National Socialism vs. Communism.

Private Panic wrote:

But the effort to put the Jews into those concentration camps did not halt when food shortages began. It was intensified.

True.

Therefore the murder of the Jews was not an unfortunate result of Allied food shortages.

The Nazis fed everyone within their borders–including the Jews–back before the Allied food blockade was imposed or famine conditions experienced. Back then, their long-term plans for the Jews involved relocation to Palestine or Madagascar. Once the Allies imposed famine conditions upon German-occupied Europe, the Nazis’ actions demonstrated they did not want famine deaths distributed randomly. They wanted those deaths borne by the Jews first, Slavs second, the Germans not at all.

If there was any sort of famine, the Nazis wanted the Jews to die first. No one disputes that. The more controversial question is whether the Nazis would have exterminated the Jews even had the Allies not caused famine within Germany. In order to answer that question in the affirmative, it is necessary to assume that for some unknown (but presumably very compelling) reason, the Nazis would have been much harsher to the Jews in the '40s than they’d been in the '30s. Granted, the Nazis were much harsher to the Jews in the '40s. But we don’t have to look for some mystery reason to explain that increase in harshness. Not when the answer is staring us in the face. The Nazis could feed everyone within their borders during the '30s, and could not feed everyone after the imposition of the food blockade.

So because the Nazis were an evil anti-Semitic regime and put themselves into a
corner with the Jews via their evil policies we should forgive them genocide?

I think that it’s normal for people to see what they expect to see. If (for example) a man regards women as flaky and unreliable, then any time he encounters a woman who is those things, he will see it as confirmation of his view. If on the other hand a woman proves non-flaky and very reliable, he will see her as an exception to the broader trend, or will assume the woman has a reservoir of not-yet-discovered flakiness. The vast majority of people are guilty of seeing what they expect to see.

When the Nazis saw a Jew engage in economic exploitation, or an effort to lower moral standards, or an effort to promote miscegenation, or join a Marxist political organization, then for them this was confirmation of their views of Jews generally. If on the other hand some Jew were to stand up against those things, they would see that Jew either as a rare exception, or else as someone attempting to build his credibility today so that he could lend his support for those things tomorrow.

The Nazis saw the Jews in a very negative light. To the best of my admittedly limited knowledge, their perspective was not justified by facts.

Is there no category of people we see in a more negative light than that justified by facts? During WWI and again during WWII, a lot of counterfactual, nonsensical anti-German propaganda was thrown around. Ignorant propagandists called the Germans “Huns,” and much of the population followed suit. There was also plenty of anti-Japanese propaganda thrown around. Propaganda which led to anti-Japanese hate “A poll in Fortune magazine in late 1945 showed a significant minority of Americans (22.7%) wishing that more atomic bombs could have been dropped on Japan.[224][225]”

One of the central tenets of Allied propaganda is that the Nazis were uniquely evil–evil in a way the world had never seen before. There are many downsides to that particular lie being believed. For example, people often don’t realize when they are doing the exact same thing the Nazis did. Namely, singling out some group; and thinking of that group in malignant terms. Yes, the Nazis did that with the Jews; but there are plenty of examples throughout history in which some group did that with some other group. Typically the feeling was mutual. People are instinctively tribal; and sometimes there is hostility between one tribe and another.

I think our different view possibly comes down to the following point:

@KurtGodel7:

If there was any sort of famine, the Nazis wanted the Jews to die first. No one disputes that. The more controversial question is whether the Nazis would have exterminated the Jews even had the Allies not caused famine within Germany.

This is a good question. It is also one to which we will never know the answer. I do not believe we should therefore forgive the Nazis the result of their evil anti-Semitic policies, which ultimately lead to their murder of the Jews (and others), albeit helped along that path by food shortages created by the Allies.

The Nazis are damned because they “wanted the Jews to die first”, regardless of the active hostility of many other peoples and nations.

I think I have said that half a dozen times in a number of different ways in my responses. I believe your quote above - the less than absolute certainty as to whether the Nazis would have murdered the Jews if there had not been food shortages - is what holds you back from accepting this point. If we had the missing certainty you would accept that the Nazis were guilty of genocide, even though helped along by food shortages?

Please confirm whether we have finally reached the focal point of our disagreement?

Nazis are bad, period. What is wrong with you people ?

@Narvik:

Nazis are bad, period. What is wrong with you people ?

