Travel back in time: You’re the rulers of the United Kingdom and France (separately, but at the same time) when Germany Invades Poland on 1 September 1939. Knowing what you do about everything that happened before that day*, including the fact that Poland was an autocratic state that had previously helped with the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, would you have declared war on Germany within three days for that aggression?

* But only before that day; no knowledge about what was going to happen later.

Question:
You’re the UK, would you?
.

Choices:
No.
Yes.
I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Question:
You’re France, would you?
.

Choices:
Yes.
No.
I have no idea what you’re talking about.

 

I'd have absolutely flattened them the first time Hitler even spoke about breaking the Treaty of Versailles. Marching across into the demil'ed Rhineland would have been the absolute last straw before crushing them and I would have made it more final than it was at the end of the next war. That's how you need to deal with bad guys.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
including the fact that Poland was an autocratic state that had previously helped with the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia

You mean like Britain and France also had helped?

Britain, France, Germany, and Italy met in Munich the year before in 1938 to come to an agreement about the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. The Poles weren't even invited. Neither were the Czechs.

At that point (9/1/39) you've kind of talked yourself into a corner. You've told Hitler that if he invades anybody else you'll declare war on Germany. Given what Hitler had already done - listening to France and Britain telling him to stop and then doing nothing about it when he went ahead anyway, multiple times - you have to figure that he'll keep on doing it, and you're probably next on the menu. So you don't really have a choice anymore.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, the British and French had been desperate to avoid a repeat of the horrors of WW1 and seemed basically willing to do anything it took to avoid another ghastly war. But by the mid/late 1930s, after things like the German remilitarization and reoccupation of the Rhineland, Italian invasion of Ethiopia and the collapse of the League of Nations, and the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and then China, it finally became clear to them that it was a matter of when, not if, the next world war would jump off, and it was coming fast. So then it turned into delaying tactics to buy enough time to get their militaries built back up into a good enough position.

The more I learn about the pre-war run-up, the more I'm convinced that the Munich Agreement wasn't seen by the British/French through rose-colored lenses as some naïve guarantee of a lifetime of peace as it's sometimes portrayed (even to the British/French public at the time), but rather it was a stalling tactic to sacrifice Czechoslovakia (sorry Czechs!) in exchange for additional year(s) of military build-ups and preparations to put them in a better position to prevail in the inevitable war. In that light, then contrary to popular portrayal of him as some weak, naïve appeaser... what Chamberlain did was right, buying his country enough time to be able to initially survive and eventually win.

By the time Poland rolled around the following year, there wasn't the opportunity to stall any more, for a number of political and military reasons.

But in the intervening year, great strides had been made in preparations, so Britain and France were in a stronger position in September 1939 then they had been in September 1938. For just one example: In September 1938, very few Hurricanes (~50) and even fewer Spitfires (less than 10) were available to the British RAF. Initial production runs of those had just begun to arrive in mid 1938, so most of the RAF's fighter aircraft were still obsolete biplanes. Therefore, if WW2 had jumped off in September 1938 with the Czech crisis, it's unlikely that Britain would have been able to win the now-accelerated Battle of Britain. Whereas 1 year later, when war did kick off in September 1939, the RAF then had ~500 Hurricanes and ~400 Spitfires, with the production lines now operating at full speed to be able to produce thousands more.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
You mean like Britain and France also had helped?

I should have specified that by “dismemberment” I meant the actual seizure of Czech territory, as by Poland and Hungary, not just, “Oh, sorry: You’re on your own; too bad, so sad.”

What I can't understand is why EVERY European country wasn't in the Ukraine the first week after Putin fired the first shot with all of them pushing the Russians back into Russia.
They should realize after Hitler & Stalin that Putin will never stop until he is dead.

Brits: Impossible chain of supplies. No way to project power and sustain with force.

Frogs: Nos troupes ne savent pas marcher avec les culottes parterre! Desolés!

Very tough decisions considering the still fresh scars of WWI and the decimated male populations in all these he countries involved.

Just as the european countries neighboring the URSS were reluctant to get involved in a war that could easily escalate to nuclear, none of the allies of Poland were eager to enforce the treaties and pacts with blood. Their own.

0-0

quote:

Originally posted by gjgalligan:
What I can't understand is why EVERY European country wasn't in the Ukraine the first week after Putin fired the first shot with all of them pushing the Russians back into Russia.
They should realize after Hitler & Stalin that Putin will never stop until he is dead.

