Thin threads, crazy possibilities!
When History Professor, Mile Stroud was on the Free Zone, we discussed the thin threads of history, and the profound and sweeping the outcomes of seemingly small events.
The two events we discussed were Lee’s key decision at Gettysburg and the German’s siege of Bastogne. In a later discussion with friends on FB, I expounded on the Gettysburg pivot. For those who have not seen the two episodes with Mike, and you should, I’ll leave links in the text.
Quick Ad
Help keep the P4B and Free Zone free.
Here and now, I’ll provide a more detailed consideration of these events.
My point about Bastogne centered on how, thanks to the military “genius” of Adolf Hitler, it was decided, late in the planning for what we know as “The Battle of the Bulge”, to invest Bastogne rather than bypass it. Hitler noticed the cross roads at the town and decided this geographical feature made it critical to capture, thus dooming the blitzkrieg concept behind the whole affair.
In reality, Hitler might have read something about the importance of holding a crossroad, or had a detail of key part of a larger battle provided in a briefing…and it stuck.
Yes, if you wish to hold a specific area, capturing a crossroads town is a good idea. But if the German tank division had blown past the town, the bulk of the allied armies would have had to spread out east and west to pursue the dash to Antwerp. Since the idea was to push west as quickly as possible, the idea of holding territory should have been solidly secondary, and with the Allies in the area spread thin by a hard spear thrust, and with German infantry following the thrust, rolling up Bastogne might have been a relatively easy task.
If Hitler didn’t stomp all over the planning of an otherwise brilliant maneuver, and the Germans just REACED Antwerp in strength, even if they didn’t reconquer the port, what might have been the results? Keep in mind, the Germans got to within 20 miles of their objective. Had they not wasted precious time, ammunition and fuel at Bastogne, they might have reached Antwerp before the weather cleared.
My point to Mike was that the war would have been extended for at least a year, maybe more. Even with an organized withdrawal, after damaging the port facilities, there is a chance serious damage might have been inflicted on the British units to the north. They would have lacked supply as well as the initiative. As the allies controlled the seas by that time, a more organized “Dunkirk” might have been considered. But as a minimum the allies would have been substantially, if temporarily weakened. For the Wehrmacht to have fallen back through towns like Bastogne, and possibly held one or two, the battle just to retake Belgium would have been no cake walk for the Allies. With Patton’s Third Army and renewed air operations, closing the salient was hard enough.
We’d have reached the summer of ’45 with two major strategic problems. 1. The allies would have likely not have been charging to Berlin yet. And 2. The Soviets would have been.
In reality, this would not have been too big a deal for FDR. He was a sick man. He had a weird fascination with Stalin. But Truman was properly broken in by his military advisors and properly saw Stalin and a necessary evil at best. Churchill would have been beside himself at the very idea of The Soviets thrashing around Germany unchecked.
And by the summer of 1945, we had the bomb. Two of them, in fact.
Considering Truman’s position, I would contend that there is no way he’d have dropped both on Japan. He wanted to end the Pacific war, to be certain. But he would have been advised, correctly, that we needed to not only crush German resistance, we had to give Stalin a front row seat to throttle back his ambitions! We’d have nuked Germany.
The guys making the “Gadgets” as the A bombs were called, would have been working round the clock to make as many more bombs as they could find materials for. How much longer would that have taken? I don’t know. But the world we live in today would look so much different!
We just might have taken Patton up on his idea of pushing the Russians back to at least their prewar position in Poland - or threatened to do so. I feel confident, after watching the mushroom cloud grow over Europe and not having one of his own, Stalin would have been okay with just ALL of Eastern Europe. But the idea of satellite states would have been shitcanned. In its place would have been the complete annexation of all remaining conquered territory by the Soviets. And truth be told, there was nothing we could have done about that.
In Episode 37, Bob Zeidman talked about how easy it was to get the Germans to cooperate after WWII. He said we had fought the war in such a way that the locals feared us more than they ever feared the Nazis. The Japanese had an even more exaggerated fear of the Allies, especially Americans. They watched us level two cities with one bomb each.
