[bell-cot]

> Unfortunately the UK has not been...

20 years, or 112 years?

Consider just how far the UK's place in the world fell between 1911 (George V ascended to the throne of the global superpower; his Royal Navy was launching 2 to 4 new capital ships per year) and 1948 (3 years after "winning" WWII - and basics such as food, clothing, and gasoline were still strictly rationed).

[r_thambapillai]

Very true, although I suppose a significant fraction of the decline at that time might be a result of the end of the Empire, which given that there are simply no such successful Empires anywhere in the world anymore was almost certainly inevitable.

By comparison, the performance of the UK in the last 20 years vs the US or the Nordics is a singular tragedy.

[roenxi]

> there are simply no such successful Empires anywhere in the world anymore

There is the US not-an-Empire [0] though, that'll probably count when the history books reflect on the present era. WWI/II can very easily be interpreted as a transition of power away from incompetent British leadership (indeed, European monarchies - the change pre- post- WWI is striking) towards more capable US-based leadership.

It isn't clear UK public ever really grappled how insufficient their leadership theory is. Their acceptance of poor performers over the last 20+ years has been striking although it is mirrored by low standards in the US.

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

[insane_dreamer]

I think it was more about economics than competency.

By the end of WW2 the UK was bankrupt and completely ruined economically, while the US had become the industrial powerhouse of the world thanks to abundant resources, manpower, and the fact that the war largely took place far from its borders (a few tiny islands notwithstanding). By the end of WW2 the US owned nearly all the gold that Europe previously owned which led to the US Dollar the worldwide reserve currency.

[roenxi]

If the UK wants to pretend that WW2 (or, indeed, WW1) happened like a shock storm, unforseen and unforseeable, with no involvement from them they are welcome to do that. The result of that attitude was that the UK parliament was only allowed to govern a small and increasingly irrelevant island with lousy weather and steadily worsening economic prospects instead of a global empire.

There is a lesson for people governing global empires here - don't allow major wars to blow up on your borders. Or, ideally, anywhere. Maybe spend some time promoting peace and prosperity. Train the diplomats in diplomacy.

You'll notice that the US solution at the end of WWII was completely different to the European settlement at the end of WWI. And the US approach to warring was a lot more staid than the UK's. These are basic matters of competence.

[insane_dreamer]

Some fair points, but remember that the US had the benefit of knowing that post-WW1 settlement was a failure. Of course, Wilson did object to the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, so it's fair to say the US had a better perspective from the start -- though one can argue that the US' own failure to ratify the League of Nations was a contributing factor to WW2.

Another key factor is that the US had no empire to hold together, and, to its credit, wisely did not seek to expand its territory after WW2 in order to create one (which it could have easily done, and which the UK had done many times before).

[bluGill]

The us wants at the end of wwi were similar to what we got with wwii.

[timthorn]

British weather is great. Enough rain to keep the land green and pleasant, temperatures that don't get too hot nor too cold - the very definition of temperate.

[CapeTheory]

I have a solid sheet of grey clouds over my head for what feels like 300 days of the year - would happily take some of that variability!

[switch007]

We aren't without our annoying and extreme weather though. Eg in the north of England last week it was -10c for a few nights and a week of 0/1c daytime temperatures with a biting wind chill. Before that was heavy snow and ice.

Heat waves up to 35-38c aren't unheard of. Our houses aren't built for this so a heatwave is quite uncomfortable as houses stay 20-25c overnight

Plenty of flooding in various parts

This autumn and winter has seen a lot of storms

The south fares much better of course and without as much flooding

[throwaway48476]

Indeed. Choose peace if possible instead of rushing into war. Nothing that happened in the Balkans was important to the UK.

[WillPostForFood]

Nothing important Sudetenland, nothing important in Austria, nothing important in Poland. They tried your strategy in the 30s and it was not a success.

[nine_k]

Possibly Balkans themselves were not important. The trade routes in Mediterranean likely were.

Also, there was a complex web of international treaties and alliances that eventually pulled the UK into the war.

[switch007]

How do you get the land for your empire to begin with, with peace and diplomacy? I guess war is a hard habit to break

[dukeyukey]

> Their acceptance of poor performers over the last 20+ years has been striking

How many PMs has the UK been though in that time? _Way_ more than the average Western country. We don't accept poor oerformers more than anywhere else, we kick them out of office - but the talent pipeline is abysmal so the next one is usually awful too.

[nobodywillobsrv]

It's interesting that incompetence ... Fabians started in 1884 and a lot of insanely destructive ideas seem to defend from those circles. We don't have the great leap forward it's slower but something as bad on a longer timescale

[mike_hearn]

Yep. UK had post-war rationing longer than Germany did! Fabians were largely to blame for this state of affairs. UK caught back up, just about, in the 1980s, but the Conservatives went to seed at the start of the 90s and never really got fixed. It's the oldest political party in the world so it took a long time for people to give up on them but that's now finally happening.

