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The Second World War was the decisive moment of the left’s ascent to power in the West. Historians like Niall Ferguson and Andrew Roberts, whose careers centre upon justifying it, are falsely presented by fellow anti-fascists as conservatives. The raison d’etre of the fake right is to occupy any space in which genuine, committed opponents of the left would otherwise exist and to continually surrender. They conspire in the anti-fascist monopoly; the real right are excluded from all institutions.
Hitler’s violation of the Munich settlement in March 1939 proved his perfidy and his intention to conquer. But why was Britain party to that settlement? The German invasion of Poland triggered the declarations of war by Britain and France. But why were those countries allied with Poland? The two statements are familiar. The two questions I arrived at myself, and since the answers have not been forthcoming from historians, I have sought them, and only thereby begun to understand the causes of the war.
To say that the war began because Germany invaded Austria, Czechoslovakia or Poland leaves begging any explanation of British involvement, as Britain only pledged support to Poland six months before the German invasion and was never allied with Austria, Czechoslovakia or France. The latter two were allied with each other since 1924, and both made pacts with the Soviet Union in the 1930s. France’s alliance with the Czechs (who dominated the Slovaks) made Germany’s demands toward the latter a British issue because British politicians and civil servants informally maintained the Entente with France: the unwritten understanding that the two would act together (with Russia) against Germany. The understanding was formed in 1904; the Great War had occurred, Russia had been superseded by the Soviet Union and Germany had been diminished at Versailles, yet through the succeeding twenty years, albeit with serious differences, Britain maintained a common diplomatic front with France against Germany. French politicians’ hostility to Germany and collaboration with communists was condoned and imitated by the war party in Britain. French politicians, exploiting British sympathy, aggravated relations with Germany and surrounded it with alliances, but refrained from declaring war alone, regarding British commitment as a necessity. Pro-war forces in Britain required six years to discredit, isolate and defeat the moderates and peacemakers; when they did so, Britain declared war and France followed.
A year before, Britain had been the decisive actor at the Munich summit, in which Czechoslovakia was, according to Churchillian history, ‘given away’ to Germany in a vain attempt to avoid war. Why war would otherwise have eventuated and between whom tends to go unspecified. France was unfaithful from the start in its promises to the smaller nations and would have forgone them if Germany’s threats to Czechoslovakia were fulfilled. Britain’s solidarity was precisely what made France and the Czechs affect such boldness as they did. British politicians, including Neville Chamberlain, acted there, and before and after, as though allied with France; for this I have never encountered any explanation. A self-consciously pro-French, anti-German faction fostered by King Edward VII took over the civil service, Parliament and the media in the century’s first decade and brought about the First World War, in which Churchill exulted. As nothing appears to have interrupted the hold of that faction on British policy, I surmise that they and their successors deepened their power through the 1910s and 1920s, became what we now call anti-fascists in the 1930s and have had hegemony in politics and the publishing of history ever since.
There should be detailed accounts written on this continuation of British support for France against Germany in the interwar period, as it was probably the most consequential foreign policy option in modern British history. Instead the most famous historians have, since the war, directed their readers’ attention toward whatever justifies the course taken by Winston Churchill, not only as Prime Minister from May 1940 but in the previous seven years through which, in their portrayal, he was a prescient but unheeded seer of the German threat. Historians who have diverged, like David Irving and Patrick Buchanan, are treated not only as incorrect but as fools or scoundrels to be met either with vehement denunciation or aloof avoidance and disparagement. In the telling of court historians, Hitler’s insane and malevolent actions are always the explanation for the war. Only one party instigated conflict; everyone else involved was merely responding to the ‘Nazi menace’; every other factor cited is Nazi apologism.
National chauvinism could explain using such a selective approach to exonerate Britain and France, but it is also taken by Western historians in favour of the Soviet Union. The Soviets, it is implied, were no threat to anyone (until 1945). The numerous attempts at Marxist overthrows in Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, Romania and other states since 1917 are mentioned only in the more detailed studies of the time, yet these were the primary provocation for the burgeoning of fascism and national socialism, which decidedly are included in the victors’ history as causes of the war. The ubiquity of the myth, probably Trotskyist in origin, that Stalin gave up on the idea of world revolution (or conquest) is convenient for his apologists in the West. ‘Socialism in one country’ derives from one letter by Stalin to a newspaper; it is belied by his and others’ more private utterances and the gargantuan military forces he amassed through the 1930s and positioned at the border with Germany in 1940-1, ready to convey socialism to many more countries.
The activities of the Comintern and the Soviet NKVD in penetrating the British civil service and recruiting agents of influence and prestigious non-communist advocates via front groups are the subject of dozens of books, television dramas and movies, yet I know of few historians who make any mention of them in relation to the causing of the war. Those Churchillian historians who mention the most famous Soviet foreign initiative, the Popular Front, condone it at least tacitly. They could hardly do otherwise, as Churchill was effectively part of a greater anti-German alliance of which the Popular Front was a vital international element. Churchill’s phrase from 1941 about being willing to make a favourable reference to the devil if the devil happened to be at war with Germany is proferred to superficial readers to imply that he became pro-Soviet out of necessity in light of Operation Barbarossa, but Churchill began to privately meet Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador, a full seven years earlier. He was introduced to Maisky specifically to foster an anti-German rapprochement by Robert Vansittart, who personified the pro-French, anti-German faction preeminent in the civil service.
By another civil servant, Reginald Leeper, and for the same purpose, Churchill was also introduced to the Anti-Nazi Council, which he renamed the Focus in Defence of Peace and Freedom (or simply the Focus). The Anti-Nazi Council was the British arm of an international campaign initiated by Samuel Untermyer to force regime change in Germany, initially by boycott. Untermyer, Felix Frankfurter, Bernard Baruch, Henry Strakosch, Eugen Spier and Robert Waley Cohen are the most well-documented of many wealthy Jewish activists who supported and collaborated with Churchill in this effort. As the boycott was found insufficient, threats of war, then war itself, became the methods required; as Britain was as yet governed by men like Chamberlain still inclined to value British interests higher than Jewish ones, regime change was required here too.
The pretext consisted in persistently characterising Germany as a threat to Britain. Churchill’s reputation as the Cassandra who ‘warned us of the danger’ refers to his speeches in Parliament and on the BBC from 1934 claiming that the Germans were developing a larger air force than Britain and implying that they would, when ready, launch it all at Britain, whom against all evidence they were supposed to revile. The juvenile preposterousness of his fear campaign should not distract from the fact that much of the intelligence he (and later the Focus) cited was simply made up by Soviet agents like Jurgen Kucyznski, brother of the handler of the traitor Klaus Fuchs. Germany had no plan to bomb Britain and appears not to have prepared for any such conflict until Churchill’s lies were several years old and beginning to generate the desired antagonism.
The Focus, covert in itself, published and staged events under aliases including ‘Arms and the Covenant’, which referred to its members’ calls for accelerated rearmament (without regard to affordability) and the enforcement of the Covenant of the League of Nations against Germany. When the Soviet Union later violated the Covenant to invade or annex five member states of the League, this approach was abandoned, but Britain was by then at war with Germany. Support of the League had always been a leftist cause and a vehicle for ‘internationalism’, i.e., the supersession of nations, an aim remarkably compatible with the long-term goals of both the Soviets and Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s vision for the United Nations after the war was as a world government with the USA and the USSR as the leading powers. The entry of the latter into the League had been welcomed by leftists, including Tories like Anthony Eden, who became Churchill’s wartime Foreign Secretary and his successor as Prime Minister in 1954.
The Second World War was the decisive moment of the left’s ascent to power in the West. Historians like Niall Ferguson and Andrew Roberts, whose careers centre upon justifying it, are falsely presented by fellow anti-fascists as conservatives. The raison d’etre of the fake right is to occupy any space in which genuine, committed opponents of the left would otherwise exist and to continually surrender. They conspire in the anti-fascist monopoly; the real right are excluded from all institutions.
The Churchillian version of history relies entirely upon portraying Germany as a threat to Britain. No matter how much the wickedness of ‘Kristallnacht’ is magnified in significance, atrocities against civilians in the 1930s cannot suffice as a casus belli against Germany, since the Soviets eradicated more of their own people every few hours throughout the decade than Hitler’s regime killed on those two nights. Aggression toward neighbouring countries also fails as an explanation. Germany invaded the western side of Poland on September 1st 1939; the Soviets invaded their agreed portion sixteen days later. Whatever excuse remained for continuing to treat Germany as the sole enemy thereafter surely evaporated when the Soviets attacked Finland and then subjugated Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Yet by the time Britain ‘betrayed’ the Baltic, at least no less than it betrayed the Czechs, Churchill and the war party were powerful enough to elide the paradox. By Churchillian historians, Hitler’s peace overtures are dispelled by asserting either that they would not have been honoured or that they would have freed German forces to succeed in their invasion of the Soviet Union. The preservation of the communist empire at the expense of Britain’s own is deemed a necessity.
Stalin and all the Bolsheviks had considered Britain their main adversary since the day of their overthrow of the Russian Republic. Stalin’s collaborations with Hitler, not limited to the pact of August 1939, make more sense in this light. All the capitalist states were to be subverted or conquered. The ideal scenario was one in which they fought and weakened each other while the Soviets grew their own capacity to dictate and threaten, as the Soviets did to the nations of eastern Europe as soon as they felt able. That scenario the pro-war forces in Britain and France delivered as though fulfilling a promise to Moscow. The Soviet perspective is routinely minimised. The same historians then assert that the Soviet Union did become a great danger as World War II ended, in Andrew Roberts’ case neatly crediting Churchill, speaking in Fulton, with prescience about the Cold War as well. Such involutions are undergone to justify the origins of the existing regime, the one established by Churchill and his comrades.
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Britain should have stayed out of both WW1 and WW2. Churchill was all for both of them. He played a key role in ruining his own country. As for the French their alliance with Czechoslovakia was really stupid especially since they had built an immobile defensive fortification called the Maginot line. It would have no value if they had to attack Germany to bail out the Czechs.
Hitler shouldn’t have invaded the Soviet Union.
It was a game of bluff all around.
A poker game with UK, France, and Poland pretending to have the cards that they didn’t. When UK ran out of money, it borrowed from the US to keep raising the bets.
Germans acting like they had a full house when they were a card short.
Soviets with a card up their sleeve unaware of the joker held by Hitler, who went all in to take everything from Stalin.
the biggest mistake the nazis made was attacking the soviet union. this whole israeli style “we had to attack them before they attacked us” bullshit, makes no sense. usually an attacking army requires more troops and casualties than a defending one, that could dig in and prepare proper defenses (no, not the maginot line).
if the soviets had attacked “europe”, the u.s. and britain would have armed the germans as defenders of europe and they would have had the moral high ground, instead they opened a war on two fronts and allied the soviets with the u.k. and u.s., that hated both of them.
israel is currently making the same mistakes, opening a war on multiple fronts, relying on blitzkrieg techniques and underestimating the resolve of their adversaries. it will lead to the same result in the end. the ukranazis suffer from the same mental illness, “invading” kursk in their delusional efforts to march on moscow, well hows that working out for them? if your going to take a page out of history, you may want to start with something that ended victoriously, they too will meet the same end. the u.k. should stay out of all wars as you really need an army to do so and they sould stay the fuck out of ukraine to begin with, it never ends well for them there. those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Little Britain was bankrupt before WWI (like the US today just not as
far underwater as they religiously clung to the gold standard), and the Jews were
holding out for a new sugar daddy; Churchill´s earnest protestations
(vis-à-vis Gandhi) that he “did not become prime minister to sell out the Empire”
notwithstanding, that´s precisely what he ended up doing …
whether it was treason or idiocy we can endlessly debate.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
Marlborough got the Empire handed to him on a silver platter by the non-Platonic
affections of Prince Eugen, and his less attractive scion liquidated the
bankruptcy estate.
