"Obama opened an old wound that was mostly healed."
Virtually all people of colour and a lot of white people too would certainly not agree in any way, shape or form that the wounds where "mostly healed".
That echoes Fox News again that had never acknowledged racism in America (unless it's directed at whites), then claimed all racism was magically over just because Obama got elected - and then spent 8 years delegitimizing and pushing every imaginal dog-whistle racist smear against Obama they could find or invent themselves.
Frankly - the statement that the wounds of racism should have been "mostly healed" is down right offensive when black kids can't go buying a soda without being gunned down simply because they are black and their murderers - sometimes in police uniform - don't even get a slap on the wrist.
You may not be able to see the vast amount of racism in the American society but there is a lot of serious studies of this - try reading some of those instead of Fox News.
I don't read Fox News no - I have a high blood pressure already and don't need that aggravation. To which you'll probably reply that I shouldn't condemn then. But there are a lot of people who do both watch and read them for me and read those distilled reports. To which you'll probably say their slanted but I've seen enough short clips to know how it looks. And like the Trumpster bragging about sexual assault, tweeting insane things or mocking the disabled there is no polishing that turd when it's on film or in their own writing.
"Funny I thought it was the punitive demands placed on Germany after the Great War"
"...that lead to the second" you mean?
Yes, that was a big part but:
a) Wilson's 14 points and basis for the LoN was for much fairer terms to Germany. He correctly saw that no good ever have come out of humiliating your enemy and since America had taken very few casualties he didn't have much pressure from his home opinion for harsh terms.
The French position was understandable but short-sighted, the British was in between and more in favour for softer terms then the French but once Wilson was blocked by isolationists at home and had to withdraw from even joining the LoN and disengaging from Europe the British was alone against the French and didn't fight them very much on the terms.
b) But even if the peace had been a harsh one American participation in the LoN could have made a large difference later on in the 20's and 30's in checking the future Axis powers. It assumes Wilson's views had won out in America - that engagement in the world is safer in the long run. In that case America had been a part of the political conversation and reached more properly to the many warning signs along the way.
Instead America basically ignored the future Axis aggression - as did the British and French - until it was to late. But just for a moment imagine what an oil-embargo against Japan in 1937 would have meant instead of it being issued in 1941 as it was historically. The Japanese war machine in China would have been completely crippled - before they had had another 4 years to build up their power until Pearl Harbour.
"I thought, perhaps incorrectly, that appeasement had been quite popular. "
Appeasement was the result of making two wrongs and hoping it would end up one right.
First the terms in the Versailles peace where unfairly harsh to Germany - then especially the British (who never really liked the hash terms in the first place) reacted to this by trying to be understanding to German grievances later on.
And later on it was the French turn to cave in to the British line.
So I wouldn't really call it popular - it's more like it was the best they felt they could do out of a bad situation.
The problem of course was that the British especially totally misread Hitler. They thought he told them the truth in private diplomatic communications - that he only wanted special concessions to amend especially problematic parts of the treaty - and that his rhetoric at rallies at home was just playing to his own people. Hitler told them what they wanted to hear, acting like a serious statesman who just wanted to amend - not completely tear up - the order in Europe the Versailles treaty had created.
And most Britons and many French didn't think that sounded completely unacceptable.
After all - they didn't really care all that much if a few borders moved some miles somewhere deep inside mainland Europe, far from them.
But all that changed completely after the occupation of Czechoslovakia as you correctly said. After that the British knew Hitler wasn't to be trusted at all. And the French tagged along.
But America - being isolationist - still didn't give a shit about war being inevitable in Europe.
If they had acted forcefully then - even at that late date - it could have made a large difference.
The German people and more importantly the German military didn't greet the war with excitement like at the start of the first world war. There where no spontaneous celebrations in Berlin as war broke out - the German people feared this could end badly, the last great war was fresh in their minds.
And the German generals - who knew how weak Germany actually still was - was basically terrified some of them. If the French - who had a larger army and more tanks then the Germans - had crossed the boarder in force they would have rolled over the German defences since most of the German forces where committed to the Polish campaign.
The German people and - once again more importantly - the German generals never completely fell in line (with a few notable exceptions) behind Hitler until he gave them the easy victories of 1939-40. Had things gone badly in the beginning the army could very well have decided to step in to save the nation from another disaster.
"With the condition of the Weimar Republic wouldn't a Nation *Socialist* German *Worker's Party* have been popular anyway?"
Well if Wilson had had his way there wouldn't have been those harsh conditions. And even if there had - with America in the LoN you had the basis for a working organisation that could actually have solved grievances peacefully. With some carrot and some stick instead of all stick you can get a long way. And I'm not talking about Hitler here obviously - I'm talking about previous German leaders who where open to serious compromises.
