Terrorists or Partisans?

Saying that Germany started WW2 is maybe a little bit inaccurate.

I don't think that anybody will deny that Germany is alone responsible for the european war that started in september 1939.
No one can seriously blame France and Britain for honouring their alliance with Poland.

But of course Germany is not directely responsible for let's say the war between the US and Japan, or for the entry of Italy....l

Germany deliberately started the european war in 1939 which later became a world war.

 

I don't know if you can blame them, but i do know the alliance with Poland was just an excuse to wage war on Germany.
Just look at how much their alliance was worth in 1945...
I'm just glad we were at the west side of germany at that time!

BTW Issaak How the Dutch or the French civilians were treated by the germans is not really important but i would say that in the beginning it was probable not to bad but that it got worse when it went worse for germany (i'm not tlaking about the deportation of some minority groups ofcourse cos they got treated inhumane).
Dautch got treated worse than the French because their liberation took longer and most parts had a Hunger Winter as we call it (The Dutch had their Liberation day at the 5th of May 1945).

 

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Well, you cannot deny that France and Britain did everything they could to stop the war from happening.
Had they wanted to make war on Germany, why not do so in 1936 about the Rhineland issue, or 1938 about Austria and Czekoslovakia.
If they wanted war, why did they not militarily prepare for it??

As for what happened to Poland in 1945, that is of course tragic(tough not as bad as nazi occupation), but what could France and Britain possibly have done about it??

 

That is a goood question. If they wanted war, why have they not prepared for it?
A damn good question, the answer to which is a mystery for me.
I also used to think, that Britain and France decided that Hitler is too unpredictible and a criminal with whom there is no use negotiating. A notorious lier who talks of peace all the time, while preparing a typical, large army of aggression.
IMO the last moment they forced themselves to try to believe the man was Munich. The annexion of the rump Czech “protectorate” was the signal that the man must be stopped.
Of course, it was too late. By then, he had acquired more population and much more industrial strength to wage war with. Not to speak of the alliance with Stalin.
But democracies are inherently slow in reacting.
Between March and August 1939 there was too little time to prepare the French and British armies for war.
Still, I can agree that the attack on Poland was used as a kind of trigger to begin to oppose Hitler. I don´t think there were many people in France and Britain who actually cared about what was being done to Poland and Poles.
As to who started the WW2: Is it important to find out who? And why is it important? If we have to have the guilty party for legal reasons and for reasons of compensations and reparations, the we have to find the one(s). Then, we´ll have to find a point in time from which to start. IMO, that point must be the last day before the actual shooting began, the last day of peace: August 31, 1939.

Starting the war against Poland, German leadership knew perfectly well that France and Britain had obligations vs. Poland and an armed intervention from these countries is to be expected. In spite of this, he decided to go ahead with war. According to the Ribbentrop-Molotov the USSR was to attack and annect the eastern Poland. The fact, that the USSR started moving later does not mean anything. The USSR were Germany´s ally from the start in the aggression.
Thus: The war in the Western Hemisphere was started by Germany and USSR.
The war in the Eastern Hemisphere was started by Japan. This is the legal point of view.

From the philosophical point of view, all history MAY be seen a process without a beginning or end, without guilt or free will involved (a very marxist kind of philosophy). Looking at it in this way, nobody started WW2. It started as a logical consequence of previous events.

 

The answer is rather simple, they did not want war and hoped till the last moment being able to avoid it.

 

And it was easier to keep secrets and people was less informed than today.
TV and internet generations can't conceive how people lived and were afected by propaganda back then. They even can't conceive how people received information and news before live reports by CNN, starting at the Tiananmen Square events.
One argument i have many times around this:
How could allies not know about THE Camps? Hitler was against jews from the beginning, and many "educated" people around the world were more or less antisemithic (spelling?). They should know, they tell me.
But how could they know? There was no satellite TV, phone calls had troubles from one city to the next, most journalist never got out of their offices...

Idea for another post: What could allies have done if they knew?

 

My neighbour told me they had to eat tulip bulbs as they didn't have sufficient pottatoes, I don't think England had it that bad.

 

This is something people today take look at themselves. We have indoctrination today and we have such a wealth of information, some true some slightly true and some false, years ago we had truth and lies but whos was telling the truth and who the lies. It maybe just as hard to work out the truth when you have too much info.

 

AFAI can see, the discussion has become a little counfouded. We bland the problems of classification of “freedomfighters” with the “guilt” of the Western allies for what has or has not been done about the Holocaust, about the start and the ending of WW2, for who was treated how by the occupant. Too much subjects, if we are to get some conclusions out of this.

Castelot´s remark about the West´s inability to do anything about Poland in 1945 I understood thus: it was not possible to get Poland out of Stalin´s clutches in 1945. It was not at all about the Jewish question, as it was an answer to the opinion, that the French and the British used the Polish-German war as an alibi to destroy Hitler. Have I understood you properly, Castelot?

All the subjects crept into this forum called “Terrorists and Partisans” by themselves, somehow.
Maybe it´s because the original subject has been discussed sufficiently.

Maybe we should established a new Forum called f. ex. “Who was responsible for the start of WW2 in the West?” or “Why do people consider Hitler guilty of WW2?”. We can also discuss athe Jewish question in WW2, like “Why did Hitler not like the Jews?” or “What role did the Jewish question play before, during and after WW2”?

If not, we have to define more precisely, what are we talking about here?

 

Yes, you did.

 

That´s good.

But what we are going to do about the whole discussion?

 

I think I'll start a new topic.

 

Bonne chance!