ddt
Mafia Penguin
Yeah, so what's the big deal with the 269B gold mark that was initially made out as the reparations for Versailles? Why didn't Germany just loan that money on the Frankfurt exchange?That is a factor of 4, not counting other losses, like all it's colonies. Debt can be refinanced and spread out over a longer term.
You really throw around that word "German" with very little specificity. What do you mean?We already discussed that France had taken the mainly German Elzas by force. It went back.
That it's geographically in your conception of Germany? As in west of the Maas, see the first strophe of the Deutschlandlied: "Von der Maas bis an die Memel, von der Etsch bis an den Belt"?
Or that they speak some Germanic dialect? Really, if you look at the German dialect continuum, Dutch is as much as a (Low Franconian) dialect as Luxemburgish, Alsatian or Swiss German. The Alsatians didn't, and don't speak German, they speak Alsatian, and someone from Berlin can't understand them.
Or that they feel "ethnic Germans"? I've seen no evidence.
And yes, the Alsace was politically French since Louis XIV.
You have very little in the way of counter arguments.ddt tries to minimize Versailles:
See the new ignorance listing.Sounds sinister. Not sure what you mean by this. What was wrong with post 1871 German behavior? That they spoke German? Made great economic progress?
It's never Hitler's fault in your world. Yes we get it.Hitler did not want to see that experience repeated. the invasion of Western Europe was forced upon him.
We've already gone over this. Hitler had already showed that if you give him one finger, he takes the whole hand. There was no realistic peace offer in October. And England didn't try to invade Norway, only lay mines.To sum it up: Britain and France declared war on Germany after refusing to cooperate in giving the German town of Danzig back, that had stolen in Versailles from Germany and Hitler took it back by force. Then there was a peace offer by Hitler in October to recreate a Polish rump state, which was turned down. In march it became obvious that Churchill was preparing for an invasion of Norway.
And therefore, they built a big fleet. Useless (except for the U-boats), as can be seen from the naval history of WW1, as it never made it out of the Northsea, but it did manage to piss off Britain to no end. That was actually the prime objective of Tirpitz, though he worded it a bit differently.Fact of the matter is that British government officials like Grey, did not like at all to see that a powerful competitor was emerging o the continent. So the Germans had all reason to prepare themselves.
Thanks for proving my point. You used the fact the Viennese speak German to argue it should belong to Germany.Flemish Dutch. Nevertheless, the Flemish would hate to see to be united by a larger group of lefty Dutch fanatics