:firedevi:
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The German campaign of conquering Britain
ill be damed if i know
Active member
Well the term appeasement exists because britain and france gave way to hitlers demands on issues such as the unification with austria, rhine land etc.
yes i agree hitler did not initailly want war with britain , he made that clear even after britain declared war but iam not sure what his stance was with france ...
But surely you would agree hitler wanted war with the east (soviet union )?
Britain declared war i think purely thinking it was their best chance of stopping hitler , poland just happened to be the time and place were it was the last straw with the brits. kind of like
" hes had it, we are next ! ") mentality which as you put it ,panicked ,the british politicians.
But i think the suggestion that britain wanted war is wrong , britain wasnt ready for war , ( argueably germany wasnt ready for full europen war either ). Also the memory of ww1 was still strong in britain , german nationalism i think removed much of anti war feeling germany felt after ww1 , yes things like the controversial teaty of Versailles may of hardened the german public for war to take back what was seen to be rightfully theres.
yes i agree hitler did not initailly want war with britain , he made that clear even after britain declared war but iam not sure what his stance was with france ...
But surely you would agree hitler wanted war with the east (soviet union )?
Britain declared war i think purely thinking it was their best chance of stopping hitler , poland just happened to be the time and place were it was the last straw with the brits. kind of like
" hes had it, we are next ! ") mentality which as you put it ,panicked ,the british politicians.But i think the suggestion that britain wanted war is wrong , britain wasnt ready for war , ( argueably germany wasnt ready for full europen war either ). Also the memory of ww1 was still strong in britain , german nationalism i think removed much of anti war feeling germany felt after ww1 , yes things like the controversial teaty of Versailles may of hardened the german public for war to take back what was seen to be rightfully theres.
senojekips
Active member
C'mon you lot. That's enough of baiting Ollie, let's all admit that Happy Adolph was the world's saviour in waiting, who's wondrous and benevolent plans were mercilessly crushed by the nasty, bad Allies.
Ollie Garchy
Active member
-- Ollie Garchy Blows Delboy Away --
A. J. P. Taylor: "No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic".
(1) Stalin killed more civilians than Hitler. You are lying. Here is the evidence from your source:
a) Rummel: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.TAB1.1.GIF
b) Rummel: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM
(2) Your extrapolation of my position on Hitler is absurd. I simply said that if you believe Hitler was evil because he killed 20 million civilian, Stalin's 40-60 makes the Russian twice or three times as bad. That is your logic. Not mine.
(3) My comments concerning Beschloss stand. His work on Eisenhower is a coffee table book. This is one of the reviews:
"Published to mark the 100th anniversary of Dwight Eisenhower's birth, this excellent summary of Ike's military and political careers also contains more than 200 photographs, many previously unpublished. Historian Beschloss does not break any new ground in his discussion or analysis, but offers a good introduction for general readers to a President whose skills and accomplishments were not fully recognized during his lifetime. (Over the past 20 years scholarly evaluations of Eisenhower's presidency have become increasingly positive.) It might also convince readers to pick up more interpretive works on Eisenhower, in particular Stephen E. Ambrose's two-volume Eisenhower ( LJ 9/1/83, 9/15/84) and Fred I. Greenstein's The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader ( LJ 10/15/82). Recommended for public libraries"....ie. for children.
(4) Rummel's democide stats are unimportant. The killing happens AFTER WWII starts. They do not constitute a reason for Britain to declare war because they had not yet happened.
(5) Prussia was destroyed: "In Law #46 of 25 February 1947 the Allied Control Council formally proclaimed the dissolution of the remains of the Prussian state...the transfer of control of everything east of the Oder-Neisse line, (including Silesia, Farther Pomerania, Eastern Brandenburg, and southern East Prussia), to Poland, with the northern third of East Prussia, including Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, going to the Soviet Union".
(6) Eisenhower quotes & attitudes concerning Germans:
a) Crane, Conrad C., Bombs, Cities, and Civilians: American Airpower Strategy in World War II (University Press of Kansas, 1993), p. 118.
"The search for a single aerial deathblow against Germany was unsuccessful. USSTAF's heart was never really in the effort, mainly because of the attitudes of its commander, Lt. General Spaatz. The Americans resisted getting involved in the attempt to bomb Balkan cities, and Spaatz's Operation Clarion evolved into an attack on transportation and not on morale. He had acquiesced in Eisenhower's desires and permitted Thunderclap, but Doolittle managed to direct that attack at military targets as best he could. The increased emphasis on transportation attacks, especially on marshalling yards in cities, did signify a relaxation of the standards limiting civilian casualties. The larger the target, the more widespread bomb spillover would be. With the diminishing number of good strategic targets, the large number of available bombers, and the constant pressure from the ground forces, such a shift was inevitable. But USSTAF did resist the temptation to attack morale directly and to kill civilians to attain that end".
Thunderclap: the bombing of Dresden, which was a war crime.
b) David Irving, Nuremberg: The Last Battle (Focal Point Publications: London, 1996). Internet.
"General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who has a wellmanicured image in the history books as a military commander blessed with both chivalry and decency, was little better. He told Lord Halifax on July 10, 1944 that in his view the enemy leaders should be 'shot while trying to es cape' the common euphemism for murder used in Hollywood's cheaper films about the Nazis. Eisenhower's naval aide Harry Butcher heard his chief of staff, LieutenantGeneral Walter Bedell Smith, an officer who nursed a phenomenal hatred for the Germans, urge that imprisonment was not enough for the enemy's General Staff, a body of some 3,500 officers. 'There was agreement,' noted the aide in his unpublished diary, 'that extermination could be left to nature if the Russians had a free hand.' Why just the Russians? inquired Eisenhower: the victorious powers, he suggested, could temporarily assign zones in Germany to the smaller nations with scores to settle.10
He repeated these views to Henry Morgenthau when the latter vis ited the Portsmouth command post of the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (S.H.A.E.F.) on August 7 indeed, Morgenthau would, with some justification, point to Eisenhower as the father of his famous Plan.11 According to Morgenthau's version, General Eisenhower opposed any soft line: 'The whole German popu lation is a synthetic paranoid,' he told the treasury secretary. 'And there is no reason for treating a paranoid gently. The best cure is to let the Germans stew in their own juice.' 'General Eisenhower had stated,'Morgenthau told his officials five days later, '… that in his view we must take a tough line with Germany as we must see to it that Ger many was never again in a position to unleash war upon the world.'12 According to another witness, Eisenhower also said: 'The ringleaders and the S.S. troops should be given the death penalty without ques tion, but punishment should not end there.'13"
It is Irving, but the sources he quotes are all recognized historical documents.
c) Donald Abenheim, Bundeswehr und Tradition: Die Suche nach dem gueltigen Erbe des deutschen Soldaten, Vol 27: Beitraege zur Militaergeschichte, MGFA (Muenchen: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1989) Trans, pp. 43-55.
"Eisenhower stated during his January 1951 trip to Germany that his views experessed in "Crusade in Europe" were wrong in that the German army was not collectively guilty for NS crimes".
d) Stephen E. Ambrose, "Eisenhower and the Germans" in Stephen E. Ambrose (et al.) Eisenhower and the German Pows: Facts Against Falsehood (Louisiana State University Press, London, 1992).
Explains that Eisenhower's hatred of Germans was only limited to WWI, Weimar, the Nazi Regime, WWII and the immediate postwar...ie., most of his life. (pp. 29-38.)
Argues that the number of deaths of German POWs was nevertheless quite high and that, while Bacque's big number is wrong, "Nevertheless, a full study of the surviving records dealing with the POW camps of the Allied powers in the spring and summer of 1945 will, I have no doubt, offer a sobering corrective to any remaining illusion that in World War II all the inhumanity was on one side". (p. 92).
e) "God, I hate the Germans..." (Dwight David Eisenhower in a letter to his wife in September, 1944)
http://12.196.152.78:8000/kcweb/kcC...controlnumber=+++89046225&referedby=titlelist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Former_eastern_territories_of_Germany
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senojekips
Active member
Ollie you flatter yourself!
You are no more than a bitter man who has never learnt to accept that the reallity that the NAZIs were a poisonous blight on humanity and after a great sacrifice by millions of others, they got their just deserts. You are blind to the reality of the matter, and try to justify your unpopular views in a debate, in which only your "experts" are correct, and where world opinion is of no matter. Unfortunately the world does not work that way.
You are fun to bait, but you're fooling nobody but yourself, with your self imagined "scholarly" replies. In fact, all you have done is to convince others that the people you so willingly quote are complete idiots who like yourself are convinced of their own infallibility.
You are no more than a bitter man who has never learnt to accept that the reallity that the NAZIs were a poisonous blight on humanity and after a great sacrifice by millions of others, they got their just deserts. You are blind to the reality of the matter, and try to justify your unpopular views in a debate, in which only your "experts" are correct, and where world opinion is of no matter. Unfortunately the world does not work that way.
You are fun to bait, but you're fooling nobody but yourself, with your self imagined "scholarly" replies. In fact, all you have done is to convince others that the people you so willingly quote are complete idiots who like yourself are convinced of their own infallibility.
Doppleganger
Active member
So quick to criticize yet any meaningful input from you has been sorely lacking. Rather than act like a child and fire off snooty remarks, how about you either add something positive to the discussion? The above post added nothing to this thread. You're welcome to your opinion and I respect it, but here's a novel idea. Why don't you let someone else express theirs without behaving like a 5 year old?
By the poisonous blight of the Nazi's presumably I presume you mean the Nazi leadership and state apparatus and not the Nazi rank and file, of which there were millions of otherwise ordinary people. You'll get no argument from me, or Ollie I suspect, that men like Heinrich Himmler, Martin Boorman and the like were evil, corrupted men who found themselves in positions of great power. That is beyond argument. However, this discussion isn't about that, it's examining the reasons why nations go to war and discovering that they are multi-faceted and complex.
If you can't treat this debate for what it is, an attempt at a scholarly discussion about the origins of WWII and the motives behind WWII (and WWI for that matter as you can't really discuss one without the other) then don't take part. It's that simple. Just don't bother replying. Just don't start acting like you're back in the playground because quite frankly it's just a waste of everybody's time friend.
senojekips
Active member
It's quite simple Doppelganger, Because there is no meaningful input nor positive to be said about this matter. It is cut and dried and has been for over 60 years.
As for your "scholarly" discussion, Del Boy summed that up right at the start with his remark that you "can't polish a turd" try as you may. Nor can you change history and the way that it is, and will be perceived by the remainder of the world.
By NAZIs, I mean those who believed in "the dream". There were many Germans who were not NAZIs, but of course they would never have expressed their views out in public.
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Ollie Garchy
Active member
How History is Written:
Karl R. Popper: "There can be no story of the past that describes how things really were. There can only be historical interpretations, and none of them are final".
EH Carr: ""History is a process continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, and unending dialogue between the present and past".
All of the subjects that I have raised are still debated. You guys do not even understand how history is written. Here is a brief summary of something I once read from D.C. Watt: (from memory)
The Modern History Writing Process: (Political, Military, etc.)
1. The "Event": "Events" are described by journalists who briefly summarize "happenings" and offer a crude explanation. Often, these views reflect either state or monied interests. Why? Because governments control the press during wartime and the newspapers, etc. are owned by the wealthy elite. Today, for example, CNN uses "embedded" journalists in Iraq and Rupert Murdoch dominates journalism like some kind of warlord. An example of an "event" is the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. The initial interpretation is formed in the interests of power.
2. The Immediate Aftermath: During this period, lasting twenty to one hundred years depending on when governments open the archival collections to the public, other journalists and political scientists attempt to offer increasingly complex analyses of the "event". What happened, why it happened, why it is important, etc. They use public speeches, governmental position papers, official policy proclamations and theoretical models. But these explanations rely heavily on the initial interpretations of the "Event" and are still very much formed in the interests of power. In terms of the Iraq war, we are now in this process. This type of analysis is incomplete without the actual documents.
3. The Archives Open: The first "real" documents -- ie. the evidence -- becomes available for the first time. It is only now possible to answer the important questions of the "event". But historians, who are people, have to work as fast as they can to publish the first books. This means that they skim the documents and instead rely heavily on previous interpretations and try to assess the theories presented by the journalists and political scientists. Again, established power is important because they originally framed the theoretical issues and now fund the research. In terms of the Iraq war, this phase will start in 2023 because the Americans start opening their files after 20 years.
4. The Critical Phase: This period normally lasts for decades after the archives open. After the first books are published, other historians start thinking about the first books published, classify them, raise new questions, and generally try to falsify the original hypotheses from phases 1-3. New complex theories, often massive compilations using a multi-disciplinary approach, emerge. It is only now that the influence of power interests starts to fade. In terms of the Iraq War, this phase will start around 2033 and run for decades.
5. The "End" Game: Since history is an ever-changing process whereby each generation asks new questions and conceives of history in a different way, the past is rethought, reworked and rewritten. New methods, documents, models, disciplinary approaches, etc. are used to examine the past and especially the arguments raised during the critical phase. In terms of the Iraq War, most of us will be dead when this phase starts.
Therefore, history was not written 60 years ago. I am sorry, but some of you guys have no clue what the writing of history even means. Attacking me for being dishonest, or not in tune with the times, is just laughable. Most of my sources, like DC Watt or Ambrose or Overy, are the most respected historians in the world.
30 Year Rule: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_year_rule
E.H. Carr: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._H._Carr
Hitler as Bogeyman: http://www.gtexts.com/college/papers/s8.html
What is History: http://www.amazon.com/What-History-Edward-Hallet-Carr/dp/039470391X
Doppleganger
Active member
I am of the opinion that very little is cut and dried, especially when one's perceptions can change when exposed to new information and ideas.
It's not about changing history, more about improving understanding and clarity of why things happened
What do you mean by 'the dream' exactly? Many ordinary Germans were supporters and even members of the Nazi Party because they believed that Adolf Hitler would lead them to greater prosperity and respect. Where they then automatically evil? There were undoubtedly some truly bad people (as well as people who were misguided) who were Nazi's, much of the Nazi 'Inner Circle' for example. Many who joined the Allgemeine SS were criminals and thugs who were elevated to positions of relative power. The same applies to a good percentage of the Nazi Party Gauleiters. However many of them had no real influence over their own destiny and were swept along with the events of the time. I think many of them realised in time that things were being done in the name of Germany that they never would have agreed with. By that time however, there was nothing that most of them personally could have done about it.
The vast majority of the 8 million strong membership of the Nazi Party were not bad or evil however, who had no real control over their own destiny and were trying to make the best of things in difficult times. When discussing the evil of the Nazi's it is really individuals we are discussing rather than what was in essence a national political party. It is important to make the distinction.
senojekips
Active member
Well that's your prerogative. You may believe as you wish. However after 60 years the only "new" evidence coming out is "old evidence" with the nasty parts conveniently reworked by those who never lived through the fact.
This understanding was at it's clearest in the minds of those who took part, immediately after the war. The effluxion of time has only knocked off some of the rough edges and and resulted in the deaths of those who actually knew the truth.
This is the very reason why police like to question their suspects and witnesses as soon as possible after the crime, memories and evidence become more and more tainted as time passes.
If you don't know, there is no person on this earth who could tell you.
