• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Question for Gawdzilla

ddt said:
And how should that have worked?
Here's a map of the spread of the Sudeten Germans in 1930.
Note that the border between Czechoslovakia and Austria starts east of the southernmost point of CS - to the west lies Bavaria. It would have made a state less compact than any gerrymandered election district ever, and non-contiguous with several exclaves.
Click to expand...

Well, obviously there is no perfect solution. But it seems to me like a shape could be found at Munich that doesn't include enclaves or make the state shape TOO odd, or not much more irregular than the previous shape. So, you know, we know that a solution exists. So it can't really be an unsolvable problem, if it has a solution, can it?
 
Gawdzilla said:
I find the efforts to justify this blatant land grab odd, but then the IHR has always baffled me a bit.
Click to expand...

Well, maybe you could explain what you don't understand or what information do you have conflicting with what was said, and we could have a more productive discussion from there.
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, obviously there is no perfect solution. But it seems to me like a shape could be found at Munich that doesn't include enclaves or make the state shape TOO odd, or not much more irregular than the previous shape. So, you know, we know that a solution exists. So it can't really be an unsolvable problem, if it has a solution, can it?
Click to expand...

You wasn't talking about Munich but about Versailles. Attaching it to Austria would have made a very funny shape. Unless Austria had united with Germany.

But then you've arrived at the Munich solution, which was to incorporate it into the German Empire release 3.0.
 
Well, even for Austria it's not hard to draw at least the southern border differently. Sure, it only solves half the problem, but it's still better than none.

But ultimately I wasn't aiming to propose any solution to the post-WW1 redrawing the map se, but simply than that the Czechs would have been better served by not being dicks. For better or worse they had been given 3 millions of ethnic Germans, and however happy or unhappy those may have originally been (actually a lot didn't seem to mind it initially,) the Czechs proceeded to make them REALLY unhappy. Which in the end helped convince the UK and France that maybe those guys do have a legitimate grievance.

There is hardly anything revisionist there, or anything that isn't mainstream history, really. There is hardly any conspiracy or controversy that Chamberlain and his initial envoys thought that the Sudeten Germans had a legitimate grievance.

It seems hard to imagine for some people that if Hitler was evil, everyone else involved could be less than saintly, but sometimes reality involves more than one person or group being a dick.

It's hardly anything non-mainstream for example, that the Czechs were actively settling ethnic Czechs in the German-majority regions, which nowadays is kinda frowned upon as a dick move. And by "frowned upon" I mean it's flat out forbidden by international treaties in at least some circumstances.

Or it's hardly anything that's not mainstream history in noting that the same Benesh government, later spent its years in exile writing whole reams of edicts after edicts on such topics as how all the ethnic Germans will lose their citizenships, and all the (newly) non-citizens must get the hell out, and how all the industries owned by (newly) foreigners will be confiscated, etc. Nor is there much of a controversy that they were immediately enacted after WW2, and STILL there have been no restitutions or anything.

Which, you know, nowadays tends to count as ethnic cleansing.

Now probably there was some knee-jerk reaction in that, it is still telling that ultimately the way that government saw as perfectly normal to prevent that from ever happening again was an ethnic cleansing. Maybe a less drastic one than Hitler's, but still, you know, generally seen as a dick move. It's hardly the kind of thing that reassures one that they weren't relly dicks to start with.

Nor is there much of a controversy about the expulsion of Germans from the border region, under the excuse of state security. Again, nowadays that kind of getting all of an ethnic group out of a place tends to count as, see above, ethnic cleansing.

Anyway, all I was saying is that ultimately that was a way to shoot oneself in the foot. Had the Benesh government created less of a massive dissent problem there, maybe history would have gone differently at Munich. Is all I'm saying.
 
