When the USSR invaded Poland, Britain was silent

[Mkk]

Mortimer,

Hungary also joined in the dismantlement of Czechoslovakia, gaining portions of Southern Slovakia.

[Kingfisher]

It's stretching a point to suggest that the Czechs "invited" the Germans to occupy them of their own free will, but the reality nevertheless was that with the collapse of Czechoslovakia the Bohemian rump was a dangerous power vacuum and in a geographical position to be a serious threat to German security, especially since the Union with Austria.

It sat across vital lines of communication, including Vienna-Berlin and in the event of war would have been a dangerous salient, possibly for the Soviet Union. For strategic reasons, Germany had little choice but to shorten its lines of defence. When ethics and strategic reality clash all nations react the same.

[Moderator]

It would be nice if my responses were released so I could respond to this stuff...

The ones that actually addressed the topic of thread have been released.
M1

[Hannover]

It's stretching a point to suggest that the Czechs "invited" the Germans to occupy them of their own free will, but the reality nevertheless was that with the collapse of Czechoslovakia the Bohemian rump was a dangerous power vacuum and in a geographical position to be a serious threat to German security, especially since the Union with Austria.

It sat across vital lines of communication, including Vienna-Berlin and in the event of war would have been a dangerous salient, possibly for the Soviet Union. For strategic reasons, Germany had little choice but to shorten its lines of defence. When ethics and strategic reality clash all nations react the same.

I don't think it's a stretch at all. The Czech government sought German assistance.
Your points about a power vacuum and strategic German interests are good points. Both parties gained, a win-win so to speak.

- Hannover

[Nüziders]

The Czech government sought German assistance.

Can you prove that?

[Hannover]

The Czech government sought German assistance.

Can you prove that?

Easily.

Czech President Hacha signed an agreement with Germany for protectorate status. The Czech government went on to praise Germany on many occasions thereafter.

- Hannover

[Nüziders]

The standard history has it that Hitler threatened to bomb Prague if Hacha would not accept protectorate status. E.g., Kershaw reports this on pp. 171-172 of Nemesis: http://tinyurl.com/bcns7cm

Do you have a source that refutes that?

[Hannover]

The standard history has it that Hitler threatened to bomb Prague if Hacha would not accept protectorate status. E.g., Kershaw reports this on pp. 171-172 of Nemesis: http://tinyurl.com/bcns7cm

Do you have a source that refutes that?

I need no source. Your challenge is illogical. Must I explain?

On the contrary, you must support the laughable allegation by Kershaw, he certainly cannot. He just says it without proof. Funny how someone just says things, another repeats him, and then someone else cites them both and then claims to have multiple sources of proof. Hilarious stuff.
Hacha and Hitler signed an agreement and Hacha was very flattering towards Germany a long time afterwards. Some "coercion' that was. That fact is apparently difficult for some to deal with.

And you are off topic, this thread is about the USSR invasion of Poland and Britain's double standard.

- Hannover

[Mkk]

What was the point in bombing Prague or anything like that? Hitler declared in April 1939 that he didn't want any Czechs - the Germans quickly got around to creating a new Czech government, which came about shortly before Heydrich's assassination. Also note that despite there being no boundaries to doing so, Germany never annexed the protectorate.

What better proof against the "Hitler wanted to take over the world" hypothesis?

[Barrington James]

As I explained in the above discussion , "The creation of WW1 and WW2" , the Brits formed their insincere alliance with Poland as the final trap for Hitler . The alliance of GB and Poland was perceived by Hitler to be insincere for he had been led to believe through Chamberlain and the other phony actors of the appeasement party that GB would never go to war over Poland, despite the rantings of Churchill. Consequently when the Poles began slaughtering German Nationals in 1938 and refusing to negotiate with him , Hitler decided to save the German Nationals on his own and go to war. This, of course , was the trap. Hitler had greatly under estimated Churchill and the war party’s ability to create the war. And even his decision to let the British soldiers escape from the beaches of Dunkirk was not going to stop their long planned war.

Hitler’s other mistake was that he had greatly under estimated the strength of Russians and their willingness to fight for Stalin. Why he didn’t know or didn’t care that the USA had been supplying the communists with trains, trucks , ships, guns and planes in order for the communists to wage war upon him is another story. Some may blame the weather , or his late start in the war because of the Italians, but the truth is Hitler never stood a chance against Russia. Hitler had no answer for the Russian T-34, American trains trucks, the enormous size of the Soviet military nor the American organizational ability of Averell Harriman, who had been sent to Russian to organize the Russian war effort, nor the power of the communists in FDR government such as Harry Hopkins, Alger Hiss, and Harry Dexter White to supply the Soviets with the best of everything American for the war during the entire war.

GB was "silent" after Hitler had attacked Poland because Churchill had done what he was supposed to do. All he
had to do now was bomb Germany to keep the war going and wait for the USA and the Soviets to win the war.

