Hugo Boss designed Nazi uniforms. VW built Nazi cars. Bayer made lethal gas. Siemens built the ovens. Rockafeller Oil (broken into Exxon, BP, and Chevron) profiteered by selling to both sides as well as a host of other American companies (Ford, IBM, Coke, Kodak…).
North American was taken over by Rockwell – IIRC the company built the Saturn V second stage, with Boeing building the first – which lasted until about the end of the Cold War.
Battle of Moscow. The Germans one chance of winning the war. Lost thanks to the Siberian divisions.
Battle of Flodden. End of Scotland as a threat to England.
Sack of Ctesiphon by Septimus Severus. Destroyed the Parthains. Brought the Sassanids to the fore.
Battle of Pharsalus. Operation Bagaration.
Not quite… maybe part is now part of BMW, but the big aerospace part merged with Bolkow, and then the aerospace arm of Blohm und Voss to form MBB (Messerschmidt Bolkow Blohm).
MBB was bought by Daimler-Chrysler Aerospace (or DASA at that point, I think), sometime in the 1980s which was subsequently rolled into EADS as “EADS Germany” in 2000 or so.
The helicopter part was rolled into Eurocopter in the late 1990s prior to the creation of EADS, however.
Malacandra, bump,
Thanks for the info - so nobody, on either side, went out of business. The basic economic structure was not changed by ‘battles’.
Crane
Flodden was decisive in ending the war, but it was dynastic politics that pulled the Scots’ fangs long term, not a single battle.
That’s leaving aside my opinion that Scotland was never really an existential threat to England’s survival anyway. In the span of history it was more an indigestible lump than a looming danger.
Similarly here. Ctesiphon had been sacked before, it would be sacked again - it didn’t really fundamentally undermine Arsacid power. Almost 20 years after that sack in 198/199, the Parthians and Romans were slugging it out again at Nisibis, which resulted in a lot of shed blood and a negotiated Parthian TKO. As it was when the Sassanids took out the Arsacids it was about a generation after Cteisophon and only after hard fighting, including several pitched battles between the contenders. I have a hard time regarding Ctesiphon as decisive in that chain of events - the rebellion of Artabanus IV against his elder brother Vologases VI probably had a greater impact and even that it hard to credit as the dominant cause. Most likely the overthrow of the Arsacids was down to a combination of several factors including the Roman wars as well as the civil war, with more than a little credit going to Ardashir’s own ability.
That’s an interesting choice. The ostensibly weaker side defeated the ostensibly stronger side in one decisive battle that radically changed the balance of power in the region from that point onward.
These threads tend to be Anglocentric for obvious reasons, but I think European history, including British history, would have been very different if a strong Spanish state didn’t arise in the late Medieval early Renaissance period. Especially if there would have been a powerful Muslim state in Iberia instead. Would such a scenario have significantly delayed the European rediscovery of the New World?
I suppose so. The Muslims wouldn’t feel the need for another trade route to the east and the Dutch would likely have remained part of the Holy Roman Empire.
What got the Dutch on the road was stealing Spanish treasure. That would leave the English, but they didn’t have the maritime know how, at the time.
Awful hard to speculate on what a Muslim Spain would or wouldn’t have done in general, but I’m not sure your comment is on point. It’s not like a speculative Spanish Muslim state would have necessarily had any sort of advantageous relationship with the Mamelukes in Egypt and Syria ( who dominated the Eastern trade via the Red Sea and overland routes into Syria ). Nor were the Mamelukes’ Muslim faith any barrier to Christian trade - the Venetians made a fortune trading with them ( and later the Ottomans, much to the annoyance of folks like the Knights of St. John ).
The drive to find trade routes was for purely state-related reasons, not driven by a clash of religion-based civilizations. Christian Venice, a dominant sea-power, didn’t involve themselves much in exploration because they didn’t have to - they already controlled the carrying trade in the Eastern Mediterranean. Spain was interested in new routes because they were non-competitive in that highly lucrative existing arena because fellow Christians already had a near-monopoly.
