From: "Hans Imglueck" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Let me give you a "what would have been, if ... " story:
>
> - 1937: British and French troops invade Germany. Hitler is killed.
> - Almost all Germans are thinking: "Hitler was not a wrong guy. What
> the hell, gives them the right to remove him." This opinion is shared
> by the Austrian, Italian, Spain, Russian and US.
Bullpucky! It is not yet 1938 and Hitler has not even mobilized his military
Nobody's going to start a war at this point. Iraq, on the other hand,
invaded and occupied Kiwait, therefore:
this is Bull, > - 1939: Another national party gets the total power in
Germany. The
> production of weapons is increased dramatically.
this is Bull, > - 1941: Some German scientists invent the posibilty to built
an atomic
> bomb.
this is Bull, > - 1944: Germany starts the war by laying Paris and Moskow in
ruins.
and this is Bull. > - 1945: War is over. Germany and its allied nations
rules Europe, Asia and Africa owning almost 90% of all world wide oil
reserves...
Further, when the US finishes a war, we do not leave the country in a power
vacuum. Following WWII, we ran Japan for some seven years specifically
preventing the above garbage. I don't remember offhand how long the Allies
ran Germany.
According to the Encyclopedia, in May of 1938, Hitler mobilized his military
to annex Czechoslovakia's German-speaking Sudetenland -- but halted when
Britain, France, and Stalin's Soviet Union threatened war if he did so.
Hitler backed down, but he wouldn't let the matter rest.
On September 15, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain visited
Hitler to discuss a "peaceful solution" to the Sudetenland question. In a
followup meeting on September 22, Chamberlain agreed to allow Hitler to
annex the Sudeten region.
But Hitler wasn't satisfied! He wanted German troops to enter the
Sudetenland at once -- something Chamberlain refused to allow. With war
looking imminent, on September 23, the Czechoslovakian military mobilized to
defend against Nazi Germany.
Poland then made its move.
On September 27, seeing that Czechoslovakia was in dire straits with
Nazi troops readying to invade, Poland issued an ultimatum, demanding that
Czechoslovakia hand over its Tesin (Teschen) district.
Two days later, on September 29, France, Britain, Germany, and Italy
signed the Munich Agreement. It allowed Hitler to have the Sudetenland in
exchange for him agreeing to "guarantee" Czechoslovakia's borders -- but
only after Poland and Hungary had taken their shares!
Britain and France not only sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler -- but to
Poland and Hungary too!
The sellout appears in Article 1 of the Munich Agreement. According to
the Encyclopedia [Vol. 1, p. 8]:
"As Article 1 of the agreement put it, 'when the question of the
Polish and Hungarian minorities in Czechoslovakia has been settled, Germany
and Italy will each give a similar guarantee to Czechoslovakia'. Poland had
been first to share in the spoils. After an ultimatum from Warsaw on
September 27, 1938, Czechoslovakia had ceded to Poland the district of Tesin
(Teschen) -- an area of some 625 square miles with a population of 230,000
people."
After signing the Munich Agreement, Chamberlain flew back to Britain,
declaring that the Agreement meant "peace in our time!" But it was not to
be.
Poland took its piece of Czechoslovakia first. Then Hungary helped
itself to some of Czechoslovakia's Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia region. Hungary
said it had been stolen from them after World War One by the 1920 Treaty of
Trianon.
To make matters worse, even while it was being dismembered,
Czechoslovakia was contending with demands for independence from its
Slovakian region. And so, now trying to appease its own citizens,
Czechoslovakia agreed to grant more autonomy to Slovakia, and to hyphenate
the country's name, so that it became Czecho-Slovakia.
Abandoned by its allies and threatened with civil war, Czecho-Slovakia
was unable to fight its neighbors. Instead, it allowed Germany, Hungary,
and Poland to bite off pieces, hoping they'd eventually all be satisfied and
go away.
But it was not to be. According to the Encyclopedia [Vol. 1, p. 8]:
"Having appeased the Polish and Hungarian demands in accordance with
the Munich Agreement, Czecho-Slovakia was now entitled to ask for the
promised guarantees from Italy and Germany. On November 5, Chvalkovsky
raised the point in a discussion with Dr. Hencke, German charg� d'affaires
in Prague, only to be dismissed with the reply: 'The question of the
guarantee will not arise until the new frontiers have been defined in detail
by the commissions.'"
But instead of guaranteeing the new borders, Hitler took advantage of
Czecho-Slovakia's internal divisions. He encouraged Slovakia to declare
independence, so he could more easily take the remaining Czech region. As
enticement, in March 1939, Hitler promised Slovakia that if it declared
independence, he would protect it -- from Hungary and Poland!
According to the Encyclopedia [Vol. 1, p. 10], Hitler gave Slovakia a
choice:
"[O]n one hand, the autonomous Slovak Government could continue to
exist according to the statute granted to it in the previous autumn by the
Prague Government -- in which case Germany would settle accounts with the
Czechs and leave the Slovaks to the mercies of Poland and Hungary.
Alternatively, if Slovakia demanded immediate independence from Prague, the
Reich would offer all-powerful protection to the new state, and would shield
her from the territorial greed of Warsaw and Budapest."
In the end, Hitler took the remaining Czech region, and Slovakia won its
independence -- at least until the end of World War II. Slovakia was forced
to reunite with the Czechs under Communism, but was separated once more
after the fall of Communism.
> I think Camberlain has done a good job. Don't mock on him, he doesn't
> deserve it. Nobody knows the future. Afterwards all know it better
(including me).
The above tells all concerning Neville Chamberlain. In the long run,
everyone got what they deserved. It came about that, As ye sow, so shall ye
reap, or, What goes around, comes around, etc.
> What I realy don't understand is, why Saddam has survived
> the first Iraqian war.
We have individual criminals here in the US that evaded capture for several
years.
> And who gave him the damned chemical weapons?
According to Saddam, his country made them. It's actually quite trivial to
do. The only hard part is designing the production so that it doesn't kill
the workers.
You forgot your exercise.
Bob...
--------------------------------------------
"Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying
the object which is abused. Men can go wrong with wine
and women. Shall we then prohibit and abolish women?"
-Martin Luther
