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Originally Posted by Kai-Petri
I am not talking about attacking anyone. By clearly politically opposing Hitler early on things would have been different. By letting Hitler have what he wanted Hitler himself considered the Western Allied nations and politicians weak and that he could get anything he wanted.
The Allied by refusing to co-operate in Munich 1938 over the Sudeten areas Hitler would have been thrown away by his own Generals. That is quite serious talk about how dangerous the Army men considered Hitler themselves.
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The trouble is that Hitler wasn't clearly the evil man we all know now. in 1938 Hitler was seen as quite a succesful ruler who had united Germany and brought them out of the depression far ahead of the rest of Europe. And with the Sudeten question, many thought he had a legitimate case as the Sudetenland was overwhelmingly German in character and had never wanted to be part of Czechoslovakia. The Allies created this problem by incorporating large German minorities into the new eastern European nations and this gave Hitler a causus belli and justification for his ostpolitik. Hitler seized this opportunity and the Allies couldn't attack Germany in 1938 without appearing as the aggressors themselves, against a Germany that could easily argue it was merely trying to defend fellow Germans. I don't see how the Allies could have stopped Hitler in 1938, before he had attempted to conquer non-German territory. In retrospect, we know that he wanted more, but in 1938 the Allies didn't have the evidence to support a pre-emptive attack.
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Chamberlain by creating this peace deal with Hitler ( " We are not prepared to go to war for a piece of land somwhere on the other side of Europe " mentality ) destroyed this coup
and also the possibility of a peaceful solution in Europe. Now the rest of Czechoslovakia was without any defence protection and easy to conquer in early 1939. Now Britain started arming as well.
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Agreed, Hitler was closer to being overthrown here than at practically any other point in his rule. However, the Allies weren't in much position to attack Germany, either morally or militarily.
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As well the Danzig question was as poorly taken care of.The allied by making a pact with Stalin, Hitler could not prepare for war, but the Western Allied never sent anyone with enough authority to present the deal to Stalin who laughed at them. Instead as time went by he made a pact with Hitler. Now nothing could stop Hitler.
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Yep, the Allies really dropped the ball here. By not courting Stalin they let Hitler come to an agreement with him that strengthened them both, at the expense of the Allies. Of course, how would the Allies justify an alliance with Stalin. Even at that point Stalin was well known for his incredibly oppressive regime and mass murder of his own people. If you thought Munich was hard to justify to the British population imagine trying to justify an alliance with Stalin!
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It is quite "interesting" to see how Hitler was given his chance to prepare for war. No one really did anything to stop him, even if he threatened with immediate war if he did not get what he wanted, so no wonder war "finally" started in Sept 1939. So many chances to stop war and none taken.
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The more I learn about history the less I condemn others for their decisions in the past. If you remove our 20/20 vision what other decisions seem superior to the ones actually taken? I think too often we forget that when we look back on WWII we are doing so with knowledge of how the whole war turned out. While we now know what Hitler was capable of, back in 1938 the evidence wasn't so clear cut and he didn't seem as big a threat as he would later on become. The politicians of the 1930s had to proceed on the knowledge that they had, not the knowledge that we now have. There were many chances to stop the war but I don't see that those chances were as obvious as you apparently see them.