Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

Specifically in regards to Poland:

http://www.thenewamerican.com/history/european/938

It was 70 years ago on March 31 when Great Britain committed the fatal blunder that led to World War II: issuing a war guarantee to Poland. This was the war, as Pat Buchanan says in his recent book, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, that “led to the slaughter of the Jews and tens of millions of Christians, the devastation of Europe, Stalinization of half the continent, the fall of China to Maoist madness, and half a century of Cold War.” Buchanan’s book is essential for understanding why World War II was so unnecessary.

Poland was a creature of the Versailles Treaty. After being partitioned several times in history by Prussia, Russia, and Austria, Poland was reconstituted after World War I at the expense of a defeated Germany. But as Buchanan says: “Versailles had created not only an unjust but an unsustainable peace.” To give Poland a port on the Baltic, the city of Danzig, which was 95-percent German and had never belonged to Poland, was detached from Germany and made a Free City administered by the League of Nations. A "Polish Corridor" connected Poland to the Baltic and severed East Prussia from Germany.

The regime in Poland, according to contemporary British historian Niall Ferguson, was “every bit as undemocratic and anti-Semitic as that of Germany.” Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, the dictator in Poland who had come to power in a coup, considered making a preemptive strike against Germany before signing a 10-year nonaggression pact with Hitler in 1934. Poland had joined in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia after the Munich Agreement, seizing the coal-rich region of Teschen. Hitler’s offer to Polish foreign minister Jozef Beck — a man known for his duplicity, dishonesty, and depravity — to guarantee Poland’s borders and accept Polish control of the Corridor in exchange for the return of Danzig and the construction of German roads across the Corridor was rebuffed.

Britain did not object to Danzig being returned to Germany, knowing that a plebiscite would result in an overwhelming vote in favor of return. Lord Halifax, the British foreign secretary, deemed Danzig and the Polish Corridor to be “an absurdity.” Hitler wanted an alliance with Poland, not war. He issued a directive to his army commander in chief: “The Fuehrer does not wish to solve the Danzig question by force. He does not wish to drive Poland into the arms of Britain by this.”

But then, after false alarms about an imminent German attack on Poland, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain addressed the British House of Commons:

I now have to inform the House that ... in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty’s Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power. They have given the Polish Government an assurance to that effect.

It was March 31, 1939. Germany terminated its nonaggression pact with Poland on April 24, and Poland would cash this “blank check” on September 1, when Hitler invaded Poland. Chamberlain had repeated the blunder made by Kaiser Wilhelm on the eve of World War I.

Former prime minister Lloyd George considered the war guarantee “a frightful gamble” and “sheer madness.” The British army general staff “ought to be confined to a lunatic asylum” if they approved this, said Lloyd George. Former First Lord of the Admiralty Cooper recorded in his diary: “Never before in our history have we left in the hands of one of the smaller powers the decision whether or not Britain goes to war.” It was “the maddest single action this country has ever taken,” said a member of Parliament. Newspaper military correspondent Liddell Hart wrote that the Polish guarantee “placed Britain’s destiny in the hands of Polish rulers, men of very dubious and unstable judgment.” Only the warmonger Churchill seemed to think the war guarantee was a good idea, foolishly asserting: “The preservation and integrity of Poland must be regarded as a cause commanding the regard of all the world.” Buchanan simply calls it “the greatest blunder in British history.”

Buchanan refers to modern British historians Roy Denman, Paul Johnson, and Peter Clarke about the folly of the Polish war guarantee:

The most reckless undertaking ever given by a British government. It placed the decision on peace or war in Europe in the hands of a reckless, intransigent, swashbuckling military dictatorship.

The power to invoke it was placed in the hands of the Polish government, not a repository of good sense. Therein lay the foolishness of the pledge: Britain had no means of bringing effective aid to Poland yet it obliged Britain itself to declare war on Germany if Poland so requested.

If Czechoslovakia was a faraway country, Poland was further; if Bohemia could not be defended by British troops, no more could Danzig; if the democratic Czech Republic had its flaws, the Polish regime was far more suspect.

Britain could not save Poland any more than it could have saved Czechoslovakia. As Buchanan wrote elsewhere:

Britain went to war with Germany to save Poland. She did not save Poland. She did lose the empire. And Josef Stalin, whose victims outnumbered those of Hitler 1,000 to one as of September 1939, and who joined Hitler in the rape of Poland, wound up with all of Poland, and all the Christian nations from the Urals to the Elbe. The British Empire fought, bled and died, and made Eastern and Central Europe safe for Stalinism.

Neither Britain nor France had the power to save any nation of Eastern Europe. Yet, Britain was willing to go to war rather than allow Germany to dominate Europe economically, unaffected by a British blockade.

