Lyke Omg!11, The Nazis Were Soo Imperliaistic!!!1111!

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

Funny how revisionist scum love to omit the above from history books. I never learnt the above when being taught WWII history.
Retards like to parrot that Germany was imperalistic, yet it was Britain and France which declared war on Germany first. The excuse that 'Germany invaded Poland' is a lame old cop out. Naughty Germany for attempted to restore its old borders before going to smash the Communists. It's not like Russia invaded any countries during WWII... right? Poland, the Baltic States, and Finland welcomed the Russians with open arms!!!

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Guess what Rudolf Hess was charged with at Nuremburg?

Yeah, like, Hess was committing crimes against peace when he risked his life to parachute into Britain to negotiate a peace with the British Govt.

I rest my case. The Nazis were nothing more than war mongers!!!

 

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History is written by the victors.
Just like the civil war- damn yankees.

 

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James R:

Oh yes, I don't doubt that it is in some obscure history books. But not the history books used children in secondary school. When I went to school, WWII was portrayed as 'Good' vs 'Evil', where the Nazis were evil, imperialistic scum.

Where did I claim that it does? However, it is rarely, if ever, mentioned to schoolkids that Russia invaded Poland, the Baltic states, and Finland. Because the obvious questions they would ask are 'Why did France and Britain declare war on Russia?' and 'Why wasn't Russia charged with 'crimes against peace' at Nuremburg?'

At least Germany had a valid excuse for invading France and Poland. It wanted to restore old borders. Whether Alsace and Lorraine, plus part of Poland, belonged to Germany is controversial, since the European powers have been warring and annexing land from each other for centuries. However, at least Germany had a claim to it (Franco-Prussian War). Russia did not.

Hess risks his life to get into Britain, breaking his ankle. He wants peace with Britain.
Britain not only imprisons him, but refuses to accept peace with Germany, despite Hitler repeatedly begging for peace. The British then bomb Germany, including aiming at civilian targets in German cities such as Dresden.

And then Hess is charged with 'crimes against peace'. Can you not see the hypocrisy? Why was Russia not charged with 'crimes against peace'? What about Britain, who refused to accept a peace deal with Germany?

 

Excuse me! Where did you dredge up THAT piece of fiction?!?!

 

The fucking Nazis always wanted to make peace, so they could avoid a coordinated allied attack and pick them off one by one when it was convenient. You can't possibly believe that they were just misunderstood peaceniks, they wouldn't have honored any treaty, they were ruthless.

 

Exactly! The Nazi's tried to make peace with Brittain to prevent them from attacking Germany. It was a trick, and it failed. Like Spidergoat said, Hitler would have made peace with them, then destroyed them the first chance they had for a one-on-one battle.
Who feeds you this shit, mountainhare? Who made you believe that the bastards who tried to kill an entire race were really peaceful people? Not only that, but what makes you believe it?

JD

 

The Nazis had a peace treaty with Russia, just before they invaded.

 

You never heard of the faithful bulldog Hess losing his marbles and flying the channel to try to talk peace?! Really? What rock have you been living under?

Ah. The rock of secondary school...
High school history classes are shit. Can't really blame them. They only have 9 months or so to cram it all into a single course. I... don't really recall what I was taught in high school about WWII. Not much. Certainly not the nuts and bolts. The beginning. The ending. The Holocaust. Russia's involvement. Japan and the nukes...
Hmm. All I can remember clearly from high school history is the older stuff. Revolutionary war. War of 1812. Etc... I'd think that more time would be spent on WWII as there is such a wealth of information on it (take note of the History Channel and their obsession with WWII because of all the archival footage).

Anyway.
Yeah. Hess went off his rocker and thought that he'd save the Reich by single-handedly establishing a peace accord with the UK.

Hitler wasn't happy about this, you know. It certainly wasn't his plan. It showed weakness and he despised the showing of weakness.

Now. As to the question of Hitler only wanting peace for the moment... well. It's possible. There's no true way to answer that question. But, it is known that Hitler always wanted peace with England. He always thought that Germany and England were natural partners. He always thought in his heart that England would someday realize this as well. In fact, it has been said that he invaded Russia because he thought that would inspire the Brits to ally with him against the commies. (And you can bet your ass they thought about it too...)

So. Would Hitler have betrayed England in the end? Maybe. Hitler was certainly powerhungry. But, he was also Eurocentric. He wanted the continent. His Eurocentrism cost him dearly in the war. He lost North Africa largely because he didn't feel it important to the war effort. If properly supplied, Rommel would have held and the course of the war might have gone completely differently.

