Churchill’s position was reasonable and Hitler’s was not. Hitler’s position was basically, “I get to have everything I wanted and you get to let me have it. How is that not reasonable?”
Now if Hitler had made a reasonable peace offer in 1941 - like offering an agreement where everyone went back to their pre-war borders - and Churchill had refused that, then I’d agree that Churchill would have been the unreasonable one.
My mistake, it was Ozymandius.
But he prevented nuclear war and as the smartest guy on earth, he had figured out that this was the least destructive way of achieving that goal. Or am I misremembering again and he was actually a sadist who could have achieved peace by pushing a button but decided to blow up a city for shits and giggles.
There’s a book?
Well you know how David killed Goliath? They’re not about to give Palestinians the same chance.
Movies are usually better than books, especially now taht we have 3d… amirite?
I think you’re missing the point: the point was to step up pressure on England to agree to peace; not to actually invade.
Also, Hitler’s plans were not generally ill-conceived or delusional. All you have to do is look at the quick and entirely successful conquest of France. The same France which defeated Germany in the last war.
Even Operation Barbarossa was exceptionally and surprisingly successful, in the beginning. People are quick to assume Hitler was delusional about everything, because he was a racist. (He was delusional about race.) But he wasn’t. In terms of diplomatic and strategic decisions, there was nothing stupid or delusional about him.
I’d just refer you to Fuji’s quote:
It was a long speech, but the real point of it came at the end: after a vituperative personal attack on British political leaders in general and Churchill in particular, he made Britain one last offer. ‘In this hour, I feel it to be my duty before my own conscience,’ he declared solemnly, ‘to appeal once more to reason and common sense in Great Britain as much as elsewhere. I consider myself in a position to make this appeal since I am not the vanquished begging favours, but the victor speaking in the name of reason. I see no reason why this war must go on.’
The response from Britain to this appeal to reason was a very loud raspberry, and the stepping-up of bombing raids on the Reich"
I recall a commentator on network TV years ago who insisted that Hitler has to be insane. The reasoning was that it made no sense at all to continue to go all out with the railroads transporting Jews to their deaths in the closing months of the War in the ETO. It would have made far more sense to focus fully on the Soviets on their east and the other Allied Forces on their west and secure victory, and as much territory as they could maintain initially, and then push outward again if possible. Only monomania over genocide (and the supposed impossibility of defeat regardless of the what the maps say?) could explain such blindness to the obvious.
If this reasoning is correct, if would still not have been certain that Hitler was insane from the beginning of his campaign.
Making a really, really bad judgment is not in itself evidence of insanity.
That’s what makes it a silly game.
Yes and no. By 1938, most of the population of the Polish Corridor were ethnic Poles, but in 1918-19, the population was about half ethnically German. Danzig itself, in the 1923 census of the city, was about 95% German.
What happened to the corridor was that there was a large German emigration, which lowered the German population. Danzig itself was majority German until the German population was expelled after WWII and Poles brought in.
From an absolute morally-neutral perspective, where one would consider that Hitler’s actions might be either good or bad or even an intricate blend of the two, one metric stands out after all other bias has been sieved out. A couple of posters above have alluded to it.
One of the nastiest literary villains of ever made a rather insightful observation: “There is no good or evil … only power …” A person intent upon doing bad things must have sufficient power to accomplish them, otherwise those things amount to bad ideas. Hitler sought the power to undertake his plans and pursued even more power in order to expand his reach. In that respect, the fact that his goals could only be attained through power – stepping on people rather than attempting to work with them – strongly suggests, from the impartial position, that he was execrable.
Power seems to be quite seductive and difficult to cede once gained. Yet, Cincinnatus was famous for judicious use of his power. George Washington was similarly modest (or maybe just worn out tired). By contrast, most of today’s captains-of-industry appear to be on rather morally shaky ground, as they strive to gain more and more power over the lives of others.
It is just difficult (for me) to see how power over others leads to net positives. In a few cases, it can, but for the most part, it does not, and pursuit of it is a warning sign of moral weakness.
I’m sorry, but it is you that is missing the point. Führer Directive 16 didn’t order the German military to “step up pressure” on Britain to force them to the negotiating table, it instructed them to plan and prepare for an invasion of Britain. You are entirely wrong in claiming Hitler never seriously intended to invade Britain. He did, as is made abundantly clear in Führer Directive 16:
There is nothing there about ‘stepping up pressure’, and continues on to list objectives in England to be taken. Again, that the plan was unfeasible to the point of delusional is irrelevant, the point is Hitler planned to invade England.
Again, I have no idea what any of this has to do with anything relevant to the issue at hand. It’s as much of a non sequitur as your talking about mortality rates in POW camps during the US Civil War in response to Germany’s use of slave labor from countries it occupied. You’ll note that I nowhere said anything about Hitler’s plans being generally ill-conceived or delusional. I said
Many =/= generally, and many of his plans were ill-conceived and at times delusional. See for example his insistence that 6th Army allow itself to be surrounded at Stalingrad and his refusal to allow it to attempt to breakout when it had a chance.
And I’d direct you to my response to his quote, namely where exactly is the peace proposal that I asked to be cited at in there? The answer is that there isn’t one; it was a speech for public consumption to show what a man of peace he really was. He made a long speech insulting Britain’s political leaders in general and Churchill in particular, the very people he would need to negotiate with if he was serious in his desire to come to terms for peace with Britain, after which he made a vague appeal telling the people of Britain that they were defeated and should give up. That’s not a peace proposal, or even anything that will lead to a peace proposal. Hitler saying “I consider myself in a position to make this appeal since I am not the vanquished begging favours, but the victor speaking in the name of reason” isn’t him seriously attempting to make peace with Britain, it is him trying to tell them that they are defeated and may as well give up. I still await a cite from you on a single peace proposal or feelers for a peace proposal with Britain coming from Hitler. Actually, I’m not awaiting it, since as there was none you won’t be able to find evidence of any.
It wasn’t Hitler’s fault - he was cleaning Germany and it went off.
You mean outlaw Germany and only outlaws will have Reichs?
Oh, and bye the bye, you should have a look at the quick and successful conquest of France in 1940. It was not Hitler’s plan, it was Manstein’s. The original OKH plan, also not Hitler’s but rather Halder’s but given Hitler’s stamp of approval was very conservative and only planned on pushing the Allies back to the Somme, exactly where the Germans had been stopped by the Allies back in 1914. It was only the Mechelen incident where a German plane with an officer on board who was carrying documents detailing the German plan made a forced landing in Belgium that forced Germany to modify plan. Manstein was able to get Hitler’s ear and convince him to adopt his plan, the now infamous “sickle stroke”. Maps comparing the plans here, wiki article on the Manstein plan here.
Well, not really. That’s what you’d call the nationalistic American version of those wars.
Actually, Lincoln explicitly said the war was not to free the slaves. It was to keep the South from seceding. And Japan never had any ambition to take over the US, much less the world. Neither, for that matter, did Germany.
And the Allied bombing raids were specifically to kill civilians. It wasn’t incidental. That was the purpose.
Semantics. The North was not willing to live in a country that allowed slavery. The South was not willing to live in a country that abolished slavery. If Lincoln was going to use arms from the North to force the submission of the South, it was going to inevitably involve the abolition of slavery along the way, and Lincoln knew that going in.
Maybe. But they were gleefully raping and pillaging China and southwestern Asia, and they would have barreled right through Australia if we hadn’t entered the war when we did. Now, maybe an empire with territorialistic ambitions stops once they have 1/3rd of the world in their grasp, but personally I think they would have just kept marching forward until somebody stood in their way. Maybe they conquer India and the eastern Middle East first. Maybe they move through South America before setting sights on the USA. But maybe not. Remember, Japan attacked the US before the US even entered the war.
