10 ms·

1938 vs. 1940 (2018)

143 points by diodorus 6y ago

Guthur 6y ago
This takes a too limited a view of the situation. These decisions were likely made on far more more factors than one of purely material. Geopolitically Germany had the the advantage of singular national focus, it had no allies to coordinate with either strategically or tactically (at this stage). The UK and France were two very separate and independent states, who were not necessarily strongly aligned, there would have been a deep rooted sense of mistrust (which has existed for centuries). Another aspect is military doctrine; France had a decidedly defensive doctrine at the time, based of the perceived success of WW1 (the victor always fighting the previous war and all that). The UK military was also very much geared for holding onto an empire and not necessarily fighting large scale military operations across Europe. A decisive military strike was just not in the nature of the nations at the time, they lacked the necessary aggressiveness and sense of purpose to carry it out. All up the French and British were a little too risk adverse, rightly so I suppose because they had a lot to lose. Unfortunately taking no action was a decision as well and one that would cost them in the long run far more dearly than they might have imagined at the time.
- stevula 6y ago
  I don’t think the author is trying to make the point that the UK and France were right or wrong to pursue appeasement. Rather he is trying to debunk a very specific argument that they went with that strategy in order to buy themselves time to mobilize. In fact, they were not significantly more prepared for war in 1939 than in 1938 and ended up on worse footing, according to his argument. So I think your point stands, but we can also question when someone justifies the appeasement strategy by saying that UK/France needed more time to mobilize. In fact, they were probably more taking a gamble to see how things would play out.
- DenisM 6y ago
  > These decisions were likely made on far more more factors than one of purely material. That's the same point the author is making: If the decision was made based on logistics the war would have to have started in 1938. So the decision was made on something else and only rationalized later with the "time to prepare" argument.
  - Guthur 6y ago
    Yes, I was being a little unfair to the author. Though I'm actually not convince there is any prevaling narrative that the goal of appeasement was rearmament, most narratives are that it was born from a policy of pacifism with a desire for geniunely avoiding a conflict that some in the UK felt could not be sustained. Churchill was very much a Hawk all through the 1930s and was pretty much ignored, Chamberlain was Dove through and through not playing some game buying time for a decisive strike.
- lovelyviking 6y ago
  > Geopolitically Germany had the advantage ? What do you mean by this? Why “ Geopolitically”?
  - Guthur 6y ago
    UK was unlikely to take on Germany alone, it couldn't mount a unilateral invasion of Germany imo. Therefore the UK needed to coordinate with a foreign power (France) both strategically and operationally. There are some examples in the battle for France where comms and coordination between UK and France General Staff was pretty woeful. Germany made one agreement with USSR to divide Poland and then basically shipped it's Army around mainland Europe stomping everyone west of Poland.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  > Geopolitically Germany had the the advantage of singular national focus, it had no allies to coordinate with either strategically or tactically (at this stage). I’d argue this was an advantage to Britain, not a disadvantage. Many of Britain’s ‘allies’ did as they were told and while theoretically had control of their troops destiny, actually did not. Having supplies and manpower that could be built up and trained with little or zero threat of attack was very helpful.
  - Guthur 6y ago
    Which allies are you referring to? those that made up the dominion of the empire such as Canada and Australia? then yes. But they can only really supply some troops and resources. The UK needed France and they were not nearly as cooperative with each other as you might think, and France had little to no interest in an offensive war.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      > The UK needed France If the war started early, perhaps. But later on, not really. Britain and the dominion had one hell of a lot of resources. There is a good book on this topic by David Edgerton titled ‘Britain’s War Machine’. It’s largely debunking the idea of the plucky underdog and shows the great strength of Britain relatively to Germany. It was more a question of how long it would take Germany to fall, rather than anything else. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13647996 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13647996
      - Guthur 6y ago
        An invasion of mainland Europe was tough. Not only logistically but also geopolitical, as hard is might be to believe there could be a large push back from an unilateral British invasion of Europe. Also the UK had great access to men and resources, definitely better on the latter than Germany. But did it have industrial capacity necessary is the question. Most of the manufacturing was concentrated in mainland UK, by design as that's how the empire made its wealth. The UK had to purchase a lot of both naval and land assets from the US.
sillysaurusx 6y ago
If you like military history (and this style of writing) I highly recommend 100 Decisive Battles From Ancient Times To Present. It gives an overview of 100 engagements that changed the world: the strengths of each army, the expected outcome, and usually some "twist" that turned the tables. Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/100-Decisive-Battles-Ancient-Present/dp/0195143663 https://www.amazon.com/100-Decisive-Battles-Ancient-Present/... It looks like there's a PDF here, but you'll be waiting 2min: http://rogers.sharpschool.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_732815/File/tomlida/100%20Decisive%20Battles%20from%20Ancient%20Times%20to%20the%20Present2.pdf http://rogers.sharpschool.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_73281... Here's the list of battles: - https://i.imgur.com/izTpwpG.png https://i.imgur.com/izTpwpG.png - https://i.imgur.com/sdUljXu.png https://i.imgur.com/sdUljXu.png Here's the list in text form, sorted by year, for blind users: https://gist.github.com/shawwn/099cadef6d0e2600172cd0d202b166d9 https://gist.github.com/shawwn/099cadef6d0e2600172cd0d202b16...
