Appeasement: Right or Wrong?

[orange]

so really you're not against alliances or nations coming to each others aids, just the draft and taxing people for military action against a nation when a declaration of war is not given?

Btw: if Hitler knew that no nation would declare war until Germany declared war upon them, he'd have just picked off each nation one by one. First France...then the USSR, then Britain maybe...and dealing with each one at a time would have been cake.

[David Floyd]

so really you're not against alliances or nations coming to each others aids, just the draft and taxing people for military action against a nation when a declaration of war is not given?

First off, even after a DoW is issued, I'm still against forcing people to pay for the war if they don't support it.

Second of all, I don't believe governments should license citizens of that nation to go kill citizens of another nation, except in self defense. So actually, I misspoke. Come to think of it, I would NOT support the goverment of one nation encouraging its citizens to form a private army that goes around killing other people.

Btw: if Hitler knew that no nation would declare war until Germany declared war upon them, he'd have just picked off each nation one by one. First France...then the USSR, then Britain maybe...and dealing with each one at a time would have been cake.

All the military alliances in the world didn't do anything to stop Hitler from taking Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, and France. Military alliances didn't have an effect upon the Battle of Britain, which Germany lost, and while the campaign in the Soviet Union was certainly affected by outside influence, most of this influence was exerted after Hitler foolishly declared war on the US, creating his own problem.

[orange]

Originally posted by David Floyd
First off, even after a DoW is issued, I'm still against forcing people to pay for the war if they don't support it.

I knew that. What I was getting at is - what's the difference between a country at war and a country not at war, if you think drafts and taxing for the military are both wrong...but since you go on to say...

Second of all, I don't believe governments should license citizens of that nation to go kill citizens of another nation, except in self defense. So actually, I misspoke. Come to think of it, I would NOT support the goverment of one nation encouraging its citizens to form a private army that goes around killing other people.

What about a government encouraging and funding (privately) its citizens to take up arms in another country, in defense of that country, which has been declared war upon by yet another country. What's wrong with that?

All the military alliances in the world didn't do anything to stop Hitler from taking Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, and France.

One might argue that this is BECAUSE OF appeasement. None of these countries stood a real chance on their own. Hitler took bits and pieces and then had the ability to declare war on France and Britain without losing.

Military alliances didn't have an effect upon the Battle of Britain, which Germany lost, and while the campaign in the Soviet Union was certainly affected by outside influence, most of this influence was exerted after Hitler foolishly declared war on the US, creating his own problem.

Agreed that Hitler declaring war on US was a tragic mistake...but the US would have gotten into it soon enough anyway. Whether that would have been moral or not.

Was the US right to send troops to Europe, then? Or should it have only defended itself against German attack at home? Would the US government have the right to draft and/or tax citizens for homeland defence from a German or Japanese invasion? After a declaration of war has been passed in congress?

[Ned]

Appeasement obviously grew out of British military weakness and her politician's sickness of war. For centuries, the Brits were fond of throwing their weight around; but I doubt whether Britain and France together could have beaten Germany in 1936. But to enforce Versailles meant that one had to threaten war. A threat of war often leads to actual war, which actually happened in 1939.

Thus the problem of appeasement lay farther in the past - to the end of WWI, Versailles and to British and French underinvestment in their military from that point until 1939. At the end of WWI, they rearranged the map of Europe to Germany's and Austria's detriment, and created a number of new states from the old empires that could not defend themselves. Once they did that, both countries went into a period of military decline. This created a power vaccuum that Hitler soon exploited.

When Hitler came to power in Germany, Britain should have then forged an alliance with the United States and the USSR and begain to heavily rearm. But, instead, it waited while the Nazi menace grew. Buy the time of Munich, it was already too late.

Chamberlain had a choice then. Threaten war, or accept the fact that England and France could not win a war with Germany and take what scraps Hitler offered him. He chose the latter and said we had "peace in our time."

Chamberlain's most serious mistake was to reject Roosevelt's offer to hold a conference to revisit Versailles after Munich. What arrogance.

But I agree. From 1936 on, the Brits and French could no longer handle Germany by themselves. Appeasement was the only acceptable policy and should have been continued - not by the piecemeal surrender employed by Chamberlain, but by the European conference suggested by Roosevelt.

One has to remember that no matter how just the cause, starting a war is not justified unless once is certain of winning it. England may have had a just cause (but even this is arguable) but no longer had the power to win a war with Germany. Thus appeasement was the result of weakness.

[DinoDoc]

I hate when I get to the interesting threads late.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
It's amazing the lengths some people will go to in order to defend a murderous dictator...

I'm not defending Bush, what are you talking about?

[Heresson]

France and Britiain did not have to declare war on Germany once it invaded Poland, anymore than they had to declare war when the germans occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in march '39

They had.

[Sava]

Originally posted by David Floyd
Fine, then - as a Christian, I believe that morality ultimately comes from God.

Sorry to go off topic, but I just had a comment about this.

