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Originally Posted by NeilAllen  Didn't they? It was either "settle" with Hitler (ie surrender) or become Junior Partner to America. I don't think they really had much of a choice. |
Hitler never really desired a war with Great Britain (or France) but mostly just wanted the wrongs of Versailles corrected. Britain which was, for the most part, amenable to these demands, as they involved the reclamation of lands with (vast) majority German populations (the Sudetenland, Danzig, etc) which wanted to remain with Germany anyway.
Britain forced Germany's hand by giving Poland a "war guarantee" it could not back up, when talks between the Germans and the Poles on the subject of the return of Danzig to German authority were dismissed out of hand by the Polish government.
By doing so Germany was forced to treat with the Soviets, which through the twists and turns of fate eventually led to over four decades of the Cold War.
Churchill's bungling led his nation directly into
being the "Junior Partner to America" which it remains to this day. The British government's ham-handed diplomacy in the lead-up to war alienated Italy and Japan, both allies during the first war, into to become prime members of the Axis.
Had the Brits left Poland out to dry, Hitler's gaze would have remained eastward, where a Stalin/Hitler confrontation was inevitable, but would have spared the destruction of Western Europe in the process.
Hitler
was evil and would eventually have to be destroyed but the Nazi movement was much more about the man (Hitler) than the message (National Socialism). Communism was a much worse threat to Western civilization and outlived that monster Stalin by more than three decades. This goes squarely on the resumé of Mr. Churchill.