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Comment by chulk90 | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, the author tweaks facts and statistics to make his claims more believable than they are.

For example, the author claims that Germany lost its chance to conquer Europe and the U.S. This is very misleading, and here's why.

Even though Germany rose to the Europe's most industrial and populous nation state following the unification of 1871, its production capacity was incomparable to that of the combined outputs of its western rivals. That is why Otto von Bismarck wanted the newly established Empire to stay out of any conflicts (and this is why he got fired by the more aggressive Wilhelm II).

The U.S. at that time was nobody. It was still undergoing the post-Civil War recovery and the Industrial Revolution JUST arrived on the continent. No European nation was interested in conquering the largely agrarian society.

Germany didn't miss a chance. It had neither the capacity nor the will to conquer the U.S.

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>> Germany didn't miss a chance. It had neither the capacity nor the will to conquer the U.S.

I doesn't seem the author is saying that Germany wanted to conquer the US. Germany wanted to create the equivalent of a US on continental Europe by annexing large landed regions and populations to get parity with the US on natural resources and population.

It wasn't even all that much earlier that European countries were selling off their American land holdings, to Americans mostly to finance their various national monetary needs.

> The U.S. at that time was nobody.

The US was an APEX power and had been for a long time. Nobody could conquer it. To claim the US was a nobody is a laughable.

> It was still undergoing the post-Civil War recovery

After the civil war, the US fielded the greatest army in the world and it's economy was growing because it was shifting to westward expansion. We took over territory bigger than western europe. Not only that, the US was the largest producer of oil BY FAR at that time.

> the Industrial Revolution JUST arrived on the continent.

It just arrived in european mainland as well relatively speaking...

> No European nation was interested in conquering the largely agrarian society.

No european nation could. Let's stop pretending any european country had any hope.

A european country conquering the US in the 1800s is like costa rica conquering the US today. It's laughable.

During the civil war, the US developed much of the military technology that was used in the first world war a few decades later.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted for this because it's true.

In addition, to your points, after the civil war, the U.S. had the largest number of guns in civilian hands of any country by far. The populace was so well armed that an invasion would have been ridiculous.

The U.S. also had the largest economy in the world at the time, a population about the same size as Germany, and had the Atlantic Ocean situated between itself and an invading army.

By the 1870s the U.S. had a large iron and steel industry and in less than 20 years later (by 1889) the U.S. was producing more steel than Great Britain.

Furthermore, the U.S. had the second largest navy in the world at the end of the Civil War--a navy that was very modern since it was largely composed of new ships built during the war. The U.S. Navy was also the most experienced by far with modern naval combat since they were the first country to use ironclads in battle. Granted the Navy rapidly declined in size after this time period, but given that the buildup happened in only 4 years in the first place, new ships could have been rapidly brought online if a war broke out.

The U.S. was also covered in railroads and telegraph lines by this time that they could use to coordinate movements and rapidly deploy troops--this was a huge advantage not available to an invading army.

The idea of a European power invading the U.S. after the civil war is definitely laughable.

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