Post by robotsmfc on Nov 16, 2009 17:20:46 GMT
I accept what Sultan has to say completely, as he has gone after the debate rather than the debatee.
As I said above, I probably overdid the 1939-45 part almost entirely in my original post. The fact that Hitler was pretty damaged probably would have been helpful to a neutral Britain since Hitler appears to have been an obsessive admirer of certain aspects of British life. I'm not trying to suggest that Britain should have remained neutral, though, just that there was more to the war than fighting for freedom.
You're right to say that we have no idea what might have happened in 1914 had Britain not intervened, however I think you underestimate the French just a little bit, after all they did win a key battle 60 miles outside of Paris single-handed in the early days of the First World War to push the Germans back to the more familiar lines. Whether they'd have stayed there without the British and eventual American help is again a matter for speculation. It's not at all certain either way. Nor is the treatment of the defeated party. I'd suspect that Germany would have been much kinder to France had roles been reversed since they were so used to beating them anyway after the war 1870; the French were so upset about being beaten that they wanted to impose a far more total defeat upon Germany in 1918 than I suspect Germany would have to France.
You're spot on about being careful of bias too. I've studied this particular time period under so many different and contradictory teachers (thanks to our education system's penchant for flogging the first half of the 20th century to death) and read enough contradictory material to say that I'm mainly posting from my own opinion on the Second and First World Wars. It's always a danger to draw too much influence from someone who is too biased, although it's near impossible to find a single historian who isn't; as my favourite old teacher says, "history is not what happened, it's what people think happened!"
As I said above, I probably overdid the 1939-45 part almost entirely in my original post. The fact that Hitler was pretty damaged probably would have been helpful to a neutral Britain since Hitler appears to have been an obsessive admirer of certain aspects of British life. I'm not trying to suggest that Britain should have remained neutral, though, just that there was more to the war than fighting for freedom.
You're right to say that we have no idea what might have happened in 1914 had Britain not intervened, however I think you underestimate the French just a little bit, after all they did win a key battle 60 miles outside of Paris single-handed in the early days of the First World War to push the Germans back to the more familiar lines. Whether they'd have stayed there without the British and eventual American help is again a matter for speculation. It's not at all certain either way. Nor is the treatment of the defeated party. I'd suspect that Germany would have been much kinder to France had roles been reversed since they were so used to beating them anyway after the war 1870; the French were so upset about being beaten that they wanted to impose a far more total defeat upon Germany in 1918 than I suspect Germany would have to France.
You're spot on about being careful of bias too. I've studied this particular time period under so many different and contradictory teachers (thanks to our education system's penchant for flogging the first half of the 20th century to death) and read enough contradictory material to say that I'm mainly posting from my own opinion on the Second and First World Wars. It's always a danger to draw too much influence from someone who is too biased, although it's near impossible to find a single historian who isn't; as my favourite old teacher says, "history is not what happened, it's what people think happened!"
