Hindsight does distort the past more than people realize
Larry Send a noteboard - 01/01/2012 11:39:25 PM
The question is why the UK and France chose to support the Polish intransigence over Danzig. Even assuming they felt backed into a corner by Munich and the subsequent annexation of Czechoslovakia, they could have argued that Germany had a right to the corridor.
I'm amazed at how colored our view of the 1930s is by subsequent events. For example, the whole "we should have known that Hitler was going to murder 6 (really 4.2) million Jews because of Kristallnacht" (ignoring the rampant anti-semitism elsewhere in Europe) or "it was clear Germany wanted war" (when in fact people assumed, correctly, that it wasn't ready for war).
I'm amazed at how colored our view of the 1930s is by subsequent events. For example, the whole "we should have known that Hitler was going to murder 6 (really 4.2) million Jews because of Kristallnacht" (ignoring the rampant anti-semitism elsewhere in Europe) or "it was clear Germany wanted war" (when in fact people assumed, correctly, that it wasn't ready for war).
Am curious about the 4.2 number. Which source(s) do you derive that number from? Most I've seen are around the 5 million figure (when taking into account the beatings, individual shootings, starvation, and so forth), with less than half that number at the camps.
Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie
Je suis méchant.
Je suis méchant.
/Personal: Grandfather's journal and clippings from Spring/Summer 1939
- 31/12/2011 12:14:53 AM
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It shows once again how everyone assumed Hitler would attack the USSR.
- 31/12/2011 08:01:46 PM
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Hindsight does distort the past more than people realize
- 01/01/2012 11:39:25 PM
554 Views