So. Considering this, I find it likely that Hitler would have allowed Britain to maintain its non-European empire. What would he care? He would have had what he wanted.


Consider also his relationship with Mussolini. Hitler admired Mussolini. He was a true ally to the man. Even when Mussolini and his forces failed time and time again to add anything positive to the war effort, Hitler still stood by him and defended him. Called him friend. He even rescued him from Allied captivity. Hitler wasn't necessarily the traitorous dog he was made out to be. Sure, he was crazy, racist fucker. But that doesn't mean he was all bad.


Anyway.
Obscure history books?
Right.
You really ought to try reading sometime.

 

I find the whole Hess affair really intriguing. The generally accepted theory is that Hess acted without Hitler's knowledge yet there is no record of any retalitory action taken against Hess's family. Not exactly Hitler's style when confronted with public opposition. There is also the insistence on keeping Hess at Spandau. Very curious.
My wild guess. Prior to invading the USSR Hess was dispatched to negotiate with the British carring an ultimatum make peace or the Nazi's implement a final solution. Certainly a good reason to see that Hess never told his story.

 

The book to read on the Hess affair is "Double Standards" by Lynn Picknett et al (Time Warner 2002). Read it with utmost skepticism, of course, but it is well researched and referenced. The Hess affair is indeed intriguing!

I agree with most of what invert nexus has to say -- save that I do not believe Hess was mad. The theory that a political or military figure went mad, apparently very suddenly, must always be treated as a very suspect historical explanation. He may, of course, have been tricked. Or those who invited him over may have been infiltrated.

 

sounds like a very good guess.

 

JDawg:

Lyke OMG, that is so unorthodox! What sort of assholes try to make peace with a country so that that country won't attack it!? That's definitely not the point of a peace treaty...

 

Well. I didn't really mean that he went crazy... more like he made a stupid choice.

Hess's decision to attempt to make peace as he did speaks volumes about the types of things Hitler said to those close to him during those long boring dinners that Hitler was famous for throwing... Hitler believed that England and Germany were meant for each other. Partners made in heaven. And he would go on and on about how this was so and why.

Hess believed him. And therefore he acted on that belief. He acted in a manner which he thought was best for his country and for his Fuhrer. He believed that peace with England was inevitable and only bitter pride was keeping them apart. Hess, a simple man, elected to forego said pride and to act as the bridge between these two noble empires...

He misjudged.

Can't blame him though. Hess was never known for deep thought. A man with a mind far too simple to ever 'go crazy'.

Or perhaps that is merely the facade created by the historians to cover up something more sinister?

Perhaps. I doubt it though. Unless you think Speer lied as well in his book Inside the Third Reich?


Another thing to consider on this is that the Nazi's were anal about documentation. They documented everything from war plans to the extermination of the jews to how many rolls of toilet paper were used in the governmental buildlings on a yearly basis (this last is pure conjecture, but I bet I'm right...) As secret as Hess's mission might have been, it would still have been documented.

 

Man, I love the Nazis. They make such good historical characters.

It's too bad about the whole Jew thing, otherwise Hitler would make an excellent traic hero. It's just so tough these days, trying to romanticize a genocidal bastard.

 

Trouble with history, it's hard work -- and not at all the place for wild guesses! If you read and read and read, then by the time you are a Senior Citizen, you begin to understand the way of things.

First of all, you have to understand how things stood in May 1941. The war was going badly for Britain -- on almost every front. Worst of all, loss of merchant ships to U-boats brought the prospect of starvation. Churchill faced a vote of confidence in the House of Commons, surviving it at least in part because his opponents did not wish to gratify the Germans with the image of a nation divided.

Labour MP Richard Stokes wrote to former Premier Lloyd George, "What many of us hope [is] that if the Hess visit holds out any prospect of bringing the war to an early conclusion that opportunity should not be lost." Among members of the House of Lords, this may have been a majority opinion. Because things afterwards turned out as they did, much correspondence and many diaries expressing pro-Peace views have conveniently disappeared.

Hess was neither mad nor a simpleton. In fact, as a prisoner he was given IQ tests and scored well. [1] Hess came with Hitler's blessing. [2] He was invited to Britain by highly placed individuals in the "Peace Party". [3] He came with peace terms that would have been acceptable to much of the population of Britain. Indeed, it would have been in Britain's best interest to accept those terms. [4] The plans for Hess's visit were learned of by those opposed to peace, but they saw the advantage of letting Hess arrive, and of letting Hitler believe in the prospect of peace.

Each of these assertions can be argued separately. I believe each of them can be justified.

