Biggest Mistake of WWII

[the_historian]

If Congress had backed Woodrow Wilson's promise to the French, IMHO there wouldn't have been a WW2 because a forerunner of NATO would have stamped him into the ground the first time he ever invaded anywhere, if he ever tried.

Quoted post

The forerunner to the UN was the League of Nations, who did damn all to stop Italy invading Abbyssinia, or the Japanese murdering a million people at Nanking. So that idea's a non-starter.
Biggest mistakes were Hitler's failure to have even thought about invading Britain in the first place, and not shifting his economy totally onto a war footing until around 1942.
With regards to convoys being able to sail out of Scotland unmolested, one of the first air raids on Britain was on 16th October 1939, when JU-88A1s of 1/KG30 bombed warships in the Firth of Forth. They flew from a base at Westerland on the Danish border. After Norway fell, no part of Britain was out of range.

[BeppoSapone]

[quote=the_historian,Nov 7 2004, 08:51 PM]

If Congress had backed Woodrow Wilson's promise to the French, IMHO there wouldn't have been a WW2 because a forerunner of NATO would have stamped him into the ground the first time he ever invaded anywhere, if he ever tried.

Quoted post

The forerunner to the UN was the League of Nations, who did damn all to stop Italy invading Abbyssinia, or the Japanese murdering a million people at Nanking. So that idea's a non-starter.



I was talking about the "Anglo-American Treaty of Guarantee", which promised the French immediate aid if their borders were violated. Payback time for this could be the French attitude to Iraq?

At the peace negotiations Woodrow Wilson promised the French military support in order to get them to sign the "Treaty of Versaille". However, the whole thing lapsed when US Congress refused to ratify what Wilson had agreed to.

IMHO this American retreat into isolationism was one of the main causes of the later failure of the "League of Nations".

[the_historian]

IMHO this American retreat into isolationism was one of the main causes of the later failure of the "League of Nations".

Quoted post

[/quote]


Not the fact the "Never Again" pacifist movement made it impossible for the League of Notions(!) to realistically threaten anyone about anything? And let's not forget that the middle classes in Britain-and elsewhere-were evenly divided between slavish devotion to Hitler and slavish devotion to Stalin.

[BeppoSapone]

Originally Posted by the_historian,Nov 8 2004, 05:00 AM

IMHO this American retreat into isolationism was one of the main causes of the later failure of the "League of Nations".

Quoted post

Not the fact the "Never Again" pacifist movement made it impossible for the League of Notions(!) to realistically threaten anyone about anything? And let's not forget that the middle classes in Britain-and elsewhere-were evenly divided between slavish devotion to Hitler and slavish devotion to Stalin.

Quoted post

[/quote]


No, not that at all. The thing that enabled Hitler to start WW2 is that the western allies did not pile in 'mob handed' the first time Germany moved its troops into any place they were forbidden to.

If America, Britain and France had troops ready and prepared to go into the Rhineland if Hitler did, Germany would have backed down, and not invaded anywhere else.

[BeppoSapone]

[quote=BeppoSapone,Nov 8 2004, 04:53 AM]
[quote=the_historian,Nov 7 2004, 08:51 PM]

If Congress had backed Woodrow Wilson's promise to the French, IMHO there wouldn't have been a WW2 because a forerunner of NATO would have stamped him into the ground the first time he ever invaded anywhere, if he ever tried.

Quoted post

The forerunner to the UN was the League of Nations, who did damn all to stop Italy invading Abbyssinia, or the Japanese murdering a million people at Nanking. So that idea's a non-starter.

The League of Nations applied "Sanzioni" to Italy after the invasion of Abbyssinia. These sanctions would have worked if Germany has not supported Italy, and broken the sanctions.

[the_historian]

Sorry, I disagree. The main reason the western allies were reluctant to do anything was the influence of the pacifist movements. These groups had their heads stuck so far into a hole, they nearly left it too late to do anything when they did finally rejoin the real world.
Another factor was the various Communist parties in Europe. Their one and only goal was to weaken the western military machine to the point where "spreading the revolution" would have been a piece of cake. There can't have been many anti-war organisations they didn't manage to infiltrate. No wonder Stalin called them "useful idiots".
As for sanctions working against Italy if Hitler hadn't supported them-who was supporting Japan after they invaded Manchuria? Hitler wasn't even in power. They ran rings round the League of Notions and STILL got away with it. Why? Because the pacifists would have thrown one almighty tantrum at the very suggestion of military action.

