Broken backed World War Two

[RedLegion]

When you stole half of the house from the neighbor, you should kinda expect, that he might demand his property back at some point.

The Russians were truly surprised when the owner returned after 123 years to take back what was his.

 

[Elan Vital]

Arguably Poland supporting Czechoslovakia in 1938 was probably one of the more significant events to achieve the intent of this thread without altering rearmament in other countries. It utterly transforms the campaign as Germany's Eastern Front can no longer be wrapped up in a single short campaign. 1938 Czechoslovakia alone was likely going to be a harder and longer fight than OTL 1939 Poland, but with a mobilized Polish Army, it will be even worse. I also believe that this, instead of the unreliable Poland we got at Munich, would have been the threshold to sway the Anglo-French towards supporting CZ as well since it makes the Eastern Front less hopeless.

The diplomatic environment from 1935 onwards was pretty much a nightmare for everyone involved. The USSR could do nothing major against Germany without approval from either Romania or Poland, not without drawing the ire from everyone else if they used force against either neighbor. Poland's grievances towards Czechoslovakia were to a degree legitimate but completely out of scale with the existential threat that either Germany or the USSR posed to the country if it stood alone.
It should have been obvious no later than 1936 that France was absolutely desperate for a strong force in Germany's East and that by not allying with CZ, Poland risked French appeasing Germany at the cost of someone else...which is precisely what happened in 1938. After that, Poland was doomed no matter what happened in Western Europe.
Czechoslovakia could probably have made earlier concessions to Poland in hopes of obtaining their support as well. Zaolzie was not a big loss.

France was in an even worse nightmare. It was them who had to convince anyone else to fight alongside them, but it proved near impossible to obtain more than one ally at a time. The USSR was, fairly or not, viewed with suspicion by everyone else and since obtaining Soviet support was reliant on obtaining either Romanian or Polish support, it was a non-starter. The Soviets were not able to reassure the French Army of their effectiveness after the Great Purges. Italy had such delusions of grandeur that it would be very hard to keep them allied without sacrificing too much in the process.
Britain was completely delusional about actual French strength. It thought that the French could deal with Germany alone on the ground and was actually stronger for much longer than was warranted. Britain consistently discouraged French attempts at making alliances with other European countries, without even compensating with a genuinely massive and balanced rearmament. With a new king at the helm and a fierce fight between pro-French and pro-German parties, Belgium was already retreating towards neutrality even before the Rhineland crisis.

Short of obtaining an extra ally on the continent, obtaining a brocken back WW2 was reliant on either an earlier and more substantial British rearmament, an earlier or more efficient French rearmament, or at the latest a more effective operational plan for the Entente for May 1940.

 

[Justo Miranda]

I think you're focusing on the wrong point. A rebuttal to the idea that “the populace isn't subject to judgment” should use specific events.
Alcohol and the like are not counterexamples.

BTW, nothing personal, I've noticed that in conversations Euros and Americans are always concerned with very small details, not the whole story.I wonder if your history education ever addressed the relationship between contingency and necessity. Or does it overly focus on anecdotes like 'for want of a nail, the war was lost'?
back to yor post, you also mentioned that the WWI led to poor sanitation in Europe, especially within trench warfare.
So it doesn't matter if the 1918 pandemic was brought on by Americans or not, other pandemics in that sanitary environment might not have caused the kind of killing effect that the pandemic did, and would have hit society hard.

Do you want good examples?

ONE: Churchill, the victor of the Second World War "blood, sweat and tears" lost the first election he stood for, after the British victory.

TWO: The propaganda was not enough to stop the Germans from fleeing to the west, and it was necessary to build the Berlin Wall with the Vopos shooting at people trying to flee.

THREE: Despite the efforts of the infamous UNESCO organization to preserve traditions and culture in the Third World, its inhabitants, as soon as they can, leave there, dress like Europeans and most adapt to our customs, despite the efforts of terrorists to separate the two civilizations.

FOUR: If you know where to look, you'll see that the populace is becoming more and more intelligent and difficult to control by propaganda and the mainstream media. The elites are so worried that they are beginning to consider the possibility of annulling the result of the elections that do not suit them.



Regarding the second issue, the reason why Europeans and Americans argue over small details is because they agree on the big details: health, food, civil rights and liberties, free elections (for the time being) and above all, peaceful handover from power without the need to poison or imprison opponents who threaten to gain power and change things.

The word “pandemic” means nothing because the causes and effects can vary greatly depending on the nature of the bacteria, virus, or meme that causes them and according to the structure of the society that suffers from them, the time of year in which it spreads, the density of the population at ground zero, the speed of transport networks or the criminal interference of supranational organizations to prevent the causes, origins and demands for compensation from being known. We all know who, why and why you can't say in this forum who and why.

 

[Dilandu]

Arguably Poland supporting Czechoslovakia in 1938 was probably one of the more significant events to achieve the intent of this thread without altering rearmament in other countries. It utterly transforms the campaign as Germany's Eastern Front can no longer be wrapped up in a single short campaign. 1938 Czechoslovakia alone was likely going to be a harder and longer fight than OTL 1939 Poland, but with a mobilized Polish Army, it will be even worse. I also believe that this, instead of the unreliable Poland we got at Munich, would have been the threshold to sway the Anglo-French towards supporting CZ as well since it makes the Eastern Front less hopeless.

Most importantly, Poland willing to protect the Czech automatically made French-Soviet alliance much more of concern to Germany. Even without formal agreenmen, the mere possibility of Red Army rushing in to reinforce Poland - with French army preparing on West - was a complete non-starter for Germany. Neither German military nor civilian population would support an almost guaranteed two-front war in 1938.

 

[Archibald]

Another classic Winston Churchill response: when a woman said to him, "You're drunk!" he replied, "And you, ma'am, are ugly. But in the morning, I'll be sober and you'll still be ugly." "

One angry woman once told Churchill "If you were my husband, I would poison your wine." To which Winston immediately replied "Well, if I was your husband, I would, indeed, drink that wine. In a hurry."

Another good one, from Parliament. One MP insulted Churchill, shouting repeatedly "Liar ! liar ! liar !" To which Churchill answered something like (from memory) "Can my adversary please decline his identity, rather than his main personality trait ?" WHAAAM

 

[Archibald]

Whatever the (countless) flaws in the 1938 French military, a British - Polish - French - Czech alliance would be a formidable adversary for Germany. Don't forget that we french passed the czechs Maginot line technology for their border defenses - and they did a good job with it.
And of course there is the 20 000 pound elephant in the room : the Skoda works. Which after Munich churned panzers at accelerated pace - for Germany... as I said in another thread, Daladier doomed France at many different levels, such as this one. Also his staunch, unflinching support of Gamelin-crétin.

 

[Justo Miranda]

The Russians were truly surprised when the owner returned after 123 years to take back what was his.

In my country there is an anecdote of a Sephardic Jew who returned to the house of his ancestors in Toledo after the pogrom that expelled them five hundred years earlier. The family had kept the key to the house all that time because the Church of Rome had destroyed all the other written evidence of ownership, so Isaac went to the door of the house, tried the key... and opened it.

Some olive trees that belonged to the Sephardim are still preserved, but environmentalists are uprooting them to install solar panels, the injustice continues with other names.

One angry woman once told Churchill "If you were my husband, I would poison your wine." To which Winston immediately replied "Well, if I was your husband, I would, indeed, drink that wine. In a hurry."

Another good one, from Parliament. One MP insulted Churchill, shouting repeatedly "Liar ! liar ! liar !" To which Churchill answered something like (from memory) "Can my adversary please decline his identity, rather than his main personality trait ?" WHAAAM

It is possible that most of the stories that are told of that great man are not true, but in my opinion the one that can best define his character and personality is true. Tired of his opponents' hints about his excess weight, he dug a garden pool with his bare hands for his family.