So Islam is a religion of peace?

The Sudetenland, perhaps, but the Rhineland? Most definitely not. Had the French defended the Treaty of Versailles with force, things would have turned out very differently indeed.

 

Thanks Dachs, that was really enlightening.

 

Yeah that would have been a military disaster. But the idea that Hitler was "testing" the Western Powers and emboldened after his "successes" is an artifact of the debate over appeasement, in which both sides believed Hitler was a conventional politician who would respond to political enticements, either positive or negative.
The evidence compiled after the war says Hitler was a man of apocalyptic vision who wanted a war, and found the British policy of appeasement frustrating. Combined with his hypochondria, Hitler was actually terrified that the British might continuously deny him the war he wanted until he died.

As for the issue of the Rhineland occupation, sure it looks like a lost opportunity now, but if they had been a war in '36 it'd probably be remembered as an incredibly stupid and evil action. First of all, the Casus Beli would be rubbish. The Germans were violating a treaty that virtually every power in Europe had violated, including the British who had just months earlier torn up the Naval Provisions over the objections of the Italians.

After that, yeah the war is a cakewalk, but what's the end game? Re-Impose the treaty of Versailles? De-Industrialize Germany? Break up Germany into Statelettes? Hold a Nuremberg style trial hang most of the Nazi and army leadership sans holocaust, sans the blitz, sans history of unjustifiable aggression?

 

I've never been happy with that argument. If they could have operated in the West, they would have, with no regard to what was going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. It makes no sense otherwise. This was not a situation where individual fighters were being tied down in one place, so they could not deploy elsewhere. Rather it seems the real situation is that they simply had a very limited ability to operate in Western countries. They had to use only people dedicated to their cause that could get past customs. And clearly they had only a handful of people like that. In Afghanistan we have overwhelmingly been fighting locals who just want us to not be in Afghanistan, and don't give a crap what happens outside of Afghanistan.

Now while I agree that going after al Qaeda where ever we can is worthwhile for a variety of reasons, I can't really see how the occupations of either country was really a benefit to doing that.

 

Out of interest, was that ever considered during the settlement to WWI? There seemed to be a popular belief, at least among the British, that not merely the Kaiserreich but a Germany state as such was a disruptive element, so it seems like that partition would have been considered at least in passing.

 

It was considered. Even those few who supported the idea soon decided that it wouldn't solve any more problems than it would create, and that enforcing was going to be much more trouble than it was worth.

 

The French really wanted an independent Rhineland to be a good idea, but as Dachs said, they found it was a very stupid idea despite their wishes.

 

Irrelevant. Shortly after those other conflicts ended, the violence against civilians almost always stopped quickly. Japan got it far worse than any Muslim nation ever did. But you didn't see Japanese trying to suicide-bomb Americans one year after the war ended.

One year later, one decade later, five decades later. Doesn't matter. No other group I know of has reacted to American violence as radically as Muslims have, nor directed the majority of that violence at American civilians.

 

Irish terrorists have been blowing up British civilians since the 1860s. Why don't we see you directing any diatribes against Popery as you do against the Mohammeteans?

 

Actually, Japanese soldiers continued to resist allied occupation in large numbers in South East Asia in the 1940s, and Japanese Far-Right terrorism is absolutely still a thing.

 

I'm so glad that somebody else is saying that. I was beginning to think that I'd imagined all those free holidays.

 

Eh, I think that diatribes against popishness from the likes of me more than make up for the conspicuous lack of same from the likes of him.

 

Indeed, a couple were still at it in the 70's.

Oh, I'm sorry. I mean the 70's.

 

So you can name one group of people that are regularly violent. <snip>

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Hooligans?

 

I've never known hooligans plant a bomb on a child's tricycle, no matter how rowdy they are.

 

They are a group of people that are regularly violent are they not?

 

That is so very not the point I was trying to make that it hurts.

 

Explain it, then.

 

I like how you generalise an entire religion as "violent."

As a Brit I am well familier with the IRA. Before 9/11 they were among the most violent terror organisations in the world. Before Osama was organising the blowing up of embassies the IRA were setting bombs at pubs.

The IRA were fanatics, so are al-Qaeda. It would be a error of judgement to use either of them to demonise a faith.