If God said murder was okay, would you do it?

Morality doesn't come from God. Morals are logical conclusions of the "treat others how you would like to be treated" variety; although a bit more complicated. One doesn't need God to be moral, and many people with God, aren't moral.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
I hate when I get to the interesting threads late.

As do I, but this ain't one of them. As soon as Floyd starts justifying his arguments with natural rights, I head for the door, because all is lost from that point on.

[DinoDoc]

Sava: No one cares about your obsessive need to rant about any and all references to God, religion, Christianity, etc. So piss off.

[TheStinger]

Originally posted by Ned
Appeasement obviously grew out of British military weakness and her politician's sickness of war. For centuries, the Brits were fond of throwing their weight around; but I doubt whether Britain and France together could have beaten Germany in 1936. But to enforce Versailles meant that one had to threaten war. A threat of war often leads to actual war, which actually happened in 1939.

Thus the problem of appeasement lay farther in the past - to the end of WWI, Versailles and to British and French underinvestment in their military from that point until 1939. At the end of WWI, they rearranged the map of Europe to Germany's and Austria's detriment, and created a number of new states from the old empires that could not defend themselves. Once they did that, both countries went into a period of military decline. This created a power vaccuum that Hitler soon exploited.

When Hitler came to power in Germany, Britain should have then forged an alliance with the United States and the USSR and begain to heavily rearm. But, instead, it waited while the Nazi menace grew. Buy the time of Munich, it was already too late.

Chamberlain had a choice then. Threaten war, or accept the fact that England and France could not win a war with Germany and take what scraps Hitler offered him. He chose the latter and said we had "peace in our time."

Chamberlain's most serious mistake was to reject Roosevelt's offer to hold a conference to revisit Versailles after Munich. What arrogance.

But I agree. From 1936 on, the Brits and French could no longer handle Germany by themselves. Appeasement was the only acceptable policy and should have been continued - not by the piecemeal surrender employed by Chamberlain, but by the European conference suggested by Roosevelt.

One has to remember that no matter how just the cause, starting a war is not justified unless once is certain of winning it. England may have had a just cause (but even this is arguable) but no longer had the power to win a war with Germany. Thus appeasement was the result of weakness.

It could not be forseen in 1939 that Germany would walk over the UK and France in amonth, it was reasonble to assume that combined France and the UK could take on Germany.

As to your alliance with the US and the USSR, the US would have laughed at the idea of opposing Hitler and the USSR were considered as bad as germany.

Heaping all the blame on Chamberlin is like saying Clinton is responsible for Sept11

[Stefu]

It's threads like this that make me remember that old Floyd classic, "We should invade China with nuclear weapons NOW!" (The title might be bit off, but you get the idea.)

If Floyd suddenly became a socialist and started to be as inflexible and extreme in his new ideology as he's now, and as he was when he still was a conservative, I wouldn't blink an eye.

[Sava]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Sava: No one cares about your obsessive need to rant about any and all references to God, religion, Christianity, etc. So piss off.

OOhhhh, someones got sand in their vagina...

As long as Christian/Islamic fundies keep our world ****ed up, I will continue to rant.

[GePap]

History offers us NO LESSONS whatsoever, so to conduct our current actions and judge the possible effectiveness of diplomacy based on 'the lessons of history' is simplistic and childish.

What is the lesson of the Maginot line?
Many would state that the lesson is that you can't hide behind walls (ie. be aggressive against 'evil', no 'appeasement'). The French let their aggressive spirit whittle away sitting in bunkers and gave the momentum to the Germans. Sitting in their bukers, they refused to attack Germany in '39 when western germany was vulnerable, and thus sealed their fate by 1940.

We could very easily also state that the lesson is that the wall was not long enough: The project was not carried out with full urgency: there were areas with a very weak wall, specially the area around Sedan and the ardenned forest, the site of the german breakthrough and the beginning of the deadly left hook. Had the French had strong fortifications in the area, the German breakthorhg would have failed or been slowed enough to bring back the French and British forces racing into Belgium back towards France. after all, german fortifications along their border with france prevented a french attack...

which version is right? Neither. you can draw 'any' lesson from history you want, for you not only have the facts to deal with, but you also get to create lots of possible scenerios, things that 'could have been', to argue why the lesson you chose (always conviniently backing your ideological point of view) to learn is the correct one. Iraq in 2002 under Saddam Hussein is not Nazi Germany under Hitler in 1939. Different place, time, actors, tools, audience, so forth.

Wether we 'appease' saddam or not must be a rational consideration based on our aims and security concerns, not one made after 'learning from history'.

[GePap]

what's with the david lovefest loinburger and Stefu?

You can always threadjack the thing with itelligence, if you feel that is not present. Good god, if stupidity can threadjack so many things, why can't intelligence do it as well?

ps: DF has a strict set of belief, but having read his arguments, he at least he is able to create consistent and rational undepinnings for them, which is far more than I have seen from many others.