Jihad or not - Page 2

Prager, I am not going to argue war, as you know by now, I am anti-war as there is always a cost to a society in any war. You call it sacrifices and I call it the cost of war. Did Hitler need to be stopped, yes.

WW2 did not need to be fought. The aggressors could have, should have, decided against war to further their ambitions and fix their problems.

Should of, could of .... Most nations do not go into war light hardheartedly. Germans were put in bad situation by Versatile treaty. I am not excusing them but after the German capitulation in WW 1 allies were too short sighted by imposing on Germany too much of a punishment which letd to economic destruction of Germany. It was just too much pressure and that lead to counter pressure in form of WW2. On the end of the WW1 Germans gave up not because they were losing war - they could keep on going for much longer- but because the futility was obvious. They expected friendly capitulation . But allies went for jaguar instead.
To make friends from former enemies like it was done after WW 2 Marshall plan was much better solution.

@Prager, that was a non-answer. The Germans did not have to go to war. They did not have to do what they did to the citizens of the nations they conquered. They did not have to ignore the Geneva Conventions when it came to Soviet troops. They did not have to create the Holocaust. These are all products of war and the Germans did not have to do any of it. Looking back, was going to war the right option for Germany? The thing about war is that hindsight is useless except as a lesson for the future. There are no do overs so you better learn from the past.

Carlo have I said that they had to do so? I have said SAME THING as you when I said that I am not excusing them ( their actions). I am merely stating historical facts. My family suffered under Germans and member of my family was killed by Nazis so please do not try to explain to me evils of Fascism .

What I am saying is that Germany is not at fault alone . Allies made mistake by imposing terms of Versailles treaty which help push Germany the wrong direction.
Sun Tzu said : "never fight desperate enemy". Meaning do not make your enemy desperate. And Versailles treaty made Germans economically quite desperate.

There is also the argument that the treaty was not that harsh, and the French believed it should have been harsher, and that it did not have the devastating economic effect that some claim. How harsh were the terms between Russia and Germany? Germany made out well with that. The Germans felt humiliated more by losing the war than the terms of peace. In other words, the harshness of the treaty is a question of perception rather than reality. Regardless, Germans did not have to fall under Hitler's spell and try to conquer the world and exterminate certain peoples in the process. I mean, how do you go from "these terms are rather harsh" to "let's kill all the Jews"?

Whatever the motivation for war it was not the only, and as it turned out not the best, option.

Well I am sure there are arguments on all sides. But the inflation and economic collaps was not a perception but reality. The government's economic of moving away from gold standard ( in order to pay for WW1) strategy backfired when Germany lost the war. The new Weimar Republic was now saddled with a massive war debt that it could not afford. That was then made even worse by the fact that it was printing money without the economic resources to back it up. The Treaty of Versailles further accelerated the decline in the value of the mark, such that 48 paper marks were required to buy one US dollar by late 1919. German currency was relatively stable at about 90 marks per US dollar during the first half of 1921.Because the western theater of warfare during World War I was mostly in France and Belgium, Germany came out of the war with most of its industrial infrastructure intact and in a better position to become the dominant economic force on the European continent. However "The London Ultimatum of May 1921", however, demanded reparations in gold or foreign currency to be paid in annual installments of 2,000,000,000 (2 billion) gold marks plus 26 percent ( GROSS!!!!) of the value of Germany's exports.

The total reparations demanded were 132,000,000,000 (132 billion) gold marks, of which Germany only had to pay 50 billion marks.

Because reparations were required to be repaid in hard currency and not the rapidly depreciating paper mark, one strategy Germany employed was the mass printing of bank notes to buy foreign currency, which was in turn used to pay reparations. This greatly exacerbated the inflation rates of the paper mark. Those were the options set by Versailles treaty and they were not a matter of perception.
As far as Jews go? Hitler was very upset when Germany surrendered in November 1918 and firmly believed that Jewish politicians had stabbed Germany in the back. Germans hated the Versailles Treaty and viewed the June 28, the signing of the treaty as a day of dishonor for the German state. Hitler’s main objective and argument was that he was going to make Germany world power. He argued that in for Germany to regain its status of greatness, he Versailles Treaty had to be abolished. Hitler begun by proclaiming that he was going to liberate the German people of the dictated treaty.Hitler in essence promised the German people the effacement of the Versailles Treaty. In doing so he paved the way to World War II. The German people argued that it was a dictated treaty, due to the fact that Germany had no say and this caused immense bitterness. Hitler’s popularity, in large part was due to his outspoken denunciation of the treaty. He promised that he was going to reunite all Germans under the fatherland once again. The German populace was in a state of distraught. Hitler used their sentiments to come to power. He began to disregard the Treaty of Versailles when he took Germany out of the League of Nations. Germany starts rearming in 1933. Hitler bolstered that by 1940 Germany would be fully prepared for war. He occupies the Rhineland in 1936. To fulfill his promise of reuniting all Germans once again, Hitler first unites with Austria in what is termed the Anschluss. The union of Austria and Germany was forbidden by the treaty. He then negotiates with the British Prime Minister, Chamberlain, to and obtains Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia. By 1939, Hitler has literally abolished the dictated treaty and World War II begins in 1939 with the invasion of Poland.

Anyway and that the way it was.
I used internt for accuracy reasons to make this posts.
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/projects/1920s/CarlosTreaty.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic