Split Thread WWII & Appeasement

[Klimax]

"Best argument against democracy is five minute talk with a voter".

 

[theprestige]

"Best argument against democracy is five minute talk with a voter".

On the other hand, the best argument for democracy is a five minute talk with someone convinced that most people are incompetent to vote.

 

[HansMustermann]

Oh, most are. The real argument for democracy is that all alternatives we've tried so far are far far worse.

And not just for human rights reasons. A dictatorship is necessarily inefficient, as it requires SOMEHOW placating the other powerful guys so they don't depose you. Probably THE main reason (out of several) that Germany lost the war, was the institutionalized chaos in both the military and government, some of which I have mentioned before, where power games and insubordination were actually encouraged. But that's one way to keep them from working together and possibly deciding to replace the guy at the top. That's an inherent problem of any realistic dictatorship.

 

[theprestige]

Oh, most are.

I disagree. Yours is a poisonously misanthropic idea.

 

[Andy_Ross]

I agree with HansMustermann

Voters gave us Trump and Brexit.

 

[Henri McPhee]

Firstly it was not the false information that formed Chamberlain's views, but those views that made him willingly to uncritically accept that information. Allow that Chamberlain viewed the Versailles treaty as unnecessarily vindictive and that he regarded the real threat as Soviet Communism (Germany and Italy were after all still capitalist societies even if they were dictatorships) and a stronger Germany is justifiable, things like the Christie-X report just provided a rationale for continuing to do so.

However in continuing appeasement when he became PM Chamberlain was ignoring a fundamental principle of British foreign policy towards the continent, to avoid any one nation becoming over mighty, potentially threatening the channel coast and Britain's vital seaborne trade. If Chamberlain was genuinely alarmed at the strength of Nazi Germany he should have done what his predecessors had done for two centuries, construct alliances to provide a counterbalance and check German expansionism. Instead he further strengthened Germany at Munich and paved the way for Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which almost fatally undermined Britain's position and did prove fatal to France.

As far as the Sudeten Germans go, well Chamberlain was sadly right when he referred to the dispute over the Sudeten as 'a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing'. I seriously doubt the British people would have been any more concerned about the fate of the Sudeten Germans than they were about the fate of the Czech's post Munich.

You need to get real about this. Chamberlain was concerned at the time in 1938 that Germany intended to invade the UK and London, as well as the Czechs and Russia. Chamberlain had no powerful ally. He tried to keep Italy out of the war. The French High Command was in a bad state. America had signed a Neutrality act and was militarily weak and Russia was not much help. There were deficiencies in the air force in 1938. It's no good being an armchair admiral. You can't declare war on a wing and a prayer.

 

[Degeneve]

You need to get real about this. Chamberlain was concerned at the time in 1938 that Germany intended to invade the UK and London, as well as the Czechs and Russia. Chamberlain had no powerful ally. He tried to keep Italy out of the war. The French High Command was in a bad state. America had signed a Neutrality act and was militarily weak and Russia was not much help. There were deficiencies in the air force in 1938. It's no good being an armchair admiral. You can't declare war on a wing and a prayer.

As a matter of fact Hitler did not intend to "invade the UK and London " in 1938. By the way, he never evoked this possibility in Mein Kampf. All what he wanted was to keep the UK outside the wars he intended to lead to the East for the Lebensraum) or even to have the UK fighting on his side against the Soviets.

There is not a coincidence that von Ribbentrop's loss of indluence found its starting point on 3 September 1939, when the UK declared war to Germany. Hitler did not expect this to happen and von Ribbentrop had assured him this would not happen.

Finally if Germany had not the means to "invade the UK and London" in September 1940 it had them even less in 1938.

 

[SpitfireIX]

You need to get real about this.

Chamberlain was concerned at the time in 1938 that Germany intended to invade the UK and London . . .

First, what is your evidence that Chamberlain was so concerned? Second, you have repeatedly been asked to, and failed to, explain how Germany was going to invade the UK (of which London is a part, BTW) in 1938.

Chamberlain had no powerful ally.

France and Czechoslovakia weren't powerful?

He tried to keep Italy out of the war.

What does that have to do with appeasement in 1938?

The French High Command was in a bad state.

For certain values of "a bad state." However, that doesn't mean the French Army would have surrendered en masse or stood idly by while the Germans marched to Paris.

America had signed a Neutrality act and was militarily weak . . .

First, you claimed earlier that America had the "military clout" to intervene on behalf of Czechoslovakia. When you were corrected on this you failed to admit your error and simply changed your story as if you'd never made the claim to begin with.

