Posted on 05/14/2015 4:52:09 AM PDT by Kaslin
May 8 marked the end of World War II in Europe 70 years ago -- a horrific conflict that is still fought over by historians.
More than 60 million people perished -- some 50 million of them in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and China.
The prewar Soviet state in the 1920s and 1930s had killed perhaps 20 million of its own citizens in purges, exiles, collectivizations, forced famines and show trials. Then it lost an estimated 25 million soldiers and civilians to the German army on the Eastern Front. Hitler's Germany by late 1942 had occupied almost 1 million square miles of Soviet ground.
The Soviet Red Army would eventually be responsible for three quarters of Germany's WWII casualties, but at a cost of approximately 9 million dead of its own combatants. Nevertheless, the Allied defeat of the Axis powers is more complicated than just the monumental and heroic sacrifice of the Soviet soldier.
World War II started largely because the Soviet Union had had assured Hitler that the two powers could partner up to divide Poland. With his eastern rear thus secure, Hitler then would be free to fight a one-front war in the West against the European democracies.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
valid points-
I always wondered if the war in Europe started
just 2 years later- with Germany able to actually
have 300 submarines AT sea all the time-
if their Army was outfitted close to 10 million-
if they Actually helped to train the Italians-
would they have won?
Right on. Two Centuries spent throwing off the yoke of serfdom or suffering its effects through pointless conflicts and here we are witnessing a class of elite statists doing their best to revive it.
Agreed.
What was AH THINKING we he declared war on U.S. in December 1941?
At that precise time his overextended armies were freezing to death just outside of Moscow.
Did he think his Luftwaffe was going to be able to pound U.S. cities?
Did he think his U-Boats would be able to penetrate the Great Lakes?
Did he think his Panzer divisions would be able to roll over the fruited plain?
What exactly was AH thinking by declaring war on U.S.?
Another reality was that France had lost all stomach for war after losing 1.7 million men 25 years before in the “war to end all wars”, and Britain couldn’t do much alone (as evidenced between the time of France’s surrender and our entry into the war).
The Brits had the same problem and accounts for a lot of the tactical criticism leveled against Monty. Not to speak to his asshole personality. But Generals will be Generals.
At least Chamberlain was not an islamist thus destroying by the day.
Britain could at least force the people more strongly than the French, who simply elected a left-wing government and did little. Britain did the same in WWI (starting conscription late and such); many felt that they were assisting France rather than shouldering the war as the main player. In WWII the Brits knew there were parts of an empire to suppress afterwards that would be reclaimed from the Japanese, and were fighting both wars (Europe/Pacific) simultaneously.
Many whom were sacrificed by Stalin, not Hitler.
Didn't matter if he declared war or not, Britain declared war on Japan, thus all restrictions to aiding Britain were gone, and it would have only been a matter of time before something would have triggered a state of war between Germany and the US.
Chamberlain was not an islamist as they are now, but making nice to Hitler who was hand in hand with the Islamist states was surely an appeaser to it.
Not “Europe” — Western Europe and Russia.
Read Anthony Sutton’s “Wall St. and the Rise of Hitler”
What was Hitler thinking when he declared war on U.S.? There are many theories, none of which makes Hitler’s decision seem rational. One view is that Hitler felt if he declared war, he could take the U-Boat War to the U.S. and keep us from continuing to supply Britain. (The Germans did take the U-boat war to the U.S. and really raised hell for a time.) Still, it seems to me that Hitler gave Roosevelt the world’s best early Christmas present. If Hitler hadn’t declared war, FDR would have had to find a reason to get us into the war against Germany and sell that reason to the public, whose rage was entirely directed at Japan after Pearl Harbor.
How was it a Hoax????????
Not entirely sure. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor (another move equally as insane as Hitler’s declaration of war on U.S.) the U.S. would have had its hands full in the Pacific.
Getting back to Hitler in December 1941, his troops are literally freezing to death deep inside the USSR, lines over extended, short on supplies, exhausted, Soviet defenses are strengthening. It was an idiotic idea to invade the USSR to begin with. Now he wants to wage war on the world’s foremost economic power protected by two vast oceans? What sense did that make? I think Hitler was on something when he made that decision.
“What exactly was AH thinking by declaring war on U.S.?”
1. He believed Japan to be much stronger than they actually were and the US would be tied up in the pacific.
2. He believed that it was only a matter of time before the US declared war on Germany since Germany was ‘allied’ with Japan.
IOW’s, he was doomed. He had no choice.
I still don’t get it. He didn’t need to declare war on U.S. just days after Pearl Harbor. He had his hands full in Russia in December 1941. Declaring war on the US should have been the last thing on his mind. His troops were dying of cold, starvation, and exhaustion on the Eastern Front by this time. Russian defenses were strengthening, a massive Russian counteroffensive was only weeks away. Of course AH couldn’t have known that on the day he declared war on the US. But there is no doubt that situation was turning against him as the brutal Russian winter was just arriving. Pure madness.
” Declaring war on the US should have been the last thing on his mind.”
Japan’s devastating attack on the US was his wake-up call.
He over-estimated Japan’s power and under-estimated the capability of the US.
Besides, it was damned if you do, damned if you don’t for Hitler at that time.
We simply changed Eastern Europe from Nazi satellites to Soviet satellites, and while preaching about freedom for Europe we were helping them hold onto their colonies. As for Japan, they went from allies in WWI to enemies because they expected an earlier Roosevelt’s pledge about their expanded role in the Pacific to be honored.
At this point most justifications for the war center around Nazi & Japanese atrocities, which certainly weren’t the reasons given to the US public at the time.
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