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re: Why does Hitler get more hate than Stalin?

Posted on 2/15/17 at 9:08 pm to
Posted by ChewyDante
Member since Jan 2007
17029 posts
Posted on 2/15/17 at 9:08 pm to
quote:

So you do not agree that there was an arms race on the european mainland between the wars?


I'm not sure how you drew this conclusion from anything I said.

What I'm telling you is Germany rearmed with the intent of revising the stipulations of the Versailles Treaty and securing living space in the East and that Hitler sought to avoid war with Britain, France, and the Low Countries in the process, but he was willing to risk it if they stood in his way.
Posted by ninthward
Boston, MA
Member since May 2007
21303 posts
Posted on 2/15/17 at 9:10 pm to
quote:


What I'm telling you is Germany rearmed with the intent of revising the stipulations of the Versailles Treaty and securing living space in the East and that Hitler sought to avoid war with Britain, France, and the Low Countries in the process, but he was willing to risk it if they stood in his way


That is basically what my quote says that he was willing to go to war for expansion.

Yes and in doing so had to modernize the army to compete with that of France.

Name another army that could go toe to toe with Germany in Spt 1939? it was just France, it was inevitable. To consider this did not cross the minds of the German army until Sept 2 1939 is just not realistic.
This post was edited on 2/15/17 at 9:13 pm
Posted by ChewyDante
Member since Jan 2007
17029 posts
Posted on 2/15/17 at 9:14 pm to
quote:

That is basically what my quote says that he was willing to go to war for expansion.

Yes and in doing so had to modernize the army to compete with that of France.


He needed a modern military to compete with ALL of his regional neighbors. France being the largest of course it needn't to be able to match France's power or at least come close. Again, this does not indicate a desire or intent to war with France.
Posted by ninthward
Boston, MA
Member since May 2007
21303 posts
Posted on 2/15/17 at 9:18 pm to
quote:

Again, this does not indicate a desire or intent to war with France.

So invading Poland knowing full well it will cause a war with Britain and France does not show intent or willingness to go to war with both? Ok.
This post was edited on 2/15/17 at 9:20 pm
Posted by ChewyDante
Member since Jan 2007
17029 posts
Posted on 2/15/17 at 9:21 pm to
quote:

Name another army that could go toe to toe with Germany in Spt 1939? it was just France, it was inevitable.


I don't agree it was inevitable, but regardless, that's quite the different claim than saying Hitler sought war with France or intended to fight them all along.

quote:

To consider this did not cross the minds of the German army until Sept 2 1939 is just not realistic.


I never said war with France never crossed ANYONE's mind in Germany much less the German brass. The German brass were terrified of a potential war outbreak with France during the Austrian crisis and the Czech crisis. Even as far back as the reoccupation of the Rhineland. Hell, several attempted to organize Hitler's assassination because they feared Germany would be sucked into a war they would lose outright over these issues. Hitler as well was deeply concerned with the French. Hitler made a statement to the effect that the reoccupation of the Rhineland was the most stressful day of his life due to fears of French response.

So again, you are attributing a position to me that I've never taken.
Posted by ChewyDante
Member since Jan 2007
17029 posts
Posted on 2/15/17 at 9:24 pm to
quote:

So invading Poland knowing full well it will cause a war with Britain and France does not show intent or willingness to go to war with both? Ok.


I'm starting to think you've not read any of my comments in this thread.

And here's an example for you. France and Britain might be willing to go to war with Germany if they invade Poland. Does this mean France and Britain intended to go to war with Germany all along? Or is there a qualitative nuance at play there?
Posted by ninthward
Boston, MA
Member since May 2007
21303 posts
Posted on 2/15/17 at 9:25 pm to
I think you have a very practical view of this, and nothing you said has been incorrect. The German brass did not want to fight anyone, but when you are ruled by a megalomaniac you are at the mercy of someone who would rather have the 4th army starve than rescue it.
Posted by ninthward
Boston, MA
Member since May 2007
21303 posts
Posted on 2/15/17 at 9:26 pm to
quote:

And here's an example for you. France and Britain might be willing to go to war with Germany if they invade Poland. Does this mean France and Britain intended to go to war with Germany all along? Or is there a qualitative nuance at play there?
Actually, yes.


And thanks I appreciate the responses, I always learn a little more in each one of these WW2 threads.

I have often wanted a WW2 board here.
This post was edited on 2/15/17 at 9:31 pm
Posted by TheTideMustRoll
Birmingham, AL
Member since Dec 2009
9618 posts
Posted on 2/16/17 at 10:38 am to
In both World Wars, Germany attacked France in order to clear the way for a single-front war against Russia.

It is possible to consider both the First and Second World Wars as two chapters of an overarching conflict between Germany and Russia over which would fill the power vacuum left in eastern and southeastern Europe by the double decay and collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.
Posted by ChewyDante
Member since Jan 2007
17029 posts
Posted on 2/16/17 at 10:53 am to
quote:

In both World Wars, Germany attacked France in order to clear the way for a single-front war against Russia.


This implies that Germany had an overarching war plan that centered on Russia and determined a conquest of France was a necessary first step. I'd love to know where you folks seem to be getting your information because I can unequivocally tell you there was no organized German war plan for this scenario. This is nothing more than conjecture about what Hitler had bouncing around in his own head.

In many ways, WWI and WWII were in fact directly linked. In other ways, not so. Ever since the History Channel came out with that stupid program making this suggestion I've heard people throwing it around left and right and simplifying a historical context that is far more complex than that.

ETA: First paragraph referring to WWII.
This post was edited on 2/16/17 at 10:58 am
Posted by NYNolaguy1
Member since May 2011
21421 posts
Posted on 2/16/17 at 10:57 am to
quote:

Stalin killed million of peasants trying to turn the country into an industrialized nation


quote:

The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.


PS it wasn't just peasants. He also killed off all military officers and their families who he thought might be against him. "The Purge" was real long before the movie.
Posted by TheTideMustRoll
Birmingham, AL
Member since Dec 2009
9618 posts
Posted on 2/16/17 at 11:05 am to
Germany went to war with France in 1914 because their war plan called for it in the event of war with Russia, and war with Russia was inevitable because the Tsar had guaranteed Serbia protection in the event of an attack on that state by Austria-Hungary. The entirety of the Western Front in that war was the direct result of a conflict between Germany (and Austria-Hungary, a state dominated by ethnic Germans) and Russia.

Hitler's main plan prior to the start of World War 2 was to increase Germany's sphere of influence in the East at the Soviet Union's expense. Although he was prepared for war against Great Britain and France, he did not seek it. His initial aims did not include western expansion. France and Great Britain forced his hand by declaring war in support of Poland.

I don't know what History Channel show you're talking about.
Posted by ChewyDante
Member since Jan 2007
17029 posts
Posted on 2/16/17 at 11:09 am to
quote:

PS it wasn't just peasants. He also killed off all military officers and their families who he thought might be against him. "The Purge" was real long before the movie.


He killed ANYBODY that stood in the way of his worldview, in any respect, or who he felt possessed popularity that might threaten his grip on power and manipulation of the narrative to paint himself as the person responsible for all Soviet "achievements" and "successes." Stalin murdered millions of people and threw millions more into Gulag concentration and slave labor camps, where scores more would die or survive in a miserable existence of slavery and mistreatment. He did this over decades and decades with no remorse or need for moral justification. He also had nothing against murdering foreigners either when he got the opportunity. His crimes in the Baltics and Poland in the USSR's short occupation of those nations prior to the German invasion show his eagerness to murder political, social, and cultural opponents there as well. He killed loyal, high ranking members of the Red Army AND the Communist Party, routinely. He murdered leaders of the Leningrad holdout after Leningrad's liberation for no reason other than their popularity and period of relative independence from the central Soviet state's control. He condemned Soviet soldiers and civilians who had fallen into German hands or occupation because they had been "exposed" to non-Communist ideas and were tainted. He imprisoned wives and family members of his inner circle. He humiliated them and forced them to live in terror as to whether he would have them arrested or killed at any moment.

Stalin was a sociopath of the highest order. Any argument that suggests his crimes were somehow morally less than Hitler's on account that he didn't target a specific ethnic/religious group is as logically and morally bankrupt as can be.
This post was edited on 2/16/17 at 11:17 am
Posted by ChewyDante
Member since Jan 2007
17029 posts
Posted on 2/16/17 at 11:14 am to
quote:

Germany went to war with France in 1914 because their war plan called for it in the event of war with Russia, and war with Russia was inevitable because the Tsar had guaranteed Serbia protection in the event of an attack on that state by Austria-Hungary. The entirety of the Western Front in that war was the direct result of a conflict between Germany (and Austria-Hungary, a state dominated by ethnic Germans) and Russia.


I'm not talking about WWI. WWI is much more straightforward.

quote:

Hitler's main plan prior to the start of World War 2 was to increase Germany's sphere of influence in the East at the Soviet Union's expense. Although he was prepared for war against Great Britain and France, he did not seek it. His initial aims did not include western expansion. France and Great Britain forced his hand by declaring war in support of Poland.


