Oh my god. They've done it. This takes all rights away.

Matthew on 27/10/2006 at 18:35

Not quite.

Quote Posted by Dr Sneak

If England and France had taken a harder line against Hitlers land grabs prior to 1939 when he was militarily weak, it is possible that WW2 would not have happened at all or would have been on a far smaller scale.

Or, more likely, he would just have waited until he was militarily strong then continued his aggression. Bear in mind that you are also talking about a generation that had gone through the horror of seeing World War I in all its population-reducing effect - the idea of willing provoking another war was not necessarily a popular one.

I'm not sure what nation you're referring to when you say 'our', so I can't really respond to the rest of your post. Hitler was not just motivated about whether he could or couldn't get away with something - he had ideological and racial motivations behind, for example, his attack on Russia. Saying 'well the Cold War would never have happened' doesn't particularly follow - if we're playing 'Marvel What-If?' then what if Hitler had attacked Russia, the Soviet Union had swept through all of Germany and ended up parked that bit closer to the Atlantic?

TheGreatGodPan on 27/10/2006 at 20:49

Quote Posted by Agent Monkeysee

Oh come off it. Hitler didn't "plan" to invade Russia when he signed the non-aggression pact with Stalin but if you read the internal Reich documents it was plainly obvious that was the idea from the start. UK was on the chopping block in 1938, it's just that no one but Hitler's inner circle knew it yet.

Why bother reading those when he goes on about "Drang noch Osten" and the Bolshevik threat in Mein Kampf? He also states that he plans to ally with Britain and Italy before attacking France and eastern european countries. All of that happened except for the alliance with Britain. Liebensraum referred to grabbing large areas of sparsely populated land, which is hardly a fitting description of the British Isles.

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Sweden and Switzerland are terrible examples. Sweden gave so many concessions to German troop movements and materiel that for all intents and purposes they were occupied. Switzerland was essentially the money-launderer for Nazi loot; there was no reason to invade a country that collaborated so closely with the regime. In addition neither country was a regional or imperial power. Hitler's plan was to take down every major player in the region; Lebensraum would have never worked without that step. That means France, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom.

Swedish concessions for the most part consisted of exports, which went to both the UK and Germany (more to the former than the latter until the Germans started blockading the UK, which is not surprising considering they were at war), and use of the rail system to enter Norway (which the Germans invaded because the Allies were about to invade to block off exports to Germany and gain a strategic base) on the condition that the number of German troops going in equaled those going out. Not much of an occupation. Regarding not giving a regime any reason to go to war, that's part of the whole idea behind isolationism.

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Regardless your views of "American isolationism" are ignorant fantasy. We were only truly isolationist when we were too weak to do anything, and arguably even then our expansionism West into Indian, French, Spanish, and Mexican territory was just as overbearingly aggressive as the Monroe Doctrine. Actually I revise that. It was goddamn Manifest Destiny, it was contemporary with the Monroe Doctrine. Our foreign policy has been aggressive and hegemonic since 1803.

Our conduct in the Americas and the Pacific is a long, long history of imperialist intervention, toppled governments, and gross economic manipulation. Our "isolationism" has only ever applied to the European sphere; just as along as Europe stayed the hell out of our hemisphere. There was never EVER a time when we were content to sit on our laurels and trade passively with our immediate neighbors. The America you're describing has NEVER EXISTED.

It's true that we kicked around the native americans for much of our history, but they were far too weak for there to be serious consequences for the U.S, and the unsettled and ungoverned nature of the area made expansion pretty much inevitable. Between the war of 1812 and the Spanish American war the only foreign country we went to war with was Mexico. I'd say that's a much better track record for us than the post-Spanish American war era or post WW2, when we stopped bothering with defensive justifications or even declarations of war.

Agent Monkeysee on 27/10/2006 at 21:54

Quote Posted by TheGreatGodPan

I can't belive you're taking THE THIRD REICH of all things at its word. When they said they wanted to unite the Germanic peoples they said they wouldn't do it militarily. When they invaded Czechoslovakia they said they wouldn't invade Poland. When they invaded Poland they said they wouldn't attack Western Europe. When they attacked Western Europe they said they wouldn't attack the Soviet Union. When they attacked the Soviet Union they said they wouldn't attack the UK. When they said there was a place for the Jews in the Reich they began deporting them. When they said they would simply deport the Jews they began placing them in concentration camps.

Jesus christ, man, get some fucking perspective.

Quote Posted by TheGreatGodPan

I don't even understand your argument at this point. Kowtowing to a militaristic, genocidal regime just so you don't get your shorts dirty is somehow a good policy?

