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world war 2 biggest mistake

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claymore | 08:21 Thu 14th Aug 2008 | History
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Its hard to believe that Roosevelt , Churchill , Eisenhower and other top allied leaders and generals failed to recognize the problem that Russia would become post 1945. The biggest mistake of the twentieth century was the Allies support of Russia when Germany invaded. They could have negotiated a truce with Hitler and let him have free rein against the Bolsheviks. I believe that fighting a war on one front would have seen Germany defeat Russia. They would have saved the world a lot of grief by rounding up Stalin and his henchmen and putting them up against the wall . Whether Hitler would have been satisfied with just taking Russia is another question , but given the choice between Hitler and National socialism or Stalin and communism I know which would have been the lesser of two evils ....Any thoughts?
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Hindsight is a wonderful thing - we all have it.

I think on the basis of Hitoler's avowed intent to take over the world, the Western leaders did well to side with Russia. Again with hindsight, it is possible to see that had Hitlernot been occupied on two fronts, we would in fact have lost the war.
I am sure those world leaders you mention (and their advisors) were well aware of the threat Rusia would pose come the end of the war.

One of the reasons the USA dropped the atom bombs on Japan was to end the was quickly as Russia had offered to "help" the USA defeat Japan.

The US knew that if Russia came down into the south east of Asia to help defeat Japan the likelyhood was they would never leave and they would stay in Singapore, Malaysia etc.

This was a strong reason for droping the bombs and keeping Russia out of south east Asia.

Even with that they still came down into Korea and Vietnam, causing the Korean war and Vietnam war in the 50s and 60s.
>They could have negotiated a truce with Hitler

I dont think Hitler was the sort of person who you could negotiate with.

I think any "deal" with Hitler would have required him to leave France, Holland, Belgium etc., and I think it unlikely he would have done this without a fight.

Look how determined he was to keep those countries after D Day.

Thousands of British, USA, Canadian, German (and others) were killed in the long slow drive through France to Berlin after D Day.

There is no way Hitler would have given this up peacefuly.
I think the biggest "mistake" in World War 2 was not coming down harder on Hitler BEFORE the war started.

The British (and others) stood back and let him take pieces of land round Germany, some with our agreement.

If we had slapped him down hard during the 1930s it is unlikely he would have kicked off the war in 1939.

Many people, including Churchill, saw the danger of Hitler but Churchill was ignored at the time as he was out of favour in politics.
The biggest mistake of the 20th century was probably WWI , the Treaty of Versailles or the way in which the Allies did almost nothing to alleviate the effects of the Depression on post-WWI Germany ot maybe the fact that they attacked Russia in the aftermath of WWI. After all of these mistakes, WWII wasalmost inevitable as was a lot of the ill-feeling and political positioning before, during and after it. Allied leaders had very little option in their choice of Stalin as a partner. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend'.

As to Hitler's Naziism being the lesser of two evils versus Communism, Stalin was paranoid, ruthless and killed and ruined the lives of millions. As for Hitler - oh he was just misunderstood, was he? At the time of WWII I don't think the full reality of Stalin's excesses was realised in the West. Even the Katyn massacre didn't really see the light of day untill much later. The allies' moves were pragmatic and, I think most of them would argue still, were forced on them.

As to the Russians' involvement in Korea and Vietnam - they sat on the sidelines; it was the Chinese who participated in these two conflicts. Russia's Asian involvement was principally in India where it supplied arms and training to combat the West's support of Pakistan.
As one who was around in those days I would like to make two points. Firstly, hindsight is a wonderful thing. News of what was going on was not so easy to reach the general public and some matters were considered better not to be disclosed. Secondly, I agree that talking is much better to resolve matters always but there comes a moment when you have to be very firm and in no way would Hitler have agreed to curtail his plans for our benefit. There will always be people whose word you cannot trust.
we'd already negotiated with Hitler and taken his word that he didn't want any more of Czechoslovakia. Turned out he was fibbing. Perhaps we learned something from that?
First thing you ned to learn is that Claymore is a bit of a fan of the 3rd Reich.
Stalin was by far the lesser of the 2 evils for example look at Hitler's plans for Stalingrad (he wanted to destroy every building and make it into a lake), contrast that with modern German victimology the multiple rapes in Berlin were everyday occurrences in the occupied east and at least the Russians brought food for the Berliners in POland children would beg for scraps off Wehrmacht soldiers who would give them a bags of sh1t laughing, 1 in 5 Poles died WW2.
I could go on and on about WW2, for instance it was by no means certain we would have lost without American armed intervention.
We were winning the war at sea, we were winning in Africa and were surpassing their ability to build planes, train pilots and build better planes, we were better fed, better led and we had better inteligence.
Donn't be fooled by Goebel's propaganda, good though it was, it does'nt disguise the fact that George Formby sh1t all over Horst Wessel...
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Hitlers first move was to the east towards the main enemy ..Russia ,not the west where he never really wanted to fight a war. If Britain and France had n`t been swaggering around with delusions of grandeur and had not declared war on Germany, the conflict would have proceeded east to its inevitable conclusion
I don't think you can say the French had delusions of grandeur as (if memory serves) they reneged on their treaty obligations to guarantee Czechoslavakia's borders.
The French had no appettite for a war (it showed) and Chamberlain knew this, equally there's no guarantee that Germany would've defeated Soviet Russia by itself.
The Third Reich was a very badly run government socially, economically, militarily and administritively.
I don't think we would havew lost the war without the American's everton. But I don't think we could have won it without them.

We didbn't have the wherewithall to stage the Normandy landings and reoccupy Europe.

We'd have probably ended up with a stalemate and truce
With naval supremacy we could blockade their ports, with air supremacy we could destroy their Romanian oilfields (the German's did'nt possess a strategic bomber) and we could've mounted a campaign throught the tough old gut" of Italy.
Hard to say, I agree, but we were better than we're given credit for nowadays.
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The biggest mistake of the Twentieth Century was Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand's chauffeur's wrong turn in Sarajevo. Were it not for that Franz Ferdinand would not have died, Germany woud not have invaded Belgium.

F/F woulfd have ascended the thorone in 1916 on the death of Franz Josef, (he'd already promised freedom for Serbia).

There would have been no WWI, no Russian revolution, no Hitler. Europe would have been a much more peaceful place.

These were the opinions of Professor A J P Taylor, but to anyone who reads the smallest bit of 20th Century history the authenticity of them is glaringly obvious.
With naval supremacy we could blockade their ports, with air supremacy we could destroy their Romanian oilfields (the German's did'nt possess a strategic bomber)

But what about the new weapons that the Nazis possessed ie V1, V2, Jet fighters etc.

If there had been no Americans, hence no D Day, how could we have stood alone?

For Hitler it was much, but too late.
We had jet fighters and better ones at that too.
123everton
I think you will find we only had the Gloster Meteor, first entered active service July 27 1944. This was used to intercept and destroy the 'Doodle Bugs.'

Germany had 3 jets in operation, Messerschmitt ME 262A-1, ME 262 and ME163 Komet, although the Komet was not a true jet but rocket powered.

All 3 German planes were faster than the Meteor,

Meteor = 410mph.
ME 262A-1 = 541mph
ME262 = 541mph
Me 163 Comet = 596mph

http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft_compar isonx4_detail.asp
Both communism & NS under Hitler or Germany are abhorrent and am glad of 1945 settlement.

Just imagine us all on holiday rushing to beach beds at 4am to towel the best sites. Far better our way....up at 11am and throw the towels off the beds into the cess-pit. Makes for a 'fun-holiday' especially in 5* hotels.
Found two others the German Arado Ar 234 Blitz and the
Ar 234B Blitz.

Both were Turbojet-powered bombers.

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