All of these excerpts from Niall will be from his book 'The War of the World'
You can download the book here: http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=1F57582BF9CD4A923F05ECF5E44B6142
In brief. Fergusons position can literally be summed up as:
"Big Germany bad me no like big Germany, strong Germany threat to Britain that mean war good"
And he does what all other historians have done, try to justify British preemptive war against Germany simply because they claim Germany was "a threat" in what way? Who knows, Niall doesn't say. But the propaganda of moral suggestion about WHO is right or wrong is on display for all to see. According to Niall, Britain is right because they're not the National Socialist Germans and that's good enough for him. The Germans are wrong simply because they're German and their interests may or may not align with those of Britain. Needless to say Niall doesn't think they align at all, but gives us no reason for this claim, but that's his basis. The truth is that there's nothing stopping anyone in all fairness taking the exact same unfalsifiable stance against Ferguson or Britain during the Second World War. We could RIGHTLY suggest and claim that Hitler had every moral right to attack Britain, even preemptively since that's apparently an okay option for supposed "peace loving" countries to do.
His case is boiled down to the unprecedented justification of hostilities on an up and coming Germany who threatens the status quo, and this status quo is what gives historians of the victor countries the divine right to tell the entire world supposedly "objectively" that they're morally superior because of that status quo. It's truly hard to put into words the twisted justifications based on nothing these people have for why it was okay to do what they did; however the best way I can think to explain it, is the dynamic of victim and aggressor. Germany had interests in altering the status quo on a moral basis, perhaps even some imperial interest in Eastern Europe if you accept the orthodox narrative. Whether this is the case or not it hardly matters, conflict with the Soviet Union in my eyes can only be morally justified, perhaps you'd expect the likes of Niall to agree with this? You'd think they'd have the moral consistency to judge Hitler's "unmotivated" attack on the Soviet Union as a necessary act to "pre-empt" against a gigantic militarizing Soviet Union which had multiple 4 year plans and industrial zeal since long before Hitler came onto the world stage. Niall or any of his contemporaries do not do this, Niall has the gall to claim that:
the only one of the options that was never seriously contemplated was pre-emption - in other words, an early move to nip in the bud the threat posed by Hitler's Germany.
Pp. 319
Niall isn't the only one to suggest something like this.
a new book on the Munich Agreement reviewed by Kirkus Reviewshttps://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/pe-caquet/the-bell-of-treason/ wishes for war as well
War seemed imminent, which, Caquet emphasizes, might have been a good thing.
and on the dust jacket to his book 'Munich The Eleventh Hour' Robert Kee says:
it is possible to argue that had he (Chamberlain) taken a diametrically opposite course at Munich and risked war the world might have been spared at least the worst of the subsequent horrors and possibly would have been saved from war altogether. Equally it had been argued that but gaining time for Britain Chamberlain enabled her to re-arm sufficiently to be able to survive when war came.
To Kee, I'll say this much. The logic behind Hitler's invasions of the Soviet Union was exactly the same. If he could wipe them out quickly, the war would be over quicker and Britain would have to make peace:
Two days later Hitler called a council of war at his summer retreat. Seated in the main hall of the Berghof, his military chiefs learned for the first time of Hitler’s motives. The arguments he presented were practical ones. The Soviet Union was Britain’s last chance; with the Soviet threat knocked out, Britain would make peace, and America would no longer be a danger.
Richard Overy, Russia's War (*I cannot ascertain a page number for this as I do not currently have a physical copy, look on the google books preview or Libgen a copy of the book and search the quote)
One must wonder why the same logic used to justify a potential "pre-emptive" but in actuality, an unprovoked attack on Germany couldn't be used by Hitler, or any historians today to justify Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union as morally justified? I want a fucking answer to this question. Why on god's green earth is this DOUBLE STANDARD OKAY? If our standards are that we're allowed to attack powers willy nilly because they could become strong, thus a threat, or they are strong and are now a potential threat then we can just attack them because "their power is threatening" it surely leaves a disturbed precedent historians are only willing to leave if it's Nazi Germany and nobody else.
I'll come back to this point when we see how Niall utterly fails to justify his claims of the German threat, and we'll see if we can't use the same justifications to vindicate Hitler.
So we see there's a trend of historians, no doubt more, pushing this war-mongering narrative and justifying the war they wished to force onto Germany (and did so successfully) because of their unyielding and baseless belief that the Germans were a threat. Of course they managed to find proof of this "threat" in banal actions Hitler took. Even his simple ambitions which were to be expected from any German statesman. Dissatisfaction with the situation of the Sudeten Germans, Austria, Danzig, re-armament, all of these things which were justifiably in the German interest all seemed to point to German aggression, and the historians have strategically adopted this Ambition=aggression, Foreign Policy=Aggression, National Self Interest=Aggression double standard against Germany that they can twist to make themselves out to be the morally righteous victims while the Germans were just "unreasonably" rocking the applecart with their desire and demand for German unification.