- nostrademons 6y ago
  Is there a list of indecisive battles that changed the world? Battles like Jutland, Guadalcanal, the Atlantic, the North Russia Convoys, Stalingrad, Siege of Malta, along with all the knock-down guerilla warfare in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the Syrian Civil War, etc. These are almost more informative, because a.) they seem more representative of what most war is like b.) the turning points of most wars actually fall during them, eg. Guadalcanal rather than Midway was the turning point of the WW2 Pacific Theater, the Battle of the Atlantic rather than Dunkirk or Normandy was the turning point of the European theater. c.) oftentimes, the long, brutal experience of these types of battles is what led to the logistic and technical improvements that actually wins the war Similarly, it'd be interesting to read war histories that focus on logistics and technological development. D-Day has had zillions of movies made about it; codebreaking has had one or two; and the logistics of assembling an army of millions and shipping them across the Atlantic in secrecy to land on hostile territory has had none that I know of.
  - georgeecollins 6y ago
    That is a fascinated concept and a real insight into the kinds of conflicts that really do shape the world.
perl4ever 6y ago
I recommend reading George Orwell's collected letters and essays from this period of time, to get a feel for what it was like living through it without the benefit of hindsight. (this is up to 1940) https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Essays-Journalism-Letters-George/dp/1567921337 https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Essays-Journalism-Letters-G... There are other volumes, such as this covering 1940-43: https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Essays-Journalism-Letters-George/dp/1567921345 https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Essays-Journalism-Letters-G...
- lostlogin 6y ago
  His other books are also great - though not particularly relevant to the subject at hand. ‘Down and out in Paris and London’ is painful but eye opening. ‘Homage to Catalonia’ is good. In it, Orwell’s description of trench warfare is completely horrifying, it made my heart race reading it.
Synaesthesia 6y ago
Or maybe the plan was to have Germany attack the Soviet Union from the beginning. They could have easily defeated Germany prior to the war, had they tried.
- simonh 6y ago
  Part of the point of the article is we don't need to guess, the people involved explained why they did what they did. We also have their correspondences and memoirs, and those of their confidantes and associates to back that up. We can also examine whether their actual actions match up with such speculation.
- sien 6y ago
  The Poles beat the Soviets between the wars : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War The Germans rolled the Poles in weeks at the start of WWII. It's far from clear that without US help the Soviets could have defeated the Germans.
  - anticodon 6y ago
    All countries wanted Germany to attack Soviet Union: UK, France, USA. It's not a secret. It was almost openly said that the best outcome is for Germany and USSR to weaken each other so much, that USA can join later and kill off the significantly weakened party. It didn't really matter whether Germany or USSR will win because it was assumed that the winner would be too weakened to fight one more war. USA even secretly helped Germany until 1943.
    - rurban 6y ago
      Not that secretly. The major US players, press, finance, industry were all open NAZI supporters. They financed Hitler and the industry to start the war against communism. Eg they gave them free oil patents, took over IG Farben, the chemical industry to produce the needed oil for the tanks to invade Russia. They gave them huge credit lines to overcome the desastrous WW1 reparation payments. They financed the military buildup. All played well for western fascists until Japan sided with Germany to take over China, South East Asia and esp. Singapore. When Singapore was threatened, US changed sides. The US certainly never thought Russia will win over Germany. That was their nightmare scenario. Workers rights, socialism. This would have killed their idea of freedom of private contracts over civil rights. Workers would demand 10 hours workdays. Or even less. Workers demanding their rights couldn't just be shot down, as in the Coal wars. Smaller companies threatening the big ones could not just be eliminated by the national guard and army, as in the Texas oil war, and the Railroad commission. The German NAZi system was the big goal of the US industry. A fancy "democracy", well liked all over the world, with a bright film industry, and a beloved charismatic leader.
etrabroline 6y ago
This author takes the perspective of Great Britain's war planners. This is not an unreasonable starting point for an understanding of the military readiness of the nations that would eventually go on to fight in the war, but a full understanding mustn't stop there. War planners always assume war will break out because that is their job, and given that Britain and France did ultimately decide to declare war on Germany, the war can appear like an inevitability after the fact. In truth, no one at the time saw it as inevitable and indeed it wasn't. The case P. E. Caquet should be making (and isn't) would be that Germany's ambitions extended beyond the pre-Versailles central European boundaries of Germany and Austria. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War#/media/File:Europe_1871_map_en.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War#/media/Fil... Those boarders were surely larger, but had existed just 19 years prior and did not threaten the existence of France or Britain in all the years between German Unification and the Versailles treaty. Nothing in Germany's public proclamations nor the documents uncovered after the war suggest this hidden larger ambition, despite it being central to Churchill's case for granting the war guarantee to Poland (and his ultimate declaration of war against Germany) The underlying reality is that England has always been the weakest of the European powers due to its small population. It built its empire with trade, espionage and its navy not large armies. England made itself more relatively powerful by playing the larger continental players against each other and against non-Europeans, always taking the side of the weaker countries against the strongest. England aided the Prussians to defeat Napoleon, and the Ottoman Turks against Russia in Crimea. The public arguments made at the time to morally justify England's geopolitical stratagems should not be uncritically assumed to be true and do not constitute a sound starting point for a correct historical understanding of World War II.
