Quote:
Originally Posted by mapuc
Would that give England, France or other countries the right to attack Germany ?
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By international laws inked down after WWII, they would not just even have had a right, but even a legal obligation to attack, if they cannot stop in by other means. The anti-genocide convention says that when a state acting in genocide, which means not only the extermination an ethnic groups' individuals, but trying to delete the culture and identity by destroying its cultural heritage, banning its language and so forth, any state knowing of that genocide then has the legal obligation to take measure that help to stop it.
That is the reason why you can observe in modern present that many states in the world can be confronted with obviousy cases of genocide happening in Africa or the Middle East, but still strictly refusing to call it as that - because then they would face legal obligations to do something about it,
whatever it needs to stop that. And that need often is military axction.
Back then, the question is whether France and Britain actually
could have successfully fought against Germany when attacking Germany first. German Panzer for exampel were inferior to French and British and Russian designs, okay, but still were led by superior tactics and command flexibility - this and not the quality of the German tanks with their thin armour and inferior weaponry was the reason why the German Panzerwaffe was so successful. Later came the Tiger, okay, that was technical superiority - but again: also techncial vulnerablity, they were terrible to maintain and gave the engineers hell - but then the Russians had the T-34 already - maybe the best tank of the whole war, and in enormous quantities.
What should be done, and what could be done, must not nessecarily be the same thing. In an ideal world, there would be a button I press, and the bad guy drops dead in place. In reality, I could push that button and see him dropping dead - and face nuclear retaliation myself.