There's taking an alternate look at history, which I'm all for. Then there is this.

Does anyone reasonably believe that Nazi Germany would have stopped the advance as soon as their boots touched a line which said "British Empire"? I'll concede that, had the Empire stayed out it would have maybe had a stay of execution for a few decades but war would have broken out again and the Nazis would have come out on top. The British would be worse off, instead of losing Empire or gold they'd have lost everything.

The only way to avoid loosing it by force would have been to become complicit in the crimes of the Nazi regime. In doing so we'd have lost something intangible but vastly more valuable than empire, gold or homeland.

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[ Tim | History - NW Italy/French Rivera, Swiss Alps, Morocco | 2016 - Greece > Albania > Macedonia > Kosovo > Montenegro > Bosnia > Slovenia > Austria ]

There is a certain irony that UK recent history, i.e. the past couple of hundred years or thereabouts, relates to dealing with the despot Napoleon in close cooperation with the Prussians; this was followed in fairly short order with a need to deal with the Prussians themselves via their new-found Empire building.

I can see the need for France and Germany to have some form of integrated "management", "government", "economy" or whatever else it takes to keep them from further attempts to dominate the European mainland as individual nations.
(My recent travels in the Alsace region have been a timely reminder).
This need for their integration does not extend to that of other nations however.

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Dave

Well it's going off topic somewhat, but Britain was seen by Germany as a fellow aryan country, and one with a strong empire to back it up. Germany's eyes were always fastened on Lebensraum in the east, coupled with the Nazi hatred of communism. But I grant you that who knows what might have happened 20 years down the line. Despite the resources of the British Empire and its strong naval and air forces, it was ultimately Russia, not the Americans/Brits/Canadians, who defeated Germany on the ground—the western allies never faced more than one-third of the Wehrmacht.

Why did we get involved to support Poland? Why didn't we get involved to support Republican Spain when Germany and Italy were supporting Franco?

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

Some of the comments in this article made me chuckle

Post-Brexit trade deal with US could take 10 years, Obama warns - BBC News

"Countries could not "pull up the drawbridge" when faced with the migration crisis"

"Returning to the UK's place in the EU, Mr Obama said the US wanted the UK to be "at the table" influencing countries that might not see things from a US view."

"Despite criticism from pro-Brexit campaigners, he said he thought "ordinary British voters" would be interested in his thoughts on the UK and the EU."

I wonder what "Ordinary British Voters" look like?

Wayne

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The Balkans
https://new.horizonsunlimited.com/poi_entity/8417

President Roosevelt's Campaign To Incite War in Europe
Within that article are some interesting contrasts made between Hitler and Roosevelt.

Blockades of trade, in various forms - physical navies or trade embargoes - have always been a favourite method of starting a conflict, just as we have in place with Russia at present.

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Dave

Quite. Watch out for increasing demonisation of Russia over the coming months/years. The establishment mean to re-arm with new nukes and an enemy is required to justify this eye watering expenditure. Russia is it.

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So:-
I don't think that it is off topic, certainly not fully off topic.
Britain declared war on Germany in 1939 ostensibly to free Poland; Britain lost that declared war aim to the USSR.
Since then, research has shown that it was the then president of the USA who was fermenting the call to war in Europe for his own political aims. Germany was the chosen geo-political target, Italy was not specifically so and Franco's Spain got a bye.
In similar manner the public message of the American civil war was “to free the people from slavery”; in reality, the actual aim was to form an alliance of the individual States of that land under a single federal government via the imposition of a single currency, the latter being the single most significant factor in defining what a nation state is; a classic case of “ever closer union” by military means.
The same “ever closer union” aim is to be applied across Europe by means of economic conflict; in a word, homogeneous debt slavery.
The overall lesson is that populations should not conflate the public statements of their overlords (representative democracy, fascist or communist) with the real geo-political aims of their governments. In short, the publicly declared fine principles become marginal, at best, when it comes to real government decisions and actions and all politicians' promises have a “use before expiry date”.
Also, politicians will take stances within international affairs when they are struggling with their own domestic issues and their electorates (the USA is a current case in point that comes around every 4 years, Argentina is another); it is so much easier to pontificate to a crowd for which you have no actual responsibilities than to deal with those to whom you owe your position.


