Denmark, Canada, Panama, Mexico.

[murielm99]

Given the orange menace's aggression towards so many of our neighbors, I am surprised that no one here has mentioned the parallels to the Anschluss. Without firing a shot, Hitler took Austria in 1938. I am glad our peaceful former allies and neighbors have more bravery than Austria.

[Prairie Gates]

1. Most Austrians considered themselves part of a greater German "people" at the time

It was just a continuation of the unifications of the 1860s-1870s, which were not really that far off historically. Many of Hitler's annexations relied on the notion of ethnic Germans. Ethnic Germans in Austria, ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland, ethnic Germans in Silesia, in Danzig/Gdansk, etc., etc. Even ethnic Germans in Ukraine! Yes, tens of thousands of them. These were the claims.

So, that's what makes Trump's arguments very different. He frames it as pure geopolitics, resource extraction, and buffer zone security considerations - it's not so much 20th century biopolitics centered in ethnicity as it is some manner of neofeudalist imperialism. As he says about Greenland, he wants it because he wants it, and he's going to get it.

Nazi race-based imperialism was, shockingly, more subtle!

[yorkster]

5. Interesting and informative. Thanks.

[surfered]

2. Austria was willing to unite with Germany and actually attempted a union after the end of WWI,

But the Treaty of Versailles forbid it.

The citizens of Canada, Greenland, Panama, and Mexico overwhelmingly oppose joining the US, especially with a President who is lunatic and narcissistic sociopath.

[yorkster]

3. I did think of the Anschluss and, quite unbidden,

a word popped up in my fevered brain. Of course it was Canschluss. I felt ill at that obscene conjoining.
Mark Carney was unflinching and totally justified in what he said yesterday, though of course, it was awfully tough to hear...

With all of the Trump regime's disastrous moves on all fronts, I hope that there are
communications at higher levels, because ruination this way lies.

[Prairie Gates]

4. The Canschluss is brilliant!