If the western powers had thrown one of them and Germany some bones earlier on none of us most likely would ever had heard of Hitler.
"was Fascism avoidable considering the condition of Europe after the war?"
No, I don't think it was. But it certainly wasn't destined to become so powerful as it became.
But the fact is that the political right in every country preferred fascism to communism or ever social democrats. Fascism was financed and helped along the way at every turn by the regular political right and it's financial backers in business circles.
And it's exactly today the same today in Europe, the US and the rest of the world - the ordinary political right still prefers fascists to social democracy.
Just take the telling example of the Spanish Civil War. The legally elected Spanish socialist government was subjected to a military coup by fascists that evolves into a civil war as the legitimate government tries to defend against the coup who doesn't have popular support. How does the western powers react?
They embargo arms sales to Spain to "avoid fuelling the conflict" when the fascist army is the one who has all the arms already! They don't lift a finger to defend a democracy under military assault by fascism but actively work against it - all while both Germany and Italy sends massive amounts of weapons and volunteers to the fascists.
Completely and utterly disgraceful behaviour from all western powers while the Soviet Union is the only nation that offers the Spanish Republic support.
That support especially but the fact that the Soviet Union generally was the ONLY nation to consistently denounce fascism during the 30's earned the Soviet Union a massive amount of support it never deserved in the west.
All the famous British spies you've heard about ended up in the Soviet camp because of their utter disgust over their own governments abandonment of democracy in especially the Spain civil war, for instance.
And America of course ignored the war completely. Who cared if some democratically elected socialist lost power to a fascist military coup and a few hundred thousand civilians where murdered in the process?
That cost you - among other things - the secret of the atom bomb a decade later when idealist scientist turned spies at Los Alamos felt America was not a better guarantee of peace and democracy then the Soviet Union.
The west drove these people in the Soviet Unions arms by siding with fascism over democracy.
Most Americans don't know anything about this or the dozens of other instances where America since have acted in the same way but you all have to pay the prize for it.
"Basically, do you believe the war was avoidable and would not have come sooner or later?"
I KNOW it - like all wars are - was completely avoidable.
"With the population of the earth continuing to grow and people still speaking of limited resources can we be sure these genocidal ideas would have been squashed without the war?"
Growing populations or anything else doesn't make war unavoidable. War is always a choice made by usually one side who forces it on the other. But it is never forced on man - man always chooses.
You can share resources like everything else.
Regarding population the world isn't actually growing that rapidly any more and it will level of eventually - just like it's done in all developed nations. The scare of ower-population was a big thing 20 or 30 years ago - not really anymore if you look at the figures. It's just another example of most people operating on old or erroneous data.
And we can't "be sure these genocidal ideas would have been squashed" at all - because they haven't. History teaches us anything can happen again - because people don't educate themselves on what actually happened before they where born. They might hear some version of history in school but they usually don't understand the causal connections between events and are easy prey for lies and revisionist propaganda.
I bet American school children aren't taught today that America tortured people just a few years ago but you can bet every kid in Iraq knows all about it - for instance.
And now Trump wants to bring it back. Thousands of Americans who aren't even born yet will die because of Bush's and maybe now Trump's torture in decades to come.
"As a species, are we lucky to have had this war before the proliferation of nuclear technologies?"
We're not lucky to have had any wars - war is hell, plain and simple.
When you've read about it as I have - and I'm not talking about the abundant war-porn that's out there - but serious works, you realise that.
If you want THE major reason war still exist and especially why the second world war happened it's because the millions of men who fought the first one returned home and almost to a man decided NOT to tell the truth about what they saw and did because it was simply too horrible and painful.
Instead they tried to forget or hid their pain behind the official glorification of it.
So instead they got to see their own sons march of to the next one and be destroyed by it like they where.
Because no sane human can endure war without being destroyed by it on the inside.
If the men and women who fought wars had the courage to speak truthfully about it - and we had the courage to really listen to them - war would end tomorrow.
"Don't worry about Trump not leaving office. Our politicians leave office like clockwork. If they ever try not to they will be stopped by everyone. The second amendment may be a great deal of trouble but it can have its uses."
Every one should worry about that. Trump won't accept the truth now when he won - he sure as hell won't accept it if he loses. And his supporters will be right there with their "second amendment remedies" to protect him.
The only question is where the armed forced would end up doing and if someone changes the launch codes before Trump gets completely desperate.
Trump's no politician - he's a mentally unstable authoritarian that sees people that don't exist and believes things he makes up in his mind. Everyone should worry deeply that he and he alone controls the US nuclear arsenal.