[Hannover]

Barrington James:
I don't buy your rationale.
Hitler knew a trap was being set, but could not avoid it. Either way, powerful forces were gunning for Germany. Hitler knew the Soviets were planing an attack on Germany, which meant Poland, who deserved what they got, acted as a temporary buffer. Hitler had no choice but to attack the Soviets before they attacked Germany. Everything else mentioned is extraneous to this fact.
Germany also knew the Americans were supplying the Soviets, hell, everyone did; and the panzer 'Panther Mk IV' was a much better tank than the T-34, but quantities could not be realized.
The idea that Germany was foolish is to ignore the fact the German knew what was happening and felt the only recourse was to strike before being beset upon.

The whole point of the argument in the OP is to show the hypocrisy within the marketed narrative concerning British & French inaction towards the USSR who invaded Poland.

- Hannover

[Barrington James]

Hannover .Thanks ...but why couldn't Hitler avoid the trap? Did he actually think that he could win the war against the American supplied Soviets? He should never have tried to save the German Nationals in Poland. That was the trap.

It seems to me that Hitler never believed that Churchill and the War Party would risk the death of 20 million people including a million or so Brits on some trumped up idea of his desire to conquer the world. He was naïve. He had no idea of the never ending wars of world conquest that would continue up to and including the present time. Wars which have killed several hundred million since 1945. He should have studied American and British history. Or the French and Russian revolutions.

But it is so easy to look back on history and make the right dcisions now.

[goomohn]

By the way the topic of this post concerns "When the USSR invaded Poland, Britain was silent".

The UK had a secret protocol attached to their mutual assistance treaty with Poland. It stated that the only nation who's aggression would activate their treaty was Germany. The protocol was published only after the war was concluded. Certain diplomatic communiques seem to shed light on the fact that Germany learned of their special status as the target nation after the war began.

The Polish foreign minister in London asked for British expansion of their war declaration to include the Soviet Union after the USSR invaded. He was rebuffed. I believe the British counted on the fact that the Soviets would strike into East Poland after Germany invaded. They just hadn't counted on the Molotov-Ribbentropp pact of non-aggression and division of Poland. The way the French rewrote their disused military alliance treaty to include only Germany three days after the war began reflects collusion with the USSR as well.

For the Polish governments part; after the Soviets advanced into East Poland Rydz (the Polish prime minister) ordered a retreat towards the Romanian border. Specifically ordering the eastern border guards not to engage the Soviets. At that moment, also oblivious to the M-R Pact and his countries division, Rydz probably believed that the Soviet and German armies would smash into one another. His war aims of reoccupying Poland and claiming German territory after the war was over were still in sight.

The Polish government in exile never declared war upon the USSR though. That fact can be used to justify Britain and Frances ignoring the Soviet invasion. In march 1939 the UK, France, and the USSR were involved in secret tripartite talks concerning a military alliance against Germany. When those talks broke down the USSR signed the M-R pact.

It must have been quite an adventurous mood in London when the Soviets had invaded Poland. The Soviets had broken their non-aggression pact with Poland. The British government probably felt this was the beginning of their tripartite war against Germany. After Poland's division and Germany/USSR showed the world their friendship I imagine there was an audible gulping sound in a stunned house of lords.

[Hannover]

Barrington James said:

But it is so easy to look back on history and make the right decisions now.

How very correct. I believe there is much information which has been destroyed or is held without public access. The German position is never discussed, or for that matter, allowed to be discussed in the Jewish supremacist dominated media. This forum does help.

- Hannover

[hermod]

Great Britain didn't care about Polish independence. Poland was used to get a war with Germany. The British and American leaders needed Poland to start a war on Germany and the USSR to crush Germany. But there was a problem. The Polish leaders hated the USSR and firmly rejected any alliance with the USSR. So the British leaders had to keep their alliance with the USSR secret for a while in order to preserve their excuse for war - Polish independence - as long as needed.

According to documents found in Finland (Marshal Mannerheim's File S-32) Churchill and Stalin secretely negotiated the starting of co-operation in a war of many fronts against Germany since April 1939. On the 15th of October 1939 an agreement was signed between Stalin and Churchill (the allied forces). The core of it was the plan to destroy Germany both militarily and economically (book "FINLAND IN THE EYE OF THE STORM" by ret. Major Erkki Hautamäki). That book also reports an interesting episode of WW2:

The last airplane that left Berlin included Hitler’s secret archives. The Americans shot down the plane and nothing was left, everything disappeared. It was said that Hitler turned pale when he heard of this and said: “There went all the possibilities to witness that the things are otherwise than the winners will insist”.

The standard history has it that Hitler threatened to bomb Prague if Hacha would not accept protectorate status. E.g., Kershaw reports this on pp. 171-172 of Nemesis: http://tinyurl.com/bcns7cm

Do you have a source that refutes that?

