Did Neville Chamberlain cause WW2?

U r in error, Bill.
The German Army was in a state of collapse
and things were deteriorating in Germany,
even to the extent that the German negotiators
received a telegram SENT IN THE CLEAR -- NO CODE-- ordering them
to accept ANY peace terms in the Armistice;
i.e., World War II was unnecessary. Hitler was in the hospital blind,
for a few weeks when the surrender (such as it was) occurred.
He did not know (as the LEADERSHIP did) how bad things really were for the Germans. [Germen ??]

If he had KNOWN, maybe he woud not have complained as much.





David

Amazing that the last few battles of WW1 was as costly as ever for the allies side and yes they was in bad shape but so was everyone else but the Americans at the time and somehow I do no see anyone being able to explain to the American people of the time that we needed to spend a hundred thousands or so extra lives to made a political point.

Because of the failure to finish the job (as Pershing said),
World War II became necessary, as he said it woud.

We 'd have been better off if Pershing had been President.
The moral of the story is: DON'T elect Democrats,
even when the Republicans split.





David

Riiiight. When instead we could elect Republican presidents like Richard Nixon, whose "secret plan to end the war in Vietnam" didn't. And Bush I, who did NOT go on to Baghdad. Or for that matter Dwight Eisenhower, whose meddling with the Viet-French accords led inevitably to the war in Vietnam, which the Vietnamese won, and which we shouldn't have fought in the first place.

Oh, cool, that reply double-posted, but I discovered if you hit "delete" as soon as you see it double-postedd, you can get it back down to one.

The HELL, it didn't. Do u think that we r still fighting there ??
His plan was to abandon our freedom-loving friends there
and to come back, thereby yanking the rug out from under
single-issue George McGovern, resulting in a re-election
in an overwhelming landslide.




THAT was indefensible; contemptible,
so that we had to go back n clean it up, like the 2nd World War.
I knew that Bush was bad news when Reagan chose him.
The Bushes were not and r not conservatives; thay r fakes.






Fighting communist slavery was always a good thing to do.





David

If you acknowledge that the embargo was justified, just how is that you allege that Roosevelt "provoked" war with Japan?



Given that you haven't demonstrated that this was in fact the case, this isn't worthy of a reply.

Your comments about commies and courage are a full measure of the quality of your ability to defend your position here. You have no basis in historical evidence to suggest that the Germans ever came close to defeating the Soviet Union. No amount of elementary school sneers about courage and commies changes that.

There was no Pentagon in 1942--just another measure of the depth of your ignorance of this subject. Both i and others here have pointed out that Leslie McNair was responsible for army procurement including and particularly armored fighting vehicles. I don't know upon what basis you allege that Roosevelt could have known in 1942 that the Sherman tank was inferior to the Tiger tank. The first major tank battle in which Tigers were used in large numbers was Kursk in July and August of 1943. The Germans lost that one, along with more than two thirds of their armored fighting vehicles, including the brand new Tiger I tanks. So i'd be interested to know just how that experience was supposed to have informed Roosevelt of the inferiority of Sherman tanks. Once again, you are delusional because your partisan hatred blinds you. Even knowing that Shermans were inferior, what were the United States and England to have done? Sat around biting their nails and waiting for better armor before invading the continent? Sat and watched the Red Army overrun Europe as the German military collapsed?

I see that you are unwilling to either define or defend that ludicrous "dangle the fleet" remark.

When he took office in 1941, if he had been honest enuf
to openly admit to the citizenry, truthfully, that in 1940, he lied
about his intentions and his foreign policy plans toward the nazis
and the Japs, in order to get re-elected, then Congress 'd
not have supported him; that woud not serve his purposes.
By using those good, admirable, nifty & justified embargos,
he pushed the Japs, provoked the Japs, into helping him out.
( In effect, he left them perched on a few rocks in the ocean, to starve.)
The Japs successfully convinced Congress to declare war,
which was beyond Roosevelt's (direct) ability. This was the
cornerstone of Roosevelt's foreign policy, until August 1945.
By this technique, he assisted our Allies to withstand the nazis,
engendering symbiotic military relationships. Logic requires me to approve of this.
It served America 's best interests to do that then.

At the time ( June of 1941 ), a lot of people approved of
internecine warfare among the national socialists and the international socialists.
I felt that way, but upon counsel and deliberation,
I changed my mind. It was an intolerable risk.
Unlike u, I suspect that the nazis 'd have defeated the commies
and taken their oil, and used it against us.
( Everyone knows its strategic value.)




Yeah, maybe on February 32, 1941, he called all the Flag Rank Officers
into the White House n said:
"Hay guys, I 'm gonna shove the Japs into a war."
Do u believe that?? I don 't.