The USSR also won WW2 militarily, as Stalin reminded Churchill et al on various occasions.
Stalin was sufficiently ruthless that he sacrificed any number of his own people, that was necessary in his eyes, in order to achieve his aims; one estimate is 20 million.
As just one instance,.during the battle of Stalingrad some 10,0000 Soviet troops were shot by their own side to encourage the others to continue fighting.


The USSR also won the post-1945 cold war “peace” in terms of their political aims with their “land grab” of Eastern Europe (for 40+ years only) but it was clear that the soviets had little to offer to the subjugated populations; ironically, those East European nations found their own ways of throwing off the burden of communism, more or less led by the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 – that process was relatively peaceful in that no one declared yet another European “hot” war in order to liberate such nations. In other words, internal unrest was sufficient to bring these various disparate countries to find their own solutions to their conditions – and that process is ongoing and far from finished.
From Hungary or Austria, for instance, in the SE of Europe to, say, Norway in the North (yes, the latter is not in the EU but it is in the Shengen area) none of them needs a homogeneous Europe of “ever closer union” in order to satisfy their own populations.
Nor does the Ukraine, which is currently part of the intended empire building of the central European powers.
The EU/EC are not prepared to allow individual countries to evolve at their own pace; rather, in the Ukraine they interfered to bring down a legitimately elected government.
The people of the Netherlands recently held a referendum on a Ukrainian related issue and decided by 2/3 of the voters that they do not want this EU-sponsored deal with the Ukraine. It remains to be seen if their own government opts to ignore their electorate and support the proposals to bail out the bankrupt Ukraine.
References:
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers/Paul Kennedy
Stalingrad/Beevor

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Dave

As a follow up to my last post in here, the author of my last link wrote another later analysis, presented in 2008, about "the good war"; WW2.
The 'Good War' Myth of World War Two
It is this very emotion that the POTUS played upon during these last few days.

Historians are not in agreement about very much at all to do with that period.

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Dave

Great a link to an organisation established by a National Front member and widely accused of denying the Holocaust. IHR is also regarded as antisemitic and having links with neo Nazi groups

Not surprised. The "fear, uncertainty and doubt" of leaving the EU is clearly becoming a little less uncertain leading to more fear of Brexit. Inevitable that some will resort to even more extreme views.

Had unofficial confirmation this week that one of my clients, a major US multinational, have already established the plan to move their European HQ to Switzerland if we vote Brexit. Not if we leave; if the referendum votes "leave".

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Paul "Every county of England, every country of Europe and every (part of every inhabited) continent of the Earth" 94% done! What's left? Central America, East, Central and West Africa, Australia & New Zealand

A couple of useful, perhaps even insightful, comments on recent news items.
Use of the word “Queue”:-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...pm_world_pop_b


And some commentary, analysis and general overview of some of the arguments, with a twist in the tale/tail:-
Why should we take advice from a president who has surrendered the world to chaos?


As for earlier comments herein related to writers on the internet, I read and assess the message without recourse to who the messenger happens to be; in other words, it is best to make up your own mind about the veracity of any particular piece of information.


It is salutary to know that traditional-minded, closed-shop type of people holding a particular ideology (whether they be MSM, historians, environmentalists or whatever) and all the other self-interested groups find their current orthodoxies under challenge – long may it continue.
In the specific two cases of the writings of Mark Weber to which I linked, he cites a wide range of traditional, well-known historians in his writings and he makes a strong case in each of the two articles, irrespective of the background history of the website for which he writes.


However, the overall point is that the current dude in the White House has done nothing different from his predecessors, but he has been far less subtle – possibly because he is winding down and seeing out his period of notice?

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Dave

[QUOTE=Walkabout;536694]
In the specific two cases of the writings of Mark Weber to which I linked, he cites a wide range of traditional, well-known historians in his writings and he makes a strong case in each of the two articles, irrespective of the background history of the website for which he writes.
[QUOTE]

Your don't need to spend more than 10 minutes researching the IHR and Mark Weber to understand their agendas and attempts to change modern history through pseudo scholarly publications like their own Journal of Historical Review and their links with far right white supremacy movements

Mark Weber: The Professional Denier

I think I'll get my facts elsewhere thanks

Swiss facts:
1.They have 15% immigration at present.
2. This is of concern to the Swiss people who have made that clear in a referendum that gives their government two years to come up with a solution to what is considered to be excessive amounts of foreign workers imposed upon them by the EU regulations.
The two years expires around the end of this year.

