Split Thread WWII & Appeasement

[Tolls]

Um, isn't that some pro-Nazi "poor Germany" nonsense?
It seems to be implying there was a scheme hatched so that Germany would be wiped out?

"Stalin was pre-primed to attack the Nazis in 1941."
"The whole knuckle-biting drama of war and peace in 1939-41, including England as the lonely defender of freedom, was a charade. Germany was in the cross-hairs all along."

 

[Border Reiver]

This is an interesting opinion which I don't necessarily regard as the historical truth, but there is an interesting quote from the supposed appeaser Lord Halifax:

http://www.themillenniumreport.com/...asement-to-trick-hitler-into-a-two-front-war/

First - the opinion is that of a Nazi apologist diverting blame for WWII from Hitler onto Britain.

Second - it's bollocks (now that is my opinion and I trust you'll find it interesting).

The USSR was NOT pre-primed to start a war in 1941 with Nazi Germany. It had shortages of spare parts which was requiring the diversion of both spares and units back of the front. It was preparing trenchworks (note - you do not dig if you are going to attack), there were shortages of ammunition, and fuel for front line formations and no stockpiles that could be used to provide the logistic base for an attack. And until mid-41 was required to keep large forces in the East as a potential counter to the Japanese until the signing of their Non-Aggression Pact. These are the veteran units that were able to be the used to drive back the Germans starting in November 1941.

The myth that Hitler pre-empted Stalin's attack with Barbarossa was based on a book by a Soviet defector Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun who wrote under the pseudonym "Vicktor Suvorov". Essentially, the facts on the ground don't support his thesis, but the idea is popular with Hitler apologists who want to

a. Whitewash their hero by deflecting blame for the wars started by Nazi Germany onto someone else; and
b. Blame those damn Commies.

On the face of the historical evidence for Lord Halifax - given that he supported Chamberlain's policy of appeasement prior to Munich, and began to switch after the absorption of the rest of what is now the Czech Republic to preparing for a conflict the idea of setting up what looks to be a two front war for Germany as a means of securing peace is a logical step. Germany had twenty years prior fought a two front war and lost badly. It would have been logical to conclude that the prospect of another two front war (in this case with Poland on one flank and Britain/France on the other) would dissuade Nazi Germany from starting something. In the end, Hitler gambled on the illogical, and sent his troops over the Polish border after a false-flag attack. WWII is on the Austrian Corporal for sending his military into the sovereign territory of another country without consent.

 

[Hans]

First - the opinion is that of a Nazi apologist diverting blame for WWII from Hitler onto Britain.

Second - it's bollocks (now that is my opinion and I trust you'll find it interesting).

The USSR was NOT pre-primed to start a war in 1941 with Nazi Germany. It had shortages of spare parts which was requiring the diversion of both spares and units back of the front. It was preparing trenchworks (note - you do not dig if you are going to attack), there were shortages of ammunition, and fuel for front line formations and no stockpiles that could be used to provide the logistic base for an attack. And until mid-41 was required to keep large forces in the East as a potential counter to the Japanese until the signing of their Non-Aggression Pact. These are the veteran units that were able to be the used to drive back the Germans starting in November 1941.

The myth that Hitler pre-empted Stalin's attack with Barbarossa was based on a book by a Soviet defector Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun who wrote under the pseudonym "Vicktor Suvorov". Essentially, the facts on the ground don't support his thesis, but the idea is popular with Hitler apologists who want to

a. Whitewash their hero by deflecting blame for the wars started by Nazi Germany onto someone else; and
b. Blame those damn Commies.

On the face of the historical evidence for Lord Halifax - given that he supported Chamberlain's policy of appeasement prior to Munich, and began to switch after the absorption of the rest of what is now the Czech Republic to preparing for a conflict the idea of setting up what looks to be a two front war for Germany as a means of securing peace is a logical step. Germany had twenty years prior fought a two front war and lost badly. It would have been logical to conclude that the prospect of another two front war (in this case with Poland on one flank and Britain/France on the other) would dissuade Nazi Germany from starting something. In the end, Hitler gambled on the illogical, and sent his troops over the Polish border after a false-flag attack. WWII is on the Austrian Corporal for sending his military into the sovereign territory of another country without consent.

Exactly right. One other note. To invade Europe the Russians would need to supply the logistics to do so. They lacked trucks so they would have had to use the rail system. One problem:

Henri have you considered?

""One reason it was so hard for Germany to invade Russia/the Soviet Union in World War II (and I) was because the Russians had a different (wider) railroad gauge than that of most of the rest of Europe, making European rolling stock useless on Russian railways...nerd note the German gauge was 4' 8 1/2 vs 5' for Russia. Soviet locomotives were also larger than Western, and designed to carry more supplies, which meant that they could build support structures at less frequent intervals. The Germans discovered that for every water and coaling station in existence, they had to build another one, and for this they were not prepared.""

The Russian had neither stock piles of materials to reset the rails nor specialized engineers to do so. The Germans DID but the The price was high: Reichsbahn railway staff and the railway troops of the Wehrmacht had to convert a total of 16,148 kilometres of Soviet trackage to German standard gauge track between 22 June and 8 October 1941.....yet they were able to do it - must have been planning it.....


why do you think that was Henri?

 

[ddt]

Soviet locomotives were also larger than Western, and designed to carry more supplies, which meant that they could build support structures at less frequent intervals. The Germans discovered that for every water and coaling station in existence, they had to build another one, and for this they were not prepared.

Thank you, I didn't know that aspect!

 

[Henri McPhee]

why do you think that was Henri?

I agree that the article I mentioned was probably written by a Nazi apologist accusing every British politician around as a communist. It's just that I was interested in that quote by the supposed appeaser Lord Halifax about the strategy of having Germany on a war on two fronts, which I take to be accurate. Hugh Sinclair, who was head of MI6, advised Chamberlain to sign the Munich agreement, and he was no fool.

I don't know much about the different Russian and German railway gauges, but I agree it probably helped the Russians. There is a bit about the German logistics in a book called The Russian Outlook by Sir Giffard Martel 1947:

The third point was that the long and difficult German communications, coupled to a less extent with our bombing effort, seriously reduced the scale on which it became possible for the Germans to equip their forces. It was unusual for a Panzer division to have more than half its tanks. Lorries and mechanised transport of every kind were becoming increasingly deficient. At the same time our Allied naval forces were convoying great numbers of merchant ships carrying munitions of every kind from America and our country to the Russian ports.

 

[Garrison]

I agree that the article I mentioned was probably written by a Nazi apologist accusing every British politician around as a communist.

But you're still going to continue trying to use it as a source:

It's just that I was interested in that quote by the supposed appeaser Lord Halifax about the strategy of having Germany on a war on two fronts, which I take to be accurate. Hugh Sinclair, who was head of MI6, advised Chamberlain to sign the Munich agreement, and he was no fool.

Sinclair was dying of cancer and it is odd that Chamberlain was so willing to take Sinclair's advice on Munich while ignoring his appraisal of Hitler:

Sinclair was asked in December 1938 to prepare a dossier on Adolf Hitler, for the attention of Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, and Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister. In the dossier, which was received poorly by Sir George Mounsey, the Foreign Office assistant under-secretary—who believed that it did not gel with Britain's then contemporary policy of appeasement—Sinclair described Hitler as possessing the characteristics of "fanaticism, mysticism, ruthlessness, cunning, vanity, moods of exaltation and depression, fits of bitter and self-righteous resentment; and what can only be termed a streak of madness; but with it all there is a great tenacity of purpose, which has often been combined with extraordinary clarity of vision

Sinclair was also preparing for war prior to Munich, interesting to note one of his last acts was to purchase a country house to act as intelligence office, a place called Bletchley Park.

I don't know much about the different Russian and German railway gauges, but I agree it probably helped the Russians. There is a bit about the German logistics in a book called The Russian Outlook by Sir Giffard Martel 1947:

You mean the same information that other posters who do know about the Russian railroads already gave you? Frantically googling up some antique book does nothing to disguise your ignorance Henri.

 

[Dabop]

But if you all let him have the last post, how am I going to learn so much stuff?

This....

I ignore Henri's blatherings, but have found out things I never knew about the war previously, and often go off on google searches (well duckduck actually) to find out further, often making up the evenings entertainment....

(given up on tv as a bad joke here, many shows that were previously shown in 30 min blocks now are shown in 1 hour blocks- they have just added another 30 minutes of ads to pad them out.... on top of the 10 mins of ad time they had previously- we have now broken the tv ad singularity radius, where there is now officially more ad time than program time)

 

[Hans]

While researching something else I stumbled on this political cartoon from the late 1930's. The character making the statement is the famous Colonel Blimp.

 

[Craig B]

While researching something else I stumbled on this political cartoon from the late 1930's. The character making the statement is the famous Colonel Blimp.

[qimg]http://www.sadiethepilot.com/aaweb/blogpix/low3_s.jpg[/qimg]

His companion looks like Lenin.

 

[Hans]

His companion looks like Lenin.

Yeah he does. It is actually the artist himself if I remember my Blimpisms.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I dunno if it's been mentioned before, but I feel like adding one factor to the estimations of German army and Luftwaffe in '38. Namely, that in addition to numbers, Poland hadn't happened yet in '38.

The Spanish Civil War gets a lot of credit for something where the Germans, Italians and Soviets learned a lot about warfare, whereas the UK and USA did not. (In fact, the only article in RAF journals about aerial warfare in Spain, was a translation from French.)

But Poland was a much bigger one. Sure, the Poles got overran, but Germany learned a lot of lessons there, and did changes to their doctrines and even division structure to address the shortcomings they had in Poland. E.g., they found out that they need a LOT more infantry per tank in their tank divisions than they previously thought.

In '40, Germany would use these newly learned lessons against a France and a UK that hadn't learned them yet, giving them an important advantage.

In '38, that wouldn't have been the case yet. If Germany went to war directly against the UK and France in '38, the German army would have been much less effective than in '40. The Germans were even less of a danger in '38, than a raw count of tanks and planes would suggest.

 

[Henri McPhee]

Part of the explanation for this appeasement business is that in 1938 the belief was that hundreds of thousands would be killed in German bombing raids, and that poison gas would be used by the Germans. In fact as events turned out only thousands of people were killed in German bombing raids and no poison gas was used by the Germans that I know about. I was a bit surprised to learn in a recent BBC documentary that the Japanese used poison gas against the Chinese before the European war in the 1930s, which must have made British politicians and military a bit edgy about the matter at the time.

 

[Garrison]

Part of the explanation for this appeasement business is that in 1938 the belief was that hundreds of thousands would be killed in German bombing raids, and that poison gas would be used by the Germans. In fact as events turned out only thousands of people were killed in German bombing raids and no poison gas was used by the Germans that I know about.

So part one of this post is you echoing back info provided to you by other posters in this thread, as if no one could go back to previous pages and see that you have been told precisely this repeatedly and yet you still insisted the Luftwaffe could bomb Britain into submission in 1938.

I was a bit surprised to learn in a recent BBC documentary that the Japanese used poison gas against the Chinese before the European war in the 1930s, which must have made British politicians and military a bit edgy about the matter at the time.

And the second part is you being surprised by information I suspect everyone else posting in this discussion was already aware. I suppose we should mention Unit 731 and Abyssinia, though these had little influence on British policy beyond emphasizing the importance of issuing gas masks, which the British did in 1938 in anticipation of a war that seemed inevitable until Chamberlain capitulated at Munich.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

To be fair to Chamberlain too, though, I think the whole problem discussed in this thread is really a strawman. If it came to war... well, look at the actual war later. The ACTUAL question isn't really how Germany's going to get its bombers and troops to England, it's how you're going to get your troops all the way to Berlin.

I dare say that nobody wanted a rehash of WW1, with just holding the line for ever. Nor really a rehash of Versailles. If you entered the war against Germany, you wanted to end it. And decisively at that.

And when you add the exaggerated estimates of the German abilities at the time, that promised to be a rather costly affair.

And I think that really THAT's what Chamberlain wasn't ready to commit to, not just a defense of the British Isles.

And I still submit the idea that the real problem was lack of popular support for such an exercise. Ultimately Chamberlain was a politician. If he wanted to send a couple million Brits and Commonwealth people to die storming Berlin to make a point about leaving the Czechs well alone, he had to sell that idea to the parliament and, more crucially, to the voters. And at that point I think it wasn't an easy sell.

Especially the way that Hitler was framing it in his speeches. If you listened to him, it was just about the right of some oppressed Germans to live under German rule. It would have been damn hard to sell the idea that a few million Brits must die just so... err... what? So some Germans continue to be unhappy under foreign rule? Any opposition would have had a field day with that.

And it would have been an even harder sell in France. Because we often forget about that member of the alliance, but their opinion mattered a lot at the time. It wasn't JUST Chamberlain.

Anyway, sure, there was the distinct possibility of a coup against Hitler if he went to war in '38, but the UK didn't really have any certainty that that would happen.

So, anyway, I submit the idea that reducing it to ONLY a defense of the British Isles, as both sides here seem to be doing, is a very distorted and misleading view. That wasn't the whole of the problem.

 

[Klimax]

…
And it would have been an even harder sell in France. Because we often forget about that member of the alliance, but their opinion mattered a lot at the time. It wasn't JUST Chamberlain.
…

This is incorrect. French were ready to help us. (They really liked us)

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

It's hard to judge how much the average French liked you, but the French government first advised that Czechoslovakia accepts the German demands (e.g., as early as may 1938) and then outright demanded it (E.g., on the 16'th September 1938.)

 

[Klimax]

It's hard to judge how much the average French liked you, but the French government first advised that Czechoslovakia accepts the German demands (e.g., as early as may 1938) and then outright demanded it (E.g., on the 16'th September 1938.)

