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The bad thing about the Nazis was that they started WWII. Everything they did before the start of WWII was within the envelope of typical right-wing authoritarian governments. Most people would cite the Holocaust as the bad thing about the Nazis, and yeah, it was bad, but the over-emphasis of it ironically plays right into the Nazi Propaganda that WWII was a war launched against Germany for the benefit of the Jews.
"Who started WWII" is more ambiguous than that. WWII started with England and France's declaration of war on Germany. Germany had a reasonable casus belli on Poland, and England was pressuring Poland not to negotiate with Germany. Even more important are the many peace proposals Germany offered England, which entailed Germany fully pulling out of France, and Churchill not only rejected them but even hid them from the public. Ultimately Churchill and the United States would set the only war aim as Unconditional Surrender, which is what ultimately led to the mass murder and destruction.
Furthermore the tall tale of Germans tricking millions of Jews into walking into gas chambers that had been disguised as shower rooms is a fantasy meant to justify this one-sided WWII narrative. Incidentally, Grok 3 is the first LLM I've seen explicitly take the Revisionist side of a core argument regarding that narrative, even going so far as to criticize the Narrative's sole reliance on witness testimony over any other form of evidence. Also first that has accurately summarized the mainstream position on an issue, accurately summarized the Revisionist position on an issue, and explicitly concurred with the Revisionists that the "official claim is not plausible under scrutiny." The days of that narrative are numbered, and other WWII Revisionism is going to come along with the collapse of that narrative.
Germany's war on Poland provides no justification for England and France to ally with the Soviet Union in a catastrophic war aim of unconditional surrender on Germany.
On that note, normalize the Roman Salute. It's just a cool pose. It evokes emotions in people and that makes it powerful.
Leaving aside for a second the more odious points of this comment, this is preposterous. Britain had no justification for attempting to stop Germany attempting to make itself the pre-eminent power in Europe by conquest? Almost as if it was the guiding principle of the British to prevent such a state of affairs emerging for centuries prior. This was precisely the argument Napoleon tried to give at various - Britain had no need to meddle in continental affairs rather than attending to its overseas possessions and trading activities and had ruined itself for the sake of a conflict it had no interest in. It was preposterous then and equally so in 1939. And indeed the conduct of Hitler and the and the Nazi government before and during the war proved that they could never be tolerated as a major element of the European order.
This is the Revisionist position. And no I do not think it had a justification to do so with the threat of the Soviet Union and the human and cultural cost of destroying Old Europe in a war of unconditional surrender. And ultimately Britain lost its own Empire. But yes Britain did start WWII in order to prevent Germany from becoming the pre-eminent power in Europe. That's the real reason WWII started and Britain allied with the Soviet Union to make it happen. It wasn't over Danzig, all of Poland was conquered by Britain's ally at the end of the day.
The Treaty of Versailles was an attempt to make sure Germany never become the pre-eminent power in Europe. But it was unenforceable. So they waged war ostensibly over Danzig, but then retconned it ultimately to be about the Holocaust narrative to try to post-hoc justify the war and solely blame Germany for the utter destruction and death.
Very funny that Britain makes the claim Germany wanted to "make itself the pre-eminent power in Europe by conquest" over Danzig. Germany offered to fully evacuate from Western Europe for peace and England said no.
But yes, the real reason for the war was Britain didn't want Germany to become the largest power in Europe. No that is not at all a justification for their alliance with the Soviet Union, the demand for unconditional surrender, and mass death and destruction of Europe to realize that objective. Germany is today arguably the largest power on the European Continent anyway. No it was not justified.
As @johnfabian said, you must think we're complete fucking mongoloids if you expect us to buy that.
Contemporary articles have Sir John Simon and Anthony Eden both drawing parallels to Napoleon and the 30 years war in thier opposition to appeasement, and you can find speechs from Churchill about the German/Nazi Menace going back the early 30s. There's also the 390 years of observable foriegn policy between the end of the English Civil War and the start of World War Two.
The idea that the war was justified because contemporary articles compared Hitler to Napoleon is just absurd, as absurd as all the contemporary articles you can point to which endlessly compare X with Hitler to justify some war, whether it's Ukraine (with both Zelensky and Putin invoking Hitler to justify the war effort on the other) or Iraq or Iran. Britain lost its Empire, Europe was destroyed, tens of millions dead, half of Europe gifted to the Soviet Union including Poland.... oh but contemporary articles said it had to be done because of Napoleon, right.
That wasn't the claim, the claim was that the British having a long-standing foriegn policy of countering any individual continental power that got too big was a "Revisionist position".
That it is relatively easy to find examples of the British government and it's officials citing this policy and acting upon it prior to 1939 is proof to the contrary.
It is a Revisionist position, because nobody says "WWII was started because the British wanted to stop Germany from getting too powerful, even though Germany did not want war with Britain." But that's the truth. The official position is that Germany wanted and intentionally started war with Britain and France, proving that in international "court" was one of the primary purposes of the Nuremberg Trial even though it fell flat on that front, the mountains of documents and testimony proved that it was not planned for or expected or desired. Nothing forced the British to wage a war of unconditional surrender on Germany. Citing "long-standing policy" is wrong as the policy position of "appeasement" did not fail, what failed was shifting from 0-100, appeasement to "no negotiations ever, only unconditional surrender after we destroy Europe." That was nonsensical and unpredictable, Germany did not expect it and it was an unpredictable departure from British policy to catastrophic consequences.
The Treaty of Versailles failed because it was an unenforceable attempt to forever keep Germany weak. They had no choice but to negotiate, what people call "appeasement" was the correct solution to the quagmire. The British were going to, what declare war on Germany because they mobilized within their own territory? Ok, so you send in the French and they back down. Then the French leave and they do it again... It was never going to work as a long-term steady state.
No, they entered the war because they had signed a mutual defence pact with Poland.
A mutual defense pact that was motivated in large part by Britian's long-standing policy (since the 1600s) of "containing" any continental power they felt was getting too big/powerful too quickly.
If Hitler didn’t want a war with Britain he could have simply Abided by the terms of Munich, not repudiated the Anglo German Naval Agreement, and most importantly not invaded Poland.
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