Ferguson adopts all of this hypocrisy as I'll show.
Let's see how Ferguson starts his chapter 9 "Defending the Indefensible" (no bias here lads)
For obvious reasons, we tend to think of the years from 1933 to 1939 in terms of the origins of the Second World War. The question we customarily ask is whether or not the Western powers could have done more to avert the war - whether or not the policy of appeasement towards Germany and Japan was a disastrous blunder. Yet this may be to reverse the order of events. Appeasement did not lead to war. It was war that led to appeasement. For the war did not begin, as we tend to think, in Poland in 1939. It began in Asia in 1937, if not in 1931, when Japan invaded Manchuria. It began in Africa in 1935, when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia. It began in Western Europe in 1936, when Germany and Italy began helping Franco win the Spanish Civil War. It began in Eastern Europe in April 1939, with the Italian invasion of Albania. Contrary to the myth propagated by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg that he and his confederates were its only begetter, Hitler was a latecomer to the war. He achieved his foreign policy objectives prior to September 1939 without firing a shot. Nor was it his intention to start a world war at that date. The war that broke out then between Germany, France and Britain was nearly as much the fault of the Western powers, and indeed of Poland, as of Hitler, as A. J. P. Taylor contended forty-five years ago in The Origins of the Second World War.
Niall Ferguson, The War of the World, Pp. 312-313
Now who on earth could disagree with this? The 1930s were a tumultuous decade filled with tension, ambitions, and skirmishes that could've led to war. Yet these smaller affairs are blocked out to make way for a narrative of unique German Villainy and guilt for having the same interests, dissatisfaction and desires as any other country in Europe at this time.
He goes on to say some more boring shit:
Yet Taylor's argument was at best only half-right. [...] The British said they wanted to uphold the authority of the League of Nations and the rights of small and weak nations; but when push came to shove in Manchuria, Abyssinia and Czechoslovakia, imperial self-interest trumped collective security. They fretted about arms limitation, as though an equality of military capability would suffice to avoid war; but while a military balance might secure the British Isles, it offered no effective security for either Britain's continental allies or her Asian possessions.
Ibid, Pp. 313
The big problem here is that Niall seems to think it was Britain's right to intervene around the world in the affairs and conflicts of others. Yet he's bewildered by the fact that Germany, for this reason, might feel the need to kick Britain's teeth in despite their countless peace offensives as Niall will soon admit. Instead this is taken as more "proof" of German aggression. At least he admits it's Britain's interests driving her, not her morality. But we already knew this.
With withering irony, Taylor called the Munich agreement a 'triumph for British policy [and] . . . for all that was best and most enlightened in British life'. In reality, war with Germany was averted at the price of an unfulfillable guarantee to the rump Czechoslovakia. If handing the Sudetenland to Hitler in 1938 had been the right decision, why then did the British not hand him Danzig, to which he had in any case a stronger claim, in 1939? The answer was that by then they had given another militarily worthless guarantee, to the Poles. Having done so, they failed to grasp what Churchill saw at once: that without a 'grand alliance' with the Soviet Union, Britain and France might find themselves facing Germany alone. As an indictment of British diplomacy, Taylor's has stood up remarkably well to subsequent scholarship - though it must be said that he offers few clues as to why Britain's statesmen were so incompetent.
Ibid.
And Taylor would be correct. I'd defy anyone to deny it would've been moral to deny the self-determination of the Sudeten Germans the right to reunification with the Reich. But thankfully we have an idiot here who already did. No one other than Niall himself. And no matter how hard you bitch and complain, no matter how upset you might be that Hitler was RIGHT in his actions and his words you cannot deny the legitimacy of his claims. It's not "aggression" because you don't like it Niall.
Is he seriously suggesting that the only alternative to Munich was war? Well, not involving Britain as Niall admits Britain couldn't fight, it was a guarantee that was "unfulfillable". But if they did fight where would be the morality in that? Why on earth would Britain or France sound the drums of war to help a 20 year old state that was a failed hodge podge of ethnicities who were unwilling to submit to Czech Supremacy.
I suppose the takeaway from this is that in this weird way he acknowledge the German moral case for both Danzig and the Sudetenland. It was justified but the British simply refused to give Danzig back to Germany because of their guarantee to the Poles. The real question is why they didn't revoke their useless guarantee.