- watwut 6y ago
  Isn't the quest for living space that supposedly hidden ambition? Germany was not seeking pre Versailles borders. They were seeking collonies. That was pretty significant part of Hitlers ideology.
  - cheschire 6y ago
    Some general reading on the topic for others: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum
stosto88 6y ago
"A key defence of appeasement, and especially the 1938 Munich Agreement, is that it gave Britain and France time to rearm against the Nazi threat." They declared war on Germany...
- tgv 6y ago
  After Germany had taken Austria, Sudetenland and Poland, isn't it. With a username like that, you should be careful to comment on WW2.
  - lifeisstillgood 6y ago
    Can you explain the username comment - I am assuming there is some kind of "dog whistle" involved but for the life of me I cannot get it?
    - mrcarrot 6y ago
      https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/88 https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/88
  - csunbird 6y ago
    or maybe he was born in 1988. Although his comment history is, I am not sure how to say it in PC way, unpleasant.
- hef19898 6y ago
  After Germany declared war and invaded Poland. Poland was an ally of both Britain and France. No question who started WW2, and who wanted it from the get go. It was the Germans.
- dang 6y ago
  Between this comment and the username, I think the probability tilts towards this username being trollish. That's not allowed on HN, so I've banned this account. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20trollish%20username https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... If you'd like to pick a different username we'd be happy to change it for you. Email hn@ycombinator.com in that case.
georgeecollins 6y ago
On the other hand, Germany would have been far more ready to face England and France in 1942 or 1943. In particular the Kriegsmarine was completely unready to threaten the UK, which it was much more able to do in 1914. More submarines, cruisers, battleships to complement a superior Luftwaffe. Another few years to prepare and Germany might have been able to knock the UK out of the war. So the allies may have been unwise to not confront Germany in 1938, but the fascists were probably unwise to force the issue in 1939.
- DenisM 6y ago
  > the fascists were probably unwise to force the issue in 1939. They also had to get ahead of the Soviet modernization and mobilization efforts, and they did.
MichaelMoser123 6y ago
i wonder what would have happened if strategic planning in France would not have been centered on the Maginot line. It may be that they were too much focused on defensive fortifications and didn't use the tanks they had effectively. https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/france/ww2_French_Tanks.php https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/france/ww2_French_Tanks.p... "The failure of French tanks was owed to obsolete tactical concepts, compromises which led to undermanned tanks and busy commanders, lack of air support and very poor communication aggravated by a rigid, scattered chain of command. In short, French armor could have had prevailed if better commanded and with better coordination and supplies. The ensuing losses were an incredible waste of military might, reproduced almost to the letter by the USSR in the summer of 1941." More arms here and there would not have made a big difference in the battle of France, given that the system failed as a whole.
- azernik 6y ago
  The issue wasn't so much the emphasis on the Maginot Line; it was diplomatic failure of appeasement. tl;dr French security strategy relied heavily on a strong alliance with Belgium, and they threw that away in 1936-8 Since the First World War, when Belgium's territory had been used by Germany as a route into France, Belgium had been in an alliance with France. This meant that while they built up fortifications on the German border, they expected to use the Belgian fortifications (places like Fort Eben-Emael) on its border with Germany as a northern extension of Maginot. When France and Britain failed to oppose the remilitarisation of the Rheinland in 1936, however, Belgium lost confidence that France would actually honor its security guarantees and declared neutrality again. They extended the Maginot fortifications along the Franco-Belgian border, but not didn't have the time or money to build it up to the standard of the rest of the line. Meanwhile, in 1940, instead of being manned by a fully-mobilized wartime army and probably elements of the French and British armies, the Belgian fortifications were held by skeleton crews of an only-moderately-alert neutral army.
  - MichaelMoser123 6y ago
    just like in software: when a system fails entirely everyone is blaming someone else.
paganel 6y ago
“The end of the beginning” was certainly not El Alamein but some event on the Eastern Front (I personally vote for the winter campaign of 1941-42).
- lostlogin 6y ago
  Perhaps, but El Alamein was what Churchill was discussing in his speech from which that quote comes. “ On 10 November, knowing that El Alamein was a victory, he delivered one of his most memorable war speeches to the Lord Mayor's Luncheon at the Mansion House in London, in response to the Allied victory at El Alamein: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill#%22We_shall_never_surrender%22 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill#%22We_shal... Speech here: http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/EndoBegn.html http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/EndoBegn.html
- hef19898 6y ago
