Aside: Unlike premodern history with no AV material, 20th century history creates incongruous juxtapositions of textual and audiovisual memories. The people in this book are a lot smarter and more modern than their campy avatars in 16-18fps b&w footage and tinny radio broadcasts.
-
Show this thread
-
And damn, they had nukes and did more moving and shaking than Davos set, but they used paper communications, wore silly hats, and ride around in primitive vehicles barely a generation removed from horse-drawn carriages. And flew in antique death trap propeller airplanes

1 reply 0 retweets 26 likesShow this thread -
Yet in text they come across as people you might deal with comfortably as contemporaries today. Basically modern despite funny accents and no WiFi. Which societal memory is more accurate? Textual or AV?
3 replies 0 retweets 21 likesShow this thread -
Marshall had a BATNA in negotiations with Molotov: unilateral disengagement from the fragile Potsdam talks which proved impossible to implement. The impasse was Soviets wanted capped and weakened Germany being milked for reparations and the US wanted Germany self-sufficient first
1 reply 1 retweet 15 likesShow this thread -
Reparations-first logic would have made Germany a pass-through entity for American aid as reparations to allies, which would have repeated WW1 mistakes. But Potsdam called for a unified economic plan. So breakdown into East and West was inevitable.
1 reply 1 retweet 14 likesShow this thread -
But pass-through grift aside, intentions were different. The West wanted an economically strong unified Germany though France had doubts. The Soviets wanted a weak unified Germany. Subsistence level with all surpluses going towards reparations.
1 reply 2 retweets 16 likesShow this thread -
There’s a lesson here on reparations in general. The economic math doesn’t work even if the moral math does. The Soviets wanted essentially a kind of indefinite reparations-debt slavery Germany would never have exited. Moral debts of the past cannot be repaid with future bondage.
2 replies 6 retweets 44 likesShow this thread -
Unclear what the answer to the blood money question is, but it isn’t reparations. That’s just vendetta math with a moral UX overlaid. It can never end.
1 reply 1 retweet 21 likesShow this thread -
This setup to the partition of Germany in 1946 is giving me 4d chess headache. Trying to balance reparations, trade deficits, imports, rebuilding, economic integration but with political weakness, with US aid balancing the equation. That’s even before getting to doctrinal diffs.
2 replies 0 retweets 16 likesShow this thread -
This problem goes back to Napoleonic wars. Keeping Germany economically strong enough to pay reparations but politically weak enough to not be a threat and under the control of competing adversaries. The US was a new boundary condition of aid that kinda eventually solved it.
3 replies 2 retweets 24 likesShow this thread
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.
