Thread: Chamberlain a new look.

I think in the end war was pre-ordanined. Germany was eventually going to try and re-unite the parts of it sliced off at the end of the Great War. German feelings that Austria was really part of Germany "Osterriech"(sp?) wre also not new by any means.

Though it should be noted that the first areas Hitler went after (Austria/Österreich, Sudetenland, Rest of Czech) were never part of the German Empire (1871 edition). And the idea that Austrians are not Germans in the way like Bavarians are Germ..(ok bad example lets use Prussians since nobody really thinks of Bavarians as Germans) was the result of the Kleindeutsche Lösung (Small German Solution) during the founding 1871 which excluded Austria, mostly for the reason to ensure that the new Germany would be dominated by Prussia.

edit: ah and by the way, at least in German SDP does not stand for the Social democrats but for the Sudetendeutschepartei. (Sudeten-German Party) The version of the NSDAP that was active in Czech before Treaty of Munich.

Originally Posted by Tarek Morgen

edit: ah and by the way, at least in German SDP does not stand for the Social democrats but for the Sudetendeutschepartei. (Sudeten-German Party) The version of the NSDAP that was active in Czech before Treaty of Munich.

I was talking about the Social Semocrats. The Sudenten Germany Party was SdP not SDP since its a compound word Sudetendeutsch Partei

i know but in German abbrivations are usually (but not always) written in complete Capitals. (Like NSDAP instead of NsDAp). But this is getting a bit far offtrack.

Originally Posted by Tarek Morgen

i know but in German abbrivations are usually (but not always) written in complete Capitals. (Like NSDAP instead of NsDAp). But this is getting a bit far offtrack.

True, but with 2 SDP which one are you talking about? SDP vs SdP makes it much easier.

We usually only use SPD for the Social Democrats (It stands for Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, Socialdemocratic Party of Germany). SDP (as in social democrats) I only see sometimes in English language texts.

Originally Posted by Tarek Morgen

We usually only use SPD for the Social Democrats (It stands for Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, Socialdemocratic Party of Germany). SDP (as in social democrats) I only see sometimes in English language texts.

This is an English language forum

true but why do we then use NSDAP instead of NSGWP?

But getting back to Chamberlain, Munich and Czech.

Would an actual Invasion of Czech and Sudetenland (if more or less succesful, regardless on the effects it would have on a later invasion of the low countries and France) leave Poland more inclined to give up on Danzig/Gdansk?

Originally Posted by Tarek Morgen

true but why do we then use NSDAP instead of NSGWP?

But getting back to Chamberlain, Munich and Czech.

Would an actual Invasion of Czech and Sudetenland (if more or less succesful, regardless on the effects it would have on a later invasion of the low countries and France) leave Poland more inclined to give up on Danzig/Gdansk?

I doubt it, if you look at Polish military deployments they really tried to defend all of Poland despite the tactical, operational and strategic handicaps this placed on them.

I also don't think they knew how far behind the curve they were in operational thinking. They had never been a western front WWI army so the lessons they learned came form the east where horse cav had not gone out of style and continued to play an important role. Of nearly 900 AFV's less than 200 were tanks and only 2 full taak battalions of 7tp existed. But they had a huge amount of cavalry supported by tankettes. Thus they isolated their infantry in frontier duties and then didn't properly equip the mobile units. The cav units could attrit the Panzers, and had the Poles tired to defend away from the border where they could bring mass to bear things might have been different.

Finally, they were totally outclassed in the air.

Originally Posted by Mihais

Way of the mark with this one,mon ami.HD and revisionism are 2 different trees,not HD as the top branches of revisionism.I can translate what you say like that :in the end,revisionism regarding WW2(and the whole science of history means revisionism,based on new found evidences,new interpretations of the old ones etc) should be banned just like HD is in some countries.Let's start a witch hunt for revisionists.Welcome to an un-intellectual age.

A few quick tips Mihais:

1) Don't give up your day job to become a mind reader or historian

2) The quickest way to p1ss me off is to tell me what I'm thinking. If you want to know, ask.

For the record, I am & have always been violently opposed to any law that dictates historical truth. I find it only marginally less offensive than holocaust denial itself and in some cases more dangerous (and every bit as offensive as people who presume to tell me what I think).

Holocaust denial IS a form of revisionism. It is also not a single entity. In some forms it is simply a type of fantasy. In many others it is constructed as history, but with distortions (David Irving is a good example). This sort of stuff bleeds very easily into more respectable forms of revisionism. This does not mean that revisionism is the same as denial or even leads to it, but it does mean that it can be used as a Trojan horse for denialist arguments & must be assessed very carefully. I get to read it almost daily in other forums. I have a very good idea what it looks like in various forms.

There is no single truth. There is no single narrative. There are popularly understood narratives which we use for convenience. There are countless facts, few of which mean anything without interpretation. We are still uncovering little known facts & offering new interpretaions. This is all as it should be. None of this excuses distortion of facts. None of this excuses racism, lies or politically motivated academic hit jobs.

If you want to look at harbingers of an 'un-intellectual age' (I'm not sure that is even English) you best look at the subject of my criticism, not its author. (failing that, try a mirror. Mind-reading is about as 'un-intellectual' as it gets).

Originally Posted by 1979

But it did...it was a open admission of weakness and Hitler saw right trough it.
A strong leaderships would either refuse to talk or send a message along the lines:
- make your decision and we would make ours -

It did. Bad choice of words on my part. I meant triggered the war rather than "led to" it.

Originally Posted by zraver

To be fair, there was little chance there would not be a second war with the combination of the abusive Treaty of Versailles and the development of the "stabbed in the back/November Crimminals" rationale. Even the Wiemar government had no intention of not re-arming at some point (Treaty of Rapallo 1922). Hitler gets less blame for causing WWII (the why) than in deciding how, and when it would be fought. If the SDP had remained in power- war, if the KDP won- war, the party mattered little.

The evil is in the how, going after civilian populations, genocide, holocaust, mistreatment of prisoners, slavery and hostage taking among others more than condemn him to either the very bottom rung of humanity or the top of the totem pole of evil.

Z,

I take your point about the likelihood of further fallout from Versailles, but likely isn't definate. There is also a big difference between Weimar looking to re-arm & Hitler planning a series of increasingly large invasions of the neigbourhood. There are simply too many variables in interwar Europe to predict what would have happened if Germany hadn't become a dictatorship, let alone one led by the likes of Hitler OR if a hundred other things hadn't happened as they did.

Originally Posted by Bigfella

Z,

I take your point about the likelihood of further fallout from Versailles, but likely isn't definate. There is also a big difference between Weimar looking to re-arm & Hitler planning a series of increasingly large invasions of the neigbourhood. There are simply too many variables in interwar Europe to predict what would have happened if Germany hadn't become a dictatorship, let alone one led by the likes of Hitler OR if a hundred other things hadn't happened as they did.

true, but given the state of Germany, nationalism and the actions of her neighbors war was more likely than not. Thanks to Hindenburg, German militarism was never broken. Ignoring for the moment all the interwar German nationalism, all Hitler had to do was forcibly retire 16 senior officers and shift 40 others and the German military was prepared to go to war. That is how thin the razor's edge was between peace and war within the German military and any government could have done that.

Originally Posted by redco

I have.
Its a dishonest book, in which Buchanan plays fast and loose with historical facts in order to suit his political rant.

Here'a a couple of articles on some of Buchanan's dishonesty in the book

Thanks for the contrary sources. Very enlightening. I am not going to whitewash Buchanan, but in his defense, a handful of errors in research does not topple what are to me his two main contentions, 1) that Hitler wanted to avoid war with Britain and France and 2) that war was all but inevitable once Britain declared it would go to war to protect Poland's independence.

Was Poland in danger? Yes, but I am not convinced that Germany planned to invade Poland no matter how the Danzig question was resolved. Germany made a number of attempts to get Poland to agree to a corridor linking Danzig and Germany. The door was open even up to the last minute, or is that a falsehood as well?

No doubt Germany would have dominated Poland had a settlement come about. An invasion then would have been unnecessary and pointless. Germany was looking east for breathing room and wanted transit rights through Poland. At worse, a settlement on the Danzig matter would have forced Poland to choose sides between Germany and the USSR. Considering it feared the USSR more than Germany, it's a fair guess it would have chosen Germany.

Poland was invaded because it was an intransigent stumbling block. Had Britain not promised Poland to defend it's independence, Poland would have recognized its vulnerability and perhaps settled with Germany over Danzig. But Britain's promise gave Poland a false sense of security and the nerve to refuse Germany's diplomatic efforts to settle the Danzig question.

One might ask--if Hitler didn't want war with Britain, then why did he invade Poland knowing Britain would respond by declaring war? It seems to me he was on a roll and couldn't afford to wait. He may have hoped it would be over so quickly that Britain and the allies would say to hell with it militarily--they did react excruciatingly slow. Or maybe he hoped it would be another Munich.

History must have a record of Hitler's thinking, but it's really beside the point when you consider that time was at a premium for him. At that point, the allies lacked adequate forces to defeat Germany, much less check its ambitions, and for the moment he had co-opted the Soviets from allying with France and Britain. Those conditions were not static. It almost seems as if Blitzkrieg not only applied to Germany's military tactics, but also to Hitler's mental pace in making political and tactical moves.

Back to Buchanan. I worked in the Reagan administration at the same time he did. Met him only once and all that was memorable for me was his steely glare. His job was to articulate and defend the president's political agenda. By definition that means crafting political messages that both argue for the president's position and attempt to paint the opposition in the worse light.

At the White House level, media scrutiny is intense. Buchanan, as a master of his craft, had to be able to select and weave facts together to support a conclusion that attracted media coverage. Audacious was fine as long as he could survive a debate only few minutes long.

Someone who makes a living doing that for years--he worked for Nixon, too--could, I suppose, continue the habit unconsciously even after shifting into the alter ego of a historian. IMO a good historian first amasses all the evidence, puts it into chronological order, and then draws conclusions about motives and outcomes. Buchanan seems to turn that around. He seems to draw conclusions first and then cherry picks evidence to support them.

Tips
1-there is sarcasm somewhere in my post
2-Good to know what to avoid in order not to piss you off
3-Unless you're a legally appointed higher authority it buggers the heck on me to tell what to do; it's ''offensive''

Good to know that you're against holocaust denial laws as much as those individuals that deny the thing.I consider both of them hypocritical and dangerous as well.Specifically because they don't give a s...t about what history but they use it for political purposes.
You didn't described h.d and revisionism in those terms the first time.You described them as a continuum(with a somewhat acceptance that parts of revisionism might be OK)and you specifically suggested that Buchanan might go HD.

Now,for the record,I consider linking everything about WW2 with the sad fate of the Jews really offensive.I find that idea way to often.It goes like this:we fought Hitler because he was really nasty-look he killed the Jews.Forget the cynicism,national interests of each combatant,the betrayals ,the alliance with a criminal at least as bad as Hitler(we had this Hitler-Stalin talk before IIRC ).The end result is a fairytale ideology for the masses to feel good about themselves.Personally I don't lose sleep over this,but all ideology has a tendency to annoy me.