0
@lesserevil
"Obama opened an old wound that was mostly healed."
Virtually all people of colour and a lot of white people too would certainly not agree in any way, shape or form that the wounds where "mostly healed".
That echoes Fox News again that had never acknowledged racism in America (unless it's directed at whites), then claimed all racism was magically over just because Obama got elected - and then spent 8 years delegitimizing and pushing every imaginal dog-whistle racist smear against Obama they could find or invent themselves.
Frankly - the statement that the wounds of racism should have been "mostly healed" is down right offensive when black kids can't go buying a soda without being gunned down simply because they are black and their murderers - sometimes in police uniform - don't even get a slap on the wrist.
You may not be able to see the vast amount of racism in the American society but there is a lot of serious studies of this - try reading some of those instead of Fox News.
I don't read Fox News no - I have a high blood pressure already and don't need that aggravation. To which you'll probably reply that I shouldn't condemn then. But there are a lot of people who do both watch and read them for me and read those distilled reports. To which you'll probably say their slanted but I've seen enough short clips to know how it looks. And like the Trumpster bragging about sexual assault, tweeting insane things or mocking the disabled there is no polishing that turd when it's on film or in their own writing.
"Funny I thought it was the punitive demands placed on Germany after the Great War"
"...that lead to the second" you mean?
Yes, that was a big part but:
a) Wilson's 14 points and basis for the LoN was for much fairer terms to Germany. He correctly saw that no good ever have come out of humiliating your enemy and since America had taken very few casualties he didn't have much pressure from his home opinion for harsh terms.
The French position was understandable but short-sighted, the British was in between and more in favour for softer terms then the French but once Wilson was blocked by isolationists at home and had to withdraw from even joining the LoN and disengaging from Europe the British was alone against the French and didn't fight them very much on the terms.
b) But even if the peace had been a harsh one American participation in the LoN could have made a large difference later on in the 20's and 30's in checking the future Axis powers. It assumes Wilson's views had won out in America - that engagement in the world is safer in the long run. In that case America had been a part of the political conversation and reached more properly to the many warning signs along the way.
Instead America basically ignored the future Axis aggression - as did the British and French - until it was to late. But just for a moment imagine what an oil-embargo against Japan in 1937 would have meant instead of it being issued in 1941 as it was historically. The Japanese war machine in China would have been completely crippled - before they had had another 4 years to build up their power until Pearl Harbour.
"I thought, perhaps incorrectly, that appeasement had been quite popular. "
Appeasement was the result of making two wrongs and hoping it would end up one right.
First the terms in the Versailles peace where unfairly harsh to Germany - then especially the British (who never really liked the hash terms in the first place) reacted to this by trying to be understanding to German grievances later on.
And later on it was the French turn to cave in to the British line.
So I wouldn't really call it popular - it's more like it was the best they felt they could do out of a bad situation.
The problem of course was that the British especially totally misread Hitler. They thought he told them the truth in private diplomatic communications - that he only wanted special concessions to amend especially problematic parts of the treaty - and that his rhetoric at rallies at home was just playing to his own people. Hitler told them what they wanted to hear, acting like a serious statesman who just wanted to amend - not completely tear up - the order in Europe the Versailles treaty had created.
And most Britons and many French didn't think that sounded completely unacceptable.
After all - they didn't really care all that much if a few borders moved some miles somewhere deep inside mainland Europe, far from them.
But all that changed completely after the occupation of Czechoslovakia as you correctly said. After that the British knew Hitler wasn't to be trusted at all. And the French tagged along.
But America - being isolationist - still didn't give a shit about war being inevitable in Europe.
If they had acted forcefully then - even at that late date - it could have made a large difference.
The German people and more importantly the German military didn't greet the war with excitement like at the start of the first world war. There where no spontaneous celebrations in Berlin as war broke out - the German people feared this could end badly, the last great war was fresh in their minds.
And the German generals - who knew how weak Germany actually still was - was basically terrified some of them. If the French - who had a larger army and more tanks then the Germans - had crossed the boarder in force they would have rolled over the German defences since most of the German forces where committed to the Polish campaign.
The German people and - once again more importantly - the German generals never completely fell in line (with a few notable exceptions) behind Hitler until he gave them the easy victories of 1939-40. Had things gone badly in the beginning the army could very well have decided to step in to save the nation from another disaster.
"With the condition of the Weimar Republic wouldn't a Nation *Socialist* German *Worker's Party* have been popular anyway?"
Well if Wilson had had his way there wouldn't have been those harsh conditions. And even if there had - with America in the LoN you had the basis for a working organisation that could actually have solved grievances peacefully. With some carrot and some stick instead of all stick you can get a long way. And I'm not talking about Hitler here obviously - I'm talking about previous German leaders who where open to serious compromises.
