Truth is the First Casualty of War

[Brad De Long]

>So Chamberlain declared his phoney "war" (drole de guerre) on 
>Germany and spent the next year or so doing nothing against Hitler 
>and everything feasible to get Hitler to expedite his attack on 
>Russia.

That's not how I read it at all. The British mobilization curve 
during the first year of the war is extraordinarily impressive--not 
what a country fighting a "phony war" does. And a Britain that is 
fighting a "phony war" would be a Britain that makes peace in the 
winter of 1940, or just after the fall of France.

As to doing "everything feasible to get Hitler to expedite his attack 
on Russia", why yes, of course. The British government needed allies, 
and whatever they could do to suck America into the war on their side 
and whatever they could do to get Russia to change sides, they did...

Brad DeLong