[BeppoSapone]

Originally posted by the_historian@Nov 8 2004, 09:33 AM
Sorry, I disagree. The main reason the western allies were reluctant to do anything was the influence of the pacifist movements. These groups had their heads stuck so far into a hole, they nearly left it too late to do anything when they did finally rejoin the real world.
Another factor was the various Communist parties in Europe. Their one and only goal was to weaken the western military machine to the point where "spreading the revolution" would have been a piece of cake. No wonder Stalin called them "useful idiots".
As for sanctions working against Italy if Hitler hadn't supported them-who was supporting Japan after they invaded Manchuria? Hitler wasn't even in power. They ran rings round the League of Notions and STILL got away with it. Why? Because the pacifists would have thrown one almighty tantrum at the very suggestion of military action.

Quoted post

You are wrong. The pacifist movements you mention were not a power in the west in 1918-1919. The problem was that America did not deliver what Woodrow Wilson promised, and retreated into isolationism.

It was this retreat that stopped a forerunner of NATO being in place and waiting for Germany to try anything. It was the retreat into isolationism by the USA, and others, that led to the growth of pacifist bodies. Pacifist, not Communist.

I also think you overplay the influence of Communist parties in Europe. The Italian Communist Party was a spent force from 1922 and the German one from 1933. The French, and other, Communist parties were not pacifist as late as 1936 when they helped raise the International Brigades for Spain. You would be correct in saying that the French Communist Party, and its attitudes after the Non-Aggression Pact, aided Germany in May and June of 1940.

Re: Italy and Japan. The League of Nations sanctions hit Italy very hard, and forced Italy into the German camp, and to behave more like Germany. For example, there was no real anti-semitism in Italy, and 'Il Duce' had nothing against Jews. In fact, IIRC the Chief Rabbi of Italy was a member of the Fascist Ground Council, but he was sidelined for political reasons in the late 1930s.

In the case of Japan and China. Who cared, and who could have done anything? Russia and the US maybe. But, iirc neither were members of the League of Nations! The problems with the League of Nations were: Firstly, that a lot of important nations were not members of it. Secondly, it did not have an army.

If only pacifists had the power you assign to them.

[Kiwiwriter]

The power of the pacifist movements of the 1930s and the disarmament trends was based not as much in ideology, Communist or otherwise, but in the sheer horrors of the Great War, whose mindlessness and ghastly carnage devastated the nations of Europe. An entire generation had been slaughtered to move Field Marshal Haig's liquor cabinet six feet closer to Berlin. Nobody in their right mind wanted to see a repeat of Passchendaele, complete with poison gas. Everyone in Europe had lost family and friends at the Somme, Ypres, or Verdun. The Somme slaughters wiped out whole neighborhoods, schools, towns, and even office complexes and law firms, as the "Pals Battalions" were blasted away. In Germany, there were millions of young widows with no other way to support themselves but prostitution. There were even "mutter-und-tochter" teams on the streets of Berlin. France's birth rate plummeted between the wars. In Britain, spiritualism was all the rage as otherwise normal people tossed vast sums of money at "mediums" to contact their sons and husbands killed at Vimy. Among them was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who I believe lost a son in the trenches. After Giulio Douhet wrote his book and Stanley Baldwin said, "The bomber will always get through," the visceral terror became fleets of bombers dropping vast numbers of bombs and poison gas on cities, causing more destruction in 20 minutes than was actually done during the war. HG Wells and other writers foresaw London covered with poison gas, all her buildings burning, her people fleeing and dying in a state of terror. Logically, the British government ordered millions of cardboard coffins and an exactly same number of death certificates, discussed mass burials at sea, and appeased Hitler. People were also disillusioned by how the vast sacrifice of World War I had only resulted in economic slump, profits for armaments manufacturers, and the collapse of old orders. Democracy was seen as a failure, Communism, Fascism, Nazism, Technocracy, and other nostrums seen as the only way to save the world from another war and the continued Great Depression. Wells' book, "The Shape of Things To Come" is a good view of how a lot of people viewed the future.

[BeppoSapone]

Kiwiwriter

Most of what you say I would agree with. However, I would say that the situation was more the case in the 1930s. Certainly not at the time of the negotiations prior to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. I still maintain what I said about Wilson, the USA and Isolationism.

Also, I would like to introduce a distinction between "Pacifism" and "Appeasement". The vast majority of British people were in favour of appeasement, but very few were pacifists.

[the_historian]

If only pacifists had the power you assign to them.

Quoted post

You mean myself and every lecturer and guest speaker at the Centre for Second World War Studies at the University of Glasgow. In fact, you are the only one I have ever met who holds that view.
America cared enough about the Japanese presence in China when Zeros attacked an American ship in 1937-I forget its name unfortunately. It almost triggered war between them four years before Pearl Harbour-not my idea of isolationism.
I won't accept that American isolationism was chiefly to blame for WW2-it sounds too close to the current trend of blaming America for everything-nor that there is any distinction between pacifism and appeasement. I thought that fallacy had been destroyed by the Falklands War.
Anyway, we're a long way off the topic here....