@Frontovik:
btw, your text
hmm…
i agree, but i wouldn’t of been better
instead of gulags we would of have death camps
not big difference
Alas, one of the great myths of WWII has yet to die, the idea that we had to go to war in order to stop the Holocaust. The Wannsee Conference, which came up with the “Final Solution”, did not take place untill January 20, 1942, after the United States had already been drawn into the war. Six years before WWII under the Nazis, and two years after the start of the war, there was no Holocaust. Half of Germany’s Jews had emigrated to other parts of Europe after the Nuremberg Laws were enacted, the other half after Kristallnacht. When Hitler invaded Poland in on September 1, 1939, there practically were no Jews in Germany.
Why did Hitler invade Poland? Because Poland refused to negotiate over the port of Danzig, a free city with a population 95% German, which wanted to be part of Germany. Why did they refuse? Because Britain, which had no draft, no divisions, no spitfires, gave Poland a War Guarantee that it would declare war on Germany over Danzig.
Why did Hitler invade Russia? Churchill’s plan was to wait out Germany till Russia and the US could be drawn into the war. Hitler felt that if he could quickly knock out Russia, it would convince Britain they could not win.
It wasn’t until mid-winter of 1942, when the German advance grounded to a halt, and being at war with the United States, Hitler knew he was doomed. It was then that the genocide started. It wasn’t the Holocaust that caused WWII, it was WWII that caused the Holocaust.
On September 1, 1939, Stalin had killed a 1,000 times more people than Hitler. When German tanks rolled into Poland, Polish civilians began fleeing Eastward. When they heard that the Red Army was coming from the East, they turned right around and started fleeing West towards the German Army. “No big difference” you say? Was a war that cost 50 million dead worth trading Hitler for Stalin in Europe and Tojo for Mao in China? When Mao killed 50 million Chinese in his lifetime, the USSR killing 100 million in the Gulags in it’s lifetime, was the death of Fascism worth the Rise of Communism, and the enslavement of over half the world’s population?
but atleast with gulags, western europe was free
Hitler was not a threat to the West. Remember, it was Britain and France that declared war on Germany, not the other way around. If Hitler had planned all along to take over the world, why did he build the Western Wall, the German equivalent to France’s Maginot Line? Why did he not build a fleet to challenge Great Britain? Why did he not demand back any of the land lost to Italy and France, or the colonies lost in the Treaty of Versailles? Why did Hitler offer peace after he conquered Poland in '39, and again after letting the British Army go at Dunkirk in 1940? Why did he continually offer Britain an alliance? Why did he not demand France’s fleet and colonies after conquering her? Hitler’s goal was to take back land lost in the East, and form his empire there.
Hitler wanted hegemony over Central Europe, and an anti-Comintern Pact against communist Russia, an Alliance he offered Poland membership in (which had a right-wing government ruled by army colonels that Hitler saw as natural allies).
i still blame the US for not taking more of germany and the balkans
for the same context,
Really? Was Truman wrong to decide that America’s national interests ended at the Elbe River? Russia lost 350,000 lives in the Battle of Berlin alone. Was taking one city, which had no military value, worth well over a quarter million lives?
The French seem to appreciate the United States very little for liberating them, and don’t seem to ponder too much the 200,000 white crosses that dot their country side. Would the Germans have been anymore grateful for keeping part of their country away from the Russians after we firebombed Dresden, and carpet bombed every other city to dust? Would the spliting of Germany between East and West have been better than splitting Germany into North and South, as was proposed by United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. under the Morgenthau Plan, agreed upon by America and Britain on September 16, 1944 in Quebec, worth 350,000 American lives? Was Yugoslavia worth more American lives?
i do honour the brits
As do I, but was loosing their empire worth Danzig?