Tolls said:
It's not the fortifications.
It's the air power.
The Czechs best fighter was a biplane. It was the best biplane ever produced, but it was still a biplane.
Click to expand...
In 1938 biplanes were still the thing. Zhukhov still had lots of them deployed against the Japanese in September 1939.
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, even for Austria it's not hard to draw at least the southern border differently. Sure, it only solves half the problem, but it's still better than none.
Click to expand...
When you look at that map, there are only six municipalities/districts bordering Austria, disconnected from the rest. The bulk of the Sudeten area is on the Thuringian/Saxonian border. The Sudeten area (those with >50% German speakers) consisted of six disconnected areas. There simply was no way to make them a separate state or to connect them to Austria.

HansMustermann said:
But ultimately I wasn't aiming to propose any solution to the post-WW1 redrawing the map se, but simply than that the Czechs would have been better served by not being dicks. For better or worse they had been given 3 millions of ethnic Germans, and however happy or unhappy those may have originally been (actually a lot didn't seem to mind it initially,) the Czechs proceeded to make them REALLY unhappy. Which in the end helped convince the UK and France that maybe those guys do have a legitimate grievance.
Click to expand...
I agree with you there, the Czechs could and should have treated the Sudeten Germans a lot better. They weren't all to nice to the other ethnic groups inside CS either, the Slovaks included.

HansMustermann said:
Or it's hardly anything that's not mainstream history in noting that the same Benesh government, later spent its years in exile writing whole reams of edicts after edicts on such topics as how all the ethnic Germans will lose their citizenships, and all the (newly) non-citizens must get the hell out, and how all the industries owned by (newly) foreigners will be confiscated, etc. Nor is there much of a controversy that they were immediately enacted after WW2, and STILL there have been no restitutions or anything.
Click to expand...
Wow. No, there haven't been any restitutions, but there has hardly been any reparation payment after WW2. The Soviets took some industry from East Germany, and that's it. If Germany had had to pay reparations for WW2 (as well as finalize the payments for WW1) they would still be paying through the nose, so I don't think you want to go there.

And I don't think many in Germany argue for that either, outside of the Bund der Heimatvertriebenen. That organization has traditionally been domineered by ex-Nazis, and currently is chaired by a woman who was "expelled" because she was born in the Warthegau as the daughter of an official of the Nazi occupation administration.

HansMustermann said:
Now probably there was some knee-jerk reaction in that, it is still telling that ultimately the way that government saw as perfectly normal to prevent that from ever happening again was an ethnic cleansing. Maybe a less drastic one than Hitler's, but still, you know, generally seen as a dick move. It's hardly the kind of thing that reassures one that they weren't relly dicks to start with.
Click to expand...
For completeness' sake, let's also mention that those Sudeten Germans who could make credible not to have collaborated with the Nazi occupation, could stay. The Benes decrets were, for all you can criticize of them, not a blanket ethnic cleansing.
 
ddt said:
... For completeness' sake, let's also mention that those Sudeten Germans who could make credible not to have collaborated with the Nazi occupation, could stay. The Benes decrets were, for all you can criticize of them, not a blanket ethnic cleansing.
Click to expand...
There were some oddities. I think I have heard of cases of German speaking Sudetenland Jews, survivors of the Holocaust, being expelled because they were listed as German in the 1930 national census.
 
ddt said:
I agree with you there, the Czechs could and should have treated the Sudeten Germans a lot better. They weren't all to nice to the other ethnic groups inside CS either, the Slovaks included.
Click to expand...

Aye, we can certainly agree that the Slovaks didn't draw a longer straw than the Sudeten either.

ddt said:
For completeness' sake, let's also mention that those Sudeten Germans who could make credible not to have collaborated with the Nazi occupation, could stay. The Benes decrets were, for all you can criticize of them, not a blanket ethnic cleansing.
Click to expand...

More like could reapply for getting citizenship, after losing it anyway, and it was up to the minister of interior to decide who made a strong enough case. Apparently virtually none managed to make that case.

