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this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Confidently Incorrect
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When people are way too smug about their wrong answer.
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Yes, the UK and France were likewise preparing for war. So how can Western nations be condemned for buying time by negotiating with Hitler, if you are willing to excuse Stalin for doing precisely the same thing?
Neither were doing anything of the sort. As I have already pointed out and as basically all academic historians agree - both were trying to steer Hitler towards attacking the USSR. They rejected every attempt of the USSR to do anything about the nazis, forcing the USSR to either accept fighting the nazis or to enter into their own non-aggression pact. They did not believe the USSR would do so.
Stop inventing history. Read a fucking book.
The West was most definitely preparing for war, even if they hoped Hitler would attack the USSR. Peacetime conscription, previously unheard of in the UK, was established in the months before Molotov-Ribbentrop was signed.
Meanwhile, Stalin was preparing for war and hoped Hitler would attack the West.
Why didn't the West cooperate with Stalin in those early days? Probably because they didn't trust him. For good reason.
This is nonsense. You genuinely do not know what you are talking about.
In 1936 Britain ordered just 310 Spitfires to be produced, delivered in 1938. And was only contracted for another 1000 by 1940.
When Germany fucked Poland and turned towards France in 1939, there was just 3 months between this action and Britain sending the British Expeditionary Force of 390,000 troops to support the French. These all got resoundingly fucked in the ass because they were NOT PREPARED. This led to the disaster at Dunkirk.
Britain then started to take shit seriously. Massive action was taken, the Shadow Factory Plan was put into effect, Spitfire production was taken and given to Vickers, and the London Aircraft Production Group was formed to start churning out Spitfires and bombers en masse. Britain was not remotely preparing for war, it had action plans it could take IF a war broke out, but it was doing fuck all until the IF actually happened.
But we can listen to Winston Churchill himself on this topic can't we? His words to the italian fascists in 1927 are explicitly clear on what side he stood:
I am begging you people to read books for your history. Real books by actual academic historians. Stop getting all of your history from reddit comments made by literal actual fascists who fill your brain with porridge. It's like someone says the word communism and all of you lose the capability to remember that half the internet are reactionaries that want desantis for president, you completely ignore that when they fill you brains with something you desperately want to hear because you're so heavily propagandised on anti-communism that you lose all capability to verify fact from fascist fiction and historical revisionism.
If you are counting Spitfires in 1936, then you are the one who needs to read more history books. The Hurricane, not the Spitfire, was the primary fighter aircraft used by the RAF in the early war. In 1938, RAF had only 2 Hurricane squadrons. When they declared war the following year, they already had 16 Hurricane squadrons and 35,000 new troops. So yes, they were most definitely preparing for war.
And obviously, "preparing for war" does not mean "capable of defeating Hitler". The UK suffered a defeat at Dunkirk in 1940 for the same reason that the Soviets suffered defeats at Kharkiv and Smolensk in 1941: they both prepared for war, but the Germans were far better prepared.
Bro 35,000 troops is fucking NOTHING. You grasping at straws. Just the wehrmacht at that time was nearly 3million professional soldiers. That's without even getting into the navy and the air force.
You are absolutely not taking part in this conversation seriously. All you're doing is spouting the lies you want to spout while desperately clinging onto completely incorrect positions that you stubbornly refuse to back down from because to do so would mean having to admit the socialists are right. Since you're ideologically committed to anti socialism you refuse to.
All of this happening in the Confidently Incorrect community is the funniest part.
You wanna know what actually preparing for war looks like? "We will deploy 1 million troops to the border with Germany in Poland to deter Hitler by next week if you will join us with what you have." which was literally the offer the Soviets put on the table of France and England.
You need to get a grip. The scale must be understood in order to see that they absolutely were not preparing for war. The UK right NOW in 2023 is considering a 30,000 increase in army size on the exist 73,000 army it maintains, this is categorically not a preparation for war but simply a small expansion to provide it with other capabilities. The UK at that time had a colonial empire to maintain, such changes in army size were not unusual.
Here is the UK military size every single year since 1700, obtained through a Freedom of Information request that the government must comply with when made by British citizens. I urge you to take a look at the full history and see for yourself what the obvious moment was where preparations for war begin. It was 1939 and 1940 only when the UK was forced to. If you look at the full history you will agree that the fluctuations were all perfectly normal prior to the "oh shit" moment created when the soviets finally gave up on the game that they were playing and pushed Hitler west by agreeing to the non aggression pact.
All of this could have been averted had they not fucked around. They fucked around and they found out. They literally brought it on themselves.
Fuck me man I don't need this irritation on a work break.
That's 35,000 trained conscripts, starting from zero trained conscripts.
Does that seem small? Well, that's because the UK did not start peacetime conscription until mid-1938, conscripts took six months to train, and war was declared in 1939. Do the math.
But before that, in May 1939, the UK greatly expanded its conscription efforts. Which means that while only 35,000 conscripts were trained by September 1939, there were 200,000 conscripts trained by December.
I think you are the one who is not taking this seriously. There is ample evidence that the UK was preparing for war throughout 1939, and you are grasping at whatever figures you can find to deny reality.
Your own link proves my point. There is a sharp increase in military personnel in 1939. You incorrectly assume that all of this increase took place after war was declared in September, but this is simply not the case - conscription was ramped up in several stages throughout 1939.
In any case, you are shifting the goalposts. Originally you suggested that Western democracies ignored Germany, now you are arguing that they should have done more, which presumes they recognized the Nazi threat. But there is no question that all of the Allies could have been better prepared. How else do you explain the nearly 500K Soviet casualties at Smolensk, with less than 40K German KIA/MIA?
Ah yes, the generous offer made by Stalin literally during his negotiations of a non-aggression pact with Hitler. I wouldn't have trusted it either.
I have literally already included these in our discussion above. You are going in circles.