Posted on 10/01/2008 5:14:15 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
The famous quote is in the second image down.
Indeed. Put me on your ping list, Homer. So many of today’s problems could be headed off if history were properly studied.
The answer, paradoxically, to both questions, we now know, is No. All the generals close to Hitler who survived the war agree that had it not been for Munich Hitler would have attacked Czechoslovakia on October 1, 1938, and they presume that, whatever momentary hesitations there might have been in London, Paris and Moscow, in the end Britain, France and Russia would have been drawn into the war.
And—what is most important to this history at this point—the German generals agree unanimously that Germany would have lost the war, and in short order. The argument of the supporters of Chamberlain and Daladier—and they were in the great majority at the time—that Munich saved the West not only from war but from defeat in war and, incidentally, preserved London and Paris from being wiped out by the Luftwaffe's murderous bombing has been impressively refuted, so far as concern the last two points, by those in a position to know best: the German generals, and especially those generals who were closest to Hitler and who supported him from beginning to end the most fanatically.
The leading light among the latter was General Keitel, chief of OKW, toady to Hitler and constantly at his side. When asked on the stand at the Nuremberg trial what the reaction of the German generals was to Munich he replied:
We were extraordinarily happy that it had not come to a military operation because ... we had always been of the opinion that our means of attack against the frontier fortifications of Czechoslovakia were insufficient. From a purely military point of view we lacked the means for an attack which involved the piercing of the frontier fortifications.
William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 423
You are added. Thanks for your interest. If you missed my posts for the last two days you might want to go back and check them out. (Yesterday’s especially didn’t get much response since Free Republic was recovering from an upgrade.) By Oct. 1 the damage was done. Much of the damage was done on Sept. 29 and 30 at Munich.
Higher education=FAIL
I hear you. When they reach an apex like this it can take a lot of time. I’m working 12 hour days right now anyway which makes it worse. I did finally finish Agent Zigzag a couple of days ago and have been rereading Shrier. I think I’m going to pick up Code Name Tricycle next. (Kevmo suggested it). He is another British double agent that was handled by Ian Flemming and is the basis for Ian’s James Bond.
Everything Hitler did was a colossal bluff. In all crises up to Munich, he never had his bluff called. However, from that point on, virtually all of Hitler’s bluffs were called. In every situation but one (Operation Sealion, the cross channel invasion of Britain) he went ahead and played his cards. That was the only time he folded.
Most of his gambles he lost. He would have been a terrible poker player once the canny players figured him out.
I believe that had Chamberlain and Daladier called his bluff, Hitler would have gone to war in 1938. I believe the Czechs could have held out through the winter, and the Allies would have done nothing in the West as they did a year later. In the spring the Wehrmacht would have their act together and would have overwhelmed Czechoslovakia.
“Higher education=FAIL”
I agree. Your post reminds me of one of my favorite Monty Python skits, “The Funniest Joke in the World,” where a joke writer composes a joke so funny that anyone who hears it dies laughing. It was used to launch “joke warfare” against the Germans.
The funny part was when the narrator declares that the new joke was vastly superior than Britain’s pre-war joke, and they cut to the clip of Chamberlain waving around his scrap of paper. I saw the humor and thought it hilarious, to the extent anything about Munich was funny.
Today, because of our crappy educational system, how many people under 25 would get the joke?
Most telling is that Hitler went back and told his generals, “Our enemies are little worms, I saw them in Munich.”
Must have really sucked to have been a baseball fan in Philadelphia in ‘38.
Maybe Harry has taken up with Sadie. (See the following personal.)
Wow. A combined 88 1/2 games out. That is impressive.
I love that skit. And your right not many under 25 would get that joke. My children will (oldest does), but too many to not realize the importance (my wife included) in having a firm understanding of our history. It is very easy to repeat the same mistakes when you are ignorant of the old ones.
Thanks for the thread.
Ping.
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