I thought I would offer some thoughts, from a different thread:
William Schirer was a correspondent for CBS in Berlin in the late Thirties. He had many high level contacts among the Nazis. One of the things that he learned was that Hitler was prepared to withdraw after he reoccupied the Rhineland, had he been challenged, because he was not yet prepared for war. Further, it was the failure of the Allied powers to enforce the demilitarization of the Rhineland that emboldened him to demand the Sudetenland.
During the period between the annexation of Czechoslovakia and the invasion of Poland, both Germany and Britain were courting Stalin to make a deal, in the event of further hostilities. One reason that Stalin decided to deal with Hitler was his observation of the lack of will on the part of the Allies. He decided that it was safest to cut a deal with Hitler, despite his pronounced anti- Communism, because it was inevitable that Hitler would prevail, at least at the beginning of war. Hitler, on the other hand, was sufficiently worried about the Soviet Union that he regarded making a deal a necessary condition for the invasion of Poland at that time. Thus, on many levels, the failure of will and preparedness on the part of Britain and France led to World War Two.
The Allied powers underestimated Hitler, despite their reluctance to make a military challenge. Their inadequate intelligence led them to woefully misestimate his armed forces, which were limited by the treaty of Versailles. Germany had long had a deal with the Soviets to produce armaments on Soviet soil, so as to evade detection, and although there was a limit to the size of the standing army allowed under the treaty, Germany had sped up conscription, to ensure that most men under thirty were trained reservists. The degree to which Hitler had stockpiled oil, and his virtual control of Romania, his major source of petroleum, were unknown. Thus, when war finally broke out, the Allies were inadequately prepared, and had to retreat across the Channel, while France was conquered.
Had it not been for two things, Lend- Lease and Hitler's foolish insistence upon opening a second front against the Soviet Union, it is likely that Britain would have collapsed as well, and that Hitler could have consolidated his hegemony over Western Europe, and prepared himself for a showdown with the Soviet Union. As it was, the European territory of the Soviet Union practically collapsed when attacked, and had the United States not supplied the Soviets with materiel, might well have collapsed entirely.
In spite of the importance of US aid, the key to British and Soviet survival was intransigence. The British public endured a terrifying bombing campaign, and nevertheless held firm. The Soviet Union suffered horrific losses, and yet continued to fight. When America entered the war, and the Allies invaded Italy, there was so little will to fight that most Italian resistance collapsed almost immediately. Unfortunately, there were enough Germans stationed there to create fierce pockets of resistance, but it was still a relatively easy campaign.
In China, there was will enough to resist the Japanese, but not to work together to do it, so the Kuomintang and Communists spent about as much time fighting one another as they did the Japanese, and even the Kuomintang frequently degenerated into warlordism, with territorial governors refusing to cooperate with the central government. The Japanese exploited the virtual state of civil war in the country to their benefit.
In general, the fate of nations frequently hangs on the will of the populace to prevail over a common foe, and their ability to do what is necessary and work together towards the goal. And sometimes, the fate of civilization hangs on the fate of nations..... |
