@Redleg13A:
So, your implication is that the western allies should have foregone entering the war because supposedly hitler didn’t want war with Britain or the US? (Mein Kamph makes it abundantly clear his plans for Britain and the US)If he didn’t want to fight the USA then why did he declare war on it? What was the US supposed to do after Germany declared war…sit on their hands? Hitler and his cronies were bad dudes no matter which way you cut it. They needed to be taken out. Furthermore, the western allies had every right to prosecute a war on Germany not even counting the atrocities that were committed. Once the atrocities became known, how could anyone consciously think there was not complicity at the very highest levels?
The most affected areas of the allied bomber campaign was western Germany…the area NOT occupied by the communists…and also the area that received massive influxes of aid, money, and infrastructure repair from the Marshall plan. Your logic is “the allies were trying to keep the Germans down so they could spend billions on them later eventually becoming one of the worlds strongest economies?” I’m not sure that’s sound logic.
Let’s not get into revisionist history too much and stick with the facts. The nazi ideology was not only anti Semitic, but anti anything but german essentially. Remember, 5 million of the 11 million killed in the holocaust were NOT Jews but " undesirables". He didn’t just hate communism and Jews but Slavs as well. This was quite evident by SS treatment of the Slav civilians when they were doing the “noble” duty of murdering them once the fighting had moved ahead. The war in the east became a war of annihilation BECAUSE of the brutality of the occupying Germans. Fluff it up all you want, they needed to go.
(Mein Kamph makes it abundantly clear his plans for Britain and the US)
I apologize for going off-topic, but the above post requires a response. I’ve read Mein Kampf. Nowhere in it did Hitler express any desire to conquer either Britain or the U.S. He intended to get his required Lebensraum by conquering the Soviet Union. Nor were these just empty claims. Throughout Hitler’s administration, only 10% of German military spending went to the navy. The idea that Hitler intended world conquest was Allied propaganda.
If he didn’t want to fight the USA then why did he declare war on it?
FDR had ignored the usual restrictions associated with neutrality. American warships joined the British in search and destroy missions against German ships. FDR sent a flood of weapons shipments to Germany’s enemies in hopes of causing Germany to lose the war. Hitler’s decision to declare war was based on four beliefs: 1) the most frightening aspect of the U.S.–its massive industrial potential–had already been turned against Germany even though the U.S. was technically at peace. 2) After the Pearl Harbor attack, most of America’s naval strength would be tied down in the Pacific. It would be unable to adequately protect the ships sending weapons to the Soviet Union and Soviet allies. 3) Germany absolutely had to achieve crushing victories over the Soviet Union in the summer of '42. Sinking the American ships carrying tanks, planes, and artillery pieces to the Soviet Union might well make the difference between achieving and not achieving those victories. 4) Sooner or later the pro-war faction in the U.S. would succeed in getting America into the war; just as they’d succeeded at getting us into WWI.
Furthermore, the western allies had every right to prosecute a war on Germany not even counting the atrocities that were committed.
They did not. Britain and France ostensibly went to war against Germany to protect Poland from German aggression. However, France quickly broke its promise to launch a general offensive against Germany. In breaking that promise, it shattered the entire basis for Polish diplomatic and military policy, and also shattered the basis for a free Polish state. Nor was a free Poland part of the Allies’ postwar plans: it was obvious that if Germany collapsed, the Soviet Union would expand to fill the resulting void. The Allies’ food blockade of Germany resulted in the deaths of millions of Poles. Given the Allies’ cynical, brutal disregard for the Polish people and the Polish nation, it is glaringly obvious that their actual motives for going to war bore no relation to their purported motives.
Once the atrocities became known, how could anyone consciously think there was not complicity at the very highest levels?
As of September 1st, 1939, the government of Nazi Germany was guilty of several hundred illegal killings. Most of those killings were done by men acting without orders. As of that same date, the government of the Soviet Union was guilty of tens of millions of mass killings, including several million for the Ukrainian famine alone. The Allies’ decision to adopt pro-Soviet, anti-German foreign policies cannot be explained by any desire to prevent mass murder. Once war began, Britain and France imposed a food blockade on Germany. German officials estimated that, as a result of the food blockade, they would be unable to feed 20 - 30 million people within their own borders. The Germans allocated scarce food resources to the people they valued the most, or who seemed most valuable to the war effort.
and also the area that received massive influxes of aid, money, and infrastructure repair from the Marshall plan.
Anti-communist politicians implemented the Marshall Plan in 1948. From 1945 - '47, American occupation policy was driven by pro-communist politicians and their Morgenthau Plan. The intention of the Morgenthau Plan was not merely to cripple Germany economically and militarily. It was to use hunger as a weapon with which to starve millions of Germans. The Morgenthau Plan was only partially successful: it succeeded at “only” starving to death an estimated 6 million German civilians in the postwar era.
