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Off-and-on trying out an account over at @tal@oleo.cafe due to scraping bots bogging down lemmy.today to the point of near-unusability.

  • “Absolutely not. My advice to that unnamed low-level French politician would be to remind them that it’s only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a press briefing Monday, likely referencing an American-French allyship during World War II that snuffed out Nazi Germany. “They should be grateful.”

    Ehhh....maybe yes, maybe no. It's not clear to me that the Allies lose, even if it's just the UK and USSR as the major powers.

    The US provided aid prior to, but didn't enter the war directly until after Pearl Harbor (and in Nazi Germany's case, the direct factor was the German declaration of war on the US a few days later). At that point:

    • Nazi Germany's attempt to reach the preconditions for Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of the UK, had already failed, as it had lost the Battle of Britain, the air war over the UK. Forcing the UK into a surrender would then require winning the Battle of the Atlantic, successfully blockading the UK.

    • Nazi Germany's attempt to knock out the USSR at one go, Operation Barbarossa, had also failed immediately before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Time was not on Hitler's side, as his advantage was earlier preparation. The Soviet Union had been hurt, yes, but wasn't out of the fight. An additional problem for Nazi Germany was that Operation Barbarossa had caused the Soviet Union to stop permitting supplies to Germany through; prior to that, the Soviet Union had been a route to circumvent the Blockade of Germany.

    Had the Allies won, it would have been a considerably-more-unpleasant-for-them fight than was the case in our own timeline, but it's possible that the Axis had already bit off more than it could chew by mid-1941.

    I'd think that a larger issue might be whether the Soviet Union winds up taking control of Western Europe.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Union_(alliance)

    The Western Union (WU), also referred to as the Brussels Treaty Organisation (BTO),[1] was the European military alliance established between France, the United Kingdom (UK) and the three Benelux countries in September 1948 in order to implement the Treaty of Brussels signed in March the same year.[Note 1] Under this treaty the signatories, referred to as the five powers, agreed to collaborate in the defence field as well as in the political, economic and cultural fields.

    When the division of Europe into two opposing camps became unavoidable, the threat of the Soviet Union became much more important than the threat of German rearmament.[8] Western Europe, therefore, sought a new mutual defence pact involving the United States, a powerful military force for such an alliance. The United States, concerned with containing the influence of the Soviet Union, was responsive.[9] Secret meetings began by the end of March 1949 between American, Canadian and British officials to initiate the negotiations that led to the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949 in Washington, D.C.[10]

    The need to back up the commitments of the North Atlantic Treaty with appropriate political and military structures led to the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). On 20 December 1950 the Consultative Council of the Brussels Treaty Powers decided to merge the military organisation of the Western Union into NATO.

  • That didn’t sound like the best idea ever for someone using jets so often.

    I am sure that he doesn't fly on commercial public transport.

  • To be fair, he's always smiling and his predecessor had to be the world's least photogenic Pope, so it's probably something that he's focused on doing himself.

  • Vinegar is nasty

    I like salt and vinegar potato chips.