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