As David Hoggan says in his definitive work, The Forced War, Hacha’s daughter confirmed after the war that her father was treated courteously and kindly by the Germans, and with all the attention and consideration normally given to a statesman. No word about her father being bullied by Hitler.

Munich was tragic because it was the last time "appeasement" would be used. The next step was war. FDR was unhappy the war he wanted in Europe didn't start and he pressured the British to stop their appeasement policy.

When Hacha signed the agreement with Hitler, the British government initially accepted the new situation, but then Roosevelt intervened. In their nationally syndicated column of 14 April 1939, the usually very well informed Washington journalists Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen reported that on 16 March 1939 Roosevelt had "sent a virtual ultimatum to Chamberlain" demanding that henceforth the British government strongly oppose Germany and "the president warned that Britain could expect no more support, moral or material through the sale of airplanes, if the Munich policy continued." Chamberlain gave in and the next day, 17 March, ended Britain's policy of cooperation with Germany in a speech at Birmingham bitterly denouncing Hitler. Two weeks later, on March 31, 1939, the British government formally pledged itself to war in case of German-Polish hostilities (the "Anglo-Polish Agreement").

William C. Bullitt, the leading American diplomat in Europe, was pleased by the reversal of British policy in March 1939. He knew that President Roosevelt would welcome any British pretext for a war in Europe. Ambassador Bullitt sent a jubilant report from Paris on March 17, 1939, in which he triumphantly concluded that there was no longer any possibility for a peaceful diplomatic settlement of European differences. Polish Foreign Minister Beck received an assurance from Juliusz Lukasiewicz and William Bullitt on March 19, 1939, that President Roosevelt was prepared to do everything possible to promote a war between the Anglo-French front and Germany. American Minister Joseph E. Davies reported to Washington, D.C., from Brussels on March 30, 1939, that in Belgium the Chamberlain speech at Birmingham was regarded as a disaster which had reversed the favorable prospects for peace in Europe. On 25 April 1939, four months before the outbreak of war, Bullitt called American newspaper columnist Karl von Wiegand, chief European correspondent of the International News Service, to the U.S. embassy in Paris and told him: "War in Europe has been decided upon. Poland has the assurance of the support of Britain and France, and will yield to no demands from Germany. America will be in the war soon after Britain and France enter it." Bullitt informed the Poles that he knew Germany hoped to acquire Danzig, and that he was counting on Polish willingness to go to war over the Danzig question. He urged Lukasiewicz to present demands to the West for supplies and other military assistance.

Thus it was American pressure, and not Hitler's policies as most history books claim, that ended the British 'appeasement policy' and ultimately led to WW2.

"Played golf today with [former Ambassador] Joe Kennedy. I asked him about his conversations with Roosevelt and [British Prime Minister] Neville Chamberlain from 1938 on. [...] Chamberlain, he says, stated that America and the world Jews had forced England into the war." - diary of James V. Forrestal, the first U.S. Secretary of Defense, entry for 27 December 1945.

Many revealing infos to understand how WW2 was brought: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t906738/

Munich is important because, again, it provides the context for the UK's declaration of war. The Munich Agreement had specifically stipulated that the Sudetenland would be the final territorial demand that Hitler would make. Then, not only did Hitler march into Prague and dismantle Czechoslovakia.

The march into Prague was not a territorial demand but a request by the president of the Czech lands, Emil Hacha, as previously explained. And many people, including a lot of British people, legitimately considered Danzig as a German city that should be attached to the new German Reich. So Danzig was not really a territorial demand but a legitimate retrun to normal. After the huge territorial concessions Hitler had made to Poland (Hitler had offered to guarantee the Western borders of Poland, and so had proposed to renounce to the lost German lands in Poland once and for all, something even the democratic Weimar Republic had never done or even taken into consideration*), he couldn't just left the negotiation table with empty hands. The return of Danzig was a minimum. Did the British leaders choose to destroy their own empire for the city of Danzig or was Danzig just used as a way to get a war enabling the destruction of the too strong German competitor (according to the secular British "balance of power" policy)? The British leaders knew what they were doing. During Allied discussions on the 'peace treaty' at Versailles in 1919, David Lloyd George, the English Prime Minister during the First World War, tapped "the corridor" on the map and predicted "This is where the next world war will begin!"...


*
"The fact is that the only real offer of security which Poland received in 1938 and 1939 emanated from Hitler. He offered to guarantee the boundaries laid down in the Versailles Treaty against every other country. Even the Weimar Republic had not for a moment taken this into consideration. Whatever one may think of Hitler's government or foreign policy, no doubt exists on this point; his proposals to Poland in 1938/39 were reasonable and just and the most moderate of all which he made during the six years of his efforts to revise the Versailles Treaty by peaceful means." - Professor Harry Elmer Barnes, American Historian

"Of all the Germans, Believe it or not, Hitler is the most moderate as far as Danzig and the Corridor are concerned." - Sir, Neville Henderson, British Ambassador to Berlin, 16th August, 1939