Don’t forget that Obama announced the cancellation of Bush’s missile defense system while in Poland, on the anniversary of the 1939 invasion of Poland by the USSR.

The big problem for Britain and France wasn’t the Blitzkrieg tactics per se. It was that the strategic leadership assumed that Germany would try the same thing that it did in 1914, and ended up getting half the army cut off and surrounded when the Germans smuggled most of their tanks through the Ardennes instead.

By the start of the invasion of France, Great Britain building fighters faster than Germany was. I don’t know about other equipment, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case for things like tanks as well. Britain’s big problem wasn’t industrial capacity. It was manpower. As for the projected invasion of Great Britain, I doubt that the Germans could have pulled it off even without Barbarossa. They never would have been able to get the Royal Navy weak enough. And Stalin had plans of his own to go to war with Germany, so Hitler was still on a timetable.

I can’t agree that the start of WWI was due to “a bunch of idiots playing stupid games in an air of idiocy”. Nor that the various nations pulled into the War were incoherently hoping for something undefinable. Back then concepts like honor meant something and they had the quaint notion that treaties must be honored even if it meant a war no one wanted.

Nor can I agree with “the generals planned to can Hitler if the French resisted…” At that point, Hitler’s power was at its zenith and no rational German general would have imagined that canning Hitler was possible.

As for “After a certain period without war, the US public demands it in popular entertainment.”

Escapist entertainment and wishing for the real thing are of course, entirely separate things.

Public approval of and economic support for entertainment is not a ‘demand’, instead might subconscious/subliminal reflection upon recent, significantly impactful events through ‘entertainment’ be at play?

Here’s a tell: Hitler talked of secret weapons and the blond Aryan superman. The Japanese talked of the Code of Bushido. Mussolini spoke of the Brits,, “once a race of magnificent adventurers, now a line of tired rich men’s sons.” (Read his Wodehouse, I bet).
When they talk like that, they’re trying to occlude potential combat power which they cannot see themselves overcoming with combat power. But they went ahead because….no rational answer.

Question: Obviously, before the European elections the two parties [UKIP in England & National Front in France] had a clear link to Putin. If one of the representatives of the dangers of capitalism is the state involvement in capitalism, so, I see there, also Marine Le Pen campaigning in Moscow with Putin, and also UKIP strongly defending Russian positions in geopolitical terms.

Harnwell: These two parties have both been cultivating President Putin.

Bannon: I think it’s a little bit more complicated. When Vladimir Putin, when you really look at some of the underpinnings of some of his beliefs today, a lot of those come from what I call Eurasianism; he’s got an adviser who harkens back to Julius Evola and different writers of the early 20th century who are really the supporters of what’s called the traditionalist movement, which really eventually metastasized into Italian fascism. A lot of people that are traditionalists are attracted to that.
One of the reasons is that they believe that at least Putin is standing up for traditional institutions, and he’s trying to do it in a form of nationalism – and I think that people, particularly in certain countries…

You know, Putin’s been quite an interesting character. He’s also very, very, very intelligent. I can see this in the United States where he’s playing very strongly to social conservatives about his message about more traditional values, so I think it’s something that we have to be very much on guard of. Because at the end of the day, I think that Putin and his cronies are really a kleptocracy, that are really an imperialist power that want to expand. However, I really believe that in this current environment, where you’re facing a potential new caliphate that is very aggressive that is really a situation – I’m not saying we can put it on a back burner – but I think we have to deal with first things first.

Bannon seems to have no illusions about Putin, but is more worried about radical Islam – first things first. He also is willing to overlook a nascent Fascist movement in Europe (see Hungary) if it advances nationalism, as he was willing to tolerate white supremacists and cultivate the alt-right here.

Does this explain why Trump and his sycophants are trying so hard to dismiss Russian involvement in our election?

Gingrich compares Trump to FDR. Is he forgetting Yalta?

(The interview is at buzzfeed.com but cannot be linked.)

In 9/39 France and England had the upper hand militarily on paper… England did declare war on Germany with the invasion of Poland. But actual events proved that neither the French nor the English were capable of resisting the German Blitzkrieg nor contesting the air superiority of the Luftwaffe. Dunkirk was the English desperately trying to save the English forces on the continent from being destroyed. The French folded like a paper tent and English forces on the continent were utterly routed.

Had Germany not attacked Russia and Pearl Harbor not happened… England would eventually have fallen.

Yes it was a good idea to allow the Baltics and Poland into NATO, Ukraine no for obvious reasons. Of course if one wishes to make Moscow great again, it was a very bad idea.

1980s policy is calling us back to the future. Get a grip with 2 hands. There will be turbulence.

With that in mind, was it a good idea in the first place to admit those countries into NATO in 2004? Did anyone in the Bush-43 administration foresee what might happen later on? Could Russia stir up some resentments to serve its own interests, or are the Baltic Russians happier to be in a more prosperous country that is closer to the rest of Europe?

As for Lithuania, they are in better shape, with 2.85 million people, a comfortable majority of them as 87% Lithuanian, rounded out with 5.6% Poles and 4.8% Russians, among others. Given time, and a decent economy, all three Baltic states could grow closer to the rest of Europe, with Russia having less to offer as long as the price of oil stays relatively low.