Quote Posted by TheGreatGodPan

Read up on the Monroe Doctrine. We'd laid claim to the entire Western Hemisphere incredibly early in our history. The fact that our expansionism didn't garner any "serious consequences" doens't make it any less expansionist. Isolationism has only ever had any practical implementation when it came to the Old World's Imperial holdovers. True isolationism has never been practiced by this country.

Fringe on 28/10/2006 at 00:14

Quote Posted by TheGreatGodPan

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Clair%27s_Defeat) A quarter of the entire U.S. standing army massacred in a single battle not a serious consequence?

TheGreatGodPan on 28/10/2006 at 03:06

Quote Posted by Agent Monkeysee

When he wrote Mein Kampf, there was no Third Reich. It was just him outlining his plans. The stuff he wrote there was a fairly accurate predictor of what he actually did. It was his treaties, those things that you said bound Britain to go to war, that weren't worth the paper they were printed on. It would also seem rather ridiculous to expect Germany to hold to a promise not to attack France or the UK after both countries declared war on it following the invasion of Poland. Giong to war with Germany was the right move for France since Germany was going to invade them as soon as they were up to the task, but an invasion of the UK was a whole 'nother story. Germany had already invaded France during World War I and the Franco-Prussian war, so another go at it considering their territorial grievances with Versailles would not exactly be unprecedented. England is part of an island which hadn't been invaded since they invited William of Orange over and was sought as a natural ally by Germany.

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I don't even understand your argument at this point. Kowtowing to a militaristic, genocidal regime just so you don't get your shorts dirty is somehow a good policy?

If not declaring war or blockading but trading and trying to maintain good relations is kowtowing, then I think kowtowing worked great with China, and not doing so has had shitty results with Iraq, Iran, Cuba and North Korea. If by dirtying your shorts you mean losing 400000 soldiers (both the UK and US) and however much were lost during the German air raids, then I'd prefer to avoid getting shorts dirty when I have that option. Perhaps if countries had been more keen on kowtowing during the previous war much of what has been referred to as the "(http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/atrox.htm) hemoclysm" wouldn't have occurred and there wouldn't be 155 million victims of "dirty shorts". It would be ridiculous to expect no cases of democide during the period, but perhaps it wouldn't have been so much more than had ever been seen before.

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I think there are large differences between the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corrollary. The first was a rather empty statement prohibiting interference from Europe. The latter was when the U.S really took on the trappings of imperialism.

scumble on 28/10/2006 at 09:19

The best thing is to simpy look at all the imperial action the US Federal Government has been involved in, forgetting about any supposed policy of "isolation" at various points in time. Take the business with the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century - the US government supposedly bought the territory after giving Spain's army a good beating, but the Filipinos understandably wanted their own country back. Obviously, this required the US to deal with the situation, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos by direct and indirect effects of warfare.

It's a familiar sounding scenario isn't it?

And, I suppose to put in some loose change about the second world war, I don't think you can make so much sense of it without going back to the consideration of the first world war, which produced the conditions for Hitler to get going. Ultimately if you go back to the early 20th century again, the root cause is nationalist policy that puts entire peoples against each other.

Nationalist policy hasn't gone away completely of course, but in Europe at least militarism has declined by a huge amount. Unfortunaltely, the US gov spends more on militarism than most other countries in the world combined, and until that changes there won't be an end to what we're seeing now.

Well, at least that's the way things seem to me today.

TheGreatGodPan on 28/10/2006 at 21:45

Like the author of the book whose review I linked to and Frederick William the First (or Smedley Butler for an american example), it's not having a strong military I'm opposed to (which perhaps makes me more of a militarist than such giants of the post-war american right-wing as (http://www.lewrockwell.com/dmccarthy/dmccarthy26.html) Richard Weaver, Russel Kirk and Robert Nisbet), but throwing it around all the time. The best reason to have a strong military is to avoid war.

Regarding the Phillipines, I don't see how that constitutes a knock against my advocacy of isolationism, as some have painted it. There are few today who seem to think that our involvement in the Phillipines was a good thing, and the non-isolationist behavior of the american government during that time is no more proof that american policy has never been isolationist than our recent involvement in Iraq or the balkans.

Dr Sneak on 28/10/2006 at 23:47

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The best reason to have a strong military is to avoid war.

:thumb: True, now if we can only axe the politicians that want to abuse it's power without going too far in the other direction and weaken our ability to defend ourselves.

scumble on 29/10/2006 at 09:01

Well, I think history shows that a strong military has never been a key factor in avoiding war. It's alll very well to say "All we need to do is stop men abusing power", but to my mind that's like trying to change human nature. Or at least everything I know of points to the general misuse of military resources when it's easy to put them to action.

If the US military has been consistently abused for 200 years it seems daft to hope to elect the "right" politicians at this point.

Dr Sneak on 29/10/2006 at 09:44

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If it's all unchangeable and hopeless why bitch about it then?:rolleyes: