Originally Posted by
BobZ
Absent the US military industrial complex....those nordic countries would all be speaking Russian.
Or maybe German.
Thats real.
Hey....they cuda made those 130s f18s and all the other hardware in house. Of course that would have cost billions to acconmplish. All that money diverted from what was otherwise directrd to developing the non military econmy.
They bought the stuff from US....because it was cheaper to do so. And because the hardware dovetailed to the common defense cartel...nato. Also ovetwhelmingly paid for by the US.
In the military i trained nordic country pilots.....so it was apparently more cost effective to have US not only develop and build their hardware...but also train the personnel?
You seem to ignore the Swedes in your equation. They are a non-aligned country and have developed and built top of the line fighter aircraft in house, as well as top end submarines, and yet still have the ability to have a successful "Nordic Model". The other Nordic countries could very well have purchased Gripen's, Typhoon's, or Rafael's, all of which are NATO developed or NATO compatible.
As for speaking German without the help of the United States...most historians would disagree with you. While there is no doubt the United States played a crucial role in ultimately winning the war in Europe, most historians will tell you that the tide had already turned against Germany by the time the U.S. entered the war in December 1941. The Battle of Moscow in October 1941 through January 1942 is widely considered to be the turning point of the war, with the Soviet counteroffensive starting on December 5 often pointed to as the single most important event, when even German generals began to concede that Germany would ultimately lose the war.