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Originally Posted by MattyC
Which is funny when you consider it was one of the very few wars in history that actually needed to be fought. It's weird how countries are hesitant to get involved in conflicts that include horrific human rights violations and global domination aspirations when it's difficult to see where they may profit at the end of it all.
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the bottom line is this
At the start of WW1, they promoted this as a war when you would be home by Christmas. You're sons would go on a adventure, the nation would be bloodied, but war would be something that was heroic and a large part of nation building and securing additional real estate.
The Trench Horror's changed a lot of minds about the use of war as a diplomatic tools. The Axis and Triple E all expected a quick war, but it dragged on for years and destroyed the young male base of all of the countries involved.
so it went from "Go and fight Jerry, for god mother and country" to "The War to end all wars"
I believe that the punitive reparations requirements were put in place to forever hobble Germany who were seen as a massive ongoing militaristic threat.
Instead they were the ignitor fuse to what was then called "The Great Hate".
also in terms of the unwillingness to get to making war. The Great Depression had stripped a lot of nations of their military budgets. The British, the French, The Americans were just not ready to fight a large scale conflict. The British were highly dependent on their fleet of what turned out to be obsolete battleships. The French built the Maginot line at murderous cost but it cost them in terms of training and equipment and troops. They thought the cheaper option was their own version of the Great Wall of China.
For the American's pre WW2, their military was relatively tiny, and weak, they didn't have much in the way of modern batttle tanks or artillery. For the most part their soldiers trained with wooden guns. They were also caught in a doctrine misunderstanding that frankly saved them at Pearl Harbor as they had relatively few carriers and they weren't at Pearl. The devastating attack looked so destructive because frankly a majority of their naval admiralty still believed in battleships.
so no one was prepared to fight, no one wanted to see another generation of young men lost.
As well Intelligence wasn't what it is today. We talk about the German arms buildup but it wasn't brazen and in everyone's faces like some historians like to position. Hitler was adamant that the build up of planes and tanks and submarines was done secretly. They disguised factories as schools and hospitals and the German Counter Intelligence for a brief period of time showed some competence.
The other reason for the willingness to not fight was that there were a lot of people in governments in Britain, the US and even france who were sympathetic to Germany and on board with how the Nazi's were doing things. Lets not forget that to a lot of German's Hitler was the guy that pulled Germany out of a long dark night. He was a guy that was willing to wake up in the morning with two goals 1) Make German a strong serious player again 2) Tell France to go f themselves.
The horrors of the holocaust were well hidden until late int the war, and a lot of nations were ok with the forced removal of Jews from society.
There was no good reason to go to war with Hitler until he went after a major power. If Hitler wouldn't have gone after France, the World would have been content with Hitler going securing his gains and would have probably encouraged him and provided him with material support to go after Russia.
With Japan, if they hadn't attacked Pearl Harbor and gone into their Island hopping campaign and aimed for Australia, the American's probably would have been content with sitting out the pacific war and continuing to rebuild their navies strength based around a carrier doctrine.