It's not really much an excuse IMHO, when (A) it's still aimed specifically at an ethnic minority, and (B) it's applied anyway first, you just can contest it afterwards, and (C) it boils down to being guilty unless you can thoroughly prove yourself innocent. Sorry, I still don't think they're anything else than ethnic cleansing.

Plus, I don't think it has to be 100% thorough to count as ethnic cleansing. The Turks missed quite a few Armenians, but nobody thinks it was ok then. And Hitler gave thousands of Jews certificates that they're Aryan enough, but that doesn't quite make him less of a racist dick.
 
HansMustermann said:
The difference was that the Anschluss referendum was held by the occupying Nazis, after Austria was occupied. And is universally accepted as rigged. That doesn't apply to the support for secession in Czechoslovakia.



I wouldn't call it "Austrian yoke", but yes, Austria had been forbidden by the allies to unite with Germany.
Click to expand...
.
I kinda recall reading something about the rigging in a Gunner Asch novel by Hans Helmut Kirst, where people who had voted against the referendum were appalled to see tha 100% approval the vote counters came up with 30 years back or so.
 
ddt said:
That sounds a bit vague. The German army command inspected the fortifications and said they were glad they were not up against that.

Hasn't anyone made a wargame of it - either as a game or as a military exercise - with the real strengths of the German and the Czechoslovak armies and fortifications?
Click to expand...

Tolls said:
It's not the fortifications.
It's the air power.
The Czechs best fighter was a biplane. It was the best biplane ever produced, but it was still a biplane.

The fortifications also weren't as tough as Maginot. There's a map here. Only the red bits were Maginot equivalents (some better). The green were essentially pillboxes at best. Also note the incomplete bits. Yes, the big bunkers were impressive...as the site I linked to says, they were used as practice for Eben Emael. They weren't everywhere.

I've been digging around for the Chiefs of Staff report, but the National Archives aren't cooperating. Found the end of '37 defence expenditure plans, which covers the RAF and how badly outgunned it was compared to the Luftwaffe, and would be up to probably 1941, even with the planned big expansion. CP316(37) "DEFENCE EXPENDITURE IN FUTURE YEARS", if you're at all interested.
Click to expand...
Oops, I forgot to respond to this. There is a wargame for Fall Grun ('Case Green1, the German invasion plan for Czechoslovakia in 1938) in the always excellent Strategy & Tactics magazine, issue 152 (JUN1992).
It goes into pretty exhaustive detail about the political, military, ethnic, historical and technical background (including vehicles, aircraft, fortifications, politics, the 'little entente' and more).
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any way to acquire the issue, except via 'unofficial' PDF. Let me know if you're interested.

There also Turtledove's The War That Came Early; this alternate history series has it's major PoD3 a failure to agree at Munich and a general war breaking out after the Germans invade Czechoslovakia in 1938. Link. Link. Link.


1 Not to be confused with 'War Plan Green'
2 Well it is S&T, exhaustive detail is what they do, and do well
3 Sanjurjo also survives so the Spanish Civil War is rather different without Franco
 
ddt said:
LOL.

Iceland lies on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, so you may try to claim them for North America. Spitsbergen definitely lies on the European side.
Click to expand...
Well the Yanks arrived in '41 and are still there.

Tolls said:
The Irish are arguably more European than the UK.
They at least use the Euro...:)
Click to expand...
Indeed. We rather like Europe and the EEC/EC/EU.

ddt said:
And what about the 2008 financial crisis. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Never deregulate banks. No matter how much they whine.

Craig B said:
In 1938 biplanes were still the thing. Zhukhov still had lots of them deployed against the Japanese in September 1939.
Click to expand...
In '38 everyone used they as front line fighters, including the UK and France.

ddt said:
Wow. And apparently, the Irish worried enough that they didn't lift the state of emergency until the Troubles were well underway. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
We'd gone to the trouble of holding a referendum...........
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom