Comments by "Alan Pennie" (@alanpennie8013) on "‘But TIK, the reason WHY Hitler started WW2 makes no sense!’" video.

  1.  @zupalan2265  He certainly comes across as delusional. He should hide under the bed from those scary Communist teachers.
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  2.  @AFGuidesHD  You should do it. Wouldn't be hard to do better than Hoggan.
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  3. Also The French Revolutionary Wars, launched because the Revolution. which was the result of a fiscal crisis, had made that crisis even worse
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  4.  @ryanward10  There's a depressing thought. Perhaps the Vietnamese will save us.
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  5.  @benbruce9192  He often picks up the wrong end of the stick but at least he gives it a good look.
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  6.  @brucetucker4847  It's quite interesting that Rome conquered the world despite The Fetial Law, which prohibited wars of aggression.
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  7. You have to remember this all happened during The Great Depression. The idea of self - sufficient empires seemed more plausible in the days of The New Deal, The Five Year Plans, and the Ottawa System.
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  8. Oh we have plenty of inflation. It's just that asset inflation (unlike inflation of commodity prices) doesn't officially count.
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  9. I think the model is fine provided you take an instrumental view of rationality. Hitler's methods were rational in the light of his weird conception of the world.
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  10. The Nazi - Soviet Pact allowed Stalin to make major territorial gains. Stalin demanded control of the three Baltic republics in order to protect Leningrad (St Petersburg). The British said no, but Hitler said yes. So Stalin went with Hitler. Additionally you have to remember that in 1939 people expected a long Stalemate in The West, not a quick German victory
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  11.  @przemekkozlowski7835  Interesting. I think this was all widely known before around 1990 when the "ideological turn" led to economics being neglected for a while in accounts of The Third Reich. Adam Tooze says something like this in his book about the Nazi economy.
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  12. They could have. But Hitler was impatient and a gambler. So a slower, safer policy didn't appeal to him.
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  13.  @3gunslingers  You should check out British historian Tim Mason. He used to argue along these lines very persuasively. I don't altogether agree. The Nazi regime was so popular it probably could have weathered some economic dislocation.
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  14. No. You pay your creditors in money you steal from someone else. Like someone stealing money to pay their drug dealer.
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  15. If hypothetically Goering had been in charge I doubt there would have been a world war. He lacked Hitler's obsessive mindset and would not have taken such a risk.
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  16. Yep. It was "pretend East Europeans are American Indians" time.
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  17.  @illerac84  I think so. Up until that moment they decided they owned the world.
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  18. The British were opposed to a formal alliance for two reasons, the danger of war with Japan and the Soviet demand that they be given control of the Baltic republics ( which seemed too much like a new Munich from the British pov).
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  19.  @electronworld4996  AF Guides is a Nazi but a well - informed one. He's not altogether wrong. You have to remember that what Hitler was interested in was his Lebensraum war. If Poland could be recruited as an ally for that war (like Romania later was) there would be no need to conquer it
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  20.  @0utc4st1985  I certainly wouldn't say that it was a good idea. Just that it might plausibly seem like one then.
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  21.  @Edax_Royeaux  He was unlucky, and TIK isn't really fair to him in this video. Arguably he rather successfully dug a heffalump.trap for Hitler at Munich.
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  22. No you're correct. The Poles made it very clear after Munich that they weren't going to join in Hitler's war for Lebensraum, but up to March Hitler still hoped they'd come around, and the Brits feared that they might.
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  23. Very true. If countries want to fight wars they have to run deficits.
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  24.  @grekusPotatus  Much of my argument is based on, How War Came, by D.C. Watt. It's a bit long and repetitive, but well argued I think. You might like to check it out.
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  25. Nowadays it's a British intelligence base. Perhaps it was the same then.
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  26. There was an interesting historical debate about all this in the late 1980s, and the consensus was that Germany did not face immediate collapse but that ambitious plans for further rearmament (like building up a ocean - going navy) could not be carried out without foreign conquests.
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  27.  @dragosstanciu9866  Exactly. They wanted to prevent the quasi - alliance between Germany and The USSR becoming more solid. Though there was a hare brained scheme to attack the Caucasus Oil industry following the Soviet attack on Finland.
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  28. Stalin was not such a fool as to fall for that. He was never going to make any aggressive move unless convinced it would not pose any threat to The USSR.
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  29. Thanks.
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  30. Yes. But he couldn't have waged the great war for Lebensraum which he regarded as his mission.
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  31. TBF the Germans did have an ancient historical connection with Eastern Europe and many Germans had settled there over the centuries. This didn't make the idea of conquering the whole area sensible but the Ausland Deutsch were a real issue in an age of nationalist assertion and conflict
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  32.  @zxbzxbzxb1  True. True.
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  33. They knew about but they didn't believe in it (with good reason).
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  34. Indeed. A German - Polish entente would have been a disaster for The British. Fortunately the Poles never considered it, perceiving correctly that it would end their independence.
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  35. Chamberlain wasn't spineless. Once it became clear that Hitler really was pursuing a Lebensraum policy he declared war.
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  36. Economics was really his center of interest.
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  37.  @electronworld4996  This is true. Plus WW1 had been financially ruinous and the Brits couldn't pay for another world war. Luckily the were able to persuade The USA to underwrite them.
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  38. The Brits would not have conceded him anything. That was all decided in May 1940.
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  39. The German people mainly. Foreigners wouldn't lend following earlier defaults.
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  40. Yes. These are good arguments. I think under any leadership Germany would have pursued an aggressive, expansionist policy in the 1930s.
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  41.  @SamuelJamesNary  You could say that in the 1930s Germany was aggressive because it was so weak. The Kaiser's Germany was much stronger and could effectively protect the Germans who were governed by non - German rulers (most of whom were German allies, or at the least reasonably friendly).
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  42.  @michanerwinski6394  You have to understand Hitler's temperament too. Being an Austrian he had no particular hostility to the Poles and he hoped Poland would be an ally in his war for Lebensraum. When the Poles turned him down he became very angry and wanted to punish them. Similarly he ordered his air force to destroy Belgrade when Yugoslavia sided with The Brits.
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  43.  @michanerwinski6394  The Chad Chamberlain, as the younger folk would say.
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  44.  @MrKakibuy  The debate first arose out of the idea of a blitzkrieg strategy back in the 1960s and continued certainly until the late 1980s. After that there was an "ideological turn" in Third Reich studies. Tim Mason (an unorthodox Marxist) did very interesting work which would be worth re-examination. He may have been the first Anglophone to pay any attention to Victor Klemperer
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  45. Nope. Hitler was not a Christian because he was an extreme social darwinist. Positive Christianity was a thing, but not a thing which interested Hitler. It was extremely appealing to German Protestants though.
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  46. The British view was that the more Polish territory Stalin conquered the better. That was the only effective way of denying it to Hitler.
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  47. He hoped to avoid war, but if it was inevitable it needed to be delayed until the British air - defence system was completed in 1940.
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  48.  @mustardjar3216  This is true. The Brits didn't really trust any other European country to oppose Germany.
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  49. That's reasonable. Chamberlain hoped to prevent a world war by sacrificing The Czechs. It was reasonable (from his pov) but definitely ruthless.
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