We know what the situation was.
I 'm too lazy to argue the facts; (now, anyway).




Yeah, its a good thing that the Topic of this Thread is the depth
& breadth of David's knowledge. I remembered vaguely, from
a sightseeing tour, that the Pentagon was built FOR WWII.
I accept your correction that it was not functioning in 1942.
Ground was broken for construction on Sept. 11, 1941, 60 years
to the day before another event concerning the Pentagon.
Wikipedia tells us that:
"Pressure to speed up design and construction intensified after
the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, with Somervell
demanding that 1,000,000 sq ft (9.3 ha) of space at the Pentagon
be available for occupation by April 1, 1942." It remains unclear
whether that demand was satisfied on time or not.
Apparently, it was fully in service in 1943.





I have pointed out that McNair was NOT the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of America
and that Roosevelt coud not lay off his Constitutional Responsibility for their well being
onto a mere underling. Roosevelt coud delegate authority, but not responsibility.




The English captured 3 of them in North Africa in 1942.
R u implying that thay refused to let American Intelligence look at them??
I 'm pretty sure that thay noticed the 88mm cannon.
Thay were kinda conspicuous, in the front there.
Maybe u think thay forgot to examine the armor ?

I think we all know that those 88s went thru the Shermen
like the proverbial hot knife thru butter; very distressing for the occupants.





For informational purposes, I 'd have thawt that 1 Tiger 'd
be sufficient. Yes? Maybe u need "large numbers"; I dunno.
The English captured 3 of them in Tunisia in 1942. Were thay enuf ?
Roosevelt had NOTICE. He had all thru 1943 and half of 1944.
How much more time did he NEED in the middle of a major war??
In June of 1944, he sent innocent, trusting American soldiers
to chase Tigers in equipment that was not much safer than bicycles,
with ineffective guns, whose rounds were known to bounce
harmlessly off of nazi armor, the Tigers, whose guns took them out
from 2000 yards away, in one shot. The problem was Roosevelt's liberalism,
which denigrates the value of the Individual: expendable,
in the service of collectivism; that was Roosevelt.





The Shermen had ineffective armor and ineffective guns against the Tigers.
(In the end, thay had to sneak up on them and flank them.)




Thay were to have made THE PERSHINGs, with 90mm guns, as thay DID in time to celebrate V-E Day!
Only about 20 of them ever saw combat in WWII,
while the guys were getting slaughtered in their speedy Ronsons.
Thay coud get there quick and get lit up! Whatta way to die, Setanta.
I 'm sure that thay all blessed Roosevelt for that opportunity.








Not just "waiting" like I wait for my girlfriend;
thay were IN CONTROL of production of all ordnance, including tanks.
Was it too much to ask that thay do a decent job of it???
Make the PERSHING with the 90mm, not the Ronson with the 75mm.
Roosevelt's failure to have done that was the most egregious, lethally egregious negligence; homicidal.
It was a most perfidious malfeasance, in an arguably fiduciary relationship
between the Commander-in-Chief and his troops.




I don t choose to address your speculations.





That was about the only bait that Roosevelt had. That 's what the Japs cared about.
He used it to get us into the War, as I have already explained.
If the Japanese spies in Pearl Harbor had reported that
the Fleet had departed, there 'd have been no attack.
Do u dispute that ?





David

That's one of the most feeble arguments i've seen around here. As though the Japanese (or the American electorate, for that matter) were so naïve as to believe that any politician is irrevocably bound by a campaign promise in a world which constantly changes.

There would have been no reason for Roosevelt to call in General and Flag officers to tell than that he was going to "shove" Japan into a war, as there is no evidence that he intended to do so. That's a case of begging the question which ought to embarrass you.

Yes, i do know what the situation was, and there was never a chance that the Germans would overrun the Soviet Union.

Continuing to whine about Sherman tanks doesn't alter that no President has the time or the energy to micromanage the military. The Tiger tank did not go into service until late August, 1942. None were delivered to front line units until late September, 1942. Rommel's Afrika Korps was no longer receiving resupply and personnel or material replacement by that time, and they were driven out of Egypt and Libya by the end of 1942. Where do you allege that the British captured those tanks?

Leaving that aside, though, you are ignoring that even if McNair had devoted himself full-time do developing a response to the Tiger tank (which, in fact was the case with the Pershing tank), he could not have miraculously produced a new main battle tank in under two years. As it was, the T20, which eventually became the Pershing tank, only began development in 1942--before McNair or anyone else in the army knew of the Tiger tank.

I guess you're expecting Roosevelt to have used his crystal ball again.

