Missed opportunities and hypocrisy leading up to WWII.

Really? Fascinating!

 

Wadda ya mean?

My problems are the greatest hypocrisy leading to WW2!

That and Churchill's Imperialistic desires on Central Europe, apparently.

 

"The colonial question united a great many nationalists in Germany. It was always assumed that at some point the return of colonies would be negotiable, and in the context of declining world trade and raw material shortages German leaders expected colonies to play an important part in sustaining Germany's world economic position."

"... in the second volume of Mein Kampf, that German interests lay fundamentally in 'the strengthening of continental power by the winning of new soil and territory in Europe', a priority to which he remained consistently committed."

"... negotiations over colonies foundered on British insistence that Germany should trade a colonial settlement for promises of good behaviour in Eastern Europe, and were finally broken off in March 1938,..."

"Göring told a British contact in February 1937 that the regime 'wanted a free hand in Eastern Europe' but was happy to leave the colonies to the British."

All quotes from Richard Overy's contribution to Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered, Chapter 6: Misjudging Hitler

But yeah, it was the evil empires of Britain and France forcing Germany to align itself with the USSR and attack Poland.

 

I have to disagree, also with Overy,because he fails to understand that after WWI the situation had changed : if the German attack on Poland happened before WWI, it is very unlikely that F +B (France comes first,even before WWI ) would have declared war ;after all there were before WWI 2 Balkan wars and F +B did not intervene, neither did they when Germany declared war on Russia .

Why ? Because before WWI, to start a war,attacking an other country, was normal practice and considered as not immoral /

All this changed after 1918,(also ) caused by the (following a lot of people pernicious ) influence of the headmaster of Princeton;the result was that is was considered a crime to start a war,because war was considered as bad,as a crime .

F + B did not declare war because Hitler attacked Poland ,or to prevent a German predominance of central Europe:they had no objection to such a predominance (see the letter from Lord Halifax to the British ambassador in Paris on 1 november 1938): F +B declared war because of a principle : someone had raped peace by starting a war, and they could not look the otherway while international morality (a meaningless invention of the headmaster of Princeton ) was violated .

Before 1914, they would have looked the other way,because Wilson was still save in Princeton and not in Washington .

 

There are a lot of interesting points made throughout this thread, though I think most are much too focused on key dates and actions that are too late in the timeline to change what was essentially a ticking time bomb. By 38 or early 39 you might affect when or how the war would break out, but by that point nothing was going to stop it.

When you take a step back and look at the bigger picture in the decade or so leading up to the flashpoints, it looks very different. Germany in particular was in open violation of the arms limitations in the Versailles treaty as early as 1933 and expanded almost exponentially every year after that. At that point and in the next couple of years, the UK, France and the US could have easily (and legally) stepped in to re-occupy and demilitarize Germany in accordance with the treaty. They did not do so when Germany was still weak, and by the time they woke up and took note it was too late to do it the easy way.

Japan is a bit more problematic in the decade leading up to war. The situation was quite similar in that a nationalist/militarist/expansionist faction had taken power, but there was no easy political solution as there was in Europe, and certainly no international coalition with a direct interest in intervening. One could foresee that to truly fulfill their stated goal of becoming the great regional power in the east, Japan would need to expand their interests beyond China and Manchuria and down into SE Asia for the oil and other vital industrial materials there.
Of course, those areas were colonized by Europe and the US, and Japan wasn't going to take on the British, French, Dutch and Americans all at once no matter how vital that region was. No western power was very concerned, and they were correct right up until 39/40 when three of those four powers were suddenly embroiled in Europe. That's an enormous power shift and the Japanese took full advantage of it. The war in Europe made the war in the Asia/Pacific theater possible, even inevitable.

In a nutshell, if the allies had stepped in early and enforced the Versailles treaty before Germany fully re-armed there would have been no war in Europe or the Pacific - or at least, the west would not have been dragged into any Asian/Pacific conflict. It would have remained a Chinese/Japanese and possibly Soviet conflict.

 

No : France, Britain and the US could not have legally stepped in : they could not act on their own: they needed the consent of the League,and, besides, as the US were not a member of the League .......

:they also could not have easily stepped in : Britain had no forces with which it could operate on the continent, neither did France . US had no forces at all and the Atlantic Ocean who protected the US from Eurpe,prevented a US intervention in the continent .


:it all depended on France and if France did not intervene, no one would intervene .

Violation of a treaty does not give the right to intervene militarily,because treaties are not inviolable, they are only pieces of paper of which one of the signatories has the intention of follow them,only when / as long he is forced to do it . The moment when Germany had the occasion no longer to obey the treaty, it would not hesitate for a moment .

There was only one possibility to force Germany to obey the treaty and this was to occupy Germany in 1919 for an undetermined duration,something which was out of the question, for several obvious reasons .

 

@LJAD

You're probably right, but if France had the right on colonies in Africa, then why Germany and USSR were deprived from the same right in Central Europe - to divide Poland and to have two sweet little colonies? By the way, Poland also claimed the right to have a colony - Madagascar. They have based their claim as a successor of German Empire. Poles needed Madagascar to dump there their Jews, as far as possible, in the middle of Indian ocean. Later, Heydrich and Eichman have stolen Polish idea.

Is it possible to talk here about any kind of respect, dignity or moral principles? Remember, all these nations considered themselves as civilized people. Barbarians, worse than Ghenghis Kahn.

The subject under consideration stinks - more than ordinary hypocrisy.

 

Amazingly, the crazy idea of moving Eastern European Jews to Madagascar has cropped up more than once. It was first put forward as far as I can tell in 1885 by a violently anti-Semitic German, Paul de Lagarde ... Given Paul's known connections as an inspiration and idealogue for anti-semitic right-wing pre-Nazi views, it seems hardly necessary to go via Poland to get the idea into Heydrich's or Eichmann's head, indeed, it seems more likely that Paul's idea was picked up by Poles when Imperial Germany ruled a not insignificant part of what had been Poland.


"One would have to have a heart of steel to not feel sympathy for the poor Germans and, by the same token, to not hate the Jews, to not hate and despise those who - out of humanity! - advocate for the Jews or are too cowardly to crush these vermin. Trichinella and bacilli would not be negotiated with, trichinella and bacilli would also not be nurtured, they would be destroyed as quickly and as thoroughly as possible."
- Paul de Lagarde In his 1887 essay Jews and Indo-Germanics

 

A treaty is a contract and the signatories have the right to enforce the provisions in that document, with force if necessary. The terms are clear. The penalties for breaking the terms are clear. As I pointed out, Germany had essentially no army until 1933 when they began building up, in clear violation of the treaty. If the allied powers had acted at that time, there would have been no bloodshed. Even the peacetime armies of France and the UK could have ended it before it began.

All wars are political blunders of one sort or another. WWII was a blunder of political paralysis.

 

No = a treaty is a promise by politicians to do something and is not a contract between private persons .And violations of the treaty did not give F +B the right to intervene : they had first to ask the consent of the League .

Besides, NO country will intervene because of a violation of a treaty,they will only intervene if there is a threat to their interests .

US did not intervene when Iraq invaded Iran, but when Iraq invaded Kuweit .

US intervened when NK invaded SKorea,but not when Indonesia invaded Timor, or China Tibet, etc...

A violation of the treaty of Versailles was no reason for France to invade Germany and an invasion of Germany would not prevent Germany of violating the treaty,unless France occupied Germany for an undetermined time,something which France could not do .And what no country wanted to do .

 

This is not correct : WWI was no political blunder,neither was WWII.They were both inevitable .

 

For WWI : already since at least 10 years,Germany looked for an opportunity /excuse to start a war in western Europe,which would give it the domination of the continent,after several failures, it decided in 1914 that it was now or never and used Sarajevo as an excuse . Nothing that Britain and France could have done ,could have prevented the outbreak of the war .


For WWII : after november 1918,the majority of the Germans refused to accept the treaty and especially the provisions for Central/Eastern Europe :German nationalism demanded domination of this region .If this domination would happen without war, there would be no WWII, but if the German policy resulted in a war, it would be impossible for France and Britain to look the other way(as they were able to do before 1914):it was obvious that Poland would not accept a satellite status and it was obvious that Germany would not abandon its attempt to subjugate Poland : one of both had to arrange,otherwise war was ineluctable .Nothing that France and Britain could do could prevent the outbreak of the war . They tried (as before 1914) ,but the decision did not lie in their hands.

 

Maybe in places as Princeton,Harvard,etc, but not in the real world :treaties were made by people who had not the habit of keeping their word :if they kept their word, they would never have the position they occupied .
I like also to see an exemple of a war caused by someone who violated his promise .

 

It's most certainly not incorrect. Of course it is as was admitted an opinion but on any reasonable scale it's hard to call Stalin "a good guy". He is an ideal example for what most would consider "bad guy". I'm not as familiar with Chiang but he certainly qualifies as "disreputable".

As for the USSR during the war. They are at least partially responsible for the war due to a number of actions in particular their alliance with Germany vs Poland that started it. That they switched sides to fight with the "good guys" doesn't make them "good guys" and I've read a number of accounts of those who were less than happy to be "liberated" by the Red Army.

 

Which as noted didn't answer the question. Furthermore you have stated the opinion that there is no such thing as "benevolent imperialism". That is a very questionable position to take. Indeed it is quite clear that some countries or at least major portions of their populations (and in some cases the majority) benefited from imperialism. Certainly some did not but that's wasn't in question.

 

Yes, how does this answer the question you were asked?