The British and French had refused to die for Czechoslovakia in 1938. But for Danzig, a remote Baltic port at the northern tip of the Polish corridor, guaranteed by the League of Nations, with various rights reserved to the Polish government, and inhabited mainly by Germans, they were pledged to offer their lives. [...] Danzig no longer represented a place, but a principle.
Sidney Aster, 1939-The Making of the Second World War (Andre Deutsch, 1973), Pp. 188
The Czech guarantee would not apply if:
Slovakia or Ruthenia to break way from Czechoslovakia...[or] were Czechoslovakia to join in a union with Germany which was so close as to amount to a virtual alienation of independence of the republic
Ibid. Pp. 25
Which is exactly what happened. Any guarantee would've been worthless, so I guess Niall is right on that as well.
Next, Niall tries to justify his "othering" of Hitler through the Germans of the past and the differences that define them, in doing this he will tell us what makes Hitler so different!:
of the First'. Nothing could be more remote from the truth. Bismarck had striven mightily to prevent the creation of a Greater Germany encompassing Austria. Yet this was one of Hitler's stated objectives, albeit one that he had inherited from the Weimar Republic. Bismarck's principal nightmare had been one of coalitions between the other great powers directed against Germany. Hitler quite deliberately created such an encircling coalition when he invaded the Soviet Union before Britain had been defeated. Not even the Kaiser had been so rash; indeed, he had hoped he could avoid war with Britain. Bismarck had used colonial policy as a tool to maintain the balance of power in Europe; the Kaiser had craved colonies. Hitler was uninterested in overseas acquisitions even as bargaining counters. Throughout the 1920s Germany was consistently hostile to Poland and friendly to the Soviet Union. Hitler reversed these positions within little more than a year of coming to power. It is true, as Taylor contended, that Hitler improvised his way through the diplomatic crises of the mid-19 30s with a combination of intuition and luck. He admitted that he was a gambler with a low aversion to risk ('All my life I have played va banque'). But what was he gambling to win? This is not a difficult question to answer, because he answered it repeatedly. He was not content, like Stresemann or Briining, merely to dismantle the Versailles Treaty - a task that the Depression had half-done for him even before he became Chancellor. Nor was his ambition to restore Germany to her position in 1914. It is not even correct, as the German historian Fritz Fischer suggested, that Hitler's aims were similar to those of Germany's leaders during the First World War, namely to carve out an East European sphere of influence at the expense of Russia.
Hitler's goal was different. Simply stated, it was to enlarge the German Reich so that it embraced as far as possible the entire German Volk and in the process to annihilate what he saw as the principal threats to its existence, namely the Jews and Soviet Communism (which to Hitler were one and the same). Like Japan's proponents of territorial expansion, he sought living space in the belief that Germany required more territory because of her over-endowment with people and her under-endowment with strategic raw materials. The German case was not quite the same, however, because there were already large numbers of Germans living in much of the space that Hitler coveted- When Hitler pressed for self-determination on behalf of ethnic Germans who were not living under German rule - first in the Saarland, then in the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland and Danzig - he was not making a succession of quite reasonable demands, as British statesmen were inclined to assume. He was making a single unreasonable demand which implied territorial claims extending far beyond the River Vistula in Poland. Hitler wanted not merely a Greater Germany; he wanted the Greatest Possible Germany. Given the very wide geographical distribution of Germans in East Central Europe, that implied a German empire stretching from the Rhine to the Volga. Nor was that the limit of Hitler's ambitions, for the creation of this maximal Germany was intended to be the basis for a German world empire that would be, at the very least, a match for the British Empire.
Ibid, 313-315
So this is it. This is what makes Hitler so bad? I don't see it. What makes Hitler different is that he's more ambitious and he wanted and acted on exactly what he claimed, a Greater German Reich that most Germans in Eastern Europe seemed enthusiastic about. (see below)
It should be pointed out that Hitler made no demand for the entirety of the German people to the Volga to be incorporated into the German Reich. This is a pure extrapolation on the part of Niall. I could however see Hitler desiring this. But we're not talking about Hitler's end game, we're talking about the events which culminated in the second world war.
We know that Hitler considered independent Socialist states in the East at one point (see: John Toland, Adolf Hitler, (New York Anchor Books), pp. 677 and William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), pp. 830-34.) We also know that Hitler had no plans with what to do with an occupied Poland and that Nialls claim about some German world empire, which he similary gives no evidence for because there is no evidence for it, is bogus:
Few historians now accept that Hitler had any plan or blueprint for world conquest, in which Poland was a stepping stone to some distant German world empire. Indeed, recent research has suggested that there were almost no plans for what to do with a conquered Poland and that the vision of a new German empire in central and eastern Europe had to be improvised almost from scratch.
