Thread split: Origins and causes of WW2 - the good, the bad, the ugly and the responsible

[Astragoth]

I haven't read all nine pages of this thread.

Hitler's mistake was waging war on non-German speaking peoples. He should have been satisfied with what he had.

He had 16 million German speaking hostages in Eastern Europe and the entire jewish world looking to murder Germany and him with it. He couldn't sit back and watch. The Germans were the victims in WW2.

[Elizabeth]

He had 16 million German speaking hostages in Eastern Europe and the entire jewish world looking to murder Germany and him with it. He couldn't sit back and watch. The Germans were the victims in WW2.

Then he should have only fought in Eastern Europe for the 16 million German speaking hostages and left France and the rest of Europe alone, and should have left North Africa alone. He bit off more than he could chew. He spread himself too thin.

[Astragoth]

Then he should have only fought in Eastern Europe for the 16 million German speaking hostages and left France and the rest of Europe alone, and should have left North Africa alone. He bit off more than he could chew. He spread himself too thin.

Tell it to the Brits and French. They were building up forces to attack behind the French fortifications. Its why they were built in the first place. It was the same thing the Russians were doing. Of course Hitler attacked them.

[BattleAxe]

Hitler had his ethnostate, he should have been satisfied with that. But no. His mistake was not being satisfied with it, and wanting more territory. I bet if German nationalists could rewind the clock to 1935 and pursue diplomacy instead of militarism, they would.

[Astragoth]

Hitler had his ethnostate, he should have been satisfied with that. But no. His mistake was not being satisfied with it, and wanting more territory. I bet if German nationalists could rewind the clock to 1935 and pursue diplomacy instead of militarism, they would.

He tried that dozens of times actually. Tell it to the Brits and French as above.

[Emma of Normandy]

Hitler had his ethnostate, he should have been satisfied with that. But no. His mistake was not being satisfied with it, and wanting more territory. I bet if German nationalists could rewind the clock to 1935 and pursue diplomacy instead of militarism, they would.

The problem is that the whole people weren't within its borders. Hitler's "aggression" was largely aimed at freeing German people, not just of Germanic blood but German speaking and identifying as German, from other lands where they were being actively persecutred.

[Nordic Angel]

Then he should have only fought in Eastern Europe for the 16 million German speaking hostages and left France and the rest of Europe alone, and should have left North Africa alone. He bit off more than he could chew. He spread himself too thin.

It was France and England who declared war on Germany, not the other way around. Don't you know that?

[Þoreiðar]

Hitler had his ethnostate, he should have been satisfied with that. But no. His mistake was not being satisfied with it, and wanting more territory. I bet if German nationalists could rewind the clock to 1935 and pursue diplomacy instead of militarism, they would.

I agree, but one also has to wonder what France, Britain and Russia had in store for Germany already in 1935. The Zionists declared "war" on Germany in 1933, and they surely would have kept pushing to make it more than a symbolic threat as their power and influence grew in the three aforementioned countries (which probably would have taken a similar course even in the absence of WW2). France and Britain's military pacts with Poland made it very clear that they were simply looking for an excuse to bring down Germany. And we know that the USSR wouldn't have simply stopped their expansion at Poland and called it a day, unless they were physically stopped. In Hitler's shoes, I don't know if one would want to just sit and wait for that.

[Chlodovech]

I agree, but one also has to wonder what France, Britain and Russia had in store for Germany already in 1935.

Not an invasion at any rate. If they wanted to invade Germany and topple Hitler that way they could've done so easily enough in 1936, on the basis of a "technicality", the remilitarisation of the Rhineland. There would've been little fighting: those few German battalions entering the Rhineland were no match for the French army - and Hitler and perhaps the national socialist revolution would've been in serious trouble, Hitler could've been deposed by the army or perhaps even his own party or the German people, after that. This was Hitler's scariest pre-war crisis.

But eventually some other German leader, a more ready one, perhaps a bonapartist or a monarchist, would've tried entering the Rhineland again - a decade later or so.

Not saying there weren't Germanophobic forces at play in France/Britain, some downright advocating declaring war on Germany, even on Weimar-Germany, all throughout the thirties - but the hawks were obviously not the dominant political wave. Fear for another war was too big for that in the UK and France. Germany's enemies seem to have been thinking more of staging a color revolution avant la lettre and/or isolating Gemany internationally (like they would do with Japan, eventually forcing its leadership to either go to war or implement democracy and liberalism or face a revolution which would), and hence weakening it.