Unfortunately the smear tactics against Farage over the years have been quite successful especially against the older generation that relies more heavily on TV for news. UK might face another election where the right splits their vote and Labour walk in again. Many decades of decline would be compounded at that point, putting the UK into more of a second world position.

[bell-cot]

I'd say ruin - in great part from the costs of two World Wars - came before the end of the Empire. Wikipedia notes of WWII - "Britain was left essentially bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a US$3.75 billion loan from the United States". Vs. the Partition and dissolution of the British Raj were in 1947.

[pfdietz]

Most of the world's gold was in the US by the end of the war.

The flow of gold into the US starting in 1933 is thought to be why the Great Depression was moderating so much there and then: the money supply was inflating.

[graemep]

Not greatly different from Germany or Nordic countries, or EU average, and better than France or Japan.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

Its a Europe wide problem.

[blitzar]

Switching to % change - EU beats US.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

[graemep]

That is a better graph, but the conclusion I would draw is much the same.

The EU gets a boost from the inclusion of Eastern European economies that have been fast growing from a lower base.

If you compare the US and the UK to the four biggest EU economies, the US is doing best by far, and the UK is doing better than three and worse than one:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

[marcinzm]

If that's adjusted for cost of living and inflation then isn't that hiding the actual economic changes? If GDP falls then cost of living would likely go down and vice versa.

[nine_k]

Yes, "winning" as in not being completely destroyed, occupied, and maybe even enslaved. Check out what Poland looked like in 1940 when it lost, or what Germany looked like in 1945, or, well, 1949.

USSR was also terribly battered by WWII, and its leadership was not highly competent either; I'd say both parameters were much worse than UK's. But it managed to remain a large empire with a high economic potential, and UK could not.

[Xmd5a]

>USSR was also terribly battered by WWII, and its leadership was not highly competent either

The USSR moved all its industry eastward, as the German army advanced, waiting for the very last moment to do so. Quite an incredible feat that allowed them to beat Germany at industrial efficiency and secure victory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evacuation_in_the_Soviet_Union

Here's an analysis of the mechanisms underpinning this kind of achievement according to a Russian mathematician:

>One of the fathers of synergetics, G. Haken, in his article [9], recalls the following story from the Ancient Testament: “It was the custom in a certain community for the guests to bring their own wine to weddings, and all the wines were mixed before drinking. Then one guest thought that if all the other guests would bring wine, he would not notice when drinking if he brought water instead. Then the other guests did the same, and as the result they all drank water.”

>In this example, two situations are possible. In the first, everyone contributes his share, giving his equal part, and everyone will equally profit. In the second, each strives for the most advantageous conditions for himself. And this can lead to the kind of result mentioned in the story.

>Two different arithmetics correspond to these two situations. One arithmetic is the usual one, the one accepted in society, ensuring “equal rights,” and based on the principle “the same for everyone,” for instance in the social utopia described by Owen. In a more paradoxal form, this principle is expressed in M. Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita by Sharikov: “Grab everything and divide it up.”

>The aspiration to this arithmetic is quite natural for mankind, but if society is numerous and non-homogeneous, then it can hardly be ruled according to this principle. The ideology of complete equality and equal rights, which unites people and inspires to perform heroic deeds, can effectively work only in extremal situations and for short periods of time. During these periods such an organization of society can be very effective. An example is our own country, which, after the destructions and huge losses of World War II, rapidly became stronger than before the war.

>One of the authors personally witnessed such an atmosphere of psychological unity when he was working on the construction of the sarcophagus after the catastrophe of the Chernobyl nuclear facility. The forces of the scientists involved were so strongly polarized 2 that the output of each of them was increased tenfold as compared to that in normal times. During that period it was not unusual for us to call each other in the middle of the night.

>Nevertheless such heroism, self-denial, and altruism, when each wants to give (and not to take) as much as possible, is an extremal situation, a system that can function only for short intervals of time. Here the psychological aspect is crucial, everyone is possessed by the same idea — to save whatever may be saved at any cost. But the psychology of the masses, which was studied by the outstanding Russian emigr´e sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, is presently studied only outside of Russia.

Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0806.4164

Now the question is: to which extent and in which ways does this apply to the subject we're discussing.

[inglor_cz]

The USSR also gained de facto control over relatively developed places like the Baltics, Czechoslovakia and East Germany, and exploited them.

Czechoslovak industry in the early 1950s was producing a shitton of products sold under their real price to the Soviets, or bargained for cheap agricultural products.

[samastur]

This is a myth they tell themselves. USSR won by incredible amounts of American supplied material.

[__alexs]

A truck without a driver has no value in a war. Lend lease was important but the ambition and drive to defeat Germany required huge sacrifices on all sides that are impossible without shared cultural ideals.

