My conversation with Copperknickers
Aside from the bombing of Rotterdam itself the invasion of the Netherlands was more to secure a path into France and Belgium. The Germans asked the Netherlands if they could cross that country and the foreign minister to there was suddenly arrested. Hitler received reports strongly indicating that the Netherlands was not planning to stay neutral and so the Germans took the chance to cross that territory but also to occupy the coast to keep British troops out.
Albert Kesselring was attempting to bomb the city in a bid to have Rotterdam surrender. Not saying it is moral but it has nothing to do with the Blitz on Britain, not only that but the Germans were most likely not trying to kill Dutch civilians seeing as the way the bombing was carried out does not suggest that at all... unlike say the bombing of Germany which more or less sought to burn as much as possible.
You may admire Churchill I am not telling you not to. But Churchill is very much a mythological hero, the opposite of Hitler. Not because Churchill was the epitome of morality but because he has been made out to be that way.I agree with you in principal, but that will never stop me admiring Churchill. I would have been killed at birth if not for him, because Hitler would have eventually taken control of Britain, and people like myself would have suffered the full horror of Nazi ideology's hatred of minorities.
Another myth is that Hitler was out to take over Britain. Is there any proof of that aside from Operation Sea Lion? Is there any German fleet which can accomplish this? Is there any reason for why Hitler would even attempt this?
granted, but what does this have to do with geopolitics? As I have said and many other historians have pointed out, this was in no way the goal of the Allies, we did not set out to liberate or do away with evil.Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, the disabled, political dissidents... I'd say anything up to half of the populations of Romania and Hungary would have been on the Nazis' hitlist.
So you are saying that fighting and winning a war against all odds was morally correct in 1940 but that winning a war against all odds in 1945 is morally incorrect. There were no guarantees that Britain would have won in 1940 either. There was still a gap until early 1950 for the Soviets to get nukes either way and the Soviets were pretty devastated. We may have defeated the USSR but how many people had to suffer until then?Yes. Nazism was an extreme form of social darwinism, it would have resulted in the total destruction of Western civilisation in Europe if it had achieved domination, we'd have been a dystopian hellhole of genocide, torture and cruelty on an industrial scale. Soviet Communism was bad, but it had two salient features: firstly, by 1945 it hadn't actually resulted in anything hugely horrific that hadn't also happened in the British empire, namely political persecution and a couple of mass famines; secondly, taking on the combined might of Russia and China was totally unthinkable after war with Germany crippled us, they outnumbered the allied powers by about 2 to 1 in terms of sheer manpower.
Hitler was the priority until his defeat, and after that the Russians were developing nuclear weapons and the game was changed completely. Besides, we eventually did achieve the fall of Communism in Russia, and with minimal casualties, so surely even you can't argue with that.
If we had not given half of Europe to Stalin, we'd have had to go to war again, which was impossible, and would have involved further millions of deaths.
So it is okay to prolongue war and having 20 million die but any more than 20 million, God forbid it.
Um no Hitler never said that, according to whom? Last I recall he made several peace offers to Britain and even offered to resign if this would make Churchill feel better. It was Churchill who insisted that Britain would never surrender even though they weren't expected to surrender.Do not be ridiculous. Everyone with half a brain knows that it was Hitler's stated ambition to defeat first the great European powers, and then, if possible, their overseas allies and possessions. My university library in London has a plaque stating that it was Hitler's designated headquarters while he was conquering the British isles.
Hell if we look up the propaganda video "Why We Fight" it makes the claim that Hitler would have some how mustered the combined strength of the entire populations of Europe and Asia to invade the USA, why should anyone believe that claim?
If I recall this was the exact same attitude that Britain kept pressing onto the evil French during the Napoleonic wars and the evil Germans in WW1. Despite the peace offers of Napoleon, Britain refused even when Napoleon was winning. Even in WW1 the Germans sought to negotiate but the Allies wanted nothing short of Versailles.
In fact if one were to google Mein Kampf and look up "Britain" which I just did, Hitler's exact words on the matter is that "Germany does not need overseas colonies", "Germany need only seek military superiority over France so that France is no threat" and even "an alliance between Germany and Britain would be most beneficial". So much for that theory.
Except that Hitler's peace offers to Britain would have allowed Britain to freely do what ever it wanted with its economy. Churchill could have made peace if he so wanted. Neville Chamberlain, Hugh Dowding, the Queen Mother, the King and Lloyd George all criticized Churchill for not accepting the peace.Yes, but because of Hitler, not because of Churchill (who if you recall, wasn't actually our prime minister when we declared war on Germany).
So the ends justify the means is what you are saying? South Korea today is a nice place, it can hardly be compared to that in 1950 where Communists were being killed and a hard core rightist regime as in place. We cannot compare North Korea today to 1950 either since there is no indication as to what would have happened if Korea unified under Communism. At best I can only speculate that Korea would be no better than Maoist China. I will have to agree with you on this point but not because we were being so moral and kind hearted but rather because in this case the ends justified the means and politically (not morally) it was not in the West's interests to allow this takeover to happen.Really? So what about the war in Korea? Look at South Korea today, one of the world's safest and most populous countries. Now look at North Korea: one of the worst. Now imagine if the West had not supported the South: all of Korea would have been North Korea. The same goes for the Falklands war: the Falkland islanders would have been thrown off their land and persecuted, or forced to flee thousands of miles to Britain. So we fought the Argentinians off, and voila, no major disaster, but relative safety and stability.
The problem with the biggest claim in the world, is that we did not set out to stop the Holocaust because either we did not know about it and could not have gone to war to stop something we had no knowledge of or we did know about it (remember the enigma codes?) and we told no one about it for some strange reason. I'll let you guess which one is more likely (hint, it probably wasn't the first one).It was not necessary from a moral standpoint to stop the Holocaust? Do I detect the subtle hint of Neo-Nazi troll?
Moreover the Allies allowed the Jews to rot in a limbo state in the camps across Europe until after Israel became a recognized state. Not just that but many Jews were not allowed to immigrate simply because they were Jewish. So much for the "we fought WW2 to save the Jews".
Germany wanted to reverse the Versailles treaty revoked internationally. That does not mean that Germany was willing to go to war with France over it nor was Germany willing to go to war with France over Alsace.So, because Germany didn't have ambitions in France (which goes against the Shame of Versailles hypothesis), they didn't have ambitions of conquest and ethnic cleansing? Are we talking about WWII here?
That he did, but when you have a neighbor like Pilsudski's Poland or Stalin's USSR then it doesn't really matter what you preach so much.Erm Hitler wrote a book preaching war with Poland and the Soviet Union, and built an army to do that. Then he did it.
I can't see any merit in your statement.
No Hitler built up a Wehrmacht to defend Germany's borders. The Wehrmacht in 1939 sure as hell was not ready to fight France or Poland, anyone can confirm that. It was not until 1940 that soldiers were sufficiently well trained or equipped to even attempt going to war against France, attempt is the word. Moreover Germany's entry into the league of nations had Germany make several claims over the defense of the East all of which were ignored. The obvious response would have been to increase the size of the Wehrmacht.