Second, there were several Neutrality Acts passed during the 1930s. The fall of 1938 was actually a better time for Britain and France to receive US aid than the fall of 1939, as the Neutrality Act of 1937 contained a "cash-and-carry" clause that would have allowed those countries to purchase arms from America immediately. This provision lapsed in May 1939, and was not renewed until November of that year, which resulted in a two-month delay in such purchases from the beginning of the war.

. . . and Russia was not much help.

Your opinion, with no evidence provided, as usual. The Soviet Union unquestionably had the military capacity to intervene effectively on behalf of Czechoslovakia, particularly with air power; whether Stalin would have actually done so is a question that historians continue to debate.

There were deficiencies in the air force in 1938.

First, as has been explained to you ad nauseam, the RAF was perfectly capable of dealing with any air attacks the Germans could have mounted against Britain in the fall of 1938. Second, there would have been enough operational Spitfire and Hurricane squadrons to have adequately supported the BEF by the spring of 1939, which is the absolute earliest that Germany could have launched any sort of ground offensive on the Western Front.

Second, I note that you have dropped your claim that there were also deficiencies in the British Army in 1938. This is presumably because I've pointed out to you that Chamberlain failed to take any steps to correct those deficiencies until after Hitler violated the Munich Agreement. So yet again, you've failed to acknowledge your error, and simply pretended that you never made it in the first place.

It's no good being an armchair admiral. You can't declare war on a wing and a prayer.

And, has been explained to you, again ad nauseam, the Allies were in a much stronger military position with respect to Germany in September 1938 than they were a year later. This isn't just the opinion of some armchair strategists; it's an incontrovertible and easily demonstrable historical fact.

 

[Garrison]

You need to get real about this.

Everyone else has, you are the one who consistently refuses to deal in facts.

Chamberlain was concerned at the time in 1938 that Germany intended to invade the UK and London.

And here's a classic example, there is no evidence to support such a suggestion, indeed the available facts make it clear that Hitler wanted to avoid fighting the British if possible.

as well as the Czechs and Russia. Chamberlain had no powerful ally.

Apart from the Czech's and the USSR you mean? BTW it is the USSR and not Russia, they are not the same thing. If Chamberlain felt Britain lacked allies then why pursue a policy designed to drive other nations into the German sphere of influence?

He tried to keep Italy out of the war.

Which was a waste of time, only when France was on the brink of defeat did Mussolini enter the war in 1940. in 1938 he would have done precisely nothing unless the Wehrmacht pulled off a miracle in the West

The French High Command was in a bad state.

And faced with the unexpected nature of the German assault in 1940 such weakness was a fatal flaw. However against a Germany army forced to adopt a more conventional strategy they would probably have been adequate.

America had signed a Neutrality act and was militarily weak

Directly contradicting your earlier claim about them having the military clout to intervene. One of these two claims is false, which are you going to retract?

and Russia was not much help.

The USSR would have been a huge help in 1938, both by forcing Hitler to divert resources to defend a potential eastern front, assuming the Soviets didn't intervene directly to help the Czech's, and of course no M-R pact means Germany is robbed of vital supplies of food and raw materials.

There were deficiencies in the air force in 1938.

Relative to 1940 yes, but they would have been adequate to deal with any Luftwaffe planes that could actually reach Britain in 1938. Still waiting for you to link to the post where the claim was made that the bombers couldn't reach Britain BTW, are you going to be providing that any time soon?

It's no good being an armchair admiral.

So it's a good thing we keep directing you to the real German Admirals, Generals, and Finance officials who made it clear that a war in 1938 would be disastrous isn't it? Again why are you willing to accept the opinions of those officers that they could have succeeded with Sealion, but ignore their views, recorded at the time rather than in self-serving memoirs years after the war, that Germany could not win in 1938?

You can't declare war on a wing and a prayer.

Which is what Germany would have been doing if war had come in 1938.

Please Henri, stop googling for any online quote that you misguidedly think backs up your claims and start doing some proper reading on the subject if you want to discuss it seriously.

 

[HansMustermann]

I disagree. Yours is a poisonously misanthropic idea.

Well... it is. Guilty as charged. But being misanthropic doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong.

About a third of the voters voted for Hitler. And not as much because they wanted what he said, but to show the middle finger to the traditional parties and political coalitions who had lost the public trust. Do I need to say more?

Mind you, I'm not necessarily saying people are too STUPID to vote, but frankly, if you think every barber and taxi driver actually understands the economics and demographics and crime statistics and so on behind the proposed agendas, you're naive at best. Sure, every one of them can talk out the ass AT LENGTH about how yeah, they'd just do this and that and fix everything, but frankly that's just courtesy of Messrs Dunning and Kruger. And that's the people who'll vote on what gets done.

Actually, let me even doubt that they're not stupid. I submit to you: Brexit. I was watching the interviews on the street the couple of days after the referendum. Well, more like facepalming than watching, really. Person after person going some variant of "uh, we didn't want that, but we thought it won't actually happen. Can we vote again?"

That goes beyond Dunning-Kruger and into the realm of outright stupidity. Now I don't doubt that some actually wanted a brexit. But then there were a couple million people who actually voted AGAINST what they wanted. It's not even whether what they wanted was feasible, or whether they understood the implications. It's that they flat out voted AGAINST what they actually wanted.

If that's not a reason to be misanthropic about Joe Voter, I don't know what is.


Mind you, just to make it clear, I like democracy, but really just because everything else we tried is far worse. Not because of believing that Joe Voter actually knows what he's voting for.

 

[SpitfireIX]

Another point about declaring war in 1938: Britain and France sharply increased military spending during the first year of fighting; had the war started during the Munich crisis, this dramatic increase in Allied military budgets would have come a year earlier. Germany, by contrast, was already increasing its military spending as rapidly as possible. So this would have put the Western Allies in a significantly stronger position in 1940, which is the soonest that Germany could have possibly launched any sort of blitzkrieg on the Western Front, than they were historically. This is even ignoring the issue of all the German and Czech war materiel that would have been destroyed or otherwise expended in 1938.

 

[Garrison]

Another point about declaring war in 1938: Britain and France sharply increased military spending during the first year of fighting; had the war started during the Munich crisis, this dramatic increase in Allied military budgets would have come a year earlier. Germany, by contrast, was already increasing its military spending as rapidly as possible. So this would have put the Western Allies in a significantly stronger position in 1940, which is the soonest that Germany could have possibly launched any sort of blitzkrieg on the Western Front, than they were historically. This is even ignoring the issue of all the German and Czech war materiel that would have been destroyed or otherwise expended in 1938.

In fact the German rearmament drive had already run into serious issues in 1937 as plans had to be scaled back because of issues with resource allocation. This was a recurring theme of the Nazi economy and the fixes usually amounted to cutting deeper into the civilian economy plus slave labour and stripping resources from the conquered territories later.

Had the Western powers had an accurate picture of the condition of the Germany military and economy I doubt they would have been so accommodating at Munich.

 

[SpitfireIX]

In fact the German rearmament drive had already run into serious issues in 1937 as plans had to be scaled back because of issues with resource allocation. This was a recurring theme of the Nazi economy and the fixes usually amounted to cutting deeper into the civilian economy plus slave labour and stripping resources from the conquered territories later.

Yeah. I always get a laugh out of that episode of ST:TOS, when they say that the Nazi system, run benignly, would be the most efficient economy.

Had the Western powers had an accurate picture of the condition of the Germany military and economy I doubt they would have been so accommodating at Munich.

One would hope not, but I'm not sure I'm willing to give Chamberlain and Daladier that much credit.

 

[Garrison]

Yeah. I always get a laugh out of that episode of ST:TOS, when they say that the Nazi system, run benignly, would be the most efficient economy.

Yeah in the 1960's they were still very much buying into Albert Speer's myth of the total war economy and the 'armaments miracle' of 1943-44. The reality was an ever increasing level of coercion and the progressive collapse of every other part of German society to feed the armaments drive. Adam Tooze is definitely not a Speer fan as he spends a couple of chapters in 'Wages of Destruction' deconstructing the mythos he created. Guess Tooze's work didn't survive WWIII.

One would hope not, but I'm not sure I'm willing to give Chamberlain and Daladier that much credit.

Yeah this is the big question mark over Chamberlain's decision making, the level to which he believed what he wanted to believe so he could justify a policy he had already decided on. Wouldn't have been the first, or last, politician to do so.

 

[HansMustermann]

Another point about declaring war in 1938: Britain and France sharply increased military spending during the first year of fighting; had the war started during the Munich crisis, this dramatic increase in Allied military budgets would have come a year earlier. Germany, by contrast, was already increasing its military spending as rapidly as possible. So this would have put the Western Allies in a significantly stronger position in 1940, which is the soonest that Germany could have possibly launched any sort of blitzkrieg on the Western Front, than they were historically. This is even ignoring the issue of all the German and Czech war materiel that would have been destroyed or otherwise expended in 1938.

