fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #6406 ]

[ SECRET POST #6406 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6406 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 64 secrets from Secret Submission Post #916.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yes Prime Minister convinced me WW2 was not worth fighting. Sir Humphrey was actually right. I don't like it, I really don't like it, but I agree with it. "All we achieved after six years of war was to leave Eastern Europe under a Communist dictatorship instead of a Fascist dictatorship. At a cost of millions of lives and the ruination of the country."

Fighting WWII did stop several genocides, so there's that. Hitler's plan for Eastern Europe involved allowing tens of millions of people to starve, as well as killing all Jews, Roma, Sinti, Sami, etc.

Well, it briefly interrupted them. Stalin picked up the baton with extreme vigor, possibly killing even more than the Godwinated One ever did, immediately afterwards.

I don't think that's true? The worst of the Soviet genocides happened before WW2 as far as I understand.

It's not true. The worst of Stalin's regime was in late 30s. In late 40s he was using his "savior" status instead of killing. And he died in 53

I mean, tens of millions of people starving in Eastern Europe sounds like something several communist regimes were entirely in favour of as well so it only postponed it.

It's an utterly stupid belief, and I'll say so when the secret gets posted too, I imagine.

Fighting the Nazis was both morally right, and strongly and deeply in the interests of the UK. It did not result in the ruination of the UK. To the contrary, the UK was left in a very strong position relative to the rest of Europe at the end of WW2, and a much much stronger position than it would have been in as a (rather doubtful) ally of a German-dominated fascist continental Europe. Communist domination of Eastern Europe was genuinely much less of a threat to Britain's interests than Nazi domination of the entirety of the continent would have been. And while the ultimate collapse of Britain's colonial empire came after WW2, the writing had been on the wall since well before the war. India had been for all intents and purposes irrevocably lost by the early 1920s; keeping a presence in sub-Saharan Africa would have been largely impossible regardless; and the war is not why the UK lost Suez or Southeast Asia.

The problem for the UK is that they had spectacularly bad management and performance in politics and business in one way or another really from 1950 right onwards. But that failure and mismanagement wasn't caused by the decision to fight WW2.

The money we spent playing second fiddle to America in Europe could have been better spent in the Pacific and keeping the Empire together. In fact, if we were not so busy letting the Luftwaffe level most of Southern England then Japan might not even have attacked at all. It was the ruination of the country, and Empire. And it achieved nothing except giving Poland to Stalin. Nothing. We didn't even finish paying it off until about a decade ago.

Ah, I see, you're actually racist and think the British Empire should have continued. Well, in that case your argument makes sense, it's just an incredibly stupid argument. And I say this as a person with family members in the BNP, so I've heard it all before.

The money we spent playing second fiddle to America in Europe could have been better spent in the Pacific and keeping the Empire together.

People always say this kind of thing, without actually answering the question: What would it mean to keep the Empire together? What would the Empire actually look like over the long term?

The thing is, it would not have been possible to keep the Empire in the same form it existed in 1900. Well before WW2, the British were committed both theoretically and practically to long-term goals of self-governance for their colonies. The UK had already begun to move towards home rule and self-governance during the interwar period, and that movement had political support across the British political spectrum, especially from Labour.

And support in the colonies for native self-government was consistently growing as well. There was very strong desire for native self-government. So both the British and the colonial subjects were unwilling to keep the empire in the same form it had been in. And using intensive violent repression to keep Britain's authority intact, while totally rejecting demands for self-governance and home rule, would be a non-starter. So it was in fact clear well before WW2 that the British Empire would have to undergo a substantial process of devolution and increased native self-government. The goal should have been for the British to devolve in a way that created political structures that were friendly to Britain and its interests.

Of course, the British were extremely bad at actually doing this, and usually managed to utterly alienate the colonial natives and make themselves totally hated. You can see this very clearly in the process of Indian independence. The UK committed to self-governance and home rule as their long-term goal in the immediate aftermath of WWI, and they began carrying out the process immediately. However, by the early 1930s, British management of India had so thoroughly pissed off the entire spectrum of Indian political opinion that a friendly, well-managed transition to home rule became essentially impossible and there was nothing left for Britain but to walk away. And the fact that all of this was happening well before WW2 is pretty strong evidence that WW2 was not the fundamental cause of the Empire's downfall.

And of course, all of that is totally setting aside the moral critique of the Empire, and doesn't even engage with the question of whether the Empire should have continued. Even for people who wanted it to continue, it wasn't actually possible. And then, you also have to take into account that the British continued to do a very bad job at managing their relations with native demands for self-governance after the war; the problems didn't go away, but the point is that the problems existed before WW2 and had causes unrelated to the war.

In fact, if we were not so busy letting the Luftwaffe level most of Southern England then Japan might not even have attacked at all.

This is not very plausible. Like, if you look at Japan's strategic outlook and interests, there is no reason to think that they would have refrained from attacking. The US wasn't involved in Europe at the time, and Japan had no compunction about starting a war with them. Japan was very militarist, the Japanese military was incredibly high on their own supply, and their plans for regional hegemony in East Asia relied on being able to take over the European colonies and resources in SEA.

And it achieved nothing except giving Poland to Stalin. Nothing.

Utter horseshit. It achieved the destruction the primary European continental rival to the UK, IE, Nazi Germany. That's absolutely an accomplishment. It made Western Europe - France, Belgium, the Netherlands, West Germany, Austria, Denmark, Italy - free from Nazi domination. That's a huge accomplishment both morally and from the point of view of British interests.

It didn't defeat the Soviet Union, no. But it did defeat the Nazis, and the Nazis were much more of a threat to British interests. If you have two enemies, and you defeat one of them, that's not a failure. That's not nothing. It is, in fact, a huge accomplishment. One that the UK failed to capitalize on - but that's not a problem with the war, that's a problem with the post-war leadership.

would you prefer the entire continent of Europe be under fascist dictatorship?

something tells me you'd like it in theory but wouldn't find it very fun in practice.

+100

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #6406 ]

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