# Why did most of Europe just lay down for Germany at the start of WWII? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 29, 2010, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233 "2010-11-29T01:02:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Susanann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/101 "2010-11-30T19:04:03Z")
Originally Posted by Susanann If Hitler had left Switzerland and Russia alone, then Hitler would probably still be in power of the rest of Europe today. The lesson is: Don’t mess with countries that will not surrender. > [@kidchameleon](#): > > In the real world, Hitler did leave Switzerland alone. Being only HALF-right, doesn’t cut it. ---
**Author:** ![Norse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a9adbd/32.png) [@Norse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Norse)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/102 "2010-11-30T19:05:16Z")
> [@Maastricht](#): > > How would you have responded if you didn’t have an airforce, your enemy did, and he just bombarded Boston off the map and threatened to do the same to New York? They’d probably respond roughly the same way Japan did after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been bombed off the map… ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/103 "2010-11-30T19:21:54Z")
> [@Susanann](#): > > I can speak for myself. > > IF somebody breaks into/invades my house, I will shoot them dead. Period. No need to play any hypothetical mind games or any “mystery option” games. I dont bargain with invaders. This includes police? > [@](#): > > The Swiss had the same mindset, and Hitler’s generals went elsewhere. Largely because Switzerland wasn’t much of a threat; Swiss banks happily co-operated with the Nazis, they had no desire to protect any other countries, and provided a useful go-between in diplomacy for both sides. Out of interest, I was under the impression that the UK, among others, had the same mindset. Yet it strikes me that the Nazis attempted to invade us. ---
**Author:** ![Capitaine\_Zombie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@Capitaine\_Zombie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capitaine_Zombie)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/104 "2010-11-30T19:23:45Z")
> [@Susanann](#): > > The lesson is: Don’t mess with countries that will not surrender. > Doesnt matter. It was/is a mistake to invade any country that will not surrender. Hitler lost the war because he invaded a country that wouldnt stop fighting. There are too many casualities incurred by an invading army when fighting a country that believes in\*\* “Total Resistance”\*\* . Hitler should have got his resources elsewhere… from countries that “lay down” . Yeah, the USSR clearly were a country where every citizen was armed to resist oppression, in fact , it was renowned for precisely that, and not the millions that got sent helpless to the gulag. Nor the millions live squandered fighting Germany with a decimated high command and structure. "Hitler should have got his resources elsewhere… from countries that “lay down”. What an assinine argument, the Soviets had to retreat for thousand of kilometers under German assault. Any other country in Europe that would have done the same would have found itself in high seas. Using the Swiss as an example when they didnt even fight is probably one of the worst examples you could think off. When you dont fight, you dont even have the opportunity to surrender. At least its neighbors fought, Switzerland just got passed down as not even interesting for a conquest. That’s like being the last one picked to join a team in sports. ---
**Author:** ![Capitaine\_Zombie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@Capitaine\_Zombie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capitaine_Zombie)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/105 "2010-11-30T19:25:26Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#): > > Out of interest, I was under the impression that the UK, among others, had the same mindset. Yet it strikes me that the Nazis attempted to invade us. Well, the British army did flee at Dunkirk. And Hitler never tried to invade England (nor even planned it, Sealion was a stillborn idea from the start). ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/106 "2010-11-30T19:33:54Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > And yet there were resistance movements in every country the Germans occupied. Certainly, which helped fight, but did not defeat the Germans. And the Jews did fight back, in the Warsaw Uprising, and were utterly annihilated. What defeated the Germans was good old fashioned military power from the Allies. Look, if we’re going to compare Vietnam and the Jews in Germany and Poland, it’s worthwhile to look at the motivations of the combatants there. Vietnam was fought ostensibly to prop up South Vietnam and provide a bulwark against Communism. The US didn’t want to kill all the Vietnamese - it would have made the whole endeavour pointless and provoked a war