The Europeans thought that after the Soviet Union collapse things would somehow become different in the world. Human nature would somehow fundamentally change and there could never be someone so psychopathic in a leadership position again.
Much like those that believed in the “Peace in our time” mindset back in the 30’s.

The situation was much more complex than the version you learn in basic history classes.
Just like now where Eastern Europe is full of corruption. Nobody is perfectly pure and without some bad. But some are really much worse. And happen to have nukes.
The Europeans also let themselves get totally dependent on Russia for energy and we’re just starting to see how that effects the equation.

I’m a skip-to-the-end kind of guy. I would have sent assassins.

quote:

Originally posted by gjgalligan:
What I can't understand is why EVERY European country wasn't in the Ukraine the first week after Putin fired the first shot with all of them pushing the Russians back into Russia.
They should realize after Hitler & Stalin that Putin will never stop until he is dead.

Because most of those European countries are members of NATO and Russia has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world.

Political murder was a very common thing in Germany in the 20s-30s. Hitler knew there were people looking to kill him, and took precautions. So what you're talking about might not have been as viable as you may be thinking.

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
I’m a skip-to-the-end kind of guy. I would have sent assassins.

To turn the original question on its head, if you were Hitler o. 12/8/41, would you have declared war on the US? The war in Europe would have been vastly different if he didn't.

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
To turn the original question on its head, if you were Hitler o. 12/8/41, would you have declared war on the US? The war in Europe would have been vastly different if he didn't.

Clearly a bad move on his part but it probably would have happened anyway.
I believe he had a treaty with the Japanese to do that but we were already supplying the Allies and December 7th was just the push over the edge that was needed to get the public behind the war in the US.
His biggest blunder was double crossing the USSR although that's another war that would have eventually happened.

The US and Germany were already at war well before December 8th, 1941. We had been in a shooting war in the Battle of the Atlantic against German submarines and commerce raiders since early 1941. We had already deployed troops overseas into the ETO in mid-1941, sending American soldiers to occupying places like Greenland and Iceland in order to prevent them from falling into German hands. Plus we had been openly supporting Germany's enemies for well over a year, supplying them with large amounts of war material, military technology, economic aid, and intelligence.

The formal declaration of the existing war was an inevitability by December 1941. Pearl Harbor just represented a convenient pretext to make it official.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
The Poles weren't even invited. Neither were the Czechs.

It's true.
You can check any Pole.
Or poll any Czech.

I voted no on both. I know that's not what happened, and I know ultimately, that is what needed to happen. However, I think were I France or Britain, I would've been both incredibly wary to jump into another war that could conceivably look like the one a generation prior with the successive technological and military developments... and I would've wanted all the time I could buy myself to get as much of that ready for myself as conceivably possible if that was going to be the eventuality - which is what I'm sure it already looked like by then.

Interesting that, so far, 10% of those that voted Yes for Britain voted No for France. I suspect those folks are allowing their foreknowledge of what was going to happen in 1940 to color their decision, despite the parameters set forth in the OP.

That fact is that of the two nations, France was considered - and considered itself - to be more ready for war in September 1939. They had the strongest and best equipped army in the world at that point. Their eventual problems in 1940 stemmed from more esoteric issues like inflexible leadership and tactics, including an overreliance on static fortifications, leaders' inability/refusal to adapt to intelligence that contradicted their expectations, inadequate interunit radio communications, a general discouragement of improvisation and initiative among small unit leaders, the doctrine of parceling out their armored vehicles in piecemeal dribs and drabs for infantry support instead of concentrating them into larger armored formations, and a lack of combined arms training.

But in 1939, nobody (save perhaps the Germans) knew that those would be crucial flaws in the coming type of war. And France simply didn't have time to learn and adapt before they were quickly overrun. The British and Americans had to relearn how to fight a modern mobile combined arms war too... They just were allowed more time in which to do this.

Who'd have guess that roughly 80 years later the US and European nations are united with Nazis fighting the Russians?

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
The US and Germany were already at war well before December 8th, 1941.

Another very poorly-recognized fact.

Although there was a treaty between Japan and Germany, our actions would have given Germany ample justification for declaring formal war against us before Pearl Harbor.