Richard J. Overy, 1939: Countdown to War, (Penguin Publishing group, 2011), pp. 124
and
In 1939 Hitler had no plan (Konzept) for the conquest of "Lebensraum in the East." It is clear from records of his conversations during the Polish campaign that he still did not know what he should begin [to do] with Poland after a victory. Had Hitler envisioned Poland in 1939 as "Lebensraum in the East," then he would have had a plan for the defeated Poland ready at hand."
Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof, The War that Had Many Fathers (English Ed.), Pp. 667
All of this is a distraction which ignores the fact that none of this, even if it was Hitler's ambition, is immoral or determines a general European war, let alone Hitler's enthusiasm for one. Similarly it's all hypothetical babble which doesn't invalidate the claims of Hitler or the Volksdeutsche that wished to unite together. The British cannot be spared the blame for continuing the war when they refused Hitler's countless peace offers to them either.
Ferguson goes on to say:
This puts British policy in a rather different light. [...] The worst that can be said of British policy before 1914 was that too little was done to prepare Britain for the land war against Germany that her diplomacy implied she might have to fight. What was at stake in 1914 was essentially the future of France. What was at stake in 1939 was the future of Britain.
The statesmen of the 1930s were not blind to the danger posed by a Germany dominant on the continent. On the contrary, it became conventional wisdom that the nation's capital would be flattened within twenty-four hours of the outbreak of war by the might of Hermann Gôring's Luftwaffe. In 1934 the Royal Air Force estimated that the Germans could drop up to 150 tons a day on England in the event of a war in which they occupied the Low Countries. By 1936 that figure had been raised to 600 tons and by 1939 to 700 tons - with a possible deluge of 3,500 tons on the first day of war. In July 1934 Baldwin declared, 'When you think of the defence of England you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier lies.' Yet he and his successor Neville Chamberlain failed altogether to devise a rational response to the German threat. It was one thing to let the Japanese have Manchuria; it meant nothing to British security. The same was true of letting the Italians have parts of Abyssinia; even Albania could be theirs at no cost to Britain. The internal affairs of Spain, too, were frankly irrelevant to the British national interest. But the rise of a Greater Germany was a different matter.
Niall Ferguson, The War of the World, 315-316
Seems to me like Niall finally found the missing motivation he previously couldn't muster to explain why Britain didn't "allow" Germany to have Danzig and continued to support Poland in a fruitless gesture.
Niall is trying to explain why the British did what they did because this is how they felt, but he's also making the mistake without evidence that these British fears were actually reality and that war was the moral choice Britain had to make in order to stave off a Greater Germany which showed no signs of wanting to attack her. The very fact that Germany was getting larger and more militarily capable of self sufficiency and self-protection against larger powers such as Britain is conflated by Ferguson into "German Aggression" where it actually doesn't exist.
He is straight up lying with his claim that the "future of Britain was at stake", that's the kind of propagandistic trope you'd expect to come out of the mouth of Winston Churchill, not a supposedly objective academic historian. By saying this he primes the reader to think that Germany was an actual threat to Britain and "proves" this by listing off some impressive figures about the German Luftwaffe. Which in effect proves nothing unless Hitler was planning to use it on Britain for some reason, which he never did unprovoked.
Mr Ferguson, I have to tell you that you don't have the right to declare war on other countries (as Britain did) just because they're more powerful than you. Otherwise Hitler would've had the moral greenlight to attack you if he so felt like it. Something I'm rather sure you'd be staunchly against.
It was of course possible that Hitler was sincere when he protested that German expansion in East Central Europe would pose no threat to the British Empire. There were numerous instances when Hitler expressed his desire for an alliance or understanding with Britain, beginning with Mein Kampf. From November 1933, Hitler sought a naval agreement with Britain, and secured one - overriding the wishes of his Foreign Ministry and the German navy - in June 1935. 'An Anglo-German combination', he noted at the time, 'would be stronger than all the other powers.' At times he displayed, as Britain's ambassador in Berlin Sir Eric Phipps put it, 'an almost touching solicitude for the welfare of the British Empire'. Such ideas resurfaced four years later when Hitler started to feel nervous about British intervention on the eve of his invasion of Poland. He had 'always wanted German British understanding,' he assured the new British ambassador in Berlin, Sir Nevile Henderson, on August 25, 1939.When Britain ignored these blandishments and honoured its pledge to Poland of April, he was dismayed, telling Rosenberg that he 'couldn't grasp' what the English were 'really after': 'Even if England secured a victory, the real victors would be the United States, Japan and Russia.' On October 6, having conquered Poland, he renewed his offer of peace. Time and again after 1939, Hitler expressed regret that he was fighting Britain, because he doubted 'the desirability of demolishing the British Empire'. As he told General Franz Haider, who became his Chief of the General Staff in 1938, he 'did not like' war with Britain: 'The reason is that if we crush England's military power, the British Empire will collapse. That is of no use to Germany . . . [but] would benefit only Japan, America and others.' Hitler often alluded to the racial affinity he believed existed between the Anglo-Saxons and the Germans. As a Propaganda Ministry press briefing put it in 1940: 'Sooner or later the racially valuable germanic element in Britain would have to be brought in to join Germany in the future secular struggles of the white race against the yellow race, or the germanic race against Bolshevism.'