[bell-cot]

Those "shared cultural ideals" amounted to very little beyond "conquer the Nazis, before they conquer us" - as late-war and post-war relations between the USSR and the Western Allies showed. Or, as pre-'39 Western policies showed. The '30's saw the Nazis as an evil...but a useful and "not too" evil, that would (mostly, in effect) protect the West from the greater evil of Soviet Communism.

[cpursley]

You’ve watched too many Hollywood movies. Yes, Lend-Lease was very helpful - but only about 5% of Soviet GDP. For example, the Soviets produced more tanks than all other allies combined, and that was while under massive active attack and invasion - even moved entire factories.

The real myth is that the Soviets just threw meat waves and would have lost without Uncle Sam. Most of that was anti communist propaganda and any serious (ie non-narrative driven) historian knows the truth about the industrial and military achievements of the Soviets in that war.

[Retric]

Lend lease included food and industrial equipment which was critical for Russia through the war not just tanks, aircraft, and ships. The value was more in covering what their economy struggled with than simply total output.

“In all, $31.4 billion went to the United Kingdom, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France, $1.6 billion to China, and the remaining $2.6 billion to other Allies.” ~12x that when counting for inflation.

As pointed out by a sibling poster Russia produced more of them than the US but not more than US + England. But the context was tanks are relatively difficult to ship, so America focused on other areas.

[inglor_cz]

"the Soviets produced more tanks than all other allies combined"

For such feats, factory equipment mattered. So did trucks. Studebakers were relatively cheap and probably wouldn't move the needle on your GDP-based meter, but they were very important to Soviet logistics.

[Xmd5a]

I think he's right though, the 5% figure isn't accurate. Perplexity answer below:

https://anonpaste.pw/v/6f99bf00-ab49-48fc-978a-27f656a37c02#...

Nonetheless, the production hell people working at those factories went through shouldn't be downplayed.

Documentary (2024): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjGYMFVMeYo

[rUsHeYaFuBu]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_Wor...

Tanks & SPGs

British Empire - 47862

USA and territories - 108410

USSR - 119769

Other vehicles

British Empire - 1475521

USA and territories - 2382311

USSR - 265000

Bombers

British Empire - 38158

USA and territories - 96872

USSR - 21116

Total large ships

British Empire - 558

USA and territories - 2020

USSR - 63

[tomcam]

Sugar was rationed in England until 1953, and meat until 1954. Pretty rugged times.

[edm0nd]

Exactly this. Great Britain colonized huge parts of the globe and had an empire. They were kings of trade and the world. Now they are just a surveillance nanny state and hollow shell of their former self.

[vixen99]

I regularly see opinion pieces in the British Press advising young Brits to get out. In 2022 one writer wrote 'Britain is fed up, bitter, and practically broke – and it’s all going to get worse' and indeed it still is and getting worse. One basic problem: an unsustainable welfare and health system and overwrought bureaucracy. Today I learn that one major bank is considering leaving the UK in view of excessive 'red tape'.

[_hao]

The UK has no shortage of good banks. Santander can fuck off for being worse than their competition.

[tonyedgecombe]

Yes, it's difficult to overstate quite how bad their customer service is. They actually lost a big cheque I deposited.

[Peanuts99]

> Today I learn that one major bank is considering leaving the UK in view of excessive 'red tape

Or failure to compete with startup banks...

[nobodywillobsrv]

The welfare state is horrid. Democracy is largely dead. The judiciary and bank of England are unaccountable and unassailable. The Fabians have won.

[adityamwagh]

UK also had a lot of colonies that contributed to their growth.

[dukeyukey]

It's thought that most European colonies actually stymied growth in their home countries.

[jampekka]

Interestingly people, especially poor people, were better nourished during the WW 2 rationing than before the war. Also e.g. universal healthcare was establised post-war.

Is number of war ships, or billionaires, a good measure for a country?

https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/food-thought-rationing-...

[graemep]

I have not drilled down into the data, but I think it highly likely poor people did not benefit.

I have read that the Empire was a fiscal net negative. That was offset by it being a free market area with policies that favoured the UK, the benefits from that went primarily to a small minority.

[throwaway48476]

They spent the wealth of empire fighting a war and achieved what exactly? They would have been better off losing. Crazy when you think about it.

[mike_hearn]

Just so everyone is clear, the Nazi plan for what to do with an occupied Britain was to enslave large parts of population, to completely erase Britain as a country, and they also considered mass deportations of the native population. "Better off losing" is not really supportable under any reading of the historical evidence.

[hackandthink]

Hitler admired the British Empire.

https://www.quora.com/What-was-Hitlers-opinion-of-the-Britis...

[WillPostForFood]

They would have been better off losing. Crazy when you think about it.

Better if they had let the Nazis won and ruled the UK? WTF?

[throwaway48476]

That was never going to happen. And the Nazis didn't exist in 1914.

[twixfel]

Nah the Germans were militaristic arseholes in 1914 too.