with China. The Jews, on the other hand, were as mentioned a tiny minority within both those countries and actively scapegoated in one of them. Hitler’s first and second goals in WWII were to: a) occupy Europe and b) kill all the Jews. He even wrote a book about it. If Jews in Germany started shooting at German police and soldiers do you think that would make Hitler less, or more determined to deal with the Jewish population? And what do you think the German population, already fairly anti-Semitic on the whole, would think of this uprising in their midst? It doesn’t appeal to our sense of righteousness, but the Jews were utterly, hopeless screwed in German once Hitler came to power, unless they somehow managed to leave. They might have helped kill a few more Germans and might have shortened the war a little bit, but they might also have gotten more Jewish people killed. It’s hard to say which would have been better for them, but there were no positive outcomes possible. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/107 "2010-11-30T19:37:39Z")
> [@Capitaine\_Zombie](#): > > Well, the British army did flee at Dunkirk. And Hitler never tried to invade England (nor even planned it, Sealion was a stillborn idea from the start). I’d say even worse than that, given that even with the whole armada of little ships a good proportion of the Allied forces were captured. But I would say that indicates a greater level of resistance than even the vaunted Switzerland, since the UK was prepared to defend not only itself but other countries, too, and took great steps to do so. So far as invasion goes, i’d say it was different from continental Europe because of our moat. Most of the time, defeat of opposition and capturing of enemy territory went hand in hand; with the UK, the Nazis needed to defeat in large the RAF and RN before they could start taking any steps towards invasion, which they didn’t but certainly tried. Not to mention that some of the Channel Islands _were_ successfully occupied by the Nazis. ---
**Author:** ![villa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc79bd/32.png) [@villa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/villa)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/108 "2010-11-30T19:42:46Z")
> [@Raygun99](#): > > The Jews, on the other hand, were as mentioned a tiny minority within both those countries and actively scapegoated in one of them. Hitler’s first and second goals in WWII were to: a) occupy Europe and b) kill all the Jews. He even wrote a book about it. If Jews in Germany started shooting at German police and soldiers do you think that would make Hitler less, or more determined to deal with the Jewish population? And what do you think the German population, already fairly anti-Semitic on the whole, would think of this uprising in their midst? Well - tiny minority isn’t really accurate as regards Poland. There were, in 1939, 3.5 million Polish jews out of a population of around 35 million - 10 % of the populace. Germany was a much smaller percentage - in 1933 there were around half a million jews out of around 67 million Germans. And Jews were actively scapegoated in both countries - Poland was a hot bed of anti-semitism. The populations differed in more than size as well - German Jews were far more integrated into German society. Polish Jews had been more excluded. This was true of other Western and Central European nations as compared to the Jewish populations of the East. The Shoah began in the East for many reasons, not least of which was that it was significantly easier to persaude Germans to kill Eastern Jews than Western/Central ones, as they were seen as significantly more “alien.” ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/109 "2010-11-30T20:41:34Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#): > > So far as invasion goes, i’d say it was different from continental Europe because of our moat. “I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea.” -Lord St. Vincent ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/110 "2010-11-30T20:52:14Z")
> [@Raygun99](#): > > Certainly, which helped fight, but did not defeat the Germans. And the Jews did fight back, in the Warsaw Uprising, and were utterly annihilated. What defeated the Germans was good old fashioned military power from the Allies. > > Look, if we’re going to compare Vietnam and the Jews in Germany and Poland, it’s worthwhile to look at the motivations of the combatants there. > > Vietnam was fought ostensibly to prop up South Vietnam and provide a bulwark against Communism. The US didn’t want to kill all the Vietnamese - it would have made the whole endeavour pointless and provoked a war with China. > > The Jews, on the other hand, were as mentioned a tiny minority within both those countries and actively scapegoated in one of them. Hitler’s first and second goals in WWII were to: a) occupy Europe and b) kill all the Jews. He even wrote a book about it. If Jews in Germany started shooting at German police and soldiers do you think that would make Hitler