Ibid, 316-317
Dunno Niall, Hitler seems like a pretty upstanding an trustworthy guy to me. Like a good Ally. Not doing your case any favours here buddy.
Such notions led some at the time, and have led some subsequent historians, to imagine that peaceful coexistence between the British Empire and a Nazi Empire might have been possible, that the great mistake was not appeasement but its abandonment in 1939. Perhaps, it has even been suggested, peace could have been restored in 1940 or 1941, if only someone other than Churchill had been in charge of British policy.
Ibid.
Yeah, seems like those people have their heads screwed on and the sense to realise obvious back breaking peace overtures. But why do you disagree Niall? I'm sure it's super convincing!
Standing aside had been an option for Britain in 1914. The Kaiser's Germany would not easily have won a war against France and Russia; even in the event of victory, the threat to Britain would have been relatively limited, not least because Wilhelmine Germany was a constitutional monarchy with a powerful organized labour movement. In any case, Britain was not prepared for war with Germany in 1914 and the costs of intervention proved to be very high. Hitler's Germany was a different matter. The Kaiser did not have the Luftwaffe. Hitler did not have to worry about Social Democracy and trade unions. Perhaps Hitler was a sincere Anglophile; the Kaiser had sometimes been one too. But no one could be sure if Hitler was telling the truth or, even if he was, that he might not one day change his mind.
Ibid.
Soooo Britain had to go to war against Germany, at the end of the day, because a land power like Germany had the type of military weapons a landpower would have, in the form of aircraft...And this potentially threatened Britain so Germany needed to be economically and politically destroyed because you didn't like how a foreign country conducted themselves? Just for good measure I suppose you had to go that extra mile to remove German Nationalists from power because you thought it POTENTIALLY might conflict with British Nationalists...When all evidences points to the contrary mind you. It's not even that Germany even did anything to Britain, it's just that they had the gall to demand and assert their own German interests and increase the strength of their country that Niall and the historians feel Hitler's Germany had to be destroyed.
I dunno, kind of sounds like you're the people you're accusing the Germans of being Niall. People who don't respect national sovereignty of the rights of countries that aren't of interest to you.
Even if Hitler wasn't telling the truth, which you have no reason to think and every reason to suspect otherwise, why would he have attacked Britain if he didn't in 1940? If he didn't at Dunkirk, if he didn't bother invading. He didn't even build up a navy for this venture and planned for the Polish campaign to only involve Germany and Poland without the expectation that Britain and France would get involved. So let's say that peace is concluded in 39', 40' or 41', what could Germany have done if Hitler had apparently planned on invading Russia? It seems unlikely given this that Hitler would have betrayed Britain especially considering his words of support to them ever since Mein Kampf as Niall admits. I really fail to see how this claim of Hitler's unpredictability does anything more than ensure doubt in the minds of normal people that Hitler must be attacked because security in his aims cannot be understood. It's a baseless primal fear that these Historians have been pushing in their narratives against Britain accepting peace for decades.
The shadowy uncontrollable Hitler that could or could not do many things, but must be taken down to ensure one thing. That he cannot go on to be unpredictable because that's too politically scary for foreign nations and their tactically incompetent leaders to fathom.
I think it's rather ironic. These people talk about how the National Socialists were Racists who killed people, surely out of some "fear" or "misunderstanding" based on prejudice when the Brits are being commended for their prejudice against a Germany they don't understand.
Anyway.
He isn't finished yet though, Niall has some evidence to show us!
We know that he did. Encouraged by a disillusioned Ribbentrop, his ambassador in London, to regard Britain as a declining power, Hitler came to the conclusion as early as late 1936 that 'even an honest [sic] German-English rapprochement could offer Germany no concrete, positive advantages', and that Germany therefore had 'no interest in coming to an understanding with England'. As he put it in a meeting with his military chiefs in November 1937 (recorded in the famous Hossbach Memorandum), Britain was a 'hate-inspired antagonist' whose empire 'could not in the long run be maintained by power polities'. It was a view constantly reinforced by Ribbentrop, who saw England as 'our most dangerous opponent' (January 1938). On January 29, 1939 work began on the construction of a new German navy consisting of 13 battleships and battlecruisers, 4 aircraft carriers, 15 Panzerschiffe, 23 cruisers and 22 large destroyers known as Spdhkreuzer. There could be no doubt against whom such a fleet would have been directed, had it ever been built.
Ibid. 317-318
In 1936 Hitler said this? That's odd, I guess we won't know because Niall doesn't supply a source for it. But I have reason to doubt it:
I have proved that I (have done) everything possible to deal with the British. In 1940, after the French campaign, I offered my hand to the British and renounced (everything). I didn't want anything from them. On September 1, 1939, (I) made a suggestion to the British--rather I repeated a suggestion, which had been transmitted by Ribbentrop already in (1936)--the offer of (a) union, whereby Germany would (guarantee the British) Empire.[1298]
[1298] In fact Hitler would rather have avoided war against the "Germanic brother nation" and was never able to understand why England refused to give him continental supremacy [...] The remark about the year 1936 means the appointment of Ribbentrop as German ambassador to London, who was given the explicit command to probe the possibility of a German-English understanding. "Ribbentrop, bring me the English union!" are said to have been Hitler's words of farewell. Further above, Hitler speaks of the "offer" that he made to the English ambassador Henderson on August 25, 1939: He would agree to the British Empire and was willing to commit himself personally to its existence--under the preconditions that a) Danzig corridor problem would be "solved", b_ the colonial demands of Germany would be met, and c) his obligations toward Italy and the Soviet Union would not be touched, After the French campaign, Hitler--without mentioning any details-- made an "appeal to reason" during his Reichstag speech on July 19, 1940: He had never planned to "destroy or even damage" the British Empire and therefore did not see any reason for the continuation of the war. -- Source: Hofer,p.94; VB of July 20, 1940; Ribbentrop, p. 91
- Helmut Heiber & David Glantz, Hitler and his Generals: Military Conferences 1942-1945, pp. 466 and 985 n. 1298
Seems rather contradictory Niall. In 1936 Hitler perseus Britain when he's claiming otherwise? And so briefly too, we'd need more context before we take a literally baseless claim seriously.
It doesn't help that you then quote the worthless and fraudulent Hossbach Memo. I mean....It's baffling. This is the state of your evidence for your claims about German aggression toward Britain?
On Hossbach See: http://redpillaction.subvert.pw/?p=155 and https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=8055&p=90381
And there's this nonsense about the fleet. Yeah, if Hitler had to stop the British from blockading Germany a fleet to meet them head on would've been nice. But like he says, Hitler didn't build this so it's relevance is waning.
The fact that Hitler could've, or might've if time permitted built this fleet isn't evidence of any hostile actions towards Hitler just as Britain building an air-force isn't direct evidence that Britain was going to attack Germany for no reason. As much as Niall et al. might like that idea.
I guess that opens up another contradiction. If Britain could be paranoid about the German Air Force and use that as a pretext to destroy an entire country couldn't Hitler do the same? Germany wasn't the only country limited to having an air force. At what point would Britain's Air-Force become large enough to warrant an unprovoked attack by Hitler's Germany? I don't think Niall would like this question very much. But it really shows you the dishonest basis for which he and all other historians have built their narrative about World War Two.
Air Force for me, but not for thee!
We'll end with the end of this first sub-chapter. I won't go on because I'm not going to review every page of his entire book. We know where he's based his argument and that's all we need.
In short, Hitler's Germany posed a potentially lethal threat to the security of the United Kingdom. Hitler said he wanted Lebensraum. If his theory was right, its acquisition could only make Germany stronger. A bigger Germany would be able to afford a larger air force as well as an Atlantic battle fleet. The likelihood of peaceful coexistence on such a basis was minimal.
Niall Ferguson, The War of the World, Pp. 318
Keyword, potentially.
Here we come back to the Grug meme I posted at the beginning. Ferguson is assmad that Hitler was making Germany stronger and more resourceful through his moral campaign to unite the Volksdeutsche throughout Europe which could've challenged the British Empire but showed no signs of such sentiment. Who is he to say that peaceful coexistence was likely minimal? How? In what way? Again I could easily come up with an example which exposes the fallacy that statement truly is. Powerful Country=/=Aggressive unable to foster peace. These orthodox Historians should know that better than anyone! After all, the biggest industrial totalitarian Nation who had as it's goal world revolution was apparently perfectly peaceful with no intentions foreign policy wise anywhere!
you know. Until they invaded Poland in 1939 and starting invading other countries in 1940. The Soviets. But as we all know, Hitler was immoral for attacking them because they're supposedly an exception to this rule Ferguson just pulled out of his ass.Even a dog has a choice when confronted by a more aggressive dog: to fight or to flee. The British chose to fight in September 1939. By the end of May 1940 they no longer had a choice; they had to flee. This was, despite valiant propaganda about the 'Dunkirk spirit', one of the biggest débâcles in British military history - precisely the defeat they and their allies had spent four and a quarter years avoiding after July 1914. The British had failed to appreciate that their options were better than a dog's. Having identified the potential threat posed by Hitler, they had four to choose from: acquiescence, retaliation, deterrence or pre-emption.
Acquiescence meant hoping for the best, trusting that Hitler's protestations of goodwill towards the British Empire were sincere, and letting him have his wicked way with Eastern Europe. Until the end of 1938 this was the core of British policy. The second option was retaliation - that is to say, reacting to offensive action by Hitler against Britain or her chosen allies; this was Britain's policy in 1939 and 1940. The defects of those two options are obvious. Since Hitler was not in fact to be trusted, acquiescence gave him several years in which to enlarge Germany and her armaments. Electing to retaliate against him when he attacked Poland was still worse, since this left the timing of the war in the hands of the German and Polish governments. The British also tried deterrence, the third option, but their concept was fatally flawed, as we shall see. Fearful as they were of aerial bombardment, they elected to build bombers of their own, with a range sufficient to reach the biggest German cities. Hitler was undeterred. A far more credible deterrent would have been an alliance with the Soviet Union, but that possibility was effectively rejected in 1939 and had to be thrust upon Britain by Hitler himself in 1941. Thus, the only one of the options that was never seriously contemplated was pre-emption - in other words, an early move to nip in the bud the threat posed by Hitler's Germany. As we shall see, the tragedy of the Second World War is that, had this been tried, it would almost certainly have succeeded.
Ibid, 319
"Chosen Allies". So if you want to get involved in a war that doesn't concern you, over land and politics that doesn't involve, you, just get yourself a Chosen Ally that that get your countrymen into continental and then world conflicts that could've been avoided! Also provoke the Nations that want nothing to do with you and hope they're kind enough not to want to just crush you because of your nosiness. I wouldn't blame Hitler for desiring such a thing. And who's gonna stop me? What's immoral about wishing Britain would get her ass handed to her if we could supposedly justify the same sentiment towards the Germans? None. It seems that you're either pro-British simply because you're anti-German or Pro-German because you're pro equal treatment among nations and self determination. Both of the latter things Britain, nor Ferguson and the likes of him can claim to be.
Hitler wasn't to be trusted he says. Yeah, and no reason to believe that. He just says it again like they're the magic words to some spell.
The best thing Britain could've done was keep their nose out of other peoples business.
When you get down to it, it's all propaganda of suggestion, Ferguson will point out some facts or extrapolations of the truth in order to inflate a narrative into a seemingly inevitable corner where the only action which could culminate is one where the reader's mind blames Hitler for starting the Second World War where Britain was "helpless" but to fight because of Hitler's "aggressive" ambition which would allow German dominance on the European continent. Yet this is somehow immoral because......It's Germany.
In conclusion, what can be said for the reason why Niall and all other historians who purport to make the "Hitler bad" claim? Why, in 1939, before the "Holocaust" and without the hindsight of that phoney event was Hitler's aims any less just? Why could any of these people say comfortably that Hitler and his regime was uniquely evil and in need of being "taken care of" in this aggressive and hostile manner? Was it because he re-armed? Because he wanted to unite Germans from former Reich territories? Was it because his goals were potentially at the expense of the Soviet Union?
No.
It's none of these and it couldn't be any of these, because they're not unique enough to justify this unbalanced amount of attention payed to Germany.
