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Original_Z posted:How did the Nazi stormtrooper army manage to grow so fast during such early stages? They were independent from the normal army, yeah? I heard that they had something like millions of members before they were eventually consolidated into the main army. Seems kind of crazy that they could essentially build up their own forces and that they could recruit so many people even before having total control of the nation, you'd think that building up a separate army loyal to a certain political party would be grounds for treason? There were a lot of disaffected veterans after WWI and many of them joined paramilitary veterans organizations, some of them connected to a political party, some not. The SA was just one such organization. The largest organization was the Stahlhelm and although not Nazi, it was nationalist and conservative and functioned as a paramilitary force. I believe these organizations were tacitly allowed due to the manpower restrictions imposed upon the German army by the treaty of Versailles.
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Apr 25, 2013 14:52
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Indeed, they were called Freikorps, and they're pretty common in various forms through later German history. There was at least one big Freikorp serving for the Prussians in the Napoleonic war, and they were used to suppress the 1918-1919 Berlin communist uprising as well. Lots of veterans joined them after WWI, I'm guessing the already shaky Wiemar government just wasn't in any hurry to piss off armed and organized veterans.
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Apr 25, 2013 17:44
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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LittleBob posted:Did the German media say much about the resistance movements in occupied countries? Any idea how they were portrayed? It's not really what you asked but at least in France, the legal press referred to resistance as bandits, terrorists, etc. and usually tied them to the communists, regardless of their actual political affiliations. I would guess that they got the same treatment in the German press as criminals and/or communists.
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Apr 25, 2013 18:18
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Original_Z posted:How did the Nazi stormtrooper army manage to grow so fast during such early stages? They were independent from the normal army, yeah? I heard that they had something like millions of members before they were eventually consolidated into the main army. Seems kind of crazy that they could essentially build up their own forces and that they could recruit so many people even before having total control of the nation, you'd think that building up a separate army loyal to a certain political party would be grounds for treason? If you are talking about the SA then it is important to note that other parties also had what amounted to private armies/security forces/thugs.
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Apr 25, 2013 23:01
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PittTheElder posted:Indeed, they were called Freikorps, and they're pretty common in various forms through later German history. There was at least one big Freikorp serving for the Prussians in the Napoleonic war, and they were used to suppress the 1918-1919 Berlin communist uprising as well. Lots of veterans joined them after WWI, I'm guessing the already shaky Wiemar government just wasn't in any hurry to piss off armed and organized veterans. It's here that a second problem with the size of the military occurs. Since the military was kept so small, a situation quickly arose where the number of paramilitary troops vastly exceeded the number of military troops and police combined. It's also worth noting that, while there was a lot of lawless rabble in these groups, many of them were led by experienced military officers. I'm not saying that they would have been a match for the army in a pitched battle, but they were significantly better organized and led than the modern street gangs I've seen them compared to.
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Apr 26, 2013 00:17
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Azathoth posted:I think that it should be expanded on as to why these veterans were no longer in the army. After WWI ended, the Treaty of Versailles set the limit on the army at 100,000 men. Their pre-WWI size was roughly 500,000 and over 10 million men had fought in the German army during the course of the war. This left a huge population of career soldiers out of the job they expected to have for the rest of their lives. Many of them really liked being soldiers and wanted to continue, but the army simply did not have a spot for them. It's natural that, in this environment, organized paramilitary groups are going to pop up. Honestly, it's a wonder the Weimar Republic didn't collapse and Germany revert to pre-unification states, each with its own standing army and government, especially since they could say, "Well, the Grand Duchy of Baden didn't sign any treaty, so gently caress off!"
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Apr 26, 2013 03:25
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DasReich posted:Honestly, it's a wonder the Weimar Republic didn't collapse and Germany revert to pre-unification states, each with its own standing army and government, especially since they could say, "Well, the Grand Duchy of Baden didn't sign any treaty, so gently caress off!" As bad as things got in the Weimar Republic, the German people still believed that they were capable of returning to their former position of power and, to the everlasting horror of the rest of the world, that proved to be true. There's a reason that the Treaty of Versailles was so punitive to Germany, pretty much everyone on the winning side absolutely feared what would happen if they ever took their boot off Germany's throat. The same line of thinking ultimately comes up again post-WWII with the Morgenthau Plan, which wasn't really abandoned until people like Herbert Hoover did the math and figured out that unless they wanted to kill or forcibly resettle 25 million Germans outside of German borders, it wasn't feasible. The entire world feared a united Germany, even after beating the snot out of them in WWI and WWII.
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Apr 26, 2013 04:06
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Azathoth posted:Yeah, but if that happened, any state but Prussia would have basically reverted back to being a third-rate European power instead of a great power. Also, Prussia had worked pretty drat hard to make Unification happen in the first place, and they dominated all the other states regardless, so they had a pretty vested interest in staying together. In the 40-50 years between Unification and WWI, Germany got a taste of what it's like to be a world power and even if they got beat in WWI and humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles, they still had a lot of what allowed them to become a great power in the first place (large population, strong industrial base, etc.), even if they were stuck in a terrible depression. Hell, there were enough people in 1990 who went "This is a terrible idea and will backfire spectacularly". Of course, the jury is still out if they were right...
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Apr 26, 2013 16:25
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Azathoth posted:... I wouldn't go that far. There were a lot of people in the British Cabinet, including Lloyd George himself basically saying that 'you know guys, this whole super-punitive dictated surrender might not be the best idea.' Clemenceau wasn't having any of that of course; given the Franco-Prussian war and the absolute horror of WWI, it's kind of tough to blame him, but hindsight is a wondrous thing. And while the tone of most people at the peace conference was 'Tough on You, Germany,' there were people who realized that it might backfire.
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Apr 26, 2013 18:35
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DasReich posted:Honestly, it's a wonder the Weimar Republic didn't collapse and Germany revert to pre-unification states, each with its own standing army and government, especially since they could say, "Well, the Grand Duchy of Baden didn't sign any treaty, so gently caress off!" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Alsace-Lorraine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_Soviet_Republic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_City_of_Danzig
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Apr 26, 2013 22:41
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Azathoth posted:Yeah, but if that happened, any state but Prussia would have basically reverted back to being a third-rate European power instead of a great power. Also, Prussia had worked pretty drat hard to make Unification happen in the first place, and they dominated all the other states regardless, so they had a pretty vested interest in staying together. In the 40-50 years between Unification and WWI, Germany got a taste of what it's like to be a world power and even if they got beat in WWI and humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles, they still had a lot of what allowed them to become a great power in the first place (large population, strong industrial base, etc.), even if they were stuck in a terrible depression. I wonder if you would view this the same way had the Treaty of Versailles not been so punitive, the Nazis had never risen to power, and Germany became more of a social democratic state, possibly a constitutional monarchy, similar to Japan, post WWII. Also, Clemenceau was a tremendous dick, and did more to destabilize the world than anyone else in the whole sordid affair. If you want to say the French paid the cost in blood for the war, that was largely due to fuckers like Nivelle. The British arguably suffered the worst long term effects of the war, since post 1918 the Empire begins a slow decline while the United States takes the first steps to becoming a superpower.
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Apr 27, 2013 00:03
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I don't have anything to add to the discussion, knowing nothing about Nazi Germany, but thought someone might like to see a photo of my grandfather who fought for them in the war. That is to say, it doesn't mean he was a Nazi himself, but was German. Mind you, for all I know he WAS a Nazi. I know next to nothing about him and have lost all contact with my German relatives since my parents died. Apparently this is a policeman's uniform, not a soldier's, so the photo is of him before the war. As far as I was ever told he never returned from combat. 
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Apr 27, 2013 00:27
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Gromit posted:I don't have anything to add to the discussion, knowing nothing about Nazi Germany, but thought someone might like to see a photo of my grandfather who fought for them in the war. That is to say, it doesn't mean he was a Nazi himself, but was German. Mind you, for all I know he WAS a Nazi. I know next to nothing about him and have lost all contact with my German relatives since my parents died. He never returned because they mashed his body up into a special slurry which was added to the paint used on propaganda posters to make every picture filled with dashing young men. He was a seriously good-looking guy.
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Apr 27, 2013 00:30
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DasReich posted:I wonder if you would view this the same way had the Treaty of Versailles not been so punitive, the Nazis had never risen to power, and Germany became more of a social democratic state, possibly a constitutional monarchy, similar to Japan, post WWII. If the Nazis had not come to power, I think there would have been a more serious Communist revolution, which would have been put down by the conservative elements of the German army and then we would have been off to the races against the Bolshevik threat in Russia anyways. One of the biggest fears in Germany was a Communist revolution, it's what allowed Hitler to truly seize power. The Communists weren't going to go away because of anything decided at Versailles. If it hadn't been Hitler, it would have been a different conservative warhawk, probably one of the Prussian nobility, who would have stepped into Hindenberg's shoes. There would not have been the Holocaust (which alone would have been worth anything) but I think that the war would have been just as brutal otherwise. They would have started a local conflict, which would have spiraled out of control, just like war did after the Germans started annexing neighboring countries. All the Treaty of Versailles did was call a 20 year cease-fire on WWI and I'm definitely of the camp that treats WWII as a direct continuation of WWII. All that 20 years bought was time for the horrors of mechanized warfare to be taken to their logical end, with vast improvements in offensive capabilities. I don't think that anything could have been done at Versailles to stop the next war from happening, short of refusing to negotiate with Germany and forcing unconditional surrender as the Allies did at the end of WWII. Azathoth fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Apr 27, 2013 |
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Apr 27, 2013 02:54
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I don't think anyone was really in a position by 1918 to drive the German army back to Berlin. They were still on French soil at the time and despite supply shortages and such if you know you're in for all or nothing, the fight to the death becomes MUCH more unpleasant. Much of occupied France and Belgium would have been slashed and burned, along with any raw materials useful to the Allies, and the net result is a weakened Europe right next to a rising Soviet Union. It's entirely possible given this scenario WWII would have been Soviets vs the West.
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Apr 27, 2013 03:42
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The Soviet Union of 1918-1920 was hardly a burgeoning super power. It's by sheer good fortune that they even lasted at all. I doubt they were taken into account by the Allies as they decided how to end the war. At least directly, of course the allies feared a spread of Communist revolutionary movements across the continent.
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Apr 27, 2013 13:51
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:The Soviet Union of 1918-1920 was hardly a burgeoning super power. It's by sheer good fortune that they even lasted at all. I doubt they were taken into account by the Allies as they decided how to end the war. At least directly, of course the allies feared a spread of Communist revolutionary movements across the continent. Well, in the hypothetical I was talking about, the Soviet Union wouldn't start becoming a major player until the late 20s or early 30s, if the Allies are still slugging it out with Germany, they have no ability to get involved in the Russian Civil War.
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Apr 27, 2013 14:23
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DasReich posted:I don't think anyone was really in a position by 1918 to drive the German army back to Berlin. They were still on French soil at the time and despite supply shortages and such if you know you're in for all or nothing, the fight to the death becomes MUCH more unpleasant. Much of occupied France and Belgium would have been slashed and burned, along with any raw materials useful to the Allies, and the net result is a weakened Europe right next to a rising Soviet Union. It's entirely possible given this scenario WWII would have been Soviets vs the West. There was a deep distrust of the Soviet Union and Communism in general, what with the whole revolutionary aspect of it, and it took the Soviet defeat against Poland to really curb Lenin's desire to export the revolution. The forces that shaped the East vs. West showdown during the Cold War were certainly present by the late 1930s and it's interesting to consider what would happen if the Germans had managed to court the conservative elements in England better, which would have been bolstered by the Soviet's clear expansionist goals. A conservative German government, setting themselves up as the bulwark against Communist invasion from the east, could have gotten Britain on their side, provided that they didn't start invading all their neighbors or "peacefully" annexing them, but it's a real long-shot. Aside from the Anschluss, the Germans would have basically had to turn their entire attention East to have a shot at having support from the West. The real wildcard in all this would be France. No one hated Germany more than France, post-WWI, and given what had happened, it's very difficult to see any scenarios where France and Germany work together. It's far more likely that France and the Soviets would have had an alliance similar to Germany and Finland in WWII. This is where, I think, the entire scenario begins to break down. Unless the Third French Republic gets overthrown by Communist revolution, it's very difficult to imagine a world where France doesn't use every diplomatic measure they have to keep their allies from siding with Germany. Even if WWII starts as strictly a German vs. Soviet conflict, France is definitely getting involved at some point. In our scenario, whoever does not have Alsace-Lorraine will be coming for it at some point. If the Germans get to keep it, France is certainly going to take advantage of any serious period of German weakness while they're fighting the Soviets to annex it themselves, and if Alsace-Lorraine is given to the French, it's hard to imagine that Germany wouldn't come for it. As soon as France gets involved, Britain would be dragged in immediately. It's a very interesting counterfactual, but I think that, given the way WWI ended, there was basically no way to keep a second World War from occurring. Japan was going to start a war with the US, England, and France regardless of what happened in Europe and they had already been clashing with the Japanese Army in China, further bringing the Allies together. Any scenario where WWII doesn't start basically as it did, instead replaces it with simultaneous local conflicts, and it's difficult to imagine how those would not eventually spiral into a second World War as various countries ally with each other to try to gain the upper hand.
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Apr 27, 2013 14:33
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The real wildcard is the United States. Where does Washington come in? The industrial capacity of the US is second to none, and even with the Great Depression, the capability is still there. Due to the American fascination with the automobile and the vast amounts of capital, the US could conceivably mechanize their forces faster. But which side would they support?
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Apr 27, 2013 15:26
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Gromit posted:I don't have anything to add to the discussion, knowing nothing about Nazi Germany, but thought someone might like to see a photo of my grandfather who fought for them in the war. That is to say, it doesn't mean he was a Nazi himself, but was German. Mind you, for all I know he WAS a Nazi. I know next to nothing about him and have lost all contact with my German relatives since my parents died. Why are the pretty ones always nazi 
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Apr 27, 2013 15:33
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Mans posted:Why are the pretty ones always nazi Well they did literally practice eugenics.
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Apr 27, 2013 15:44
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DasReich posted:The real wildcard is the United States. Where does Washington come in? The industrial capacity of the US is second to none, and even with the Great Depression, the capability is still there. Due to the American fascination with the automobile and the vast amounts of capital, the US could conceivably mechanize their forces faster. But which side would they support? The effect of Japan going on the offensive in the Pacific is that the US and Britain end up fighting on the same side there. Because of this, it's impossible to imagine a scenario where the US doesn't side with Britain in Europe, even if Germany and Japan do not become allies. It's also very difficult to envision a scenario where Britain sides with Germany against what would be the most strenuous of objections from the French, who absolutely hated Germany and would not ally with them under any circumstances. France would not allow Britain to side with Germany and still maintain friendly relations with them, so Britain would essentially have to choose between France and Germany and I don't see how they could choose Germany given that choice. In this scenario where the Nazis do not seize power, we still have a World War going on, we just have looser ties among the allies. US industrial might is always going to supply Britain, Britain and France are going to be allies, and Germany is going to end up involved in a two-front war. The US will fight a brutal war in the Pacific, but will likely devote more resources to that theatre than it did before, but I don't think it will change the strategic calculus there either. It's also difficult to imagine that, given the alliance between Britain and France, that they would not end up siding with the Soviets against Germany. The Treaty of Versailles seriously hosed Germany, but it wasn't the deciding factor in starting WWII. WWII occurred because the issues that caused WWI were not even remotely close to being resolved when fighting stopped. Additionally, the nations that would come to fight WWII were still operating under the same geopolitical realities that existed in 1918 and the intervening 20 years was nowhere near enough time to change the respective power blocs. It's all well and good to ask "what if Germany had a more social-democratic government after WWI?", but they tried that and it failed miserably, we call it the Weimar Republic today. Even without the reparation payments, the Great Depression was going to hit Germany very hard. They relied then, much as they do now, on producing exports to sell so that they can import food. When the Great Depression reduced worldwide demand for products, it hit Germany exceptionally hard. As someone posted up-thread, the German people did not have a long democratic tradition and between the right and left wing authoritarian sides, and during the Great Depression, the people quickly lost faith with democracy in general, they were just split about going to the right or the left. You do have an interesting point about creating a constitutional monarchy, but ultimately the 1930s showed just how much the German people respected the idea of a constitution. I think it would have gone very quickly from a constitutional monarchy back to a plain monarchy with a theoretical constitution that is ignored in practice. It's difficult to imagine how a scenario like this wouldn't have seen the rise of a powerful right-wing leader.
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Apr 27, 2013 16:54
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I question what Britain would have done because their foreign policy had always revolved around a balance of power on the continent. A Franco-Soviet alliance would have seriously upset that. Before WWI, England and France had frosty relations at best.
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Apr 27, 2013 17:40
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Azathoth posted:
I would disagree, on the account of the massive efforts the Nazis made to ensure they covered their actions legally. If you look at the hoops they jumped through to make killing German citizens legal, you can see that the Nazis were very conscious of the constitution, even though there was no institution that could conceivably challenge them.
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Apr 27, 2013 18:30
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ArchangeI posted:I would disagree, on the account of the massive efforts the Nazis made to ensure they covered their actions legally. If you look at the hoops they jumped through to make killing German citizens legal, you can see that the Nazis were very conscious of the constitution, even though there was no institution that could conceivably challenge them. That's a good point. Even the original anti-Jewish boycotts and Kristallnacht pissed off ordinary Germans who were willing to look the other way during the mistreatment of Jews, as both were open, state-sponsored violence. I think you may be conflating German leanings toward constitutionalism and democratic ideals with the desire for a well-ordered society, however. I'm not entirely sure myself if Germans were tired of democracy as a concept itself by 1932, or if they were just tired of the crappiness of the Weimar Republic, reparations, the Depression, etc. and were desperate enough to want a change, any change at all. This whole mini-discussion is getting into Sonderweg territory. Anyone want to take sides on that one?
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Apr 27, 2013 20:48
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DasReich posted:I question what Britain would have done because their foreign policy had always revolved around a balance of power on the continent. A Franco-Soviet alliance would have seriously upset that. Before WWI, England and France had frosty relations at best. ArchangeI posted:I would disagree, on the account of the massive efforts the Nazis made to ensure they covered their actions legally. If you look at the hoops they jumped through to make killing German citizens legal, you can see that the Nazis were very conscious of the constitution, even though there was no institution that could conceivably challenge them. When Hitler seized absolute power, it was using the legal apparatus outlined in the Weimar Constitution, and it ultimately didn't matter what the constitution said, because by the time he had seized power, there was no one who had a hope of stopping him. To further illustrate the point, Italy was a constitutional monarchy when Mussolini seized absolute power and that didn't stop a dictatorship from happening there either. Victor Emmanuel III was in a position to stop Mussolini but ultimately chose not to exercise the power. I can't see Wilhelm II, who would have been the monarch of Germany stepping into the political fray to support democracy over a strong, autocratic leader. Even if they deposed Wilhelm II, they would then certainly have placed his son Wilhelm (the Crown Prince) on the throne. This is the same Wilhelm who supported Adolph Hitler and hoped that Hitler would do for Germany what Mussolini had done for Italy. It all would have just ended up in the same place.
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Apr 27, 2013 20:58
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Azathoth posted:Yeah, but this is post-WWI where over 1 million British and Commonwealth soldiers died in a war against Germany and her allies. Britain, in particular, lost a bit more than 2% of her population. To put that in perspective, imagine a situation where the US loses 4 million troops fighting in Korea, then around the time of the end of the Vietnam War, decides to ally with North Korea and China to invade South Korea. That's the magnitude of the turnaround you're talking about. The British lost more soldiers in France and Flanders alone in WWI than the US lost in the entirety of WWII on both fronts. The other option is a Communist Europe, with an Iron Curtain from Atlantic to Pacific. Truly a rock and a hard place, maybe the best option would have been ostensible neutrality, while slipping the Germans arms and supplies under the table.
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Apr 27, 2013 21:51
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DasReich posted:The other option is a Communist Europe, with an Iron Curtain from Atlantic to Pacific. Truly a rock and a hard place, maybe the best option would have been ostensible neutrality, while slipping the Germans arms and supplies under the table. In the end, this scenario is ultimately not playing out appreciably different than the actual war did, aside from an implicit assumption that this hypothetical German government wouldn't have initiated the Holocaust. I'm not sure that we can make this assumption, as anti-Semitic as Germany had gotten by this point. I don't particularly want to get into that side of things, but I don't think it can be assumed. Anyways, I think I've explored this idea as far as I want to go. I'll stand by my original assertion that the Treaty of Versailles ultimately didn't cause WWII, though it likely altered the timetables slightly. The events that caused WWII were put in motion by the way WWI ended and there was very little that could be done to stop them prior to WWII actually starting.
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Apr 27, 2013 23:35
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That is an idea of history that I find very difficult to swallow, because it requires a certain amount of human non-agency to work. "Inevitable" is a word historians should use very sparingly.
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Apr 27, 2013 23:47
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Azathoth posted:
It needs to be noted that prior to the Great Depression, Weimar Germany was performing entirely adequately. It's possible that without a worldwide financial meltdown (or possibly even if it comes a little later) we don't see everything fall to pieces. I'm not certain "failed miserably" is quite the right phrase to use.
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Apr 28, 2013 16:36
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Slavvy posted:He never returned because they mashed his body up into a special slurry which was added to the paint used on propaganda posters to make every picture filled with dashing young men. Mans posted:Why are the pretty ones always nazi Thanks for that. Pity it seems to have skipped a few generations - I could have done with a little of that from his side of the family.