less, or more determined to deal with the Jewish population? And what do you think the German population, already fairly anti-Semitic on the whole, would think of this uprising in their midst? > > It doesn’t appeal to our sense of righteousness, but the Jews were utterly, hopeless screwed in German once Hitler came to power, unless they somehow managed to leave. They might have helped kill a few more Germans and might have shortened the war a little bit, but they might also have gotten more Jewish people killed. It’s hard to say which would have been better for them, but there were no positive outcomes possible. I will readily concede that the Jews, by the time they were able to recognize what was happening, were not in much of a position to fight back. I will, however, note that there were successful uprisings in the camps themselves. I wasn’t really trying to liken the Vietnamese to the Jews in any case. I was actually addressing the scorn that **Der Trihs** and the other usual suspects heap upon the idea of an armed populace resisting a professional army at all. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/111 "2010-11-30T21:03:36Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > I wasn’t really trying to liken the Vietnamese to the Jews in any case. I was actually addressing the scorn that **Der Trihs** and the other usual suspects heap upon the idea of an armed populace resisting a professional army at all. If you’re talking about the Viet Cong, though, they had state support. They were being funded and trained by North Vietnam and the Soviet Union. So, that gave them an advantage, and even then, they were wiped out by 1969. ---
**Author:** ![Caffeine.addict](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f475e1/32.png) [@Caffeine.addict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caffeine.addict)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/112 "2010-11-30T21:24:18Z")
I think the difference between Vietnam and the German invasion of Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands etc. is that the Germans were prepared to kill as many people as it took to “pacify” those regions. An insurgency like Vietnam and Iraq only works to a certain extent against forces who won’t simply start shooting civilians in reprisal for any attacks on them. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/113 "2010-11-30T23:10:56Z")
As mentioned above, hindsight is 20/20. Prior to WWII, surrendering or otherwise being defeated in war usually did not result in the kind overwhelmingly brutal occupations that the Nazis engaged in. Ordinary European civilians generally did not arm themselves because they did not obsess over the idea of shooting at occupiers the way today’s right-wingers do. When a few did take potshots at German troops, the reprisals were extremely horrific. That probably gave a few would-be heroes pause. As for the Vietnamese, they had jungles in which to hide–terrain makes a huge difference in guerilla warfare. They also had 30 years of experience fighting foreign armies. You can’t expect an unarmed civilian population to become an effective insurgency overnight, even though there were some exceptions (i.e. Yugoslav partisans). ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2010, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/114 "2010-11-30T23:48:54Z")
> [@Susanann](#): > > Originally Posted by Susanann > I can speak for myself. > IF somebody breaks into/invades my house, I will shoot them dead. Period. No need to play any hypothetical mind games or any “mystery option” games. I dont bargain with invaders. That just gets you put on the list of “houses to be destroyed by artillery”. It’s been over a hundred years since a bunch of people with rifles has been a serious threat to a real army. All they are now is an annoyance. ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/115 "2010-12-01T00:17:45Z")
> [@Uosdwis\_R.Dewoh](#): > > When did this happen? Finland fought fiercely against the Soviet Union. We lost in the end and had to pay huge sums in war reparations and to cede large territories. But of all the nations the Soviets invaded during WW2, Finland was the only one that managed to keep it’s independence. Yeah that was what I was going to say! We kicked the Russkies arse but boy did we pay for it later on. Karelia we miss her still. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/116 "2010-12-01T00:17:49Z")
> [@Susanann](#): > > Originally Posted by Susanann > Yes. Being strong, armed, and willing and able to resist completely without surrendering made the Swiss VERY tough. Too tough for Hitler’s armies. They also had terrain on their side (ie The Alps). Great Britain had the English Channel between themselves and ze Germans and the Soviet Union was a huge country with a massive population. France, The Netherlands and Poland were also armed and resisted the the Germans but they were simply overrun. I should also point out to you that every occupied country had some form of resistance movement. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/117 "2010-12-01T00:19:06Z")
> [@Susanann](#): > > I can speak for myself. > > IF somebody breaks into/invades my house, I will shoot them dead. Period. No need to play any hypothetical mind games or any “mystery option” games. I dont bargain with invaders. > > The Swiss had the same mindset, and Hitler’s generals went elsewhere. > > If Hitler had left Switzerland and Russia alone, then Hitler would probably still be in power of the rest of Europe today. The lesson is: Don’t mess with countries that will not surrender. Then you would die as well. It’s very easy to say things on a message board, but if you have a reasonable chance of being able to live mostly a normal life under occupation, then if you’re like 90% of humans you won’t trade your life for some vague sense of making the occupation more difficult. In human history it is virtually unheard of for a moderately comfortable occupied population to fight to the bitter end. People who fight to the bitter end tend to be ones that know they are choosing between being massacred and being killed in a “last stand.” That’s no real choice at all, and most people would choose to take out as many of their murderers as possible in such a situation. Here’s something to keep in mind though, in most countries the Germans occupied, the majority of the civilians got out alright. Their quality of life decreased somewhat, as the war went on all of Europe’s quality of life decreased dramatically, but at the end of the day things were tolerable. By and large the people who fought to the “bitter end” lost their lives. Russians had no conception of the comforts of life that western Europeans had, Russians also felt they were fighting for survival. France was only fighting for sovereignty, the Germans had no plans to mass exterminate all the French or all the Dutch or all the Belgians. Hitler on the other hand essentially publicly stated in his writings that he considered the extermination of the Slavic peoples to his east to be essential in giving Germans “growing room.” That’s a very different thing from what the French were faced with. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/118 "2010-12-01T00:21:45Z")
Another thing to keep in mind is the British and the Russians weren’t fighting to the “last man.” By and large it was Russian soldiers who fought the Germans, not Russian civilians. A lot of people were conscripted into the Russian military, but something like 100 million of them were _not_ conscripted, and they by and large were not active parts of the battle. Russia won because Germany’s lines of supply got longer and longer the further into Russia they went, their numbers were always smaller than those of the Soviets, and as the campaign dragged on that fact was exacerbated, and the Russian military wasn’t willing to engage in any sort of peace agreement even when they had sustained unimaginably catastrophic losses. However, it certainly wasn’t because all of the untrained civilians in Russia were popping off Germans with single shot civilian issue hunting rifles. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/119 "2010-12-01T00:28:57Z")
> [@Susanann](#): > > Originally Posted by Susanann > If Hitler had left Switzerland and Russia alone, then Hitler would probably still be in power of the rest of Europe today. The lesson is: Don’t mess with countries that will not surrender. > Doesnt matter. It was/is a mistake to invade any country that will not surrender. Hitler lost the war because he invaded a country that wouldnt stop fighting. There are too many casualities incurred by an invading army when fighting a country that believes in\*\* “Total Resistance”\*\* . Hitler should have got his resources elsewhere… from countries that “lay down” . You know that Poland never surrendered, right? > [@Susanann](#): > > Originally Posted by Susanann > I can speak for myself. > IF somebody breaks into/invades my house, I will shoot them dead. Period. No need to play any hypothetical mind games or any “mystery option” games. I dont bargain with invaders. Ok, so lets assume for a second that your gun fantasy plays out and you somehow manage to wipe out the squad of heavily armed SS agents and police who bust into your house at 3am. Now where do you go? I think you vastly overestimate your ability to resist if the state where suddenly to turn it’s aparatus against you. You would most likely need to either already be an organized criminal or be well connected with them. IOW, people who already live under the radar and are used to conceiling their identity and activities. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2010, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233/120 "2010-12-01T00:45:15Z")
> [@sisu](#): > > Karelia we miss her still. :mad: I had heard that Finland fought with the Germans because they hated Russians. No [wonder.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karelia) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-of-europe-just-lay-down-for-germany-at-the-start-of-wwii/562233.md?page=7)