I'm not sure if rapidly increasing the war spending was a blessing, and that's putting it mildly, since it had been stalling the German economy for a couple of years at that point. Essentially you had more and more percentage put into army... out of an economy that wasn't growing nearly as fast as that of any of its neighbours. I think Germany would have actually been in a better position even militarily in, say, '41, if it had imported more stuff for the industry instead of diverting all resources into weapons and into feeding a huge army.

 

[Henri McPhee]

Relative to 1940 yes, but they would have been adequate to deal with any Luftwaffe planes that could actually reach Britain in 1938. Still waiting for you to link to the post where the claim was made that the bombers couldn't reach Britain BTW, are you going to be providing that any time soon?



So it's a good thing we keep directing you to the real German Admirals, Generals, and Finance officials who made it clear that a war in 1938 would be disastrous isn't it? Again why are you willing to accept the opinions of those officers that they could have succeeded with Sealion, but ignore their views, recorded at the time rather than in self-serving memoirs years after the war, that Germany could not win in 1938?



Which is what Germany would have been doing if war had come in 1938.

Please Henri, stop googling for any online quote that you misguidedly think backs up your claims and start doing some proper reading on the subject if you want to discuss it seriously.

I don't know what you are on about. You seem to think that Hitler could not possibly have defeated France and Belgium and Denmark, and the Czechs and Poland, and that he only had good intentions towards the British and Channel Islands, who could not possibly be bombed or invaded because of the bad state of the German economy, and the RAF Gloster Gladiators and Bristol Blenheims. Neither were America and Russia in peril. Britain was caught with its pants down in 1938. Chamberlain provided another year to get organised.

https://www.findmypast.co.uk/1939register/why-britain-issued-gas-masks-ww2

 

[Andy_Ross]

In fact the German rearmament drive had already run into serious issues in 1937 as plans had to be scaled back because of issues with resource allocation. This was a recurring theme of the Nazi economy and the fixes usually amounted to cutting deeper into the civilian economy plus slave labour and stripping resources from the conquered territories later.

Had the Western powers had an accurate picture of the condition of the Germany military and economy I doubt they would have been so accommodating at Munich.

A good example is something as mundane as motor transport. Germany couldn't produce enough trucks and lorries to equip its army even in piece. When the war actually started they never stood a chance, they could barely keep up with losses, civilian motor transport was almost completely commandeered for military use. This had a choking effect on the economy.
Horses were still important up until the end.

 

[Andy_Ross]

I don't know what you are on about. You seem to think that Hitler could not possibly have defeated France and Belgium and Denmark, and the Czechs and Poland, and that he only had good intentions towards the British and Channel Islands, who could not possibly be bombed or invaded because of the bad state of the German economy, and the RAF Gloster Gladiators and Bristol Blenheims. Neither were America and Russia in peril. Britain was caught with its pants down in 1938. Chamberlain provided another year to get organised.

https://www.findmypast.co.uk/1939register/why-britain-issued-gas-masks-ww2

What?

 

[Hans]

I don't know what you are on about.

Yes you do. You are wrong and instead of understanding that you are stamping your feet, repeating the same failed comments and threatening to hold your breath until you turn blue.

Boring same old Henri - I suggest you either get new facts or a new strategy....lol

 

[Garrison]

I don't know what you are on about.

That's been painfully obvious for a few pages now.

You seem to think that Hitler could not possibly have defeated France and Belgium and Denmark, and the Czechs and Poland.

No, as I've explained to you multiple times it was the German Generals and finance ministers who believed that, your constantly ignoring this fact does nothing to strengthen your argument, such as it is.

and that he only had good intentions towards the British and Channel Islands

Again this is a matter of historical record, Hitler wanted to avoid war with Britain, how are you not aware of this?

who could not possibly be bombed or invaded because of the bad state of the German economy, and the RAF Gloster Gladiators and Bristol Blenheims.

No one has said the Luftwaffe couldn't bomb Britain, they've pointed out your claim that Britain could be defeated in a week by aerial bombardment is ludicrous. Britain absolutely could not be invaded by Germany in 1938, again the facts that explain why have been explained to you repeatedly, that you choose to ignore them doesn't make them any less true.

Neither were America and Russia in peril. Britain was caught with its pants down in 1938.

Utter nonsense, only the Luftwaffe had any advantage over the UK in 1938, the other branches of the Wehrmacht were utterly inadequate.

Chamberlain provided another year to get organised.

Yes, which the Germans gained far more from than the UK, how is this an argument in favour of his policy?

https://www.findmypast.co.uk/1939register/why-britain-issued-gas-masks-ww2

Yes they were concerned about gas attacks, which proved like so much else to be a false concern.