If you can read this in English thank a veteran. Really?

Great Debates
41

There are two distinct elements here.

Could a country have conquered the United States?

and

If a country conquered the United States, could it have changed the language?

Sub to that question is would any country want to change the national language?
As for the first question, there are all sorts of “what if” threads that come and go, and scenarios in which America gets its ass whumped aren’t that hard to come by. Forget hiney-whomping for a moment, just being roundly defeated in WWII or due to electoral differences (hey, who’s the asshole with the time machine and the animosity for butterflies?!) staying out of it could (note: could) have changed the outcome of the war.

I can’t imagine that there aren’t many very plausible, very well-researched works of fiction out there.

Now, take a weakened post-war US–one with no Manhattan project–and give the atom bomb to either Germany or the Soviet Union. Both seemed to have little reservations to killing a lot of people who got in their way. Give them ten years to rebuild (whichever country you want to imagine for the moment), a nuclear arsenal, and need/desire for whatever resources we have at the moment.

Why is it such a stretch that if not for a handful of lucky breaks and a lot of sweat the post-war period could have been much different. Perhaps I should post to the “things I was taught that were wrong” thread, but I thought victory in WWII was far from certain.

So is it that implausible that Russia/Germany could have emerged as the sole, dominant, and ambitious superpower after WWII? No.

Is it implausible that the US could have been severely weakened (or never militarized in the build-up to WWII) in the post-war period? no.

Is it implausible that a dispute, real or otherwise, could have sparked an aggressive action against us? No.

Is it implausible that after New York, Washington, Philly, and even Des Moins are irradiated (even with small nuclear bombs) the remaining power structure wouldn’t capitulate and surrender? Nyet.

Now what?

I went with the Soviet example because they had a pattern of pushing their language on “host” countries. Why? Stalin was like that. Or maybe there’s some other reason. But while they never completely eradicated all native languages, there are some that are lost, and there are tons of people who do not speak (or are relatively just learning to speak) their national language. Again, I doubt they’d have been able to jam the metric system down our throats, but removing the military and playing “what if” games only requires a modicum of imagination to get to that result.

42

It’s staggering just to land and supply an army across those distances with their logistical requirements unopposed. Think about how hard the Berlin airlift was for exmaple, and there weren’t Soviet fighters trying to shoot down our planes or ambush us at the airports.

The USSR and China have never had the sort of sealift capability that you’d need. Even if we said “hey, ok, take a free shot at us - we’ll let you land as many troops as you can in California for a day without even trying to stop you”, how much of a foothold do you think they could establish? How many troops could they land, with how much supply, and how long would it take for the second wave of supplies to arrive? Neither have ever been naval powers, they don’t have large enough merchant marines or naval lift capacity.

Even if we had no standing armies or navy or airforce and just used a swiss-style defense force, they’d have no chance. Or are we not even allowing that? Are we talking about a hypothetical example where we have no national guard, no militia units, hell, not even just people with small arms? Because we’re getting into pretty silly territory here.

The actual existance of the US hasn’t been threatened since - and I’ll be generous - 1840 or so. Soldiers who have signed up for the job since then have not been doing so in order to protect the sovereignty of the US homeland. At least not typically - you can make a case for the people in SAC/missile silos/etc doing it. That doesn’t mean that veterans haven’t done anything worthwhile or that you shouldn’t be thankful towards them, but they certainly aren’t protecting us from a valid threat of an invasion of our homeland, or UFOs with superintelligent polar bears either.

43

When men and women sign up for the armed forces they most certainly do so to protect the sovereignty of our nation and it’s stated explicitly in the oath that they take. They protect us from any threat, impending or hypothetical.

44

That was an effort to support a large, civilian population cut off from all other supply lines. Any invasion force into the US would have plenty of pickings available if there were no military to oppose them.

I would say we’re not allowed to count anyone who would be considered to be veteran afterwards.

45

I think the primacy of the Russian language and its use as the lingua franca in zones in the Russian sphere of influence is part of Russian nationalism. And it’s certainly true that many countries that were part of the Soviet Union (Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia to name a few) now have significant Russian-speaking populations, and many “ethnic” subdivisions of Russia are now majority Russian-speaking.

But on the other hand, other former Soviet republics have now reasserted the use of their national language, and Russian never displaced the languages of the countries in the Soviet sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe. It was widely taught as a second language, but it’s not even certain that the citizens of these countries even retained it.

Even if the Soviet Union had occupied the US, which I find to be a preposterous proposition, they couldn’t have changed the national language and they probably wouldn’t have wanted to. They could have imposed a favoured trading partner relationship between both countries, and they could have imposed the teaching of Russian as a second language in the US, but Russian displacing English as the national language would mean Americans actually embracing it which I just don’t see happening. Americans are more numerous than Russians; there’s no way immigration alone could change the culture of the country in such a way.