  Agree. And it is important to note, that Russia did no recieve a lot of lend-lease stuff at that point in time. After that, sure they did get a lot.
ajuc 6y ago
Piłsudski proposed to do preventive invasion of nazi Germany in 1935. At the time it would have been a walk in the partk. France and Great Britain declined because they played "balance of power" and wanted Germany to be a counterbalance to soviet Russia. WW2 and Holocaust were only possible because of all the egoistic diplomatic games all the powers played at the time.
- iguy 6y ago
  What happens in the alternative universe where the west crushes Germany in 1935? It seems really hard to guess these things. Do they have the attention span to keep it divided for another half-century until things cool down, or do the hawks get voted out as crazy people, and they walk away after a few years leaving simmering hatred? Does the USSR get its act together and finish what they failed to do in 1920? Perhaps on the same side as Japan since war in the pacific was also brewing... then we get WWII with different teams. Does the US still get the bomb first? Probably. Does the communism end up occupying the space nazism has in our culture, as the great evil, or does it still sound too tempting afterwards?
  - ajuc 6y ago
    Well it's pretty unlikely it would end worse than WW2 and Holocaust.
timonoko 6y ago
If you listen Hitler-Mannerheim birthday party recording in 1942, you understand that Hitler had realized already he had fucked up totally. Hitler complains bitterly: "Russians had moved Panzer factories to the Urals and making 100 new ones every day, what can I do?". That is why Hitler even made the hazardous trip to Finland. There was no other sane person anywhere near him to ask advice. It was decided there and then that Finland will stop advancing and aim to some kind of deal with the Russians. After the defeat Germany will have some kind future, but Russians will exterminate Finnish people totally like the have done to all other Finnic nations.
- timonoko 6y ago
  Yes. Original plan was to extend Finland to Urals as this happy song so vividly describes: https://youtu.be/n9I88CXlmh4 https://youtu.be/n9I88CXlmh4
  - ifdefdebug 6y ago
    Forgot to switch accounts?
    - timonoko 6y ago
      Dont be offended Ivan. This song was a parody and joke at the time of its creation for most people.
      - ifdefdebug 6y ago
        I was referring to the somewhat strange impression that you seem to be agreeing to yourself in your second post ("Yes.") but maybe you just wanted to add something and did not notice because you're not a native English speaker (neither I am).
        timonoko 6y ago
        And I was replying "Yes" to the Down Voting Crew, who did not seem to be believe some part my theory. Unfortunately they dont have to justify their votes, so I dont truely know which part was the offending part.
shadowprofile77 6y ago
Germany got extraordinarily lucky at many points between 1938 and 1941 (just prior to Barbarossa), but two of its most decisive lucky breaks happened in 1939 and 1938. First break: in 1938 when Hitler was essentially gifted the Sudetenland by the Munich accords and by the inaction in an absurdly limp response from the Czech government. This particular region of Czechoslovakia was deeply protected by heavy military defenses and these in turn were backed up by a strong army run by a country that was (though it may seem a bit strange today) at the time one of the more robust and sophisticated industrial powers in Europe. Had the Czechoslovak government simply said "No, if you want it, you'll have to fight for it", Hitler's army would have likely suffered catastrophic losses invading the Sudeten region in 1938 and its entire later drive to conquest would have been ruined before it even really began. Instead, Beneš and Prime Minister Milan Hodža caved to pressure from Chamberlin and from Hitler as well, and lost their single best chunk of protective territory (not to mention the sheer morale loss that this entailed. From then, it was a simple thing to swallow the rest of Czechoslovakia in early 1939, further reinforcing the German war drive and industrial power. Had Hitler attempted to actually fight for the Sudetenland in 1938, his own generals knew that the Wehrmacht was still completely unfit for such an undertaking and they believed this to the point of being on the verge of a military coup attempt had it come to war. This was all (for Hitler) very luckily nullified by the completely counterproductive Munich agreement. Hitler came out of that looking like a political genius when in reality he was a frustrated fool who had desperately wanted war over the Sudeten region instead of diplomatic victory, despite it being a terribly bad idea. Next, the lucky break of 1939: Yes, the German army was superbly equipped and armed by September of that year, but it was materially and numerically inferior to that of the French forces. Thus, when Hitler sent the vast majority of his forces into Poland in September, the only thing protecting Germany in the west was a thin screen of scant divisions along the border with France. Had France actually had the drive and political will to take its declaration of war in defense of Poland seriously and energetically, it could have mobilized fully and sent the full force of 40 divisions that the country's already prepared, ready, fully deployable "Saar Offensive" plan called for into the heart of western Germany. Doing this while Hitler was busy with Poland, in mid September would have been a catastrophe for the Germans, and would have completely ruined later plans to invade France. Instead, the French only advanced 30 divisions TO the Saar border, did essentially nothing more, and shortly afterwards, once the Polish campaign was over, Germany quickly reinforced this region with its own offensive action in October, 1939, causing the French to pull back completely. What an enormously wasted opportunity for boosting morale and war footing ahead of the game and crushing obvious future German aggression.
nahuel0x 6y ago
Is interesting to read the words of Trotsky just after the Munich agreement was signed, predicting the upcoming Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the upcoming war: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/10/predict.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/10/predict.htm