Niall expresses again the "weakness of appeasement" in the fact that Hitler and National Socialism was actually TOO POPULAR! Among ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe:
What Chamberlain and his advisers failed to grasp was the simple fact that Hitler was most unlikely to rest satisfied with the Sudetenland. As others pointed out, there were many more minorities in East Central Europe, each with its own grievances, each with its own desire to redraw Europe's borders. In particular, as we have seen, there were numerous German minority communities, scattered all the way from Danzig, at the end of the Polish Corridor, and Memel, an enclave in Lithuania, down to the picturesque Saxon villages of the Siebenbiirgen, now in Romania, and as far east as the banks of the River Volga, in the very heart of Soviet Russia. In all, according to the Nazis' inflated estimates, there were no fewer than thirty million Volksdeutsche living outside the Reich - nearly ten times the number of Sudeten Germans. Conceding Hitler's right to the Sudetenland therefore set a very dangerous precedent. The more Hitler was able to cite the trials and tribulations of the Volksdeutsche as the basis for border 'rectifications' in one place, the more resources - both economic and demographic - he could stake a claim to in the other states of Central and Eastern Europe. Chamberlain and his advisers were apparently blind to the implications of the rapid spread of National Socialism among not just the Sudeten Germans but nearly all ethnic German minorities after 1933. This ideological conquest was well advanced by 1938. 'From our viewpoint,' recalled Gregor von Rezzori, a young ethnic German in Romania,the developments in Germany [after 1933] were welcome: a profusion of optimistic images of youth bursting with health and energy, promising to build a sunny new future - this corresponded to our own political mood. We were irked by the disdain with which we as the German-speaking minority were treated, as if the former Austrian dominion in Romania had been one of Teutonic barbarism over the ancient and highly cultured Czechs, Serbs, Slovaks and Wallachians, as if these had freed themselves from their oppressive bondage in the name of civilizing morality.
As early as 1935 the Romanian Germans had found in Fritz Fabritius a confirmed Nazi to act as their leader. To be a National Socialist in Austria, Neville Laski found in 1934, was to be 'a contingent holder of the job. To be a Nazi was to be an optimist'. By 193 8 the Hungarian Germans, too, had formed their own Nazi organization, the Volksbund. Before even bidding for living space, Hitler was already winning the 'thinking space' of the Volksdeutsche. They became, in effect, his advance guard in the East.
Ibid, 348-349
And this popularity would surely inspire Hitler to greater conquests! All the way to the Volga according to Niall as we've seen him claim previously without evidence.
He ultimately comes off as a man seeking to post-humorously fear monger and at the same time justify the Second World War on the basis that Hitler was a threat to Britain because he had some ideas about eastern Europe that were territorially revisionist. This apparently gave Britain the right to interfere in interests that had nothing to do with her. It's also likely that Germany would have come into conflict with the Soviets anyway and if Hitler's Germany had won that war without bother from the West the territorial revisions open to Hitler would've been much greater and easily taken care of with little bloodshed.
The problem with all this is that Niall and all other historians are attempting to make a hypocritical moral case out of these events. If they wanted to be objective, they'd simply have to say that Britain felt threatened by this ever emerging larger Germany that they felt the need to interfere on behalf of their own perceived interests and the conflict of those interests they thought clashed with Hitler's. Which apparently amounted to "imminent invasion". A claim again Niall seems to accept without any evidence. He just says it so it's true. He's uncritical to the claims made by British statesmen like Winston Churchill in the 1930s, he adopts their arguments instead of being a historian who is supposed to stand apart from his subjects and judge objectively what all sides thought and how those thoughts formed motivations based on right or wrong evidence, and then explain the reality of those thoughts as you culminate the evidence to provide context with the benefit of hindsight.
The only reason with conceivable merit that can explain this sick demand for German guilt is the obsession these people have with Hitler's Anti-Semitism. This is their defining trait of "unique" evil which expressed itself in the culmination of the Holocaust. These events cannot be separated and when the historian talks about the origins of the war the Holocaust is always in the foreground, because the Holocaust is what demands the Germans be guilty, not their foreign policy, their form of government or their moral claims for German unification. All of that is window dressing to divert blame from everyone else to enforce German guilt. The Allies had no compulsion in deserting Poland, they had no moral scruples about allying with the Soviet Union which is "what Churchill saw at once: that without a 'grand alliance' with the Soviet Union, Britain and France might find themselves facing Germany alone.", refusing to declaring war on them, ignoring their complicity in starting World War Two at Nuremberg when the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was disclosed. When you remove the Holocaust as an element you end up having to judge Germany fairly in the eyes of geopolitical struggles and power skirmishes. When you have the Holocaust the decision of guilt is predetermined, made essential and unbinding to where these Historians cannot permit themselves to honest scholarship void of unbiased moral "just-so" stories.
The coercive morality of the Holocaust is what enforces this frame of mind on the public as well. Nobody would dare alleviate the guilt from Hitler and put his Germany into proper perspective because to do such a thing would make objective judgement, sympathy, identification with the regime, Hitler and his goals a morally acceptable social position.
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I'm curious to hear the thoughts of anyone who read this ungodly long rant.
