War - A necessary evil?

Post Reply New Topic

Sorry no it was not sarcastic. What i was saying that you are right about resources, just in this instance the trouble was Britain and France ripping Gremany to pieces for its resources and forming the catalyst for the war. The cause was about resources but in a slightly different way to the idea you put.

Dent, are you saying Hitler was witihn his rights to do what he did? I can understand why you'd blame this on Britain, being Australian and all.

1. Of course Germany was not within its rights

2. Wars do not just start, it generally takes years if not decades of distrust, resentment, abuse etc(the causes for WW1 start back in the 1860's maybe even earlier).

After WW1 the British and the French demanded that Germany pay for all the damage that it inflicted on them during the war, this was called 'War Reparations'. The effect of this was to destroy the German economy.
So you now have a country that has lost a war then has had the added insult of the victors taking what ever they want and imposing conditions on them, (don't forget that no one really won WW1, Germany just ran out of resources before the allies. There was no military victory as such)
Adolf Hitler used the feelings that Britain and France had created, moulding the country into a super patriotic state. He worked on the resentment, poverty, humiliation brought about by the war reparations, without which he would not have succeeded. The logical end to this hyper patriotic fever was war.

What I am saying is that you need to look at the causes of war to try and prevent them (provided that you want to prevent them, I would suggest that many wars are deliberately started by organisations/states that have a vested interest Iraq is a prime example)
There is no doubt in my mind that the seeds to WW2 were sown by Britain and France. This is also why after the war the allies spent so much resources rebuilding Germany and Japan because they did not want a repeat. There were no war reparations after WW2, in fact Britain took much longer to recover than Germany because they focused on rebuilding Germany first.

I am not letting Germany off the hook but I am saying that Britain and France were complicit in causing this war

3. I am English not Australian, I just know a good county when I see it.

I hope this clears it up for you.

Everything in history has some sort of causation. Hitler's invasion of Poland was simply the directly provoking factor of WWII. The causes go far back. We could place the blame with the victors of WWI, who decided upon harsh terms, but we forget German militarism and the actions of the German establishment itself. We forget that Hitler might just have found another way to get in power. Definitely, the end of any war decides between who, when, and where the next will be fought.

I do believe that the start of World War II was justified, for the record. It was justified in that France and Britain were defending themselves against a provocative threat, by launching a pre-emptive strike. The major powers did not agree that the Treaty of Versailles could lead up to another war; France especially expected that the punishment inflicted upon Germany would put it down, like some naughty child, and that was their mistake. We cannot place all the blame with them.

It is my opinion that war is an inevitable-but-delayable process, as long as significant rivalries, conflicting ambitions, and misunderstandings exist. People can't agree on everything. There are greatly different perspectives, and also different, conflicting aspirations. The world is imperfect. War is just a violent means of achieving short and long-term objectives. Sometimes it is the only viable option. We don't have forever to sort out our differences. That will come as humanity matures. For the present, war may be the only option. This is still a cut-throat world in parts. Nations cannot try diplomacy indefinitely.

Would Hitler give into diplomatic pressure? Should we wait whilst enemies build up their forces and further lower our chances of victory? If we had just attacked Germany and deposed Hitler from power before the Wehrmacht was too strong, and not bothered with appeasement, World War II would have been fought between different sides. Perhaps between the Soviet Union and the west. Germany might have chosen communism.

Thing is, though, we needed a strong Germany as an ally against the Soviet Union. Leaders wanted Germany and Russia to fight each other, likely, but that did not all go to plan. They underestimated Hitler's aggressiveness, and realised that he was not going to provoke the USSR immediately. (Thank Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact.)
So, it had to go one way or another, and BritFranc leaders could not be seen as weak appeasers anymore, not after Germany had taken its conquest of Europe too far.
Let's go back two centuries, to the Napoleonic wars. Napoleon, too, wanted conquest of Europe, and look what happened. What are nations supposed to do when their interests are under threat? Fight, not sit back and let a conqueror slowly dominate the world!

Believe what you like. I refuse to accept that we are incapable of evolving our thinking to a point where war is unconscionable. I do not accept that if we had rebuilt Germany rather that destroy it Hitler would have found another way. Not intending the results of war reparations does not absolve the allies of complicity. We must not give in to war, education and understanding of the root causes of war is the first step in preventing them

To quote Einstein once more.

"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."

"The pioneers of a warless world are the young men who refuse military service"

"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."

"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."

Understanding what?

"The pioneers of a warless world are the young men who refuse military service"

Hippies or militaristic activists?

"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."

If you aren't prepared, then you will be overrun.

War is necessary to clear out inferior people and their cultures, you learn this the hard way when you grow up and travel a bit.

... I rather fight for money than for that.

"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."
- George Washington 1790.

"Let him who desires peace prepare for war."
- Vegetius 375 A.D.

"Those who beat their swords into plows plow for those who didn't."
- Anonymous

"The purpose of all war is peace."
- Saint Augustine, 354-430

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
- John Stuart Mill English economist & philosopher (1806 - 1873)

^
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
- John Stuart Mill English economist & philosopher (1806 - 1873

The views expressed above are vile and despicable. Personally I despise patriotism and nationalism, again education would show kids where these values take us


As I stated earlier I refuse to believe that we cannot evolve beyond the likes of George Washington and St Augustine.

@zakfriend I am 43 have travelled extensively, views like yours are just dumb and ignorant. Maybe you are one of the inferiors that need to be cleared out. You reckon that you have grown up Yeah right.

Spoken like a true neonazi.

What the f**k does that mean

Dogbrain is on a quest to be banned by insulting everyone. He's a bit "special".

Ahh so dog brain is not an avatar

A very Nazi way of thinking. I hope you're not serious.