3 ms·

The Battle of Britain is generally accepted to have had a peace treaty with Britain as a (failed) strategic objective, thus putting it “out of the picture”.

by lovecg 4y ago

avodonosov 4y ago
I've read, the Battle of Britan can indeed be called a failed attempt to conquer Britan. Althouhg not ended with a peace treaty, wikipedia even says: "Hitler believed that the United Kingdom's refusal to end the war was based on the hope that the United States and the Soviet Union would enter the war against Germany sooner or later." - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II So I am not sure it is really "out of the question". Overall, the Orwell's sentence is not very insightful, imho.
- nl 4y ago
  The prescience of Orwell's comment is that "Russia's turn would come" rather than any semantics about exactly what "England is out of the picture" meant. Germany and Russia were in a military alliance and were dividing Poland between them when Orwell wrote that. So yes, it was very prescient.
  - avodonosov 4y ago
    I am not a historian of course, but by that time I don't think serious politicians had illusions about the upcoming war between Russian and Germany. Russia was not in alliance with Germany. The Non-Aggression pact with Russia was similar to the pacts Germany had with other countries. For example, Germany had a Non-Agression pact with Poland, and Poland took pieces from Czechoslovakia when Hitler took Sudetenland in 1938. This didn't prevent Hitler from attacking Poland. The Soviet-German pact was just buying time in preparation to the future war. The Soviet Union had been seeking to create a collective security military alliance with France and Britan against Germany, because it considered the war with Germany inevitable. But after the negotiations failed, Soviets made the pact with Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact#Munich_Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... We should remember, this Orwell's text is a newspaper article, so may be a propaganda to a degree. For example, Orwell himself multiple times called his work for BBC a propaganda - see his resignation letter to BBC and the famous quote from his diary: > Our radio strategy is even more hopeless than our military strategy. Nevertheless one rapidly becomes propaganda-minded and develops a cunning one did not previously have. Eg. I am regularly alleging in my newsletters that the Japanese are plotting to attack Russia. I don’t believe this to be so, but the calculation is: ... https://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/14-3-42/ https://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/14-3-42/ In this article what is interesting to me is how he explains that Hitler poses as a Christ or Prometheus, a self-sacrificing heroic victim. (Because I am not familiar with Mein Kampf and Hitler's rhetoric in general). The rest - not a revelation. BTW, he attributes the "Better an end with horror than a horror without end" to Hitler, but that's wrong, the phrase has a different author.

The Battle of Britain is generally accepted to have had a peace treaty with Britain as a (failed) strategic objective, thus putting it “out of the picture”.

by lovecg 4y ago

The Battle of Britain is generally accepted to have had a peace treaty with Britain as a (failed) strategic objective, thus putting it “out of the picture”.

avodonosov 4y ago

I've read, the Battle of Britan can indeed be called a failed attempt to conquer Britan. Althouhg not ended with a peace treaty, wikipedia even says: "Hitler believed that the United Kingdom's refusal to end the war was based on the hope that the United States and the Soviet Union would enter the war against Germany sooner or later." - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II So I am not sure it is really "out of the question". Overall, the Orwell's sentence is not very insightful, imho.

nl 4y ago
The prescience of Orwell's comment is that "Russia's turn would come" rather than any semantics about exactly what "England is out of the picture" meant. Germany and Russia were in a military alliance and were dividing Poland between them when Orwell wrote that. So yes, it was very prescient.
- avodonosov 4y ago
  I am not a historian of course, but by that time I don't think serious politicians had illusions about the upcoming war between Russian and Germany. Russia was not in alliance with Germany. The Non-Aggression pact with Russia was similar to the pacts Germany had with other countries. For example, Germany had a Non-Agression pact with Poland, and Poland took pieces from Czechoslovakia when Hitler took Sudetenland in 1938. This didn't prevent Hitler from attacking Poland. The Soviet-German pact was just buying time in preparation to the future war. The Soviet Union had been seeking to create a collective security military alliance with France and Britan against Germany, because it considered the war with Germany inevitable. But after the negotiations failed, Soviets made the pact with Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact#Munich_Conference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... We should remember, this Orwell's text is a newspaper article, so may be a propaganda to a degree. For example, Orwell himself multiple times called his work for BBC a propaganda - see his resignation letter to BBC and the famous quote from his diary: > Our radio strategy is even more hopeless than our military strategy. Nevertheless one rapidly becomes propaganda-minded and develops a cunning one did not previously have. Eg. I am regularly alleging in my newsletters that the Japanese are plotting to attack Russia. I don’t believe this to be so, but the calculation is: ... https://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/14-3-42/ https://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/14-3-42/ In this article what is interesting to me is how he explains that Hitler poses as a Christ or Prometheus, a self-sacrificing heroic victim. (Because I am not familiar with Mein Kampf and Hitler's rhetoric in general). The rest - not a revelation. BTW, he attributes the "Better an end with horror than a horror without end" to Hitler, but that's wrong, the phrase has a different author.