Detailing long-buried diplomatic offers showing how close we came to avoiding the outbreak of World War Two on both continents or ending it years earlier offering important lessons for war in Ukraine
The history lessons are there indeed...but will we ever learn?
As Bill Murray says," It's hard to win an argument with a smart person, but it's damn near impossible with a stupid person". The military and political arguments for the push to escalate and supply more and more offensive arms to Ukraine and delay the inevitable are an embarrassment to logic.
Right about now, as I watch us stumble into what may well be the end of humankind, I remain confounded that we never seem to learn by the avoidance lessons of wars past.
Thank you David Pyne for your insight and perspective as always.
Yes it is indeed frustrating to see us on the verge of repeating the tragic mistakes of history in a catastrophic way. World War 2 is the most sacred cow for neoconservatives so that's why I attacked the rationale for Britain starting the world war in the first place.
The British were and are acting in their own interest for sure and liberal historians do overstate matters to save FDR at minimum from any culpability. But....
No way was Hitler not going to war. No conference in Aug or Sep 1939 was going to stop war, only postpone it slightly. Hitler was 100pc subterfugal.
Hitler had no desire for war with the UK, France or Poland and made many attempts to avert war with them including five years of diplomacy with Poland to try to persuade them to ally with Germany against the USSR. Hitler only wanted war with the Soviets so he could carve out an eastern empire for Germany at western Russia's and Ukraine's expense, a plan he only abandoned briefly from September 1939 to November 1940 after Stalin rejected his offer of a Four Power Alliance.
The history lessons are there indeed...but will we ever learn?
As Bill Murray says," It's hard to win an argument with a smart person, but it's damn near impossible with a stupid person". The military and political arguments for the push to escalate and supply more and more offensive arms to Ukraine and delay the inevitable are an embarrassment to logic.
Right about now, as I watch us stumble into what may well be the end of humankind, I remain confounded that we never seem to learn by the avoidance lessons of wars past.
Thank you David Pyne for your insight and perspective as always.
Yes it is indeed frustrating to see us on the verge of repeating the tragic mistakes of history in a catastrophic way. World War 2 is the most sacred cow for neoconservatives so that's why I attacked the rationale for Britain starting the world war in the first place.
The British were and are acting in their own interest for sure and liberal historians do overstate matters to save FDR at minimum from any culpability. But....
No way was Hitler not going to war. No conference in Aug or Sep 1939 was going to stop war, only postpone it slightly. Hitler was 100pc subterfugal.
Hitler had no desire for war with the UK, France or Poland and made many attempts to avert war with them including five years of diplomacy with Poland to try to persuade them to ally with Germany against the USSR. Hitler only wanted war with the Soviets so he could carve out an eastern empire for Germany at western Russia's and Ukraine's expense, a plan he only abandoned briefly from September 1939 to November 1940 after Stalin rejected his offer of a Four Power Alliance.
Excellent! One small errata "Chamberlain itself" should be himself