Bookworm wrote:What I like to point out to people is that WW-I was caused by the Serbians separatists, and WW-II was caused by the French. Everyone likes to blame the Prussian/Germans/Austrians, but when you look at the underlying _cause_, it was not. They may be to blame, but they weren't the cause.
Serbia.. that area of the world is just as much trouble as Afghanistan and 'The Middle East'.
The Serbian separatists contributed to starting the war between Austro-Hungary and Serbia, though you could also rightly claim that that war was caused by the Austrians. But the Russians or the Germans or the French didn't really care about some member of the Austro-Hungarian nobility getting shot, and ordinarily wouldn't have gotten involved in what would have been a small, localised war.
What caused it to be a global war depended on each country. It was caused on Russia's part by distrust of German expansionism and by pan-Slavic sentiments. It was caused on Germany's part by careless diplomatic promises and pan-Germanic sentiments. It was caused on France's part by lingering resentment of past German victories. And so on. It was caused by a whole lot of different causes in different places.
For that matter, you could claim that it was caused by the fall of the Roman Empire.
Typeminer wrote:I have read an interesting argument in Chamberlain's defense: That at the time of his policy of appeasement, Britain was in no state to take on Nazi Germany in any case, and it bought time.
I don't find this altogether convincing (France had a massive standing army, for one thing), but it's a different view. To my knowledge, Chamberlain never made that argument himself.
Sure, Britain might not have been fully ready to go to war against Germany. . .but Germany wasn't all that ready for a war itself at the time, as events revealed several years later. Besides, Britain didn't even have to be militarily ready; Britain had a large amount of influence of the non-military type at the time, and Germany wasn't exactly eager to go to war even with an unready Britain.
Also, Hitler was cautious at first in his whole land-grabbing plans, because he was worried that the British would do something about it. It was Britain's passivity that led him to gain confidence in his plans, and helped to grant him the confidence of the German people. If the British
had drawn a line at an early point, it's quite likely that Hitler would at the very least have greatly slowed down his plans, perhaps looking inward to domestic affairs rather than moving on with his pan-Germanic empire plans.
There's also the matter of the high-ranking military officers who were planning a coup against Hitler. They were waiting for the right moment, when Britain would stand up to Hitler and shake the German peoples' confidence in their leader. That moment never happened, and so the officers dithered and the coup never happened. Probably the coup would not have worked out as well as the officers wanted, and the officers in question were anti-Nazi rather than anti-war, but at the very least things within Germany would have played out in somewhat different manner than they did.
Of course, the problem with looking back and second-guessing historical statesmen and leaders is that we only know for sure (maybe) how things turned out after the choices that were made. We can make educated guesses and extrapolations of what would have happened if other choices had been made instead, but we can never really know. We also tend to have access to information that the people at the time never had, as well as to all of the analysis that has been done in the meantime.
Maybe if Chamberlain had stood up to Hitler things would have been better. . .or maybe Hitler would have managed to do even
more damage. After all, while Germany was eager for a war against Poland or France in 1939, they weren't actually ready for the war that they ended up with and were taken somewhat by surprise by the sudden escalation of things. If Hitler
had concentrated his attention inwards and worked more on strengthening his hold over Germany and building up German power, the war might have happened years later and featured a much more competent and better-equipped Nazi military.
In any case, Chamberlain gambled that if he stalled and appeased that the problem would somehow resolve itself peacefully, and he lost that gamble.
Alkarii wrote:On yet another completely unrelated topic:
The youngest of my mom's three brothers has cancer, possibly bone cancer. My grandfather on that side died of bone cancer, and he was four years younger than that particular uncle of mine is now.
So I might use some vacation time when I get some to go visit. I haven't been to Ohio in several years, and I know very little of what's going on with everyone.
Sorry to hear that.
