opinions on everything america does like anyone asked or gives a single fuck american politics, the moon mission, our economy, our military, our culture. the entire world has something to say about everything we do 24/7. but you never see americans sitting online all day tweeting about what’s happening in your country. ever. because nobody cares worry about yourself and fix your own problems. the obsession with america from people who don’t live here can’t vote here and have zero stake in the outcome is genuinely hilarious stay in your lane nobody asked you or cares what you have to say

To be fair, as an Englishman, this is definitely something that was also a feature of the British Empire, so it isn't exactly surprising that they're like how we were in this respect as Americans are just anglos minus the British's proximity to Europe not allowing us to able to be totally solipsistic.

The level of cognitive dissonance among some Americans is staggering. They have no trouble understanding that when China extends loans to African countries in exchange for opening their markets, it is a strategy of domination and subjugation. Yet they are sincerely convinced that the Marshall Plan was some kind of entirely selfless philanthropic endeavor, and that the subsequent dominance of American corporations across European markets is purely coincidental, owed to nothing but the inherent superiority of their products. Incredible.

I mean, we only: 1) Sent thousands of men to fight and die alongside you in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then joined you in striking Libya and Syria. 2) Agreed to raise military spending up to 5% of our GDPs, agreed to your demand that we pay for US aid to Ukraine, etc. 3) And, in the case of Britain, we only grant you access to islands which house some of your most important bases like Diego Garcia on a long term basis. But like, yeah, we never really tried. Maybe if we just did something for you, you'd have stayed. Alas, America is now to leave NATO. Too bad really. I guess we can only wish you luck.

@BRICSinfo Maybe they should try harder to convince us to stay? I know, it’s a wild idea…

JUST IN: 🇺🇸🇪🇺 European allies are losing hope of keeping the United States in NATO.

We can pin the blame for the American beliefs on the US foreign policy establishment who basically sold their whole package of "goods" as the unbelievable generosity of America born of its noble heart and love of freedom and democracy everywhere. The only difference between the past America and today's America is that while back in the day this PR line used to give Americans the warm and fuzzies, the same line just makes Americans be like "why are we being so generous?"

Anglophone X is now flooded with Americans explaining how Europe was freeloading off the American empire, and cheering its coming end. I'm cheering too, so we're on the same side. But here's the funny part: MAGA has actually gaslit itself into believing the American Empire was a bad deal for America and a gift to Europe. (And that it was always this way - meaning they genuinely think their parents and grandparents were either idiots or naive philanthropists who, having Europe in the palm of their hand, decided to set up a system that worked against them.) As a result, MAGA is now dismantling its own empire. We haven't seen a self-own this spectacular since Germany blew up its own nuclear plants. There's always a moment in history when the metropole gets tired of paying for empire and loses sight of what it's getting out of it. We're there now. It's going to cost Europe dearly to exit its semi-protectorate status. But in the end, it'll be far better off for it. I put together a quick scorecard of what each side - America and Europe - gains and loses from the status quo. I'd encourage my American friends to take a look. So many of you have no idea how your own empire actually works. (1/2)

I really don't get this point that we in Western Europe are somehow parasites. America's contribution to NATO is not some pot of money that gets divied up equally between all NATO states, it is just your plain old military spending. Europe benefits passively from you being very strong, sure, but are you suggesting America should be weak just to spite us in Europe? How will leaving NATO, and thus losing the hundreds of billions of dollars other NATO countries spend on their defence that would have supplemented your own military spending, benefit America in any tangible way?

@JonahDispatch Have you ever been to Western Europe and actually spoken to the people in all of those countries? Most of them loathe Americans and that has been the case for decades. The NATO relationship is one of parasite and host, the quicker it ends the better.

I agree with some of this directionally, but my God the refusal to acknowledge that Trump has worked assiduously to poison the alliance and heap all the blame on Europe is just water-carrying hackery. Saying "NATO will never be the same, and Western European weakness and acquiescence is the cause" is like writing a movie review when you missed the first half of the movie.

After decades of American right-wingers whinging, I find it funny that you think anyone in Europe is interested in being lectured about taking responsibility for our own problems from a country that has large contingents of its society that blames all its problems on: the Russians, the Chinese, DA JOOS, the "Israeli Lobby", the European Union, and whatever the super secret global cabal of satanic pedophiles who apparently run the world is called. I think Europeans whinging about American dominance all day instead of actually doing anything meaningful to build an alternative model are dumb and pathetic, but no one in America is in any position to lecture us on personal accountability.

My genuine advice to the European right (such that it exists) is to lean into the anti-American sentiment. That’s your path to power. You need an ‘oppressor’ to fight against. One that moderate voters already want to hate. And the obvious rhetorical choice is America. Who’s responsible for the European migrant crisis? Not Europeans! It’s those damn Americans who caused chaos in the Middle East and forced you to accept 50M migrants (don’t worry about proving the “forced” part, people will believe it because they want to). Who’s responsible for the European energy crisis? Not Europeans! It’s those damn Americans who pushed climate change and anti-nuclear narratives to deindustrialize Europe and keep it weak and dependent (don’t worry that Russia actually funded your Green parties, it’s more fun to blame America, so people will). What about NATO? Here’s where it gets tricky, so follow along closely: America didn’t create NATO to protect you from the Soviet Union, it created NATO to keep you weak and enslave you. But also, Donald Trump wants to leave NATO because he wants to keep you weak and enslave you. Does that seem like a contradiction? It doesn’t matter. Your voters want to believe both, so they will. Ukraine War? America forced Russia’s hand. Strait of Hormuz? America closed it. Fertility crisis? America psyop’d you into thinking the world was overpopulated. It works for everything. Blame America and watch the communists and Islamists start nodding along. Blame America even harder than they do and watch your rankings shoot up in the polls. Just don’t start believing it yourselves. Never get high on your own supply. A strong, self-confident Europe is good for both Europe and America. So if you ever actually get back to that and stand up and peer out across the wide world for a friend, there across the pond, your old pal America will be waiting.

I am not a critic of the fight against Islamism, lol. I am a critic of Americans pretending like we weren't there fighting alongside you. Also, fyi, I am in favour of a huge increase in European defence budgets. You seem to think I am some kind of leftist, I am not. My criticisms of the last 80 years of European defence policy are many and not at all milquetoast. Critique all you like, I have no issue with that, but what Trump and MAGA engage in is not criticism of European policy, it is just outright slander, and that is when it is not just outright bs like the claim that Europe has never done anything for America etc.

@HippioScipio @bungarsargon Yeah being nice can come afyer we're all on the same page. You literally described the wars v. Islamism as America's wars. They are your wars whether you fight or not. Whether you can take any sorry of criticism or not. China and Russia are watching and laughing at you lot.

Like the Democrats, our European allies are enjoying the fruits of a mission they freely admit is in the world’s best interest—ridding the world of the threat of a nuclear Iran. And like the Democrats, they want the privilege of freeloading off the benefits of that mission while reserving the right to complain about it, holding their noses and pretending to be above it. My column: batyaus.substack.com/p/europes-last…

I literally said that Europe should get involved but ok. I was simply suggesting you should go about securing that support from the European leaders (who I think are garbage) in a better way. But i guess being nice occassionally is too high a price to pay for European help. Bluster and threats has done just wonders for you so far, so why change?

@HippioScipio @bungarsargon Not supporting your allies during a war v. a shared enemy is what freeloaders do. Oh no someone might call you a name!! 40K Iranian civilians murdered and you're worried about name calling Typical euro trash.

@StillySteelhead @bungarsargon Also a backbone would also mean we say no to you. Which we are doing right now. Which, last I checked, is what you're complaining about?

@HippioScipio @bungarsargon The problem is that you've become so worthless and weak that we just don't care anymore. Get strong, develop a backbone, then maybe we can treat you like equals again.

@StillySteelhead @bungarsargon Why are you asking for our help if we are so weak? A bit odd don't you think?

@NJ_USA_Patriot @EricLDaugh Arrogant? You were the one who dismissed my argument by implying I was an idiot who hadn't read your original comment. But if you can't be bothered to defend your point then ok. Have a nice day.

@HippioScipio @EricLDaugh Expensive doesn't have to be just money. You are annoying me with your arrogance. Please stop.

🚨 BREAKING: President Trump just EVISCERATED our NATO “allies” as total FREELOADERS after refusing to help in Iran, says we don’t need them anyway — and “NEVER DID!” “The United States has been informed by most of our NATO “Allies” that they don’t want to get involved with our Military Operation against the Terrorist Regime of Iran.” “Because of the fact that we have had such Military Success, we no longer “need,” or desire, the NATO Countries’ assistance — WE NEVER DID!” “Likewise, Japan, Australia, or South Korea. In fact, speaking as President of the United States of America, by far the Most Powerful Country Anywhere in the World, WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

@NJ_USA_Patriot @EricLDaugh Also I notice you didnt address any of my points lol. Prove NATO is expensive.

@HippioScipio @EricLDaugh I said, it is an expensive one-way street. Read the whole sentence.

@NJ_USA_Patriot @EricLDaugh I did. Tell me, @grok, how many times has NATO been activated, and by whom? Does that suggest NATO is a one way street?

Ok, quick question, what expenses are you talking about? The US "contribution" to NATO is not some seperate money pot that America contributes to, it is your own military spending. Are you saying you want to cut military spending? Even if you think Europe doesn't spend enough—which is true—do you think it'll be less expensive to have to make up for the hundreds of billions of dollars that other NATO members spend on their militaries with additional US tax money?

@EricLDaugh It is time for us to leave NATO. It is an expensive one-way street.

@ShippersUnbound Trump excoriating Starmer right where it hurts. It is also not one of those jabs Trump makes where it is obviously just bs, but actual, genuine frustration with how Starmer operates. I think very relevant given recent domestic coverage.