143 points by diodorus 6y ago

This takes a too limited a view of the situation. These decisions were likely made on far more more factors than one of purely material. Geopolitically Germany had the the advantage of singular national focus, it had no allies to coordinate with either strategically or tactically (at this stage). The UK and France were two very separate and independent states, who were not necessarily strongly aligned, there would have been a deep rooted sense of mistrust (which has existed for centuries). Another aspect is military doctrine; France had a decidedly defensive doctrine at the time, based of the perceived success of WW1 (the victor always fighting the previous war and all that). The UK military was also very much geared for holding onto an empire and not necessarily fighting large scale military operations across Europe. A decisive military strike was just not in the nature of the nations at the time, they lacked the necessary aggressiveness and sense of purpose to carry it out. All up the French and British were a little too risk adverse, rightly so I suppose because they had a lot to lose. Unfortunately taking no action was a decision as well and one that would cost them in the long run far more dearly than they might have imagined at the time.

stevula 6y ago
I don’t think the author is trying to make the point that the UK and France were right or wrong to pursue appeasement. Rather he is trying to debunk a very specific argument that they went with that strategy in order to buy themselves time to mobilize. In fact, they were not significantly more prepared for war in 1939 than in 1938 and ended up on worse footing, according to his argument. So I think your point stands, but we can also question when someone justifies the appeasement strategy by saying that UK/France needed more time to mobilize. In fact, they were probably more taking a gamble to see how things would play out.
DenisM 6y ago
> These decisions were likely made on far more more factors than one of purely material. That's the same point the author is making: If the decision was made based on logistics the war would have to have started in 1938. So the decision was made on something else and only rationalized later with the "time to prepare" argument.
- Guthur 6y ago
  Yes, I was being a little unfair to the author. Though I'm actually not convince there is any prevaling narrative that the goal of appeasement was rearmament, most narratives are that it was born from a policy of pacifism with a desire for geniunely avoiding a conflict that some in the UK felt could not be sustained. Churchill was very much a Hawk all through the 1930s and was pretty much ignored, Chamberlain was Dove through and through not playing some game buying time for a decisive strike.
lovelyviking 6y ago
> Geopolitically Germany had the advantage ? What do you mean by this? Why “ Geopolitically”?
- Guthur 6y ago
  UK was unlikely to take on Germany alone, it couldn't mount a unilateral invasion of Germany imo. Therefore the UK needed to coordinate with a foreign power (France) both strategically and operationally. There are some examples in the battle for France where comms and coordination between UK and France General Staff was pretty woeful. Germany made one agreement with USSR to divide Poland and then basically shipped it's Army around mainland Europe stomping everyone west of Poland.
lostlogin 6y ago
> Geopolitically Germany had the the advantage of singular national focus, it had no allies to coordinate with either strategically or tactically (at this stage). I’d argue this was an advantage to Britain, not a disadvantage. Many of Britain’s ‘allies’ did as they were told and while theoretically had control of their troops destiny, actually did not. Having supplies and manpower that could be built up and trained with little or zero threat of attack was very helpful.
- Guthur 6y ago
  Which allies are you referring to? those that made up the dominion of the empire such as Canada and Australia? then yes. But they can only really supply some troops and resources. The UK needed France and they were not nearly as cooperative with each other as you might think, and France had little to no interest in an offensive war.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    > The UK needed France If the war started early, perhaps. But later on, not really. Britain and the dominion had one hell of a lot of resources. There is a good book on this topic by David Edgerton titled ‘Britain’s War Machine’. It’s largely debunking the idea of the plucky underdog and shows the great strength of Britain relatively to Germany. It was more a question of how long it would take Germany to fall, rather than anything else. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13647996 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13647996
    - Guthur 6y ago
      An invasion of mainland Europe was tough. Not only logistically but also geopolitical, as hard is might be to believe there could be a large push back from an unilateral British invasion of Europe. Also the UK had great access to men and resources, definitely better on the latter than Germany. But did it have industrial capacity necessary is the question. Most of the manufacturing was concentrated in mainland UK, by design as that's how the empire made its wealth. The UK had to purchase a lot of both naval and land assets from the US.

sillysaurusx 6y ago

If you like military history (and this style of writing) I highly recommend 100 Decisive Battles From Ancient Times To Present. It gives an overview of 100 engagements that changed the world: the strengths of each army, the expected outcome, and usually some "twist" that turned the tables. Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/100-Decisive-Battles-Ancient-Present/dp/0195143663 https://www.amazon.com/100-Decisive-Battles-Ancient-Present/... It looks like there's a PDF here, but you'll be waiting 2min: http://rogers.sharpschool.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_732815/File/tomlida/100%20Decisive%20Battles%20from%20Ancient%20Times%20to%20the%20Present2.pdf http://rogers.sharpschool.com/UserFiles/Servers/Server_73281... Here's the list of battles: - https://i.imgur.com/izTpwpG.png https://i.imgur.com/izTpwpG.png - https://i.imgur.com/sdUljXu.png https://i.imgur.com/sdUljXu.png Here's the list in text form, sorted by year, for blind users: https://gist.github.com/shawwn/099cadef6d0e2600172cd0d202b166d9 https://gist.github.com/shawwn/099cadef6d0e2600172cd0d202b16...

nostrademons 6y ago
Is there a list of indecisive battles that changed the world? Battles like Jutland, Guadalcanal, the Atlantic, the North Russia Convoys, Stalingrad, Siege of Malta, along with all the knock-down guerilla warfare in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the Syrian Civil War, etc. These are almost more informative, because a.) they seem more representative of what most war is like b.) the turning points of most wars actually fall during them, eg. Guadalcanal rather than Midway was the turning point of the WW2 Pacific Theater, the Battle of the Atlantic rather than Dunkirk or Normandy was the turning point of the European theater. c.) oftentimes, the long, brutal experience of these types of battles is what led to the logistic and technical improvements that actually wins the war Similarly, it'd be interesting to read war histories that focus on logistics and technological development. D-Day has had zillions of movies made about it; codebreaking has had one or two; and the logistics of assembling an army of millions and shipping them across the Atlantic in secrecy to land on hostile territory has had none that I know of.
- georgeecollins 6y ago
  That is a fascinated concept and a real insight into the kinds of conflicts that really do shape the world.

perl4ever 6y ago

I recommend reading George Orwell's collected letters and essays from this period of time, to get a feel for what it was like living through it without the benefit of hindsight. (this is up to 1940) https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Essays-Journalism-Letters-George/dp/1567921337 https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Essays-Journalism-Letters-G... There are other volumes, such as this covering 1940-43: https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Essays-Journalism-Letters-George/dp/1567921345 https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Essays-Journalism-Letters-G...

lostlogin 6y ago
His other books are also great - though not particularly relevant to the subject at hand. ‘Down and out in Paris and London’ is painful but eye opening. ‘Homage to Catalonia’ is good. In it, Orwell’s description of trench warfare is completely horrifying, it made my heart race reading it.

Synaesthesia 6y ago

Or maybe the plan was to have Germany attack the Soviet Union from the beginning. They could have easily defeated Germany prior to the war, had they tried.

simonh 6y ago
Part of the point of the article is we don't need to guess, the people involved explained why they did what they did. We also have their correspondences and memoirs, and those of their confidantes and associates to back that up. We can also examine whether their actual actions match up with such speculation.
sien 6y ago
The Poles beat the Soviets between the wars : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War The Germans rolled the Poles in weeks at the start of WWII. It's far from clear that without US help the Soviets could have defeated the Germans.
- anticodon 6y ago
  All countries wanted Germany to attack Soviet Union: UK, France, USA. It's not a secret. It was almost openly said that the best outcome is for Germany and USSR to weaken each other so much, that USA can join later and kill off the significantly weakened party. It didn't really matter whether Germany or USSR will win because it was assumed that the winner would be too weakened to fight one more war. USA even secretly helped Germany until 1943.
  - rurban 6y ago
    Not that secretly. The major US players, press, finance, industry were all open NAZI supporters. They financed Hitler and the industry to start the war against communism. Eg they gave them free oil patents, took over IG Farben, the chemical industry to produce the needed oil for the tanks to invade Russia. They gave them huge credit lines to overcome the desastrous WW1 reparation payments. They financed the military buildup. All played well for western fascists until Japan sided with Germany to take over China, South East Asia and esp. Singapore. When Singapore was threatened, US changed sides. The US certainly never thought Russia will win over Germany. That was their nightmare scenario. Workers rights, socialism. This would have killed their idea of freedom of private contracts over civil rights. Workers would demand 10 hours workdays. Or even less. Workers demanding their rights couldn't just be shot down, as in the Coal wars. Smaller companies threatening the big ones could not just be eliminated by the national guard and army, as in the Texas oil war, and the Railroad commission. The German NAZi system was the big goal of the US industry. A fancy "democracy", well liked all over the world, with a bright film industry, and a beloved charismatic leader.

etrabroline 6y ago

This author takes the perspective of Great Britain's war planners. This is not an unreasonable starting point for an understanding of the military readiness of the nations that would eventually go on to fight in the war, but a full understanding mustn't stop there. War planners always assume war will break out because that is their job, and given that Britain and France did ultimately decide to declare war on Germany, the war can appear like an inevitability after the fact. In truth, no one at the time saw it as inevitable and indeed it wasn't. The case P. E. Caquet should be making (and isn't) would be that Germany's ambitions extended beyond the pre-Versailles central European boundaries of Germany and Austria. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War#/media/File:Europe_1871_map_en.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War#/media/Fil... Those boarders were surely larger, but had existed just 19 years prior and did not threaten the existence of France or Britain in all the years between German Unification and the Versailles treaty. Nothing in Germany's public proclamations nor the documents uncovered after the war suggest this hidden larger ambition, despite it being central to Churchill's case for granting the war guarantee to Poland (and his ultimate declaration of war against Germany) The underlying reality is that England has always been the weakest of the European powers due to its small population. It built its empire with trade, espionage and its navy not large armies. England made itself more relatively powerful by playing the larger continental players against each other and against non-Europeans, always taking the side of the weaker countries against the strongest. England aided the Prussians to defeat Napoleon, and the Ottoman Turks against Russia in Crimea. The public arguments made at the time to morally justify England's geopolitical stratagems should not be uncritically assumed to be true and do not constitute a sound starting point for a correct historical understanding of World War II.