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Apr 29, 2013 08:39
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GreyjoyBastard posted:It needs to be noted that prior to the Great Depression, Weimar Germany was performing entirely adequately. It's possible that without a worldwide financial meltdown (or possibly even if it comes a little later) we don't see everything fall to pieces. Yeah, this really does get overlooked. Around 1925-1929, things really were looking up for Germany. Which is pretty good given what they'd been through in WWI. If the damned Americans could have kept their financial markets under control, it's possible Germany could have come through the period without lapsing into dictatorship. Which is still threatening to world peace really, since then you're probably right back where we were before WWI, minus Austria-Hungary. It's sad that American-market-crash is a thing that kicks the wider world in the teeth some 4-5 times throughout the last couple centuries.
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Apr 29, 2013 18:51
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I have a question. Why did Hitler break the non-aggression pact with Russia and invade them before securing the western front by forcing Britain into surrender? I was taught that being forced to fight on two front between France and Russia was one of the biggest reason Germany lost WWI. So given that Hitler should have already learned this lesson, this always seemed to me to be a monumentally dumb move.
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May 2, 2013 05:28
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MN-Ghost posted:I have a question. Why did Hitler break the non-aggression pact with Russia and invade them before securing the western front by forcing Britain into surrender? I was taught that being forced to fight on two front between France and Russia was one of the biggest reason Germany lost WWI. So given that Hitler should have already learned this lesson, this always seemed to me to be a monumentally dumb move. Well besides nazi ideology demanding it there were two major reasons. 1. He was convinced that Britain would give up if the only major power left on the continent was defeated or would at least allow him to throw everything at the British without having to worry about a surprise soviet attack. 2. Germany's rearmament program. Germany was the first power to begin beefing up its armed forces in preparation for a war, thus not attacking only gave Stalin the time he needed to rebuild the red army. Also because of his massive arms program by the start of the war the German economy was starting to fall apart as imports of raw materials rose, only to be used on the military, while exports fell because hitler sure as gently caress wasn't going to sell his tanks to anyone else. The raw resources of Russia were to be used to makeup the shortfalls of the nazi economic policies. Vvvv seeing how it was hitlers end goal from 1923 onward, yeah. E2: I would also argue that it was Von Kluck's stupidity and Joffre managing to pull his head out of his rear end by the end of August 1914 that made Germany lose the war but that's another thread. Raskolnikov38 fucked around with this message at 08:16 on May 2, 2013 |
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May 2, 2013 07:58
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Was a German-Russian war that inevitable?
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May 2, 2013 08:01
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MN-Ghost posted:I have a question. Why did Hitler break the non-aggression pact with Russia and invade them before securing the western front by forcing Britain into surrender? I was taught that being forced to fight on two front between France and Russia was one of the biggest reason Germany lost WWI. So given that Hitler should have already learned this lesson, this always seemed to me to be a monumentally dumb move. How was he going to force Britain into surrender?
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May 2, 2013 11:31
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Namarrgon posted:Was a German-Russian war that inevitable? Some, like Admiral Raeder, wanted a focus on a southern strategy and concentrating on North Africa and the Middle East. However, Hitler wasn't really going to listen to anyone once he set his mind to something.
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May 2, 2013 12:02
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Kemper Boyd posted:Some, like Admiral Raeder, wanted a focus on a southern strategy and concentrating on North Africa and the Middle East. However, Hitler wasn't really going to listen to anyone once he set his mind to something. I was thinking more about it from the Russian side.
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May 2, 2013 12:13
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Namarrgon posted:I was thinking more about it from the Russian side. Stalin wasn't really into the idea of taking risks, he learned his lesson in the Polish-Soviet war. That's why he was willing to make peace with Finland twice in WW2. Starting a war against Germany would have been a serious risk even if the western allies would have supported him even then.
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May 2, 2013 12:17
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MN-Ghost posted:I have a question. Why did Hitler break the non-aggression pact with Russia and invade them before securing the western front by forcing Britain into surrender? I was taught that being forced to fight on two front between France and Russia was one of the biggest reason Germany lost WWI. So given that Hitler should have already learned this lesson, this always seemed to me to be a monumentally dumb move. In Hitler's mind, they either invaded under-strength, unprepared and unorganized in 1941 or they waited until 1942\3 when they were in not much better conditions against a fully re-organized Red Army. Had Germany invaded in the summer of 1942 most fortifications of the Ukraine and Belarus would've been prepared and the T-34 would've been deployed in quite decent numbers. While the idea of the fascists being stomped as soon as they dared to invade the Soviet Union is great, Hitler didn't really think that way. It was either attack in 1941 while the purges' effects were still being felt or never.
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#
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May 2, 2013 17:05
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