So, no doubt, in 1940 at leasst one of these peace efforts will pay off, and what could have been a very deadly war -- resulting in the deaths of thousands, possibly tens of thousands -- will be avoided, and sanity will be restored to civilized men everywhere.I wish I shared your optimism. Roosevelt and Pius XII working for peace is all very well, but this Hitler character is a wild card. I just don't trust him. He acts as though he doesn't really want peace at all. And he seems to be firmly in control of the German government. He could launch an attack against the Maginot line any time now. Even though it would probably be suicidal, it would be very costly in human terms for the French as well as the Germans. With Goering's air force, or Luftwaffe, as they call it over there, supporting a "Blitzkrieg" attack on France, he might just get lucky and prevail. He has had remarkable good fortune so far, has he not? If that happens he is just a short hop across the Channel from Great Britain. It is not out of the question that next year by this time Hitler could be the new master in both Paris and London. What will FDR do then, do you suppose?
"It is not out of the question that next year by this time Hitler could be the new master in both Paris and London. What will FDR do then, do you suppose?" Isn't President Roosevelt preparing military budget requests that are six times greater than his 1939 requests? (The military will grow another 100 times beyond that by war's end). So I suspect he's already thinking the unthinkable.
And something else I hear rumors of -- it's still super top secret, so if I told you too much I'd have to kill you -- but Boeing Aircraft has already presented plans for the largest bomber ever conceived. Might look something like this..
But it's far to expensive, no way could it ever be built. I think FDR is just daydreaming...
And something else... and I know they'll kill me if they find out I mentioned anything to anyone, but that crazy Einstein fellow from Germany, he has some nutty ideas about making really, really high explosives, and they could never be built -- vastly too expensive -- but I hear that FDR is taking him seriously... don't tell ANYONE!
So maybe Roosevelt is as crazy as that Einstein?
But look, all of this is total speculation -- that's because the French have spent more money on their Maginot Line than any defensive works in history, and there's just no way that Hitler, wild as he is, is nuts enough to send the German army to their doom against French guns.
So, not to worry -- all will be well. Peace will be found, and the world will step back from the brink of conflagration, or in a more biblical term, a Holocaust. No doubt about it... ;-)
I think I have to agree with Homer on this one. It was frighting how fast the Nazis took out Poland. They may not have been the biggest army in Europe but I would have thought they would have lasted longer. It seemed like they were then all of a sudden the entire mood of the stories I was reading in the paper changed and Poland was crumbling.
My impression is now that the Germans are just waiting for the Spring to start their next offensive, when they are more likely to have better weather for an offensive. Come spring I wouldn’t be surprised if the Germans came sweeping in through the Belgium much like the Schlieffen Plan had them doing in 1914. I bet they come through Belgium again and I hope that Gamelin there in France is moving units to employ them to extend the Maginot Line since that seems to be what they are relying on. The French to have good tanks like the Char-B and the Hotchkiss and a lot of them. I hope they can use them as good as the Germans seem to use their Panzers.