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RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 6:35 pm
by Dili
Anyone can find motives to start a war in Europe and in many places of earth, it is just start delving in the past and then it just needs 20 years of propaganda. For example was Germany more "humiliated" in WW1 with Versailles or in WW2 with partition and occupation?
I also think big wars start when people are optimist. That optimism is usually linked to improvements perceived or real in economic situation, technological developments. That is why i am afraid about what is going in Pacific. The current shift of power to Pacific could lead to reckless optimism there.
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 6:53 pm
by LoBaron
ORIGINAL: Dili
For example was Germany more "humiliated" in WW1 with Versailles or in WW2 with partition and occupation?
Oranges and apples. You are comparing an ideologically multinational driven Europe to a Europe split in two by the cold war.
Global players after WWI remained roughly the same, with the exception of Austria, while after WWII nationalism was outpaced
by the battle of western democratic ideology against Marxism.
Optimism is an incremental way of thinking when you are warmongering. In every other state of mind it would be contradictive to go to war,
so this is nothing special.
Only, the big wars don´t start because of optimism, rather the driving force in most cases is greed or desperation, or a combination of both.
Ideology, nationalism, liberation, all those, are in most cases only excuses to pursue one or the other underlying cause.
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 8:27 pm
by JeffroK
ORIGINAL: Nikademus
ORIGINAL: sanch
I believe Europeans have a fundamentally different geo-political outlook than Americans. In a nutshell, Americans have no real issues with their neighbors; they don't covet regions of other countries.
A few years back I spent some time in Budapest. In the national museum, there is a huge wall map of Hungary - this map includes regions such as Transylvania and Croatia - territories they ceded at the end of WW I.
Hungarians still believe these areas are rightfully theirs. As a consequence, they really dislike Romania (owns Transylvania!); they cannot stand Croatia (that's Hungarian land, not an independent country!); and they're really annoyed with the Czech Republic over some piece of land (Upper Hungary, maybe?); and of course they hate the Austrians, who essentially held Hungary in vassalage for some hundreds of year; and don't even think about the Russians (i.e. Soviets).
Essentially, they have issues with all their neighbors. Consider, for a moment, the other countries of Europe - many, if not most also have issues over some past land realignment or problems about ethnic minorities. What a powder keg, waiting for a spark to set it off.
Not take somebody like Hitler, and drop him into this witch's brew. There's the spark, and boom!
That trip to Hungary was definitely an eye-opener in international relations to me.
To be fair, I think it needs to be clarified that the primary reasons why the US doesn't have "issues" with their neighbors and doesn't covet the lands next to them is because we've already obtained the lands (through means both legit and not so legit) needed to make us the most "have" of the "have" nations. I point this out because on forums of the past I noted a lot of bias against Europe, the most extreme examples going on about how the US always wanted to "avoid getting involved in Europe and yet another of 'their' wars" etc as if the US was a utopian paradise of virtue.
Its easy to be complacent when you own one of the largest pieces of Real Estate in the world, guarded by two oceans and with only two neighbors, both of which are (were) not major powers at the time. It also makes it harder to understand mindsets in Europe where things are much closer....competition for land and resources is steeper and cultural animosities and grievances go way back.
The UK at least had a moat around it's small islands and a powerful navy that for a long time allowed them to enjoy "splendid Isolation" but by itself, England could not maintain it's status without it's Empire and Commonwealth....so a wary eye had to be kept on the neighbors. Germany.....sandwiched between two major world powers (France and Russia) can be forgiven for being a tad obsessed with security. The history leading up to the First World War is a fascinating one. Ultimately there were no villains on the scale of Stalin or Hitler. It was Wagnerian tragedy with the right (or wrong) combination of technology, old treaties, and old plans mixed in with a comedy of errors and missed opportunities.
Then there's the Balkans.....
This is not meant to be provocative but one of the interesting things that came out of the Ostkrieg book was that Hitler used the US and it's period of expansion (Manifest Destiny) as an inspiration for what he envisioned for a Greater Germany once he came to power. As mentioned in the other thread, Germany as it was in the 1930's could not become the World power he wanted it to be without expansion. The means by which this was to be accomplished was brutally, chillingly simple. Displace and/or exterminate the peoples currently occupying the lands needed. No paper treaties or reservations. It was "First, rule; Second, administer; third, exploit." As another on this thread mentioned. Once Chamberlain and company woke up to Hitler's true longterm goals, their resolves stiffened. I don't blame them though for having wanted to avoid the horrors of WWI. Hitler exploited that fear.
Well put!
It helps to explain how ones circumstances colour your opinions of anothers circumstances,
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 1:15 pm
by Dili
Oranges and apples. You are comparing an ideologically multinational driven Europe to a Europe split in two by the cold war.
