In this lecture, Sarah Paine explains how Britain used sea control, peripheral campaigns, and alliances to defeat Nazi Germany during WWII. She then applies this framework to today, arguing that Russia and China are similarly constrained by their geography, making them vulnerable in any conflict with maritime powers (like the U.S. and its allies).

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* Transcript: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/sarah-paine-ww2
* Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-hitler-almost-starved-britain-sarah-paine/id1516093381?i=1000725163932
* Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6qx346vBRykbtlaINo1LB7?si=dbbcca18accf46e0

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00:00:00 – How WW1 shaped WW2
00:16:00 – Hitler and Churchill’s battle to command the Atlantic
00:31:00 – Peripheral theaters leading up to Normandy
00:38:03 – The Eastern front
00:48:53 – Russia’s & China’s geographic prisons
01:01:21 – Hitler’s blunders & America’s industrial might
01:15:53 – Bismarck’s limited wars vs Hitler’s total war