Split Thread WWII & Appeasement

World war II and appeasement came to an end in 1939. This is from a book called Sir Anthony Eden by Alan Campbell-Johnson published in 1955:

On 15th March 1939, Hitler's legions marched into Prague thereby converting the Munich agreement within six months of signature into yet another scrap of paper. A week later they had annexed Memel. On 31st March 1939, Britain had made the fateful guarantee to Poland. Appeasement had suffered sudden death and in the process there was neither time nor opportunity for post mortems.
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Henri McPhee said:
World war II and appeasement came to an end in 1939. This is from a book called Sir Anthony Eden by Alan Campbell-Johnson published in 1955:
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What is your point?

That Britain and France were no longer pursuing a policy of appeasement by the time they declared war in response to the invasion of Poland?

I am pretty sure that is uncontested.
 
Henri McPhee said:
Crete was a victory in the end for the German paratroopers.
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It was also a near run disaster for the Germans. Hitler needed to eliminate Crete has a possible base for aircraft to threaten his rear during the upcoming Operation Barbarossa and it had to be done quickly Hence the planning for the operation was slapdash and poor. Student's plan was quite simply bad. Basically trying to capture three widely separated airports at the same time along with very poor planning in terms of the planning for each attack. Student would have been better off concentrating on one airfield and relying on small detachments and German air superiority to keep reinforcements at bay. Instead he tried to do too much and the result was near catastrophe for the Germans.

May 20th was a disaster for the Germans, casualties were horrific among the paratroopers.

The Germans were able to win because they were able to gain control of the airport at Malme early on the 21st of May due to their own fighting prowess and what can only be called an in excusable mistake by the local British commanders at the airfield who withdrew on the night of the 20th-21st of May. leaving the airport to the Germans.

Student took advantage of that along with German air supremacy to send enough troops through to Malme to secure victory.

Interestingly the local Greek Army contingents and local Cretans fought very well despite a lack of arms. The British failure to distribute arms to these forces is in retrospect a serious mistake.

As it is given that the British had superior numbers, (They also had Ultra intercepts.), were on the defensive and Student's plan was a disaster waiting to happen. It is remarkable that the Germans won at all.

But has it is the British made their own serious mistakes which in the end more than counter balanced German errors.

1. They apparently didn't think that the airports were that crucial to a successful German invasion by parachute. In fact it appears that the British thought that the Germans didn't need airports land troops in by plane. They actually thought the Germans could land troops anywhere there was level ground.

2. In all the many months they were on the island the British did not arrange to arm the local population or the local Greek Army units. The result is these forces fought half armed or armed with captured German equipment during the battle.

Despite the above and of course German air supremacy, which created huge problems for the British, the Germans still came within a whisker of catastrophe. If a few units had not withdrawn from the area of Malme Airfield on the night of the 20th-21st of May 1941 it is extremely likely the Germans would have lost.

As it is Student didn't lose his desire for more mass airborne operations, proposing Malta, Cyprus and even Port Said for future operations. Hitler because of the heavy losses and near failure, thought differently and the Germans engaged in very few airborne operations for the rest of the war. It also appears the Hitler realized that Students plan had been poor and had lost confidence in him has a planner of such operations.
 
There is an interesting reference to appeasement in general in a 1932 book called English Justice written by a solicitor:

We assume that all must be well to an extent that may some day lead to disaster. To take one instance, after enjoying a naval supremacy fought for during centuries and unchallenged for more than fifty years, we obstinately refused to see that ironclads had rendered our wooden fleet obsolete. And this at a time when our relations with the French, who had built those same ironclads, were of the worst. Within our own generation high naval and military authority ridiculed the notion that aircraft could play any important part in war.
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Henri McPhee said:
There is an interesting reference to appeasement in general in a 1932 book called English Justice written by a solicitor:
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Source. Or else it is pure BS.

Especially as the British had 16 ironclads afloat or building within three years of the French completed the Gloire.
 
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What does any of that have to do with appeasement in any case, eve if it were the case?

Just to add to what erwinl says, the Gloire was launched end of 1859.
The Warrior (which was a far better ship, and made the Gloire pretty much instantly obsolete) was launched at the end of 1860.

Not exactly a case of our navy holding back.
 
erwinl said:
Source. Or else it is pure BS.

Especially as the British had 16 ironclads afloat or building within three years of the French completed the Gloire.
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I don't believe that remark by a solicitor about wooden ships in the British Navy being obsolete is factually incorrect.

This is a background quote about the matter from an internet article:

THE END OF WOODEN WALLS: A COMPARISON OF HMS WARRIOR (1861) TO THE USS MONITOR (1862) David L. Hirsch

Abstract: In this article I will compare and contrast two warships, the British HMS Warrior and the American Union’s USS Monitor. These ships were the early ironclads which brought an end to the wooden ship navies of the world. Although they never met in battle, both ships were available for military action during the first years of the American Civil War (1861-1865). From early November 1861 until the end of December of the same year Britain and the American Union almost came to war with each other over the HMS Trent Affair. This article will speculate whether the British ironclads would have bested the Union ironclads and broken the Union’s blockade of the Confederate sea ports.

While Britain and France were allies during the Crimean War (1857-58), the French Navy had a wooden steam fleet which briefly achieved numerical equality to the British wooden steam fleet. “This fact, in combination with the laying down of Gloire [by the French] in March of 1858, sparked off the [British] invasion scare of 1858-59.”

The Gloire was an armor-clad wooden ship. French Emperor Napoleon III ordered the construction of the Gloire as a direct challenge to the previous forty five year British command and control of the world’s seas using wooden ships. HMS Warrior was the British answer to Gloire and the policy that she represented. “Warrior was in every respect a more advanced ship than Gloire, indeed so advanced that she could not have been built in France.” The Gloire was 256 foot, 5,500 ton ironclad wooden ship whereas the Warrior was an iron- hulled ship. The word “ironclad” is used in this essay and by other authors to refer to both armor- over-wood and entirely iron ships.

The Gloire was a seagoing harbor assault ship whereas the Warrior was a 420 foot long and fast 9,000 ton frigate which was not designed for harbor assault. The Warrior had four and one half inch thick wrought iron armor and forty 8 inch smooth bore and 7 inch rifled guns. Unlike the Gloire, these guns gave accuracy and armor piercing capability. When she entered service in 1861 HMS Warrior instantly rendered every other warship afloat obsolete and her combination of size, speed and firepower helped to defeat Imperial France in a major naval arms race. She was the ultimate Victorian deterrent.

The design deficiencies of the Warrior were significant. The screw propeller shaft was above the water line and a lucky shot could have disabled the vessel. The shaft should have been protected by armor. Since the knowledge of how to apply copper to iron did not exist at the time, the Warrior’s iron hull was easily fouled by barnacles that greatly reduced her speed and maneuverability. The British and the French had previously attached copper to the bottom of wooden ships in order to discourage fouling. Because of her 420 foot length, only a few.............

1 Andrew, Lambert, HMS Warrior 1860 Victoria’s Ironclad Deterrent. (Conway Maritime Press, 2011), p.8.
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Henri McPhee said:
I don't believe that remark by a solicitor about wooden ships in the British Navy being obsolete is factually incorrect.

This is a background quote about the matter from an internet article:
Quote:
THE END OF WOODEN WALLS: A COMPARISON OF HMS WARRIOR (1861) TO THE USS MONITOR (1862) David L. Hirsch

Abstract: In this article I will compare and contrast two warships, the British HMS Warrior and the American Union’s USS Monitor. These ships were the early ironclads which brought an end to the wooden ship navies of the world. Although they never met in battle, both ships were available for military action during the first years of the American Civil War (1861-1865). From early November 1861 until the end of December of the same year Britain and the American Union almost came to war with each other over the HMS Trent Affair. This article will speculate whether the British ironclads would have bested the Union ironclads and broken the Union’s blockade of the Confederate sea ports.

While Britain and France were allies during the Crimean War (1857-58), the French Navy had a wooden steam fleet which briefly achieved numerical equality to the British wooden steam fleet. “This fact, in combination with the laying down of Gloire [by the French] in March of 1858, sparked off the [British] invasion scare of 1858-59.”

The Gloire was an armor-clad wooden ship. French Emperor Napoleon III ordered the construction of the Gloire as a direct challenge to the previous forty five year British command and control of the world’s seas using wooden ships. HMS Warrior was the British answer to Gloire and the policy that she represented. “Warrior was in every respect a more advanced ship than Gloire, indeed so advanced that she could not have been built in France.” The Gloire was 256 foot, 5,500 ton ironclad wooden ship whereas the Warrior was an iron- hulled ship. The word “ironclad” is used in this essay and by other authors to refer to both armor- over-wood and entirely iron ships.

The Gloire was a seagoing harbor assault ship whereas the Warrior was a 420 foot long and fast 9,000 ton frigate which was not designed for harbor assault. The Warrior had four and one half inch thick wrought iron armor and forty 8 inch smooth bore and 7 inch rifled guns. Unlike the Gloire, these guns gave accuracy and armor piercing capability. When she entered service in 1861 HMS Warrior instantly rendered every other warship afloat obsolete and her combination of size, speed and firepower helped to defeat Imperial France in a major naval arms race. She was the ultimate Victorian deterrent.

The design deficiencies of the Warrior were significant. The screw propeller shaft was above the water line and a lucky shot could have disabled the vessel. The shaft should have been protected by armor. Since the knowledge of how to apply copper to iron did not exist at the time, the Warrior’s iron hull was easily fouled by barnacles that greatly reduced her speed and maneuverability. The British and the French had previously attached copper to the bottom of wooden ships in order to discourage fouling. Because of her 420 foot length, only a few.............

1 Andrew, Lambert, HMS Warrior 1860 Victoria’s Ironclad Deterrent. (Conway Maritime Press, 2011), p.8.
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highlightedHuh!? This is simply not true. It is as if that person has never seen a picture of Warrior. The propellor shaft is underwater now and that is with Warriors diminished draft (her not carrying any coals, ammo and other stuff). With a full load, the shaft is even deeper under water.

Should be, because a propellor shaft above water would not work for a ship like that (or any ship for that matter).

Considering the highlighted nonsense in this quote. What else is nonsense as well?

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I've found the abstract. It is even worse than the quote you mentioned above.
 
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Henri McPhee said:
I don't believe that remark by a solicitor about wooden ships in the British Navy being obsolete is factually incorrect.
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Which was not, of course, the point that was being made; the point being made was that HMS Warrior, in service the year after La Gloire, was a superior ship, and that the Royal Navy did not therefore ignore the superiority of ironclads over wooden warships. Rather, it adopted a very sensible policy of "imitate and overtake", producing superior designs to the initial French ironclads and then relying on superior industrial capacity to build up a significantly superior force.

Henri McPhee said:
This is a background quote about the matter from an internet article:
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I suggest you read it yourself. It comprehensively refutes the point you were trying to make with your earlier, and very poorly informed, quote.

Dave
 
Churchill's Appeasement

Churchill was guilty of appeasement of Stalin. He agreed at Yalta to give Poland to the Soviet Union. This was after fully knowing what a murderous tyrant Stalin was as he had helped to cover up the Katyn massacre for him.
www.heretical.com/miscellx/churchil.html The Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17 1939 -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland
Churchill completely ignored this and appeased Stalin after the soviet-nazi war broke out. Then in 1945 he agrees to Poland being given to Stalin. The entire British Empire (Australia, Canada, Fiji, India, New Zealand, South Africa etc) went to war because Germany invaded Poland and yet Churchill hands it over to Stalin at wars end. It made a mockery of the reason for going to war in the first place -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYJ1_RG2xS4
 
Mondial said:
Churchill was guilty of appeasement of Stalin. He agreed at Yalta to give Poland to the Soviet Union. This was after fully knowing what a murderous tyrant Stalin was as he had helped to cover up the Katyn massacre for him.
www.heretical.com/miscellx/churchil.html The Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17 1939 -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland
Churchill completely ignored this and appeased Stalin after the soviet-nazi war broke out. Then in 1945 he agrees to Poland being given to Stalin. The entire British Empire (Australia, Canada, Fiji, India, New Zealand, South Africa etc) went to war because Germany invaded Poland and yet Churchill hands it over to Stalin at wars end. It made a mockery of the reason for going to war in the first place -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYJ1_RG2xS4
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You mean because Churchill complied with Stalin (who occupied Poland in 1944-45 because he wanted to, and had the opportunity), that justifies Hitler's invasion of 1939? Stalin presented his incursion into Poland (justifiably) as intended to evict the Germans from that country; he created a Polish government (of a kind agreeable to himself, needless to say) and committed crimes, but not genocide. Nothing in Stalin's behaviour, or the Allies' response to it, justifies Hitler's unprovoked prior invasion of Poland, or the fiendish atrocities perpetrated there by the Nazis.

Your linked source, by the way, has another piece of alleged information about Churchill, that you have omitted from your post. Here it is.
‘Cunning, no doubt, came to Churchill in the Jewish genes transmitted by his mother Lady Randolph Churchill, née Jenny Jacobson/Jerome.’​

ETA Another item from the same source.
International Jewry declared war against Germany in 1933 simply because the German government had removed Jews from influential positions and transferred power back to the German people.​
 
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Mondial said:
Churchill was guilty of appeasement of Stalin. He agreed at Yalta to give Poland to the Soviet Union. This was after fully knowing what a murderous tyrant Stalin was as he had helped to cover up the Katyn massacre for him.
www.heretical.com/miscellx/churchil.html The Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17 1939 -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland
Churchill completely ignored this and appeased Stalin after the soviet-nazi war broke out. Then in 1945 he agrees to Poland being given to Stalin. The entire British Empire (Australia, Canada, Fiji, India, New Zealand, South Africa etc) went to war because Germany invaded Poland and yet Churchill hands it over to Stalin at wars end. It made a mockery of the reason for going to war in the first place -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYJ1_RG2xS4
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I agree that both Roosevelt and Churchill, and even Eisenhower, can be accused of appeasement at Yalta with Stalin in 1945 with regard to Poland and Poland's elections and frontiers. This despite the fact it was obvious that Stalin had treated the Poles abominably by not giving them practical encouragement during the Warsaw uprising, and also Stalin was determined to install a Soviet administration in Poland. The excuse would probably be that it was necessary to keep Russia in the war as it was still not won.

I remember once reading a book by the Polish General Anders who fought with the Allies during the war. He said that the Germans were defeated by General Mud and General Frost, and then he called for Britain and America to march on Moscow. The problem with that was the UK was nearly bankrupt then, and it would not have been supported by public opinion. I think it was sad that no Polish troops or airmen attended the Victory Parade in 1945, possibly in order not to offend Stalin.

Churchill can also be accused of appeasement in agreeing to Roosevelt's demands at the beginning of the war for self determination of the British colonies, and for them to be given to the black people, though I agree we could not have held on to India after the war.

I still think that Putin is not Stalin and that there is no evidence, as the Liberal politician Shirley Williams thinks, that Putin desperately wants to annexe the Baltic states.

There is a bit about this matter in a book called Sir Anthony Eden by Alan Campbell-Johnson published in 1955:

It was at Yalta that agreement was finally reached with Russia on the Polish question, and although it is undoubtedly the fact that it would have been impossible to have insisted upon any other solution without imperilling the Grand Alliance at a time when the war was not yet won, many consciences in many of the Allied countries were uneasy The Polish Government in London announced that they refused to accept the conditions.
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There are people now, including the former British ambassador to Bonn in the 1950s, Sir Roy Denman, who think it was a mistake for Chamberlain to give Poland a guarantee in 1939 and to introduce conscription and that Britain should have stayed out of the war. I find this extraordinary. Britain and even Canada and America would have been next after Russia was defeated, and with Panzers and the Luftwaffe a few miles off of the South Coast of the UK.

Harold Nicholson once wrote that three nobleman at his club had told him they would prefer a Nazi government in London to a Corbyn style government because Corbyn doesn't have a talent for business. They were the real appeasers and not Chamberlain.
 
Henri McPhee said:
Churchill can also be accused of appeasement in agreeing to Roosevelt's demands at the beginning of the war for self determination of the British colonies, and for them to be given to the black people, though I agree we could not have held on to India after the war.
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Eh? Am I reading this correctly, or do you really mean what you have written? "Giving British colonies to the black people" is "appeasement"?
 
No where near enough perspective is given to the influence of WWI on the decisions made in the run up to WWII. All of the politicians involved clearly remembered WWI. The British and French did not want an all powerful Germany upsetting the balance of power. After allowing it to return to WWI size, they watched as the expansion continued, hoping war could be avoided, but they had to draw a line in the sand, which was Poland. The aim was keep a balance of power so no one would want to fight anyone else and destroy each other. It was like the later MAD policy re nuclear weapons.

I also think that not enough attention is spent on what Hitler actually wanted. His aim was Lebensraum in the east, removal of the Jews and a buffer against communism. He hoped to get that with France and the British keeping out, thinking they would support his fight with communism. There was also enough anti-Semitism in Britain and France for him to think they would not be too concerned about the Jewish people. He did not recognise fascism is just another anti-democratic, repressive, dictatorship, which would also be opposed.
 
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