Not entirely true. I have been posting updates from Shirer's book that show the planning for the invasion (Case White) is well along. Hitler has even settled on the date of 1 September as the probable date of execution. When Chamberlain announced that Great Britain would guarantee Poland against outside aggression (a mostly empty promise) he had the support of most of Parliament, including Churchill. People with access to information and the willingness to look at it realistically knew that the probable outcome would be a general war with Germany. And probably before the year was out.
yes, thats certainly true. what i meant was, if you look at the pre war and post war world and map, and the objectives everyone had, none were met and the world was vastly different than they ever imagined.
obviously, things didnt turn out a s germany thought, but the same is true for england. their two basic objectives to maintain a free europe and prevent the occupation of poland, neither worked. at the end of the war, communism dominated eastern europe and poland wa occupied by a totalitarian power.
so everyone failed.
Reading this is like reading about live in ancient Pompeii the day before Vesuvius erupted, except that Pompeii was just one small city, and this was a world about to be wiped out, with hundreds of millions killed or wounded without most of them realizing what was coming. A bit like the attitude of the US before the Civil War, no one having a clue as to the level of a catastrophe that was coming.
I wonder if folks will be thinking the same about us, a few years from now.
I remember the British were putting all of their newspaper archives online but its apparently only accessible to researchers or something right now.