Could have told that to the Spanish when they were being bombed by German planes. See, they thought they were a democracy being attacked by a fascist coup receiving political and military aid from the Nazis, but they didn’t realize that they didn’t have a land border with Germany, so it didn’t count. That was their real problem. See, the British got bombed when France was already Nazi, so that counted and they got liberated. Should have waited a few years. Rookie mistake.
I am kinda curious to know where you’re from now, but I don’t like being too explicit about that myself, so I won’t push it.
For what it’s worth, the first time I had a conversation about how fuzzy and arbitrary the “official” start of WW2 is I was in high school. “Wait, so Germany was bombing Spain since 1936 and Italy was straight up invading Ethiopia since 1935? How is that an ‘interbellum’?” didn’t require that much maturity to bring up.
I had good history teachers in high school, incidentally. Kudos to them.
I am kinda curious to know where you’re from now, but I don’t like to be too explicit about that myself, so I won’t push it.
The US. “Nazis were fucking around all over Europe, and attempts were made to ignore or appease them before Poland forced the issue” is pretty standard.
Yeah? Well, not being from the US that’s not quite how I heard that tale.
For one, who made the attempts? Gonna guess the implied “we” in that framing doesn’t include Ethiopia, Spain, Portugal, Italy itself and a bunch of others, right? Not much appeasement going on in Guernica, you’ll have to admit.
I mean, the underlying facts are the same, but appeasement as an attempt to pacify Germany versus appeasement as a politically convenient way to avoid intervention in areas where opposition to the fascists was heavily aligned with communist or broadly marxist stances are meaningfully different framings. Little of column A, little of column B, I have to assume. Lots of column ethnocentrism, almost certainly.
Could have told that to the Spanish when they were being bombed by German planes. See, they thought they were a democracy being attacked by a fascist coup receiving political and military aid from the Nazis, but they didn’t realize that they didn’t have a land border with Germany, so it didn’t count. That was their real problem. See, the British got bombed when France was already Nazi, so that counted and they got liberated. Should have waited a few years. Rookie mistake.
Yes, WW2 did not start at the first fascist interventions. Congratulations for knowing what every schoolchild is taught?
EVERY schoolchild?
I am kinda curious to know where you’re from now, but I don’t like being too explicit about that myself, so I won’t push it.
For what it’s worth, the first time I had a conversation about how fuzzy and arbitrary the “official” start of WW2 is I was in high school. “Wait, so Germany was bombing Spain since 1936 and Italy was straight up invading Ethiopia since 1935? How is that an ‘interbellum’?” didn’t require that much maturity to bring up.
I had good history teachers in high school, incidentally. Kudos to them.
The US. “Nazis were fucking around all over Europe, and attempts were made to ignore or appease them before Poland forced the issue” is pretty standard.
Yeah? Well, not being from the US that’s not quite how I heard that tale.
For one, who made the attempts? Gonna guess the implied “we” in that framing doesn’t include Ethiopia, Spain, Portugal, Italy itself and a bunch of others, right? Not much appeasement going on in Guernica, you’ll have to admit.
I mean, the underlying facts are the same, but appeasement as an attempt to pacify Germany versus appeasement as a politically convenient way to avoid intervention in areas where opposition to the fascists was heavily aligned with communist or broadly marxist stances are meaningfully different framings. Little of column A, little of column B, I have to assume. Lots of column ethnocentrism, almost certainly.