How much time did Roosevelt need in the middle of a major war? Are you serious? The Pershing tank was already in development. Just how fast do you think things like that can be accomplished? It is amazing that American industry was able to develop such a design and put it into production in such a short period of time. Even if the Pershing had been a finished design, fully tested and ready for production (which it was not), just how fast do you think industry could have re-tooled to produce an entirely new model? As usual, your obsessive political hatred trumps your common sense. The army got the Pershing into production as fast as they could, and faster than any other armored fighting vehicle ever completed it's design and went into production. Once again, what do you propose the western allies were to have done, waiting until the Pershing was available before landing in France? More than 300 were sent to France--only 20 saw combat because of the strained supply lines. In the face of the incredible accomplishment of supplying three armies moving as much as 30 miles a day against a tenacious enemy, supplying them over the invasion beaches, you are obsessed with indicting Roosevelt because you hate him for partisan political reasons. You saw one program on the History channel produced by a discredited "historian," Belton Cooper, who, incredibly, blames George S. Patton for delaying the production of the Pershing tank. Reputable military historians know better, and point out that Eisenhower and Marshall pushed the production of the Pershing over the objections of Leslie McNair. McNair was killed in a "friendly fire" incident during Operation Cobra (July, 1944), and there was no more foot dragging. Your inability to realistically view the distribution of responsibility in the chain of command is just symptomatic of your hysteria with regard to Roosevelt.

I can see why you don't want to address what would have happened if the western allies had waited for the Persing before invading Europe.

As for that dangling bullshit, in which you now descrive the Pacific fleet as bait, i notice that you have not addressed the issue of whether or not it is appropriate for the CNO, under the supervision of his commanding officer, under the supervision of the Secretary of the Navy, under the Secretary of War, under thes supervision of the President, with the advice of the Secretary of State, and with full and appropriate congressional oversight, to station ships in existing naval bases on American territory as they believe the stategic situation dictates. I see that you are unwilling to address the issue of where the Pacific fleet was to have been station if not in Hawaii and Dutch Harbor.

To my knowledge, there was a single Japanese agent in Hawaii who was sending data to Japan on the mooring of ships of the Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor. He sent his messages by cable, and the FBI had (with dubious legality) already begun tapping Western Unions cable operation to intercept such messages. The infamous "bomb plot" message was sent along to Husband Kimmel. Do you suggest that Roosevelt was to have flown to Hawaii to make sure that Kimmel and Short were doing their jobs properly? Do you suggest that there was any good reason for Roosevelt, Stimson, Knox, King and Marshall to believe that the men they has assigned to command in Hawaii were incompetent to perform their duties. You carry your obsessional hysteria way too far.

As it happens, the First Air Fleet (Admiral Nagumo, the task force which attacked Hawaii) observed radio silence thoughout the entire mission, and the Imperial Navy was careful to address no radio traffic to Nagumo to avoid "tipping their hand." The First Air Fleet left northern Japan on the same day that Roosevelt sent out the war warning message. Had Kimmel sortied with the entire Pacific fleet, there was no way that Nagumo would have known until his aircraft were over Hawaii. So yes, i do dispute that fatuous claim.

Your ignorance is breathtaking. I'm not surprised, though--you have this hysterical hatred going on, and you don't want to know anything which might cast doubt on your obsession.

Only two things are in operation here. Some goofy program from a dubious source which you saw on the History channel--and in their case the "history" they broadcast bears the same relationship to reliable history as Christian Science does to actual science; and your obsessional, hysterical hatred of Roosevelt. This is just incredibly loony.

What's going on with the Pearl Harbor conspiracy nuts is acatually a case of hidden racism. Before the war, Americans despised and belittled the Japanese. Laws were passed on the West Coast to actively discriminate against them. Theodore Roosevelt complained about in the first decade of the 20th century.

But the attack on Pearl Harbor involved the Japanese overcoming very difficult material and operational difficulties, training their crews without ever letting them know what the target would be, and then steaming for a week in the North Pacific without being sighted to reach their launch position. It was one of the greatest successful military operations in the history of naval warfare. Many Americans felt a deep sense of humiliation that we had been suckered and so badly hurt by a nation which we had so long despised.

And, of course, there's the deep and abiding hysterical hatred of Franklin Roosevelt. Which is exactly what Bolton Cooper was exploiting with that bullshit program on the history channel. That was easy though--America is still full of people who love to hate FDR.

I am sure Neville Chamberlain had the best intentions. At that time, the harsh conditions which had been imposed upon Germany and Austria by the treaties Versailles and Trianon had become well known and there was a growing sympathy for Germany's cause worldwide. Everyone knew that millions of ethnic Germans had been expatriated by the huge losses of territory by the creation of new political states in Europe such as Czecho-Slovakia and Yugo-Slavia and the loss of Germany's eastern provinces to the newly configured post war Poland.