It is not apples and oranges, it means that when there is overwhelming power from the other side the humiliation card can't be played not because it isn't available. It is perceived as ineffective from start so energies aren't directed to it because it is pointless.
Optimism is what makes possible to entertain the possibility of starting a war. Everyone at WW1 start was happy with war, the technological evolution was going fast, people applauded...people even manifested towards it. Optimism breeds recklessness, everyone went to it like if was a walking in the park.
In WW2 it was the defeatism in allied side, it is known that Daladier words- someone that wasn't so clueless as Chamberlain- when he received the applause of the people after Munich: "Ah, les cons". Which means more or less: "the idiots"
The optimism was maintained in Axis side at populist level. Which is scary in itself, how the Governments affect the mood of the people and make everything possible in such short time even if the people is well educated.
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 2:20 pm
by Shark7
ORIGINAL: LoBaron
ORIGINAL: Dili
For example was Germany more "humiliated" in WW1 with Versailles or in WW2 with partition and occupation?
Oranges and apples. You are comparing an ideologically multinational driven Europe to a Europe split in two by the cold war.
Global players after WWI remained roughly the same, with the exception of Austria, while after WWII nationalism was outpaced
by the battle of western democratic ideology against Marxism.
Optimism is an incremental way of thinking when you are warmongering. In every other state of mind it would be contradictive to go to war,
so this is nothing special.
Only, the big wars don´t start because of optimism, rather the driving force in most cases is greed or desperation, or a combination of both.
Ideology, nationalism, liberation, all those, are in most cases only excuses to pursue one or the other underlying cause.
Actually, when you look back in history every war that has ever been has been about greed. Country X has something Country Y wants and Country Y tries to take it. Or Country Y has a colony that it is stripping to fatten itself and finally the colony revolts and becomes Country Z, etc etc. Greed has shaped our world and will continue to do so. The one constant in all this...human nature.
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 3:13 pm
by warspite1
ORIGINAL: Dili
Oranges and apples. You are comparing an ideologically multinational driven Europe to a Europe split in two by the cold war.
In WW2 it was the defeatism in allied side, it is known that Daladier words- someone that wasn't so clueless as Chamberlain- when he received the applause of the people after Munich: "Ah, les cons". Which means more or less: "the idiots"
Warspite1
Yeah - shame Daladier wasn't present for the Munich agreement - things would have turned out soooo differently.... Oh, my mistake he was [8|]
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 3:19 pm
by LoBaron
ORIGINAL: Dili
Optimism is what makes possible to entertain the possibility of starting a war.[...]
Come on Dili, this is pointless.
Optimism is a prerequisite for war as much as it is for taking part in a car race, or asking a question requiring an answer, or ordering something to eat because
you expect it to taste good. Without optimism that an action results in something you hope for, every person would freeze in place and stop attempting anything.
Thats a no brainer.
Lets skip that I think were talking past each other...
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 4:32 pm
by Hiltibrant
ORIGINAL: castor troy
As it stands nowadays, I can assure you, nations in Europe that pretty much all are part of the EU don't have real issues with each other, probably not worse than states of the US would have with each other.
This seemed to be the case for what we usually call Western and Southern Europe. But the late Euro-crisis opens up some terrifying new possibilities some years down the road if it continues in the form of a downward spiral. That is an economical backdrop about the same as Europe experienced in the 1920s, at least for some countries.
I guess the only difference is that this time around Germany is not at the epicenter of the issue, meaning that if push comes to shove we won't see a global conflict arise. But there's plenty of chance of local or regional conflicts (again, if the European economies continue on the way the seem to be on).
But to return to the original post - I'd definitely goes as far as "excusing" even people like Neville Chamberlain. His attitude towards Hitler was certainly representative of a fair share of the populace in many Allied countries (read: Great Britain and France). Many people simply wanted 'peace in their time', and were wary of risking a war of the scale as the last over issues in some country far, far away from home. And no matter how good Allied wartime intelligence was, I do not think that anyone, politician or analyst could with certainty have foreseen the lengths to which Hitler would eventually go.
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2012 5:19 pm
by pmelheck1
Odd thing to me is the attitude of some folks I have known that we are much better than to allow any type of barbaric practice such as war. Boy how uncivilized our forefathers must have been to even think of such a thing. Sad truth to me is that the folks of that day had the same blinders on that we have today, and we will be in for the same rude shock if/when the set of people/circumstances precipitating a war occurs once again. Our parents didn't sit around thinking "boy lets start a war and see how many of us can get killed!". The right set of things happening can set a war going today. Sometimes all you can do is hold on and hope you survive the madness. I'm sure many of the people going through the time leading up to WW2 didn't recognize things until to late (boy that was a mistake) - but their is no do over button for real life and while it can be somewhat interesting to conjecture why things happened the way they did we don't have only the facts they had in the order they had them in.
