[ajuc]

Just before WW2 the Haber Bosch process for fixing atmospheric nitrogen into fertilizers/explosives (same thing basically) was invented. Shortly after the war it was widespread, and since then there was no starvation in any developed or even semi-developed country.

Hitler started WW2 to annex Ukraine because of its fertile soil. Basically he wanted colonies without the inconvenience of dealing with the sea. Like soviets and Americans had.

Shortly after WW2 it ceased to make sense to invade for farming land.

It's not the only factor (nukes are another), but it is a very significant factor.

[Metacelsus]

Haber-Bosch was just before WWI, not WWII

[hinkley]

WWII started just before WWI. Some people call the Second World War part 2 of the first. At the time people were worried that the settlement with Germany was just an armistice. Those people turned out to be right.

I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that we should be very very careful treating the wars like they were unrelated incidents. They absolutely were not.

[jcranmer]

> WWII started just before WWI. Some people call the Second World War part 2 of the first.

Ehh......

WWI is complicated, but it essentially boils down to a great power war caused by a breakdown in relations that reached the point that diplomats were unwilling or incapable of keeping the war from breaking out. The result of WWI was that all of the traditional great powers (both those who won and lost) were spent [1]. The peace treaty sought to see the victors compensated by the losers, and part of the compensation was breaking them up in the vain hope that this would make war less likely, with some parts being carved up into independent countries, and others (especially colonies) being annexed to the victors.

WWII isn't so much a single war as it is four (sets of) wars of naked territorial aggression (Germany, Italy, Soviet, and Japanese) and two civil wars (China and France) that got merged into a single conflict by the fact that everyone ended up aligning into one side or the other. These wars don't start just before WWI; in many cases, the territorial jealousies that precipitate the war can't start until after WWI (e.g., how can Russia start seeking to invade its neighboring countries when they're still part of Russia?).

In between these two conflicts is a very large series of civil wars and revolutions and failed revolutions that are largely born from the instability of the international political sphere following the exhaustion of all great powers in WWI. These (relatively) smaller conflicts provide a more or less continuous segue between WWI and WWII, to the point that it may be better to just think of the period from 1914 to 1949 as a modern Thirty Years' War that sees the world shift from a balance-of-power regime involving the major European powers to a world that involves just two superpowers and their alliances.

[1] The US was the only major country not economically devastated by the war, but despite its economic size, its unwillingness to participate in European affairs means it's not really a great power as far as people at the time were heavily concerned--it doesn't enter the stage until WWI.

[roenxi]

Another interesting metric is royal families - pre-WWI, we saw monarchs in Italy, Germany, Russia, Austria and many others [0]. They mostly get ground down and collapse through the World Wars. And the British 'monarchy' that came out on the other side of WWII was crippled as their empire collapsed and they don't have much power any more.

A weak showing by the European aristocrats. Clueless bunch.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchies_in_Europe#Territori...

[ranger207]

WWII was definitely caused by WWI but that wasn't necessarily always going to be the case. If a more Marshal Plan-like armistice had been settled rather than the punitive treaty that actually happened then there's a decent chance that fascism wouldn't've found such a disaffected populace to breed in.

[scythe]

More descriptively, there was a cascade of revolutions and coups across Europe and Asia in the wake of WWI: Russia (1917), Germany (1918), Turkey (1919), Hungary (1918, 1919), Afghanistan (1919, independence), Egypt (1919, independence 1922), Morocco (1920, French conquest resumed), Mongolia (1921, independence), Italy (1922), Iran (1921, 1925), Portugal (1926), Poland (1926), Lithuania (1926), Arabia (1925, Saudi conquest), China (1928, KMT-CPC split), Iraq (1932, independence), Thailand (1932), Germany (1933, Nazis) Latvia (1934), Austria (1934), Estonia (1934, reversed 1938), Spain (1936), Romania (1938), probably some others I left out.

[TimTheTinker]

It's interesting to note how many of these revolutions and coups involved a fall to either communism or fascism. For the most part, these were not positive developments.

Perhaps the declining role monarchs across the world was a causal factor there -- countries of citizens trained to live with a highly authoritarian structure, who because of prior experience gravitated towards fascism/communism (also highly authoritarian)

[pasabagi]

All the statements in your comment, except one, are straightforwardly false. You should probably fact-check things you think.

[CRConrad]

Help a guy out here, wouldya — which one isn't?

[pasabagi]

Well, the Haber process does fix atmospheric nitrogen to make fertilizer. So that description was correct. They could have said it fixed atmospheric oxygen, or something.Or it was invented by Kim Jong Il.

[CRConrad]

That felt more like just a specification or attribute of what they were talking about, not an actual specific statement about it. A bit like if they'd said “The motor car was invented in 1645 by Gustave II Adolphe of Sweden”, and getting credit for “Yes, cars have motors”. Naah, that's just saying what you're talking about; everything that it actually says is wrong.

[pasabagi]

I guess one way to go about it would be to try and decompose the entire paragraph into testable fragments:

    1. Just before WW2 the Haber Bosch process ... was invented
    2. for fixing atmospheric nitrogen into fertilizers/explosives 
    3. (same thing basically). 
    4. Shortly after the war it was widespread,
    5. and since then there was no starvation in any developed or even semi-developed country.
    6. Hitler started WW2
    7. to annex Ukraine 
    8. because of its fertile soil.
    9. Basically he wanted colonies 
    10. without the inconvenience of dealing with the sea.
    11. Like soviets and Americans had.
    12. Shortly after WW2 
    13. it ceased to make sense to invade for farming land.
    14. It's not the only factor (nukes are another), but it is a very significant factor. 

You could probably decompose it further (so like, 'farming land' could be a fact, because you can farm on land). My feeling is it's quite hard to make a rigorous distinction between factual statements and statements in general - there's just an awful lot of factual content in language as commonly used, and some of it seems to have crept into this comment.

[KineticLensman]

> Hitler started WW2 to annex Ukraine because of its fertile soil

Ukraine wasn't a distinct state then. There were many many factors involved [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II

[devnullbrain]

>Ukraine wasn't a distinct state then.

That has no relevance.

[FpUser]

Well it does. USSR was much bigger than standalone Ukraine, hence different consequences.

[selimthegrim]

After WWII Ukraine and Belarus were given separate UN seats from USSR. So in 1991 they just kept those seats.

[FpUser]

For fuck's sake. The point was that at the time Ukraine was part of USSR and by attacking Ukraine Hitler has attacked USSR with all the consequences. It seems that you are trying to do something different here but I'll leave you to it.

[ajuc]

I didn't think I'd it necessary to mention that Ukraine was a part of USSR and Poland at the time. It's common knowledge. What isn't common knowledge is that Hitler had plans for Ukraine in particular (inspired by Hlodomor).

[ponector]

What? Hitler started a war with UK, France and other countries to annex Ukraine a few years later?