>I think they grossly
>underestimated the threat from Hitler. I think they grossly
>overestimated the threat from Stalin.
I'm not sure they didn't have a decisive hand in exacerbating the threat Hitler posed, Brad. Trotsky predicted as much in Harper's Magazine back in 1933, btw. And Hitler certainly had good reasons to believe he could do what he liked, short of invading France, without having to go to war with the big boys.
>Nevertheless, when the chips were down, the British and French
>governments *declared* *war* on Nazi Germany in early September 1939.
>They didn't have to do so. And they were the only governments to
>declare war on Hitler, rather than wait out as much of WWII as
>possible in the hope that Hitler would not attack them.
Er, are you saying the Netherlands, or Belgium, or Poland should have declared war before September 1939? The first two would have been reduced to rubble in a month (as May 1940 was to show), and the Poles could (a) not win on their own (which events in Spain three years earlier indicated they would be) and (b) would deprive their allies of any pretext to join in. C'mon Brad, it was either UK and France *together* - or it was no-one - they could have stuffed Hitler in Spain in 1936 by showing just enough resolve to worry him, or they coulda got nasty in late '38 or early '39 (when the Soviets had made clear an offensive alliance was at least on the table) - which possibility Hitler had allowed for - word is, he'd not have tried that fateful Polish business on September 1 if the allies had sent troops to the Czech border back when he grabbed the volk some lebensraum there - when, I'd've thought, the chips were down for the second time in three years.
BTW, I can't remember where I read it (was it Shirer?), but Hitler was, by his own calculations, more than a year underprepared for the big showdown in 1939, and was genuinely surprised by the allies' September 2 ultimatum and the September 3 declaration - a real form reversal as far as he was concerned.
Guess he wasn't to know that the French would allow a variant of the Schlieffen plan, which had not worked in 1914, to work now. Just as he wasn't to know that if he'd unleashed his panzers at Dunkirk and then concentrated solely on the British aerodromes in May-September of that same year, he'd have had Britain, too. And maybe there's the superpowers' main excuse. They were less prepared than Hitler by a decisive margin. I'd be interested to know if anyone on the British and French side was talking like that at the time ...
>(footnote: FDR would have declared war on Hitler--in fact did all he
>could to try to bring the U.S. into WWII earlier--but could not carry
>a congressional majority with him).
Is there anything to back up the rumour that FDR was aware of the Japanese plans for Pearl Harbour at least a day ahead of time - that he might have decided to trade some battleships and a couple of thousand fellas for a pretext to go in? Is that why the carriers were not at their moorings that morning? Is that story around, stateside?
Yours in idle speculation, Rob.