The Nazis were evil Narvik.

Edit - Since your post was in the plural Narvik, are you saying that I should not be debating whether the Nazis were guilty of genocide with Kurt?

The debate has moved Kurt along the path of accepting both that the Nazis had a policy of genocide and that they were “unjustifiably” anti-Semitic. If my previous post was right then that is two thirds of the way to gaining agreement to the Nazis being guilty of genocide. Is this not a point worth winning?

I do not think ignoring Kurt’s well informed (but in my view often misguided) views achieves anything. Nor do I believe rudeness gets us anywhere. Whereas a constructive and civil debate can yield progress. In this thread I think I am two thirds of the way towards my objective. In a previous thread, wherein Kurt advanced a much posted argument that the western democracies should have been more worried about Stalin than Hitler, I won acceptance that it was G’s position at the heart of Europe that ratcheted up its threat status. Kurt is open to discussion if you engage with him. But to engage with him you also have to be open to his views being right some of the time.

I thought I’d check whether you were having a go at me as I see that two forum colleagues have marked your post up, to my surprise.

@Private:

Since your post was in the plural Narvik, are you saying that I should not be debating whether the Nazis were guilty of genocide with Kurt?

If Kurt claimed the Moon is a cheese, would you still be debating him ?

I think that Kurt is maybe David Irving, lurking on wargames forums from his prison pc, doing PsyOps against not so smart kids that love to play A&A

@Narvik:

I think that Kurt is maybe David Irving, lurking on wargames forums from his prison pc, doing PsyOps against not so smart kids that love to play A&A

I didn’t know Holocaust Denial was a crime, at least in some European countries. Yikes.

Private Panic wrote:

I do not believe we should therefore forgive the Nazis the result of their evil anti-Semitic policies,
which ultimately lead to their murder of the Jews (and others), albeit helped along that path by
food shortages created by the Allies.

The Allies caused the death toll with their food blockade. The Nazis caused that death toll to be unevenly distributed. Of those two misdeeds, the Allies’ was both worse and less commonplace. In most nations throughout history, any given famine-related death toll would have been unevenly distributed; and the nature of that uneven distribution would have been unfair.

The above does not excuse the Nazis for their flaws. Certainly, a Jewish person could not expect fair treatment at the Nazis’ hands. That was true even in good times, when the Nazis had enough food with which to feed everyone. My point is not that the Nazis were perfect–they weren’t–but that their crimes have been deliberately misrepresented by the Allied propaganda machine.

The Nazis are damned because they “wanted the Jews to die first”, regardless of the active hostility of many other peoples and nations.

Suppose that some ancient Greek city-state was hit by a food blockade/famine conditions. And suppose that those who ran the city state wanted to make the feeding of citizens a much, much higher priority than the feeding of their slaves. Would you condemn those leaders in the same harsh terms you condemned the Nazis? If not why not?

I believe your quote above - the less than absolute certainty as to whether the Nazis would
have murdered the Jews if there had not been food shortages - is what holds you back from accepting this point.

Not only is there “less than absolute certainty” that the Nazis would have murdered the Jews even in the absence of food shortages. There is no evidence at all that such a murder would have happened. During the ‘30s, the Nazis exported so many Jews to Palestine that the Palestinians revolted. The act of sending the Jews away–to a place outside the Nazis’ control–is clear evidence of the absence of any short- or long-term plan to kill the Jews. Only after the food blockade was imposed, and only after severe food shortages were experienced, did the Nazis develop any sort of plan to kill the Jews.

If we had the missing certainty you would accept that the Nazis were guilty of genocide, even though helped along by food shortages?

After WWII ended, the Allies imposed murderous conditions on postwar Germany.

On March 20, 1945, President Roosevelt was warned that the JCS 1067 was not workable: it would let the Germans “stew in their own juice”. Roosevelt’s response was “Let them have soup kitchens! Let their economy sink!” Asked if he wanted the German people to starve, he replied, “Why not?”

The Allied propaganda machine went into high gear to justify what General Clay described as a “Carthaginian peace” imposed on postwar Germany. First, the starvation element was denied. Second–and perhaps a bit more to the point–the Allies declared that the Germans were “collectively guilty” of the Holocaust. In order to support their “collective guilt” argument, they claimed that anyone who’d casually perused Mein Kampf or listened to Hitler’s speeches knew or should have known that the Holocaust was inevitable. Therefore, the decision to vote Hitler into office in the first place–and the decision to support him throughout his tenure as Germany’s Fuehrer–constituted implicit consent to the Holocaust.

