Is there a policy or policies that might have been adopted by a more prescient Roosevelt administration (or even a Hoover or Coolidge admin) that would have kept things hunky-dory? Let’s say, for example, if the U.S. had adopted a much more pro-active stance towards the republicans in Spain: the merits of doing so aside, would the economic benefits of a war-time economy have gotten us out of the depression earlier (and so made it an easier sell to the U.S. public)? More germane, would having a tremendous U.S. military presence in Spain have inhibited Hitler’s war plans any? What were the risks in doing so?
For the purposes of this exercise, let’s say you’re FDR in 1944–you get a do-over in one sphere of U.S. policy over the past two decades. Which one do you choose, with the understanding that it could have backfired on you as well as helping your country out?
In a purely theoretical world, if the western powers had formed an organization like NATO with the countries of Eastern Europe in the 1930’s, it probably would have prevented World War II. Germany wouldn’t have invaded Austria, Czechoslovakia, or Poland in the face of real resistance. Italy and the Soviet Union were fence sitters and probably would have sided with the western powers if they had shown themselves to be more decisive. And Japan never would have gotten as far as it did if the colonial powers had been distracted by Germany.
But realistically, this is hindsight. There was no almost no chance of Britain and France making a NATO like commitment in the 1930s and there was definitely no chance of the United States doing so. The fact is, in retrospect, we can see that FDR was almost the only American leader who was correctly foreseeing WWII in the 1930s and he did all any American President could have realistically done, generally in defiance of resistance from Congress and the nation.
My next question (in another thread, probably) if we can reach a concensus as to the wisest policy for preventing WW II, would be “How could FDR have conceivably sold policy X to the public?” but that 's getting ahead of ourselves. it would be interesting (unlikely, but interesting) if we can reach such a concensus as to what X equals, but find it unsellable, because that would be the essence of tragedy in my book: to have a way out and still to reject it.
Would leaving Hitler in power have been an acceptable price to pay for avoiding the Second World War?
And by “avoiding the Second World War,” do you mean preventing the war entirely, just keeping America, Britain, and France out of the war, or just keeping America out of the war? A long time ago I was told that Germany made serious attempts to sue for peace between the fall of Poland and the invasion of France. (My only source of information for that is a post by a white nationalist on a message board, so obviously it’s highly suspect.) For that matter, I suspect that the United States could have brokered a peace deal between Germany and the Western allies if we had wanted to do so. Would it have been acceptable for Britain, France and the U.S. to stand back and let Hitler and Stalin slug it out? I’m enough of a cynic to accept such an outcome, but of course that rests on the assumption that Germany would not have turned on the West after settling Stalin’s hash.
I think that WWII begain with the economic disaster in Germany in the 1920’s. That was a big factor in bringing Hitler to power. I think the die was then cast because Hitler was determined to expand to the east and to incorporate all German speakers into Germany.
It appears to me, then, that some sort of action to bring about a stable enconomy would have been a big help. Problem is though that the German economic problem was simulaneous and part of a global economic problem and I don’t see how any one country could have corrected those difficulties. Especially so given the laissez faire economic theories of the time.
You are correct Polecat, that Hitler, or to be more explicit Ribbentrop and von Neurath did attempt to end the war after subjugating Poland, and again after the Fall of France. (The terms offered the U.K. were pretty generous – they got to stay exactly as they had been, except for agreeing to give Germany a free hand in Europe and returning to Germany the four colonies it lost after WWI: Togo, Southwest Africa (=Namibia), Cameroons, and Tanganyika. Churchill and the Cabinet rejected them, of course.
I don’t think there is any single step that would have prevented war, especially not one that the U.S. could have taken. Japan was expansionist; we could have stopped backing China and defined what they could and could not invade and annex, but that would probably only have prolonged the inevitable. Hitler could have been stopped at the Rhineland (1936) or Munich (1938) and probably would have fallen from power after having been thwarted, though that’s purely supposition based on reactions of other leading Germans of the time. Avoiding alienating Mussolini over Ethiopia might have helped shorten the war but would not have prevented it. In any case, in the power politics of the time, the U.S. was a major player but not the paramount force it has been since WWII. Britain, France, Italy, and the Soviet Union were all players of approximately the same degree of power as us at that time, and a consensus would have had to have been formed among them.
Good point–allow me to clarify my debating point: given that war, especially between Germany and Russia, may have been unstoppable, what one policy shift from FDR’s position late in the war should he have undertaken earlier (or should his predecessors have undertaken) that would have weakened the Axis powers, or stengthened the U.S. and their allies, so as to have ended the war more swiftly and with lesser consequences? I’m still on “vigorously supporting the republicans in the Spanish Civil war,” but am prepared to be talked out of that position if a better argument comes along.
Enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles (1919) at anytime in the early & mid 1930’s. Take a look at Churchills masterpiece “The Gathering Storm”. (Well worth the read, IMHO.)