The end.
No, the Brits should have fought WITH Germany, America should have fought WITH Germany as well but alas by then the United Kingdom was the Jewnited Kingdom and the USA was already JewSA.
Thank you, (((greatest generation ever)))
It is all Mr. Churchill’s fault the War in Europe lasted so long and that so many more people died and so much destroyed if he hadn’t been so intransigent. There is no argument that Mr. Churchill was nearly alone, when Britain’s entire land army was trapped on the beaches at Dunkirk, in his desire to pursue total war against Hitler. Almost everyone in England wanted to avoid war at all costs. That being said, IF Mr. Churchill had signed a peace treaty with Mr. Hitler in 1940, isolationist America would not have involved itself in what Hitler was doing in European as intervention into European affairs was never popular with Americans, anyway. Had Mr. Churchill made peace with Mr. Hitler, then Mr. Hitler could have focused all his military resources to defeat Mr. Stalin’s weakened army and Communism. Without US Lend/Lease and convoys from England, the Communist would surely have lost the Soviet Union to Mr. Hitler. The Third Reich would then have access to more natural resources and industrial capacity than the US had at the time and the Third Reich would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. With no more enemies to fight, Mr. Hitler could have used those resources and industry to build the Third Reich into the world’s first superpower that, most likely, would be the dominant power in the world today. Germany would be the undisputed leader in rocketry since neither the US nor the Soviet Union would be stealing its scientists. Germany would have likely developed nuclear weapons by that time. The isolationist US would have confined itself to their Japan war and even though they had the ‘Bomb’ in 1945, were very unlikely to challenge a superpower like the Third Reich. There would be no United Nations. Germany was in an expansionist mood and had experience with colonialization already so there’s no reason to think Germany wouldn’t want to colonize all of Africa and the Middle East too. I could go on but I made my point that the world would be much more ‘neat and tidy’ if the Third Reich was the only super power in the world today but it’s all Mr. Churchill’s fault because he didn’t capitulate.
> through the succeeding twenty years, albeit with serious differences, Britain maintained a common diplomatic front with France against Germany.
False.
“British policy on the Versailles Treaty was revisionist almost from the start… The British ambassador in Berlin, Viscount D’Abernon, … from the start became the center of revisionism… His entry in his diary in December, 1921, read ‘England and the United States were the two countries to which the Germans looked with some degree of hope.’”
— Koppel Pinson, Modern Germany, p. 426.
It was a different matter when Hitler came into power, since he had stated multiple times in Mein Kampf and elsewhere that he envisioned broad German expansionism. But while the Weimar Republic lasted, Britain and France were in conflict over the Versailles Treaty.
It was preemptory action by the Germans. The Soviet invasion of Germany and western Europe was to commence about 1 month later. Read The Chief Culprit by Viktor Suvorov.
Hey everyone let’s liberate the South Koreans and South Vietnamese from (((communism))) but fight with the (((Soviet Jewnion))) against the Germans who were trying to free US ALL from (((communism aka Zionism.)))
Makes sense to me.
US makes the same mistake as UK
No, Stalin put the military there to send a message to the Germans. It was a show of force, a bluff.
He didn’t want to play scared turtle like France, hunkering down and wetting its pants.
Instead, he amassed forces to send a message to Hitler, ‘You be on the defensive cuz we can hit you hard.’
It was just not in Stalin’s character to risk everything by starting an all-out war with Germany.
I agree. Stalin’s Army was in no way ready to fight after his purges of their leadership. Stalin was raking in big bucks selling the Germans raw materials so he wouldn’t want to jeopardize that trade.
Not a good sign when a history article starts out with a myth:
Germany never invaded Czechoslovakia! It broke apart and the Czech economy collapsed while Hungary threatened that tiny nation and Slovakia with invasion. Germany was invited in to protect these nations whose people welcomed them while they retained their own army and government. And don’t reply saying some official western historian said they were bullied by Hitler without any proof.
Video Link
If Stalin had been smarter, he would amassed the troops in defensive position. That way, he would send a signal to the Germans that the USSR is ready to repel any invasion.
But by putting his troops in offensive position, it’s possible the Germans really thought the Soviets were going to attack.
Document no. 103202/6 signed by chief of staff Kirill Meretskov in 1940, revealed that Stalin was preparing to invade Western Europe on July 10th 1941 in a massive invasion named Operation Groza (Operation Thunderstorm). It is dated September 18th 1940, three months before the Germans Operation Barbarossa was signed. After Zhukov became chief of staff in February 1941, the plan was called MP 41 (Mobilisatsyonni plan 41).
Operation Barbarossa was a pre – emptive strike.
Here they are:
Video Link
In the end, the British Empire was doomed. National Liberation movements were in the air.
What killed UK wasn’t WWI or WWII or end of empire. It was Jew Worship, which led to GloboHomo and Negrolatry.
Look at Sweden. It was unscathed by World War I and World War II, indeed even profited handsomely from both. Yet, it went the same way.
UK and Sweden lost the peace to the Jews. Same with the Irish who stayed out of WWII. Yet, look at Ireland, and its elites are doing the same thing the London elites are doing. Sucking up to Jews and promoting globohomo and negrolatry.
In the end, they lost the peace. It has nothing to do with the war.
And look at Japan. It survived WWII that killed so many. It arose from the ashes.
But it’s dying now with peace, prosperity, apathy, Negrolatry, and globohomo. No babies but increased immigration.
Japan lost the war and recovered. But it lost the peace and is dying.
I think it was both morally and pragmatically correct to oppose Nazi expansionism at some point. But even granting that, it’s worth considering the wisdom of making Poland the casus belli.
First, France only reluctantly acquiesced in the 1939 declaration of war — and the results were fatal. The sheer lack of enthusiasm for the war on the part of France had much to do with her catastrophic collapse in 1940. Should Britain have continued to rearm and bide her time until there was a more authentic consensus for war?
