Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Last flight of the Luftwaffe

Man, what a tragic turkey shoot.

Nasty.

What would this world look like if, if, Hitler would have stopped, and left Britain, and Russia alone?

Mark always has good stories.

I’m amazed at how he keeps finding new stuff for WW II. I know quite a bit about WW II and he has a lot of stuff I haven’t heard about before.

You mean, what if Britain and the Soviet Union had left Germany alone...

Do you mean after the invasion of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland? After the Anschluss? After Germany and The Soviets divided up Poland, or after the invasion of France? You mean appeasement I think?

After breakup of the Austria-Hungary empire
Sudeten Germans then found themselves in
the new formed Czechoslovakia and dont
ignore the fact that Poland had invaded
and annexed its borderlands..

ie: Poland invaded Czech. while Germany was
annexing the Sudetenland per Munich agreement.
Some 6 months later Germany invaded Poland.

Hitler wanted Sudeten coz of the large number of
Germans there, Poland wanted parts of Czech.
coz of the large Polish population.

September 1938 Poland delivered Czech a 24 hr
ultimatum and Poland entered next day!. ..
this goes back to when Czech in 1919 took by force
the territory that contained a majority of Poles.

1920 Versailles decided what land would become
the 2nd Polish Republic, (as it did with other new
states).. Not everyone precisely agreed where
one nationality's lands ended, and another's began,
causing a series of wars.

1772, Austria, Russia, and Prussia conducted the
First Partition of Poland. ... Poland was vanished
from the map of Europe until 1918.

11th century the Poles were a medieval kingdom
under a Dynasty (Plast monarch) known for military
expansion - 14th century, Casimir III the Great,
presided over a period of territorial aggrandizement.

'Poles' are traced to Iron Age tribes - Balts, Celts,
Slavs, Scythians, Germanic clans and Sarmatians.

Britain declared war on Germany for invading Poland.

Europe has always been fugged up.............and still is to this very day.

Those pilots knew the risks they were running, when they just as easily could have sat it out in perfect safety, but they went anyway.

I recently got dome reading "The German War", about the lives and attitudes of German civilians '39-'45.

https://www.amazon.com/German-War-Nation-Under-1939-1945/dp/0465094899

One thing that comes out is the quite astonishing deree to which Polish and German civilian militias were already killing each other in disputed parts of Poland before Hitler invaded. We only think we have racial hatreds in this country.

The Germans knew very well what was going to happen to when their soldiers became Soviet POW's.

AH made several overtures to Churchill & the French, from before Germany & the USSR attacked Poland and even after Dunkirk. AH had no desire to fight either the UK or France or anyone to the West. AH thought well of the British Empire. Churchill did not share those overtures with the British people, as Churchill had other designs.

The east was another deal. AH looked east and wanted the majority-German lands back as part of Germany. He saw the bolsheviks as blood enemies and land to the east as land to be colonized by Germans. And, of course, AH was right about Stalin's designs on the west and the Soviet build-up along their frontier. If AH had not attacked the USSR, the USSR would have attacked Germany. IMO, Germany was 50% screwed from the moment UK & France declared was on Germany and 100% screwed when the USA declared war on Germany. Germany may have been able to resist invasion by the USSR, but could not manage to come out on top while fighting both east & west.

In any case, the War to Save Bolshevism that was WWII was a "success."

Actually, Hitler declares war on the US and that, not the invasion of the USSR, was his biggest mistake. Practically every rational German from Herman Goering to the man on the street knew that it was all over but the crying when he did that.

My Parents were Czech immigrants.

True, AH foolishly declared was on the USA after the Japs bombed Pearl. But it was the USA declaring war on Germany that mattered. Germany was never a threat to the USA. AH shaking his fist at the USA had no upside.

I agree that declaring war on the USA was AH's biggest mistake. The clash with the USSR was coming, sooner or later. The longer the USA stayed out of the war, the better odds Germany had vs USSR.

But, then, the primary sources indicate that FDR was hell-bent on getting into the war on the side of the USSR and would have found his pretext before the USSR was crushed.