Who Started World War II?

[ikalugin]

Would that be the same Soviets that attacked Warsaw and were defeated nineteen years prior?

Same Soviets.
Same Russians that have partitioned Poland with Germans and Austrians.
Same Poles that were sitting in My Kremlin 336 years before the events of 1939 (discounting Polish troops under Napoleon).

One could always dig deeper. Plus in 1939 Poles were dreaming about a great empire of sorts and didn't know about General Plan East. So that suggestion was entirely retrospective.

[Cybermat47]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Anyway, there may be some few people in the world who want to argue about who "started" WWII, but I can tell you who finished it.

You can tell us when it's actually over

http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/eas...i-peace-treaty

[ikalugin]

Japanese are just slow. Remember all those people on random islands, who believed that the active shooting war was still ongoing decades after the autumn of 1945?

[HunterICX]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Would that be the same Soviets that attacked Warsaw and were defeated nineteen years prior?

Defeat? There's no such thing as defeat in the the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics it was just to fool the Poles that they could actually win over the Soviets and where proven horribly wrong years later.

[HunterICX]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

Anyway, there may be some few people in the world who want to argue about who "started" WWII, but I can tell you who finished it.

This guy?


using these?

[August]

So do you think that Hitler rage called Tojo on December 8th 1941 and said "I told you to attack the USSR not the USA!"

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by August

So do you think that Hitler rage called Tojo on December 8th 1941 and said "I told you to attack the USSR not the USA!"

Tojo probably hadn't put his glasses on when he got the order.


"SR? Chikushō!"

[U505995]

Well not to be blunt but the cause of WWII....

[Cybermat47]

Originally Posted by Sea Demon U-48

Well not to be blunt but the cause of WWII....

Well, in Doctor Who, Hitler is both possessed by an alien (until Dunkirk) and encouraged by the Doctor to persevere after the Munich pustch, so you could be on to something.

[Fahnenbohn]

We are talking about historical facts, not about movies.

[Onkel Neal]

Wait, now you want to switch to historical facts? Topic complete.

[Betonov]

Could it be ??
That WW2 was just an episode of a conflict between the UK and Germany for world dominance that started with the German unification in 1870

Just look at it, WWI started due to colonial tensions and an industrial age arms race which peaked* in 1914-1918 and then reached a conclusion in 1945 when Germany and Britain both lost to the USSR and USA.


*peaked as when the bubble finally burst, WW2 was the peak of death and destruction

[Schroeder]

Originally Posted by Betonov

Could it be ??
That WW2 was just an episode of a conflict between the UK and Germany for world dominance that started with the German unification in 1870

1871.

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by Schroeder

1871.

After Sedan it was just a matter of signing the papers and placing the crown

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Betonov

Could it be ??
That WW2 was just an episode of a conflict between the UK and Germany for world dominance that started with the German unification in 1870

Just look at it, WWI started due to colonial tensions and an industrial age arms race which peaked* in 1914-1918 and then reached a conclusion in 1945 when Germany and Britain both lost to the USSR and USA.


*peaked as when the bubble finally burst, WW2 was the peak of death and destruction

You could argue that way, although I'd slip France in there too, after all, one of the few things that Fahn has got right in this thread is when he pointed out the British and French rivalry. Before the unification of Germany the biggest threat to British dominance was France and vice versa, but Germanys sudden unification and crash course in industrialisation, not to mention its desire to try and get its own piece of the colonial pie despite arriving to the party when it had pretty much ended.

I remember a while ago I had a thought, that some wars can be seen as the end of empires, the First World War was definitely the end of Great Britains empire, although it took until the end of the Second World War for it to really start collapsing. Before that, one could say that the Napoleonic wars curbed the era of French domination, and the Thirty Years War saw the end of Spanish and Italian dominance which had risen during the Renaissance.