Only after strong persuasion from Chamberlain.

 

[Garrison]

So, anyway, I submit the idea that reducing it to ONLY a defense of the British Isles, as both sides here seem to be doing, is a very distorted and misleading view. That wasn't the whole of the problem.

It’s a reasonable set of arguments, however I think counters to most of them have been put forward, it’s just they’ve been rather buried because, as you say, the thread has become over focused on the defence of Britain in 1938.

As far as selling the idea of war to the public and Parliament, well in the summer of 1938 no one in Britain wanted war but they certainly expected it. They correctly assumed that Hitler wanted war and that Britain and France would have to fight. They would not have been enthusiastic about it, but I suspect a declaration would have been met with the same sense of grim acceptance as 1939.

Ultimately the decision lay with Hitler and it was the combination of internal arguments that Germany needed more time to prepare (ironic given the arguments advanced in favour of appeasement) and Chamberlain’s willingness to throw the Czech’s under the bus that persuaded him to accept the Munich Agreement. Had Hitler believed, as he did in 1939, that Germany had reached peak strength relative to its enemies then the likely chain of events would have made a British declaration all but inevitable.

The potential horrors of a new war in 1938 certainly weighed heavily on the minds of Chamberlain and co. Of course with hindsight it seems likely that war in 1938 would have been considerably less costly than the one that started in 1939. Yes hindsight is 20/20, but I think it’s arguable that the British leadership at the time failed miserably to get an accurate picture of the real strategic situation on which to base their decisions. First and foremost there’s the breath-taking failure of intelligence that led to them wildly overestimating German military strength and capability, especially with regard to the Luftwaffe. They bought into ‘the bomber will always get through myth’ and ignored the lessons of the Spanish Civil War. They fixated on the stalemate in the trenches of 1914-17, while ignoring the lessons of 1918 when the British led the way in restoring mobile warfare to the battlefield. To cap it all even when dissenting elements in the German high command reached out to the British Chamberlain et al rebuffed them.

Going back to applying hindsight it’s clear that the British leadership persisted for far too long in treating Hitler as a reasonable dictator they could make a deal with and that in the end Munich benefitted Germany far more than it did Britain or France. Also Munich was the end point of appeasement, but the policy had resulted in numerous opportunities to stop Hitler being missed and if Chamberlain wasn’t in charge for most of it he hardly railed against it. The only time he supported harsh action against Germany was when they threatened to default on their debts.

In summary Chamberlain faced a difficult situation in 1938, but the situation was in no small part one of his own making

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

The intelligence failure was in fact a large part of the problem. But being that the decisions were taken based on the (false) information available at the time, I still think that Chamberlain's position wasn't THAT unreasonable. Garbage In, Garbage Out, if you will, but I think there was SOME logic between the garbage in and the garbage out.

 

[Garrison]

The intelligence failure was in fact a large part of the problem. But being that the decisions were taken based on the (false) information available at the time, I still think that Chamberlain's position wasn't THAT unreasonable. Garbage In, Garbage Out, if you will, but I think there was SOME logic between the garbage in and the garbage out.

But even allowing for flawed intelligence Chamberlain's decision making. On the Alternate History forum someone put up a very neat summation of the main thrust of 'Mein Kampf' that seems to accord with what Tooze's argues in 'Wages of Destruction':

https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...avs-instead-of-the-jews.449312/#post-17421092

But, this repetitive hate against jews is subsidiary to the main issue of Mein kampf.

The main issue of the book can be summed-up as follows.

1 - We, Germans, are the superior race and, in a Darwinian world, we must prevail at the expense of others or be overwhelmed by others.

2 - The new world standard of powers is that of giant powers such as the British empire, the US, Russia and, in the future, China which enjoy huge landmass and huge natural resources.

3 - Germany must lift itself into this league of giants or it will be overcome by one of these giants.

4 - To reach this goal, Germany must conquer a lebensraum in the east and mimic what the anglo-saxon settlers did in North America to the native amerindians.

5 - And Germany, as WW1 just demonstrated, won’t be able to reach this goal without first of all destroying France, described as the eternal enemy of the German People.

To put it even more simply it should have been perfectly clear by the time of Munich that Hitler was serious about his plans, who after all was the military machine Germany was building intended to be directed against? That there was no way Hitler was going to be appeased with a few bits and pieces of other countries should have been clear by then even without 20/20 hindsight. Added to this is that a lot of Chamberlain's statements and actions after Munich suggest he genuinely believed his own rhetoric about 'peace in our time' for far too long. I think there may be an element of GIGO but a lot of it was Chamberlain believing what supported the policy he intended to pursue regardless.