I was Ninja’ed. I came to post this. What can our military experts tell us about the militarization of the Rhineland? Was it not a huge advantage to Germany, allowing them much easier westward attack?
The militarization was in violation of Articles 42, 43 and 44 of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, and accompanied many other violations. Hitler had already promised bellicosity; he had even published his hateful violent program. For the Western Allies to acquiesce as they did was unconscionable, almost criminally negligent. Can we forgive them, averse as they were to the sort of war that had kill millions a short generation before.
Disclaimer: I’m ignorant on the subject matter, my only cite being the Naval person with a cigar. :eek:
Huge advantage for Germany not to be militarily defeated in a 1936 war assuming that had happened. Not so much a decisive purely military advantage to be west of the Rhine in Germany (ie north of where the Rhine is the border). A stronger German Army could have made that move later, including during the Phony War, where there remained a distinct Allied tendency toward reluctance to fully engage. Which was as much a political problem as purely military, all through from mid 30’s to the early part of the war.
And one might also question whether challenging Hitler on the Rhineland remilitarization would have led to his fall or really greatly affected later events. The tiny German force sent to the international border, 3,000 men (French intelligence said it was 265,000, hard to say what political considerations might have been involved in that mis-estimate) had orders to retreat on sight of any French forces inside Germany. So a bloodless embarrassment of Hitler was a likely best case outcome for the Allies. That would have been better than appearing supine but not necessarily the end of Hitler or a looming second world war.
Alright I’ll agree to forgo the usage of my time reversal powers. However I like discussing history so I won’t close the whole thread down if that’s ok with you.
September 1938: Neville Chamberlain isnt conned by commie infiltrators and instead stands up to Hitler, never meets privately with him.
Hitler insists on the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The German General staff ousts him in a coup.
Thus, no WWII, right?
Nope. In Dec 1941 Japan still attacks America. Stalin follows by a invasion of Poland.
Interesting alternate War. Allies are Germany, France, UK, USA, Italy, Poland and even Spain help outs. USSR and Japan are by no means allies. USA still sends some aid to European allies, but concentrates on Japan, does not declare vs USSR. UK and USA fight vs Japan. Germany and the UK completely seal off Russia from the sea in the west, but can the allies hold?
Meanwhile Japan is hit by the full force of the USN. By 1944 Japan is sealed off to it’s main islands and is starving, while some forces remain in China.
Or:
May 1942. Hitler dies. No Barbarossa. With Hitler dead, the British people want peace, and with Germany offering to get out of France (well, not A/L of course nor the Maginot line), peace is quickly signed. Germany and USSR split eastern Europe.
USA and UK turn their full attention to Japan.
Question, is Stalin satisfied with half of eastern Europe? Or does he invade German held areas?
Amateur Barbarian: do you have a masters or phd in interwar german history or international relations? Because galbraithian versailles blaming is absolutely was the consensus 20 ish years ago when i did my degree and i very much doubt it is now.
Your degree seems to be failing you on both the spelling and sentence logic fronts, however.
First, of all, I’m not in the “Galbraithian Versailles-blaming” camp - by which I take you mean blaming Germany’s fall and rise on the economic terms of Versailles.
Where the treaty failed was in adequately disarming and demilitarizing Germany (which it did, but weakly constructed) and then enforcing those conditions in meaningful ways (like, pretty much at all) and for a meaningful duration (like, 30 years or so, until a generational change could set in).
The economic conditions (and you can choose one or more here, as suits your taste)…
[ol]
[li]…didn’t help.[/li][li]…fueled and exacerbated the social problems.[/li][li]…gave Hitler one more popular argument for ignoring the treaty.[/li][li]…all of the above, but were not by themselves the cause of Germany’s subsequent history.[/li][/ol]
It is highly probable that more stringent enforcement of the armament, military and nationalism terms would have prevented Germany from starting any of the later sh*t that led to WWII. It is possible that nothing else but that weak enforcement matters. However, the consensus has long been that more “Marshall Plan”-like economic terms, instead of punitive/vengeance-driven ones, would have undercut the popular desire to go the nationalist route and left Hitler the pipsqueak he started as.
The problem is and always will be Versailles - but not solely the economic terms. is gud enuf that for u?
Why would Philby and his colleagues have done that? It seems to me that their Soviet controllers would have gone the opposite way and fed Chamberlain misinformation that would have led to a war between Germany and the Western countries.
Other way around, anyway. They weren’t in anything like senior enough positions until much later, and in any case were in the business of collecting information to send to the Soviets, not create disinformation from them (with the partial exception of Guy Burgess, and even then he wasn’t in a position to act as any sort of agent of influence until he was fairly well established as a BBC producer, later on in the war).
No. The problem is the end of the war leaves Germany temporarily defeated but strategically stronger than ever. Theres not much any Treaty can do about that.
The “Hey, just attack Germany in 1936” theory assumes that the political leadership in France or Britain could declare war on Germany without getting strung up from lamp-posts by the citizenry.
World War I devastated France and Britain. No one in the UK or France could possibly believe that all you had to do was declare war, kick Hitler’s ass, march on Berlin and be home for Christmas. No one would believe you. Any government that tried to force war on the public would be treated like the guys who want us to re-invade Iraq, only 20 times worse. Sending ground troops to Iraq and Syria is a losing political platform in 2016 America, now imagine how declaring war on Germany is going to look in 1936 Britain and France.
:eek: