Maybe Chamberlain was not enough of a coward?

As others pointed out, Hitler hated France. He also isn’t known for making rational decisions.

But it still would have been rational to attack France. France added to Germany’s economy, its production, and even its military. More French fought for the Axis than for the Allies.

Furthermore, Hitler may have had no designs on Britain, but as you pointed out, Hitler expected Britain to surrender when France fell.

Hitler’s plan appeared to be:

• Austria
• Czechoslovakia
• Poland
• Denmark
• Norway
• Holland
• Belgium
• France
• Russia

If he expected Britain to surrender, of course preparations to invade Britain never entered his mind. But the invasion of France did, as evidenced by his moving troops into the Rhineland.

With France out and Britain at peace, Hitler would have nearly all the Continent to bring against Russia, and a one-front war. Not a bad plan.

Yes amanntai - Britain to surrender in terms of accepting the new status quo, not surrender of sovereignty or territory.

As you say G vs R as a two sided fight may well have resulted in a G victory.  Then the US & UK would have been faced by a much tougher task.

Another interesting what if would be whether the UK & R would have won if the US had not entered the war?

Good thing the Blokes had Churchill :)

@Private:

Another interesting what if would be whether the UK & R would have won if the US had not entered the war?

An Excellent question indeed. I believe Soviet manpower would’ve won “won?” in the end . They had 47 million in their national guard. The Germans didn’t know how to plan for it so they ignored it. Not a good solution.  Japan would have stayed in line though. Then again maybe not. :)

You are probably right barney.  Provided UK & R benefitted from “neutral” US industrial might.  But it would have taken longer due to the UK’s understandable Med focus sucking resources from any attempt at a northern Europe second (well third) front.

Or perhaps R’s progress on the eastern front was not overly helped by D-day? Hard to believe, but I don’t have the facts to hand - Where’s that Max Hastings book ….?  :-)

Hang on a mo - I am forgetting one of the guiding principles of my life - never let the facts get in the way of a good opinion!  :wink:

@Private:

Or perhaps R’s progress on the eastern front was not overly helped by D-day?

Although it’s a fair point that the USSR did the bulk of the land fighting in the European Theatre in WWII, and could perhaps even have won single-handedly, the Anglo-American opening of a second front in western Europe was far from unimportant – a point illustrated by Stalin himself, who spent spent 1942 and 1943 and the first half of 1944 badgering the British and the Americans to get on with the job of opening a second front instead of (from Stalin’s perspective) sitting on their hindquarters and letting the Red Army do all the work.

Yes CWO.

Of course Stalin attributed more importance before the event than he did afterwards!

Plus the fact that R received help from the UK/BE & US in other ways - pressure in the Med, particularly the Italian campaign, bomber raids, Archangel convoys, distraction of J from a Far East incursion ….

Would R really have won on its own?

Cheers
PP

Can I just add that I am amazed at how knowledgeable some of you guys are. :-)

I thought I was pretty well informed, but I have forgotten most of the facts and remembered some of the broad-brush conclusions, then muddied those with my own meanderings.

I look forward to learning from future threads on this board.

Cheers
PP

@Private:

Not sure about the USSR vs France as Hitler’s no. 1 target.  Could go to one of my books, but am sure others have the facts.

Am confident that G had no designs on the UK and its empire.  There was an underlying belief/hope that the UK would accept G domination of Europe, as some in the British government were to advocate.

So the UK could have avoided the war.  But I can think of a number of reasons why to do so would have been wrong.

1.  Europe was dominated by dictatorships - Franco, Mussolini, Stalin & Hitler.  Democracy was at bay.  It is hard to imagine the democracy under siege feel of the time.  Somewhere a line needed to be drawn.  It was not a question of which monster had killed the most, nor of accepting collateral damage in the hope that “we” would escape whilst those we might have called friends were targeted one by one.

2.  The UK’s constant policy since Marlborough was to defend a balance of power on the continent. G were the immediate threat to that balance, not R.

3. It is far from certain that the UK & USA could have beaten a victorious G (or R) + J.

I nearly started an analogy to Europe today, but history is safer!

1.  Europe was dominated by dictatorships - Franco, Mussolini, Stalin & Hitler.  Democracy was at bay.

A good point. But how much did democracy really gain as a result of its decision to go to war?

In August of 1939, France, Britain, Greece, and Scandinavia were under democratic rule. Germany and Italy were fascist, and Poland was a military dictatorship. By 1948 (as the dust from the war cleared), the democracies controlled everything they had in August 1939, plus Italy and western Germany. Almost every European nation east of that line had fallen under Soviet dominion. So it’s not like the democracies gained very much–especially not when compared with the sheer scale of Soviet gains.

2.  The UK’s constant policy since Marlborough was to defend a balance of
power on the continent. G were the immediate threat to that balance, not R.

I agree that defending a balance of power is typically a sensible policy for democracies to employ. However, I feel the Soviet Union was the true threat to that balance of power.

Germany’s prewar population was 69 million, as opposed to 169 million for the Soviet Union. The Soviets had about 2.5x as many people as the Germans.

In Marx’s writings, he described a one world communist government. The stated long-term goal of Soviet foreign policy was world conquest; and that goal was reiterated in publications such as Pravda. Every nation on the Soviet Union’s western border in August of 1939 had been partially or fully annexed by May of 1941. Soviet expansionism predated the Nazi-Soviet War.

In June of 1941, Germany had 3,000 tanks on its eastern front, as opposed to 23,000 tanks for the Soviet Union on its western front. The Soviets also had a commanding advantage in terms of artillery, infantry, and planes; albeit not to the same extent as their advantage in tanks. The reason Stalin did not expect a German invasion was because he knew Germany could not defeat the Soviets in a quick war, and was not well-positioned for a long war. On the other hand, the Soviet Union was superior to Germany in terms of industrial strength, access to oil, farmland, and raw materials. Its supply of manpower (available for infantry) was much, much greater than Germany’s.

Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union was in many ways a desperation move, taken after he’d correctly determined that Stalin was planning an invasion of Germany. Hitler struck a month before the Soviets’ invasion preparations would have been complete. Every Soviet officer had a packet of information, to be opened in the event of Nazi-Soviet hostilities breaking out. Every Soviet officer opened his packet, and found plenty of information on what to do if the Soviet Union invaded Germany, and nothing at all on how to respond to a German attack against the Soviets. The Soviets were thrown into confusion. Adding to that confusion was the fact that in many cases, tank crews and artillery crews were hundreds of miles from the machines they were supposed to be operating. That was one of the problems the Soviets intended to solve during the month they thought they had before beginning their invasion of Germany. Due to the Soviet Union’s lack of preparedness for any sort of defensive struggle, it was possible for Germany to make excellent initial gains; while achieving an astonishing 10:1 exchange ratio in combat against Soviet soldiers.

Later in the war that ratio declined to 3:1. Due to the fact that the Western democracies pulled German attention away from its eastern front; and given the Soviets’ massive advantage in manpower, that 3:1 ratio was not sufficient for Germany to achieve victory. Also, the Soviets came very close to achieving a 1:1 exchange ratio at Stalingrad. German losses were close to a million men in that battle–over 1% of its entire prewar population.

In 1941, Germany’s army had 150 divisions–slightly larger than the French Army had been in 1940. By the end of 1941, the Red Army consisted of a staggering 600 divisions. Not only that, it added 500,000 new men every month for most of the rest of the war. That was a replacement rate far beyond anything Germany could possibly hope to match.

In preparing for its invasion of Germany, the Soviet military had developed light tanks capable of traveling across rivers. These tanks had even traveled across Lake Ladoga. The next generation of that particular tank was planned to have the capacity to cross the English Channel. Stalin had hoped Hitler would conquer England in 1940, so that the Red Army could later “liberate” it from Nazi occupation. He would then have established a communist dictatorship.

3. It is far from certain that the UK & USA could have beaten a victorious G (or R) + J.

During the Cold War, Truman recognized that if the Soviet Union invaded Western Europe, American and German forces would be no match for their Soviet counterparts. Had the Soviets attacked, the main defense would have been to use nuclear weapons against advancing Soviet troops. Stalin intended to counter the American nuclear threat by using MiG jets to shoot down American bombers before they could deliver their nuclear payloads. Stalin had a lot of MiG jets. However, he died before he could put into effect his plans to launch WWIII.

It’s hard to imagine that a German or Japanese victory in WWII would have resulted in a weaker American postwar position than the one described above. Germany and Japan had very limited populations. During the war Japan expended a great many of its soldiers in its war against China, just as Germany lost many men against the Soviet Union. These losses, in combination with their relatively small population sizes–would have prevented them from overwhelming the Western democracies with sheer numbers. (As the Soviet Union could easily have done.)

@Private:

I thought I was pretty well informed, but I have forgotten most of the facts and remembered some of the broad-brush conclusions, then muddied those with my own meanderings.

Ha Ha! Well Said! My mind is quite muddied as well. :)

@KurtGodel7:

I agree that defending a balance of power is typically a sensible policy for democracies to employ. However, I feel the Soviet Union was the true threat to that balance of power.

Yea too bad the nazis were/are so nutted up. You have to be really bad to be worst than the commies.

@barney:

Ha Ha! Well Said! My mind is quite muddied as well. :)

Yea too bad the nazis were/are so nutted up. You have to be really bad to be worst than the commies.

Yea too bad the nazis were/are so nutted up. You have to be really bad to be worst than the commies.

As of August of 1939, the Soviet government had murdered about 1,000 people for every person the Nazi government had murdered. Given that the communists were much worse than the Nazis–at least by that measurement–why did the Western democracies adopt pro-Soviet, anti-Nazi foreign policies during the years leading up to the war?

One possible explanation for the Western democracies’ actions is that the communists had achieved much, much better penetration of the Western democracies than the Nazis had achieved. There was no pro-Nazi contingent in Hollywood, or among radio stations, or in American academia. There were no pro-Nazi members of the administrations of FDR, Truman, or Daladier. No effort whatever–either prewar or during the war–had been made to hush up any of the Nazis’ crimes. On the other hand, there had been a number of efforts to make deliberately dishonest accusations against the Nazis; such as accusing them of having plans for world domination or creating lampshades made of human skin.

Compare that to the scale of communists’ penetration. FDR’s administration contained about 300 Soviet agents, including Harry Dexter White, author of the Morgenthau Plan. Communists had very strong influence in Hollywood and other segments of the media and in academia. FDR’s first major foreign policy decision–taken half a decade before the start of WWII–was to extend diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union. In order to set the stage for his decision, FDR hushed up the Ukrainian famine–a famine in which the Soviet Union deliberately starved seven million of its own citizens to death.

One reason why the communists had achieved so much influence over Western democracies–and the Nazis so little–is that the communist movement has always been intended as a global movement. Whereas the Nazis were focused almost exclusively on Europe.

A second factor is that an ideology based on Aryan supremacy can appeal only to primarily Germanic or Nordic nations, such as Germany itself. Whereas an ideology based on the proletariate overthrowing the bourgeoise can have appeal in any nation which contains economic disparities.

Well… marching people into the “showers” didn’t help their image. And yes the commies were our “friends” at the time so criticism of them was largely muted during the war years. Their (russia) true colors come shining through easily if one looks.

Did R pose more of a threat than G?

Perhaps in terms of military might, but numbers and quantities are only part of that judgement.  Probably also in terms of ideological penetration of the West.

But it was G’s geographical location in central Europe and its militarised border with the foremost continental democracy that ratcheted up its threat status.

Sorry for the brevity of this response but struggling with this bloody tablet!

@KurtGodel7:

Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union was in many ways a desperation move, taken after he’d correctly determined that Stalin was planning an invasion of Germany. Hitler struck a month before the Soviets’ invasion preparations would have been complete.

Back on the PC now!

That’s news to me KurtGodel7. Either I have (re-?) learned something or this is a debated point? Look forward to hearing what others have to say.

@Private:

That’s news to me KurtGodel7. Either I have (re-?) learned something or this is a debated point? Look forward to hearing what others have to say.

There was a lengthy discussion of this topic over here:

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=34786.0

In a nutshell, some board members argued for the revisionist theory that the USSR intended to invade Germany as a first step towards global domination by the Communists, while other board members (myself included) argued for the mainstream theory that the Soviets were planning a forward defense of their territory against an anticipated Nazi invasion whose aim was to secure Lebensraum, slave labour and resources for the Third Reich.  Such discussions can be found scattered all over this forum (the present thread on Chamberlain being one such example).

Thanks CWO. Quickly scanned the thread. An interesting debate, but w/out any killer facts on either side it seems. I suppose it is likely that Stalin & Hitler could not have lived peacefully side-by-side for very long, so all we are left debating is whether R was about to attack G at that moment.

Cheers
Humble Private

PS Just consulted God (Max Hastings :-D): He does register the likelihood of R attacking G, probably in 1942, and so Hitler believing his strike was pre-emptive.  By 1941 R had doubled its “active forces” but scarcely begun its re-equipment programme.  Some truth on both sides of the argument then?

@KurtGodel7:

@Private:

Not sure about the USSR vs France as Hitler’s no. 1 target.  Could go to one of my books, but am sure others have the facts.

Am confident that G had no designs on the UK and its empire.  There was an underlying belief/hope that the UK would accept G domination of Europe, as some in the British government were to advocate.

So the UK could have avoided the war.  But I can think of a number of reasons why to do so would have been wrong.

1.  Europe was dominated by dictatorships - Franco, Mussolini, Stalin & Hitler.  Democracy was at bay.  It is hard to imagine the democracy under siege feel of the time.  Somewhere a line needed to be drawn.  It was not a question of which monster had killed the most, nor of accepting collateral damage in the hope that “we” would escape whilst those we might have called friends were targeted one by one.

2.  The UK’s constant policy since Marlborough was to defend a balance of power on the continent. G were the immediate threat to that balance, not R.

3. It is far from certain that the UK & USA could have beaten a victorious G (or R) + J.

I nearly started an analogy to Europe today, but history is safer!

1.  Europe was dominated by dictatorships - Franco, Mussolini, Stalin & Hitler.  Democracy was at bay.

A good point. But how much did democracy really gain as a result of its decision to go to war?

In August of 1939, France, Britain, Greece, and Scandinavia were under democratic rule. Germany and Italy were fascist, and Poland was a military dictatorship. By 1948 (as the dust from the war cleared), the democracies controlled everything they had in August 1939, plus Italy and western Germany. Almost every European nation east of that line had fallen under Soviet dominion. So it’s not like the democracies gained very much–especially not when compared with the sheer scale of Soviet gains.

2.  The UK’s constant policy since Marlborough was to defend a balance of
power on the continent. G were the immediate threat to that balance, not R.

I agree that defending a balance of power is typically a sensible policy for democracies to employ. However, I feel the Soviet Union was the true threat to that balance of power.

Germany’s prewar population was 69 million, as opposed to 169 million for the Soviet Union. The Soviets had about 2.5x as many people as the Germans.

In Marx’s writings, he described a one world communist government. The stated long-term goal of Soviet foreign policy was world conquest; and that goal was reiterated in publications such as Pravda. Every nation on the Soviet Union’s western border in August of 1939 had been partially or fully annexed by May of 1941. Soviet expansionism predated the Nazi-Soviet War.

In June of 1941, Germany had 3,000 tanks on its eastern front, as opposed to 23,000 tanks for the Soviet Union on its western front. The Soviets also had a commanding advantage in terms of artillery, infantry, and planes; albeit not to the same extent as their advantage in tanks. The reason Stalin did not expect a German invasion was because he knew Germany could not defeat the Soviets in a quick war, and was not well-positioned for a long war. On the other hand, the Soviet Union was superior to Germany in terms of industrial strength, access to oil, farmland, and raw materials. Its supply of manpower (available for infantry) was much, much greater than Germany’s.

Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union was in many ways a desperation move, taken after he’d correctly determined that Stalin was planning an invasion of Germany. Hitler struck a month before the Soviets’ invasion preparations would have been complete. Every Soviet officer had a packet of information, to be opened in the event of Nazi-Soviet hostilities breaking out. Every Soviet officer opened his packet, and found plenty of information on what to do if the Soviet Union invaded Germany, and nothing at all on how to respond to a German attack against the Soviets. The Soviets were thrown into confusion. Adding to that confusion was the fact that in many cases, tank crews and artillery crews were hundreds of miles from the machines they were supposed to be operating. That was one of the problems the Soviets intended to solve during the month they thought they had before beginning their invasion of Germany. Due to the Soviet Union’s lack of preparedness for any sort of defensive struggle, it was possible for Germany to make excellent initial gains; while achieving an astonishing 10:1 exchange ratio in combat against Soviet soldiers.

Later in the war that ratio declined to 3:1. Due to the fact that the Western democracies pulled German attention away from its eastern front; and given the Soviets’ massive advantage in manpower, that 3:1 ratio was not sufficient for Germany to achieve victory. Also, the Soviets came very close to achieving a 1:1 exchange ratio at Stalingrad. German losses were close to a million men in that battle–over 1% of its entire prewar population.

In 1941, Germany’s army had 150 divisions–slightly larger than the French Army had been in 1940. By the end of 1941, the Red Army consisted of a staggering 600 divisions. Not only that, it added 500,000 new men every month for most of the rest of the war. That was a replacement rate far beyond anything Germany could possibly hope to match.

In preparing for its invasion of Germany, the Soviet military had developed light tanks capable of traveling across rivers. These tanks had even traveled across Lake Ladoga. The next generation of that particular tank was planned to have the capacity to cross the English Channel. Stalin had hoped Hitler would conquer England in 1940, so that the Red Army could later “liberate” it from Nazi occupation. He would then have established a communist dictatorship.

3. It is far from certain that the UK & USA could have beaten a victorious G (or R) + J.

During the Cold War, Truman recognized that if the Soviet Union invaded Western Europe, American and German forces would be no match for their Soviet counterparts. Had the Soviets attacked, the main defense would have been to use nuclear weapons against advancing Soviet troops. Stalin intended to counter the American nuclear threat by using MiG jets to shoot down American bombers before they could deliver their nuclear payloads. Stalin had a lot of MiG jets. However, he died before he could put into effect his plans to launch WWIII.

It’s hard to imagine that a German or Japanese victory in WWII would have resulted in a weaker American postwar position than the one described above. Germany and Japan had very limited populations. During the war Japan expended a great many of its soldiers in its war against China, just as Germany lost many men against the Soviet Union. These losses, in combination with their relatively small population sizes–would have prevented them from overwhelming the Western democracies with sheer numbers. (As the Soviet Union could easily have done.)

True, democracy didn’t gain. But that wasn’t because they went to war.
Denmark, Holland, and Belgium were not at war with Germany. Yet they were invaded. Democracy lost even without war.
Prior to that, Poland and Czechoslovakia had fallen, and I believe both were democracies.
Britain and France believed Hitler was taking over Europe’s democratic nations one by one, and went to war to stop it. The war was an attempt to save democracy, that mostly ended up failing in the first few years of the war.

It is true that the Soviets had more manpower and industrial might than Germany. But did you include Italy and France in Germany’s military? After France fell, and if Britain had surrendered like Germany anticipated, the full might of the Axis would have come down on Russia. With no second front, Germany would have used those 10:1 and 3:1 kill ratios to slowly deplete the Russian population to nothing. The Soviet Union lost far more men than any other power in WW2… now imagine if they had been fighting alone against the Axis. Would they have won?