watwut 6y ago
Isn't the quest for living space that supposedly hidden ambition? Germany was not seeking pre Versailles borders. They were seeking collonies. That was pretty significant part of Hitlers ideology.
- cheschire 6y ago
  Some general reading on the topic for others: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum

stosto88 6y ago

"A key defence of appeasement, and especially the 1938 Munich Agreement, is that it gave Britain and France time to rearm against the Nazi threat." They declared war on Germany...

tgv 6y ago
After Germany had taken Austria, Sudetenland and Poland, isn't it. With a username like that, you should be careful to comment on WW2.
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  Can you explain the username comment - I am assuming there is some kind of "dog whistle" involved but for the life of me I cannot get it?
  - mrcarrot 6y ago
    https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/88 https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/88
- csunbird 6y ago
  or maybe he was born in 1988. Although his comment history is, I am not sure how to say it in PC way, unpleasant.
hef19898 6y ago
After Germany declared war and invaded Poland. Poland was an ally of both Britain and France. No question who started WW2, and who wanted it from the get go. It was the Germans.
dang 6y ago
Between this comment and the username, I think the probability tilts towards this username being trollish. That's not allowed on HN, so I've banned this account. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20trollish%20username https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... If you'd like to pick a different username we'd be happy to change it for you. Email hn@ycombinator.com in that case.

georgeecollins 6y ago

On the other hand, Germany would have been far more ready to face England and France in 1942 or 1943. In particular the Kriegsmarine was completely unready to threaten the UK, which it was much more able to do in 1914. More submarines, cruisers, battleships to complement a superior Luftwaffe. Another few years to prepare and Germany might have been able to knock the UK out of the war. So the allies may have been unwise to not confront Germany in 1938, but the fascists were probably unwise to force the issue in 1939.

DenisM 6y ago
> the fascists were probably unwise to force the issue in 1939. They also had to get ahead of the Soviet modernization and mobilization efforts, and they did.

MichaelMoser123 6y ago

i wonder what would have happened if strategic planning in France would not have been centered on the Maginot line. It may be that they were too much focused on defensive fortifications and didn't use the tanks they had effectively. https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/france/ww2_French_Tanks.php https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/france/ww2_French_Tanks.p... "The failure of French tanks was owed to obsolete tactical concepts, compromises which led to undermanned tanks and busy commanders, lack of air support and very poor communication aggravated by a rigid, scattered chain of command. In short, French armor could have had prevailed if better commanded and with better coordination and supplies. The ensuing losses were an incredible waste of military might, reproduced almost to the letter by the USSR in the summer of 1941." More arms here and there would not have made a big difference in the battle of France, given that the system failed as a whole.

azernik 6y ago
The issue wasn't so much the emphasis on the Maginot Line; it was diplomatic failure of appeasement. tl;dr French security strategy relied heavily on a strong alliance with Belgium, and they threw that away in 1936-8 Since the First World War, when Belgium's territory had been used by Germany as a route into France, Belgium had been in an alliance with France. This meant that while they built up fortifications on the German border, they expected to use the Belgian fortifications (places like Fort Eben-Emael) on its border with Germany as a northern extension of Maginot. When France and Britain failed to oppose the remilitarisation of the Rheinland in 1936, however, Belgium lost confidence that France would actually honor its security guarantees and declared neutrality again. They extended the Maginot fortifications along the Franco-Belgian border, but not didn't have the time or money to build it up to the standard of the rest of the line. Meanwhile, in 1940, instead of being manned by a fully-mobilized wartime army and probably elements of the French and British armies, the Belgian fortifications were held by skeleton crews of an only-moderately-alert neutral army.
- MichaelMoser123 6y ago
  just like in software: when a system fails entirely everyone is blaming someone else.

paganel 6y ago

“The end of the beginning” was certainly not El Alamein but some event on the Eastern Front (I personally vote for the winter campaign of 1941-42).

lostlogin 6y ago
Perhaps, but El Alamein was what Churchill was discussing in his speech from which that quote comes. “ On 10 November, knowing that El Alamein was a victory, he delivered one of his most memorable war speeches to the Lord Mayor's Luncheon at the Mansion House in London, in response to the Allied victory at El Alamein: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill#%22We_shall_never_surrender%22 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill#%22We_shal... Speech here: http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/EndoBegn.html http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/EndoBegn.html
hef19898 6y ago
Agree. And it is important to note, that Russia did no recieve a lot of lend-lease stuff at that point in time. After that, sure they did get a lot.

ajuc 6y ago

Piłsudski proposed to do preventive invasion of nazi Germany in 1935. At the time it would have been a walk in the partk. France and Great Britain declined because they played "balance of power" and wanted Germany to be a counterbalance to soviet Russia. WW2 and Holocaust were only possible because of all the egoistic diplomatic games all the powers played at the time.

iguy 6y ago
What happens in the alternative universe where the west crushes Germany in 1935? It seems really hard to guess these things. Do they have the attention span to keep it divided for another half-century until things cool down, or do the hawks get voted out as crazy people, and they walk away after a few years leaving simmering hatred? Does the USSR get its act together and finish what they failed to do in 1920? Perhaps on the same side as Japan since war in the pacific was also brewing... then we get WWII with different teams. Does the US still get the bomb first? Probably. Does the communism end up occupying the space nazism has in our culture, as the great evil, or does it still sound too tempting afterwards?
- ajuc 6y ago
  Well it's pretty unlikely it would end worse than WW2 and Holocaust.

timonoko 6y ago

If you listen Hitler-Mannerheim birthday party recording in 1942, you understand that Hitler had realized already he had fucked up totally. Hitler complains bitterly: "Russians had moved Panzer factories to the Urals and making 100 new ones every day, what can I do?". That is why Hitler even made the hazardous trip to Finland. There was no other sane person anywhere near him to ask advice. It was decided there and then that Finland will stop advancing and aim to some kind of deal with the Russians. After the defeat Germany will have some kind future, but Russians will exterminate Finnish people totally like the have done to all other Finnic nations.

timonoko 6y ago
Yes. Original plan was to extend Finland to Urals as this happy song so vividly describes: https://youtu.be/n9I88CXlmh4 https://youtu.be/n9I88CXlmh4
- ifdefdebug 6y ago
  Forgot to switch accounts?
  - timonoko 6y ago
    Dont be offended Ivan. This song was a parody and joke at the time of its creation for most people.
    - ifdefdebug 6y ago
      I was referring to the somewhat strange impression that you seem to be agreeing to yourself in your second post ("Yes.") but maybe you just wanted to add something and did not notice because you're not a native English speaker (neither I am).
      - timonoko 6y ago
        And I was replying "Yes" to the Down Voting Crew, who did not seem to be believe some part my theory. Unfortunately they dont have to justify their votes, so I dont truely know which part was the offending part.

shadowprofile77 6y ago

Germany got extraordinarily lucky at many points between 1938 and 1941 (just prior to Barbarossa), but two of its most decisive lucky breaks happened in 1939 and 1938. First break: in 1938 when Hitler was essentially gifted the Sudetenland by the Munich accords and by the inaction in an absurdly limp response from the Czech government. This particular region of Czechoslovakia was deeply protected by heavy military defenses and these in turn were backed up by a strong army run by a country that was (though it may seem a bit strange today) at the time one of the more robust and sophisticated industrial powers in Europe. Had the Czechoslovak government simply said "No, if you want it, you'll have to fight for it", Hitler's army would have likely suffered catastrophic losses invading the Sudeten region in 1938 and its entire later drive to conquest would have been ruined before it even really began. Instead, Beneš and Prime Minister Milan Hodža caved to pressure from Chamberlin and from Hitler as well, and lost their single best chunk of protective territory (not to mention the sheer morale loss that this entailed. From then, it was a simple thing to swallow the rest of Czechoslovakia in early 1939, further reinforcing the German war drive and industrial power. Had Hitler attempted to actually fight for the Sudetenland in 1938, his own generals knew that the Wehrmacht was still completely unfit for such an undertaking and they believed this to the point of being on the verge of a military coup attempt had it come to war. This was all (for Hitler) very luckily nullified by the completely counterproductive Munich agreement. Hitler came out of that looking like a political genius when in reality he was a frustrated fool who had desperately wanted war over the Sudeten region instead of diplomatic victory, despite it being a terribly bad idea. Next, the lucky break of 1939: Yes, the German army was superbly equipped and armed by September of that year, but it was materially and numerically inferior to that of the French forces. Thus, when Hitler sent the vast majority of his forces into Poland in September, the only thing protecting Germany in the west was a thin screen of scant divisions along the border with France. Had France actually had the drive and political will to take its declaration of war in defense of Poland seriously and energetically, it could have mobilized fully and sent the full force of 40 divisions that the country's already prepared, ready, fully deployable "Saar Offensive" plan called for into the heart of western Germany. Doing this while Hitler was busy with Poland, in mid September would have been a catastrophe for the Germans, and would have completely ruined later plans to invade France. Instead, the French only advanced 30 divisions TO the Saar border, did essentially nothing more, and shortly afterwards, once the Polish campaign was over, Germany quickly reinforced this region with its own offensive action in October, 1939, causing the French to pull back completely. What an enormously wasted opportunity for boosting morale and war footing ahead of the game and crushing obvious future German aggression.

nahuel0x 6y ago

Is interesting to read the words of Trotsky just after the Munich agreement was signed, predicting the upcoming Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the upcoming war: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/10/predict.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/10/predict.htm