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Sun Sep 30, 2012 4:14 pm
by Dili
Yeah - shame Daladier wasn't present for the Munich agreement - things would have turned out soooo differently.... Oh, my mistake he was.
And i said he was not? he said that as he was returning from Munich expecting an hostile reception. He just didn't had any illusions, neither about his own country.
Lets skip that I think were talking past each other...
Yeah it seems.
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Sun Sep 30, 2012 5:44 pm
by warspite1
ORIGINAL: Dili
Yeah - shame Daladier wasn't present for the Munich agreement - things would have turned out soooo differently.... Oh, my mistake he was.
And i said he was not? he said that as he was returning from Munich expecting an hostile reception. He just didn't had any illusions, neither about his own country.
Warspite1
No you didn't, it's just your initial attack on the democracies - and now the "clueless Chamberlain" stuff - that irritates.
But no point flogging a dead horse - I've made my point and so have you. Guess we'll agree to disagree. [:)]
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 6:45 am
by Empire101
ORIGINAL: warspite1
ORIGINAL: Dili
Yeah - shame Daladier wasn't present for the Munich agreement - things would have turned out soooo differently.... Oh, my mistake he was.
And i said he was not? he said that as he was returning from Munich expecting an hostile reception. He just didn't had any illusions, neither about his own country.
Warspite1
No you didn't, it's just your initial attack on the democracies - and now the "clueless Chamberlain" stuff - that irritates.
But no point flogging a dead horse - I've made my point and so have you. Guess we'll agree to disagree. [:)]
ORIGINAL: Nikademus
[;)]
Warspite,
I think the above posted by Nikademus is as relevant to this thread as it was in the 'Ships that never Sailed' thread.
I can't read the threads of one of the protagonists of this thread as I came up against the same problem and had to employ the green button, after having some outrageous insinuations written.
There is no sense of humour and no reasoning with this protagonist.[;)]
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 7:59 am
by veji1
This debate is interesting but endless, for my part I would just like to add a couple of pointers :
- Lots of criticism of France and UK in the 35+ years while Germany was rearming and seting its aggressive agenda. I would just like to point that those two democracies were facing 2 monstruous challenges at the times : deal with the collective trauma and inheritence of WWI, ie people saying "never again", and dealing with a MASSIVE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS (that had really hit France in 1932-33). You had governements that simply couldn't have forced a different course of action upon their countries. Like in many crisis, the democratic governements were trying to gain some time to convince their people of what had to be done, ie rearm, etc... They needed that time. History has been collectivelly harsh on those two democracies, but we have to remember that as democracies dreadging those 2 massive weights (WWI and Eco crisis) they were severely harmstrung. One could say that for democracies to adapt they need those symbolic schocks, ie Munich helped convince the constituents that the problem couldn't be ignored anymore.
- A major aspect of the closing stages of WWI is that war was never waged on the austro-german core provinces. Psychologically this played a major role in the "stab in the back" mantra, ie defeat was never consumated. And this analysis is correct, 11t November isn't a surrender, it is an agreement to stop the fight. Lots of french generals considered that it was a terrible, terrible mistake not to militarilly conquer Germany and only accept unconditionnal and total surrender. I am not justifying this analysis or saying this is the one and only truth, but it is an important aspect, howa can a harsh peace treaty like Versailles be credible if the countries that have had to submit to eat feel they hadn't lost ? After all Germany beat Russia and was not invaded by the western allies. In the different context of WWII this is an important lesson learned by the allies : no armistice, only unconditionnal surrender and full occupation of the defeated. You cannot expect a population to come to terms with a defeat if they just suddenly learn about it in the papers and boom it is done, suddenly in some cities allied soldiers are there walking around like it is a sunday stroll... Had the Germans seen the allied soldiers take their cities and march on the main streets, the perception of the "veracity" of the defeat at least would have been different.
Just two small points I wanted to make (the first being more significant).
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 9:11 am
by Apollo11
Hi all,
ORIGINAL: sanch
I believe Europeans have a fundamentally different geo-political outlook than Americans. In a nutshell, Americans have no real issues with their neighbors; they don't covet regions of other countries.
A few years back I spent some time in Budapest. In the national museum, there is a huge wall map of Hungary - this map includes regions such as Transylvania and Croatia - territories they ceded at the end of WW I.
Hungarians still believe these areas are rightfully theirs. As a consequence, they really dislike Romania (owns Transylvania!); they cannot stand Croatia (that's Hungarian land, not an independent country!); and they're really annoyed with the Czech Republic over some piece of land (Upper Hungary, maybe?); and of course they hate the Austrians, who essentially held Hungary in vassalage for some hundreds of year; and don't even think about the Russians (i.e. Soviets).
Essentially, they have issues with all their neighbors. Consider, for a moment, the other countries of Europe - many, if not most also have issues over some past land realignment or problems about ethnic minorities. What a powder keg, waiting for a spark to set it off.
Not take somebody like Hitler, and drop him into this witch's brew. There's the spark, and boom!
That trip to Hungary was definitely an eye-opener in international relations to me.
Ordinary people don't think that way any more... if you ask, for example, ordinary citizen of Hungary and Croatia if there is some huge rivalry still existing they would deny it...
Also, please note that Croatia was never "Hungarian land" and that Hungarians never settled Croatia or were majority there. Croatia was kingdom under Hungarian kings (but with Croatian with viceroy and Croatian parliament for centuries) only because when last true Croatian king died without children in late 11th century Hungarian kings claimed the Croatian throne because the last king's wife was Hungarian born princess (their son died as a child so there was no Croatian king of Hungarian blood)...
Leo "Apollo11"
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 5:47 pm
by Nikademus
ORIGINAL: Empire101
Warspite,
I think the above posted by Nikademus is as relevant to this thread as it was in the 'Ships that never Sailed' thread.
I can't read the threads of one of the protagonists of this thread as I came up against the same problem and had to employ the green button, after having some outrageous insinuations written.
There is no sense of humour and no reasoning with this protagonist.[;)]
best course of action. Had a similar problem in the RN/USN carrier ops thread by same protagonist. Why i rarely engage him. Either GB, or i just say "Whatever you say dude"
With age comes wisdom i guess [;)]
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 3:18 am
by Dili
No you didn't, it's just your initial attack on the democracies - and now the "clueless Chamberlain" stuff - that irritates.
I attack democracies insofar as they allowed dictatorships a free ride for almost a decade while having material and manpower superiority.
It is in context of appeasement and worse even not trying to be competent appeasers, getting a strong hand for appeasing negotiations against dictatorships that i attack them.
And don't get me even started at end of war with half Europe under Stalin. Just reading the stories of the prisoners and specially civilians sent by US forces to Soviet gulag is enough to make blood boil. Only some stiff resolve appeared later with Berlin air bridge, but from some opinions here the fall of Berlin letting it starve also would be completely understandable...
I would just like to point that those two democracies were facing 2 monstruous challenges at the times : deal with the collective trauma and inheritence of WWI
The issue was true for democracies and dictatorships, any of them had hundred thousands/million of deaths in WW1.
The second part is a good point.
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 5:08 am
by fcharton
ORIGINAL: Dili
I attack democracies insofar as they allowed dictatorships a free ride for almost a decade while having material and manpower superiority.
Hindsight is a stern judge, Dili. Those democratic governments did their job, insofar they did as their people wanted. And those people, who had been to war, won it at a very high price (go and see the monuments of WWI in any small european village : ten house and fifteen names...), and saw that this great war to end all wars only led to another war, just wanted, very logically, to avoid it.
I believe many French and English people believed the Germans thought the same. They had been there WWI too. To some extent, what western democracies did not fully realize was the "total" nature of modern dictatures.
Again, it is almost impossible for us, having grown in a relatively peaceful world, where war happens abroad, far away, and takes tens of thousands, instead of millions, to put ourselves in their shoes.
And don't get me even started at end of war with half Europe under Stalin.
Stalin had won the war in Europe.
Francois
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 9:44 am
by veji1
+1 François.
Hindsight is easy and yes Dili all of us get insenced and really suffer when we read about all the atrocities committed... But a democracy cannot force a course of action upon its people. Clever democratic governments can trick and manipulate to some extent, and they all do it, but Blum or Daladier au Chautemps did what they could.. You could say they may not have been the best equipped men to do it and shrewder or more efficient leaders might have done a bette job, but in the end they did what they could...
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 3:55 pm
by Nikademus
This is like blaming the rape victim for rapists' actions. [8|]
RE: Never Were Things
Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 4:09 pm
by jeffk3510
ORIGINAL: geofflambert
ORIGINAL: castor troy
As it stands nowadays, I can assure you, nations in Europe that pretty much all are part of the EU don't have real issues with each other, probably not worse than states of the US would have with each other.
I can assure you sir, that for one Kansas and Missouri are still fighting the Civil War. It's gotten so bad that Missouri has seceded from the Union (nowadays called "The Big Twelve") and officially joined the Confederacy (nowadays called "The SEC", - spelled out South Eastern Conference).
For you non US, this is a reference to American college football, mind you not what we call soccer, rather our game where the objective is to see how many concussions you can absorb before you can no longer walk without assistance.
Also for you non-US, don't be confused, the only reason Missouri didn't join the Confederacy in the 1860's is because those devil Yanks wisely occupied her at the start.
They can keep em... Missouri, Nebraska, and Colorado look greeeeeeeat in their new conferences.. love it... Go KSU!