I lived in London in 1961, and took this picture then. That whole side of Mecklenburgh Square had been bombed in the 1940s, and was still in ruins in 1961. It wasn’t the only part of central London like that in 1961, though it’s the only one that I have a picture of.
But I can’t work this out, forgive my lack of understanding, but wasn’t the UK just as big of a military and economic power as the USA before WWII? It had interests in Latin America (which it virtually owned) and alot of capital which it had invested in the railways of the US and transportation.
So how could a country like Germany, be able to afford all these wars in such a small amount of time and not be virtually bankcrupt either?
And just to refocus the question I did at the start, what would of happened if the UK retained it’s finanacial and economic dominance and came out on top just like the US after the war ended?
I read about how East Germany was still looking like a war ravaged country where as the West German state had rebuilt itself, could you say economic policies were to blame for the lack of a drive to clear that wreakage up?
The British Empire was as powerful as the USA before WWII. But nationalism in the colonies and protectorates had been building for years even before WWII. After the war, it became impossible to hold classic colonial empires anymore. Britain gave in more or less gracefully; France clung on stubbornly and just got kicked out of North Africa and Indochina. In less than twenty years Britain contracted from being the seat of a world empire to a European country with a few overseas dependencies.
Britain might have been overall stronger than Germany, but much of it’s strength lay in colonial forces which were busy holding the colonies, and the Navy which could only indirectly contribute to a British victory. It required an overwhelming material superiority to successfully invade “Fortress Europe”, which Britain alone simply didn’t have. And in fact Germany did bankrupt itself putting forward the effort it did.
Britain couldn’t retain its financial and economic dominance because that vanished during the war itself. By 1945 it wasn’t there anymore to retain.
The partition was done by the British. The borders were set by the British, and the act authorizing independence for both India and Pakistan was passed by the British parliament. I’m not sure what you mean when you say that the “British had no control…”
Britain had no effective control of events, other than to try something that by that time had become impossible, like cancelling independence day.
The partition was going to happen come what may, and there was nothing any of the parties involved could do to stop it.
Central planning that is narrowly focused on one major project, developing a nuclear bomb, building one or more enormous and highly photogenic dams here and there, are attainable in short order, even for a centrally planned economy.
Where a centrally planned economy falls flat on its face is enabling an adequate market system to develop. One that is not only flexible but capable of adapting to the demands and requirements of both producers and consumers.
None of the centrally planned economies of the now extinct Soviet bloc had anything remotely resembing a market economy capable of providing a decent standard of living for the majority of its people. If you have been schooled otherwise then you have been profoundly miseducated.
Well, if you fire a bullet from a gun, you could have bought the gun, bought the ammunition, loaded the gun, aimed the gun and fired the gun.
But once the bullet has left the barrel you have not one iota of control over what happens next.
Clear now?
Sure. My point is that this wasn’t appreciated - or obvious - in 1945.
Plus, the British experience of central planning during the war wasn’t focussed on a single project, like the atomic bomb or a dam; it involved managing and directing the entire economy, directed towards a single aim - winning the war - which had many, many different aspects. And, crucially, it succeeding in achieving that aim, though only by sacrificing many other objectives.
What the British sought to do after 1945 was to continue with some degree of central planning, less focussed, less single-minded and less all-embracing, but still using central government to achieve social objectives by regulating the economy. We now know the limitations of this method, having observed it in action, but what they knew was its potential, having observed what had been achieved in the previous six years. My point all along is that this had nothing to do with a naive acceptance of Soviet propaganda.
Rebuilt itself? Not quite.
West Germany received huge amounts of aid from the American Marshall Plan. East Germany got nothing from America because it was Communist.
Ok, but considering the total war effort of all the major combatants, why did the UK come off as the worse economically out of the European major powers? It took us until the 1980’s to control inflation and be economically competitive.
Probably successive governments interfering in things they would have been better off not interfering in and not interfering in things that they would have been better of interfering in.
I was under the impression that the Warsaw Pact countries were offered aid but they refused. Do I remember incorrectly?
Yeah, about as clear as mud.
Could you perhaps try and get someone you know to explain it to you?
It’s not a very difficult concept. 
Perhaps you can let us have a serious discussion and confine your snotty remarks to the thread which you ran away from. Don’t you have to go back there and arbitrarily declare things irrelevant?
Regarding the India-Pakistan issue, it should be pointed out that the riots continued unabtated for nearly a year, and contarary to the nonsence put forward by Aquila Be it should be pointed out that violance was present throughout India. My own family was living in Delhi and they were evacuated by air only because my grandmothers father was an army officer and he had the connections. Most of the muslim families in my grandmothers neighbourhood were slaughtered mercilessly.
I don’t think we’re in huge disagreement (I already stated that one way or another Pakistan and India were going to end up not controlled by the British), but I wouldn’t characterize the events when they unfolded as uncontrollable civil war. I’d characterize them as a negotiated settlement between Britain, the Congress Party and the Muslim League.
As for the ensuing violence, I don’t mean to downplay it by any means, but the high estimates are 1 million killed and 15-20 million in population exchange. While that is certainly horrific, the Indian population at the time is usually estimated to be around 350 million, so, we’re talking about a fraction of the population being involved in the violence. I personally wouldn’t characterize that as a civil war.
It wasn’t a snotty remark. I just wanted you to be able to understand something with which you were having difficulty.
As you only posted ‘clear as mud’ without actually specifying what you didn’t understand I thought it might be better if you could get someone to talk you through it in person. 
Well, in the first place a civil war is not determined by the number of people killed. It is a matter of the nature of the conflict.
And 50% is ‘a fraction’ of the population. As is 90%
You consider 1 million people out of 350 million dying to be in some way insufficient for you, personally, to characterise the conflict as a civil war. Is your personal classification of such things of any importance? Particularly considering the amount of bloodshed you obviously require before something qualifies in your mind as a civil war.