@SuperbattleshipYamato hard to argue against any of this really. The IJN was so far gone by this point in the war that there’s not really much they could have done to salvage their situation one way or another. The bit about the allies not having many LSTs in general is something I never knew before though.
Maybe Chamberlain was not enough of a coward?
-
Thanks CWO. Quickly scanned the thread. An interesting debate, but w/out any killer facts on either side it seems. I suppose it is likely that Stalin & Hitler could not have lived peacefully side-by-side for very long, so all we are left debating is whether R was about to attack G at that moment.
Cheers
Humble PrivatePS Just consulted God (Max Hastings :-D): He does register the likelihood of R attacking G, probably in 1942, and so Hitler believing his strike was pre-emptive. By 1941 R had doubled its “active forces” but scarcely begun its re-equipment programme. Some truth on both sides of the argument then?
-
@Private:
Not sure about the USSR vs France as Hitler’s no. 1 target. Could go to one of my books, but am sure others have the facts.
Am confident that G had no designs on the UK and its empire. There was an underlying belief/hope that the UK would accept G domination of Europe, as some in the British government were to advocate.
So the UK could have avoided the war. But I can think of a number of reasons why to do so would have been wrong.
1. Europe was dominated by dictatorships - Franco, Mussolini, Stalin & Hitler. Democracy was at bay. It is hard to imagine the democracy under siege feel of the time. Somewhere a line needed to be drawn. It was not a question of which monster had killed the most, nor of accepting collateral damage in the hope that “we” would escape whilst those we might have called friends were targeted one by one.
2. The UK’s constant policy since Marlborough was to defend a balance of power on the continent. G were the immediate threat to that balance, not R.
3. It is far from certain that the UK & USA could have beaten a victorious G (or R) + J.
I nearly started an analogy to Europe today, but history is safer!
1. Europe was dominated by dictatorships - Franco, Mussolini, Stalin & Hitler. Democracy was at bay.
A good point. But how much did democracy really gain as a result of its decision to go to war?
In August of 1939, France, Britain, Greece, and Scandinavia were under democratic rule. Germany and Italy were fascist, and Poland was a military dictatorship. By 1948 (as the dust from the war cleared), the democracies controlled everything they had in August 1939, plus Italy and western Germany. Almost every European nation east of that line had fallen under Soviet dominion. So it’s not like the democracies gained very much–especially not when compared with the sheer scale of Soviet gains.
2. The UK’s constant policy since Marlborough was to defend a balance of
power on the continent. G were the immediate threat to that balance, not R.I agree that defending a balance of power is typically a sensible policy for democracies to employ. However, I feel the Soviet Union was the true threat to that balance of power.
Germany’s prewar population was 69 million, as opposed to 169 million for the Soviet Union. The Soviets had about 2.5x as many people as the Germans.
In Marx’s writings, he described a one world communist government. The stated long-term goal of Soviet foreign policy was world conquest; and that goal was reiterated in publications such as Pravda. Every nation on the Soviet Union’s western border in August of 1939 had been partially or fully annexed by May of 1941. Soviet expansionism predated the Nazi-Soviet War.
In June of 1941, Germany had 3,000 tanks on its eastern front, as opposed to 23,000 tanks for the Soviet Union on its western front. The Soviets also had a commanding advantage in terms of artillery, infantry, and planes; albeit not to the same extent as their advantage in tanks. The reason Stalin did not expect a German invasion was because he knew Germany could not defeat the Soviets in a quick war, and was not well-positioned for a long war. On the other hand, the Soviet Union was superior to Germany in terms of industrial strength, access to oil, farmland, and raw materials. Its supply of manpower (available for infantry) was much, much greater than Germany’s.
Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union was in many ways a desperation move, taken after he’d correctly determined that Stalin was planning an invasion of Germany. Hitler struck a month before the Soviets’ invasion preparations would have been complete. Every Soviet officer had a packet of information, to be opened in the event of Nazi-Soviet hostilities breaking out. Every Soviet officer opened his packet, and found plenty of information on what to do if the Soviet Union invaded Germany, and nothing at all on how to respond to a German attack against the Soviets. The Soviets were thrown into confusion. Adding to that confusion was the fact that in many cases, tank crews and artillery crews were hundreds of miles from the machines they were supposed to be operating. That was one of the problems the Soviets intended to solve during the month they thought they had before beginning their invasion of Germany. Due to the Soviet Union’s lack of preparedness for any sort of defensive struggle, it was possible for Germany to make excellent initial gains; while achieving an astonishing 10:1 exchange ratio in combat against Soviet soldiers.
Later in the war that ratio declined to 3:1. Due to the fact that the Western democracies pulled German attention away from its eastern front; and given the Soviets’ massive advantage in manpower, that 3:1 ratio was not sufficient for Germany to achieve victory. Also, the Soviets came very close to achieving a 1:1 exchange ratio at Stalingrad. German losses were close to a million men in that battle–over 1% of its entire prewar population.
In 1941, Germany’s army had 150 divisions–slightly larger than the French Army had been in 1940. By the end of 1941, the Red Army consisted of a staggering 600 divisions. Not only that, it added 500,000 new men every month for most of the rest of the war. That was a replacement rate far beyond anything Germany could possibly hope to match.
In preparing for its invasion of Germany, the Soviet military had developed light tanks capable of traveling across rivers. These tanks had even traveled across Lake Ladoga. The next generation of that particular tank was planned to have the capacity to cross the English Channel. Stalin had hoped Hitler would conquer England in 1940, so that the Red Army could later “liberate” it from Nazi occupation. He would then have established a communist dictatorship.
3. It is far from certain that the UK & USA could have beaten a victorious G (or R) + J.
During the Cold War, Truman recognized that if the Soviet Union invaded Western Europe, American and German forces would be no match for their Soviet counterparts. Had the Soviets attacked, the main defense would have been to use nuclear weapons against advancing Soviet troops. Stalin intended to counter the American nuclear threat by using MiG jets to shoot down American bombers before they could deliver their nuclear payloads. Stalin had a lot of MiG jets. However, he died before he could put into effect his plans to launch WWIII.
It’s hard to imagine that a German or Japanese victory in WWII would have resulted in a weaker American postwar position than the one described above. Germany and Japan had very limited populations. During the war Japan expended a great many of its soldiers in its war against China, just as Germany lost many men against the Soviet Union. These losses, in combination with their relatively small population sizes–would have prevented them from overwhelming the Western democracies with sheer numbers. (As the Soviet Union could easily have done.)
True, democracy didn’t gain. But that wasn’t because they went to war.
Denmark, Holland, and Belgium were not at war with Germany. Yet they were invaded. Democracy lost even without war.
Prior to that, Poland and Czechoslovakia had fallen, and I believe both were democracies.
Britain and France believed Hitler was taking over Europe’s democratic nations one by one, and went to war to stop it. The war was an attempt to save democracy, that mostly ended up failing in the first few years of the war.It is true that the Soviets had more manpower and industrial might than Germany. But did you include Italy and France in Germany’s military? After France fell, and if Britain had surrendered like Germany anticipated, the full might of the Axis would have come down on Russia. With no second front, Germany would have used those 10:1 and 3:1 kill ratios to slowly deplete the Russian population to nothing. The Soviet Union lost far more men than any other power in WW2… now imagine if they had been fighting alone against the Axis. Would they have won?
As for a weaker US position post war if they had ignored Germany…
Of course it would have been weaker! They would have lost the military buildup, the increase in military production that came with going to war against Germany, the experience of troops gained in the fighting, and most importantly: The Atomic Bomb! The Atom Bomb was specifically designed and made to counter Germany’s own atomic weapon research, and wasn’t used against Germany only because Germany abandoned it’s project and then lost the war before the Atomic Bomb could be used against them. If nuking the Russians was really Truman’s plan… what would he have done if he had stayed out of Europe, and had no nukes? The US became stronger because of going to war with the European Axis, and was able to successfully prevent Soviet domination. -
@CWO:
@Private:
That’s news to me KurtGodel7. Either I have (re-?) learned something or this is a debated point? Look forward to hearing what others have to say.
There was a lengthy discussion of this topic over here:
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=34786.0
In a nutshell, some board members argued for the revisionist theory that the USSR intended to invade Germany as a first step towards global domination by the Communists, while other board members (myself included) argued for the mainstream theory that the Soviets were planning a forward defense of their territory against an anticipated Nazi invasion whose aim was to secure Lebensraum, slave labour and resources for the Third Reich. Such discussions can be found scattered all over this forum (the present thread on Chamberlain being one such example).
That the long-term goal of communism is world domination is not seriously disputed. Evidence also strongly indicates that as a step toward that goal, Stalin hoped to take control over all of Europe during his own lifetime.
In a nutshell, some board members argued for the revisionist theory that the USSR intended to invade Germany . . .
The source for this “revisionist theory” is not “some board members,” but rather Victor Suvorov. Suvorov was a highly ranked KGB agent until he defected to Britain. In the years before his defection, he had access to secret Soviet archives. It was his research into these archives–which were and are unavailable to Western historians–which persuaded him that the Soviet Union intended to strike the first blow.
It’s been said that journalists write the first draft of history. And that’s the approach most mainstream historians typically use. They’ll gather press clippings, and use them as a starting point for the books they intend to write.
But in his role as an intelligence operative, Suvorov was not trained to rely on press clippings. He was trained to dig deeper, in order to find the things which lay beneath the surface. If (for example) there was some secret the United States government did not want the Soviet government to know, the Soviet KGB did not necessarily expect to learn that secret by reading about it in the American press! The KGB’s task was not always quite so easy as that.
Suvorov had been taught techniques to use to spy on other people’s governments, and pry out their secrets. He used those techniques on his own government, to ferret out a secret it had been hiding. The more evidence he gathered, the more obvious the truth became.
Stalin came to power in the first place by using a series of alliances and betrayals. He’d ally with X against Y. After Y had been eliminated, he’d ally with Z against X. After X had been “disappeared,” Stalin would turn his sights on Z.
The Nazi-Soviet Pact represented Stalin’s attempt to do the same thing to Hitler. The agreement called for Germany and the Soviet Union to invade Poland at the same time. That way they’d both do the work of destroying Poland’s army, and they’d both take the blame for having been aggressors. Instead, Stalin delayed his invasion by several weeks. Germany had to do by far the lion’s share of the work of destroying the Polish Army, and received almost all the blame for Poland’s invasion. The Soviet Union received at least as much territory as Germany did, without having to pay a price even remotely resembling the one Germany paid.
But the destruction of the Polish Army was not the only task Stalin had in mind for Hitler. The French, and (ideally) the British Armies also needed to be destroyed. During 1940, Stalin left Hitler alone so that he could achieve the task Stalin had intended for him. By 1941, it was clear that Hitler would not conquer Britain or any other additional major Western democracy. This meant he was of no further use to Stalin. Suvorov suggested the Soviet invasion of Germany had been planned for the late summer or early fall of 1941. An August invasion was a distinct possibility; though it was difficult to pin down an exact date. One thing was relatively certain: the large numbers of Soviet soldiers gathered along the Nazi-Soviet border had not been ordered to prepare winter accommodations for themselves. Germany’s soldiers along that border were not ordered to prepare winter accommodations either; because the plan was for them to be well east of that border by winter. What is the explanation for the absence of Soviet winter accommodations along that same border?
-
Hi KurtGodel7
Not read the book you refer to, but happy to accept the likelihood of an R attack on G at some point. The uncertainty is when. Also communism global aspirations, which I am sure all would accept
Do you accept any of the counter arguments on other points? Â G being more of a threat? Â The democracies gaining or not?
Cheers
PP -
@Private:
Hi KurtGodel7
Not read the book you refer to, but happy to accept the likelihood of an R attack on G at some point. The uncertainty is when. Also communism global aspirations, which I am sure all would accept
Do you accept any of the counter arguments on other points? � G being more of a threat? � The democracies gaining or not?
Cheers
PPDo you accept any of the counter arguments on other points?
It was correctly pointed out that Germany invaded several neutral democracies, including Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium. Those invasions occurred in 1940, after the British and French governments had already gone to war. Each invasion was done for military reasons, intended to help Germany in its war against France and Britain.
Norway was invaded to protect Germany’s supply of Swedish iron ore against British aggression. The other reason for the invasion was so that Germany could have more ports along the Atlantic coast, better positioning it for sub warfare against Britain. The Netherlands and Belgium were invaded as part of the overall plan to conquer France. Denmark was invaded to help protect the Baltic against British or French naval incursions.
In 1939, Poland’s government was a military dictatorship. (And an expansionist military dictatorship, at that.)
You will recall that back when Britain and France had empires, there were two types of people: citizens, with full voting rights. And residents of colonies, who had few or no rights. Czechoslovakia was similar to that. Czechs were considered full citizens, and had full democratic voting rights. The Germans living in the Sudetenland were treated like “residents of colonies” were treated by the British and French empires, and were given few or no rights.
To assert that Germany was in the business of gobbling up democracies in the prewar period is false: the only democracy it gobbled up during the prewar period was Czechoslovakia. Compare that to the Soviet Union. During its own prewar period–which extended into early June of 1941–the Soviet Union annexed Lithuania (authoritarian government), Latvia (a democracy) and Estonia (an authoritarian/democratic hybrid). It also annexed part of Finland (a democracy). By taking away Finland’s defenses–which were quite possibly the most impregnable in Europe–the Soviet Union made it clear it was planning on a subsequent invasion of Finland as a whole. Stalin also helped himself to the eastern half of Poland in 1939; although in that particular instance he was gaining at the expense of a military dictatorship.
The idea that Germany was the bigger threat because of its habit of gobbling up democracies is not convincing to me; because the Soviet Union was perfectly happy to do plenty of gobbling too.
The democracies gaining or not?
The vast majority of the democracies’ gains were things they’d lost in the first place due to their own decision to focus on Nazi Germany while ignoring the Soviet threat. Western democratic instinct to ignore the Soviet threat predated Hitler’s rise to power. In 1920, the Soviet Union attempted to annex Poland. Had it been successful, Suvorov believes that it would have moved on to Germany. At the time, Germany was disarmed due to the Versailles Treaty, and was on the brink of a communist revolution. The Western democracies did precisely nothing to help Poland against this Soviet invasion. (With the exception of a few French military advisors.) But instead of falling victim to Soviet invasion–as most had expected–the Poles proved surprisingly resilient. When military fortunes had turned against them–when the governments of Britain and France urged the Poles to seek the best surrender terms they could–the Poles instead won a decisive victory near Warsaw. The courage and skill the Poles displayed in that battle protected both Poland and Germany from the scourge of the Red Terror for the next twenty years. However, Poland’s victory would not have been possible, had the Soviet Union not been in a state of civil war.
By 1948, the Soviet Union controlled the vast bulk of Europe. This was the natural long-term consequence of the Western democracies’ decision to ignore the Soviet threat, while doing everything they could to destroy Europe’s one counterweight to that threat.
-
@Private:
Hi KurtGodel7
Not read the book you refer to, but happy to accept the likelihood of an R attack on G at some point. The uncertainty is when. Also communism global aspirations, which I am sure all would accept
Do you accept any of the counter arguments on other points? � G being more of a threat? � The democracies gaining or not?
Cheers
PPDo you accept any of the counter arguments on other points?
It was correctly pointed out that Germany invaded several neutral democracies, including Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium. Those invasions occurred in 1940, after the British and French governments had already gone to war. Each invasion was done for military reasons, intended to help Germany in its war against France and Britain.
Norway was invaded to protect Germany’s supply of Swedish iron ore against British aggression. The other reason for the invasion was so that Germany could have more ports along the Atlantic coast, better positioning it for sub warfare against Britain. The Netherlands and Belgium were invaded as part of the overall plan to conquer France. Denmark was invaded to help protect the Baltic against British or French naval incursions.
In 1939, Poland’s government was a military dictatorship. (And an expansionist military dictatorship, at that.)
You will recall that back when Britain and France had empires, there were two types of people: citizens, with full voting rights. And residents of colonies, who had few or no rights. Czechoslovakia was similar to that. Czechs were considered full citizens, and had full democratic voting rights. The Germans living in the Sudetenland were treated like “residents of colonies” were treated by the British and French empires, and were given few or no rights.
To assert that Germany was in the business of gobbling up democracies in the prewar period is false: the only democracy it gobbled up during the prewar period was Czechoslovakia. Compare that to the Soviet Union. During its own prewar period–which extended into early June of 1941–the Soviet Union annexed Lithuania (authoritarian government), Latvia (a democracy) and Estonia (an authoritarian/democratic hybrid). It also annexed part of Finland (a democracy). By taking away Finland’s defenses–which were quite possibly the most impregnable in Europe–the Soviet Union made it clear it was planning on a subsequent invasion of Finland as a whole. Stalin also helped himself to the eastern half of Poland in 1939; although in that particular instance he was gaining at the expense of a military dictatorship.
The idea that Germany was the bigger threat because of its habit of gobbling up democracies is not convincing to me; because the Soviet Union was perfectly happy to do plenty of gobbling too.
The democracies gaining or not?
The vast majority of the democracies’ gains were things they’d lost in the first place due to their own decision to focus on Nazi Germany while ignoring the Soviet threat. Western democratic instinct to ignore the Soviet threat predated Hitler’s rise to power. In 1920, the Soviet Union attempted to annex Poland. Had it been successful, Suvorov believes that it would have moved on to Germany. At the time, Germany was disarmed due to the Versailles Treaty, and was on the brink of a communist revolution. The Western democracies did precisely nothing to help Poland against this Soviet invasion. (With the exception of a few French military advisors.) But instead of falling victim to Soviet invasion–as most had expected–the Poles proved surprisingly resilient. When military fortunes had turned against them–when the governments of Britain and France urged the Poles to seek the best surrender terms they could–the Poles instead won a decisive victory near Warsaw. The courage and skill the Poles displayed in that battle protected both Poland and Germany from the scourge of the Red Terror for the next twenty years. However, Poland’s victory would not have been possible, had the Soviet Union not been in a state of civil war.
By 1948, the Soviet Union controlled the vast bulk of Europe. This was the natural long-term consequence of the Western democracies’ decision to ignore the Soviet threat, while doing everything they could to destroy Europe’s one counterweight to that threat.
To be fair, Austria was a democracy
-
To be fair, Austria was a democracy
The First Austrian Republic lasted until 1933 when Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, using what he called “self-switch-off of Parliament” . . . established an autocratic regime tending toward Italian fascism.[45][46] The two big parties at this time, the Social Democrats and the Conservatives, had paramilitary armies;[47] the Social Democrats’ Schutzbund was now declared illegal but still operative[47] as civil war broke out.[45][46][48].
In February 1934 several members of the Schutzbund were executed,[49] the Social Democratic party was outlawed and many of its members were imprisoned or emigrated.[48] On 1 May 1934, the Austrofascists imposed a new constitution (“Maiverfassung”) which cemented Dollfuss’s power.
-
Hi KG7
The quicker response to my previous post might have been no!
Seriously, though, your passion and your knowledge do you credit.
My argument on whether R or G was the greater threat was that it was G’s geographical location in central Europe and its militarised border with the foremost continental democracy that ratcheted up its threat status.
Unless you are simply arguing that G was not a threat at all, the above point must have got lost in the noise.
Cheers
PP -
@Private:
Hi KG7
The quicker response to my previous post might have been no!
Seriously, though, your passion and your knowledge do you credit.
My argument on whether R or G was the greater threat was that it was G’s geographical location in central Europe and its militarised border with the foremost continental democracy that ratcheted up its threat status.
Unless you are simply arguing that G was not a threat at all, the above point must have got lost in the noise.
Cheers
PPSeriously, though, your passion and your knowledge do you credit.
Thanks for the kind words.
My argument on whether R or G was the greater threat was that it
was G’s geographical location in central Europe and its militarised
border with the foremost continental democracy that ratcheted up its threat status.In Hitler’s second book, he mentioned Germany’s centralized location within Europe. He considered that position a very serious liability. He would much rather Germany have been off to the side and out of the thick of things, so that it would be much less likely to experience the danger of a multi-front war against multiple enemies at once.
You will recall that after WWI, the Allies disarmed Germany. The disarmament of Axis nations was supposedly a prelude to a more general disarmament, in which Allied nations would also be disarmed. “The war to end all wars” and all that. But the Allies never disarmed. More importantly, they never pressured the Soviet Union to disarm.
The Soviet Union had a three step plan:
1. Industrialize
2. Militarize
3. Conquer EuropeStalin initiated step 1 of this plan in the '20s. Step 2 was scheduled to be complete–or at least complete enough by July or August of 1941. At that point it would have been time to embark on step 3.
What was the Western democratic plan to stop this growing Soviet threat? Nothing! Except for a few French military advisors, they did nothing at all to help Poland withstand Soviet invasion back in 1920. As the Soviet Union grew in power during the late '20s and early '30s, the Western democracies responded by not relenting on the harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty. That treaty crippled Germany both economically and militarily, leaving it completely unable to defend itself against any would-be Soviet invasion. Recall that Germany was a democracy during this time, with a democratic government set up by the victorious Allies themselves. And yet they saw no need to “make the world safe for democracy” if the threatened democracy was inside Germany. They signed no treaties which would have protected Germany from the Soviet threat, and did not allow Germany to have a military with which to defend itself.
When Hitler came to power, he recognized that if Germany was going to defend itself against the Soviet threat, it would have to be through its own efforts. He recognized that Western democracies were no more interested in defending Germany from the Soviet threat than they’d been in defending Poland from Soviet invasion back in 1920.
The Western democracies had their chance to make an anti-Soviet pact with a nice, moderate, democratic German government in the form of the Weimar Republic. They urinated that chance away. So now, due to their own failings, they were stuck dealing with a hardline leader in the form of Hitler.
Hitler began his rule by opting out of the economically crippling portions of the Versailles Treaty. Due to that and other measures, Germany’s economy began to boom. Hitler also built up Germany’s military. Germany had been prohibited tanks or military planes under Versailles, so there was plenty of work to do to create good tank and plane designs. Only about 10 - 12% of German military spending went to the navy–clear evidence that whatever military ambitions Hitler may have had were confined to the European mainland. The nature of Germany’s military buildup offered reassurance to Britain, but not to France.
France had pursued an anti-German foreign policy for many centuries. The harsh, vindictive Versailles Treaty was simply a continuation of a pattern which had begun a very long time ago. That pattern continued into the '30s, with France pursuing a policy of anti-German encirclement. Ignoring the 7 million innocent victims of the Ukrainian famine, the French government signed a defensive alliance with the Soviet Union in 1935. France’s leaders seemed to lack the ability to imagine a world in which Germany and France were not enemies.
Daladier wanted war with Germany. But he didn’t want to go in alone. He felt that to achieve victory he needed one major ally: Britain, or the United States, or the Soviet Union. In 1938 Chamberlain’s approach prevented Daladier from getting the war he wanted. Things were different in 1939.
Unfortunately, there was no way for Hitler to prove to Daladier or other French leaders that his military buildup was intended for use against the Soviet Union, and not against France. Even if there had been a way for Hitler to prove that, it’s very likely Daladier would have pursued an anti-German foreign policy anyway. France’s foreign policy was anti-German back in the '20s, at a time when Germany was weak and crippled economically, militarily, and politically. If France was going to be anti-German even when Germany was as weak and non-threatening as possible, it would certainly also be anti-German as Germany grew strong under Hitler.
Dalaider himself had strong anti-German sentiments. Back in 1935, he’d served as Minister of War in France’s Popular Front government. 40% of that government consisted of the French section of the Workers International, 20% consisted of the French Communist Party, and the remaining 40% consisted of Daladier’s own Radical Party. During the '30s, the Soviet Union promoted “anti-fascism” in Western democracies, as part of its broader strategy of fostering war between Germany and the West. Dalaider was a good Minister of War for an “anti-fascist” government like the Popular Front: he had the right pro-war, pro-Soviet, anti-German spirit.
In order to get the war he wanted, Daladier deliberately threw Poland under the bus. He made Poland promises he never intended to keep. Specifically, he promised the Polish that France would launch a general offensive against Germany within 15 days of mobilization. Daladier’s lie formed the basis of Poland’s entire diplomatic and military strategy for 1939. Polish leaders’ foolish belief in that lie is the primary reason all their plans failed.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler had written about the need to go to war against the Soviet Union. Around the year 1920 the communists came very close to taking over Germany. Hitler was almost unknown at that time. When a pair of communists came to arrest him, he drew his pistol. The communists looked into his eyes, saw he meant business, and retreated, with no shots fired. Later in the '20s the communists came very close to taking control of northern Germany. By this point Hitler had built a somewhat successful political movement, and decided to respond to this communist threat by taking control over southern Germany. Hitler’s putsch attempt failed, and he spent over a year in prison. The communist attempt to seize northern Germany failed as well.
Having finally taken control over Germany, Hitler had every reason in the world to focus his attention on the east. Especially given the fact that even before Hitler had come to power, Stalin had already embarked upon a massive program of industrialization and militarization. Stalin and other Soviet leaders openly advocated a long-term goal of world conquest. As Hitler had already seen, communist plans for world domination definitely included Germany.
You will recall that Spanish dictator Franco pursued a policy of neutrality toward Germany. Hitler responded by leaving Spain alone. Suppose that France had pursued that same policy of neutrality. Might Hitler have left France alone too? Might he have focused his attention on his one foreign policy goal–war against the Soviet Union–while leaving things well enough alone in the west?
-
Thanks KG7. Again you display considerable knowledge of events.
I understand that Hitler had rational thought processes as well as irrational, a balance which gradually altered through the course of the war. Â Plus that it is important to understand both side’s viewpoints, which makes me open to some of your arguments.
However, I don’t see in your posts a willingness to engage with the Allies’ side of the confrontation, which troubles me.
Yes Stalin was a monster, but that doesn’t make Hitler a saint. R was certainly a threat, but so was G. Hitler had clear designs on R, but that does not mean he did not have designs on others too. The democracies mislead Poland and made mistakes, but that does not make them primarily responsible. And so on ….
A more evident balance in your posts would increase the chance of engagement with the tremendous knowledge you display.
-
KurtGodel7…
I do not think it is disputed that Communism was a serious threat to the Western world, and that it was ignored by the Western democracies.
But the topic and the issue at hand is whether it would have been wiser for the Allies to have conceded to Hitler or to have fought Hitler.
On the last page, I brought up several points that I do not believe you acknowledged. Namely, the very real threat to democracy, the strong possibility of Axis victory against the USSR if things had gone according to plan and Britain had made peace after the fall of France, and the development of the Atomic Bomb, directly due to US involvement in the war in Europe, and which was the primary deterrent for Soviet aggression in the Post War period.
You have made a strong case for why the Soviets were a threat, but you have not made a strong case for why the Allies ignoring Hitler would have been a better idea than what they did.
-
@Private:
Thanks KG7. Again you display considerable knowledge of events.
I understand that Hitler had rational thought processes as well as irrational, a balance which gradually altered through the course of the war. � Plus that it is important to understand both side’s viewpoints, which makes me open to some of your arguments.
However, I don’t see in your posts a willingness to engage with the Allies’ side of the confrontation, which troubles me.
Yes Stalin was a monster, but that doesn’t make Hitler a saint. R was certainly a threat, but so was G. Hitler had clear designs on R, but that does not mean he did not have designs on others too. The democracies mislead Poland and made mistakes, but that does not make them primarily responsible. And so on ….
A more evident balance in your posts would increase the chance of engagement with the tremendous knowledge you display.
However, I don’t see in your posts a willingness to engage with the Allies’ side of the confrontation, which troubles me.
A fair point.
One reason for that is because I see little alignment between Allied leaders’ values and mine. Below are several examples.
-
Mass murder. I strongly oppose mass murder. The Allies did nothing at all which would suggest they felt the same way–at least not when that mass murder was being committed by the Soviet Union. Stalin could kill all the people he wanted, and the Western democracies rewarded him with defensive alliances, openness to Soviet influence, government-sponsored pro-Soviet propaganda films, and more. No major Western democracy adopted an anti-Soviet foreign policy prior to 1948.
-
Mass murder part 2. Not content with merely turning a blind eye to Soviet mass murder, the Western democracies chose to indulge in mass murder of their own. That mass murder began in 1939, with their food blockade of Germany. In 1940, former U.S. president Herbert Hoover wrote the following:
The food situation in the present war is already more desperate than at the same stage in the [First] World War. … If this war is long continued, there is but one implacable end… the greatest famine in history.
Germany responded to famine conditions by feeding Germans first, Slavs second, Jews not at all. Exactly how you’d expect a Nazi government to respond to famine. As a result of this (predictable) response, millions of Poles starved to death. Granted, tens of millions of non-Poles were also starved or otherwise killed, including 6 million Jews. The reason I’m mentioning the Poles in particular is because Britain and France went to war in the first place claiming they wanted to help Poland! :o That is the second-most cynical and deceitful political claim I have ever encountered. Far from “helping” Poland, the very first thing those two nations did was to unleash a food blockade which killed millions of innocent Poles! As someone who’s part Polish myself, I find it hard to remain fully neutral about something like this. I’m sure that multiple members of my extended family died as a direct result of the Allies’ food blockade.
Hitler was Poland’s enemy too. But at least in that case, Hitler told Polish leaders what they needed to do to not be enemies with Germany; and they chose not to listen. It’s not like he led them on with false promises of help and friendship, only to push them into a ditch after they’d made the mistake of trusting him. (Which is how the Western democracies treated Poland.) Not only that, the Western democracies were completely open to the idea of a Soviet conquest of Poland. (As they demonstrated in 1920, and again in 1939, and a third time at Yalta.)
- Honesty. The more honest a government is, the more I will respect it. There were times when the Nazi government deviated from honesty. To give an example: after Dresden was bombed, the official police report stated there had been 60,000 victims. Goebbels claimed there had been over 500,000 victims. Maybe he felt that some of the bodies had been buried under rubble or incinerated in the firestorm; and so not included in the police report. But even so, his statement was a case of taking what was (at best) a wild guess, and presenting it as a cold and hard fact.
However deceptive Goebbels may have been, the Allies were worse. They chose to “act as if” Germany could feed everyone within its own borders. The deaths caused by their own food blockade were presented as having been caused solely by the Nazis’ irrational genocidal urges.
During the 1930s, large numbers of German Jews had immigrated to Palestine. This immigration made Palestinians and other Muslims unhappy. In 1939, Britain responded to that unhappiness by stopping almost all additional Jewish immigration into Palestine. I don’t blame Britain for not wanting to deal with a rebellion among their Islamic colonies on the eve of a world war. I do blame Britain and France for refusing to open any of their non-Muslim colonies to Jewish immigration.