It is the Polish war guarantee for which Neville Chamberlain should be forever judged harshly, not the Munich Agreement for which he is often castigated. (The Munich Agreement essentially ceded to Hitler large sections of Czeckoslovakia in order to reduce the possibility of a European War. This has often been referred to as Chamberlain's "appeasement" of Hitler. Many believe this agreement gave Hitler the resolve to invade Poland, setting off WWII.) It is March 31 that ought to be a day that will live in infamy. The bloodiest conflict in human history was neither good nor necessary.

Laurence M. Vance is the author of Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State.
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Hm, so i'm not quite clear on Germany's rationale for invading Poland if they really wanted an alliance. Is it because Britain's war guarantee made Poland appear hostile to Germany? There's definitely some missing links in that story as to Germany's motives and diplomatic stance.
 
zabu of nΩd;10157211 said:
Hm, so i'm not quite clear on Germany's rationale for invading Poland if they really wanted an alliance. Is it because Britain's war guarantee made Poland appear hostile to Germany? There's definitely some missing links in that story as to Germany's motives and diplomatic stance.
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The city of Danzig. That might seem petty, but the US fought a War with Mexico over mostly 'uninhabitable' desert.

You also have to take into effect the actions of Soviet Russia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland

The 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland was a Soviet military operation that started without a formal declaration of war on 17 September 1939, during the early stages of World War II. Sixteen days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, the Soviet Union did so from the east. The invasion ended on 6 October 1939 with the division and annexing of the whole of the Second Polish Republic by Germany and the Soviet Union.[6]

In early 1939, the Soviet Union entered into negotiations with the United Kingdom, France, Poland, and Romania to establish an alliance against Nazi Germany. The negotiations failed when the Soviet Union insisted that Poland and Romania give Soviet troops transit rights through their territory as part of a collective security agreement.[7] The failure of those negotiations led the Soviet Union to conclude the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany on 23 August; this was a non-aggression pact containing a secret protocol dividing Northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.[8] One week after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov-Ribbentrop_Pact

Since Poland refused friendship with Nazi Germany, as did Britain, etc., the only serious threat to German expansion was the Soviet Union. With the Pact, they pretty much had the green-light to take back what had been historically part of "greater Germany".
 
Interesting. So far it sounds like Russia was the biggest 'rogue nation' in the group, with its aggressive negotiating stance in 1939. What justification could they have possibly had for "transit rights" through Poland and Romania?
 
zabu of nΩd;10157315 said:
Which, contrary to Pat Buchanan's claim, would render WW2 at least partially "necessary"
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa

His argument, and one that I agree with, is that Russia and Germany would have ground each other to a pulp, while Europe watched.

This would have left the respective countries ripe for internal revolution and reform, and their war-making abilities a hollow shell. Thus no Nazi Germany, and no Cold War with a Soviet superstate aand satellite states.

Italy was a rider on Germany's coattails and most likely would not have declared war at all if not for the Allies. France was at odds with them over control of Africa but that really had nothing to do with Europe in general.

Japan had no interest in the US, except for the US to leave them alone. They were actually attacking Russian and British interests in their expansion. Without the rest of the world at war, who knows how that would have played out.

Edit: Also, An expanded Imperial Japan couldn't objectively be worse than Communist China and subsequent resulting wars in Korea, Vietnam, etc.
 
Hm, any places to sign the petition that don't require creating an account? That's kind of a hassle.
 
coim.jpg
 
Currency competition is a good thing. However, the Bristol Pound is pegged to the pound sterling, and requires deposits in pounds to receive a payout in Bristol Pounds. As it is set up, it's an outstanding deal for the credit union taking the deposits. It's getting an internationally recognized currency for free, since printing currency costs next to nothing. With the sterling peg, I see no benefit for the people of Bristol.

More fake paper, and more people being taken advantage of.
 
Interesting that the FSA insures 85000 pounds/person of deposits whereas the FDIC in America insures 500000 dollars/person.

That article's pretty short on details. And wtf with this Ben Yearsley guy... either he's some jackass with an agenda or BBC doesn't know how to interview people about finance.

@Dak: it makes plenty of sense to peg it to the national currency since it's just been launched. What's to say they won't adjust the exchange rate later on once the currency is firmly established?
 
That really misses the point though. It says people will be issued a Bristol Pound for every Pound Sterling they deposit:

They will print notes in £1, £5, £10 and £20 denominations. A Bristol pound will be worth exactly £1 sterling.

People will open an account with the Bristol Credit Union, which is administering the scheme, and for every pound sterling they deposit, they will be credited one Bristol pound.
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What's the point for the customer? To get Bristol Pounds, which are less widely accepted, you have to deposit your essentially more valuable Pounds Sterling. The CU may then take your deposited funds and make a profit from it through the magic of fractional reserve lending, while giving you essentially nothing in return.

Bottom line: If printing money was the answer to financial crises, why not let everyone do it? There is no difference between Monopoly money and national currencies other than the "Legal Tender" status, and the ability of the backing organization to tax your labor/rent resources. In other words, the national currencies are no better than "coal mine scrip", and competing paper currencies are even worse.
 
Well didn't the US Police use tear gas against the anti bretton woods demonstrators a while back?
 
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