Get real. Germany’s armies spread from Germany in all directions at as quick a rate as he could muster until they were spread too thin to capture enemy territory, much like an amateur player in a game of Risk. Unless by “not conquering the whole world” you mean, ‘would have been happy splitting the world between themselves, Italy and Japan’, which is basically the same thing.
I’ll just note that you have yet to explain what any of this segue of yours into “war can be bad” has to do with the German occupation of France, or how it is that you consider the use of 1.5 million French citizens as slave laborers by the Nazis or the pointless massacres of French women and children as collective punishment for partisan activity (or for no real reason at all) to be, in your words “not particularly harsh”.
*"I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” *
Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861.
*“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union…” * (August 22, 1862)
It is true Japan was “gleefully raping and pillaging” China. That they had any plans to invade Australia is a new one on me.
The US came close to fighting China itself, a couple of times, after WWII.
It’s also true that the US had imposed an embargo on Japan, in order to starve them of oil (they had no such natural resource themselves) and that they believed war with the US was inevitable. Japan could not maintain its war effort without natural resources. Pearl Harbor, from their point of view, was “pre-emptive self defense”. But it was a hit and run tactic, against a military target. It wasn’t part of some plan to invade anywhere. They had no plans to invade India, or the Middle-East, or South America. All that is pure fantasy.
Germany invaded France, and partly occupied it. They occupied parts of Northern Europe. They invaded Russia, intending to destroy it as a country. They also fought some skirmishes in Northern Africa. That Hitler planned to take over the world is, again, fantasy. Europe is part of the world, but it’s not the whole thing.
“Not particularly harsh” in the context of war. Not particularly harsh, compared to, say, what happened on the Eastern Front (on both sides). Or what happened in the parts of Germany that came under Russian control. Or what happened in Nagasaki, and Hiroshima, and Dresden and Berlin.
Doesn’t change the fact that the South seceded and attacked the North because of slavery. The Civil War was first and foremost about slavery- so said the Secession Declarations of many of the southern states, and so said the Confederate leaders themselves. Back then, there was no doubt that slavery was the cause of the war.
Whether or not it was fantasy, Japan attacked us and invaded US territories like the Philippines, and it was prudent and rational for us to respond with the full force of our military might.
Hitler declared war on the United States. And there’s no way to know exactly what Hitler planned to do if he had won in Europe. I’m glad we got involved and fought Germany- America is stronger, and the world is better, because of it.
Also, in hindsight, it’s reasonable to assume that one of Hitler’s goals, had he conquered all of Europe, would have been the eradication of all Jews (and possibly all non-Aryans) on Earth, considering that towards the end of the war they pursued this goal even at the expense of the German war effort.
:rolleyes:Seriously? You consider the enslavement of 1.5 million people “not particularly harsh?” You consider locking hundreds of women and children inside of a church, setting the church on fire and machine gunning them as they try to escape being burned alive “not particularly harsh?” You know, what happened in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and Berlin was nothing compared to what happened at Auschwitz. Strangely enough people would look at me like I was high if I were to say bombing Dresden wasn’t particularly harsh in the context of war.
Honestly, were you even aware that Germany deported 1.5 million French citizens to work as slave laborers before I told you and when you initially made the statement
Because frankly, saying the enslavement of 1.5 million of them was not particularly harsh is entirely absurd. Countries do not routinely go about enslaving the vanquished, and haven’t done so in millennia.
Actually, no. He wanted all Jews out of the Reich, which he envisaged would stretch more or less from the Atlantic to the Urals, but he didn’t have any great problem with Jews being elsewhere - if anything, if other nations were “degraded” by an admixture of Jewish blood, and handicapped in other ways by having a resident Jewish population, so much the better; it would help keep the Germans in the top dog position. He only embarked on a programme of total extermination of European Jews in 1941 because he felt getting rid of Jews was an important war aim, and in wartime conditions deportation was not feasible.
As for other non-Aryan nations, they intended to use them, even within the Reich, for servile labour.
