“Imagine if people had been going ‘don’t fight hate with hate’ back when Hitler was around.”
Fam…let me tell you bout Poland.
Let me tell you about how the entire rest of Europe sat ack and watched the invasion of Poland because they thought it would be “improper” to send military aid. How they were unwilling to enforce the treaties that Germany was breaking, because that would make them “just as bad.” They sat back and wrote strongly worded letters while fascists grew in power because they didn’t want to dirty their hands. They thought reasonable discussion and politics would be enough to stop a fascist dictator from rising to power.
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t enough.
like yes, people literally did try that argument then too.
Everywhere there’s fascists there are fascist apologists hiding under the guise of pacifism, ready to enable their shit and demonize resistance.
“America First” was their isolationist cover, and then it became the motto of the KKK, and now it’s the slogan of the Orange Nightmare.
“America First” Makes America Worst
Guys, as regards “the entire rest of Europe sat back and watched the invasion of Poland” … you are aware the invasion of Poland is … why the Allies … declared war on Germany and started WWII? And marks the end of Appeasement as policy at least from the French & British governments?
I mean, there certainly were still people in Britain who wanted Appeasement to continue – including the communist party by the way – and the USA took another two years to join in, but the invasion of Poland, September 1939 is literally the starting pistol of WWII. But by all means don’t let the facts get in the way of your argument.
Mate, Utterly aside from “we aren’t complicit in the invasion of Poland just all the other countries prior to that” as a positive being one of the worst arguments I’ve ever heard. (Mostly because yes that complicity is still there).
Britian and France declared war then Poland was given so little actual help during the invasion that this period is called the phoney war, so what actually is your point here?
There were already 6 concentration camps by the time of that declaration of war – no one comes off well in discussions about appeasement and similar post war declaration policies, ‘eventually we actually did something’ is not good enough.
Cai my argument here is this, when you’re talking about the evils of the appeasement policy it is ridiculous to choose as your prime example of appeasement the event that caused the end of appeasement. If OP wanted to talk about how Poland specifically got fucked over by appeasement, by far the better example is what you mention in the tags, when Stalin invades and basically takes over and the other Allies do nothing. [I guess we can speculate at our leisure why tumblr doesn’t like so much to talk about the Soviets doing shitty things.]
[Digression. If I remember my military history correctly, Britain in particular in 1939 did not have the capacity to launch a ground offensive, their land army was really weak at that time. They started naval & some air battles from the very beginning of the phoney war, I know less about the French situation but given just how powerful the German army was, the phoney war is IIRC the Allies trying to actually get their armed forces mobilised and even slightly ready to fight the war they just started. So could France have mobilised faster & done an all-out attack on Germany in the 5 weeks it took them to conquer Poland? Maybe but probably that leads to France getting conquered a year earlier. I mean the Allies basically lose on the land war until about 1943, they were pretty out-gunned. So it’s “you ought to try at all costs” vs “do what helps win the war long-term”.]
I’m not denying that a] appeasement was a terrible policy, b] the phoney war did not see much fighting, or c] Poland got probably as a nation the worst deal out of everyone in WWII. I just disagree with the characterisation of the response to the invasion of Poland as trying to stop it by politics or thinking it would be impolite to start a war when 2 of the 3 major regional powers respond by ending political discussions and declaring war.
But the facts that a) it took until the invasion of Poland to actually declare war b) the non-engagement in Poland even after appeasement as an official policy had ended or generally summed up as ‘what happened around the invasion of Poland’ which is what that post is talking about (and not appeasement and only appeasement) are extremely relevant to the point that a lot of people (some of them in positions of power) were against getting involved and were then subsequently against getting further involved. The reaction of people in the rest of Europe to that declaration of war as ‘this is too far’ is also extremely relevant.
[Digressions and such: I don’t think you are in favour of appeasement as a policy in the 30s (although ‘i never directly said that’ is a silly argument – I am sorry if you took that I thought you were from what I said but then ‘i never said that’ either xD). I do however think you are buying into this general ‘we did as much as we could’/’we went above and beyond’ attitude much of Europe does to discuss the nazis, and the denial of complicity that comes with that. Britain not having the troops would hold a lot more water as an argument if they weren’t simultaneously turning away refugees in this regard for example – this is not making sacrifices now for the long term, that’s actively fucking people over. And, I can absolutely hold small countries (and indeed all countries) to the standards set and proved to be possible by say, Denmark or Albania. And I can hold Britain/France/Russia/the US/etc to the standard that they should and could have done so much more. Denmark is an interesting example as they both successfully prevented some of the worst effects of Nazism (to the extent they could given the countries resources) and post-war hold the position (more or less) of ‘we could have and should have done more’. Most countries did/do neither, that includes Britain, Russia and France (France handle the actions of their country during before and directly after ww2 atrociously – (independent) Latvia, as that’s the example you gave, also beat out France arguably because that’s not very hard – Poland struggle they are also god awful at this, and it’s saying shit like ‘Poland got the worst deal’ that allows them to get away with that btw). In many many countries the policies following the official abandonment of appeasement are still extremely collaboraty or at the very least going as little out of your way to help people as possible (particularly in the case of Britain) and that is still a massive problem as is the acknowledgement of the problems and nature of those policies in the years since. It does not matter why people collaborated and whether that was to do with the policy of appeasement or not, it matters that they did and it matters that people are doing it now]
When we are talking about various countries trying to obtain a temporary peace at someone else’s expense this continued with Poland and elsewhere after the active policy of appeasement was abandoned. Declaring war but then not actually doing much of anything does amount to sitting back and doing nothing while the invasion happened this post is not incorrect (although it may be hyperbolic) in that just because Britain and France had officially abandoned appeasement as a policy and had officially declared war – ‘but that’s when appeasement stopped and war was declared’ just isn’t a very good point against what this post is saying. For example, it specifically states ‘sending military aid’ and not ‘starting a war’ which is what you have taken the post to mean for some reason.
Appeasement is not the only bad policy or approach in this time period and it is not the only one the post is talking about so the fact that it came to an end isn’t that relevant given it coming to an end didn’t change much for Poland itself, or the reaction in the rest of Europe – or indeed for those countries already annexed and those people who had already been sent to camps before countries with enough clout to actually do something started actually preparing to do so and their policies post appeasement continued to allow these things to happen. Fundamentally you have taken the post to be referring to a much more narrow set of reactions than it is, it is talking about the evils of a lot of policies and approaches aside from appeasement.
fearlessstateofmind backup 