The US, Brits, & French stood by and watched Germany rearm even though the treaty did not allow Germany an army over 100,000 men, no airforce, and no submarines.
I believe at one point the French were getting worried and protested, and wanted to take further action, but the other Allies did not support them. According to Churchill, the French army could of easily occupied Germany and prevented rearmament anytime before say 1937. Such a firm and united action by the Allies could of toppled the Nazi goverment.
I am controversial on Spain, had I been there at the time I would have sided with Franco
partly to reduce the atrocities committed by his Morroccan troops
partly because his opponents were a rag bag of swine who would rather fight each other
To be honest I can’t see how the USA could have influenced that scrap.
I also have serious doubts that Hitler really wanted to destroy the UK, Dunkirk strikes me as rather spurious.
The Germans were after their old stamping grounds, East Prussia, but they were not very diplomatic. According to the ‘view’ of history that I was taught in Freiburg, in WWI the real problem was expansion in Africa - it could be true, but Austria/Germany lost a lot more German speakers after WWI. Lebensraum or just getting it back.
In WWII the Japanese were quite keen on their ‘co-prosperity sphere’ but they were a bit short of oil. Personally I think that it was dumb of them to attack the USA, but I suppose that they reckoned that the British were so much in hock to the USA that the bankers would come to the rescue.
I suppose that if I had been FDR in power two decades before 1944 ( 1924 ??) I would … well not have known what to do.
One interesting thing to consider is that the ‘British Empire’ did not exist until about 1860, it was the Indian Mutiny that kicked of Nationalization of so called colonies.
In the 1920’s we only had about 20,000 administrators (the symetry amuses me).
This goes beyond hindsight, though. Britain and France didn’t offer more than a token objection because The Rhineland is in Germany. The war had been over for almost 20 years, and the Germans were still being treated like the war had just ended. No one really wanted to keep the Rhineland demilitarized forever.
The best way to head off WWII would have been to support Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland. This was where Czechoslovakia’s fortification line was, and without it the country was militarily indefensible. With it, they could have held out long enough to get Hitler assassinated or arrested. There was a plot to do so in the Army, but the conspirators lost their nerve, and Hitler was so successful that they dropped it afterwards.
I don’t think there was any way of not having a war once Hitler was in power except to give him all of eastern Europe; the Balkans, Poland< Chechoslovakia, Eastern Russia, the Ukraine, and on and on.
It seems obvious to me in view of the statements in Mein Kampf.
Everybody, Churchill included, says if only the French had stepped down hard over the Rhineland. Well they didn’t and even Churchill doesn’t really know what would have happened if only … Everyone says that Germany was not prepared for war at that time. Well, neither was France. Despite of having a large army they were simply not in any condition, or mood, to go to war. You think Germany was unprepared? The British army was somewhere around 150,000 total and not all that well trained or equipped. British and French industry was in bad shape because of the depression and Germany had had at least four years of industrial buildup for war production. To argue that had the French gone into Germany is saying that the way to stop a war is to go to war.
According to General Ludwig Beck (COS of the German Army), if the Frech Army had marched into the Rhineland (when the Germans swallowed Czeckoslovakia), the german officer corps would have overthrown Hitler. The French would have had no trouble-there was less than 10,000 troops gaurding the fatherland. :smack:
Imagine the difficulties today George Bush would have in calling for an invasion of Iran over their nuclear armaments program. Now imagine Iran is twice as big and 10 times as powerful. Now realize that’s the situation Britain and France were in regarding German rearmament.
Sure, they could have invaded Germany over the Rhineland…but it was politically impossible because the slaughter of WWI made pre-emptive war unthinkable.
Maybe 50 years from now when we look back over the history of WWIII and the nuclear devestation it caused, we’ll shake our heads and think that with a little froce Iran could have been stopped in 2007, but by 2012 it was too late. Or maybe we’ll look back and think that Bush’s pre-emptive strikes triggered the larger war, like the assassination of the Archduke triggering WWI, if only we had decided not to interfere the whole crisis would have blown over. And so on.
In the 30s, Britain and France and the US were determined to avoid another war. There was absolutely no constituency for “getting tough” with Germany. Those who did were dismissed as bloodthirsty warmongers and tools of the merchants of death. The whole history of the 30s can be read as Britain and France and the US trying to prevent the war. Without miraculous time-travel style foreknowlege I don’t see how they could do much better at preventing the war, the only change possible would be to embrace the war and fight it earlier. But that’s not preventing the war.
Yes, but the OP has moved off “preventing the war” entirely onto finding the one policy shift that would have lessened its effects, made it less onerous, ended it quicker, etc.
Or maybe the Arabs will be sitting around a Starbucks in Tehran one day discussing how if only George Bush had been stopped when he went into Afghanistan, we might not all be speaking Hebrew.
This reminds me of how conservatives used to want to confront the USSR, because they had “learned the lessons of history.” Unfortunately, it was Chamberlain who had “learned the lessons of history” in 1938.