The Allies used a food blockade to create famine conditions within Germany. They used immigration policy to prevent Hitler from exporting his Jewish population. Then they made the Holocaust the centerpiece of their wartime and postwar anti-Nazi propaganda effort. The combination of these three decisions strikes me as even more dishonest and cynical than the lies the Allies told about wanting to help Poland.
During the latter stages of WWII, large numbers of Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, and Soviet citizens fled westward into Germany to escape the horror of the Red Army. After WWII ended, the Western democracies found themselves with about 5 million such refugees on their hands. They agreed to turn these refugees over to Stalin!
Tolstoy described the scene of Americans returning to the internment camp after having delivered a shipment of people to the Soviets. “The Americans returned to Plattling visibly shamefaced. Before their departure from the rendezvous in the forest, many had seen rows of bodies already hanging from the branches of nearby trees.”[11]
It’s widely accepted that many or most American and other Western democratic politicians are sleazy and self-serving. But the things I’ve described go well, well beyond mere sleaziness.
Yes Stalin was a monster, but that doesn’t make Hitler a saint.
Agreed. Hitler was (by far!) the lesser of the two evils. But he was still brutal, and became more brutal as the war progressed and his hopes diminished. Some of his late war killings cannot be explained in terms of coping with the famine conditions caused by the Allied food blockade.
-
-
Thanks KG7. For the first time I see a recognition of Nazi shortcomings in your post, which is a great encouragement. It will help me to continue to engage with and benefit from your knowledge.
I had begun to think that you were representing G’s actions as rational and reasonable, which I am sure is a perception you would wish to avoid. If future posts were to balance your many criticisms of the allies, some of them certainly justified, with a recognition of G’s terrible failings that would really help. The mass murder point being an obvious one.
I am sure you don’t see any correlation between the Nazi’s values and yours either, so you won’t find it hard!
I now understand that your key thrust is one of R being even worse than an awful G. In some ways you are right. I still think, however, that it was Germany’s location that made it the far greater threat to France and Britain. As a previous reply from you showed, Hitler himself understood this. He then took a range of actions that made that threat ever more real without investing the same energy in effectively re-assuring the democracies of his intentions being solely focussed on defence against R.
I also think amanntai’s point is a good one: You have made a strong case for why the Soviets were a threat, but you have not made a strong case for why the Allies ignoring Hitler would have been a better idea than what they did. Looking forward to your reply to that.
P.S. Poland was certainly badly let down by the Allies. Churchill felt it keenly.
-
@Private:
Thanks KG7. For the first time I see a recognition of Nazi shortcomings in your post, which is a great encouragement. It will help me to continue to engage with and benefit from your knowledge.
I had begun to think that you were representing G’s actions as rational and reasonable, which I am sure is a perception you would wish to avoid. If future posts were to balance your many criticisms of the allies, some of them certainly justified, with a recognition of G’s terrible failings that would really help. The mass murder point being an obvious one.
I am sure you don’t see any correlation between the Nazi’s values and yours either, so you won’t find it hard!
I now understand that your key thrust is one of R being even worse than an awful G. In some ways you are right. I still think, however, that it was Germany’s location that made it the far greater threat to France and Britain. As a previous reply from you showed, Hitler himself understood this. He then took a range of actions that made that threat ever more real without investing the same energy in effectively re-assuring the democracies of his intentions being solely focussed on defence against R.
I also think amanntai’s point is a good one: You have made a strong case for why the Soviets were a threat, but you have not made a strong case for why the Allies ignoring Hitler would have been a better idea than what they did. Looking forward to your reply to that.
P.S. Poland was certainly badly let down by the Allies. Churchill felt it keenly.
I had begun to think that you were representing G’s actions as rational and reasonable . . .
My tendency is to examine Germany’s (or any other nation’s) actions on a case by case basis. In doing so, I ask two questions: 1) to what extend did the action in question advance the nation towards its goals? 2) To what extent were the goals reasonable objectives for that nation to have?
The mass murder point being an obvious one.
I divide mass murder into two categories:
-
Mass murder with extenuating circumstances. Imagine that ten people are on a lifeboat, but there is only enough food and water for seven of them to make it back to safety. A decision to kill three people on the lifeboat would represent a miniature example of something in this category.
-
Pure mass murder. Imagine a lifeboat with ten people on board, and enough food and water to bring twenty people back to safety. A decision to kill anyone on that lifeboat would be a miniature example of this category.
The Ukrainian famine was pure mass murder. It occurred during a time of peace, when no one was blockading the Soviet Union’s ports; and at a time when it was exporting millions of tons of grain for sale on the London Exchange. There were no extenuating circumstances which would excuse that government-induced famine.
There were over 1,000 victims of Soviet prewar mass murder for every one victim of Nazi prewar mass murder. The Soviets were much, much more willing to engage in pure mass murder than the Nazis.
Once the war began, German government planners determined that the Allied food blockade–and the resulting food shortages–would result in the starvation of 20 - 30 million people. The Nazis recognized that even though they could do nothing to avoid those 20 - 30 million deaths, they at least had the option of choosing the victims. Every person they shot or gassed was one less mouth to feed. However, more people died under Nazi rule due to starvation than to gas chambers or firing squads. Millions of the victims of starvation were people Hitler had ordered to be fed. The most notable example of this is the starvation of the Soviet POWs forced to work in German weapons factories. Their work was vital to the German war effort, which is why Hitler gave the order to feed them. But the food necessary to carry out that order simply did not exist.
One reason that food didn’t exist is because the Nazis had mostly failed in their efforts to prevent captured Soviet farms from delivering food to captured Soviet cities. The Nazis had wanted that food to go to Germany instead, so that they could feed their captured Soviet POWs. However, Germany lacked the manpower with which to cordon off captured Soviet cities. Also, a number of German government officials put in charge of administering captured Soviet territory were less than thrilled with this plan; and pointed out the lack of wisdom of starving captured enemy territory during a time of war.
I still think, however, that it was Germany’s location that made it the far greater threat to France and Britain.
Over the short run you are right. Germany had a common border with France, and the Soviet Union did not. But had the Versailles Treaty remained in place throughout the '30s and early '40s, the Soviet Union would have annexed all of Germany. Once that happened, Stalin would have inherited Germany’s centralized location. But unlike Germany, he wouldn’t have had to worry about his eastern front.
By the end of the war the Soviet Union controlled half of Germany’s prewar land area. At the end of the war, the Soviets chopped off the eastern half of Poland and added it to the Soviet Union. Then they chopped off the eastern 25% of Germany and added it to Poland. The remaining portion of Soviet-occupied Germany–the part which didn’t get chopped off–became East Germany.
By 1945, the Soviet Union had acquired most of the advantages of Germany’s centralized location, without any of the disadvantages. It did its best to fuse the military age men of Eastern Europe together under a giant army under the control of the Warsaw Pact.
In early 1940, Britain and France had rough military parity with Germany. The combined Anglo-French forces (in combination with their Belgian and Dutch allies) were more numerous than the Germans. They had about the same number of tanks as Germany. They had fewer military aircraft, but more military production capacity. A war against Germany was a credible proposition for Britain and France; and it was only superior generalship which allowed Germany to conquer France.
After WWII ended, the governments of Britain and France were in no position to credibly wage war against the Warsaw Pact. Not even if West Germany joined in. The democracies of Western Europe were in a much weaker position after the war ended than they were just before it started. That weakness was the inevitable result of the policy–which they had pursued for the previous two decades–of ignoring or embracing Soviet expansionism.
[Hitler] then took a range of actions that made that threat ever more real without investing
the same energy in effectively re-assuring the democracies of his intentions being solely focussed on defence against R.Hitler could (and did) reassure the British by limiting the size of his navy. But his goal of conquering the Soviet Union was incompatible with the goal of providing similar reassurance to France by limiting the size of Germany’s land forces. Nor did Daladier or other French leaders give Hitler any reason to hope that they’d pursue anything other than a highly anti-German foreign policy no matter what he did. Even during the mid '30s, French leaders were already trying to negotiate a deal with Stalin in which Germany would be conquered and divided between France and the Soviet Union. (Stalin wasn’t interested.) Eventually, Hitler became persuaded that war with France was inevitable; and that he would need to conquer France in order to secure his western front before going to war in the east. Given that France’s anti-German, pro-Soviet foreign policy was in place long before Hitler even came to power, it’s hard to blame that foreign policy on Hitler’s own diplomatic failings. I grant that Hitler’s grasp of diplomatic policy was flawed. But even if he’d been Otto von Bismarck, it’s not necessarily clear that he could have avoided war against France.
-
-
I am alarmed that you apparently justify Hitler’s mass murders by saying it was due to food shortages! Hitler made it pretty clear that his actions were racially based. Even if Germany was suffering from food shortages, Hitler still chose to use those shortages to justify genocide. Famine should never be a justification for genocide.
Remember that Hitler also starved thousands of Russians (especially in Leningrad) as part of his policy of wiping out the Russians. And this article (http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/mobile/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007183 ) seems to indicate the starving of Soviet POWs was intentional!
Furthermore, I would like you to provide a source for your claim that 30 million Germans could have died to hunger. This seems rather inflated, as my research indicates Germany only had about 80 million people in 1940. I do not believe that 37.5% of the German population was at risk of starvation! The highest figure I have found is that 3 million Poles were at risk of starvation, and 3 million Soviet POWs starved.
-
A little bit off topic here, but:
In early 1940, Britain and France had rough military parity with Germany. The combined Anglo-French forces (in combination with their Belgian and Dutch allies) were more numerous than the Germans. They had about the same number of tanks as Germany. They had fewer military aircraft, but more military production capacity. A war against Germany was a credible proposition for Britain and France; and it was only superior generalship which allowed Germany to conquer France.
This is something I’ve always felt is not well modeled in A&A 1940. The Fall of France is inevitable (unless you get really awful dice rolls), but only because Germany has so many units to throw at France. France doesn’t stand a chance against Germany’s superior numbers on the 1940 board! Germany’s brilliant sweep through Belgium around the Maginot line unfortunately cannot be modeled on the Europe 1940 board.
But it can be modeled on the A&A 1914 board! Germany can sweep through Belgium and into Picardy, ignoring a superior French force in Lorraine as it captures Paris! I should very much like to see a future A%A game featuring a global WW2, and a European map as detailed as the 1914 map.
-
I am alarmed that you apparently justify Hitler’s mass murders by saying it was due to food shortages! Hitler made it pretty clear that his actions were racially based. Even if Germany was suffering from food shortages, Hitler still chose to use those shortages to justify genocide. Famine should never be a justification for genocide.
Remember that Hitler also starved thousands of Russians (especially in Leningrad) as part of his policy of wiping out the Russians. And this article (http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/mobile/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007183 ) seems to indicate the starving of Soviet POWs was intentional!
Furthermore, I would like you to provide a source for your claim that 30 million Germans could have died to hunger. This seems rather inflated, as my research indicates Germany only had about 80 million people in 1940. I do not believe that 37.5% of the German population was at risk of starvation! The highest figure I have found is that 3 million Poles were at risk of starvation, and 3 million Soviet POWs starved.
Thanks for the post and the link. While I am not familiar with some of the link’s secondary assertions, its primary assertion (that large numbers of Soviet POWs starved to death while in German captivity) is consistent with my own research.
Furthermore, I would like you to provide a source for your claim that 30 million Germans could have died to hunger.
Adam Tooze’s book Wages of Destruction was praised by The Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, the Boston Globe, and a number of other major media outlets. The book was awarded the Wolfson History Prize. Below are some quotes from it:
After 1939 the supply of food in Western Europe was no less constrained than the supply of coal. . . . Grain imports in the late 1930s had run at the rate of more than 7 million tons per annum mostly from Argentina and Canada. These sources of supply were closed off by the British blockade. . . . By the summer of 1940, Germany was facing a Europe-wide agricultural crisis. . . . By 1941 there were already signs of mounting discontent due to the inadequate food supply. In Belgium and France, the official ration allocated to ‘normal consumers’ of as little as 1,300 calories per day, was an open invitation to resort to the black market.
Pp. 418 - 419
According to General Thomas’s secretariat the meeting concluded as follows:
1.) The war can only be continued, if the entire Wehrmacht is fed from Russia in the third year of the war.
2.) If we take what we need out of the country, there can be no doubt that many millions of people will die of starvation.