What would it have done to the psyche of a European, as crazy as Hitler was, to watch the Allied powers do the same thing to a major city in Germany? It would have taken months before a German could look a Yank in the eye! Germans would have been tripping over each other to turn in every Nazi not already in the run from Allied authorities. Brits and French would have been looking over our shoulders, eyes as big as saucers. We could have gotten even more out of Breton Wood than we actually did.
The possibilities expand exponentially with every passing year. UNTIL…Russia gets their bomb. Now loyalties would be tested.
I leave it to you to play with all those possibilities. Tell me the possibilities you see after a nuked Germany or after the next “What if…?”
Bobby Lee
But what if we now skewed the timeline so that the World Wars would have never taken place? Or taken place earlier? Or if they had been one long war? Let’s go further back in time.
Throughout the Civil War, Lee had a reputation for brilliant maneuver. He conducted himself in such a way as to make his actions at Gettysburg unimaginable. He split his forces in the face of a numerically superior enemy at Charlottesville. And won. He could have done that at Gettysburg.
He quietly slipped away from Yorktown while McClellan dithered. This was a huge win for the Confederacy. He had every opportunity to do that before the night of 2 June 1863.
I contend that Lee was starting to believe his own press releases. As he was rolling up an impressive string of victories (or at least having the Union is complete disarray, he was quoted as saying, “I never leave the field to the advantage of the enemy,” or words to that effect.
The one thing we know about the Union Army before Grant took over, was their aversion to pursuit, after engagements, won or lost.
Now, put all that together. Lee, AP Hill, Longstreet and others are looking across at the union positions. Several were advising Lee to quietly disengage and beat feet to Washington DC, which was lightly defended. It would have been a very sound maneuver. Cut loose some of the artillery and a large Cavalry element. Then push supplies and the bulk of the army off. When the sun comes up on the third a thoroughly bloodied Union army would wake to find that if there is any fighting at all it will be a Confederate rear guard action.
If he were to remain true to form, Meade (Union) would have been relieved to see the field abandoned and would likely not react until told Lee was moving on DC. By that time, it would have been too late.
Instead Lee spurned this great advice. THIS was the time he actually chose NOT to leave the field to the enemy when he had so little chance of dislodging that enemy. Both sides were taking terrible losses throughout the campaign in exchange for a few yards of ground here and there. Some spots changed hands repeatedly.
“No. Whip ‘em here. Whip ‘em here.”
Had he taken his generals’ advice, and even if the call for Grant to come east had actually gone out, the war would have likely been over by the time Grant arrived. DC would have been thrown into complete disarray. The many weak sister in government at the time, there were lots of them, would have carried the day. Lincoln, if he remained in the city, would surely have been rolled up and carried off. Shy of a miracle that can’t be quantified here, the Union would have surrendered.
Before Meade arrived on the scene, the Rebel Army would have been in firm control of the city. There would have been no “March to the Sea.” Atlanta wouldn’t have burned. But much of DC probably would have, until Lee established his HQ. There would be no REAL emancipation. Slavery, already dying its own ECONOMIC death, would have been fanatically clung to by a South that had just fought so fiercely for it. Southerners would have smashed themselves against the rocks of debt and inefficiency before they finally let go of slavery.
We would have seen more violence in the west over which territories would join North or South. We were already seeing just that among factions of politicians and businessmen stirring up friction in support of their own agendas. When THAT hypothetical dust settled, which territories would have declared a pox on all your houses. Would California have stayed, or returned to it’s previous status as a republic? Would we have USA and a CSA today, or would we be four or five different countries between Mexico and Canada?
When Rudolf Diesel visited the States in 1904, would the industrial revolution be in the high gear he found? Or would it be stunted by the mess of “countries” he found here? Would have he seen a reason to even visit?
What if an independent South came into WWI on the side of the Kaiser? Or just remained neutral? Would France have been defeated by 1918? No Weimar Republic? No humiliation of Germany? No Hitler?
Much of those alternate realities all come back to, “No. Whip ‘em here.”
Quick hits!