 

Nazi's imperialism was all about so called Lebensraum

 

Are you always so constrained when discussing history? Where did you acquire such emotional detachment? It is a credit to all Lepus timidus scoticus. And it isn't even March.

 

The Russians...

And we know how well that worked out for them.

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One "obscure history book" you might try reading is Mein Kampf, in which none other than the "Crazy Austrian Paperhanger" himself lays out his plans to carve out a German empire.

As to this business of "restoring Germany's borders"...
Please recall that Germany lost that territory because of WW1, a conflict which the Kaiser was itching to get into, even if accusing Germany of starting it might be oversimplifying things a bit.
"To the victors go the spoils", so the saying goes, and the victorious European powers did what they had been doing for centuries to the losing side - namely chopping up their lands and taking some prime hunks for themselves - no big surprise, there.
That they set the stage for the next dustup to some degree by their post-war policies is a lot easier to see from the vantage point of 80+ years after the fact.


From a personal perspective - mind you, some people are wont to call me a kook, but what the hey - I always thought it quite amusing that in the propaganda of the period, Britain was portrayed in the West as "The Last Bastion of Freedom In Europe", fighting doggedly the dark, evil, "ratzi" menace to all things right and good and civilized.
When I look at the nazi model for the "Grossdeutsche Reich", I see a sort of land-locked version of the British Empire:
A vast area of conquered people made to serve the interests of their imperial masters.

It's over-simplifying somewhat, obviously. Clearly the British didn't pursue a consistent policy of extermination of anyone who was non-British, for example.
Still... I find it hard not to view British opposition to the rise of Germany under any manner of regime in some sense as amounting to an elder slave-empire not wanting it's quite profitable status quo upset by a perceived rival power.

.

 

Riverwind,

Perhaps. The conspiracy would be quite deep though. As I said, even Speer backs up the mainstream historical view of Hess as a simpleton who took it on himself to do what he did. Speer's memoirs were written in secret, by the way, on bits of toilet paper and the like. (Or maybe that's more conspiracy?)

As to Hess's IQ tests. I never said he was stupid. I said he was simple. There is a difference.

You're probably right on this one. If Britain had made peace with Germany, then they probably would be a stronger world power today. They'd still likely have an empire because in a world where Germany was victorious, imperialism would still be a-ok. In fact, I bet they'd have a larger empire than they had before.

I do wonder about Japan, however. Would Germany have annulled the pact with Japan in favor of one with Britain? Britain faced territorial disputes with Japan that were not present with Germany. I wonder if they could have settled those disputes amicably?

And then you'd have to consider America's role in this new world. If Britain had made peace, then America would have had no reason nor incentive to fight. Plus, there were contingents in America who sued for peace with Germany as well. "Better than the communists," it was said.

So. What would have happened? The question, again, is over Japan. Japan had its eyes on the Pacific islands and China. Both of which were already claimed, in part, by Americans. I doubt that these disputes could have been settled peacefully even if Britain's were.

So. The queston of peace would have been Germany's attitude with Japan. I find Germany and Japan to be strange bedfellows to begin with. So perhaps Germany would have given America and Britain a free hand with Japan while it dealt with Russia.

This would have been in Germany's best interest as it would have made Russia wary of invasion from the east and likely would have reduced its capability of defending its western borders somewhat.

Also, one might consider that if the war with Japan still occurred, then it is quite possible that America might still have developed the atomic bomb. And if that happened.... who knows? America might well have threatened Germany with it and America might still have ended up the world power of a completely new world... And George Bush would have fit right in... (Kidding. He is far too incompetent and the truth is that he hasn't taken advantage of several opportunities for consolidating power.)

Anyway. Starting to go along a Turtledove tangent in here.


Killjoy,

There was another thread around here where an excellent argument was made that Germany's intent towards Russia was merely a diversionary tactic. The most damning piece of evidence towards this regard is the lack of any intelligence or war plans made for an invasion of Russia prior to 1941. If Hitler had been planning on attacking Russia since the days of Mein Kampf, then there should have been reams and reams of notes, papers, reports, etc... The Germans were sticklers for this type of thing. But there was nothing until mid-1941. Very unusual. I never thought about it before reading it in this other thread but it makes sense. Look how well it worked out. France was completely taken off guard.

WWI is a weak spot in my historical knowledge. I've been meaning to dig into it a bit better but haven't found any good resources for it. However, I've heard that Germany was not exactly the aggressive power in WWI. If Hapsburg stumbles across this thread, he'd probably know. He's got the Kaiser tattooed on his penis (or he will when he turns 18...)