Mary Barra Tries to Calm German, British Fears After PSA-Opel Freakout

The British, Germans, and French all have a passive aggressive hatred toward each other for reasons I can't quite understand.

@28-Cars-Later Maybe that they were trying to kill and/or conquer each other for most of a millennium, and only stopped relatively recently?

@dal20402 I think its more than that, I think it also has to do with cultures/languages. I'd also point out the French have not tried to kill/conquer neither the British nor Germans for some time, although certainly the World Wars and British pre-war economic hostility toward the German Empire should be noted.

@28-Cars-Later But Germany started both World Wars though. Imagine if Germany had kept up its anti-imperialist stance instead of the Kaiser firing Bismarck and going on a land-grabbing campaign, there probably wouldn't have been a WWI.

@28-Cars-Later The First World War was much more complicated than one might think, it was in the works for many years prior. I can't find the Churchill letters to quote but here is a brief reference to what I am talking about when I say British aggression: "Germany had started a naval arms race with Britain. Imperialist competition between the two states over markets and resources preceded the arms race in the fifteen years before the war. Britain’s naval power was the vital element in its ability to restrict German access to markets and resources across the world. Unless Britain was willing to allow Germany to expand economically, the logic of capitalist competition meant that Germany was bound to challenge British naval supremacy. The latent violence of the leading imperial nation is always the context for aggressive challenges to the status quo on the part of rising powers." http://www.counterfire.org/history/17511-ten-lies-told-about-world-war-i The German Empire after the 1871 unification was slowly becoming a major economic power, and in the late 19th Century the Kaiser set about building a grand navy. This threatened the British Empire both militarily (in terms of warships) and economically (The Royal Navy more or less controlled the world's sea lanes, and the UK was a major economic power out of the Industrial Revolution). This was also complicated by the development of a new naval weapon concept, the Dreadnought, in 1905, and the rout of the antiquated Imperial Russian Navy at Battle of Tsushima in 1904. There are letters which bear out the threat posed by the Germans in the early 1900s but as I said I can't quite source them at the moment. The war also had several other major factors and intended outcomes, I encourage you to do your own research, including what is beyond common knowledge - history is a set of lies agreed upon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dreadnought_(1906) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tsushima The Second World War was technically initiated by ultimatum after the German invasion of Poland (the latter of which had defense treaties with the West). Important to note the West did not declare hostilities with the Soviet Union after it participated in the invasion and partition of Poland on 9/17/39. Same as before, history is a set of lies agreed upon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarations_of_war_during_World_War_II One final thought: all war is a profit center for certain groups (bankers, arms developers, mfgs, war suppliers). There is a basic concept in finance, one man's debt is another man's asset.

@28-Cars-Later War is always good business. I can imagine the Great Depression wouldn't have been so quickly and thoroughly reversed if we hadn't had to start making tanks and planes by the thousands and munitions by the millions.