Second, within fifteen months of their division of Poland, Germany and the Soviet Union were clearly moving towards war. By the end of 1940 it had become clear that the two expansionist powers were not going to be able to live side by side. Obviously, it would have required prescience on the part of Britain to foresee that, but she could have waited for war between them to break out before entering the war herself.
Whether such delays would have been preferable to the choice that historically Britain made or even politically feasible is open to question, but it is worth pointing out that Britain came perilously close to catastrophic defeat after she did opt for war in 1939. Several rather likely turns of events could have produced such an outcome: BEF could have been wiped out inland from Dunkirk, Germany could have pursued a strategy of cutting Britain’s sea lanes with greater energy and determination, or the Soviet Union might have collapsed in 1941. Britain going on to win after any of these becomes problematic. Looking further ahead, the historical course of events led to the Soviet Union overrunning the eastern half of Europe and possibly having been able to overrun all of it. That implies that going to war in 1939 — and suffering the consequences that flowed from that or could have flowed from that — was not obviously the wisest choice.
Granting complete freedom of action and perfect foresight, it can be argued that rather than going to war when she did, Britain would have been wiser to remain at peace while continuing to rearm, marshaling allies, and awaiting developments. After all, it was clear that she wasn’t going to be able to save Poland.
What are the sources?
Correction:
It was the Germans who were rearming while the Allies had not disarmed
as they themselves committed to in the Versailles Treaty; the German master
rearmament plan (“Z-Plan”) assumed no war before 1946 read:
They had better things to do with what little money they had, while Little Britain
spent a higher % of a much higher GDP on armament in 1936 than the Germans
did before 1943(!!!)
The Perfidious needed the war and any excuse was good enough while the
Germans wanted no piece of it.
Not necessarily. “Nazi” expansionism would have led to a united Europe through the re-creation of the first Reich, the Holy Roman Empire. We cannot say what was either moral or pragmatic, because war was declared on the Germans before they were able to establish a continental empire. One thing is certain, however. If the British had stayed out of the war, then there would have been no war. It would have been morally and pragmatically correct for the British and Germans to have signed a treaty of peace in June of 1940, granting the former a sea-based empire and the latter a land-based empire.
“it was both morally and pragmatically correct to oppose Nazi expansionism at some point.”
CHURCHILL: Hitler is a *madman*!! We have to stop him — he’s trying to take over a small German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, and the German-speaking parts of Poland that used to be in Germany!! It’s *madness*!! If we don’t stop him now, he’ll take over the *world*!!! — Now excuse me, I am late for a meeting with His Majesty’s ministers in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Egypt, Palestine, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Canada, Jamaica, and Belfast.
We must recall that on a re-united Germany, the sun never set.
German forces entered Prague in March 1939 with the agreement of Czechoslovakia’s leaders. After Germany got its Sudeten territory back the previous September, the Slovak and Ruthenian minorities were also eager to escape the harsh rule of the Czech state, which was an artificial patchwork entity created in 1919 as a key element of the allied strategy to contain Germany within an iron ring of hostile militarized states. On March 9, 1939, the Czech government dismissed the four principal Slovak ministers from the local government at Bratislava. In response, five days later Slovakians in the government voted a declaration of independence from Czechoslovakia. Ruthenia also quickly declared independence and became part of Hungary, dissolving what was left of the Czech state. Czech President Emil Hácha, with prior approval from his cabinet, traveled to Berlin to negotiate the outline of an agreement with Germany and the Czech state.
The occupation of Prague by German troops was authorized by the agreements signed with the Czech and Slovak leaders. German military forces were in control during the transition period for a little over one month. They were stationed in Prague primarily to provide protection from the expansionist Polish government, which had quickly seized the valuable Teschen region in the east after the 1938 partition. The new government formed as the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia on March 16, 1939 enjoyed considerable popularity among the Czechs and endured until it was overrun by the Red Army in 1945.
Infuriated by the peaceful undoing of its scheming against Germany by the cooperation of the involved parties, the British Cabinet quickly gave the aggressive Polish dictatorship a pledge of military assistance – which it lacked the capability to honor. As planned, this act would lead to regime change war with the German Reich, in the most destructive conflict in human history – so far. The parallel with Washington’s encouragment of the Kiev nationalist fanatics today is quite ominous.
Colonization of Africa is always a mistake.
Would there be more or fewer africans on the streets of 2024 Munich in your scenario?
https://odysee.com/@Qwinten:b/Europa---The-last-battle-Part-6-Operation-Barbarossa:c
2 minutes in. I recommend watching the entire video it’s quite interesting.
The pledge to Poland was a terrible mistake. That the UK should have rearmed is reasonable enough. It could have clandestinely encouraged anti Hitler groups in Germany too. But to leave the decision to go to war with a bunch of Polish generals was crazy. You need to be flexible.
The new government formed as the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia on March 16, 1939 enjoyed considerable popularity among the Czechs and endured until it was overrun by the Red Army in 1945.
Considerable popularity? Among traitors?
The people never would have voted for German rule.
The Czechs were opposed to being diced up by the Allies as a sacrificial lamb.
Hitler of course broke the Munich agreement because his plan had always been to take Western Europe and the dopey Allied leaders gave him the Czech arms manufacturers.
Chamberlain was a clueless goof just like our modern conservatives. They don’t get that their enemies aren’t playing the same game. Handshakes and agreements are just used as formalities while the real plan happens behind the scenes.
Hitler spelled out his expansion plans in his book. The British and French still didn’t think he was serious in 1938 even though he had created a totalitarian state and was executing his enemies.
Heydrich was insanely popular with Czech workers largely because
he extended German labor protection laws to the Protectorate and turned
the (((international))) hotels in Karlsbad and Marienbad into KdF homes –
no one before or after had done as much for them
(he also vehemently opposed reprisal killings as counterproductive –
in combination he signed his death sentence).
Leaving aside the morality of it all, I doubt if war would have been avoided. Germany and the Soviet Union found themselves on a collision course by the end of 1940. How would that have been avoided if Britain were watching and waiting instead of already at war?
Of course the calculations of both Hitler and Stalin would have been different — but I think the underlying ideological and geopolitical elements of the situation were such that once the Polish buffer et al had been eliminated, Germany and the Soviet Union were bound to go to war.
That’s not how I read it. The basis was always undoing the injustices of Versailles. “German” lands would have included those in the Austrian Empire, like Ukraine. Whatever you make of his statements, the fact is that he ceded Alsace and Lorraine to France voluntarily and areas, such as Upper Silesia to Poland. The Polish invasion of Tesin and Hungarian invasion of Ruthenia, both part of Czechoslovakia were ratified under the Munich Agreement. How would an offer of a referendum in West Prussia to determine status of the once German territory, be “expansionist”?
What no one wants to admit, is that the war against Germany was a war against its economic system that demonstrated the international banking cartel was superfluous on the one hand, and provided the workers with real influence on the other.
if that was his plan, why was hitler so surprised about what they found?
doesn’t really make sense.
> After Germany got its Sudeten territory back the previous September, the Slovak and Ruthenian minorities were also eager to escape the harsh rule of the Czech state,
There did exist a Slovak separatist movement, but many of their actions in 1939 were pressed on them by Germany. This is one of the points where David Irving is surprisingly honest.
—–
Over the next four weeks, the Nazi pressure on the Slovaks to declare independence increased. Keppler sent his close associate Dr. Edmund Veesenmayer to Bratislava to tell them to hurry, as “otherwise Hungary will get our permission to occupy Slovakia at any time after 15 March.” And when Durcansky and his economics minister visited Göring on 28 February, the field marshal sinisterly greeted them with: “Now, what’s it to be? When are you going to declare independence, so we don’t have to turn you over to the Hungarians!” Ribbentrop also received them with a promise to guarantee Slovakia’s frontiers, provided she proclaimed her independence at a time that suited the Führer.
—–
— David Irving, The War Path, p. 186, 2013 FP edition.
The Slovaks ended up declaring their separation as a result of such German pressure. Yes, it is plausible that without German intervention a native separatist movement might still have grown within Slovakia. Perhaps by 1941 there might have occurred a separation, analogous to 1993. But Hitler was operating on a restricted timetable. When he took power in 1933, he likely did not anticipate war for a decade (although he geared the German economy around war from the start). But in 1936, Hjalmar Schacht started dissenting from Hitler’s war preparations and insisted that Germany needed to develop its export industry. That forced Hitler to speed up his timetable for achieving expansion.
Goering’s threat to turn the Czechs over to the Hungarians is noteworthy, because this is another place where Irving very suitably pointed out the German role in maintaining the tensions with Hungary.
—–
That day, 22 August, passed without incident until evening when the Forschungsamt, routinely monitoring the Hungarians’ telephone conversations between Kiel and Budapest, reported that at a meeting of foreign ministers of the Little Entente in faraway Bled the Hungarian delegation had apparently formally renounced all use of force against Czechoslovakia; the wiretaps showed that Horthy, Kánya and his prime minister, Bela von Imrédy, had retrospectively sanctioned this. This cast a cloud over the entire state visit.
—–
— David Irving, The War Path, pp. 125-6.
Hitler was determined in August 1938 to prevent any reconciliation between Hungary and Czechoslovakia, because he saw it to his advantage to use Hungary as a tool for threatening the Slovaks.
> Without US Lend/Lease and convoys from England, the Communist would surely have lost the Soviet Union to Mr. Hitler.
Lend-Lease did not start to arrive in large quantities until 1943, after Stalingrad. It’s true that large amounts were used from then on. But it’s a totally open question whether or not Stalin would have been able to win without Lend-Lease. It’s obvious that Lend-Lease was very helpful for the last 2 years of the war. But it’s easy to imagine a scenario where the Allies in the west stay out of the war and Stalin achieves a victory over Hitler all on his own.
I’ve heard similar. What are your sources?
I think the answers to all this hinge on several questions.
1. To what extent was Czech nationalism a middle-class phenomenon? Czechoslovakia was an industrialized state. Did the workers see themselves as benefitting from Czech independence? Did they actually object to Germans returning to their accustomed position of dominance over Bohemia and Moravia?
2. How benign 0r horrific was Nazi rule? Naturally, Czech nationalists would have found it abhorrent…but the average Czech?
This is decidedly ‘soft’ evidence, but I’ve watched the 1966 Czech film Closely Watched Trains, apparently set in the Protectorate in 1944-45. Much of the film implies that even at that stage of the war, while the Czechs weren’t exactly enthusiastic about German rule, they weren’t particularly outraged by it either. A telling line is that when the supervisor shows up to make a morale-building speech to the railroad staff, he realizes that his predictions of final victory are falling flat. Even he doesn’t seem to be convinced. He sighs and says (approximately), ‘look: we are all in the same boat and must make the best of it.’
A train is blown up at the end, but the general atmosphere is one of passive apathy — and that would be at the end of the war, according to a film produced under Communist auspices.
> Heydrich was insanely popular with Czech workers
Absurd.
—–
Heydrich also closely followed Hitler’s “thoughts on the final solution” of the vexing Slav problem. One day the Protectorate would be permanently settled by Germans. “This does not mean,” said Heydrich, “that we now have to try to Germanize all Czech rabble…. For those of good race and good intentions the matter is simple; they will be Germanized. For the rest, those of inferior racial origin or with hostile intentions, I shall get rid of them—there is plenty of room in the east for them.” Inferior but well-meaning Czechs would probably be sent to work in the Reich. The more difficult category—those of good racial characteristics but hostile intentions—would have to be liquidated, if all attempts at Germanizing them failed; it would be potentially too dangerous to turn them loose in the east.
—–
— David Irving, Hitler’s War, p. 316, 1977 edition.
Sure, most Czechs tried to keep their heads down and wait until the war was over. But then they gleefully wrecked vengeance.
Höhne, Heinz: Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf
Standard resource on the history of the SS –
and nuggets I pick up here and there; but Höhne is really good –
written before the Weinzierls and Lipstadts laid waste to history.
Why did Britain determine it had to go to war in 1939?
When the Germans trundled into Czechia they also took possession of the biggest Uranium mine.
https://english.radio.cz/czech-radioactive-dillema-8109837
The Germans would have probably gained a nuke by the middle of
the 1940.
That and Jewish pressure.
The Czechs built much of the German war gear. Without much apparent complaint.
The Czechs were pretty quiet during ww2. They could have independently attempted to fight Germany in 1938. They didn’t. The Poles looked to be far more belligerent viz Germany but as you know the Poles sided with the Germans to slice a piece off Czechs. The Slovaks were pro German too.
Chamberlain was mostly concerned about Britain developing Spitfires and Radar to defend and beat the Luftwaffe. The RAF was definitely not ready to fight before 1940. Chamberlain was on top of the information about bombers and interceptors in a way that was far sighted.
There wouldn’t have been a world war in the 1940s without perfidious Albion. Fascism and Communism could have duked it out in a regional war.
The Czechs also produced war gear for Germans during World War I when they were fairly ruled by Germans in Vienna as part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The British and French carved up this empire to eliminate an imperial competitor. The Germans in Austria and the Sudetenland wanted to join adjacent Germany, but this was not allowed as part of an attempt to keep Germany weak. The Hungarians were also very unhappy with these events.
Video Link
‘The Czechs were pretty quiet during ww2. They could have independently attempted to fight Germany in 1938. They didn’t…’
Czech joke!
So a Czech, a Serbian, and a Russian resistance fighter are sitting in a bar sometime after the war.
The Serb: ‘Yeah, during the war we blew up bridges.’
The Russian: ‘During the war, we derailed trains and killed German sentries.’
The Czech: ‘I don’t understand you. During the war, all these things were illegal.’
Note that that would be a good half of your total bloodshed right there.
Then too, I fail to see why Japan suddenly becomes quiescent.
Was the war avoidable? Or was it simply undetermined as to precisely what form it would take, and what the outcome would be?
One could argue that given multiple great powers, war was certain. It was only when the dust settled, and it had been reduced to ourselves and the USSR, that some degree of peace was possible.
And now we’re headed back into another era of ‘warring states.’ And guess what?
Maybe World War Three will happen after all — only messier than the science fiction novels would have it.
No.
The early nuclear research was done on ore from Joachimsthal
(ancient silver mine hence -> Thaler -> dollar) but in the time frame in question
the Belgians (Congo) had a de facto monopoly on uranium;
indeed a good part of the US (((bomb))) was made from uranium the Germans
had already bought and paid for but the Belgians spirited away “in time”.
“lend lease did not start to arrive in large quantities until 1943, after Stalingrad”
Pat, this is incorrect. The Anglo-American Iceland-to-Murmansk/Archangel convoys had – beginning in August, 1941 and by the end of 1942 – delivered hundreds of thousands of tons of weaponry and other vital war supplies to the Reds. Cf. these narrative overviews:
Georges Blond: Ordeal Below Zero (London, 1956)
Berbard Edwards: The Road to Russia – Arctic Convoys 1942 (Barnsly, 2015)
Malcolm Llewellyn-Jones: The Royal Navy and the Arctic Convoys (London, 200&)
B.B. Schofield: The Russian Convoys (London, 1964)
Michael Walling: Forgotten Sacrifice – The Arctic Convoys of WW2 (Oxford, 2012)
Richard Woodman: Arctic Convoys 1941-1945 (Yorkshire, 1994)
David Wragg: Sacrifice for Stalin – Cost and Value of the Arctic Convoys Re-assessed (Barnsly, 2005)
and these narrative accounts of individual 1942 Arctic Convoy battles:
Samuel McCoy: “The Nuisance” (PQ.15), pp. 48-72 in Nor Death Dismay (NY, 1944)
Frank Pierce: Last Call for HMS Edinburgh (PQ.14; (NY, 1982)
S.C. Whitehead: “s.s. Empire Starlight” (PQ.12) pp. 82-92 in J.L. Kerr, ed.: Touching the Adventures of Merchantmen in the Second World War (London, 1953)
Felix Reisenberg: “The Murmansk Gantlet”, pp. 131-150 in Sea War – Story of the U.S. Merchant Marine in World War II (Toronto, 1958)
Michael Wadsworth: Arctic Convoy PQ.8 – Story of Capt. Robert Brundle and the s.s. Harmatris (Barnsly, 200)
anon.: “Destroyer Action in Defence of Convoy QP.11”, in Ian Hawkins, ed. Destroyer, Anthology of Firsthand Accounts of the War at Sea, 1939-1945 (London, 2003), pp. 169-170
David Irving: Destruction of Convoy PQ.17 (NY, 1968)
Milan Vego: “Destruction of Convoy PQ.17, 27 June – 10 July 1942”. in Naval War College Review, Vol. 69/#3, Summer 2016, pp. 83-142; @ http://jstor.org/stable/26397962?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
Paul Lund and Harry Ludlum: PQ.17, Convoy to Hell – The Survivors’ Story (NY, 1968)
William Geroux: Ghost Ships of Archangel (PQ.17; NY, 2019)
Peter C. Smith: Arctic Victory – Story of Convoy PQ.18 (London, 1975)
Harry Hutson: Arctic Interlude – Independent to North Russia (Bennington, 1997/October-November 1942: 13 ships w/o escort due to coverage required for North Africa-destined invasion convoys; sailed one-by-one at intervals. 4 got thru, 9 sunk by German air and submarine attacks)
anthologies of first-hand accounts
Peter Brown, ed.: Voices from the Arctic Convoys (London, 2014)
Mark Scott, ed.: Eyewitness Accounts of the World War II Murmansk Run (Lewiston, 2006)
Gerald Reminick, ed.: “Northern Russia”. in his Patriots and Heroes – True Stories of the U.S. Merchant Marine in World War II (Palo Alto, 2000), pp. 97-121
other firsthand accounts (naval personnel)
Adm. Daniel Gallery: “U-Boat War from Iceland to Murmansk” in John T. Mason: The Atlantic War Remembered – An Oral History Collection (Annapolis, 1990), pp. 114-142
T. Costley: “Lease-Lend” (HMS Stefa, PQ.12) in J.L. Kerr (ed.), Wavy Navy – By Some Who Served (London, 1950), pp. 205-215
R.F. Fearnside: “Tragedy of PQ.17” in Hawkins, op. cit., pp. 174-175
Francis Brummer: “Armed Guard on an Ill-Fated Convoy to Murmansk” (PQ.17) pp. 133-143 in Donald Vining, American Diaries of World War II (NY, 1982)
Capt. Jack Broome: Convoy is to Scatter (PQ.17; (London, 1972). NB: This is the officer slandered by David Irving in his PQ17 book. Said mistake cost Irving 50,000 pounds.
Lt. Robert Hughes: Through the Waters – A Gunnery Officer on HMS Scylla, 1942-1943 (PQ.18; London, 1956)
Capt. Roger Hill: Destroyer Captain (HMS Ledbury, PQ.17; London, 1975)
Lt. John Hayes: Face the Music – A Sailor’s Story (HMS London, PQ.17; Edinburgh, 1991)
S.A. Kerslake: Coxswain in the Northern Convoys (HMS Northern Gem, PQ.17+QP.14 (London, 1984)
Lt. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.: A Hell of a War (USS Wichita, PQ.17; NY, 1993)
Charlie Erswell: Surviving the Arctic Convoys (HMS Milne, PQ.18; Phila., 2021)
Leonard Thomas: Through Ice and Fire – A Russian Arctic Convoy Diary 1942 (HMS Ulster Queen; PQ.15/QP.12/PQ.18/QP.15; Croydon, 2015)
Gunner’s Mate 3/C Dalton Munn: Diary of Squandered Valor – First Convoy to Murmansk (s.s. Laranaga, PQ.8; Charlotte, 2012
R.R. Wallis: Two Red Stripes -A Naval Surgeon at War (HMS London, PQ.15/16/17; London, 1973)
B. Pawlowicz: O.R.P. Garland In Convoy to Russia (PQ.16; Mitcham, 1943)
Lt. William Carter: Why Me….Experiences of a U.S. Navy Armed Guard Officer….(s.s. Ironclad, PQ.17; Ashland, 2007)
Signalman Ivor Saul: Camera in Convoy (HMS Inglefield, PQ.17/QP.13; Foxton, 1987)
Alfred Mason: Arctic Warriors – A Personal Account of Covoy PQ.18 (Barnsly, 2013)
Lt. Cdr. J.E. Taylor: Northern Escort (HMS Loch Nevis, PQ.18? London, 1945)
John Haynes: Frozen Fury – Murmansk Run of Convoy PQ.13 (s.s. Eldena; Baltomore, 2010)
Walter Baker: Convoy is to Scatter – HMS Ayrshire….(PQ.17/pvt., np/nd)
other firsthand accounts (merchant mariners & civilians)
Fred Herman: Dynamite Cargo (AK Kentucky, PQ.18; NY, 1943)
Third Mate Rodman Dickie: Saved By a Series of Miracles (s.s. Samuel Chase, PQ.17; West Conshohocken, 2012)
Jack Bowman: Convoy PQ.17 Diary; @ http://www.pq17.eclipse.co.uk/convoy_PQ17_June1942.htm
Graeme Ogden: My Sea Lady – Story of HMS Lady Madeleine, February 1942/February 1943 (PQ.16 (London, 1963)
Robert Carse: There Go the Ships (s.s. Steel Worker, PQ.16/QP.13; NY, 1942)
Morris Mills: Convoy PQ.13 – Unlucky for Some (s.s. New Westminster City, PQ.13/QP.11; Goonhavern, 2000)
Godfrey Winn: PQ.17 – Story of a Ship (HMS Pozarica; London, 1947)
S.J. Flaherty: Abandoned Convoy….Debacle of Convoy PQ.17 (NY, 1970)
Richard Starrett: Warrior From Adelaide (s.s. Witherspoon, PQ.17; Mustang, 2011)
John McCusker: “Did You Ever Hear a Ship Die” (PQ.17), pp. 102-113 in Michael Gillen (ed.), Merchant Marine Survivors of World War II – Oral Histories….Jefferson, 2015)
William Shearer: “She Was There, Then All of a Sudden….” (PQ.18), Ibid. pp. 135-138
Ivan Hall: Christmas in Archangel – A Memoir of Life in the Merchant Navy (PQ.5/QP.13; Victoria, 2009)
E.S. Campbell: Waves Astern (Bloomington, 2004)
Alexander Werth: Year of Stalingrad (PQ.16; NY, 1947)
Larry Lesueur: Twleve Months that Changed the World (s.s. Temple Arch, PQ.2; NY, 1943)
Bill Linskey: No Longer Required – My War in the Merchant Marine (s.s. Empire Beaumont, PQ.18; London, 1999)
beggin’ yer pardon for expending so many elektrons, but I had to pre-empt in case Pat turns out 2B not just a bit vague….but an actual 1942 Arctic Convoys Denialist. Allotta that goin’ on these daze @ Unz.con
The material was a factor. Mining started in 1945, but it was known about since 1908.
The Soviets (“SDAG Wismut”) started mining there in 1945, at several times
world market price, because they at the time had no uranium deposits of their own;
now Kazakhstan is the biggest world producer.
I’ve seen the film. It is pretty far removed from Communist agitprop – my recollection is the main character and his worldly colleague are chiefly preoccupied with getting laid. The collaborator-type figure, who has an NSDAP badge, is presented as more pompous and ridiculous than evil. Not exactly the atmosphere of 1945 Prague.