46

The US was still going to be a world power from 1945 to now no matter what happened. The industrial and economic power is just too great. Unless you’re proposing that the Germans or Russians nuked us constantly for no good reason constantly, our relative importance as a world power isn’t going to suddenly become insignificant in this time period.

Are you asking if it’s possible that we never developed nukes and Russia or Germany nuked us constantly for years and then once we were non-functional they could build up some naval lift capability and come over and fuck our dead, irradiated corpses? I guess I can’t really argue with that, but then you should be thanking Oppenheimer & Friends rather than random soldiers.

Yeah, I get it. And I have no doubt they would. But that’s not what they’re actually doing - what they’re actually doing is going out and protecting US interests in the world. I’m not even casting a judgement on that in this thread - that may be the best for the country and the world too. But there’s simply no realistic threat of military invasion to the US homeland to counter.

Look - when people sign up for the Israeli or South Korean military, in a very practical and immediate way, they’re protecting the very existance of their nation. US soldiers? Not so much. This is not a judgement - I have no doubt that soldiers generally serve for what they consider good and noble reasons - but the idea in this thread is that we’d all be speaking another language if not for them, and it’s just ridiculous.

I have no doubt our soldiers would fight against the superintelligent alien polar bears too, if they needed to - but I don’t need to proclaim that the only reason I haven’t been eaten by a superintelligent polar bear was due to the bravery of our soldiers. The threat isn’t there.

Out of curiosity, what do you think would happen if for some reason the US didn’t field a large professional army? Would we be weaponless and unable and unwilling to fight?

Well, it’s hard to argue from these crazy hypotheticals. This question presumes that we’ll have people who fight off a foreign invasion who will then be veterans - and if that’s the case, I’m certainly not going to begrudge claiming that they were the reason we defended our country.

Incidentally, do you guys all think that the US could invade and take over China today? In 10 years? Why or why not?

The US is far greater a military power than the world has ever seen before. We’re set up to project our force all across the world. If any army in history has been capable of sustaining a large, cross-world invasion, it’s the modern US military. So what do you think, could we invade another big country across the world?

Our soldiers are generally good people who want to serve their country. Why do we have to resort to ridiculous hyperbole in order to say they’re important?

47

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.

“At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” – Abraham Lincoln, 1838

48

That is beautiful. I’ve never heard that quote before. Thanks for posting that.

49

It was featured (or at least a portion thereof) in the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War. (I always hear that quote, and most Lincoln quotes I guess, in the voice of Sam Waterston.)

It’s always struck me as one of those eerily prescient quotes, especially since Lincoln said it so far back as 1838. Not that we committed suicide in 1861-1865, but that was the closest we’ve ever come.

50

Ah, bon? Quelle horreur!

51

What language to they speak in Grenada? Well, whatever it is, we are spared that horror as well…

52

Grenadine?

53

So ummmm, if you can read this, thank the Brits?

My bad :smiley:

54

As I remember from my history lessons, the Japanese devastated our fleet in Pearl Harbor. My sixth grade teacher said he was was one of about 600 soldiers on duty on the West Coast at the time.

Read some first hand accounts here War History Fans

The Germans had many U-boats along our East Coast. They landed agents in the US. If Hitler had listened to his generals we might all be speaking German and/or Japanese.

55

It’s patriotic banality, on par with ‘Support the Troops’ bumper stickers, what fucking American doesn’t?

It’s almost to the point that American flag emblems have become a conservative totem. An American flag flying is nonpolitical, but if it’s on a t-shirt, bumper sticker, or baseball cap the owner is conservative.

56

Ridiculous. I originally wrote more, but that one word sums it up nicely.

57

This may come as a surprise but it’s nazi ideology I hate, not the german language.

58

That is utter horseshit.

59

Heck, Germany (well, the eastern part of it) was under the Soviet thumb for ~45 years, yet people there still speak German.

60

Your sixth grade teacher was full of shit. There were more than 40,000 soldiers from the US Army alone on Hawaii on Dec 7; two full strength infantry divisions (the 24th and 25th) and numerous independent formations. As far as the West Coast goes, feel free to look on the linked OOB. Fort Ord, California for example had an infantry division, a seperate infantry regiment, two engineer regiments and the HQ of III Corps based there on Dec 7.

I am for one glad that we weren’t defeated by the zombie British. I mean if they had won the Revolutionary War or the War of 1812 we’d all be speaking… * cough*. Nevermind.