3.) The most important issues are the recovery and removal of oil seeds, oil cake, and only then the removal of grain.The minute did not specify the number of millions that the Germans intended to starve. . . . Backe himself put the figure for the ‘surplus population’ of the Soviet Union at between 20 and 30 million, and over the following months these numbers established themselves as a common reference point. . . .
[A memorandum stated:] Efforts to save the population from death by starvation by drawing on the surplus of the black earth regions can only be at the expense of the food supply to Europe. They diminish the staying power of Germany in the war and the resistance of Germany and Europe to the blockade. There must be absolute clarity about this.
Pp. 479 - 480. However, the plan to starve 20 - 30 million people to death largely failed. As a result of that failure–and the consequent lack of food freed up for shipment to Germany–the following occurred.
When the order to ship large numbers of Eastern European workers to Germany was first given, Backe protested vigorously. The 400,000 Soviet prisoners of war already in Germany were more than he could provide for. Goering had spoken casually of feeding the Eastern workers on cats and horse-meat. Backe had consulted the statistics and reported glumly that there were not enough cats to provide a ration for the Eastern workers and horse-meat was already being used to supplement the rations of the German population. If the Russians were to be given meat, they would have to be supplied at the expense of the German population.
P. 539
Backe was in an impossible position. The Fuehrer had demanded more workers. Gauleiter Sauckel was dedicated to delivering them. Hitler and Sauckel now demanded that the workers [Soviet POWs] be fed, which was clearly a necessity if they were to be productive. And yet, given the level of grain stocks, Backe was unable to meet this demand. What was called for was a reduction in consumption, not additional provisions for millions of new workers. The seriousness of the situation became apparent in the spring of 1942 when the Food Ministry announced cuts to the food rations of the German population. Given the regime’s mortal fear of damaging morale, the ration cuts of April 1942 are incontrovertible evidence that the food crisis was real. Lowering the rations was a political step of the first order, which Backe would never had suggested if the food situation had not absolutely required it. . . . When the reduction in the civilian ration was announced it produced a response which justified every anxiety on the part of the Nazi leadership.
P. 541. In response to all this, the following measures were taken.
Entire groups were to be excluded from the food supply, most notably the Jews. As Goebbels noted in his diary, the new regime would be based on the principle that before Germany starved ‘it would be the turn of a number of other peoples.’
P. 542.
[German-occupied Poland was] an agricultural deficit territory. In the first year of the German occupation, Backe and Governor General Frank had agreed on food imports from the Reich that were sufficient to give food to those Poles working for the Germans. The majority of the Polish population was left to fend for themselves. The result was an epidemic of malnutrition and outright starvation, particularly among the Jewish population confined to the ghettos. Faced with Germany’s food shortage in 1942, Backe went much further. He now demanded that the Governor General should reverse the flow. Rather than receive food supplements from Germany, the General Government [of Poland] was to make sizable food deliveries. . . . Backe predicated his demands on the elimination of Polish Jews from the food chain. . . . Eliminating the Jews would . . . reduce the number of people that needed feeding.
Pp. 544 - 545
By the end of August 1942, this extraordinary series of measures spread a palpable mood of relief throughout Berlin. Backe, Himmler, and Goering had staved off a disastrous downward spiral in the food supply. . . . Total European deliveries of grain [into Germany] doubled from 2 million tons per annum to more than 5 million tons in the harvest year of 1942-3. Of those deliveries that did enter the Reich [as opposed to being consumed in the field by the Wehrmacht], the General Government [of German-occupied Poland] supplied an astonishing 51 percent of German rye imports, 66 percent of oats and 52 percent of German potato imports. This was directly at the expense of the local population. . . . In the summer of 1942 it was the concerted extermination of Polish Jewry that provided the most immediate and fail-safe means of freeing up food for delivery to Germany.
P. 549.
-
Suppose that France had pursued that same policy of neutrality. Might Hitler have left France alone too? Might he have focused his attention on his one foreign policy goal–war against the Soviet Union–while leaving things well enough alone in the west?
Seems unlikely. There was a large chunk of territory (the Alcase) at stake. Hitler makes it clear in Mein Kampf that France and Germany are rivals and France should be subordinate.
I had been under the impression that the French and Soviets were willing to fight for the integrity of Czechoslovakia but the British put their weight behind the peace deal. Of course it wouldn’t surprise me if the French government was also determined to avoid war at all costs, as they were leaving the Spanish republican government in the lurch at the same time.
-
Suppose that France had pursued that same policy of neutrality. Might Hitler have left France alone too? Might he have focused his attention on his one foreign policy goal–war against the Soviet Union–while leaving things well enough alone in the west?
Seems unlikely. There was a large chunk of territory (the Alcase) at stake. Hitler makes it clear in Mein Kampf that France and Germany are rivals and France should be subordinate.
I had been under the impression that the French and Soviets were willing to fight for the integrity of Czechoslovakia but the British put their weight behind the peace deal. Of course it wouldn’t surprise me if the French government was also determined to avoid war at all costs, as they were leaving the Spanish republican government in the lurch at the same time.
There was a large chunk of territory (the Alcase) at stake.
In Hitler’s second book, he wrote about the inadvisability of basing broad national policy on border disputes. The incident which prompted those comments was the fact that Italy had annexed South Tyrol, an area with hundreds of thousands of Germans. Many in Germany felt that Hitler should do something to prevent those Germans from being annexed. Hitler, on the other hand, was prepared to let South Tyrol go so that he could have an alliance with Italy.
If Hitler was willing to write off South Tyrol in order to gain a completely useless ally, he might also have been willing to write off Alsace in order to avoid a pointless and unwanted war with Britain and France.
Hitler makes it clear in Mein Kampf that France and Germany are rivals and France should be subordinate.
It is true that Hitler expressed bitterness about the fact that France had pursued an anti-German foreign policy for literally centuries. He felt it was inevitable that France would continue pursuing an anti-German foreign policy, regardless of the nature of the French or German governments. France could have tried to change Hitler’s mind about all this by pursuing a policy of neutrality or even benevolence towards Germany. But that option was never considered.
[The French] were leaving the Spanish republican government in the lurch at the same time
It’s true that France could have done more to support Spain’s communist government in its war against Franco. Whether France should have done more to help the communists is, of course, another question.
Suggested Topics
