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If we aren't discussing culpability what exactly are we discussing?
Likewise while it is true that the US had no particular reason to care about Polish sovereignty in 1939, we arent talking about the US in 1939. We are talking about the Poles and the British, both of whom had very obvious reasons to care. The Poles because it was thier sovereignty being threatened and the British because they had made an agreement with the Poles.
If you want to argue that the Poles should've valued thier sovereignty less or that the British should have valued keeping thier word less that is your perogative, but at least make that argument explicit, and provide your reasons why.
Culpability shouldn’t be a binary thing, where if you throw the first punch I get to burn your family alive and that’s on you. Britain make a last-second alliance with Poland which failed to deter German expansionism, and after Germany beat France the capacity of Britain to win a direct conflict against Germany dropped to zero. The whole of Churchill’s maneuverings were to provoke Germany into committing an atrocity that would bring the US into the war, which he did by targeting civilian German populations. Germany was culpable for starting the conflict, absolutely, but Britain was responsible for escalating the conflict to a total war.
That's certainly a take.
Firstly, the British didn't initiate the bombing of civilian infrastructure and populations the Germans did, the British were just monumentally better at it because the British had more competent leadership and greater resources to draw upon.
Secondly, Churchill's maneuvering didn't bring the US into the war, the Japanese did. Even then, the US didn’t move against Germany directly until after Germany had declared war on the US and started attacking US shipping in the Atlantic.
Finally, the German decision making process looks especially retarded when you recall that they really ought to have known better. The Belgian example two decades prior had already demonstrated that the Anglos were both ready able to wage a costly war against Germany over the sovereignty of a stupid made up country.
The British sent bombers targeting Germany for IIRC 9 months before the Germans retaliated. I can’t speak to Germans bombing civilians in Poland, tho I would believe it.
On Churchill: yes. This is why Churchill sucks. He was a warmonger who was terrible at war and failed at everything he tried to do. He was still responsible for pushing the RAF to terrorize the German civilian populous in the hopes that the Germans would retaliate in a way that would pull America into the war. Additional beef: Hitler’s offer to turn Madagascar into a Jewish-German colony was denied by Churchill because he wanted to maximize the number of mouths Germany had to feed on the continent. Decent odds Madagascar would have been turned into a charnel house anyway, but we won’t know thanks to Churchill.
Agree with Germany being dumb, but I think it was more that the Nazis thought that their struggles were due to a Jewish conspiracy that ran Europe, rather than perfidious Albion being perfidious. German theory-of-mind takes the L once again.
The Germans were the ones who opened Pandora's Box by bombing civilian infrastructure in the opening phase of their invasion of Poland. Meanwhile the RAF did not start intentionally targeting civilians until the Luftwaffe made night bombing and the targeting of population center official policy in the latter half of the Battle of Britain.
In short, your claim that the British were the ones to "escalate" the conflict is false.
I would consider the fact that Churchill's side won pretty much every every war he was involved in to be evidence to the contrary.
This is a very dumb objection for you to be making here. Either Churchill was a brilliant mastermind who played the German high command (and everyone else in the world) like a fiddle or he was a "warmonger who was terrible at war and failed at everything he tried to do". Pick one.
In either case it doesn't adress the issue that the US didn't move against Germany directly until after the Germans had declared war on the US and started shooting at American ships.
Finally "the Madagascar plan" wasn't even proposed until the summer of 1940. Not only were Britain and Germany already at war by that point but Madagascar wasn't even Germany's to give. Forget Churchill, what reason would anyone in the British leadership have to agree to that plan at that time?
Maybe if the Germans had used one of thier own colonies, or an ally's colony, or tried to cut a deal with the global hegemon instead of declaring war on them things would've played out differently but we don't live in that timeline.
Untargeted night bombing raids were effectively hitting only civilians, but the whole period has so much stuff going on that I don’t think we’ll change each others mind here.
This seems very silly? Stuff Churchill actually was responsible for, like Operation Wilfred or the Gallipoli campaign all seemed to end disastrously. Britain barely came out ahead in WWI, and in WWII the British contribution to the European theater was essentially their naval blockade, while the actual war was won by Russian soldiers and American industry.
Germany had beaten France and claimed their colonies. They were offering the transport of civilians out of a war zone, but that wouldn’t help British war aims, so it was denied. If you inhabit the frame of winning at any cost, then sure, Britain was playing to win, but so were the Germans, and what they did sure does seem evil. If Britain was losing the war, would you be surprised if they started killing the Germans they had put in concentration camps?
I don't know whether it's out of ignorance or special pleading but these are bad arguments and you should feel bad for making them.
More pointedly, pretty much every reason you've given for why we ought to regard the British as the true villians of WWII has applied doubly so to Germans.
Germany did not beat France they mearly occupied portions of it. The Vichy Government's control was tenous at best and multiple colonies renounced the German occupation. In any case you still have not adressed the question above. Given that Germany was already at war with Britain why would you expect anyone in the British leadership to want to make life easier for the German high command rather than harder? Why privilege the Vichy over "the Free French".
Simply put, If guys like Churchill and DeGaulle are to be condemned as "race traitors" for getting a bunch of thier own people killed through thier stubbornness and warmongering, what do you think that makes Hitler and Georing?
Do you think there is only one bad guy in WWII? I’ve never said “true villain”, nor “race traitors” for what it’s worth. I’m saying Churchill sucks, not that Hitler or the Nazis are the good guys.
Given that the Nazi regime thought it was at war with the Jewish cabal that controlled Europe, why should the Nazis want to make life easier on the Jews rather than harder? The answer is that killing civilians is wrong and doesn’t advance your war aims, but everybody but the US missed that memo. The same can be said for the treatment of POWs.
I can’t speak at all for DeGaulle, although the French colonies certainly aren’t where the war was won or lost.
I think the crux here is that you want the winning side to be treated as the good guys, and I want all players to be held to the same standards. War is bad! The Nazis, Japanese, and Soviets were super evil! The British were their usual level of evil, with Churchill channeling their worst tendencies. The Americans were slightly more evil than WWI but still basically the most moral players in the war.
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