Posted: Jan 05, 2013 10:06 pm
Galactor wrote:
If you mean by tardy, "gutless", it is indeed easy because there is lashings of truth in it.
Britain & France should have waded into Germany soon after 6th March 1936 under the rightful action of defending the Versailles treaty and kept on going way past the Rhineland. They had the resources and the Germans were not ready for hostilities.
I was commenting on the situation in 1941, but sure, with 20/20 hindsight, it is easy to see what should've been done. One has to remember that many nations were unwilling to go to war in 1936 after having lost so many soliders less than 20 years before.
Galactor wrote:Varangian wrote:
As for the British, a lot of heavy equipment (and plenty of personal equipment) had been lost when the BEF had to evacuate in 1940. Fighting the Battle of Britain and trying to keep the upper hand at sea took quite a bit of effort. In short, the Western allies were in no shape to mount an offensive on the European mainland in 1942.
If only they had stood up to Hitler ...
While I haven't read as much on the power games 1933-39 as I would like, Hitler's tactic of gobbling up a small piece every now and then (and, it has to be remembered, with other nations happy to play along, like Hungary and Poland) was successful - making "reasonable" demands on weak states which while other nations didn't think it was worth getting into armed hostilities over central European regions that were hard to assist militarily.