Good Lord, how stupid can you be?
The reason the British and the French allied with Poland is due to Hitler’s history of breaking agreements. The entire point of the Munich agreement in October of 1938 was to settle the German border with Czechoslovakia.
Instead the Germans tuned around in March of 1939 and occupied the rest of the Czech Lands and turned Slovakia into a puppet state.
Hitler could not be trusted, he was never going to negotiate in good faith over the Polish Corridor or Danzig’s status. His goal was to dismember Poland, and he struck a deal with Stalin to do it. The British/French guarantee to the Poles was a last ditch attempt to stave off a War which Hitler was determined to start.
> Hitler could not be trusted, he was never going to negotiate in good faith over the Polish Corridor or Danzig’s status. <
Absolutely, 100% correct. I don’t see how anyone could doubt that. I was a huge admirer of Pat Buchanan until he started to push the nonsense that Churchill was responsible for WW 2. The British should have just let Hitler have Poland, says Pat. No big deal.
For some reason, Buchanan is determined to let Hitler off the hook here. It seriously makes me wonder what Buchanan‘s core beliefs really are.
Hitler was a creature of the Treaty of Versailles.
Now, where the Poles may have goofed, and I say this is one who is very sympathetic to the Poles, is their insistance that Soviet troops not be based in Poland, as the British and French wanted, so as to conclude an alliance with Russia against Hitler.
In hindsight, considering that the Soviets got their half of Poland anyway, through the Non-Aggression Pact, it may have stopped Hitler from invading Poland.
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.
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.