Doppleganger
Active member
It's not about new evidence as such, more about applying a retrospective process. History is not a 'one-time' process - it is constantly shifting and moving. We are still learning and uncovering new evidence about what happened in our pre-history, nevermind in the past 60 years. The Nazi's (as in the individual groups I previously mentioned) committed horrendous crimes against humankind. Sadly they were not the first to do so nor were they the last.
The emotional impact of living through that period must have been great indeed. I do not wish to lessen or downplay the impact it must have had. With emotional detachment however a clearer judgement of what happened surely must take place. History is an enormously complex thing. It is not just about eye witness accounts, though these are important.
That isn't much of an answer.
MontyB
All-Blacks Supporter
The problem with applying retrospective processes is that they are generally assumptions which in time have a nasty habit of becoming "fact" I think it is very important that we never lose sight of what is real and what has been clinically sanitised by time and moderation.
As far as the rest of this thread goes I think the best explanation I have seen so far was that of "ill be damed if i know".
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senojekips
Active member
That's because it wasn't much of a question.
I can't disagree with that, but it does not excuse the crimes of the past. Maybe it's not too much to think that if these crimes are not sanitised, as some are attempting to do here, the children of the future may learn something that just might prevent it happening again.
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Ollie Garchy
Active member
Definitions, definitions, definitions. I think we need to define what it is we are talking about.
MontyB or others, let's hear your definition of history. What is real history? How do we know what happened? How do people write history?
senojekips
Active member
Another diversionary sideshow?
Maybe I should be asking for your definition of a definition?
Maybe I should be asking for your definition of a definition?
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Doppleganger
Active member
Firstly, I have dismissed no-one's opinion. All opinions are valid. You, however, have dismissed other people's opinions and have resorted to 'shouting' (in netspeak) and immature name-calling.
Secondly it is my belief that either a) you do not have the intellectual capacity to understand what Ollie is saying or b) you do understand but do not want to hear what you believe challenged in a mature and thoughtful way. I'm not entirely sure which it is but why else would you act in this childish way?
Thirdly, Churchill's speeches in the Houses of Commons had very little to do with why Germany lost WWII. You are vastly overplaying the military and political significance that Britain, or France for that matter, had in the outcome of WWII. If I had to pick one man who had the biggest hand in Germany's downfall it would be that other murderer Joseph Stalin. His speech on November 7th, 1941 at Red Square had way more impact on the outcome of the war than any of Churchill's speeches ever did. It stiffened the resolve of the Russian people when they needed it the most and quelled the mass panic that was bubbling up and threatening to overwhelm the civilian population and Red Army alike. Mass murderer and psychopath though he remained, it was a brilliant speech by Comrade Stalin.
http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1941/411107a.html
Ollie Garchy
Active member
You are so funny. You simply dismiss everything that I write with insults, offer nothing but ranting, and do not even read my points. Not really logical, but what else can I expect from someone without an education. I pity you. You are a sad angry old man.
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I enjoyed this post very much. We agree in part. Yes - I am funny. I do not offer NOTHING but ranting, and I confess to not being computor literate. My education is no business of Hitler's agents, but an establishment founded in 1535 under Henry V111, and counting the Bishop of Winchester among its headmasters ,would be unamused at your confounded ignorance, I must say. But i suppose we have to expect such drivel, from a Nazi. That said, I am happy, fulfilled, content, satisfied.
Quote : "I pity you. You are a sad angry old man". Now that sounds like someone I recognise! However, save your pity for German people that Hitler betrayed. For the millions he deliberately and systematically murdered out of hand.
Pity these :-
"In the camp, children were not allowed to be born. Guards regularly inspected this situation, carrynig a yard or metre-stick and measuring the height of the children. The children would try to stretch themselves up to avoid being taken off for immediate extermination."
Don't pity me, I escaped. That damn Churchill again!
Ref : Del Boy Auchswitz June 1966.
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