Disagree with you. He had been a corporal not a trained officer, although he was not as crazy and stupid as the German generals would have us believe as they tried to justify their actions in WW2, but I really think he didn't have a plan B. Or, to put it another way, if the allies had responded with declarations of war, I'm sure he'd have (been forced to) accept it and WW2 would have began. (Although I guess the war would have probably been more-or-less the same, UK blockading, French and BEF waiting on the border for German attack. Hitler making a pact with the USSR, dissemble Poland etc.) It was the politician Hitler that was running the show. He'd 'bluffed' a lot earlier and got what he wanted and his hubris was growing and would build to a crescendo in years to come. That was a huge factor in his decisions.
The German military was clear it was not ready for war against France and the UK, hence the muscial chairs with OKW / OKH in 1938 when they criticised his political approach.
This was a political calculation not a military decision. There was feeling from a substantial quarter of the allies that Versaille had been far too harsh and that it should be dialled down - especially with the UK, see the Navy treaties and response to Rhineland and Austria. Also there was little appetite for another war, the Munich agreement was celebrated at the time amongst many. He was banking on that, he liked the odds and made the bet. You do make this point, however as there was no plan B, an aggressive France and UK could have made WW2 play out very differently.
Fundamentally he was an opportunist who always preferred the radical solution. He made the same bet the year afterwards when the next 'opportunity' came up with Danzig and Poland. He lost it.
OK. Defining it as plan B is not correct. But don't you think he knew that there wouldn't be an agressive unified France and UK against him and that vision is something far more than just a bluff of 'nobody wants a war'? These two countries have already started the race and going head to head.
This is what I meant by the race. Everybody is against each other in some development race.
Opportunist? Single minded you mean. Like a virus. Doesn't think it could lose, just try to inavde and spread.
see you ascribe to the Tolstoyian 'calculus of history' school!
I don't really subsrcibe to any schools consciously, I promise.
I tried to give a context for why I see it that way. But yeah I am not optimistic about my species.
I'm voicing my impressions built on interaction with people from Western countries.
I think in some(most? nearly all??) senses you are correct, but I do think on occassion individuals do have an enormous impact on how events unfurl. So yes, changing a few decisions in 1938 would likely have done little to change the course of events...but Hitler being killed on the Western Front in 1918, would have surely led to a different Germany in 1934. Or would 'history' have churned out a cookie-cutter, mesmeric, 'let's expand East, boo to world Jewry' dictator? There might be an argument that there would always have still been conflict in Europe at some point - after all Germany was still rife with Prussian militarism and the German Army was a huge part of German society at the time - but who knows how radically different such conflicts might have been.
OK. That makes sense. You mean without him may be there wouldn't have been a Holocaust, but a war would have likely to happen.
I already agree with the first part, that's what I am saying. But the reason I haven't opted out the Holocaust specifically, because every dictator, nationalist-alt right politics play on created domestic and foreign enemies. It has to. That doesn't change. It's the same story today. That fear is the catalyst for that politics to work. They need demons. So any other similar conflict would have had a similar consequences for some minority or group.
In this case, Jewish people were a suitable target for a soverign country politics who was dropped out of "the race". It's simple divisive politics. Anti-semitism is an ancient sickness in everywhere around the world, but from German nationalism point in that climate they were painted as the reason for why they can't move forward in the new age as a nation.
It is probably a whole discussion, but in simplistic terms I think you can argue it was a major 'Good War' for the allies and that is different from many other conflicts in the past. Not all, but many. If you delve deeper into what happened on both sides this moral question becomes murkier and less black and white, but I still think it necessary that the allies won.
Well, it is different and I am glad they won, lol. Needlessly to say. Bu I was trying to say that it is not so different from what is going on today, even though we are living the least violent period of human history.
This is a good point - very reminiscent of Von Manstein or Guderian writing after the war that he and his men were fine, it was Hitler and the evil SS that did everything bad. However I'd contend that if Hitler hadn't been around, the conflict or whatever happened in it's place could have been profoundly different.
Hmm. OK. But again not so sure about the last part. Without inventing domestic enemies -which means immediate threat- you don't have the triggers to provide for the set of politics required for a war. We are living in this today, lol. Everywhere.
Okay, big topic. Don't really agree with you - there are plenty of nations that are thousands of years old that have all of the above. Yes many of them are different from the modern definition of national states, but they are definitely there. I'm sure the Chinese would vigoursly argue against you!
LOL Yes, from a linguistic point Chinese would be a unique example in world history and you found it.
But that's China. For early modern Europe, from cultural history point, there are no languages, but just vernaculars. There are no nations or national armies. They are very young concepts. Nationalism is not some kind of developed tribalism. We have tribes, lol. Tribes are very different.
This is interesting. Unfortunately we are a warlike, aggressive species more-or-less, so it is impossible for us to know if science and technology would have fared better in a world dominated by peace. Also it seems to be an argument perfectly made for the military industrial complex! My first guess is actually no, (purely to start a discussion
), we'd have done just as well in a peaceful world - maybe even better, but would have focussed on different areas of science and tech.
That's nothing interesting, it is a fact. And I hate this with vengeance, but yes, the technology introduced in the 20th century is the result of research made before and during the WWII. against Germany, then against Russia. Technology does not develop to make people's lives easy and keep them live, it develops via military technology to destroy lives and then get transformed into every day technology piece by piece according to the created industries and major economies; calculated profits.
Richard Feynman has a speech...well he has several, not sure exactly which one I think this was given 1952? That popped in my mind writing this.
Not quite sure what you're trying to say here. But I'll say WW2 is extraordinary in the following senses: The greatest loss of human life due to one conflict, the amount of destruction and the geographical extent of it. We've not had a war like it in the past at all - it's unique and hopefully it stays that way. That's what makes it extraordinary. That the bad guys were beaten is a huge plus (I don't see how you can put the word evil in quotation marks when talking about Nazis or the Japanese military circa 1930/40)
Everything you count up there is about the scale. But the causes, reasons...politics. Oldest story. That's why it is not an 'extraordinary' event. Of course it is horrifyingly huge. And when you paint something that dark, a lot of things look a bit better in contrast while they are not. That's what I mean. It's become some fantasy evil while it is the most basic human reality. Racism and fascism... It's pretty much alive. It has never died. It changed make up.
Overall, it looks you agree with me more than you disagree though, lol.