If the western powers had thrown one of them and Germany some bones earlier on none of us most likely would ever had heard of Hitler.
"was Fascism avoidable considering the condition of Europe after the war?"
No, I don't think it was. But it certainly wasn't destined to become so powerful as it became.
But the fact is that the political right in every country preferred fascism to communism or ever social democrats. Fascism was financed and helped along the way at every turn by the regular political right and it's financial backers in business circles.
And it's exactly today the same today in Europe, the US and the rest of the world - the ordinary political right still prefers fascists to social democracy.
Just take the telling example of the Spanish Civil War. The legally elected Spanish socialist government was subjected to a military coup by fascists that evolves into a civil war as the legitimate government tries to defend against the coup who doesn't have popular support. How does the western powers react?
They embargo arms sales to Spain to "avoid fuelling the conflict" when the fascist army is the one who has all the arms already! They don't lift a finger to defend a democracy under military assault by fascism but actively work against it - all while both Germany and Italy sends massive amounts of weapons and volunteers to the fascists.
Completely and utterly disgraceful behaviour from all western powers while the Soviet Union is the only nation that offers the Spanish Republic support.
That support especially but the fact that the Soviet Union generally was the ONLY nation to consistently denounce fascism during the 30's earned the Soviet Union a massive amount of support it never deserved in the west.
All the famous British spies you've heard about ended up in the Soviet camp because of their utter disgust over their own governments abandonment of democracy in especially the Spain civil war, for instance.
And America of course ignored the war completely. Who cared if some democratically elected socialist lost power to a fascist military coup and a few hundred thousand civilians where murdered in the process?
That cost you - among other things - the secret of the atom bomb a decade later when idealist scientist turned spies at Los Alamos felt America was not a better guarantee of peace and democracy then the Soviet Union.
The west drove these people in the Soviet Unions arms by siding with fascism over democracy.
Most Americans don't know anything about this or the dozens of other instances where America since have acted in the same way but you all have to pay the prize for it.
"Basically, do you believe the war was avoidable and would not have come sooner or later?"
I KNOW it - like all wars are - was completely avoidable.
"With the population of the earth continuing to grow and people still speaking of limited resources can we be sure these genocidal ideas would have been squashed without the war?"
Growing populations or anything else doesn't make war unavoidable. War is always a choice made by usually one side who forces it on the other. But it is never forced on man - man always chooses.
You can share resources like everything else.
Regarding population the world isn't actually growing that rapidly any more and it will level of eventually - just like it's done in all developed nations. The scare of ower-population was a big thing 20 or 30 years ago - not really anymore if you look at the figures. It's just another example of most people operating on old or erroneous data.
And we can't "be sure these genocidal ideas would have been squashed" at all - because they haven't. History teaches us anything can happen again - because people don't educate themselves on what actually happened before they where born. They might hear some version of history in school but they usually don't understand the causal connections between events and are easy prey for lies and revisionist propaganda.
I bet American school children aren't taught today that America tortured people just a few years ago but you can bet every kid in Iraq knows all about it - for instance.
And now Trump wants to bring it back. Thousands of Americans who aren't even born yet will die because of Bush's and maybe now Trump's torture in decades to come.
"As a species, are we lucky to have had this war before the proliferation of nuclear technologies?"
We're not lucky to have had any wars - war is hell, plain and simple.
When you've read about it as I have - and I'm not talking about the abundant war-porn that's out there - but serious works, you realise that.
If you want THE major reason war still exist and especially why the second world war happened it's because the millions of men who fought the first one returned home and almost to a man decided NOT to tell the truth about what they saw and did because it was simply too horrible and painful.
Instead they tried to forget or hid their pain behind the official glorification of it.
So instead they got to see their own sons march of to the next one and be destroyed by it like they where.
Because no sane human can endure war without being destroyed by it on the inside.
If the men and women who fought wars had the courage to speak truthfully about it - and we had the courage to really listen to them - war would end tomorrow.
"Don't worry about Trump not leaving office. Our politicians leave office like clockwork. If they ever try not to they will be stopped by everyone. The second amendment may be a great deal of trouble but it can have its uses."
Every one should worry about that. Trump won't accept the truth now when he won - he sure as hell won't accept it if he loses. And his supporters will be right there with their "second amendment remedies" to protect him.
The only question is where the armed forced would end up doing and if someone changes the launch codes before Trump gets completely desperate.
Trump's no politician - he's a mentally unstable authoritarian that sees people that don't exist and believes things he makes up in his mind. Everyone should worry deeply that he and he alone controls the US nuclear arsenal.