And there was the issue of the occupation of the Germany's vital industrial zones in the the Saar, Ruhr and Rhineland. So a rising sympathy for Germany's claims did exist. And ofcourse the terrible suffering as a result of the record inflation of 1922-23 was still a recent occurrance. (As a side note: Lloyd George, Britains Armaments Minister during WWI, was a great admirer of Adolf Hitler, and he later visited "Germany's Messiah" at Berchtesgaden).

As we all know, the Munich Conference gave much of the Sedetenland, which was mostly inhabited by Germans, back to Germany, reducing the newly invented state of Czecho-Slovakia to a mere joke. Hitler did not hesitate to occupy the entire western part of the country; the two old Austrian provences of Bohemia and Moravia and in the process created the new independant state of Slovakia, (which still exists).

As we all know, Hitler went on later to re-integrate Germany's lost eastern provences through his pact with Stalin's USSR, and World War Two started.

To answer the question: "Did Neville Chamberlain cause WWII" I think not.

It seems to me
that World War II coud have been avoided
if the Allies had been energeticly aggressive with meticulous care
in enforcing the Treaty of Versailles.
Without complacency and appeasement of the 3rd Reich,
the latter woud not have had the strength to perpetrate the war.

That appeasement also invested the nazis with self-confidence.





David

Although i agree with you on the basic premise, the problem is the same as the problem of resolve which continues to plague the world today. France could not stand alone against Germany (and many right-wing factions in France were open admirers of Hitler), and England would not. I suspect that sort of a lack of leadership will always be with us. We don't produce many Churchills, and the ones we do don't always win the elections.

Dream on as neither England or France had the resources to sit on Germany for decades and Germany was rearming and training with new weapons with the help of the USSR before Hitler came to power.

So it is YOUR opinion then, Bill, that it was better to fight World War II
than to carefully enforce the Treaty of Versailles?? Right ?

With all Respect, I don 't agree with that.





David

France occupied the Rhineland until 1930. It was no significant additional expense for them to keep troops in the Rhineland than to station them on their eastern frontier, which they would have done anyway. The Versailles Treaty required the Allies to occupy the Rhineland until 1935, but the English convinced a skeptical Briand (French PM) to evacuate the Rhineland by June, 1930. Far from the Soviet Union rearming Germany, they concluded a treaty with France in 1935 in response to German rearmament. At the instigation of England, France and England entered into the Locarno treaties in 1925 which set the borders of Germany, as well as attempting to "normalize" the borders of other central and eastern European nations as they had been formed in 1919. Those treaties were concluded with the Weimar government, when Hitler and the NSDAP were not even on the political horizon.

The Rhineland was to have remained demilitarized, which would have seriously hampered Germany's ability to build up their armed forces. Germany militarily re-occupied the Rhineland in 1935. Had the western allies enforced the Verrsailles treaty, or even the Locarno treaties, that would not have happened. Significantly, any serious check to Hitler's military build up would at the least have delayed his war-making plans, if it had not scuttled them entirely--his continued prestige with the German people was dependent upon his image as a powerful man intimidating the western allies. O'George's comments about Léon Blum's government earlier in this thread were just a silly attempt to blame the left for the results of the failure of resolve and leadership by all parties. Blum did not become the French PM until 1936, and by then, the damage had already been done. Hitler was not prepared to militarily challenge a Anglo-French alliance at any time before 1939, and even then, it was a serious gamble--but Hitler called their bluff even in 1939, and he won. When Germany went into Poland, she had left only ten divisions to defend Germany. But France and England did nothing, leading to what the Germans on the western front called the sitzkreig--the sitting war.

No. You are quibbling as usual - and wrong. I simply noted the dual presence of growing fear of Soviet intentions on one hand, and sympathy for its socialist goals on the other as persistent, conflicting influences on the western European nations throughout the inter war years, and used Blum's national front government, among other cited events, as illustrations of factors influencing the paralysis with respect to Hitler.

Strong western resistance prior to or coincident with the reoccupation of the Rhineland would indeed have been a significant setback to Hitler and perhaps more - on that we agree. However, there were also other missed opportunities afterwards, and the National front government in France contributed to that.

It isn't quibbling. Blum's government accepted the alliance with the Soviet Union because of German rearmament, by then a fait-accompli. To suggest that France, with whatever government, feared Soviet intentions while Germany was re-arming just across the border is more than a little ridiculous.

In my opinion the treaty of Versailles cause WW2 so no I would not had try to enforce it further but would had ripped it up and then had reach a fairer agreement so WW2 did not need to had happen.

From the point in time of its existence,
it was obviously, VERY obviously politically IMPOSSIBLE
to tear up that Treaty.
The available choices were to energeticly enforce it,
or to neglect it, as thay DID, permitting the 3rd Reich to re-arm for vengeance.





David