Agree with all of this. Perhaps I read your post wrong? It sounded like you were suggesting, as another poster here was, that France was a predetermined target of Hitler's aggression.

quote:

I don't know what History Channel show you're talking about.


It was basically just a new presentation for them to premiere a "new" WWII series, since everything has been covered as much as it could be. It centered on linking the figures of WWII to their experience in WWI and asserting that the two conflicts were really just one big European struggle. Which has some degree of truth to it, but then I started hearing folks with a rudimentary WWII understanding making this argument pretty cavalierly and I found it rather irritating.
Posted by crash1211
Houma
Member since May 2008
3399 posts
Posted on 2/16/17 at 1:40 pm to
quote:

Lebensraum is all you need to know about this.


He pretty much spelled it out in Mein Kampf. His plan was always to go east.
Posted by CoachDon
Louisville
Member since Sep 2014
12409 posts
Posted on 2/16/17 at 1:47 pm to
Israel Brah...God's people.

Posted by jrodLSUke
Premium
Member since Jan 2011
24480 posts
Posted on 2/16/17 at 3:22 pm to
quote:

And none of that indicates that Hitler had grand designs on war with France

I guess the French built the Maginot Line as part of their plot to instigate war with Germany? I guess Germany just had to blitzkrieg through Belgium in self defense?

Your position is beyond delusional. Hitler's war machine marched through the entire European Continent, into much of Africa, and well into Asia. Hitler quite literally had grand designs to invade France. It's beyond argument.
Posted by jrodLSUke
Premium
Member since Jan 2011
24480 posts
Posted on 2/16/17 at 3:31 pm to
Literally Hitler's Plan to invade France
quote:

Developed by Generalleutnant (Lieutenant General) Erich von Manstein, the plan greatly modified the original 1939 versions of the invasion plan, Fall Gelb (Case Yellow) by Franz Halder, for the Battle of France.

quote:

On 10 January 1940, the Mechelen Incident occurred, when a German aircraft carrying documents containing parts of the operational plans of Fall Gelb crashed in Belgium, thus prompting another review of the invasion plan.

The plans were literally discovered in a plan crash.
Posted by ninthward
Boston, MA
Member since May 2007
21303 posts
Posted on 2/16/17 at 3:39 pm to
quote:

He pretty much spelled it out in Mein Kampf. His plan was always to go east.
He also knew this expansion could result in a war with Britain and France.
Posted by ChewyDante
Member since Jan 2007
17029 posts
Posted on 2/16/17 at 3:47 pm to
quote:

I guess the French built the Maginot Line as part of their plot to instigate war with Germany? I guess Germany just had to blitzkrieg through Belgium in self defense?


The Maginot Line was built for very obvious reasons. In the first 50 years following the unification of Germany, France and Germany had entered into 2 major wars with one another and stood as two of the world's foremost geopolitical rivals who also happened to share a border. The Maginot Line is also irrelevant as to having any bearing on Hitler's geopolitical intentions.

quote:

Your position is beyond delusional. Hitler's war machine marched through the entire European Continent, into much of Africa, and well into Asia. Hitler quite literally had grand designs to invade France. It's beyond argument.


Please go through my posts and tell me what is factually incorrect, delusional, or beyond argument. Please be specific.

Hitler's armies moved into Western Europe and Africa only as a result of the military situation created by French and British declarations of war against Germany. Thus using these instances as an argument for "Hitler had grand designs to invade France" absent French declaration of war against Germany which then created the conditions where it was fundamentally necessary for Germany to invade France, is logically invalid.

If you can provide any historical record that indicates that Hitler sought to invade France as a geopolitical strategy outside of a response to French hostile declarations, please, by all means, provide it. We know with great material evidence that Hitler sought unification with Austria and reincorporation of German territories and peoples lost following WWI. We also know that he had grand designs on expanding Germany's control east in general. He made this explicitly clear in Mein Kampf and many speeches. What we don't have is much support for the notion that Hitler sought to conquer France and incorporate France into greater Germany. That France was defeated and occupied by Germany in a war declared by France does not suggest otherwise.

Hitler, in spite of his bold and brazen actions, was quite wary of entering into any military struggle with France and Britain. He was well aware of their military power and the offensive launched into France in May of 1940 was considered extremely risky by all involved. He was also guilty of believing that the French and British would ultimately balk on declaring war over Poland. In this, he made a typical Hitlerian error in judgment.

It's quite common to place the entire outbreak of the war on the mantle of "Hitler was a madman who wanted to conquer and rule all of Europe" but this is pop history. The reality is that France and Britain and their foreign policy strategies and philosophies were likewise major contributors to WWII's outbreak. This is a hard pill for many to swallow but it's simply true.
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