What if it includes yours?
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In hindsight, if we weren't in the war, we would have ended up the same way as France did during the war, would we not? Surely if we didn't take part in WWII there is a good chance that most of us wouldn't be speaking English right now? And surely not even being British would slightly impact the British Empire? :P
I'm not arguing that war wouldn't come eventually - although there's strong suggestions that Hitler never had ambitions on Britain and her Empire, rather he wanted to create a Empire of his own in a world which had already more or less been taken up by other colonial powers.
But let's assume that war would eventually come between the British Empire and Third Reich: we were in no position on the eve of war to fight such a large battle - having signed the ridiculous Washington Naval Treaty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty) - which meant we were much weaker than we should have been in the late 1930s. Secondly, if we were going to eventually have to fight the Third Reich then declaring war over Poland was ridiculous for the reason that as I said earlier, Poland wasn't of our interest and it was fruitless anyway as Poland is located in Eastern Europe and has always been a pawn of either Russia, France or the Prussian states (later Germany).
What we should have done is re-armed and waited until (if ever) an attack was made against us. We then would have had a reasonable objective in fighting the war (the preservation of the Empire against German aggression) and we would have been better prepared.
Not really. It's true that economically socialism was starting to grip - but that was true throughout the western world - and it's also true that whereas in the 1850s to around 1890 Britain was miles ahead of it's rivals, the inter-war period and after 1900 we had a rapidly rising America and a newly unified Germany as competitors ... along with a stronger Japan in the East. I wouldn't label it as 'decline' .. more as a fact of rivals appearing.
I think without the wars then we'd be talking about a world today where the US, British Empire and Germany would be more or less equal powers with no single power being the top dog - kind of like a world when it was the USA vs USSR as opposed to today where America is unchallenged as the world power.
But hey, the annoying thing is that we'll never know. :P
The problem with waiting though is sometimes it can be too late. What's to say that if we waited instead of fighting, we wouldn't have been ready and then easily defeated.
While we might have went to war with Germany for the wrong reasons I do feel it was the right thing to do in the end and I do believe we made a difference.
I don't believe you have so little value for your own life. Realistically, if you were going to be killed I am sure you would want someone to come and save you.
Quote:
First they came for the communists,and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.