@amanntai:
I Agree that only America protected Europe from Soviet aggression.
However, I do not believe that sitting back and doing nothing in 1940 would have been in Western Europe’s best interest. Hitler’s Germany would have attacked France (if not Britain) first, before the Soviet Union. France and Britain thought they could make a stand in Poland (defeating the immediate Nazi threat, to concern themselves with the later with the non-imminent Soviet threat), but underestimated the speed at which Germany could conquer the Poles.
I could probably do research and back up the idea that Hitler would have invaded France first with hard history, but let’s make a simple A&A comparison:
As Germany at the start of G40 (Let’s assume France and Britain are not at war), which is it easier to do: Kill France first, and then attack the Soviet Union, or attack the Soviet Union first?
Hitler’s Germany would have attacked France (if not Britain) first
This is where we disagree.
Both before and during the war, German naval spending was a steady 10 - 12% of overall German military spending. This low level of naval spending is very strong evidence that Hitler did not intend to attack Britain. Further evidence is provided in General von Manstein’s book Lost Victories, in which he expressed frustration with the fact that the German general staff was thrown into confusion after their decisive victory over France. Von Manstein opined that it is one thing for a general staff to be thrown into complete confusion when their plans utterly fail. But it was far less understandable for them to adopt the attitude of “What do we do now?” after their plans completely succeed. Hitler had expected Churchill to agree to a ceasefire after the fall of France; and didn’t know what to do after Churchill proved completely unreceptive to any sort of peace negotiations.
You will recall that in 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany before Germany declared war on either of those nations. After the fall of Poland, Hitler offered peace to both Britain and France. (They both refused.)
From Germany’s perspective, a war with the Western democracies entailed plenty of downside and little upside. There was no Nazi plan to find lebensraum in France or other Western European nations. Germany did not attempt to colonize France with Germans during the war, and had no intention of doing so after the war ended. On the other hand, it was very difficult for Germany to be at war with France without also being at war with Britain. A war against both nations opened the door to American industrial (and later military) involvement against Germany. Why would Hitler want a long, unwinnable, pointless war like that when the main goal of his foreign policy was to invade the Soviet Union?
From Hitler’s perspective, a war against the Soviet Union would have many advantages. He pointed out that no nation had ever imposed a Versailles Treaty on the United States. If Germany could conquer the Soviet Union–or at least the portion of the Soviet Union west of the Urals–it would be as strong relative to Europe as the United States was relative to North America. Access to Soviet manpower, raw materials, and industrial capacity would allow Germany to become a superpower. Access to Soviet farmlands would reduce German vulnerability to Allied food blockades.
But just as Germany was eyeing the Soviet Union, Stalin was eyeing Germany. In 1939 Stalin instituted a military draft, and began greatly increasing the size of the Soviet army. In 1940 he successfully seized Finland’s equivalent of the Maginot Line. (Except that the Finnish version was better, in many ways, than the French version.) Having taken Finland’s defenses, he chose not to take the rest of the country–at least not at that time. The conquest of the rest of Finland would come later, and its purpose would be to cut Germany off from its supply of Swedish iron ore.
On the southern portion of that front, Stalin helped himself to a slice of Romanian territory. Romania was to be the main initial target of the Soviet attack; with the intention being to cut Hitler off from his supply of Romanian oil. Having conquered Romania, the Soviet army would then wheel northwest into the heart of Europe.
The British and French estimated that Poland should be able to defend itself for two to three months, while Poland estimated it could do so for at least six months. Poland drafted its estimates based upon the expectation that the Western Allies honor their treaty obligations and quickly start an offensive of their own. In addition, the French and British expected the war to develop into trench warfare much like World War I. The Polish government was not notified of this strategy and based all of its defence plans on promises of quick relief by their Western allies.[61][62]
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland#Polish_defence_plan
Why did the British and French governments deliberately make false promises to Poland? If they had absolutely no intention of launching a general offensive against Germany–which they didn’t–why did they go through such trouble to reassure the Poles that they did?
Poland’s entire diplomatic and military strategy for 1939 was based on the quicksand of lying French politicians’ promises. In the absence of those promises, Polish leaders would have possessed a more realistic view of its actual options. Instead of being tricked into adopting an anti-German foreign policy, they would have probably come to some kind of understanding with Germany. In the presence of such an understanding, Germany and the Soviet Union could have gone to war against each other, without Germany being weakened and distracted by a pointless war in the west. It is far from clear which side would have won such a war. But Western democratic interference in the Nazi-Soviet conflict benefited no one except the Soviet Union.