the_quark

the_quark t1_j7ms4fv wrote

This is the answer. The Allied leadership - and respecially FDR - felt very clearly that WWII came out of not really beating Germany to the ground in WWI. There was a very conscious desire on the part of American leadership at least to get an absolutely unconditional surrender from both Germany and Japan in order to restructure those countries in ways intended to prevent WWIII from just inevitably coming along twenty more years later.

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the_quark t1_j5768n1 wrote

The worst part seems to be that their leadership is reading their own press releases.

It's the same thing that happened in the Soviet Union. You are given an aggressive target for your five-year-plan. You don't make it, but you fudge the numbers a little to make it look like you did.

Next five-year-plan, they give you an aggressive target from your new baseline (that you didn't actually achieve). There's no way you're making that without fudging, so you fudge away.

Never five-year-plan, they give you an aggressive target from your new baseline - which would itself be an aggressive target for you to achieve in five years.

Repeat this enough and the official numbers become completely unmoored from reality and literally no one knows what's going on.

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