The Zionists declared "war" on Germany in 1933, and they surely would have kept pushing to make it more than a symbolic threat as their power and influence grew in the three aforementioned countries (which probably would have taken a similar course even in the absence of WW2).

The zionists also officially ended that boycott well before WW2 commenced, as agreements were made between Jewish representatives and the Third Reich - although this was not the end of Jewish agitation or various goy plans to ruin NS-Germany - as for instance some segments of the Jewish world population continued to boycott NS-Germany, American Jewry would until the start of WW2.

France and Britain's military pacts with Poland made it very clear that they were simply looking for an excuse to bring down Germany.

Yes, yet that's not how Chamberlain saw it as he would never have started war over Poland himself, but the hawks (the neocons of that time and their Jewish backers) did. And the hawks forced his hand.

And we know that the USSR wouldn't have simply stopped their expansion at Poland and called it a day, unless they were physically stopped. In Hitler's shoes, I don't know if one would want to just sit and wait for that.

True, they would not have stopped after Poland - they didn't - after Poland followed parts of Finland, Romania and eventually the Baltic states in their entirety. But like with the annexation of Eastern Poland, all of it was begrudgingly approved of in advance by the Germans for strategic reasons - they were concessions. There's no way the USSR would have expanded into Eastern and Northern Europe in the late thirties and early forties without German concessions and an agreement between Berlin and Moscow or German weakness or the failure of the international community to act. The Soviets would not have seized eastern Poland if the Germans don't seize the western half of it in 1939, they would've never been there without a German-Soviet partnership. The Soviets probably preferred (an ostensibly defensive) military alliance with Britain and France, but the latter not demonstrating a sense of urgency to form such an alliance drove Stalin into the arms of Hitler.

The U.S. may have played a nefarious role in the Polish affair in a now neglected historical episode - the Polish statesman Piłsudski and some parts of his government seemed to have been willing to renegotiate the exact location of the German-Polish border when he was still alive in the first half of the Thirties, but the U.S. paying lip service behind the scenes to the idea of intervening on behalf of the Poles in case of a German-Polish conflict dissuaded the Poles from being more forthcoming with the Germans and granting territorial concessions. So the Americans may have discouraged the Poles to reach a peaceful settlement when there was a Polish government willing to reach one, hence maintaining the politically unhealthy status quo. Not sure which machinations were behind this American move, but it must have been the work of very bad people. MCP3 brings up Roosevelt's role in 1939 here.

Hitler had his ethnostate, he should have been satisfied with that. But no. His mistake was not being satisfied with it, and wanting more territory. I bet if German nationalists could rewind the clock to 1935 and pursue diplomacy instead of militarism, they would.

Most Western Europeans had ethnostates prior to WW2, even before Hitler came to power Germany was an ethnostate, but only Germany had mutilated borders and saw millions of Germans living outside of the German ethnostate. Anglo-America, France and the British Empire would not have tolerated such a situation either, that's why none of them had any serious territorial demands of their own anymore in the interwar years - they had proper ethnostates. And you're speaking with the benefit of hindsight here, because between the start of WW2 and the failure of the German summer campaigns in the USSR and North-Africa in 1942, scenarios which see Germany win or at least not lose WW2 were possible.

All it takes for Germany to change the course of world history is to hold out in Stalingrad all throughout 1943 - thereby blocking river transports on the Don and Wolga - the Soviets would've literally starved to death and be forced to sign an armistice in 1944. This could've been achieved as long as the Germans had a mobile reserve on the Eastern Front to counter any Soviet offensives to regain the Stalingrad area with - which they had - but most of it was fighting a less crucial battle to the west of Moscow when the Soviet attack came in November 1942 (Operation Uranus). The Germans believed the Soviets were on their last legs after reaching the Wolga and Stalingrad, as usual, and didn't build up a serious mobile reserve in the South of the USSR; they could not conceive the Soviets had sufficient forces left to embark on offensive operations in two different sectors of the Eastern Front at once, that's to say, not only to the west of Moscow (the Rzhev Salient), but also in and around Stalingrad. See post #81.

[Astragoth]

Please just stop. The Germans were the victims in WW2. I am so sick of seeing blame heaped on the people who had the least responsibility for the war. It's obscene.