Opinion:
The Swiss have a system of democracy that is the purest/nearest thing to a true democracy this side of utopia.

It does not pay for the Swiss government to attempt to ignore the result of the cantons' referendum (from memory, there are 16 of them and each and every one has a veto).

In any case, we will continue to be able to trade with the Swiss.

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Dave

Musing upon the UK economy, on the one hand we have a government in place (for now at least) that claims to subscribe to the laissez-faire (L-F) approach to everything, the economy, policy for education – everything.
A key exception lies in EU sponsored legislation which is implemented in UK law with alacrity and is then monitored and enforced by the best group of civil servants on this planet.

Meanwhile, our official “opposition” political parties have no answer to this L-F approach, being formed from and based on what amounts to discredited socialist ideology from the 19th century (even Cuba is joining in and is coming in out of the cold).
OTOH, the very same UK government (including anyone bought by the establishment) have claimed via their recent publications to be able to predict, to an order of accuracy of one decimal point, what will come to pass with the UK economy about 15 years from now.
So, we have a L-F approach to the economy on the surface but big government lies behind that; big government that is over-bearing, excessively prone to interfering and generally incompetent in that it takes short term decisions based on their own political expediency, especially when elections are in the offing.
Just put this down as some kind of anomaly or is it the best of both worlds?


Globalisation.
It's the way forward.
For trading that is.
It should be borne in mind that governments don't trade; it is businesses, and individuals, who trade – governments just get in the way, imposing national and international rules as a means of implementing their political power and influence.
But, nation states are extant; they are not going to disappear in some magical process of elimination leading to a utopian planet of world citizens, a single world currency, a single world of common taxation rates and free movement of billions of people from anywhere to anywhere else.
The evidence for this view is clearly seen within the ongoing Eurozone experiment; by any measure , it ain't working.
In the case of the UK, we have been selling off the family silver (to use one cliche) for many years – the net result is that what used to be considered to be key strategic industries are now owned by corporations based in other countries; Germany, France, India, China, USA, you name them.
Some recent examples:-
Tata Steel formerly “British Steel”, aka Corus, from India, will put the interests of their own home nation before those of the UK – their UK boss said as much to the House of Commons committee a couple of days ago.

SSI, another steel production company but based in Thailand, pull out of the UK closing down a plant for which they may* have received earlier grant funding from the UK government.
(Over the past years, various companies have done exactly this, receiving generous subsidies sourced from the UK government/taxpayers for local or national political reasons to set up a facility and then pulling out, virtually at no notice, once the subsidies have been paid into an overseas bank account and any time limitations imposed have expired).

EDF currently indulge in the internal politics of France rather than meet their commitments to UK national energy policy agreed (yet again) directly with the UK government.

The common factor is government interference in trade; a “we know better than those directly involved” approach.

Does any of this matter in the context of in/out of Europe?

*I haven't researched this because there are far too many examples in other industries; they are legion.
In addition, the recent decision to close down the SSI blast furnace was correct from an engineering point of view (and from an economic point of view, if one can get past politically inspired financial decisions, yet again).
Arguably, that plant should never have been re-opened in 2012.
Sahaviriya Steel Industries relights Redcar blast furnace | The Engineer
“This philosophy was, and could only have been dreamed up by individuals with a financial background. I can assure you they were not professional engineers”

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Dave

Here's another version of representative democracy that will be totally ignored, at least until next years' elections in France.
French National Assembly Votes to Lift Russian Sanctions

Edit:
That link will try to get you to sign up, and pay.

Here's the gist of the situation, as described by another online site:-
America and EU countries illegally imposed sanctions on Russia - Washington four times since March 2014 for fabricated reasons relating to Ukraine.

Nations unilaterally or collectively may not impose sanctions on other countries, individuals, businesses or organizations. International law permits only Security Council members to impose them.

They're counterproductive achieving nothing. The EU succumbed to heavy US pressure, instituting its own sanctions on Russian state-owned banks, defense and oil companies, as well as restricting sales of weapons, military and dual-use technologies, high tech and oil industry related products.

Russia responded in kind, banning imports of various EU agricultural products. Sanctions harm both sides, accomplishing nothing for either.

On Wednesday, 101 out of 577 lower house French National Assembly deputies voted on a non-binding resolution to lift sanctions on Russia - 55 for, 44 against and 2 abstentions, the majority of lawmakers not participating.

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Dave