The Allied propagandists who said these things had precisely zero interest in telling the truth about this matter. Or any other matter in which the truth would have gotten in the way of their message. Their only motive in coming up with that propaganda was to downplay and justify the starvation and death that FDR and Truman deliberately inflicted on postwar Germany.

We are not dealing with “less than absolute certainty” about whether Hitler would have exterminated the Jews even in the absence of an Allied food blockade. We are dealing with a situation in which the only evidence that Hitler would have imposed such extermination comes from the empty, lying claims of the nations which used famine as a weapon both during and after the war.

@KurtGodel7:

Suppose that some ancient Greek city-state was hit by a food blockade/famine conditions. And suppose that those who ran the city state wanted to make the feeding of citizens a much, much higher priority than the feeding of their slaves. Would you condemn those leaders in the same harsh terms you condemned the Nazis?

Yes, I would rebuke such leaders.

I would also rebuke anyone who forced a slave to work with inadequate food or otherwise inhumane conditions.

I would also rebuke anyone who supported slavery as an institution regardless of the circumstances (this includes total war) … it would be better for a civilization to perish than to stoop to slavery.

@Narvik:

If Kurt claimed the Moon is a cheese, would you still be debating him ?

I think that Kurt is maybe David Irving, lurking on wargames forums from his prison pc, doing PsyOps against not so smart kids that love to play A&A

Kurt actually has less unpalatable views than his initial posts suggest. From those initial posts it would be easy to think he is a holocaust denier, but he is not. It would be easy to believe him to be pro-Nazi, but he is not. It would be simple to understand him to be anti-Semitic, but not so. I have no idea why he keeps putting up posts that invite those interpretations, as he does himself no favours by doing so.

However, when you engage in a debate with him and dig below his initial response you discover that he accepts that the Nazis engaged in a policy of genocidal mass-murder of the Jews, that he thinks the Nazis were a terrible regime, that he regards anti-Semitism as “unjustifiable” (his word). Unfortunately he makes you work hard to get to these clarifications and many would not persevere sufficiently to do so. It seems that he is driven by a desire to apportion guilt to the allies for their failures, such as starvation of millions of Poles, given his Polish origin.

Instead of arguing with Kurt about guilt for the holocaust I am now defending Kurt and his right to free speech. Thanks for the distraction Narvik! :-(

@KurtGodel7:

The Nazis are damned because they “wanted the Jews to die first”, regardless of the active hostility of many other peoples and nations.

Suppose that some ancient Greek city-state was hit by a food blockade/famine conditions. And suppose that those who ran the city state wanted to make the feeding of citizens a much, much higher priority than the feeding of their slaves. Would you condemn those leaders in the same harsh terms you condemned the Nazis? If not why not?

Absolutely YES - I would condemn them, as I would condemn the institution of slavery (agreeing with wheatbeer). I condemn the Nazis even more than that because the Jews were not slaves. They were a free people that the Nazis first reduced to sub-human status and then sought to erase.

The Allied economic / food blockade killed millions of people. It did not target any single race or religion. It took the Nazis to do that.

The Nazis’ targeting of the Jews was not prompted by Jewish hostility, as they did not similarly target many other hostile peoples and nations across Europe in the same way. It was driven by the Nazis evil anti-Semitic views. You have accepted this.

A lack of evidence that the Nazis would have attempted to eradicate the Jews without the Allied imposed starvation is therefore irrelevant. This final step is all it takes to allocate guilt for the holocaust to the Nazis, whilst still holding the Allies guilty for the deaths of millions via the food blockade. As per a previous post, my ability to be persuasive on this point is damaged by the fact of it being obvious to me.

The only thing I can think to do is to offer an analogy, much as I don’t want to because they are terribly simplistic and rather risky!

• If you restrict the food I have to being sufficient to feed just 8 of the 10 people in a group for which I am responsible you are guilty of imposing starvation that kills two people.
• If I then feed 8 Christians but not 2 Jews (who may be hostile or unwilling to fight, or whatever, but so are others in my 10) then I am guilty of having targeted the Jews. This is genocide - “the systematic elimination of all or a significant part of a racial, ethnic, religious, or national group”. Since I decided to target that group specifically I am guilty of that genocide.
• Since you did not target any specific group you are not guilty of genocide, but you are guilty of two deaths.
• The guilt of neither party forgives the guilt of the other.

If you do not accept this then I fail to see what more I can say.

Private Panic, I think we are in agreement on most points.

The Allied economic / food blockade killed millions of people. It did not target any single race or religion. It took the Nazis to do that.

Granted. On the other hand, not only did the Allies use famine as a weapon against those living in German-occupied Europe, they also blocked Jewish immigration into Palestine or any other Allied-controlled territories. Then they proceeded to use the Holocaust as the centerpiece of their wartime and postwar anti-Nazi propaganda efforts. The success of that propaganda effort meant that the Allies were credited with fighting a “good” war; despite their mass murder of millions both during and after the war, and despite leaving the diabolical Soviet regime in control of the vast majority of postwar Europe. Given the absolutely central role the Holocaust played in Allied propaganda, we have to wonder how sad the Allied leaders really were that the Jews were unfairly singled out.

The only thing I can think to do is to offer an analogy

I agree with everything you wrote in that analogy, with the possible exception of one point. You seem to be assigning a lot of guilt and moral condemnation to the process of choosing two victims. Many or most civilizations throughout human history have engaged in “us and them” thinking, or in more extreme cases “us, them, and evil other” thinking. For the Nazis, Germans were “us,” Slavs were “them,” and Jews were “evil other.” Other civilizations–especially in polarized times–will assign different groups to “us,” “them,” and “evil other.” We do not normally describe a civilization or culture as “evil” for having embraced us versus them thinking.

It is very common for Allied propagandists to use one measuring stick for the Nazis’ actions, while using a completely different measuring stick for Allied actions. For example, German civilian bombing of Britain was vilified, and served as the basis for some Nuremberg convictions. Meanwhile, the much more massive Allied bombing effort against civilian targets in Germany was treated as legitimate military necessity.

My goal here is to avoid Allied-style hypocrisy, and to subject the Axis, Allies, and all other civilizations to the same moral standard. One measuring stick for everyone. If we describe the Nazis as “evil” for engaging in us-versus-them thinking, or for feeding “us” before feeding “them,” then we have to also apply that same “evil” label to any other civilization which engaged in us-versus-them thinking; or which would have used that thinking as a primary factor in food distribution during famine.

Hooray!

In response, Kurt, I’ll start by focusing on rather a lot of agreement:

@KurtGodel7:

Private Panic, I think we are in agreement on most points.

The Allied economic / food blockade killed millions of people. It did not target any single race or religion. It took the Nazis to do that.

Granted ……

The only thing I can think to do is to offer an analogy

I agree with everything you wrote in that analogy, with the possible exception of one point…

Sorry for the selective quotes, but I believe this means that we have agreed that the Nazis were guilty of genocide. Since that was my single focused aim I plan to take a rest after this post!

I won’t respond re Allied propaganda because I have agreed on this point in its broadest sense in the past. There is a challenging debate to be had on whether the UK & US (not the Soviets) did their best in the most difficult circumstances, as I have previously posted, but I do not plan to have it!

Before going for a lie down I will, however, respond on something else that you said:

@KurtGodel7:

Many or most civilizations throughout human history have engaged in “us and them” thinking, or in more extreme cases “us, them, and evil other” thinking. For the Nazis, Germans were “us,” Slavs were “them,” and Jews were “evil other.” Other civilizations–especially in polarized times–will assign different groups to “us,” “them,” and “evil other.” We do not normally describe a civilization or culture as “evil” for having embraced us versus them thinking.

Oh yes we do - if that “us and them” leads to “them” being abused. I then typed a load of examples of such evil, but deleted them. I don’t think I need them for my response to be absolute.

That’s it Kurt. Bye for now!

@Private:

Instead of arguing with Kurt about guilt for the holocaust I am now defending Kurt and his right to free speech. Thanks for the distraction Narvik! :-(

Bottom line is that Germany started two world wars, for no rational reason other than just for fun. No German was starving in 1914, yet der Kaizer started a world war because he wanted to rule and suppress the whole world. This even happened twice. No German was starving in 1939 neither, yet der Fuhrer (new name same wrapping) started a world war for the second time, just because he wanted to rule and suppress the whole world. He even wrote a book about it so there would be no doubt. And now your new BFF the David Irving wannabe blame the Allies for defending themselves ? What are you smoking ?

