Hi Walter,

What you are saying just reinforces my point. Europe in the 1930's was so adverse to war that an opening was created for Hitler to force issues diplomatically. France and England kept trying to negotiate reasonably with Germany but the German regime just saw that as opportunities to get away with low-power aggression.

As to the US lesson in casualties, don't forget the 620,000 who died in the US Civil War from 1861 - 1865. A huge number considering the total population. And the Soviet Union lost *far* more than 6 million - more like 15-20 million.

I think it's reasonable to say that any sane world leader would do anything to prevent a war and casualties. The difficulty, to me, is where to draw the line between averting a war with diplomacy and solving the problem or averting a war and delaying the war causing even greater casualties.

It's easy in hindsight to see what the better path would be in each case. Not so easy at the time. I don't fault the leaders of Europe for failing to take a hard stance against Hitler in the 1930's I simply point out that we can now see it was a mistake to appease him.

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>>It absolutely would have. Hitler relied on the West's complete aversion to war to re-arm. If France and England had shown some muscle he would have backed down.
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>It is easy doing the aftermath, but you have to realise that time people were tired of going into another war. Europe already had been a battle field for many years where many, many lives were lost. Europe was trying to use more diplomacy to control those matters and even WWII did not change that. It strengthened the opinion that better diplomacy should be used to solve conflicts. This is the reason for the birth of the EU. Europe is tired of getting into wars, again and again costing millions of lifes.
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>This is a lesson that the US has not learned (yet). They never have losts so many human lives in a single war as did fall on european battlefields. Imagine the US having a battlefield where 6 million lives are lost (russian casualties alone in WII). Would they not do anything to prevent that in the future?
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>Walter,
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>>>Another example of talk failed, and perhaps violence would have worked.
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>>>>The problem really was that France and England just got tired of enforcing the Versaille limitations and the occupation of the Rhineland - encouraging Germany's remilitarization and aggression. If at any point in the late 30's the Allies had made a stand the Nazi government would have backed off.
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>>>>>This is a good example that supports my point. In WWI the allies never pursued the Germans onto their own soil and Germany surrendered before being decisively defeated in battle. This lead lead to a myth amoung the germanic people that Germany had not been defeated, but betrayed from behind (in the German government) by communist and Jewish elements. This myth allowed facist nationalist like Hitler to rise to power and to cause WW2. Had the allies pursued the Germans into Germany and crushed the army, the buildins and the will of the people we probably wouldn't have had a WW2. This of nation crushing then nation building worked in WW2 and turned the germanic people into an ally of the western powers ever since. Same for the Japanese. Using your own argument from a previous thread, they had to subject the German people to the crushing deprevation of a long defeat to convince them that they were wrong. The allies simply failed to do this, failed to be violent enough.
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>>>>>>Aggressors have to be met with equal or greater violence.
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>>>>>Wait a sec, you have just switched sides in the argument.