If Hitler had had any real sense he would have handed back France and the other invaded territories with puppet fascist governments firmly in place in '41 made peace with the UK, kept the US out of the war and turned his whole attention to Barbarossa without needing to leave forces in France or Africa, he would probably have had considerable 'allied' help at that point, the fight against communism being seen as the real threat in '39 through most of the world.
That's pretty much what Hitler tried to do. Churchhill told him to pound sand.
Whatever the attitudes in the UK towards communism in '39, Hitler's conquest of most of Europe changed all that. While some elements of the British establishment were willing to come to an accommodation with Hitler after the fall of France, the British people and most of its leadership - to their undying credit - would have none of it.
As for handing back France, given the horrific bloodletting the Germans endured trying to conquer France in WW1 - Hitler's formative life experience - the notion that they would pull their troops out in '41 after conquering it in '40 is fantastical.
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The reign of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. From day one, it was a complete disaster that eventually culminates in the removal of his entire gene pool and the communist revolution.
On the day of his coronation, poor planning led to a stampede that killed almost 1,400 people. It is known as the Khodynka Tragedy. Some people say the stampede was caused because they were running out of beer and pretzels, but I don't know if that is true.
At any rate, it set the tone for his entire reign. He wasn't a great guy, but no monarchs of that day were. But a lot of what happened wasn't his fault. He actually wanted to call off the coronation events after the stampede, but the ball was being hosted at the French embassy and powerful aristocrats demanded that he attend because insulting the French would be worse than looking callous to his subjects.
This caused his subjects to hate him from the day he took the crown. Those same aristocrats, because of pressure from a public that hated him, went on to challenge him at every turn making it impossible to function as a leader. He was probably an inadequate statesman to begin with, but it only made things worse.
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I will go back to 1913 and offer the failure of Great Britain to clearly let France and Germany know whether it would honour the Entente Cordial and so precipitated the First World War, the First War could have been prevented by being clear either way, the Germans assumed the British would try to stay out and so felt they could safely invade Belgium, had the British been clear the Germans wouldn't have started WW1 (equally if the British had told the French a decade earlier we would cover them they wouldn't have done their level best to provoke the war prior).
As it was when the Germans asked what the British position in the event of war the UK language was uncommited diplomatically despite its treaty obligations, much like the US with Saddam Hussain and Kuwait a century later
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The reign of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. From day one, it was a complete disaster that eventually culminates in the removal of his entire gene pool and the communist revolution.
On the day of his coronation, poor planning led to a stampede that killed almost 1,400 people. It is known as the Khodynka Tragedy. Some people say the stampede was caused because they were running out of beer and pretzels, but I don't know if that is true.
At any rate, it set the tone for his entire reign. He wasn't a great guy, but no monarchs of that day were. But a lot of what happened wasn't his fault. He actually wanted to call off the coronation events after the stampede, but the ball was being hosted at the French embassy and powerful aristocrats demanded that he attend because insulting the French would be worse than looking callous to his subjects.
This caused his subjects to hate him from the day he took the crown. Those same aristocrats, because of pressure from a public that hated him, went on to challenge him at every turn making it impossible to function as a leader. He was probably an inadequate statesman to begin with, but it only made things worse.
I would add on that the subset to this was his decision to go to the front during WW1 and lost control of the government in place. It also put his wife firmly in the lime light of the people's hatred, and further turned the people against the government. And frankly he didn't accomplish anything on the front as the Russian Army was already demoralized, and his appearance wouldn't increase moral.
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I will go back to 1913 and offer the failure of Great Britain to clearly let France and Germany know whether it would honour the Entente Cordial and so precipitated the First World War, the First War could have been prevented by being clear either way, the Germans assumed the British would try to stay out and so felt they could safely invade Belgium, had the British been clear the Germans wouldn't have started WW1 (equally if the British had told the French a decade earlier we would cover them they wouldn't have done their level best to provoke the war prior).
As it was when the Germans asked what the British position in the event of war the UK language was uncommited diplomatically despite its treaty obligations, much like the US with Saddam Hussain and Kuwait a century later
Fair enough, but I honestly don't think anything was going to prevent WW1, it was going to happen no matter what. All it needed was a match.
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Ok, I'm going to add on because I see it as a massive historical mistake. The treaty of Versailles.
It was a extremely punitive treaty with massive reparations that could never be paid. The mistake was compounded by the French moving in and seizing the Ruhr in retaliations for a weakened Germany not being able to keep up to the reparations due to their economy.
The treaty left the Germans with no real hope for any kind of recovery, and just directly lead to the rise of extremism in Germany who's message to the people was that they were stabbed in the back.
The allies in their arrogance created the very conditions that lead to the rise of facist Germany. On top of that when it came down to it Hitler ignored the military restrictions of the treaty anyways.
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There is historical speculation the only reason Britain entered into WWI after the invasion of Belgium was because their struggling Liberal government hoped it would increase their popularity. If Britain doesn't declare war on Germany then there is still a European war but it does not become a world war.
Speaking of epic British failures I'm going to go with appeasement in 1938. If an English/French/Polish/Czech coalition invades German to topple the Nazis in 1938 there is no WW2.
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you have to realize that the concept of war wasn't feared by any of the major powers. They had no idea what was about to happen and how the face of war had changed.
Instead war was seen as a great opportunity for the younger generation to go out and basically adventure in the name of the flag, earn some medals and be home by Christmas.
People still envisioned a testing of steel and horse charges.
I think that sentiment did die a bit in the trenches and the crippling of countries due to a thinning of the next generations.
The messaging for WW1 was about earning glory. Even when you look at WW1 propaganda posters it was fairly vibrant and the message was more about serving the flag and the King and country then fighting an insidious enemy.
In WW2 for the most part propaganda posters took on a darker angle, and a lot more about vilifying a enemy bent on destroying your way of life.
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Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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I would add on that the subset to this was his decision to go to the front during WW1 and lost control of the government in place. It also put his wife firmly in the lime light of the people's hatred, and further turned the people against the government. And frankly he didn't accomplish anything on the front as the Russian Army was already demoralized, and his appearance wouldn't increase moral.
He also at one point ordered the Russian military to stop mobilizing. He was friends (and 3rd cousins ) with Kaiser Wilhelm, but let himself get bullied by the Duma's foreign minister Sergey Sazonov, who had no intention to listen to him
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Oh yeah Nicholas II is one of history’s worst leaders and has many epic failures to his name. I’d even go as far as blaming him for WWI. He was looking for any reason to expand west after the Japanese halted his eastern expansion. Mobilising the Russian army to defend Serbia in response to pretty reasonable requests from Austria-Hungary was the trigger that caused the Germany army to mobilise and enact the Schlieffen plan.
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I will go back to 1913 and offer the failure of Great Britain to clearly let France and Germany know whether it would honour the Entente Cordial and so precipitated the First World War, the First War could have been prevented by being clear either way, the Germans assumed the British would try to stay out and so felt they could safely invade Belgium, had the British been clear the Germans wouldn't have started WW1 (equally if the British had told the French a decade earlier we would cover them they wouldn't have done their level best to provoke the war prior).
As it was when the Germans asked what the British position in the event of war the UK language was uncommited diplomatically despite its treaty obligations, much like the US with Saddam Hussain and Kuwait a century later
There's been a lot of alt-history stories done on WWII, but I've always been more interested in the what-if of Germany winning WWI. Would they have been as vengful as Britain and France with the Treaty of Versailles? Would a facist movement popped up in France then? Or would WWII have been avoided completely with nothing driving the Germans towards facism?