As for a weaker US position post war if they had ignored Germany…
Of course it would have been weaker! They would have lost the military buildup, the increase in military production that came with going to war against Germany, the experience of troops gained in the fighting, and most importantly: The Atomic Bomb! The Atom Bomb was specifically designed and made to counter Germany’s own atomic weapon research, and wasn’t used against Germany only because Germany abandoned it’s project and then lost the war before the Atomic Bomb could be used against them. If nuking the Russians was really Truman’s plan… what would he have done if he had stayed out of Europe, and had no nukes? The US became stronger because of going to war with the European Axis, and was able to successfully prevent Soviet domination.

@CWO:

@Private:

That’s news to me KurtGodel7. Either I have (re-?) learned something or this is a debated point? Look forward to hearing what others have to say.

There was a lengthy discussion of this topic over here:

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=34786.0

In a nutshell, some board members argued for the revisionist theory that the USSR intended to invade Germany as a first step towards global domination by the Communists, while other board members (myself included) argued for the mainstream theory that the Soviets were planning a forward defense of their territory against an anticipated Nazi invasion whose aim was to secure Lebensraum, slave labour and resources for the Third Reich.  Such discussions can be found scattered all over this forum (the present thread on Chamberlain being one such example).

That the long-term goal of communism is world domination is not seriously disputed. Evidence also strongly indicates that as a step toward that goal, Stalin hoped to take control over all of Europe during his own lifetime.

In a nutshell, some board members argued for the revisionist theory that the USSR intended to invade Germany . . .

The source for this “revisionist theory” is not “some board members,” but rather Victor Suvorov. Suvorov was a highly ranked KGB agent until he defected to Britain. In the years before his defection, he had access to secret Soviet archives. It was his research into these archives–which were and are unavailable to Western historians–which persuaded him that the Soviet Union intended to strike the first blow.

It’s been said that journalists write the first draft of history. And that’s the approach most mainstream historians typically use. They’ll gather press clippings, and use them as a starting point for the books they intend to write.

But in his role as an intelligence operative, Suvorov was not trained to rely on press clippings. He was trained to dig deeper, in order to find the things which lay beneath the surface. If (for example) there was some secret the United States government did not want the Soviet government to know, the Soviet KGB did not necessarily expect to learn that secret by reading about it in the American press! The KGB’s task was not always quite so easy as that.

Suvorov had been taught techniques to use to spy on other people’s governments, and pry out their secrets. He used those techniques on his own government, to ferret out a secret it had been hiding. The more evidence he gathered, the more obvious the truth became.

Stalin came to power in the first place by using a series of alliances and betrayals. He’d ally with X against Y. After Y had been eliminated, he’d ally with Z against X. After X had been “disappeared,” Stalin would turn his sights on Z.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact represented Stalin’s attempt to do the same thing to Hitler. The agreement called for Germany and the Soviet Union to invade Poland at the same time. That way they’d both do the work of destroying Poland’s army, and they’d both take the blame for having been aggressors. Instead, Stalin delayed his invasion by several weeks. Germany had to do by far the lion’s share of the work of destroying the Polish Army, and received almost all the blame for Poland’s invasion. The Soviet Union received at least as much territory as Germany did, without having to pay a price even remotely resembling the one Germany paid.

But the destruction of the Polish Army was not the only task Stalin had in mind for Hitler. The French, and (ideally) the British Armies also needed to be destroyed. During 1940, Stalin left Hitler alone so that he could achieve the task Stalin had intended for him. By 1941, it was clear that Hitler would not conquer Britain or any other additional major Western democracy. This meant he was of no further use to Stalin. Suvorov suggested the Soviet invasion of Germany had been planned for the late summer or early fall of 1941. An August invasion was a distinct possibility; though it was difficult to pin down an exact date. One thing was relatively certain: the large numbers of Soviet soldiers gathered along the Nazi-Soviet border had not been ordered to prepare winter accommodations for themselves. Germany’s soldiers along that border were not ordered to prepare winter accommodations either; because the plan was for them to be well east of that border by winter. What is the explanation for the absence of Soviet winter accommodations along that same border?

Hi KurtGodel7

Not read the book you refer to, but happy to accept the likelihood of an R attack on G at some point. The uncertainty is when.  Also communism global aspirations, which I am sure all would accept

Do you accept any of the counter arguments on other points?  G being more of a threat?  The democracies gaining or not?

Cheers
PP

@Private:

Hi KurtGodel7

Not read the book you refer to, but happy to accept the likelihood of an R attack on G at some point. The uncertainty is when.  Also communism global aspirations, which I am sure all would accept

Do you accept any of the counter arguments on other points? � G being more of a threat? � The democracies gaining or not?

Cheers
PP

Do you accept any of the counter arguments on other points?

It was correctly pointed out that Germany invaded several neutral democracies, including Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium. Those invasions occurred in 1940, after the British and French governments had already gone to war. Each invasion was done for military reasons, intended to help Germany in its war against France and Britain.

Norway was invaded to protect Germany’s supply of Swedish iron ore against British aggression. The other reason for the invasion was so that Germany could have more ports along the Atlantic coast, better positioning it for sub warfare against Britain. The Netherlands and Belgium were invaded as part of the overall plan to conquer France. Denmark was invaded to help protect the Baltic against British or French naval incursions.

In 1939, Poland’s government was a military dictatorship. (And an expansionist military dictatorship, at that.)

You will recall that back when Britain and France had empires, there were two types of people: citizens, with full voting rights. And residents of colonies, who had few or no rights. Czechoslovakia was similar to that. Czechs were considered full citizens, and had full democratic voting rights. The Germans living in the Sudetenland were treated like “residents of colonies” were treated by the British and French empires, and were given few or no rights.

To assert that Germany was in the business of gobbling up democracies in the prewar period is false: the only democracy it gobbled up during the prewar period was Czechoslovakia. Compare that to the Soviet Union. During its own prewar period–which extended into early June of 1941–the Soviet Union annexed Lithuania (authoritarian government), Latvia (a democracy) and Estonia (an authoritarian/democratic hybrid). It also annexed part of Finland (a democracy). By taking away Finland’s defenses–which were quite possibly the most impregnable in Europe–the Soviet Union made it clear it was planning on a subsequent invasion of Finland as a whole. Stalin also helped himself to the eastern half of Poland in 1939; although in that particular instance he was gaining at the expense of a military dictatorship.

The idea that Germany was the bigger threat because of its habit of gobbling up democracies is not convincing to me; because the Soviet Union was perfectly happy to do plenty of gobbling too.

The democracies gaining or not?

The vast majority of the democracies’ gains were things they’d lost in the first place due to their own decision to focus on Nazi Germany while ignoring the Soviet threat. Western democratic instinct to ignore the Soviet threat predated Hitler’s rise to power. In 1920, the Soviet Union attempted to annex Poland. Had it been successful, Suvorov believes that it would have moved on to Germany. At the time, Germany was disarmed due to the Versailles Treaty, and was on the brink of a communist revolution. The Western democracies did precisely nothing to help Poland against this Soviet invasion. (With the exception of a few French military advisors.) But instead of falling victim to Soviet invasion–as most had expected–the Poles proved surprisingly resilient. When military fortunes had turned against them–when the governments of Britain and France urged the Poles to seek the best surrender terms they could–the Poles instead won a decisive victory near Warsaw. The courage and skill the Poles displayed in that battle protected both Poland and Germany from the scourge of the Red Terror for the next twenty years. However, Poland’s victory would not have been possible, had the Soviet Union not been in a state of civil war.

By 1948, the Soviet Union controlled the vast bulk of Europe. This was the natural long-term consequence of the Western democracies’ decision to ignore the Soviet threat, while doing everything they could to destroy Europe’s one counterweight to that threat.