World War II Forums - View Single Post - POLAND SAVED GREAT BRITAIN DURING WORLD WAR II

Friedrich · #13 (**permalink**) January 26th, 2004, 05:25 PM

I think that the History of France and Great Britain —the beloved western democracies— during the 1930s is really shameful. Though I perfectly understand the circumstances which made them both act the way they did.

I am a WWI geek too and I realise how a big trauma the whole war was and that they wanted to prevent anything similar to happen again by any means —I would probably have done that myself too— and to prevent sending an entire generation to a slaughter like that of 1914-1918.

However, WWII would have been very different if politicians in Great Britain would have been less Baldwins and Chamberlains and more Churchills. A rearmament in depth started in 1936 after the Rhineland crisis would have allowed Great Britain and France to stand to Hitler when he marched into the Sudetenland. Chamberlain and Daladier sincerely wanted peace and British agressive military and politicians wanted time. Czechoslovakia was abandoned as was Poland. Because Great Britain was too weak in 1938 and 1939 to stand against Germany —or so they believed.

But with what we know now we can see that it was a huge mistake. Great Britain and France could have precisely avoided a war like the Great War by punishing Germany in 1933 for quiting the League of Nations, then punishing her for the reintroduction of mobligatory military service and France should have invaded the Rhineland after Hitler's move of March. Many can say that the Versailles Treaty was unfair and that the Germans were not asked for it. But they provoked a Great War and lost it. They deserved that and more. And even if the Versailles treaty was made unilaterally only, the Germans ratified it at Locarno, multilaterally.

Then attacking Germany instead of Munich, or attacking her immediately after Poland. We know Germany was too weak in 1939 to bear a two front war inside her borders.

Czechoslovakia was abandoned to buy some very precious time. There's the old saying that without Munich, the RAF would have gone to war with biplanes. But Poland was abandoned to her luck whilst a couple of weak German infantry divisions protected the borders in the incomplete 'Siegfried Line'.

There wouldn't have been a Warsaw guetto, a Balcans partisan campaign, a DAK, an Italian campaign, the whole eastern front wouldn't have existed, no occupied Scandinavian and Low countries, no D-day... Millions wouldn't have died.