[wat10000]

Not putting thousands workers into camps for no good reason will help you build a giant navy and win a war. It’s small compared to the whole country but it does help.

But the main lesson I'd want to take is to shut down strong aggressors early, then you don’t need to run a massive war production program in the first place.

Judging by Ukraine, we seem to have learned this lesson but not very well.

[rayiner]

Preemptively getting involved in wars that don’t concern us isn’t a takeaway from world war ii. The circumstances that caused that were the result of 300 years of the Westphalian system, and are quite unique.

[wat10000]

It might not be your takeaway but it sure is mine. All that stuff with Austria and Czechoslovakia didn’t concern us, until it did. Putting a stop to those shenanigans would have been a million times easier if done early.

[roenxi]

You'd be involved in a million times more war. There are too many conflicts for that sort of thinking to work.

The lessons from WW1/2 were (1) don't be involved in the first few years of a World War, they are empire wreckers and (2) after a war, winners should invest in the economic success of the losers and (3) more Bismarck. Being even more aggressive would hardly have helped, the Europeans were all aggressive. Turns out aggression as a strategy led to ... more and bigger wars. Who'd a thunk it.

[wat10000]

I was careful to say “strong aggressors.” You don’t need to go after every tinpot dictator who decides to pull something stupid. But something like Russia conquering bits of their neighbors should have been stopped early.

Europeans didn’t get aggressive with Germany until they invaded France, at which point it was too late to bring things to a conclusion without years of fighting and tens of millions killed. A stronger response to anything up to and including the invasion of Poland could have averted the catastrophe.

[roenxi]

> But something like Russia conquering bits of their neighbors should have been stopped early.

So would it be fair to say that your WWII lesson is leading you to suggest escalating a war with a major nuclear power as the proper path forward? Because that should be setting off alarm bells that you learned the wrong lesson.

You can see in the world's reaction to the 2003 Iraq invasion; the correct response is no escalation and let the government of the defending country get pancaked. The damage is kept to a reasonable minimum and then some attempt can be made to put civilisation back together again. A China or a Russia going in to escalate the conflict or trying to stop the aggressors would have been a disaster for everyone. We could have had something as bad or worse than the Ukraine war 20 years earlier.

[wat10000]

If we had put the kibosh on Russia’s adventures in 2014 then we wouldn’t need to fret about escalating to nukes today.

The world had no choice in 2003, the US couldn’t have been stopped regardless. Fortunately the US didn’t aim for conquest.