Why did he go to war with every white dominated country?
France = white
Belgium = white
Russia = white
USA = white
Norway = white
Poland = white
Czechoslovakia = white
Hungary = white
UK = white
Ireland = white
on and on...
because they were the ones he could reach?
you forgot the dutch & the danes! i believe ireland was seen as a potential ally (since they didn't expecially like the brits), but don't know how serious that was.
oh yeah - and he didn't go to war with sweden and finland too. you don't get much whiter than them.
shareHe'd seen the Slavs especially as inferior and to be subjugated while in the meantime he persecuted Asian minorities like Jews and Gypsies of course.
His war with France, England and their allies was not ideological but a consequence since they've declared war on the Reich after the invasion of Poland.
One thing i don't really understand is why France and England did not declare war on the Soviet Union as well since the invasion of Poland was a joint effort of the Germans and Soviets.
In short Hitler was not 'white supremacist' but rather 'germanic supremacist'.
And obviously he never did go to war with Czechoslovakia (simply occupied it with no real resistance), Hungary (was a German/Austrian ally for long time), and Ireland (remained neutral throughout the war).
"One thing I don`t really understand is why France and England did not declare war on the Soviet Union as well".
That`s what they call "realpolitik", I think - declaring war on Soviet Union would have been a rather insane thing to do considering they already were at war with the other massive military power, Germany (had the Germans and Soviets moved into Poland simultaneously... now that would have posed a rather greater dilemma...). It can also be speculated that the Brits and French (correctly) predicted that the Nazi-Commie comradery will not last long and then they`d gain a crucially important ally against Hitler. And besides that, apparently, a large number of Britons had convinced themselves that Soviet claims on parts of Poland were somehow justified.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
Well, declaring war on Germany was a pretty insane thing to do too. The Western Propaganda the Britain and France "won" WWII is ingrained in a lot minds, but doesn't hold up to scrutiny. WWII was a disaster for Britain and France. They got nothing out of it except for nearly a million dead, billions of dollars wasted, and horrific destruction. And Poland (the whole reason they declared war) would spend the next 50 years under brutal occupation. The Soviets won WWII. Everyone else just got played.
if by "insane" you mean it was crazy for britain and france to wait so long to declare war, you're correct. they should have declared war when hitler went after czechoslovakia instead. instead of being able to march into a wide open german western front with a 10-1 troop advantage while the german army was bogged down trying to fight through czech mountain fortresses, the western allies showed that their defensive treaties were worthless - essentially pushing the soviets to accommodate germany.
the soviets "won" ww2? their casualties were many times that of the western allies and the gains they made proved to be costly and temporary. the usa "won" ww2, by a huge margin.
If by "USA" you mean the military industrial complex, sure they won. But the American people sure didn't "win" anything. Every American that died in Europe pretty much died for nothing. American had no beef in WWII, and the outcome would have been the same whether America participated or not. I agree that WWII was certainly not "good" for the Russian people either. But from the perspective of the nation state, the Soviet Union did in fact "win" the war. They conquered all of Eastern Europe. The West, which had started the war to liberate Eastern Europe, failed to liberate any of it.
The West should have let Germany and Russia slug it out till exhausted each other. Not a single Brit, Frenchman, or American had to die in that war. It was senseless slaughter brought to us by the usual suspects (the Military Industrial Complex and Wall Street Bankers).
if by "soviet union" you mean the few top communist leaders, sure they won. they were able to maintain their status for a few more years before their society disintegrated.
so what if the soviets conquered eastern europe? fat lot of good it did them. conquering a batch of backwards, destroyed, destitute nations without the means to build them back into something valuable is utterly pointless. western europe, on the other hand, has been highly prosperous for decades, due in large part to assistance from those american losers.
the western allies didn't start ww2, that was entirely germany's doing. and the allies weren't especially interested in liberating eastern europe. where do you get that idea from? in fact, the allies willingly sold out the anti-soviet eastern europeans with barely a second thought.
of course america had pressing interests in the war. do you really believe that the usa and nazi europe could have coexisted peacefully?
the brits and french had already taken the bulk of their early war casualties before the germans and soviets started slugging. sitting around peacefully waiting for germany and russia to start fighting wasn't an option.
without the usa in the war, britain is likely starved into submission by the u-boats and the soviets don't have lend leased equipment to fight with. not to mention the diversion caused by the air war over germany and threat of invasion of the western and southern fronts.
the american military industrial complex (which wasn't especially powerful pre-ww2) and wall street bankers started the war? and here for all these years i thought it was those megalomaniacal nazis....
Americans didn't die in WWII for nothing. How about humanitarian reasons? How about saving the world from a psychopath? Sure Russia also won, but without the USAs help, it might have been a different story.
sharethe soviets "won" ww2? their casualties were many times that of the western allies
yep, that breaks it down pretty well.
the soviets were acutely aware of the western allies willingness to let them fight germany alone, which is a large reason for the nazi-soviet non-aggression pact and partition of poland came about. hitler only wanted to fight on one front at a time - first poland, then france, then back east. if the western allies (and poland) had been more willing to hit germany at the next german provocation the soviets were quite ready to side with the allies...which might have discouraged hitler from launching the war in the first place.
maybe not, though - hitler was convinced that germany could win no matter what, due to his willpower alone.
"One thing i don't really understand is why France and England did not declare war on the Soviet Union as well since the invasion of Poland was a joint effort of the Germans and Soviets."
A mixture of diplomatic and strategical issues.
First of all, the pact of England and France to help Poland was made only for the case if Germany attacks (not the Soviet Union).
Second, in 1939 neither the British nor the French Army was in any position to deal a serious blow to the Soviet union. The borders were far away, the air forces not fit for long-range operations to Russia (one was planned in spring 1940, but not carried out because of the French defeat), and any sea operations blocked by the German fleet in the North and East Sea.
So both states adopted a kind of "hostile neutrality" towards Russia which nearly only had some impact when they supported Finland with weapons in the Winter War of 1939/1940.
Don't forget Romania witch was Hitler allies until 23.08.1944. And Serbia, but then in Serbia was a coup and they were against Hitler. After that Hitler invaded them. And I think France was more like a payback for WWI.
No Raylan, I'm gonna bet my life on you being the only friend I have left in this world.
He did not regard Poland and Russia as "white", but as Slavic and inferior and, even worse, controlled by a Jewish leading class. Especially Bolshewism was considered a "Jewish" form of government.
France and UK just stood in his way to dominate Europe, regardless of racial views, although he despised them for using black soldiers and supporting the "jewish" Soviets.
Nazi Germany didn't go to war with France and Britain, France and Britain declared war on Nazi Germany after their invasion of Poland. Hitler did not originally intend to have a "Western Front" in the war.
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Well in his vision Slavs weren't white, perhaps they loooked white, but they weren't even humans, it was a sort of old prejudice in Germany that stated "East is bad while West is acceptable".
He needed to have a boundary "explanation" with France to wash away the smell of the 1918 defeat, he would have probably incorporated western countries like Belgium and Holland in the Reich eliminating the "non pure aryan" percentage of the population, Norway, Denmark and Sweden were for him the homeland of the "pure" german race so he had to take them for the Reich, USA wasn't (and isn't) a white nation but something that he viewed half jewish half negro and so on.
He wasn't really interested in exterminating the "black" race because black people can be easily identified (and sterilized if they touched white women), Italians were more "interested" in the black race and initially didn't care about Jews (a lot Italian Jews were fascists and in 1933 Mussolini considered the idea of the Jews not being human ridicolous) and regarding "yellow" people Hitler said he never claimed the German civilisation was better than the Chinese or the Japanese so he had a sort of respect for these "Alte Kulturen".
Juliet Parrish: You can't win a war if you're extinct!
you idiot didn't go to war to kill them off, he went to war to dominate and rule over them. Are you dense?
http://hemestate.blogspot.com/
-things I write on IMDB may come from my blog
you idiot didn't go to war to kill them off, he went to war to dominate and rule over them. Are you dense?
http://hemestate.blogspot.com/
-things I write on IMDB may come from my blog
Denmark was a whole different ballgame. The reason why they chose to occupy Denmark, was because the country mainly was a part of Germany's very large deffence wall against the allied forces in the West (UK and USA), a defensive wall that went from Southern France to Norway.
The official title Denmark was given by Germany, was "Festung Dänemark" (Fortress Denmark).
They build extremely large bunkers on the westshore of Jutland, who contained extremely large cannons, that was so powerfull, that they could shoot shells of up to a ton halfway to Norway.
These bunkers can still be seen on the beaches of Jutland and some has been opened up to the puplic as war museums.
I don't deny that Germany did like Denmark, they loved the country, but that was due to the mentality of the Danes. They knew that Danes where not war happy nation, that they loved peace above everything and just wanted to enjoy their life and treat every one who lived or stayed in the country equally, because you get more out of that in your life than being deffensive, which the German soldiers who occupied the country also discovered.
But they did also discover to wards the end of the war, that the picture changed when the Nazis and their secret Police came to Denmark and began treating the Danes like they where nothing and a population that was below a German, there the peace between the Germans and the Danes was over, because Danes also treat you how they are treated.
Some other guys mentioned the fact that the Allied forces declared war on Germany, however he would have gone to war with them eventually, but he was not ready to fight the western front yet.
I would say the primary reason for England, France and USA was because of the end of the first World War, he held resentment (as did all Germans) for the bogus terms of the peace deal that was forced on Germany for WWI, and even when the economy went to hell none of them would relent on the reparations.
With the USA, Germany declared war on them after Pearl Harbor, this was hubris and pride by Hitler, basically he thought that Germany should not have war declared on them at that point but he should declare war on them. This is the one that interests me the most because I don't know if FDR could have got support for a declaration of war on Germany for Pearl Harbor, the US public and congress were all for war with Japan but not with Germany.
As to the earlier countries like Czech. and Hungary he was testing the world-wide community to see how far they would let him go without acting. They basically let him take most of the continent and have enough strength to fight the bloodiest war in human history.
I would recommend the book Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer, he was a reporter in Europe and saw first-hand much of it and it has a great look at some of the questions you are asking here.
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed..."share