@Private:

Oh yes we do - if that “us and them” leads to “them” being abused. I then typed a load of examples of such evil, but deleted them. I don’t think I need them for my response to be absolute.

It is natural human behavior to use us and them thinking. This is all about survival for your group or community. But usually most of us live and let live. Only German Nationalism started two world wars to kill and suppress the others.

Private Panic wrote,

Sorry for the selective quotes, but I believe this means that we have agreed that the Nazis were guilty of genocide.

On the surface, that sentence sounds entirely too much like an endorsement of the Allied anti-Nazi propaganda effort. Were the Nazis guilty of unfairly singling out Jews? Yes, absolutely. When famine conditions were imposed by the murderous Allied food blockade, did the Nazis unfairly allocate a disproportionate share of famine deaths to the Jews? Again the answer is yes. But a word like “genocide” normally implies that a government committed an avoidable act of mass murder. Granted, the civilian deaths which occurred in WWII Germany were avoidable. They could easily have been avoided by the Allies, had they chosen not to use famine as a weapon against the people living in German-occupied Europe.

However, it’s possible your use of the word “genocide” is more technically correct than mine. The word was first coined in 1944 by a Polish-born man named Lemkin. Lemkin wrote:

Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.

Under that definition, an immigration policy could be described as “genocide,” as long as it resulted in the eventual elimination of the host country’s main ethnic or racial groups. Everyday colloquial usage of the term is typically far narrower than that. To describe the Nazis as guilty of “genocide” risks endorsing the Allied big lie that the Nazis could have fed everyone within their own borders; and only chose not to due to racial hate.

Oh yes we do - if that “us and them” leads to “them” being abused.

During WWI, and again in WWII, the U.S. embraced us-versus-them thinking with respect to the Germans. Yet few would describe American society during those times as “evil.” (Although the actions of our political leaders were evil, especially during WWII.) During the 1860s, both the North and the South embraced us-versus-them thinking during the Civil War. If anyone who embraces us-versus-them thinking is evil, both the North and the South were evil. During the 1960s, hippies embraced us-versus-them thinking WRT the Establishment; and the Establishment embraced such thinking WRT the hippies. Maybe the world is filled with evil people. Or, maybe us-versus-them thinking is a natural part of the human psyche; and (potentially) a hardwired survival instinct.

As for whether people end up getting abused: if there are famine conditions, of course “us” will get fed before “them.” That’s inevitable. With the possible exception of WWI Germany, I can’t think of any group which engaged in us-versus-them thinking which didn’t feed us before them under famine conditions.

Most of what humans call morality is about transcending our instincts.

I am not coming back in Kurt, even though I am disappointed by your last post.

Narvik wrote,

Bottom line is that Germany started two world wars, for no rational reason other than just for fun.

You seem like a good guy. I assume you’re telling the truth to the best of your ability. However, the above represents Allied propaganda; and is not connected to reality. I say that as someone who myself passionately repeated Allied lies–at least until I learned better.

WWI began as a conflict between Austria and Serbia. A member of Austrian nobility had been assassinated. Serbia was subjected to Austrian anger over that assassination, due in large part to its past track record of harboring anti-Austrian terrorists. Serbia refused some of the demands Austria made upon it. Russia supported Serbia’s position, with France quietly and behind the scenes egging Russia on. Note that all this happened before Germany took a position on these matters.

der Kaizer started a world war because he wanted to rule and suppress the whole world

The above statement is Allied propaganda, with no basis in reality. This particular Allied claim does not merit acknowledgement, let alone a detailed rebuttal. I once believed such things myself. It was only after doing a lot of research that I realized how many Allied lies I’d swallowed; or how little actual interest the Allied leaders had in any sort of morality. (Despite their frequent, loud protestations to the contrary.)

No German was starving in 1939 neither, yet der Fuhrer (new name same wrapping) started a
world war for the second time, just because he wanted to rule and suppress the whole world.

During the Weimar Republic, most Germans experienced what one historian referred to as “prolonged and insatiable hunger” due to the brutal economic conditions imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty. It was only by breaking free of that sadistic treaty that Hitler was able to spare the German people from additional hunger.

He even wrote a book about it so there would be no doubt.

I’ve read that book–twice–and found nothing in it to justify either the Allied big lie that Hitler wanted to rule the world, or the Allied big lie that Hitler had formulated plans to kill the Jews even before he took office. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote about his desire to conquer the Soviet Union–or at least the portion of the Soviet Union west of the Urals. That conquest would protect Germany and Europe from the evil of communism, and would give Germany the same position of strength with respect to Europe that the United States had relative to North America. As Hitler pointed out, no one had ever succeeded in imposing a Versailles Treaty on the United States. He wanted to make sure no one could ever again do so with respect to Germany.

One of Hitler’s reasons for going to war was described in John Toland’s book Adolf Hitler. Toland’s book was favorably reviewed by the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, Library Journal, and a number of other major media publications.

[A.I.] Berndt [a German government official] thought the reported number of German nationals killed by Poles too small and simply added a nought. At first Hitler refused to believe such a figure but, when Berndt replied that it may have been somewhat exaggerated but something monstrous must have happened to give rise to such stories, Hitler shouted ‘They’ll pay for this! Now no one will stop me from teaching these fellows a lesson they’ll never forget! I will not have my Germans butchered like cattle!’ At this point the Fuhrer went to the phone and, in Berndt’s presence, ordered Keitel to issue ‘Directive No. 1 for the Conduct of the War.’ [pp. 566 - 567].

Also from Toland’s book:

Lipski never asked to see Hitler’s sixteen-point proposal . . . He was following his orders ‘not to enter into any concrete negotiations.’ The Poles were apparently so confident they could whip the Germans (with help from their allies) that they were not interested in discussing Hitler’s offer. [p. 567]

In 1939, France had promised Poland that, if Germany attacked, France would launch a major offensive within 15 days of mobilization. That claim was an outright lie.

In his post-war diaries general Edmund Ironside, the chief of Imperial General Staff commented on French promises “The French had lied to the Poles in saying they are going to attack. There is no idea of it”.[24] The French initiated full mobilization and began the limited Saar Offensive on 7 September but halted short of the German defensive lines and then withdrew to their own defences around 13 September. Poland was not notified of this decision. Instead, Gamelin informed by dispatch marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły that half of his divisions were in contact with the enemy, and that French advances had forced the Wehrmacht to withdraw at least six divisions from Poland. The Polish military envoy to France, general Stanisław Burhardt-Bukacki, upon receiving the text of the message sent by Gamelin, alerted marshal Śmigły: “I received the message by general Gamelin. Please don’t believe a single word in the dispatch”.[23] The following day, the commander of the French Military Mission to Poland, General Louis Faury, informed the Polish Chief of Staff, General Wacław Stachiewicz, that the planned major offensive on the western front had to be postponed from September 17 to September 20. At the same time, French divisions were ordered to retreat to their barracks along the Maginot Line.

Back when the Polish were ignoring German peace proposals and killing Germans–albeit only one tenth as many Germans as Berndt had reported to Hitler–they’d expected France to honor its promise to launch a general offensive against Germany within 15 days of mobilization. Combined, France and Poland had at least as many infantry, tanks, and artillery as Germany. A general French offensive would have forced Germany to allocate the bulk of its military assets to its Western front; thereby turning a short war into a long war. In a long war, the Western democracies’ industrial advantages over Germany would have made Allied victory nearly inevitable; and Poland would have been on the victors’ side of the peace table.

Polish leaders wanted to expand westward.

[In 1941], an office of the Polish Government in Exile wrote to warn Władysław Sikorski that if the [Atlantic] Charter was implemented with regards to national self-determination, it would make the desired Polish annexation of Danzig, East Prussia and parts of German Silesia impossible, which led the Poles to approach Britain asking for a flexible interpretation of the Charter.[25]

Now you claim that Poland started WW II ?

Narvik wrote:

Now you claim that Poland started WW II ?

Poland was an expansionistic military dictatorship. Prior to the outbreak of WWII, it had already engaged in several territorial annexations. (Including helping itself to a slice of Czechoslovakia in 1938.) Polish leaders wanted to help themselves to some German territory as well: notably East Prussia and part of Silesia. Their desire to do that was an important contributing factor in the start of the war.

But I do not feel that Poland’s raw desire for expansionism was the primary factor in the outbreak of hostilities. The primary factor was the pro-Soviet foreign policies consistently embraced by every major democracy prior to 1948. During the 1930s, it was widely believed that there would be war between Germany on the one hand, and the U.S.S.R. and the Western democracies on the other. Western democratic leaders–especially Daladier and FDR–were very eager to see exactly this kind of war.

Daladier wanted war between France and Germany. However, he did not want to go it alone. He wanted at least one major ally: Britain, or the United States, or the Soviet Union. He wasn’t all that picky which. FDR wanted to go to war against Germany as well. But at least initially, he was unable to persuade Congress or the American people that war was necessary. Making the case for war was difficult, given that the American people realized we’d gone into WWI based on a pack of Allied lies. For example, Germany was not guilty of killing millions of Belgians during WWI, despite Allied claims to the contrary.

If during the '30s Western democratic leaders were willing to carve up Germany with the Soviet Union, why didn’t Stalin want to go along with those plans? The answer is that Stalin wanted to conquer both Germany and the Western European democracies. A war in which everyone ganged up on Germany would (from Stalin’s perspective) have been too easy for the Western democracies, and would have left them in too strong a position. Therefore Stalin declined Western democratic invitations to carve up Germany, while using communist influence to promote “anti-fascism” and warmongering in Western democracies.

After the fall of France, Stalin’s plan was to invade Germany. By destroying the German Army only, Stalin would have taken control not just of Germany itself, but of France as well. He would have sold the Soviet invasion of France as a “liberation” from hostile German occupation. However, Germany invaded the Soviet Union at least a month before Stalin’s preparations to invade Germany were complete. The German attack took Stalin completely by surprise. Germany achieved a 10:1 exchange ratio during Operation Barbarossa. (As opposed to the 3:1 exchange ratio it normally achieved against Soviet forces.)

Even though Stalin declined to participate in a preemptive Allied effort to carve up Germany, Soviet and Western democratic influence in Eastern Europe was such that, during the ‘30s, most Eastern European nations had adopted anti-German foreign policies. Both Poland and other Eastern European nations wanted to be on what they felt would be the winning side in the impending conflict between Germany, the Soviet Union, and the Soviets’ allies.

The stated long-term goal of Soviet foreign policy was world conquest. Prior to 1948, the major Western democracies were useless in preventing Soviet expansion. In 1919 - '21, for example, no major Western democracy came to Poland’s aid when the Soviets went to war to annex it. Only the efforts of the Polish military (and the fact the Soviet Union was still in a state of civil war against the czarists) prevented Poland from becoming the newest Soviet socialist republic. The Soviets had achieved far greater penetration of Western democratic political processes (and influence over Western democracies) during the '30s and early '40s than had been the case during the Polish-Soviet War. The Western democracies were less likely to intervene against Soviet expansion during the '30s or early '40s than they’d been back in 1920, when they did nothing at all to prevent the U.S.S.R. from annexing Poland.

All of which reinforced Hitler’s conviction that peace and security for Germany could only be achieved by conquering the Soviet Union itself. Such a conquest would be difficult, given the fact that Stalin and the Western democracies had successfully persuaded most Eastern European nations to adopt anti-German foreign policies. Hitler used a carrot and stick policy to convert those Eastern European nations into German allies. Czechoslovakia had signed a defensive alliance with the Soviet Union in 1935. It was therefore annexed in 1938–a none-too-subtle message to any other Eastern European nation which might think of allying with Stalin against Hitler. Poland abruptly adopted an anti-German foreign policy in 1939 (mostly in response to false French promises about a general offensive against Germany).

In 1941, Italy invaded Greece. The Greeks fought off the Italian invasion. But they were careful not to provoke Germany. They didn’t attempt to conquer much Italian land, and they did not invite Britain to reinforce Greek positions. Germany therefore remained neutral in that conflict. However, the Greek government which demonstrated this restraint was voted out of office by a different, more aggressive Greek government. The replacement Greek government invited the British in; and took a more aggressive approach about conquering Italian territory. Germany therefore invaded Greece (and destroyed the pro-Soviet government which had arisen in Yugoslavia) as the final touches on its pre-Barbarossa efforts. With the fall of Greece and Yugoslavia, all of the nations between Germany and the Soviet Union were either allied with Germany or neutral in Germany’s favor. By that point, it was recognized that any Eastern European nation which engaged in bad (i.e., pro-Soviet) behavior would be very quickly punished by Germany. Ridding Eastern Europe of Soviet influence was an obvious prelude to the invasion of the Soviet Union itself.