Or to put it another way at the end of the day Muslim states didn’t give a crap about the economic stability of other Muslim states, nor did Christian states really give two figs about the economic success of other Christian states. They may have mouthed propaganda to the contrary, but self-interest almost always trumped ideology.
At the very least it is highly debatable if the loss of Moscow would have been fatal to the Soviet Union, and questionable if Germany would be able to retain a hold on it through the winter. It certainly didn’t work for Napoleon.
Historical mythology, much like the Balkan operations delaying Barbarossa for six weeks and saving the USSR. The reality is that the weather delayed the start of Barbarossa; the Balkans had nothing to do with it. Eastern European rivers were at flood into late spring. There were divisions transferred from Siberia, but they were not a force released just in the nick of time to save Moscow as the story would have it. The transfer of divisions began in June in response to Barbarossa, a total of 28 were sent up until December, and of them only 14 were sent from August until December, when the decision to release them could have been influenced by the Sorge spy ring assuring Stalin that Japan was not going to attack. There’s a breakdown of the divisions here. Of note is that
Front in “Western Front” in the above quote meaning the Soviet terminology for the equivalent of an Army Group; the Western Front was the Front in front of Moscow, north of it at the time was Kalinin Front and to the south Southwestern Front. The force that stopped the Germans before Moscow came from the enormous mobilization the Soviets performed, not from divisions released from Siberia. The size of the Soviet reserves were large enough to launch a counteroffensive that winter not just in the sector near Moscow, but along the entire length of the front.
The point is that the Far Eastern Divisions, while small in number, were experienced, well equipped etc. They certainly played a huge role in the counter offensives which pushed the Germans back.
Also, Moscow in 1812 was just the Russians largest city. In 1941, it was the Soviet Unions center of gravity. If it had fallen, it would have been a near fatal blow.
[QUOTE=Tamerlane]
Similarly here. Ctesiphon had been sacked before, it would be sacked again - it didn’t really fundamentally undermine Arsacid power. Almost 20 years after that sack in 198/199, the Parthians and Romans were slugging it out again at Nisibis, which resulted in a lot of shed blood and a negotiated Parthian TKO. As it was when the Sassanids took out the Arsacids it was about a generation after Cteisophon and only after hard fighting, including several pitched battles between the contenders. I have a hard time regarding Ctesiphon as decisive in that chain of events - the rebellion of Artabanus IV against his elder brother Vologases VI probably had a greater impact and even that it hard to credit as the dominant cause. Most likely the overthrow of the Arsacids was down to a combination of several factors including the Roman wars as well as the civil war, with more than a little credit going to Ardashir’s own ability
[/QUOTE]
The defeats against Rome destroyed the approximate parity that had been enjoyed in the Near East and led to the conditions that led to the fall. The Severus defeat saw Roman control established for the first time in Mesopotamia beyond the Tigris even. They had lost their heartland and what you describe were just the death throes of a landed fish.
First time? Bah. I give you Trajan :).
Can’t agree.The Parthian heartland was not northern Mesopotamia. It was a stinging loss, but hardly crippling or unrecoverable. If they had been gutted they hardly could have turned the Romans back under Caracalla and Macrinus as capably as they did. Like I alluded to above, I’ll buy weakened and that in concert with other factors led to their fall. But the simple sacking of Ctesiphon ( a regular sack magnet ) was not decisive, anymore than Alaric’s sacking of Rome was decisive in the fall of the WRE ( outside of the symbolism it has been imbued with by later historians ).
If there is a single battle that could have changed the underlying economics of the path of history it is Actium.
Had the Egyptians prevailed at Actium, the center of power in the Mediterranean would have shifted to Alexandria. Octavianus would have been denied the wealth that he used to create the Roman Empire. Rome would have exhausted itself in chronic civil war.
No Roman Empire -> No Constantine -> No Christianity
Crane