On the other hand, the Communists had more of a footing in parts of pre-Protectorate Czechoslovakia than they ever had in Poland, Hungary or Romania, countries where Communism tended to be associated with Jews or other ethnic minorities.
The Germans did mine from there. It’s very hush hush. They also bagged a ton in Belgium.
That book does not at all support your claim that Heydrich “was insanely popular with Czech workers.” Sure, it contains statements like:
“Peace in the Protectorate threatened to paralyze the Czech emigre democrats, for the more the population of Bohemia and Moravia seemed prepared passively to accept their German masters, the more untenable did the position of the Government-in-exile become in negotiations with the Allies.”
— Heinz Hohne, The Order of the Death’s Head, p. 558.
That appears just a page after noting how “Heydrich introduced himself with a wave of terror which earned him the name of the ‘Butcher of Prague.’” It’s not a secret that Heydrich did employ some carrots after the initial campaign of terror, and this did cause many Czech workers to adopt a passive stance. One could say the same about the later Soviet order. But there were no long-term plans for ethnic cleansing in Soviet Czechoslovakia the way that Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich had intended. For accounts of how popular the Soviet order could sometimes be, see Kevin McDermott, Communist Czechoslovakia, 1945-89. McDermott doesn’t call the Soviet order “insanely popular with Czech workers,” but by your standards he probably should have.
Czechs were even more enthused about the way they produced arms that could be traded by the Warsaw Pact.
—–
Czech exports of arms to various trouble-spots were not merely commercial and business transactions… Egypt sought arms from Western suppliers, but the latter refused to sell the arms… Egypt turned to Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak trade delegation arrived in Cairo in mid-February 1955 to make arrangements for the shipment of arms to Egypt and the export of cotton to Czechoslovakia… In 1957, Czechoslovakia offered Indonesia credit in the form of airplanes, and Moscow granted President Sukarno credits following his visit there. The negotiations between Sukarno and the two countries led to the 1958 Indonesian-Czech-Soviet arms deal. As in the case of Egypt, Czechoslovak technicians went to Indonesia along with the military hardware, and Czech instructors trained Indonesian pilots. Also Indonesian air force technicians received advanced training in Czechoslovakia.
—–
— Josef Kalvoda, Czechoslovakia’s Role in Soviet Strategy, pp. 246-7.
This is the table given in terms of just tonnage:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#U.S._deliveries_to_the_Soviet_Union
—–
Allied shipments to the Soviet Union
Year Amount
(tons) %
1941 360,778 2.1
1942 2,453,097 14
1943 4,794,545 27.4
1944 6,217,622 35.5
1945 3,673,819 21
Total 17,499,861 100
—–
OK, yeah, the phrase “hundreds of thousands of tons” is consistent with the latter. But obviously the far greater amounts started to be delivered in 1943. 2% delivered in 1941 and 14% in 1942, as opposed to 27.4% in 1943, 35.5% in 1944, 21% in 1945.
This is what Adam Tooze had in mind with comment:
—–
The Soviet miracle was not due to Western assistance. Lend-Lease did not begin to affect the balance on the Eastern Front until 1943. The best single explanation for this remarkable triumph was the extraordinary concentration of Soviet production on a limited number of weapons produced in a handful of giant factories, permitting the fullest possible realization of economies of mass-production.
—–
— Tooze, Wages of Destruction, p. 589.
> The basis was always undoing the injustices of Versailles.
Totally false. Hitler repeatedly emphasizes that pre-war territories are not to be seen as a valid goal. Only the greater aim of expansion beyond what had been held before is worthwhile.
—–
We National Socialists must never under any circumstances join in the foul hurrah patriotism of our present bourgeois world. In particular it is mentally dangerous to regard the last pre-War developments as binding even in the slightest degree for our own course… In contrast to the outlook of the representatives of this period, we must again profess the highest aim of all foreign policy, to wit: to bring the soil into harmony with the population…
I should like to make the following preliminary remarks: The demand for restoration of the frontiers of 1914 is a political absurdity of such proportions and consequences as to make it seem a crime.
—–
— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971, pp. 648-9.
Note that it refers to ethnologically. The territories ceded to Poland were primarily Polish. The ethnic cleansing in West Prussia had significantly reduced the German population to about half, therefore the offer of referendum. Ukraine, while it had nationalists, a significant proportion of the population saw itself as Austrian and had, along with the nationalists fought with the White Russians against the Bolsheviks until the end of the civil war in 1922. Tens of thousands fled.
What I found interesting about all that is that the Polish nationalists often had to hastily abandon the idea of referendums.
Not that there wasn’t a Polish majority in the territories in question; it was that a lot of the Poles (a) hadn’t found German rule all that objectionable, and (b) they preferred the evil they knew to the unknown perils of a new-born Polish state. So the 30% Germans all voting to remain German plus a third of the 70% Poles voting to stay German as well equals hmmm…
53%. Right: no referendum. It’s Poland by historical right, better. In the Ninth Century, the Piast Dynasty…
Yes, it is much more complicated than the official narrative. I could have added the former German territory Memel, which like Danzig, was under a League of Nations Mandate. When Lithuania seized it, there were expulsions and a shrunken German population, hence no claim for Memel. What I find interesting is that Polish, Hungarian, and other territorial claims by invasion during the 20s and 30s are completely ignored, as if Germany was the only one making claims.
You’ve simply taken things out of context. Your passages are extracted from Chapter 13 of Book 2, entitled “German Alliance Policy After the War” in the Ralph Mannheim translation. The following chapter is “Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy”. The chapter focused on alliances is not concerned with territorial expansion of living space, but only with the issue of how to seek alliances. You select a few passages from this chapter which don’t seem to be concerned with the expansion of living space. You cite these passages out of context to imply that Hitler was seeking to recover lost territories. But anyone who goes on to read through your chosen chapter and through the rest of the book will find that Hitler attaches enormous importance to the acquisition of new living space.