Stalingrad :Was the order given not to retreat correct?

[DeistPaladin]

Thank you for your upbeat assessment of america's future.

I hope I'm wrong and perhaps there is hope in how Obama has dialed back some, but not all, of the swaggering bully attitude of the W Bush administration.

but you didn't consider much of what I wrote. Germany did not declare war on England and france in 39..

Did Germany take on these countries or did they take on Germany.

I mean ,why thrust a world war on a smaller country for trying to recover stolen territory or over the status of one city?

What exactly did a "dictator" do that any American president would not be obliged to do ;and that is to recover states that were forcibly taken at gun point. ?

I'm fully aware of the events of the second world war, as I studied first hand the German history books on the subject, taught by my high school German teacher who lived under the last days of the Third Reich (her family managed to flee to America before the Berlin Wall was erected).

Hitler used the "schampf und schande" (shame and disgrace) of Versailles in his political propaganda but his ambitions were far more extensive than just redressing Germany's grievances with the treaty. Why else attack Russia? Germany lost no territory to them. Why else did Germany go beyond annexing the Sudetenland and fully swallow the Czech nation? Neither did Germany rule over Warsaw but that didn't stop Hitler from annexing all of Poland that he didn't give to Stalin.

Britain and France only declared war after issuing an ultimatum to Hitler to cease his attacks on Poland and withdraw. I can't prove this but my speculation is that Chamberlain was hoping Nazi Germany would be a bulwark against Communist Russia. There was a "red scare" in the western world in the 20s and 30s, no less potent than the one in the 50s and 60s. The doctrine of "appeasement" may have been to deliberately rebuild Germany under the assumption that Fascism would oppose Communism. It was only when Hitler and Stalin made a pact that this policy changed. This is just pure speculation. Others have thought that the policy was out of guilt over Versailles. Others have said they were simply naive and finally had enough with the invasion of Poland.

Regardless of the motive, the policy of appeasement shows that a diplomatically savvy Germany could have used peaceful means if redressing the grievances of Versailles were the objective. Germany could have played Britain and France against Communist Russia. Were I the Chancellor of the Wiemar Republic, I would have been far more concerned with renegotiating the crippling war reparations that spanned three generations than the territorial loss. But that's beside the point. The point is that Nazi Germany's aspirations were clearly world conquest.

Speaking of "what if" scenarios, when I studied the first world war, I thought about an alternative strategy to the Schlieflen plan which would have been deal with a Russian invasion and leave a garrison in the Alps against a possible French invasion.

I imagine the French would have attacked, having ambitions of their own to retake Alsace-Lorraine. However, progress through such mountainous territory as the Bavarian Alps was almost guaranteed to be slow and costly and easy for Germany to defend. Let the other side "throw the first punch" and avoid being the aggressor. Britain and Italy might not have entered the war. America might not have been so sympathetic to France. Militarily, it would have been a terrible risk I know. Letting the other side throw the first punch always is. But diplomatically, I think it would have paid off. It usually does.

But my musings of what I might have done are not consistent with the motives of ambitious conquerors. I'm not as versed with the motives of the Kaiser but I do know there was a "pan-German" sentiment that ran through the Junker (pronounced "Yun-ker") ruling class of Germany. The assassination of the Archduke seemed to me to be just a pretext. A good pretext but a pretext nonetheless.