@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.
