WW II began when Britain and France declared war on Germany. Germany did not declare war on Britain or France and did not want war with Britain or France. Up till that point the war had been regional. A world war has to involve opposing major powers, until Britain’s declaration of war there was no world war.
Suppose Iraq invades Kuwait. No world war. The the US invades Iraq. Still no world war. Then Russia attacks the US. Lights out, world war, started by Russia.
Germany invaded a nation that Britain and France were allied with. An attack on Poland was an attack on Britain and France; that’s how alliances work.
And even still, Germany had no intention of fighting a minor, regional war; they invaded the Soviet Union.
Gack, you are rather obviously evading any questions about Nazi Germany’s attempted extermination of the Jews in Europe, despite the obvious relevance to the issues in this thread of Hitler’s mindset, relative crimes of the various powers, and Nazi Germany’s culpability.
Did the Nazis try to wipe out Europe’s Jews? Did they kill any of Europe’s Jews? If so, roughly how many do you think they killed?
Do you believe Hitler’s hatred of the Jews was justified?
I have a specific topic to discuss in mind, and will introduce a thread on it. It won’t address the overriding questions you mention, but will be about one narrow specific aspect of the holocaust evidence. The subject seems off topic to me in this thread.
So you are refusing to answer those questions. If I start a thread on those questions, will you answer them?
When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, did he intend to start World War II?
It is pretty well established that Hitler wasn’t particularly interested in conquering France or Britain. He was interested in Eastern Europe. The only trouble was that France and the UK were allied with Poland, and promised war if Hitler invaded Poland. So Hitler invaded Poland. And there’s your war. Except that wasn’t good enough. Hitler wanted the rest of Eastern Europe. But he couldn’t invade Russia with France waiting to kick him in the back, so he had to take out France first.
Which actually worked. France was defeated. And the UK was pushed back across the channel, not much of a threat there. And so the time was ripe to attack Russia. Nice going if you don’t want to start a war.
Of course Roosevelt was helping the Brits as much as possible short of war. That’s because they were fighting Hitler, who, while not worse than Hitler, was by definition as bad as Hitler. That’s pretty bad.
We were already in a state of undeclared war against Hitler’s navy in the Atlantic as we were shipping supplies to Britain, so when Japan attacked us Hilter welcomed the opportunity to declare war on the US so he could openly attack American ships.
The alliance had one purpose only, as a trip wire for Germany. Russia also invaded Poland but there was no declaration of war against Russia.
Look, it’s all part of a bigger picture, addressed in books like Knuth’s or Engdahl’s.
We’re just arguing ‘semantics’ here, nothing really substantive, IMO.
Your opinion is incorrect. Rational people, including some that advised Hitler, knew that invading Poland would start a war with Britain and France. Hitler ignored that because he was deluded. Hitler’s delusions led to WWII, as well as the attempted extermination of Europe’s Jews.
The world war had been going on for a year before Hitler attacked Russia.
I think there should be a Stalin somewhere in there. The communist regime in Russia is unparalleled in the number of its own citizens killed. The figures are astronomical. The world has never seen anything like it, before or since.
Hitler was a charismatic, deluded fool who, by poor decision-making coming from delusions and his own hatred, started WWII, and attempted to exterminate millions of men, women, and children. Britain and the other powers also did bad things, but (except for the USSR) nothing on the level of what Nazi Germany did.
Oh, is that how alliances work? They don’t count if they are to defend against a aggressive, hostile power in the region? Why do you think countries enter into alliances, to share recipes?
France was allied with Russia as well as Poland. Those are the breaks of diplomacy.
Unless the bigger picture is that Germany didn’t invade Poland, it’s got nothing to do with whether Germany started the war, because that’s what started the war.
In terms of numbers, Stalin probably was responsible for more deaths than Hitler. Hitler and Stalin (and those who carried out their orders) were responsible for the deaths of millions.
The brutality of Stalin’s regime does nothing to lessen Hitler and the Nazi’s crimes. No event in history has ever been more brutal, savage, and inhuman than the Nazis’ attempted extermination of the Jews, and only a few events (including Stalin’s pogroms and other 20th century attempted genocides, as well as the slave trade) approach it in brutality and savagery.
To the best of my knowledge.
True. But on the other hand- “look over there! I think I see a diversion!”
First it was “let’s not count the Holocaust victims,” then it was “let’s not count anybody except Germans/Russians,” neglecting the fact that Stalin ran his country longer than Hitler did because he was less aggressive about attacking other major powers and killing their citizens. When you’re defending Nazi Germany, I imagine life is a desperate search for an uneven playing field.
More like a desperate search for an even playing field.
If you want to start a thread arguing that we should have allied with Nazi Germany against Communist Russia, that we fought on the wrong side in WWII, then feel free my man.
Hitler was only trying to save the world from the Bolshevist/Capitalist Jews I guess. A very misunderstood man.
To much conjecture there. But some things are certain, that is WW II and the subsequent development of nuclear weapons has put civilization itself on the precipice of destruction. We’ve been lucky thusfar, but the future is by no means certain.
My view is that Hitler was a nationalist who wanted to expand Germany’s reach, an imperialist. I think his aims were modest. I think that Bolshevism in Russia made conflict with the west inevitable.
The absolute crushing of the Nazi regime and the isolation of their ideas to the very fringe of human thought makes it all worth it.
Yes, he modestly wanted to wipe out a few groups of genetic undesirables people from his smallish empire. Leave Hitler alone!
Accepting this premise for the time being, the question then becomes - so what? Germany did quite deliberately trip said wire, did it not? If it hadn’t, there would have been no WW II, correct? Therefore, this statement…
…is incorrect, yes?
Nothing motivated an invasion of Poland other than aggressive nationalism. The Nazis were not in a ‘damned if we do, damned if we don’t’ scenario. They could have simply chosen to not do and be satisfied with their nasty little subversion of the Sudetenland.
WW I losses were irrelevant and hardly crippling to Germany. We can just keep going farther back if you like - Germany east of the Elbe used to be entirely Slavic. East Germany for the Wends!