All I can say is that people do seem to overestimate the impact of losing a war. Just like they overestimate the need to wage war in the first place.

The main outcome of a war is loss of lives and infrastructure. Political changes are minor; maybe they will start teaching the language of the invader in schools as an elective... Maybe restaurants will get new foods added to the menu. Maybe taxes will go up a little... A bit more immigration from that country... Money will go to a different set of politicians.

But if you want a modern proof; look at Iraq and Afghanistan... Under US occupation for many years. They have the same people, same language, same culture, same everything as before... It's like they never lost any battles. Look at Germany after they lost WW2; they still speak German. Their cultural identity is still very strong; maybe it affected their foreign policy a little but apart from that, it's hard to tell.

War is truly useless except for those selling weapons and for a couple of big companies that are trying to acquire some mineral resources or securing some trade routes. There's really no other purpose.

My ancestors are from a country which (during the French revolution) had voluntarily changed 'ownership' from France to Britain and later back to France again. They still speak French. Nothing changed, at all, except for the fact that the elites conveniently avoided the Guillotine... Fast forward 300 years and you can't tell any cultural or economic difference at all from the other neighboring nations which remained under France and had experienced the Guillotine; same GDP numbers, same culture, same everything.

Anglo-Saxons like to make fun of the French for surrendering easily but as a regular citizen, it actually makes logical sense. I think it just shows that the government is better aligned with the interests of the people.

Strategic surrender is smart; if you know ahead of time which force is most powerful and can evaluate it objectively, you can save yourself the trouble of dying and you end up with a better outcome than you would have otherwise. It's risk management.

Of course, the Swiss are even smarter for staying neutral but France is too big to take a neutral stance (and they can actually drive outcomes) so they take one stance and then back-peddle if the tide turns.

And France does something else really smart which is; they embrace internal opposition; so if the tides turn, they allow the opposing elite take control without any fighting and it looks like France was always on the winning side.

Almost nobody recalls this, but during WW2, France was actually on the German side; president Philippe Pétain allowed the Germans in. But then later General De Gaulle pushed back when it looked like there was a good chance to turn the war around. And now everyone thinks France was always part of the allied forces.

French people hacked politics. I think now Americans are now also doing something similar. This is why the country is divided IMO and it's smart. Internal division is the cost of guaranteed victory.

It works so long as the population is politically flexible and only focus on what's important to them. If people don't mind changing religion or language or some laws, then it really doesn't matter who wins the war. If the enemy doesn't have clear objectives for a war, then the loser of the war can still control the outcome.

Describing Germany's loss in WW2 as 'affecting their foreign policy a little' represents a profound disconnect with reality, which is that WW2 fundamentally reshaped the entire world, cemented the US as a superpower, set up the USSR for its rise, split Germany in two (with major political effects to this day), ended European empires (UK, French), and ultimately brought about the EU. And those are just some of WW2's effects, which would have all gone completely different directions if Germany or Japan had won.

Lots of words to be weirdly wrong about things.

There certainly were a lot of minor "elite" wars in Europe where power shifted back and forth across the aristocracy with no real difference to daily life. WW2 was not one of them. Nor, historically, was the Thirty Years War.

OP may be confused by the American colonial wars since Korea. Korea is the last one where you can see the difference in outcomes for the population.

This is not true. War materially changes the lives of the people before and after regardless of whether or not their language in customs are noticeably affected in the short term. Would you rather be a West German in 1938 or 1960? What about if you were Jewish?

I think the Jews in France in 1939 would have wished their government put up a better fight and had better generals who actually used the radio.

Also, the statement that France was on the German side is not true. The Germans conquered most of France in the first part of the war and installed a puppet regime that was loyal to them. This does not mean France was on the side of Germany, it means the Vichy puppet regime was.

You clearly know a decent amount about history, yet your analysis is so starkly wrong it appears you have an agenda.

The question was about the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Since the battle and the period following it are pretty well documented, there's no need to look for modern examples - we know what happened in England/Britain after William/Guillame won, and the results were absolutely transformative. Your summary of "the main outcome of a war" is completely disconnected from what took place in England after 1066.

The world would be completely different if Germany or Japan had won, or not been totally defeated, in WW2. Geopolitically, culturally, everything.

Germany was divided for more than forty years after the Second World War. That absolutely changed their foreign policy and those changes have continued to be felt into the present day. The Second World War ended traditional power structures and changed foreign policy for everyone. That’s reality.

> Look at Germany after they lost WW2; they still speak German. Their cultural identity is still very strong; maybe it affected their foreign policy a little but apart from that, it's hard to tell.

What a comically bad take. I am looking at Germany and it is very easy to tell. Then go back a generation and look at what WWI did to Germany.

But as the article says, this battle really was tremendously important. The utter catastrophe led to the quick and permanent entrenchment of the Normans in Britain, with huge and long-reaching consequences reaching to the present: first and foremost, that the English language was profoundly altered at every level by influence from French.

>Anglo-Saxons like to make fun of the French for surrendering easily but as a regular citizen, it actually makes logical sense. I think it just shows that the government is better aligned with the interests of the people.

>Strategic surrender is smart; if you know ahead of time which force is most powerful and can evaluate it objectively, you can save yourself the trouble of dying and you end up with a better outcome than you would have otherwise. It's risk management.

France didn't particularly surrender early. WW2 France surrendered because they were fucked and didn't have a choice; if they hadn't surrendered when they did, they would have been slaughtered and then their replacements would surrender just the same.

Russia would have done the same (and in fact, Ukraine tried to switch sides, especially with the Holomodor in such recent memory), but the Nazis were not pragmatic about permitting 'subhumans' to live.