Just several short remarks :

1. You are always saying that hitler was too hurried. I say he has preoccupied to START the negotiations. After, they could take the time needed.

For 2 years, Poland refused any negotiations, and this is UNJUSTIFIABLE.

2. An injustice REQUIRES of negotiations.

3. The construction of ways of communication and the return of a city to the Reich are NOT territorial demands, contrary to Austria and Sudetenland.

Poland refused to give into demands. Perhaps earlier Hitler and the Nazi Party may have tried a more friendlier approach but as soon he didn't achieve what he wanted his attitude turned agressive.

Even if a sovereign country does refuse to negotiate it still doesn't warrant a justification to invade.

Poland didn't threaten Germany in any way /End

What?

Demanding 759 square miles (Danzig) looks like an territorial demand to me.

The land was not annexed but became a protectorate.

-------
EDIT : About Boheme Moravia.

You see, in France, we have some people who are asking for independence also : Bretons, Corsicans, and other (islands of the ancient colonial empire) ... Is it a reason to declare war on France because she is a tyrannic country ? No.

We always lived peacefully with them. And they have many advantages in being part of the France
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Now, let's quote Hitler's speech of October, 6, 1939 :

The aims and tasks which emerge from the collapse of the Polish State are, insofar as the German sphere of interest is concerned, roughly as follows:

1. Demarcation of the boundary for the Reich, which will do justice to historical, ethnographical and economic facts.

2. Pacification of the whole territory by restoring a tolerable measure of peace and order.

3. Absolute guarantees of security not only as far as Reich territory is concerned but for the entire sphere of interest.

4. Re-establishment and reorganization of economic life and of trade and transport, involving development of culture and civilization.

5. As the most important task, however, to establish a new order of ethnographic conditions, that is to say, resettle ment of nationalities in such a manner that the process ultimately results in the obtaining of better dividing lines than is the case at present.

*

Yes maybe. But in our case, the injustice REQUIRES negotiations, or war.

GERMANY was the empire that guaranteed peace and was the only one who was able to guarantee it in Europe. Having declared war on it* is an unforgivable crime.

* : or "her" ? (sorry for bad english, I presume this is "her" after Sailor Steve's explanations, but "her" for an Empire ? :hmm2:)

Ehm yeh...that's not how it works you don't tell someone to start negotiate or it will be war.

and it failed doing just that....twice.

Negotiations were perfectly justified.

Man... and I already used up that Stewie Griffin meme :shifty:

Oh it's tell others what to do time?
I will follow your advise - when you follow your beloved Adolf.
Deal?
Win/Win! :yeah:

Which is odd since they never took place, instead impatient Hitler&Co chose to use violence.
Poland was fully within its right to choose not to negotiate as it was in her interest to do so.

Hitler has specifically stated Germany's need for Lebensraum in his books and in statements concerning his ideology. Moreover, he mentioned this in direct relation to the execution of Case White. He implemented policies to make the concept a reality soon after Poland was occupied, and continued to do so in other areas following his invasion of the Soviet Union. There is a logical chain of events here that is completely broken by the assuming that Hitler wasn't after Lebensraum, and there really is no evidence to justify this sort of assumption. No, just because Germany made some demands for the return of Danzig doesn't mean that it couldn't have found a pretext to invade under later, like it did with Czechoslovakia.

Let me try summarizing the issue of Danzig and Germany's negotiations so we don't get confused by who tried do what, where and when. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Danzig's status as a Free City was a compromise made at Versailles to give Poland access to sea trade, which was judged to be vital to its economy. Neither Germany, who wanted the city incorporated into its territory, nor Poland, which wanted independent access to the sea, were satisfied with this agreement. Poland built the port of Gdynia in the Corridor to supplant Danzig as its primary port, and this port eventually exceeded Danzig's relevance to its maritime trade, but by 1938 Danzig still accounted for 31.6% of all Polish exports.

The Danzig problem basically boils down to two points, then. Germany wanted the city annexed because it was inhabited by Germans, while Poland wanted to maintain the status quo, at least for the time being, to preserve its economy, which was struggling in the interwar period. Whether you believe that one reason or the other was more justified, the issue of losing Danzig was far more of an immediate concern for Poland than gaining it was for Germany. Danzig could have potentially have been returned to Germany given sufficient time, Poland made no claim to it and was already moving its trade away to other ports, but at this point Poland judged it to be vital to its economy.

In 1933 the government in Danzig was taken over by the Nazi party, which agitated for the city's return to Germany. Despite this, Poland and Germany signed a non-aggression pact in 1934.

From what I can tell, the first attempts to negotiate Danzig's status was on October 24th, 1938, when Ribbentrop talked to Józef Lipski and proposed the agreement that Danzig should be annexed by Germany and the extra-territorial road and railway be constructed to East Prussia. The Germans offered nothing in return for this except the extension of the German-Polish non-aggression pact and some guarantees of Poland's borders, effectively making this more of a demand than a negotiation. This proposal came in the immediate aftermath of the Munich Agreement, and Poland was afraid of coming under German influence. So naturally, Poland refused. Germany continued trying to push these demands for the next 6 months. This effectively amounted to all of Germany's attempts to 'negotiate'.

On March 15th, 1939, Germany occupied Czechoslovakia. In response, Britain promised to support Poland. On March 25th, Hitler directed OKW to prepare for a war to seize not just Danzig, but all of Poland. OKW issued a directive to the German armed forces outlining Case White on April 3rd, requiring that preparations be made for launching the operation before September 1st. On April 28th, Hitler renounced the non-aggression pact with Poland and demanded the issue be settled. Agitators were soon sent into Danzig by Germany to provoke a crisis. The German army begun troop movement to bring forces into position for Case White on June 26th. Soon afterwards, Germany began negotiating the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union, in which it agreed to partition Poland. The operation was scheduled to being on August 26th, but was delayed until September 1st because of Britain's treaty with Poland and Italy's declaration that it would not take part in the conflict. The 16-point proposal and the conditions for its signing was read out to the British ambassador, much too late, during this interval without enough time or effort to create real negotiations. Józef Lipski spoke with Ribbentrop on August 31st under instruction from Warsaw to inform Germany that Poland was willing to enter into discussions if both parties were on equal footing. This resulted in nothing. Hours later, Germany invaded Poland.

In short, I agree that there was a problem concerning Danzig's status, but throughout this entire course of events it was Hitler and Germany alone that created the crisis, made the demands, prepared for war and started the invasion, actions which were at no point made necessary by anybody else. This is without even getting to Hitler's well-documented desire to occupy Poland in its entirety.

What they called it is irrelevant. Germany intimidated Czechoslovakia into surrendering under the threat of war, then promptly occupied it with military force. It did this after it has peacefully been given all its demands in regards to the country at Munich. I really don't see how this action can be justified in any way.

The Czech people never looked for German occupation, in fact protests sprang up pretty much immediately, and never benefited from it in the slightest. That's completely irrelevant.

Isn't that the basis of Lebensraum? What's your point?

That must have been a British spy masquerading as Hitler or something. :hmmm:

http://i.imgur.com/AKfDdna.png

:har:

You make reference to the holocaust (and not for the first time).

Permit me to update you on SubSim policy as explained to me this morning from the top...

What SubSim would like to avoid are discussions where someone is actively arguing that the Holocaust was a fiction, never happened, or is a false history created by the World Zionist organization, etc.
Therefore it is the denial that is the problem and not the event itself, hence the forum rule:
So, taking the above into consideration I think it sufficiently spelled out what is and what is not acceptable but please be advised, any breach of the above may well end up with posting privileges being revoked.

I certainly don't intend ending up with a troublesome heart condition over the matter.

Just like Aboriginals were protected by the Australian settlers. And the Germans protected the Czechs just as well as we protected Tasmania Aboriginals.

Yeah peace because everyone is dead kind of peace.

This is nazi peace:
http://www.barenakedislam.com/wp-con...1-1024x959.jpg

There are some things right, but a lot more are false, in this thread :hmmm:
(and thanks Raptor1, very good explanation on page 25!)


1. Hitler did not want to conquer the world. I guess we all know that.

2. That a world war ensued was possible, but not necessarily so, and it was not as foreseeable or logical, as we assume today.
(Indeed, as long as the US staid out of the war (what it of course did not, not even before an official declaration of war from the US, their ships had attacked german U-boats already before) and Japan having nothing to do with Germany, there most probably would have been no worldwide war).

3. Invading almost all Europe was a reaction to England declaring war, from a strategical point of view alone it was unthinkable to let France or any other country become a war zone again, or a kind of enemy aircraft carrier. It was done to prevent a second front, as it it had happened in WW1.
England tried to invade Norway, Germany happened to be faster for the same reason (but lost almost all destroyers, in the invasion).
This all was done with the sole object to go against Russia, and prevent a second front in the West, or else.

4. Hitler had not expected England to declare war, and he did not really plan to invade it. The bombings (first only against industrial targets, but then escalating) were executed to force England out of the war. We know how this worked out, but who knows what would have happened, without the US.

5. Hitler wanted his "Lebensraum" in the east right from the beginning. Indeed his whole ideology and plans were based on this, and his idea of racial superiority, against those russian "underlings". You can read it in almost all the 3rd Reich's documents, of the time (and not only from H.).
Racial superiority was also the thinking of some in England though, and you can also read this in a lot of documents of the time, it was not a german (or austrian) invention alone. But those supporters never were able to be accepted, crush the constitution, and form a government. Big difference.

(Hitler wanted to fight Russia right from the beginning, to get at least a big part of it. Poland was just in the way, but it also meant some revenge for losing Prussia earlier. The Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was just a temporary means to buy some time, and get the eastern part of Poland crushed by Russia without german intervention, to later annex it.
Poland had acted quite aggressively before war broke out, some germans living in now-polish parts of former Prussia were harrassed and there even were progromes. There were also military drills, parades and a lot of polish propaganda against Germany as well. This alone is of couse no reason to invade another country.. but adding german propaganda it is one reason why this "revenge" did not find so much resistance, in the german people.
Apart from that we shall not forget, that any resistance, politically or whatever, was answered with a visit by the Gestapo..
The jews were the other scapegoat for all misery, and the money seized from them was used to finance the war. In that respect you could cynically say, that jewish money powered the german war industry. But it was stolen, of course. Goetz Aly has written an excellent book, about the german financial operarions, before and during the war.

Also, polish trains passing through the corridor had their windows blackened for some reason, but it was still clear to see that the whole region was neither needed nor used by Poland, and the fomer german houses, farms and fields decayed – which of course was not liked, especially by those who had been driven off the land, in the aftermath off WW1 and Versailles.

Going bach and regarding Versailles there are interesting bits, from Italy joining the Entente just to get big chunks out from Austro-Hungary, block Austria's ports and remove trading competition, to getting hands on Venice and all those mediterranean ports which had belonged to Austro-Hungary, before WW1.
When French Prime Minister Clemenceau was asked how history would remember the start of World War I, he replied "One thing is for certain: they will not say that Belgium invaded Germany." Case closed, so easy..)



There is no need for overblown propaganda, nor is there any need to downplay cruelties and atrocities. Things are bad enough as they are! You cannot condense the whole situation to tactical decisions and political errors of the Allies or Germany, and only concentrate on small details you like to highlight, and exclude everything else.

This is because it is good that Hitler was stopped, for reasons of dictatorship to mass execution, and genocide.
It does not matter who started the war, it is just good that the Allies won it.

Thanks, Jim, you explained it very well.

Yes, people can discuss just about anything they want here, even fantasies; Hitler was a gentle peace-loving soul who was forced into war when all he wanted to do was spread love, FDR knew the Japs were going to bomb Pearl Harbor but did nothing so the US would get into the war, the Kennedy assassination was a coup, UFOs are real, the earth is flat, whatever. You are entitled to your opinion, and as long as you do not topic spam, you can discuss it here. But there are limits to everything, so I advise against arguing, or even trying to be clever and cute and slip in a comment, about the Holocaust being untrue. As far as I am concerned, that's a gross violation of respect for the people who suffered through the Holocaust, both those who were killed and those who managed to survive the genocide.