h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"There is evidence that the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west was due to climate disaster producing catastrophic crop failures" [ITIWBS]

Do you mean the presumed volcano of 535 or 536?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_535%E2%80%93536

In Constantinople, hundreds of thousands of people are said to have died of starvation. I shudder to think of the body count for a similar event nowadays....

That was part of it, even worse in Europe.

One of the problems with climate change trends is that they span centuries, not enough time to see an entire cycle of climate change in a single lifetime, let alone a single generation.

But the western Empire collapsed in 426 surely?

sorry 476

The Goths, affected by bad weather and cropbfailures applied to the Romans for support.

The Romans, accustomedbto normal times and conditions, agreed to extend support, but affected by their own crop failures were unable to make good on their promises.

The chaos that followed was doubtless interpreted as betrayal by both, but neither had the means to adequately support themselves and more than a lifetime went by before conditions began to improve.

Weather has a way of unraveling human goals.

Nuclear weapons as a deterrent is interesting (and, coincidentally something I'm currently studying).

There is a theorist (John Meersheimer) who says that since we're not going to use nuclear weapons because of Mutually Assured Destruction, the thing that will bring peace to the Middle East is if Iran also had nukes.

Back to Hitler. Of course you need context. But the idea of being able to move people and supplies all over a country on a network of highways is a good one. Stalin had the same idea but with trains, didn't he?

And although his plans were probably on completely shaky ground, at least he was "thinking" (he thought planning) a 1,000 year Reich. At least he wasn't into short-termism like modern politicians.

On balance though, I don't think he was right.

Napoleon invaded Russia and was repelled. Hitler invaded Russia and was repelled. What was it with these monomaniacs and their desire for Russian territory? And why would we blame Russia for being paranoid? I think they were justified.

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Probably the Russian fondness for cabbage sandwiches.

I think the Germans were/are no slouches when it comes to cabbagy treats.

It is actually possible to conquer Russia.

Ask Gheghis Khan. Or... er... the Russians (of antiquity)

Could all those reasons quoted by Orcus for the fall of the Roman Empire also be said to be the causes for the decline of the Mayan civilisation? Weather certainly played a large part, but that brought with it economic reasons, disease, etc. I don't know enough about it to comment, just a few tidbits I've heard or read.

However. This is supposed to be about Hitler and the parts of his policies which were justifiable among all the rest.

He certainly had a good grasp of marketing and could inspire the public. I have no idea how he did it. When I hear the speeches, I find them very hard to understand - and with 1930s amplification systems, it must have been nigh on impossible. So he must have had something persuasive about him over and above the words he was actually spouting.

One Hitler started gobbling up large tracts of land, people started working on ways of stopping him and reversing his gains.

Under Hitler, methods for trapping atmosphere nitrogen were perfected. Hitler did it to make explosives, but since then the same techniques have helped create fertilizer for farming. This is lucky, since naturally occurring nitrogen compounds could only feed about 4 billion people.

>he must have had something persuasive about him.

He did. The Brownshirts.

The SS had only about 20,000 members, yet they were so well-organized that they held tens of millions of people in thrall.

Post 31, Orcus "...is it possible to conquer Russia?..."

So far, only the Russ have pulled it off, the Russ, rather like the Normans who conquered England, though Gheghis Khan did come close.

The Russ were natives of what's nowadays Prussia, or East Germany, before the Teutonic Knights conquest of Prussia at the beginning of the Rennaisance.

Attempting to conquer Russia is too much like cutting one's own throat.

Hopefully we've graduated from that age of the world and nothing like that is ever going to happen again.

Hitler, though was in a desperate situation, having belatedly realized after the partition of Poland with Stalin under the Non-aggression Pact, that with the removal of Poland as a buffer state, he'd created a situation where Germany was going to inevitably become a client state of Stalin's Soviet Union.

And so it came to pass.

I just read a book about the Ardennes campaign of 1944. I had to stop reading about 100 pages into it, because of the atrocity of what was going on .

The Mongols conquered Russia (really those Rus) rather quickly. So much so that even after the Mongol Empire fragmented the Russians (and Chinese) were still having serious problems with Steppe Nomads until about 3-400 years ago (see the Golden Horde as just one example in the West of the Steppes).

Maybe the famous advice should really read 'Never start a land war in Asia...unless you're Asian.


Germany and its progenitor states in the 18th-19th Century were always very good at science, arts and stuff. I'm not sure their world leading science should get attributed to Hitler, the Kaiser, Ludendorff or any other of their (past) militaristic leaders. Wars are always very good at rapidly pushing the boundaries of technology - penicillin and nuclear power came out of the WWII also.

And sorry yes I devolved off into stuff about the Roman Empire but that's because one-line trope about this stuff need challenging a little in my opinion.

As far as I am aware they know very little about the Mayan collapse - certainly the major theory the I am aware of is that there was a horrific devastating and prolonged drought.

Maybe I could be clearer and bring it back to where we are here.

A dustbowl in the USA in the 1920s/30s was part of a large contributory factor to a global depression that sparked revolutionary conditions in Wiemar Germany in the 1930s leading directly to the rise of the Nazi party...
Of course it's much more nuanced than that. If the catastrophe of the 1st world war had not happened would we not have had a much more stable and cohesive group of countries in central Europe that could probably have collectively dealt with this 'climactic' issue much better? Would the crushing reparations and war-blame directed solely at Germany by Versaille not have led to a more wealthy, rather happier and less angry nation (less, no wholly of course - everyone was traumatised) that could have applied their focus to work rather than blame-games and street battles.


In 1000 years perhaps the nuances of our modern history will be so fragmented that people will glibly say 'Oh the collapse of the Western European peace in the 20th century and the felling of the old-work Empires was down to 'global climactic conditions'

Would *we* be happy with that as a summary of our countries' recent past legacy? I firmly believe that ancient civilisations were just as nuanced and complex as we are today and it's a mistake to just sweep it all into one little pocket theory like that.