Posted on 08/16/2023 2:25:31 AM PDT by ganeemead
This is the German version of how WW2 got started in Europe
Now, as far as I am concerned, Adolf Hitler was a goofball and a slave to his own racist ideology and if there was a reason for anybody to like the guy, I wouldn't know what it was.
Nonetheless, if anybody were to ask me who started WW2 in Europe, I'd not hesitate to answer the British and the Poles.
Pat Buchanan has said that the Brits were handing out war guarantees like they were cotton candy at the time and stopped the Poles from dealing with Germany in a rational manner wrt the situation with Danzig, a German city that they had no business owning or ruling. Likewise, in March of last year, Russians and Ukrainians were both ready to sign a rational treaty when Boris Johnson flies in through the window like SuperMan and blows the entire thing up, telling the ukies that England and Nato had their backs absolutely and that they could defeat Russia rather than betraying the entire western world by signing the treaty.
In other words, the British system for recruiting war proxies has not changed since 1939. The analogy is stunning.
Proof?
That was always the plan. Hitler always felt Czechoslovakia had no right to exist, and Germany should rule over all former lands of A-H, and certainly not allow for the possibility that those lands could be used to stage troops from England and France. The Sudetendland was just a convenient excuse, since basically controlling the Sudetenland pretty much made the rest of Czechoslovakia defenseless. If Germany went to war with Czechoslovakia in 1938, it would not have been the cakewalk, many thought it would have been.
Britain was willing to pressure the Poles on Danzig, but it wouldn’t have mattered, Hitler already decided to go “all in” and take all of Poland, even if Danzig was returned to the Reich.
Plus there’s that little matter of the fact that Poland had 3 million Jews, Hitler no doubt wanted to get control over that population, and even though there was anti-semitism in Poland, and Jews were treated as second-class citizens there even before the war, that didn’t matter, Hitler wanted them at the very least as “hostages” when his ambitions ultimately expanded further East.
Memories of 1920 were too fresh in Polish minds.
And remember, when then Soviets did enter Poland, the second time, it took almost 50 years to get rid of them.
I'm not sure how that is relevant to Pearl Harbor several thousand miles away.
We already know that Japanese troops landed in Northern Malaya a few hours before the Peal Harbor strike. We also know it took hours for word to reach the British command in Singapore, who then had to send it to the War Office in London, which then had to tell Churchill, by which time Peal Harbor was already being bombed. Communications in 1941 were primitive.
Of course that’s with hindsight. The Poles figured Britain and France would be enough to deter the Germans, not an unreasonable assumption to have at the time.
Well, they had a lot of help from the Slovaks.
I was in Bratislava giving a few lectures in 1991, still a city in Czechoslovakia. I had learned a few words in Czech, including "dovedeno" for goodbye. Our wonderful hosts had gathered to say farewell, and as I shook hands, I said "dovedeno".
Immediately, the mood changed. NO!!!! they said. "dovedenYA"!!!
There's a lot we have to learn about 1938-39, starting with Austria.
Funny thing is, when Hitler came to power in 1934, he thought Poland was a potential ally. He admired Piłsudki, for what he did against the Bolsheviks in 1920. He even attended a memorial service for Piłsudski, and even had an honor guard watching his grave in Krakow.
Looking back, the Japanese did us a favor at Pearl. The battleships they damaged would not have been nearly as useful as the Admirals thought, the planes they destroyed on the ground were obsolete and could not have matched the Zero.
The sailors and pilots mostly survived Pearl, and went after the Japs in more capable replacements.
Hitler and Clemenceau should be bound together in Hell for all of eternity.
There were also some significant surface actions in the Pacific that were almost entirely between gunships where a little bit more on the American side would have helped. The two Battles of the Java Sea, night actions at Guadalcanal, and several engagements in the Battle of Leyte Gulf come to mind.
In addition to the ships lost, the deaths of over two thousand experienced sailors at Pearl Harbor was a major blow.
Moreover, if properly handled, even the obsolete American fighter aircraft of the early years could do damage as bomb and torpedo trucks. And as Claire Chennault proved in China, the way to use obsolete fighters against Japanese Zeros and their kin was by dropping from altitude, hitting them with a single close range firing pass, and then diving away without a dogfight. Before Pearl Harbor, Chennault sent an assessment to the War Department saying as much but it was foolishly ignored.
In the event, US pilots developed the so-called Thatch Weave tactic for fending off Zeros in obsolete fighters with minimally trained pilots. It worked well enough. An veteran dive bomber pilot also told me of how he survived attacks against his unescorted dive bomber by Zeros.
Bill C. trained his tail gunner to watch for a Zero closing range, levelling off, and taking aim. Then, with that as a warning, he would chop the power, skid, and side slip his aircraft to throw the Zero off, sometime even setting up a shot for his tail gunner. Bill never lost a tail gunner or an aircraft.
As it was, the value of the Navy's new Grumman fighters was a legendary sturdiness that permitted novice fighter pilots to make mistakes but survive. Heavy redundant framing; large, durable air cooled radial engines burning high octane fuel; armor plating to protect the pilot; and self-sealing gas tanks brought many American pilots home. Japanese aircraft without them were shot down in increasing numbers as American pilots survived and became more skilled in combat.
If your not sure how that is relevant do a little research into it.
Nope, the sub is documented as leaving port on 28 Nov 1941.
https://forum.worldofwarships.eu/topic/2513-hmns-k-xvii-conspiracy-theory/
The comments rip the theory to shreds.
Good job.
I knew you could do it.
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