A country in ruins. The economy is failing because of significant debts and spending to try and repair it. The country is still recovering from the costs of war. Many people are unemployed and some of them are resorting to crime in order to survive. The government continues to lose money in the form of checks to the unemployed populace, and the people are searching for a scapegoat to blame for their circumstances.
Does this all sound familiar? It was the situation Germany was in after World War 1, and it is the situation in USA today. Just swap out some of the names. Germany had Kaiser Wilhelm II to put them in WW1, The US had George W Bush to put them in the war in Iraq. Both events causing a severe blow to their related economies. The Great Depression to sink the Germans further, and the recent recession in USA as well as the debts built up by both countries to others at the time. The Germans blamed the Jewish, while the US blames the Muslims and illegal immigrants.
After World War 1 Germany owed a debt of £22 billion,(roughly $35 billion) which was finally paid off to completion in September 2010, 92 years after the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War 1, a debt that lead to disaster in Germany in the following years. Compare this to the approximate $16 trillion that USA owes to China alone today; this is many times later than the German debt was, and it continues to grow at a rate of $3.82 billion every day.
These factors in Germany led to World War 2. Although the situations are not identical, they are eerily similar to each other. Therefore, if the United States continues on the path it is on currently, it approaches the probability of total economic collapse, and potentially the destruction of the United States as a superpower. As had happened to Germany leading up to, and after World War 2
A line to an unemployment office in Hanover, Germany 1930
Could this be the future of the USA?
Could this be the future of the USA?
However, as the old saying states, there are only two certainties in the world. We can't predict the future for sure, but the path is shaping up quite similarly. The potential events will be by no means identical to those surrounding World War 2, after all the causes of the similarities I mentioned earlier are different from each other. Nevertheless, the US is currently following a similar path as Germany did between the World Wars. Now it merely remains to be seen whether they will continue down the path to disaster, as Germany did, or if they will manage to set themselves on the path to repair it before that happens.
Works Cited
Image: http://www.gcsehistory.org.uk/modernworld/germany/images/unemployment.jpg
German Debt Value: Hall, Allan. Daily Mail. Germany ends World War One reparations after 92 years with £59m final payment. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315869/Germany-end-World-War-One-reparations-92-years-59m-final-payment.html
US National Debt: U.S. National Debt Clock http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
Nick, you clearly parallel the United States' troubles with those faced by Germany in the first half of the 20th century. How do you think the United States can prevent itself from following the same path as Germany? In other words, how can they stop history from rhyming?
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