The Left is really losing it. With every success DJT or his administration pull off, the Left (predictably) gets louder, more irrational and more venomous. We have Fang Fang’s witless intelligence asset, Eric Swalwell spewing sewage online every day. Crybaby Adam Kinzinger is a talking points parrot almost as often. Newsom looks to be on the verge of blowing an aneurysm.
And every word they mutter is demonstrably pure bullshit! They CANNOT rely on facts or truth. They have absolutely no solutions to anything to offer. All they can do is cry and throw spitballs, that only stupidest among us continue to believe. I’ll have more on this soon.
NPR sent begging.
My wife pointed out a new ad for National Pubic Radio featuring Sharon Rockefeller. The Rockefeller Foundation is the biggest donor to NPR She is pleading for donations. She is wearing a rock on her bony finger the size of my thumbnail. Public broadcasting executives have gotten rich off of government largess and rubes who will pay $25 per month for two years to get a coffee mug or some cheese dick CDs.
NPR can hold a meeting tomorrow, change their charter and start real advertising. They’d make a killing. They already have a following. But they’d have to run the business like a business, not a Dem echo chamber.
And the concept of state-supported media is absolutely unacceptable in the USA. Let them beg or compete.
Almost self-evident.
By all indications, the Democrat Party in the United States WANTS the pointless killing in Ukraine to continue unabated. The battle has been reduced to trench warfare. Literally. Trenches reminiscent of WWI have been constructed, mostly in the Ukraine side. But they can barely keep the positions manned.
Let me repeat: There is no scenario in which Ukraine defeats Russia. The Russian way of war, going back 400 years is to throw fresh meat into the grinder until you win, or you run out of meat. The Russian population is four times that of Ukraine.
Bill Riggio, senior fellow of Defense of Democracies and editor of the Long War Journal says that even considering the above realities, Russia has not lost as many soldiers as we hear from our media. Its more like half or even a quarter. And he’s somewhat of a Ukraine sympathizer. But even at the inflated numbers, Ukraine has two options. Ink a peace deal (yes, they’d lose the Donbas), or get plowed under much later on, after the casualties really do go into the millions.
This is not a morality play here. The little Russian jerk off, unable to believe his good luck at Biden’s dithering, attacked another nation. That nation fought back bravely. But because Biden needed a shiny object war, we have reached the point where we are now, with no hope of a better outcome.
OUR option - NATO’s option - is to fight the war for them or let them cut their losses and leave the table. No good person WANTS that. But often what we want has nothing to do with reality.
Finally, Cracker Barrel ceases to exist.
Cracker Barrel CEO, Julie Fells Masino, who thinks it’s still trendy to bash your company and your stockholders against the rocks of now dead wokeism, has destroyed the very essence of the company.
Just the name Cracker Barrel is the antithesis of bland, austere and GAY! Although a lot of my gay friends seemed to enjoy the place more than I did. The grandad’s barn look is what brought people back again and again. You can get pretty good bacon and eggs pretty much everywhere you go. But you can’t say the same for bacon and eggs and a little scarecrow with a shirt that says, “Howdy!”
Crackle barrel was a success story because it was the very definition of quaint. It has been a comforting constant in a sea of change for change’s sake. Little Johnny likes it as much as Granny does…and for the same reasons.
Lefty news says conservative commentators are being critical. Gee, I wonder why? After all, why would we not sneer at a CEO who says they are “bringing the front porch to PRIDE.” And in the course of the same conversation Masino says it’s not a Gay thing.
We are told this dolt is doing the queer makeover because people are tired to the clutter and want fresh and bright. But the “clutter” was the brand! And, I’m sorry, Julie, but you’re not going to find enough cis gender fluid furry thirty-somethings to carry your stores.
Thank a Democrat.
P4B and Free Zone Links
Send all inquiries to poriverproductions@gmail.com
“65”, the concept explained.
The Hero Company
Find us!!!
The P4B on Rumble!
Listen on Amazon!
*Some links represent a financial relationship with the P4B and benefit the site at no extra cost to you.
Send all inquiries to poriverproductions@gmail.com
Share this post