• 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

HansMustermann said:
As are such posts that don't add anything of value, apparently. Why bother actually reading some history and talking about it, when you can feel just as good by standing on the sidelines and making content-free snide remarks :p

I suppose you could call that verbal gymnastics though :p
Click to expand...

My good Hans, I read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich when it first came out in paperback.

If you'd like some history, visit my sites. Hyperwar and World War II Resources. You can download both sites if you have 250+ gigabytes of storage free.
 
Well, then I trust you can make better use of all that knowledge, than trolling a thread with content-free ad-hominem circumstantial speculations. You know, like actually share some actual information? Just a thought.
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, then I trust you can make better use of all that knowledge, than trolling a thread with content-free ad-hominem circumstantial speculations. You know, like actually share some actual information? Just a thought.
Click to expand...

My point was pertinent. You are simply playing games with the circumstances surrounding the annexation of the Sudentenland.
 
Actually the point had zero relevance. It's just elementary logic, after all, that an ad-hominem circumstantial is a fallacy, and thus irrelevant. Just that you want to believe otherwise isn't going to rewrite logic, I'm afraid. Sorry. It's about 2500 years too late to argue whether logic applies or we should go by "but my opponent does just verbal gymnastics" drivel.

Even "verbal gymnastics" or "playing games" or whatever can have a point. Address that or pretty much get lost. If there is some wrong information there, surely you can address that, rather than speculate about form and intentions.
 
As is content-free ego-wank trolling, when you're not actually able to address the point, apparently. Why bother arguing a point when you can just do an ego jack-off by saying it's just spin doctoring? All the satisfaction and zero brain use or knowledge needed ;)
 
HansMustermann said:
Except what I was trying to say is that he didn't claim that right, and nobody granted him that right. If they had granted him the right to annex lands with a majority German population, then Danzig wouldn't have been the grenade pin of the world war.

The way it was framed was not that Hitler has a right to annex anything, but whether the Sudeten Germans have a right to secede from Czechoslovakia and join Germany, if that's what they want, and they're a majority in those lands.

ETA: What I'm trying to say is that people focus on ideas taken out of context like "appeasing Hitler" or "letting Germany annex some area", and lose sight of the context that the UK actually thought that the Sudeten Germans actually have a point. Or that the very reason why it looked like it's even possible to appease Hitler was because it looks like he's only demanding that a legitimate grievance be addressed, and the UK and France thought he'd only stick to such legitimate grievances. If anyone thought he's just demanding yet another random region, for no other reason than wanting to annex something, nobody would have assumed there's a limit to that.
Click to expand...
That's very foolish! because as I have already stated, the Anschluss can't be justified in such terms. The German speaking Austrians weren't being oppressed by any other people. Nor do I believe that the Entente was willing to let Hitler take what territory he wanted. The UK and France set the Sudeten area as a limit, and drew the line at further expansion, into Memelland and then Danzig and the Polish Corridor. Hitler strove to exaggerate the grievances of the Sudetenlanders and made sure that their demands could never be addressed. They were a mere pretext. So the Entente should never have conceded the Czechoslovak territory to Hitler. If ethnic German enthusiasm was the only issue, why not let Hitler take these later territories, by the way?
 
Oh, I have no doubt that Hitler was using it only as a pretext, or that he actually just wanted the heavy industry there and to bypass the fortifications. That is something we can agree on pretty quickly.

But sometimes the issue used as a pretext can be a real issue, and incidentally Chamberlain thought it was a real issue in the case of Sudetenland.

ETA: And by "issue", again, I don't mean just "ethnic enthusiasm". The report he trusted mentioned actual discrimination.
 
Last edited:
HansMustermann said:
*shrug* something belonging to some kingdom in 980, hardly is accepted as a valid claim nowadays. I mean, equally northern Italy had been within the HRE borders at that time, and nobody took that as an invitation to redraw that border :p
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitration_Commission_of_the_Peace_Conference_on_Yugoslavia:
Opinion No. 3 (Borders)

On 20 November 1991 Lord Carrington asked: "Can the internal boundaries between Croatia and Serbia and between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia be regarded as frontiers in terms of public international law?" Applying the principle of uti possidetis, the commission concluded on 11 January 1992 that "The boundaries between Croatia and Serbia, between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, and possibly other adjacent independent states may not be altered except by agreement freely arrived at." and "Except where otherwise agreed, the former boundaries become frontiers protected by international law."[2]
Click to expand...
So yes, it is.

ETA: my original claim was not just that those were the borders of Bohemia and Moravia in 980, but that they had been the borders continuously since 980, i.e., also as borders of the respective administrative division of the Habsburg Empire.

As an aside, I note that Hans-Friedrich Genscher acted against opinion #5, to the dismay of Eurocommissioner Hans van den Broek.
 
Last edited:
ddt said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitration_Commission_of_the_Peace_Conference_on_Yugoslavia:

So yes, it is.

ETA: my original claim was not just that those were the borders of Bohemia and Moravia in 980, but that they had been the borders continuously since 980, i.e., also as borders of the respective administrative division of the Habsburg Empire.

As an aside, I note that Hans-Friedrich Genscher acted against opinion #5, to the dismay of Eurocommissioner Hans van den Broek.
Click to expand...
Can you comment on whether the old internal boundaries of former Yugoslavia are of comparable antiquity? Surely the Ottomans applied different arrangements in the regions they formerly administered? Or is the point that whenever they were drawn up, previous internal, now international, borders are unalterable? If that is so, it's shocking to think that Czechoslovakia wasn't even invited to the conferences that disposed of its territory.
 
HansMustermann said:
Are you serious? Both had been not only core parts of the HRE, but actually had dynasties on the throne.
Click to expand...
Nitpick: as far as Bohemia goes, no. Someone or other from the Luxembourg dynasty got on the HRE Emperor throne, and when the Bohemian throne got vacant, he took it for himself. So it's the other way round.

And the same happened with Upper Austria. The first Habsburg on the HRE throne only had possessions along the Aare in Switzerland, and took the vacant seat of Marchgrave of Upper Austria while being emperor.

(this apart from the fact that Craig obviously referenced German Empire release 2.0 and not release 1.x).
 
Craig B said:
Can you comment on whether the old internal boundaries of former Yugoslavia are of comparable antiquity? Surely the Ottomans applied different arrangements in the regions they formerly administered? Or is the point that whenever they were drawn up, previous internal, now international, borders are unalterable? If that is so, it's shocking to think that Czechoslovakia wasn't even invited to the conferences that disposed of its territory.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't know the antiquity of the various Yugoslav borders in general, sorry. The border between Croatia on the one hand, and B-H and Serbia on the other hand dates back to the 16th or 17th century at least: that was the border between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. The large Serb minority in, e.g., the Krajina dates back to that as well: they were attracted by good work contracts in the Habsburg defences.

IIRC, it is OECD policy to keep borders unchanged, but google doesn't yield me any results on that.

Irrespective of that all, it was of course ludicrous that Czechoslovakia was not invited in Munich to take part in discussions on its own fate.
 
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...

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.
 
HansMustermann said:
Yes, those lands had not belonged to Germany, they had belonged to Austria. And originally the Sudeten Germans had wanted to secede to Austria. Does it make it less of a legitimate demand?
Click to expand...

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.
 
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...
I find the efforts to justify this blatant land grab odd, but then the IHR has always baffled me a bit.
 
Gawdzilla said:
And those are in Europe? I'm American so I don't have a good grasp of geography. ;)
Click to expand...

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.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom