September 30, 2025 • 46 mins
It seems ridiculously irresponsible with the benefit of hindsight, but the concept of giving Hitler everything he wanted was the policy among the UK and France as a way to keep the world from sliding into a second world war. Turns out it didn’t work.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Chuck and we're just goose stepping to Jerry's orders like
usual here on stuff you should do. Oh no, no, no,
thank you. I'm glad you cleared that up for the
new listeners who are like, oh, these guys are Nazis.
They hadn't realized.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
No, this is I really enjoyed studying this one because I,
as you know, am not the biggest student of war,
so I never like sat around and watched the History Channel,
and this one is very much a History Channel type
of episode. So I feel like I have a much
better understanding of the lead up to World War Two.
(00:48):
And also it's amazing how much this reflects modern times
and what's going on with Russia and Ukraine for real,
for real, I kept going like, oh, oh, oh.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, I mean it's there's a very clear line you
can draw between what the Allies did to a peace
Hitler and what a lot of people are concerned that
the West is doing to appease Putin right now. And
you can also see, though, I think there's another lesson
to be learned too, where once you kind of understand
what the Allies did pre World War Two, why they
(01:19):
were trying to appease Hitler, which in retrospect from our
position here in history, seems like the dumbest, most cowardly
thing you could have done. Yeah, if you understand what
their actual reasoning was for that, and also that they
didn't have the benefit of hinde in sight, yeah, then
you can kind of understand a little more like what
a weird position we're in right now, you know, or
why people would even consider doing that to putin.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Now, Yeah for sure. Yeah, so I guess broadly we
should just say that appeasement was an official policy leading
up to World War or you know, they didn't know
there was going to be a World War Two. But
looking back once again, leading up to World War Two
that the Western Allies took where in a nutshell they
were basically like, you know what, let's sort of let Germany,
(02:04):
and we need to point out we're going to over
and over that they did not know Hitler was the madman.
We know him now, but.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
No, they mistook him terribly.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, they were like, let's let Germany. I think Hitler
just wants to kind of get Germany back on footing
after World War One and after the Treaty of Versailles
kind of wrecked Germany, and we need a strong Germany
in Europe, and like, let's give him what he wants
and he says he'll stop there, and we believe him.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, And like you said, they took Hitler to be
just like any other statesman leading a European power, which
was that he was a patrician colonizer who at the
end of the day answered to the aristocracy of his country. Yeah,
and that really he was more a threat to other people,
(02:48):
lesser people throughout the world whose lands he wanted to
turn into colonies. And we just needed to bring him
into the normal European way of doing things and Germany
will be back on its feet again. What was the
kind of the darker explanation of appeasement. Another explanation was
they had just been through World War One, yeah, a
dozen years before when all this really kind of started,
(03:09):
and no one was in the mood for a second
World war. So appeasement was the official policy by the
UK and France and then some of their supporters over
time that said, if we give you the stuff, you're
asking for now, we're hoping that eventually you're going to
reach your limit, you're going to get what you wanted,
and you're just going to be calm and everything's going
(03:31):
to be cool. From that point on, we won't have
to get in your way militarily, thus will avoid war.
So let's try this instead. So ultimately it was a
way to prevent World War Two. That was the entire
point of appeasement really from the outset.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Well, yeah, because I mean, at the time, like you said,
after World War One, none of these countries what would
end up being the Western Allies were in a great position.
They were still trying to build up armaments, some slower
than others. A Germany wasn't in a great position. So
it's kind of interesting. At the end, we're going to
go over a couple of like alternate histories of different
(04:06):
tacks that could have played out, or different plans that
they could have taken, and who knows how it would
have worked out. But I guess we should start with
the Treaty of Versailles, right, Yeah, for sure. So this
was after World War One and the Treaty of Versailles
came along and was signed, and it really it really
pounded Germany, and some historians even say like it went
(04:29):
too far as far as being punitive. Germany had to
reduce their army from one point nine million troops to
one hundred thousand, They had to get rid of most
of their navy, and they had to hand back territories
that it had taken over the last hundred years and
then pay hundreds of billion dollars in reparations.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah. So not only was it like financially strapping them,
remember this is the time when German hyper reinflation happened
during the Weimar Republic, which is allion World War one
and two. This is why. And then also it was
like demoralizing. It was meant to basically smack Germany down
and be like you're lesser. Now we're punishing you. And
so I saw a quote I forgot to send it
(05:10):
to you. I don't remember who said it, but essentially
they said, this is not a treaty, this is an
armistice for twenty years. And it was somebody who looked
at this in nineteen nineteen and twenty years later World
War two broke out. Because it was so punidle, there
was no way that the German people were not going
to eventually rise up in retaliation for this, and we
were going to have a second World War. So a
lot of people point to that treaty as being the
(05:33):
thing that didn't necessarily directly lead to World War two,
but it laid all the groundwork to create a populace
that was in a vengeful mood, that would be willing
to support somebody with such nationalistic fervor as Hitler.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yeah, and that's what Hitler was cooking up from the beginning.
He was basically like, Hey, we want to get Germany
back together. We need to get all of our rightful
lands basically where any Germanic peoples are and where anybody
is speaking German. And also, as we'll see, help out
any German minorities to our east, you know, which is
Russia and the Soviet Union at the time, because they're
(06:10):
going to come into play. And he whipped up this
nationalistic fervor that everyone in Germany got behind, and that's
you know what eventually would of course lead to World
War Two. But I guess we should take it sort
of chronologically, because there were a series of appeasements starting
in nineteen thirty five, kind of one after the other
(06:30):
until finally, you know, they could take no more.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, and just bear this in mind. Well, you're hearing
all of these like high points of how we moved
toward World War two thanks to Germany. Hitler followed this awareness,
or this belief by the UK in France that what
Germany really wanted to do was climb back out of
from under the Treaty of Versacience, just get back to
where they were before. So Hiller followed that to a t.
(06:56):
All of his demands, all of the aggressions that he
made were based on the Treaty of Versailles. And yet
in retrospect now we realize now these were he was
always going to try to go way further than that.
He was just playing upon the suppositions of the Allies
at the time.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Oh god, I mean, after studying all the stuff, he
played them for such suckers he did.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
And what makes it a little worse though, too, is
he wrote all this stuff out in nineteen twenty five,
and top it's all laid out that push to the
east you're talking about where he wants to make more
room for German nationals that are outside of Germany, the
lebens Schrom, which basically says we're going to Russia eventually,
Like they knew this for ten years before he really
(07:39):
became a huge problem, and everybody just ignored it.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah, oh yeah, he's like I wrote a book about it,
and I guess you guys don't read German because I
basically said what I was going to do, right, all right.
So nineteen thirty five was the first sort of wave
of appeasement, and this was the Anglo German Naval Agreement,
basically where Britain said, you know what, we know that
you're breaking the Treaty of Versailles because we know you're
(08:03):
building up your navy even though you were supposed to
scuttle your navy and go ahead and build a new fleet.
A lot of people saw that as just sort of
an initial surrender to what Hitler wanted. But Britain knew
that they were cheating already. They had six on the ground,
specifically an agent named Carl Krueger in their U boat
design office, which was a secret program at the time,
(08:26):
and they thought, hey, maybe we can get them to
build fewer U boats by endorsing them building these really big,
expensive battleships. It costs a lot of money and a
lot of raw materials, and it'll kind of kill their
U boat program. It didn't exactly work. They were supposed
to build seventy two submarines and ended up building fifty four.
(08:47):
But I don't know if they were like hooray about that.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So yeah, that in and of itself is a problem.
Like this grand policy of like making them spend resources,
it really didn't lead to that big of a reduction
politically speaking. It basically said the UK was endorsing now
Germany breaking the Treaty of Versailles by agreeing with them
that Germany could build its navy back up. Yeah, there
(09:11):
was also another thing that had nothing to do with Germany,
but really played into this later on. France was led
by a couple of different appeasement pro appeasement prime ministers
or premiers during this time, and they were good friends
with Italy, and Italy invaded Ethiopia, as you'll remember from
our Holly Selassie episode in nineteen thirty five, and France said,
(09:36):
you know what, go with it, Italy, we don't care
about that. Just promise us that if things go down,
if the S hits the Fan or le S hits
Lifhan you will be on our side against Germany, and
Italy said, yes, definitely, you got it one hundred percent,
and then they just went and ravaged Ethiopia.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Yeah, and we all know how that turned out in the.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
End, exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That was those first two were thirty five. In nineteen
thirty six, Germans west the Rhineland. They wanted to remilitarize
that area. That again went against the Treaty of Versailles,
because that was supposed to be a buffer zone the
western part of Germany. And they had there was a
chance here to force fully respond here because they had
(10:21):
Czechoslovakia and Romania saying like, hey, you know, we got
your back if you want to do anything, but France
had Britain basically did nothing.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
No Again, Frances kind of said, nah, we're kind of
busy with our own stuff, as we'll see, right, And
a lot of people also and who were heading the
politics in Western Europe at the time, were like, yeah,
good on them. Germany. They got that taken away from
him in the Treaty of Versailles. Let him have it back.
That's Germany, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
There was also the Anschluss, which was a different category
after the remilitarization of the Rhineland because this was where
they annexed Austria. Austria was a sovereign it was not
a part of Germany before World War One as far
as I know, Please God, don't let me be wrong
about that one. And Germany just said, Austria, you're now
(11:09):
part of Germany. You guys are Germanic by heritage, so
you're just part of Germany now. And the world just
turned their heads and said, yeah, I guess that's fine too.
You know, Germany's doing it's Germanic thing.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, and you know, we're going to talk a little
bit about public opinion here and there. But at the time,
this was March nineteen thirty eight, and this was Nebel
Chamberlain as PM in Britain, and the Bridge didn't want
to get involved. There was about a twenty five percent
in a survey were in favor of, you know, a
determinate policy, so you know, I guess that's not aggression,
(11:44):
but determine.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, most people were in favor of continuing to just
kind of go along with Germany restabilizing or regaining what
it had before the Treaty of Versailles. Because again, this
is what people are thinking. But if you'll notice, we
started to pick up speed a little bit here, like
bigger things are so var to happen. That was March
of nineteen thirty eight when they took over Austria, and
then in September Hitler had been basically making speeches where
(12:09):
he was saying, hey, there's this part. He called it
the rump of Czechoslovakia that butts up against Germany. That's
really actually Germany. It's called the Sudan Land, and it's
just basically this mountain range. Czechoslovakia doesn't care about it,
but we care about it because we're reuniting Germany again.
So we want that and we're going to go take it,
(12:29):
whether you want us to or not. And Neville, Chamberlain
and PM Edouard de Dalier all ran to Mudich to
meet with Hitler on his own ground and said here,
what do you want. Well, let's make a deal.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, And Hitler said, well, I've told you what I want.
I want this northwestern part of Czechoslovakia. We call it
the Sudetan Land. And they said, all right, you can
have that, but you got to promise, like, you know,
put your hand on this Bible, raise your right hand,
and you got to promise you to do anything else.
In Czechoslovakia. That's it. It stops there. And this is
(13:03):
where things are really I feel like echoing what's going
on in Ukraine like a putin. You know, eventually you're
going to get this stuff that you've conquered, but you're
going to stop there, right, And that's what happened back then.
The Czechs were an ally to France. In Britain at
the time, they were not even invited to the summit,
again echoing things that we see going on today. And
(13:27):
at the time there were even some German generals that thought,
like early on in September thirty eight when this happened,
they were like, hey, listen, if the Allies get behind
Czechoslovakia here, we could be in trouble. So there was
some kind of bluff calling happening basically, but Britain kind
of said no, let's let them do this, and they
steered France to do the same and pressure Czechoslovakia to submit,
(13:50):
and that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, and Czechoslovakia is like, fine, they can have the
sue date and land. We weren't even invited but we'll
go along with it because our ally, France is telling
us to keep in mind, an ally is not just
like we're friends with you, we think you're pretty cool,
and ally means like you usually have some sort of
documents or treaties saying, Okay, somebody tries to take part
of your country, we're going to come back you up militarily.
(14:12):
And when the Chips came down, France said no because
Great Britain was steering them. And one other point about
all this that's kind of hidden in there. Great Britain
was in a position to steer France because you could
make an argument that it was still the world's superpower.
The Empire was on the wane, but still by the thirties,
twenty five percent of the global population and twenty percent
(14:34):
of the earth's land masks were under British control. So
Britain was in a global position to basically set the
stage of how to deal with Germany, and the UK
decided appeasement was the way to go, so everybody else
kind of follow it along.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, all right, So that's September of thirty eight. They
give them the you know, they say you can have
this portion of Czechoslovaki as long as you promise not
to go in seven months later in March of nineteen
thirty nine, and he went into the rest of Czechoslovakia
just like he wrote in his book basically, so you know,
Hitler renigged on that promise of course to leave Czechoslovakia
the rest of it alone. And that was like the
(15:13):
real decisive moment because I think I feel like that's
when Hitler was probably like, man, these guys are are
cowards and they're letting me do whatever I want. And
very quickly thereafter that was March of thirty nine. September
of thirty nine is when he invaded Poland, and then
it was on.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Yeah, and even before he invaded Poland, once he renegged
on the Czechoslovakian deal, the Munich Agreement, he showed the
world like you like I'll tell you whatever you want
to hear, I'm not going to back it up. So
he immediately destroyed the policy of appeasement. Like appeasement policy
had about as much traction as like yesterday's non winning
(15:51):
lotto ticket that you'd find in the gutter, covered in
gum and maybe a little bit of blood from somewhere Yeah,
like that was appeasement. After we'll put after the invasion
in Czechoslovakia, I got there eventually.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, but you know, Poland was invaded, and that's really
what kicked off. Like the beginnings of World War two.
Hitler tried to provoke war with Poland by saying, hey,
I want Danzig, not the band, no, but still the
city of Danzig and Prussian territory that was granted to
you in nineteen nineteen after World War One. We feel
(16:23):
like it is ours. And Britain and France, you know,
they made guarantees to Poland at the time. But in August,
it was pretty shocking at the time, the Nazis and
the Soviets signed a pact to partition Poland out and
basically said you come in from the east, we'll come
in from the west, and Poland is ours. And two
days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yep, and I think that is a great place to stop.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah, boy, what a robust set up.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
We'll be right back, So chuck where we left off.
(17:20):
Hitler had just invaded Poland and the UK and France
declared war on Germany. It took a lot what that
showed everybody was that appiasement was dead. The whole policy
had just shifted down to either containment or out and
out war now that they had had declared war. But
(17:42):
this was like there was a lot of reasons for
appeasement to have been tried. We talked about some of them,
but a big one was the UK was really holding
on to that that world's greatest superpower status as hard
as they could, and another world war put that in
like real Shepard put him in a precarious position.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, I mean they were, you know, everybody was trying
to rearm themselves, like I said earlier, since World War One.
Some a little quicker than others. I think the United States,
as will learn, wasn't making the greatest rearmament effort because
Congress is kind of chilling the purse strings back when
they could do stuff like that. But the writing was
(18:23):
on the wall for the UK. They were like, we
were not in any position, even though we're supposedly the
world's greatest superpower to fight Germany, Japan and Italy all
at the same time to prevent them from expanding their territories.
Like that's just not a possibility. And we might have
to enter an alliance with the US. If worst comes
to worse, we might have to enter into an alliance
(18:45):
with the USSR. And that's just gonna make them, I mean,
that's gonna lessen their their their stance and their power
worldwide if they have to do stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, and with their their prestige or power lessened like
on world stage, that's the kind of thing that can
spark decolonization movements. So they were worried about Jamaica, they
were worried about India, they were worried about Nigeria. All
of a sudden, being like the UK has overextended itself,
now's the time to declare independence from the UK. And
(19:16):
not just the prestige that was lost, but more to
the point, the resources or aw materials, all the stuff
that Great Britain extracted from these colonies that would be
lost as well. So what Great Britain wanted was no
war please, at least in part to preserve its empire.
Other people who were in the British Parliament and the
(19:36):
government basically said, we're going to have to go to war,
it's inevitable, but we're supporting appeasement right now because we
need to stall for time to rearm ourselves, like you
were saying.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Right, which, as we'll see, also allowed Germany to do
the same yea, either through rearmament by building things or
by storming Czechoslovakia and all of a sudden they had
all their stuff. But appeasement was popular for a long time.
Throughout most of the nineteen thirties. The public didn't want
to go to war again. They were shaking off of
(20:08):
World War One hangover. Still, no one wanted to go
to a war that was more technologically advanced, like pretty
rapidly since World War At the end of World War One,
for a second World War, I think in nineteen thirty seven,
sixty two percent of British men said they wouldn't volunteer
and seventy eight percent of women said they would not
urge their husbands to go fight mm hm. And even
(20:30):
after the Munich Agreement, when Czechoslovakia was left hanging out
to dry, seventy five percent still approved of appeasement in
Great Britain.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Yes, and so there was like a lot of anti
war anxiety. Apparently people had died by suicide, there were
mental health problems. All of the appeasement pro appeasement sentiment
was also bolstered by the Times and I believe the
BBC two, which portrayed Hitler as a moderate, basically saying
like it could get way worse than that, let's just
(21:01):
deal with this guy. And then the reason why this
matters is because at the time Britain had recently enfranchised
it's women, like more and more people were voting, so
the public opinion about stuff mattered more and more to
the people calling the shots politically. And we'll also see
that also turned the politician's views against appeasement as public
(21:22):
opinion changed on appeasement. Two.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Yeah, for sure, and you know there was a string
of pms that were all for it. Neville Chamberlain was
the third British PM. He was in there from thirty
seven to forty during this time of appeasement, so it
wasn't just Chamberlain. I think he's kind of There's two
things I feel like from Great Britain that are remembered
is and you know, it depends on how you want
(21:46):
to look at it, but I think a lot of
people eventually framed Neville Chamberlain as a coward and Winston
Churchill as a hero because he was one of the
only ones that was like this guy Hitler, like, I
don't think you guys see the right on the wall here,
He's not going to stop and this appeasement thing is
no good.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah. And he also, I mean he still alone basically
in his party. The conservatives were like, yeah, we're all
pro appeasement at least at the time. So he definitely
stood on his own in France. France also had lost
a lot of people and a lot of money in
World War One and was not very eager to do
a redo of it. But they were still anti Germany.
(22:26):
Like France was not a friend of Germany. They did
not want to be friends of Germany. Their alliances were
against Germany. But ultimately, and this is what's crazy to me,
it was racked by far right and far left internal
political conflict.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah at the time, yeah, yeah, they were kind of
in an inter stalemate almost, right.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
And so they were whether they wanted to be or not.
They were fairly drawn into domestic affairs rather than foreign affairs,
and it wasn't until Edouard d' laudier became Prime minister
that they really started to branch back out into foreign affairs.
But even then they were pretty pro appeasement, so they
didn't really have much of a stomach for going into
(23:09):
a second World War, understandably, but they didn't feel like
they were in a place to do anything, so essentially
they just went on the defense. They did not they
weren't going to go into a policy of containment or
anything like that.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah. Yeah, as far as the US goes, at the time,
we had FDR in there, Roosevelt was in there, and
he endorsed appeasement, like officially, he endorsed the Munich Agreement.
They were into isolationism at the time and trying to
stay neutral. And we were also in no position militarily because,
like I mentioned, we were kind of you know, we
(23:44):
were also depleted by World War One and moving along
a little slower than even other eventual Allied countries because
Congress was kind of pulling those purse strings a little
tight as far as building the military back up.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah, and I think that you can make a case
that any country that was involved in World War One
really lost its appetite for war after that, like, yeah,
to an amazing degree, understandably for sure. And then there
was another group of pro appeasers who was the Britain's aristocracy,
and the reason why is because they wanted things to
(24:15):
just basically, let's just go back to where we colonize
other places. And really it's the aristocracy running things. And
we're all related, and I'm your cousin, you're my cousin,
and we're all three somehow married, but we all run everything.
We're all just crazy rich let's keep doing that. And
they saw Hitler as somebody who could help keep that
kind of status quo or get back to that kind
(24:36):
of status quo. The group that was opposed to Hitler though,
they were the Soviets, and they were communists, and the aristocrats,
who enjoy wealth inequality do not typically like communism more communists,
so they wanted to steer Britain away from any kind
of alliances with the USSR that could support communists or
(24:56):
socialists in Britain and their causes, and more towards Hitler
because Hitler's policies kind of jobbed with the aristocracy's views
a little more.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, And I mean they were sort of actively courting
one another because they saw Hitler as somebody who could
you know, like you were saying, kind of let them
keep their their lifestyle in check right and Hitler in
Germany did nothing to make them think otherwise. You know,
they were playing on those peers of communism for sure.
They're like, you know, you got a lot of dough.
You know what happens when communism happens, And that, you know,
(25:27):
sent a chill through the British aristocratic scene.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yeah. They were known to say, croiky.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Right, break time or shall we go on with Churchill?
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Give me a break, Chuck, break me off a piece
of that ad break bar, Oh.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Boy, we'll be right back all right. So that might
(26:10):
have been the best ad segue ever.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
With the R.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
So I just I didn't see an allusion to kit
kat oh in this episode.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Thanks all right.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
So we mentioned Churchill sort of briefly before. Churchill was like,
we said, one of the sort of few outspoken dudes
that was like, no, we can't do this. He visited
Germany in nineteen thirty two and he was like, these
Nazis mean business. I don't think you guys understand what's
happening here. And he said, if we can see to Hitler,
things are going to get much worse. We have to
(26:42):
re arm ourselves, you know, quicker and get those factories
to work. But you know, that's the kind of thing
that can wreckon economy. So that's if people are wondering, like, well,
why didn't they all just rearm as fast as they could,
it's because it costs a ton of money and people.
So it's not great for the economy to have to
build that war machine backup. But he was founding the
drum to do so.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, and his whole take on Hitler, including the Munich Agreement,
which he called a total and unmitigated defeat. This is
where the Allies went to Hitler and said, we'll let
you have part of Czechoslovakia, just don't invade the rest
of Czechoslovakia. He like, when Neville Chamberlain came back to
the UK, he was like basically waiving the agreement and
saying he had negotiated a peace for our time that essentially,
(27:25):
like aggression from Germany was done. We were all going
to live in peace again. And it lasted a year
before we were at war with Germany. So it made
Chamberlain look pretty bad. It made Churchill look like very
foresightful and exactly the kind of guy that you would
want to fight Hitler. So essentially, after they got rid
of Chamberlain, the UK went to Churchill and said, you
(27:46):
don't like Hitler. We understand that we don't like Hitler
anymore now and so Europe.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Yeah, and you know a lot of people said that
was his aim, was to increase his political profile, and
you know who knows it. That was his aim, but
it worked. He took overs PM in nineteen forty after Chamberlain,
like you said, and he wanted he basically later on
was like, hey, if we would have had a policy
of deterrence instead of appeasement, we might have prevented this
(28:14):
war to begin with. You know, Britain and France should
have strengthened our relationship, and that was our best hope
was maybe to form what he called a grand alliance
with the Soviet Union, even in eastern European countries. But
the Soviet you know, there was a lot of distrust
of the Soviet Union, especially you know, like we mentioned
the aristocracy who wanted to hang on to their pounds,
(28:38):
and of course what Stalin was doing, you know, they
didn't trust that either. So he was not going to
get support from the British or the French to sort
of be tougher.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
No, but as we'll see later, it was not a
bad plan. Could have changed things dramatically. Yeah. One of
the other things that made Churchill such a strident voice
about opposing Germany is that he had intelligence. I guess
as a Minister of Parliament, he had men on the inside. Yeah,
and he had an intelligence report from somebody in Germany
(29:10):
saying that Germany had a mean spirit of revenge, brutality,
amounting in many cases to best reality and complete ruthlessness.
And this is at a time when Chamberlain and Daladier
are basically saying, like, Hitler's our friend, we just need
to keep keep negotiating with him. He's getting reports about
how they're just brutal and ruthless, and those panned out
(29:32):
to be true.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Yeah. Uh. We mentioned FDR in the US earlier that
officially they supported a peacement because they would not, you know,
sign any kind of formal agreement with the UK or France.
But on the inside, the administration was definitely trying to
kind of say, hey, UK, you gotta you got to
change your stance here. You gotta, like Hitler means business
(29:54):
and only your military can can deter this guy. At
this point, but on the outside they were, you know, officially, like, hey,
we're not involved. This appeasement sounds pretty good to us.
And like we said, you know, the people of Britain
were largely for it, and most of the people were
didn't want to go back to war until the Crystal
(30:14):
Knacht on November nineteen thirty eight. That's when Germany, you know,
for the first time, attacked its own citizens and destroyed
Jewish businesses and synagogues, killed about one hundred Jews and
arrested about one hundred thousand. And that's when the public
at large, kind of all around the world was like, oh, okay,
that's what this guy's about. This cannot stand right.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
And remember now with the UK having all of these
new voters, their opinion mattered, so that helped change things too.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yeah, I wish I knew how to say too late
in German.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
You don't. You didn't learn that in high school.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
No. I was trying to think of I.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Can think, can you sound it out letter by letter?
Speaker 1 (30:57):
No?
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Oh wait, you'd have to know the word to do that.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
No. I remember what Canuts in the Mouse did and
at Hans Peter's house because I remember reading that chapter
over and over and over.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
What did he do?
Speaker 1 (31:10):
I really don't remember, but that the my friend Rad
and the cartographer in Montana. He'll be the only person
in the world that gets that joke, because it was
just a lot of stuff about canuts in the mouse
and his owner Hans Peter, who was you know that
German textbook stuff?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Okay? Was that like the German high school classes equivalent
of the Little Prince in the French Probably gotcha, I
understand exactly what you mean.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah, it's fun on a big show like this to
make a joke for one human.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
So why not. So there's one other group, chuck that
we didn't talk about what they thought of a peace man.
That was the Nazis themselves in Hitler, and they loved it. Yeah,
probably not a big surprise. They saw it as a
clear sign of weakness by the world's leading powers, that
they that Hitler in Germany could do whatever it wanted
(32:01):
and France and the UK were just gonna bow their
knees and their heads in front of Hitler and the
people of the of Germany itself also picked up on
this too, like Hitler had, remember, he had taken power.
It wasn't like you know he wasn't fully supported yet.
There was like a courtship period that was still things
(32:22):
were up in the air. But when he came back
and said, I got back the Rhineland, I got back
to dayton Land, I got us Austria. What's next, you know?
And I did it all without a single shot fired. Yeah,
these guys just gave it back to us because that's
what they think of Germany. With me leading it, the
German people just went nuts. And Hitler was was the guy.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
He was Derfer.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
That was the day Hitler became der Feurer.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, that's it, man, You just walked off of a
History Channel show. You dropped the mic in the sound
studio and left. One thing we can say is that
appeasement did achieve the aim of rearmament. That was kind
of one of the goals, Like we said a few times,
is that, you know, everyone was trying to put this
off so they could build back up their war stock
or whatever, and that happened. Britain spent less on arms
(33:12):
than Germany did from nineteen thirty five to nineteen thirty nine,
but they had the highest proportion of their GDP devoted
to building up their armaments in nineteen forty, and in
nineteen thirty they rebuilt the navy to the you know,
once again the world's strongest navy. Shout out to British Seapower,
one of my favorite bands. And early on, you know,
(33:34):
they had outpaced Germany. And you know, we're going to
talk about the alternate histories here shortly, like what if
they had done something. They're in a pretty good position.
They between Britain and France. Their coalition had a five
to one armament superiority over Germany early on and France.
The fallow of France in nineteen forty apparently, and I
(33:55):
don't know enough about this stuff, but from what I've read,
it wasn't because they were unprepared and didn't have enough
bombs and things. Apparently it was about poor leadership at
that point.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah. I couldn't find enough by that myself to speak
confidently on it. All I know is that France did
not put up much of a fight from what I
remember from the history books. Yeah, well, let's talk about that, Chuck,
Let's talk about those alternate histories, especially with the view
of armament. Because Neville Chamberlain, when he basically couldn't get
a coalition government together anymore after Hitler rinegg Don the
(34:25):
Munich agreement, and he was replaced like we saw with
by Winston Churchill in nineteen forty. That same year he
died of cancer after Chamberlain was removed. But he spent
that time basically saying like I bought us time. Appeasement
bought us time to rearm. And he's right, like you
showed like Britain did have a chance to rearm. But
(34:47):
there was a really critical window that we know about
now where that policy of appeasing in order to rearm
didn't make sense, and that was about nineteen thirty to
nineteen thirty nine. And the reason was is because France
and the UK were rearming at a rate close to
Germany and were actually even overtaking it a little bit,
(35:09):
and they could have put up a fight against Germany
and probably one especially together combining their stuff in nineteen
thirty eight. By nineteen thirty nine things had changed. Germany
had gone even further overdrive into war production, but more
to the point, they had taken over Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia had
all sorts of munitions factories. Czechoslovakia had all sorts of
(35:32):
people you could could script into free labor aka slave labor.
There's all sorts of stuff that happened when they took
over Czechoslovakia and it tipped the balance whipped way up
in favor of Germany's military after that. So that period
nineteen thirty eight to nineteen thirty nine, appeasement did the
exact opposite, and it made the war way worse than
(35:53):
it would have been had the UK and France said
this is as good as going to get we gotta
go now.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Well yeah, and you know, it also possibly made the
war worst and a lot of people say it definitely
made the war worse than it would have been because
in nineteen forty Britain's holding out against Germany and they're
both seeking resources all around the world that you needed
to get to win a world war, and that just
(36:19):
expanded the war basically made it into a global thing,
a much larger thing than it might have been otherwise. Right,
deterrence might have avoided all of that if they would
have formed a grand alliance and bonded their powers early on.
You know, because I mentioned earlier there were even generals
within Germany's it's kind of a bluffing game. Like, hey,
if these guys get together, like, we're not the best
(36:41):
position right now. And so while they were buying time,
it helped Germany increase their war chest. And yeah, that's
the rest is history.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Right, But speaking of alternate histories, there were other options
that the UK had on the table, and now speaking
about them, like in retrospect, it's mind boggling to even think.
But the first one's a little more understandable or palatable.
Had the UK simply just not declared war after Germany
invaded Poland, that was an option to them on the table.
(37:12):
They didn't have to do it. France had already set
the precedent of not backing up Czechoslovakia when it was
taken over by Germany. The UK could have just not
done that too. And one thing that could have backed
this up, that could have supported actually that position in
the UK just sit back and let it play out
on its own, because it was inevitable essentially for the
(37:35):
USSR in Germany to clash because of that Lebenschrom policy.
That policy of the East actually belongs to Germany and
we're going to go take it right.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Yeah, And you know that played out by eventually with
Operation Barbarossa with the invasion of the Soviet Union in
June nineteen forty one. Some people say like, and you know,
of course this sounds completely ridiculou to think up now
with hindsight. But some people are like, you know, the
UK could have allied with Germany early on. They I mean,
(38:09):
I think one of the reasons they didn't. It's not
because they knew this Hitler guy was a madman. Again,
that came later. It was because of the colonies that
you were talking about that they had all over the world, right,
Germany also had colonies all over the world, and they
had a conflict. I think Britain wasn't gonna say here,
why don't you, why don't you take our African colonies?
(38:30):
And Germany definitely didn't like the way Britain looked at race.
They had a pretty different idea on that. And so
if they had any kind of alliance, they would have
had surrendered their liberal imperialism and they really weakened their
status as in international superpower.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Yeah, they would have had to fall in line with
basically the way Germany viewed the world. Yeah, just wrapping
your mind around that is not easy to do. Like
the UK doing that, and Kyle, who's our man on
the end in the.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
UK, right, Yeah, he's right in I six agent exactly.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
He pointed something out that I thought was pretty interesting
too that he basically said, the fact that Crystal knocked
and the news of what the Germany had done to
its own Jewish citizens, Yeah, how that turned British public
opinion just basically showed like, even if Britain did try
to allie with Germany, it was never going to work out. Yeah,
it was probably the least likely of all of it.
(39:23):
And then also, Chuck, you can't help us being Americans
to wonder could America have sat out World War two?
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Yeah, you know, we declared war after Pearl Harbor on
Imperial Japan. That followed or following that, Germany declared war
on US in December nineteen forty one, and you know,
maybe we could have evaded getting involved in the European theater.
We definitely got mired in the Pacific theater with Japan.
(39:53):
We weren't really It's not like the US wasn't on
the Nazis radar, but we weren't really a big part
of their foreign policy in the nineteen thirties. Yet right,
because again, isolationism was kind of our bag at the time.
Our army wasn't very big. We had in nineteen forty
we had five divisions compared to Germany's one hundred and
forty one. And Congress definitely was not going to like
(40:14):
get behind Roosevelt entering the European theater at the time.
So there were a lot of reasons why it looked
like the US maybe could have avoided that mess.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Yeah, but historians say probably we were going to get
drawn in one way or another, because, like you said,
Germany did declare war on the US essentially to show
Japan like, hey, we're in this together. You guys, just
handle the US. So that was going to happen, whether
we tried to stay out of it or not. And
then he also knew that we were a threat and
(40:47):
that we would eventually be online armament wise to really
make a significant contribution. He predicted by nineteen forty two.
I think we started before then. And then even more
than that, Roosevelt was already giving permission for US battleships
to shoot and destroy U boats that were operating in
the Atlantic because they had started targeting American shipping and
(41:09):
Hitler was not very happy about that, So the US
was probably not going to be able to stay out
of World War two.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
The alternate history, I guess that gets meatchuck is was
the earliest when Germany remilitarized the Rhineland and flagrant violation
of the Treaty of Versailles. Had the UK and France intervened,
this is nineteen thirty six. I mean, imagine if they
had just done something then and contained Hitler then, and
(41:39):
remember there was this courtship period or whatever, where you know,
Germany hadn't really wasn't really sure about Hitler at the time.
Had he been undermined that thoroughly on the international stage,
who knows would have happened to him as the leader
of Germany, right, And they could have done something because
at the time France had one hundred thousand troops near
(41:59):
the border with Ryanland. Germany only moved thirty five thousand
troops into the area. Prints could easily repel that and
been like, it's your move, Germany, what are you gonna do?
And Germany might not have done anything. And even if
Hitler had done something, it probably would have been against
the advice of his military advisors. So now he would
(42:21):
have personally been taking Germany to war. That's a lot
to seek your reputation on. And that one thing in
nineteen thirty six could have completely avoided the death of
tens of millions of people and it didn't do it
because of internal left right politics.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Wow, oh man, that that was good stuff. Like this
is my favorite kind of stuff. You should know when
forty five minutes later, like I know, probably one hundred
percent more than I knew before about World War Two.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Very nice, Chuck. Yeah, I didn't know almost any of
this either. I love that stuff too. And I know
we just talked about the US and in the UK
and France's alternate history. But if you want to come
up with an alternate history of for World War Two
in your country, let us know, hit the history textbooks
and come back with what you got. And we'd love
to get that kind of thing. In the meantime, while
(43:13):
we're waiting for your listener mail, we'll listen to Chuck
with a new listener mail.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Yeah, somebody just sends this man in the High Castle
no plagars and please, which I never saw or read.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
I didn't either, but it's supposed to be pretty good.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah, maybe I'll check that out at some point. It
sounds like it'd be right up my own.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
It's too depressing for me, that kind of stuff. That Yeah,
and like things that normalize billionaires, I can't take it anymore.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Like d Snyder, All right, what is this? This is
from Chris? Oh yeah, this is just a nice thing. Hey, guys,
wanted to write in for a while now. First of all,
I always appreciate the wide variety of topics you cover,
especially the ones born of your own natural curiosities. As
a former middle school science teacher, I saw my primary
role as instilling curiosity in my students and modeling for
(44:03):
them how to chase those curiosities, and your approach really
resonates with me. But the one thing I didn't pay
enough attention to back when I was in the classroom
was the art of communication that you guys display in
every episode. If I still had a classroom full of students,
I would use your show not only for the content,
but also for lessons in respectful communication. So much discourse
we hear today is loud and angry and doesn't give
(44:24):
people space to express themselves without being interrupted, mocked, or
refuted somehow, you guys seamlessly pass the baton of communication
to one another without speaking over one another, contradicting each
other's in complete thoughts or negotiating the communication flow through
general awkwardness. Even when one of you have a follow
up comment that may provide a differing or correcting perspective,
(44:45):
you always give space for the other to finish their
thought before weighing in, and the follow up comments are
thoughtfully delivered and received. Thanks so much for all you do.
I appreciate your authentic, respectful delivery of interesting content. You
guys keep my brain awake and smiling. And that is
from Chris Christine Sewell in Bloomington, Illinois And Chris. One
(45:05):
of the reasons is because we almost always agree with
each other on this stuff. I disagree, so it makes
it kind of easy.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Yeah, no, for sure. And that's something that still kind
of surprises me to this day, where like just our
common view is so in step with one another. Where
I mean, like there's so many things that are different
about It's like our personalities are pretty different.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Bladly different.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Yeah, I would say, will we sure, I'll go with that, Okay,
But when you come down to like, what do you
think about this? What do you think about this? What
do you think about that? It's generally in the same
not even ballpark, in the same hot dog stand of
the same ballpark.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Yeah, I don't think the show would have worked for
so long if you and I just were sort of
at odds over every little thing. And I think that
stuff that Christine is talking about too is so much
of media today is set up to do that because
that gets ratings, I guess. So they'll put people that
they know have different viewpoints and put them down in
chairs next to each other and that's just like.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
The Yeah, but it's like the Simpsons taught us, if
you just don't look, it'll eventually go away. So you
don't like that kind of media, just don't watch it.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Well, thank you Chris. That was really really nice. We'd
love hearing that kind of stuff. That's just a really
kind email, and we thank you for it. If you
want to be like Chris and send us a kind email,
we are always open to receiving one of those. You
can send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts, My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Chuck and we're just goose stepping to Jerry's orders like
usual here on stuff you should do. Oh no, no, no,
thank you. I'm glad you cleared that up for the
new listeners who are like, oh, these guys are Nazis.
They hadn't realized.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
No, this is I really enjoyed studying this one because I,
as you know, am not the biggest student of war,
so I never like sat around and watched the History Channel,
and this one is very much a History Channel type
of episode. So I feel like I have a much
better understanding of the lead up to World War Two.
(00:48):
And also it's amazing how much this reflects modern times
and what's going on with Russia and Ukraine for real,
for real, I kept going like, oh, oh, oh.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, I mean it's there's a very clear line you
can draw between what the Allies did to a peace
Hitler and what a lot of people are concerned that
the West is doing to appease Putin right now. And
you can also see, though, I think there's another lesson
to be learned too, where once you kind of understand
what the Allies did pre World War Two, why they
(01:19):
were trying to appease Hitler, which in retrospect from our
position here in history, seems like the dumbest, most cowardly
thing you could have done. Yeah, if you understand what
their actual reasoning was for that, and also that they
didn't have the benefit of hinde in sight, yeah, then
you can kind of understand a little more like what
a weird position we're in right now, you know, or
why people would even consider doing that to putin.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Now, Yeah for sure. Yeah, so I guess broadly we
should just say that appeasement was an official policy leading
up to World War or you know, they didn't know
there was going to be a World War Two. But
looking back once again, leading up to World War Two
that the Western Allies took where in a nutshell they
were basically like, you know what, let's sort of let Germany,
(02:04):
and we need to point out we're going to over
and over that they did not know Hitler was the madman.
We know him now, but.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
No, they mistook him terribly.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, they were like, let's let Germany. I think Hitler
just wants to kind of get Germany back on footing
after World War One and after the Treaty of Versailles
kind of wrecked Germany, and we need a strong Germany
in Europe, and like, let's give him what he wants
and he says he'll stop there, and we believe him.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, And like you said, they took Hitler to be
just like any other statesman leading a European power, which
was that he was a patrician colonizer who at the
end of the day answered to the aristocracy of his country. Yeah,
and that really he was more a threat to other people,
(02:48):
lesser people throughout the world whose lands he wanted to
turn into colonies. And we just needed to bring him
into the normal European way of doing things and Germany
will be back on its feet again. What was the
kind of the darker explanation of appeasement. Another explanation was
they had just been through World War One, yeah, a
dozen years before when all this really kind of started,
(03:09):
and no one was in the mood for a second
World war. So appeasement was the official policy by the
UK and France and then some of their supporters over
time that said, if we give you the stuff, you're
asking for now, we're hoping that eventually you're going to
reach your limit, you're going to get what you wanted,
and you're just going to be calm and everything's going
(03:31):
to be cool. From that point on, we won't have
to get in your way militarily, thus will avoid war.
So let's try this instead. So ultimately it was a
way to prevent World War Two. That was the entire
point of appeasement really from the outset.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Well, yeah, because I mean, at the time, like you said,
after World War One, none of these countries what would
end up being the Western Allies were in a great position.
They were still trying to build up armaments, some slower
than others. A Germany wasn't in a great position. So
it's kind of interesting. At the end, we're going to
go over a couple of like alternate histories of different
(04:06):
tacks that could have played out, or different plans that
they could have taken, and who knows how it would
have worked out. But I guess we should start with
the Treaty of Versailles, right, Yeah, for sure. So this
was after World War One and the Treaty of Versailles
came along and was signed, and it really it really
pounded Germany, and some historians even say like it went
(04:29):
too far as far as being punitive. Germany had to
reduce their army from one point nine million troops to
one hundred thousand, They had to get rid of most
of their navy, and they had to hand back territories
that it had taken over the last hundred years and
then pay hundreds of billion dollars in reparations.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah. So not only was it like financially strapping them,
remember this is the time when German hyper reinflation happened
during the Weimar Republic, which is allion World War one
and two. This is why. And then also it was
like demoralizing. It was meant to basically smack Germany down
and be like you're lesser. Now we're punishing you. And
so I saw a quote I forgot to send it
(05:10):
to you. I don't remember who said it, but essentially
they said, this is not a treaty, this is an
armistice for twenty years. And it was somebody who looked
at this in nineteen nineteen and twenty years later World
War two broke out. Because it was so punidle, there
was no way that the German people were not going
to eventually rise up in retaliation for this, and we
were going to have a second World War. So a
lot of people point to that treaty as being the
(05:33):
thing that didn't necessarily directly lead to World War two,
but it laid all the groundwork to create a populace
that was in a vengeful mood, that would be willing
to support somebody with such nationalistic fervor as Hitler.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yeah, and that's what Hitler was cooking up from the beginning.
He was basically like, Hey, we want to get Germany
back together. We need to get all of our rightful
lands basically where any Germanic peoples are and where anybody
is speaking German. And also, as we'll see, help out
any German minorities to our east, you know, which is
Russia and the Soviet Union at the time, because they're
(06:10):
going to come into play. And he whipped up this
nationalistic fervor that everyone in Germany got behind, and that's
you know what eventually would of course lead to World
War Two. But I guess we should take it sort
of chronologically, because there were a series of appeasements starting
in nineteen thirty five, kind of one after the other
(06:30):
until finally, you know, they could take no more.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, and just bear this in mind. Well, you're hearing
all of these like high points of how we moved
toward World War two thanks to Germany. Hitler followed this awareness,
or this belief by the UK in France that what
Germany really wanted to do was climb back out of
from under the Treaty of Versacience, just get back to
where they were before. So Hiller followed that to a t.
(06:56):
All of his demands, all of the aggressions that he
made were based on the Treaty of Versailles. And yet
in retrospect now we realize now these were he was
always going to try to go way further than that.
He was just playing upon the suppositions of the Allies
at the time.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Oh god, I mean, after studying all the stuff, he
played them for such suckers he did.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
And what makes it a little worse though, too, is
he wrote all this stuff out in nineteen twenty five,
and top it's all laid out that push to the
east you're talking about where he wants to make more
room for German nationals that are outside of Germany, the
lebens Schrom, which basically says we're going to Russia eventually,
Like they knew this for ten years before he really
(07:39):
became a huge problem, and everybody just ignored it.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah, oh yeah, he's like I wrote a book about it,
and I guess you guys don't read German because I
basically said what I was going to do, right, all right.
So nineteen thirty five was the first sort of wave
of appeasement, and this was the Anglo German Naval Agreement,
basically where Britain said, you know what, we know that
you're breaking the Treaty of Versailles because we know you're
(08:03):
building up your navy even though you were supposed to
scuttle your navy and go ahead and build a new fleet.
A lot of people saw that as just sort of
an initial surrender to what Hitler wanted. But Britain knew
that they were cheating already. They had six on the ground,
specifically an agent named Carl Krueger in their U boat
design office, which was a secret program at the time,
(08:26):
and they thought, hey, maybe we can get them to
build fewer U boats by endorsing them building these really big,
expensive battleships. It costs a lot of money and a
lot of raw materials, and it'll kind of kill their
U boat program. It didn't exactly work. They were supposed
to build seventy two submarines and ended up building fifty four.
(08:47):
But I don't know if they were like hooray about that.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So yeah, that in and of itself is a problem.
Like this grand policy of like making them spend resources,
it really didn't lead to that big of a reduction
politically speaking. It basically said the UK was endorsing now
Germany breaking the Treaty of Versailles by agreeing with them
that Germany could build its navy back up. Yeah, there
(09:11):
was also another thing that had nothing to do with Germany,
but really played into this later on. France was led
by a couple of different appeasement pro appeasement prime ministers
or premiers during this time, and they were good friends
with Italy, and Italy invaded Ethiopia, as you'll remember from
our Holly Selassie episode in nineteen thirty five, and France said,
(09:36):
you know what, go with it, Italy, we don't care
about that. Just promise us that if things go down,
if the S hits the Fan or le S hits
Lifhan you will be on our side against Germany, and
Italy said, yes, definitely, you got it one hundred percent,
and then they just went and ravaged Ethiopia.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Yeah, and we all know how that turned out in the.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
End, exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That was those first two were thirty five. In nineteen
thirty six, Germans west the Rhineland. They wanted to remilitarize
that area. That again went against the Treaty of Versailles,
because that was supposed to be a buffer zone the
western part of Germany. And they had there was a
chance here to force fully respond here because they had
(10:21):
Czechoslovakia and Romania saying like, hey, you know, we got
your back if you want to do anything, but France
had Britain basically did nothing.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
No Again, Frances kind of said, nah, we're kind of
busy with our own stuff, as we'll see, right, And
a lot of people also and who were heading the
politics in Western Europe at the time, were like, yeah,
good on them. Germany. They got that taken away from
him in the Treaty of Versailles. Let him have it back.
That's Germany, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
There was also the Anschluss, which was a different category
after the remilitarization of the Rhineland because this was where
they annexed Austria. Austria was a sovereign it was not
a part of Germany before World War One as far
as I know, Please God, don't let me be wrong
about that one. And Germany just said, Austria, you're now
(11:09):
part of Germany. You guys are Germanic by heritage, so
you're just part of Germany now. And the world just
turned their heads and said, yeah, I guess that's fine too.
You know, Germany's doing it's Germanic thing.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, and you know, we're going to talk a little
bit about public opinion here and there. But at the time,
this was March nineteen thirty eight, and this was Nebel
Chamberlain as PM in Britain, and the Bridge didn't want
to get involved. There was about a twenty five percent
in a survey were in favor of, you know, a
determinate policy, so you know, I guess that's not aggression,
(11:44):
but determine.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, most people were in favor of continuing to just
kind of go along with Germany restabilizing or regaining what
it had before the Treaty of Versailles. Because again, this
is what people are thinking. But if you'll notice, we
started to pick up speed a little bit here, like
bigger things are so var to happen. That was March
of nineteen thirty eight when they took over Austria, and
then in September Hitler had been basically making speeches where
(12:09):
he was saying, hey, there's this part. He called it
the rump of Czechoslovakia that butts up against Germany. That's
really actually Germany. It's called the Sudan Land, and it's
just basically this mountain range. Czechoslovakia doesn't care about it,
but we care about it because we're reuniting Germany again.
So we want that and we're going to go take it,
(12:29):
whether you want us to or not. And Neville, Chamberlain
and PM Edouard de Dalier all ran to Mudich to
meet with Hitler on his own ground and said here,
what do you want. Well, let's make a deal.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, And Hitler said, well, I've told you what I want.
I want this northwestern part of Czechoslovakia. We call it
the Sudetan Land. And they said, all right, you can
have that, but you got to promise, like, you know,
put your hand on this Bible, raise your right hand,
and you got to promise you to do anything else.
In Czechoslovakia. That's it. It stops there. And this is
(13:03):
where things are really I feel like echoing what's going
on in Ukraine like a putin. You know, eventually you're
going to get this stuff that you've conquered, but you're
going to stop there, right, And that's what happened back then.
The Czechs were an ally to France. In Britain at
the time, they were not even invited to the summit,
again echoing things that we see going on today. And
(13:27):
at the time there were even some German generals that thought,
like early on in September thirty eight when this happened,
they were like, hey, listen, if the Allies get behind
Czechoslovakia here, we could be in trouble. So there was
some kind of bluff calling happening basically, but Britain kind
of said no, let's let them do this, and they
steered France to do the same and pressure Czechoslovakia to submit,
(13:50):
and that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, and Czechoslovakia is like, fine, they can have the
sue date and land. We weren't even invited but we'll
go along with it because our ally, France is telling
us to keep in mind, an ally is not just
like we're friends with you, we think you're pretty cool,
and ally means like you usually have some sort of
documents or treaties saying, Okay, somebody tries to take part
of your country, we're going to come back you up militarily.
(14:12):
And when the Chips came down, France said no because
Great Britain was steering them. And one other point about
all this that's kind of hidden in there. Great Britain
was in a position to steer France because you could
make an argument that it was still the world's superpower.
The Empire was on the wane, but still by the thirties,
twenty five percent of the global population and twenty percent
(14:34):
of the earth's land masks were under British control. So
Britain was in a global position to basically set the
stage of how to deal with Germany, and the UK
decided appeasement was the way to go, so everybody else
kind of follow it along.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, all right, So that's September of thirty eight. They
give them the you know, they say you can have
this portion of Czechoslovaki as long as you promise not
to go in seven months later in March of nineteen
thirty nine, and he went into the rest of Czechoslovakia
just like he wrote in his book basically, so you know,
Hitler renigged on that promise of course to leave Czechoslovakia
the rest of it alone. And that was like the
(15:13):
real decisive moment because I think I feel like that's
when Hitler was probably like, man, these guys are are
cowards and they're letting me do whatever I want. And
very quickly thereafter that was March of thirty nine. September
of thirty nine is when he invaded Poland, and then
it was on.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Yeah, and even before he invaded Poland, once he renegged
on the Czechoslovakian deal, the Munich Agreement, he showed the
world like you like I'll tell you whatever you want
to hear, I'm not going to back it up. So
he immediately destroyed the policy of appeasement. Like appeasement policy
had about as much traction as like yesterday's non winning
(15:51):
lotto ticket that you'd find in the gutter, covered in
gum and maybe a little bit of blood from somewhere Yeah,
like that was appeasement. After we'll put after the invasion
in Czechoslovakia, I got there eventually.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, but you know, Poland was invaded, and that's really
what kicked off. Like the beginnings of World War two.
Hitler tried to provoke war with Poland by saying, hey,
I want Danzig, not the band, no, but still the
city of Danzig and Prussian territory that was granted to
you in nineteen nineteen after World War One. We feel
(16:23):
like it is ours. And Britain and France, you know,
they made guarantees to Poland at the time. But in August,
it was pretty shocking at the time, the Nazis and
the Soviets signed a pact to partition Poland out and
basically said you come in from the east, we'll come
in from the west, and Poland is ours. And two
days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yep, and I think that is a great place to stop.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah, boy, what a robust set up.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
We'll be right back, So chuck where we left off.
(17:20):
Hitler had just invaded Poland and the UK and France
declared war on Germany. It took a lot what that
showed everybody was that appiasement was dead. The whole policy
had just shifted down to either containment or out and
out war now that they had had declared war. But
(17:42):
this was like there was a lot of reasons for
appeasement to have been tried. We talked about some of them,
but a big one was the UK was really holding
on to that that world's greatest superpower status as hard
as they could, and another world war put that in
like real Shepard put him in a precarious position.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Yeah, I mean they were, you know, everybody was trying
to rearm themselves, like I said earlier, since World War One.
Some a little quicker than others. I think the United States,
as will learn, wasn't making the greatest rearmament effort because
Congress is kind of chilling the purse strings back when
they could do stuff like that. But the writing was
(18:23):
on the wall for the UK. They were like, we
were not in any position, even though we're supposedly the
world's greatest superpower to fight Germany, Japan and Italy all
at the same time to prevent them from expanding their territories.
Like that's just not a possibility. And we might have
to enter an alliance with the US. If worst comes
to worse, we might have to enter into an alliance
(18:45):
with the USSR. And that's just gonna make them, I mean,
that's gonna lessen their their their stance and their power
worldwide if they have to do stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, and with their their prestige or power lessened like
on world stage, that's the kind of thing that can
spark decolonization movements. So they were worried about Jamaica, they
were worried about India, they were worried about Nigeria. All
of a sudden, being like the UK has overextended itself,
now's the time to declare independence from the UK. And
(19:16):
not just the prestige that was lost, but more to
the point, the resources or aw materials, all the stuff
that Great Britain extracted from these colonies that would be
lost as well. So what Great Britain wanted was no
war please, at least in part to preserve its empire.
Other people who were in the British Parliament and the
(19:36):
government basically said, we're going to have to go to war,
it's inevitable, but we're supporting appeasement right now because we
need to stall for time to rearm ourselves, like you
were saying.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Right, which, as we'll see, also allowed Germany to do
the same yea, either through rearmament by building things or
by storming Czechoslovakia and all of a sudden they had
all their stuff. But appeasement was popular for a long time.
Throughout most of the nineteen thirties. The public didn't want
to go to war again. They were shaking off of
(20:08):
World War One hangover. Still, no one wanted to go
to a war that was more technologically advanced, like pretty
rapidly since World War At the end of World War One,
for a second World War, I think in nineteen thirty seven,
sixty two percent of British men said they wouldn't volunteer
and seventy eight percent of women said they would not
urge their husbands to go fight mm hm. And even
(20:30):
after the Munich Agreement, when Czechoslovakia was left hanging out
to dry, seventy five percent still approved of appeasement in
Great Britain.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Yes, and so there was like a lot of anti
war anxiety. Apparently people had died by suicide, there were
mental health problems. All of the appeasement pro appeasement sentiment
was also bolstered by the Times and I believe the
BBC two, which portrayed Hitler as a moderate, basically saying
like it could get way worse than that, let's just
(21:01):
deal with this guy. And then the reason why this
matters is because at the time Britain had recently enfranchised
it's women, like more and more people were voting, so
the public opinion about stuff mattered more and more to
the people calling the shots politically. And we'll also see
that also turned the politician's views against appeasement as public
(21:22):
opinion changed on appeasement. Two.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Yeah, for sure, and you know there was a string
of pms that were all for it. Neville Chamberlain was
the third British PM. He was in there from thirty
seven to forty during this time of appeasement, so it
wasn't just Chamberlain. I think he's kind of There's two
things I feel like from Great Britain that are remembered
is and you know, it depends on how you want
(21:46):
to look at it, but I think a lot of
people eventually framed Neville Chamberlain as a coward and Winston
Churchill as a hero because he was one of the
only ones that was like this guy Hitler, like, I
don't think you guys see the right on the wall here,
He's not going to stop and this appeasement thing is
no good.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah. And he also, I mean he still alone basically
in his party. The conservatives were like, yeah, we're all
pro appeasement at least at the time. So he definitely
stood on his own in France. France also had lost
a lot of people and a lot of money in
World War One and was not very eager to do
a redo of it. But they were still anti Germany.
(22:26):
Like France was not a friend of Germany. They did
not want to be friends of Germany. Their alliances were
against Germany. But ultimately, and this is what's crazy to me,
it was racked by far right and far left internal
political conflict.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah at the time, yeah, yeah, they were kind of
in an inter stalemate almost, right.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
And so they were whether they wanted to be or not.
They were fairly drawn into domestic affairs rather than foreign affairs,
and it wasn't until Edouard d' laudier became Prime minister
that they really started to branch back out into foreign affairs.
But even then they were pretty pro appeasement, so they
didn't really have much of a stomach for going into
(23:09):
a second World War, understandably, but they didn't feel like
they were in a place to do anything, so essentially
they just went on the defense. They did not they
weren't going to go into a policy of containment or
anything like that.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah. Yeah, as far as the US goes, at the time,
we had FDR in there, Roosevelt was in there, and
he endorsed appeasement, like officially, he endorsed the Munich Agreement.
They were into isolationism at the time and trying to
stay neutral. And we were also in no position militarily because,
like I mentioned, we were kind of you know, we
(23:44):
were also depleted by World War One and moving along
a little slower than even other eventual Allied countries because
Congress was kind of pulling those purse strings a little
tight as far as building the military back up.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah, and I think that you can make a case
that any country that was involved in World War One
really lost its appetite for war after that, like, yeah,
to an amazing degree, understandably for sure. And then there
was another group of pro appeasers who was the Britain's aristocracy,
and the reason why is because they wanted things to
(24:15):
just basically, let's just go back to where we colonize
other places. And really it's the aristocracy running things. And
we're all related, and I'm your cousin, you're my cousin,
and we're all three somehow married, but we all run everything.
We're all just crazy rich let's keep doing that. And
they saw Hitler as somebody who could help keep that
kind of status quo or get back to that kind
(24:36):
of status quo. The group that was opposed to Hitler though,
they were the Soviets, and they were communists, and the aristocrats,
who enjoy wealth inequality do not typically like communism more communists,
so they wanted to steer Britain away from any kind
of alliances with the USSR that could support communists or
(24:56):
socialists in Britain and their causes, and more towards Hitler
because Hitler's policies kind of jobbed with the aristocracy's views
a little more.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, And I mean they were sort of actively courting
one another because they saw Hitler as somebody who could
you know, like you were saying, kind of let them
keep their their lifestyle in check right and Hitler in
Germany did nothing to make them think otherwise. You know,
they were playing on those peers of communism for sure.
They're like, you know, you got a lot of dough.
You know what happens when communism happens, And that, you know,
(25:27):
sent a chill through the British aristocratic scene.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yeah. They were known to say, croiky.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Right, break time or shall we go on with Churchill?
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Give me a break, Chuck, break me off a piece
of that ad break bar, Oh.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Boy, we'll be right back all right. So that might
(26:10):
have been the best ad segue ever.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
With the R.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
So I just I didn't see an allusion to kit
kat oh in this episode.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Thanks all right.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
So we mentioned Churchill sort of briefly before. Churchill was like,
we said, one of the sort of few outspoken dudes
that was like, no, we can't do this. He visited
Germany in nineteen thirty two and he was like, these
Nazis mean business. I don't think you guys understand what's
happening here. And he said, if we can see to Hitler,
things are going to get much worse. We have to
(26:42):
re arm ourselves, you know, quicker and get those factories
to work. But you know, that's the kind of thing
that can wreckon economy. So that's if people are wondering, like, well,
why didn't they all just rearm as fast as they could,
it's because it costs a ton of money and people.
So it's not great for the economy to have to
build that war machine backup. But he was founding the
drum to do so.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, and his whole take on Hitler, including the Munich Agreement,
which he called a total and unmitigated defeat. This is
where the Allies went to Hitler and said, we'll let
you have part of Czechoslovakia, just don't invade the rest
of Czechoslovakia. He like, when Neville Chamberlain came back to
the UK, he was like basically waiving the agreement and
saying he had negotiated a peace for our time that essentially,
(27:25):
like aggression from Germany was done. We were all going
to live in peace again. And it lasted a year
before we were at war with Germany. So it made
Chamberlain look pretty bad. It made Churchill look like very
foresightful and exactly the kind of guy that you would
want to fight Hitler. So essentially, after they got rid
of Chamberlain, the UK went to Churchill and said, you
(27:46):
don't like Hitler. We understand that we don't like Hitler
anymore now and so Europe.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Yeah, and you know a lot of people said that
was his aim, was to increase his political profile, and
you know who knows it. That was his aim, but
it worked. He took overs PM in nineteen forty after Chamberlain,
like you said, and he wanted he basically later on
was like, hey, if we would have had a policy
of deterrence instead of appeasement, we might have prevented this
(28:14):
war to begin with. You know, Britain and France should
have strengthened our relationship, and that was our best hope
was maybe to form what he called a grand alliance
with the Soviet Union, even in eastern European countries. But
the Soviet you know, there was a lot of distrust
of the Soviet Union, especially you know, like we mentioned
the aristocracy who wanted to hang on to their pounds,
(28:38):
and of course what Stalin was doing, you know, they
didn't trust that either. So he was not going to
get support from the British or the French to sort
of be tougher.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
No, but as we'll see later, it was not a
bad plan. Could have changed things dramatically. Yeah. One of
the other things that made Churchill such a strident voice
about opposing Germany is that he had intelligence. I guess
as a Minister of Parliament, he had men on the inside. Yeah,
and he had an intelligence report from somebody in Germany
(29:10):
saying that Germany had a mean spirit of revenge, brutality,
amounting in many cases to best reality and complete ruthlessness.
And this is at a time when Chamberlain and Daladier
are basically saying, like, Hitler's our friend, we just need
to keep keep negotiating with him. He's getting reports about
how they're just brutal and ruthless, and those panned out
(29:32):
to be true.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Yeah. Uh. We mentioned FDR in the US earlier that
officially they supported a peacement because they would not, you know,
sign any kind of formal agreement with the UK or France.
But on the inside, the administration was definitely trying to
kind of say, hey, UK, you gotta you got to
change your stance here. You gotta, like Hitler means business
(29:54):
and only your military can can deter this guy. At
this point, but on the outside they were, you know, officially, like, hey,
we're not involved. This appeasement sounds pretty good to us.
And like we said, you know, the people of Britain
were largely for it, and most of the people were
didn't want to go back to war until the Crystal
(30:14):
Knacht on November nineteen thirty eight. That's when Germany, you know,
for the first time, attacked its own citizens and destroyed
Jewish businesses and synagogues, killed about one hundred Jews and
arrested about one hundred thousand. And that's when the public
at large, kind of all around the world was like, oh, okay,
that's what this guy's about. This cannot stand right.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
And remember now with the UK having all of these
new voters, their opinion mattered, so that helped change things too.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yeah, I wish I knew how to say too late
in German.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
You don't. You didn't learn that in high school.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
No. I was trying to think of I.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Can think, can you sound it out letter by letter?
Speaker 1 (30:57):
No?
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Oh wait, you'd have to know the word to do that.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
No. I remember what Canuts in the Mouse did and
at Hans Peter's house because I remember reading that chapter
over and over and over.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
What did he do?
Speaker 1 (31:10):
I really don't remember, but that the my friend Rad
and the cartographer in Montana. He'll be the only person
in the world that gets that joke, because it was
just a lot of stuff about canuts in the mouse
and his owner Hans Peter, who was you know that
German textbook stuff?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Okay? Was that like the German high school classes equivalent
of the Little Prince in the French Probably gotcha, I
understand exactly what you mean.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah, it's fun on a big show like this to
make a joke for one human.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
So why not. So there's one other group, chuck that
we didn't talk about what they thought of a peace man.
That was the Nazis themselves in Hitler, and they loved it. Yeah,
probably not a big surprise. They saw it as a
clear sign of weakness by the world's leading powers, that
they that Hitler in Germany could do whatever it wanted
(32:01):
and France and the UK were just gonna bow their
knees and their heads in front of Hitler and the
people of the of Germany itself also picked up on
this too, like Hitler had, remember, he had taken power.
It wasn't like you know he wasn't fully supported yet.
There was like a courtship period that was still things
(32:22):
were up in the air. But when he came back
and said, I got back the Rhineland, I got back
to dayton Land, I got us Austria. What's next, you know?
And I did it all without a single shot fired. Yeah,
these guys just gave it back to us because that's
what they think of Germany. With me leading it, the
German people just went nuts. And Hitler was was the guy.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
He was Derfer.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
That was the day Hitler became der Feurer.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, that's it, man, You just walked off of a
History Channel show. You dropped the mic in the sound
studio and left. One thing we can say is that
appeasement did achieve the aim of rearmament. That was kind
of one of the goals, Like we said a few times,
is that, you know, everyone was trying to put this
off so they could build back up their war stock
or whatever, and that happened. Britain spent less on arms
(33:12):
than Germany did from nineteen thirty five to nineteen thirty nine,
but they had the highest proportion of their GDP devoted
to building up their armaments in nineteen forty, and in
nineteen thirty they rebuilt the navy to the you know,
once again the world's strongest navy. Shout out to British Seapower,
one of my favorite bands. And early on, you know,
(33:34):
they had outpaced Germany. And you know, we're going to
talk about the alternate histories here shortly, like what if
they had done something. They're in a pretty good position.
They between Britain and France. Their coalition had a five
to one armament superiority over Germany early on and France.
The fallow of France in nineteen forty apparently, and I
(33:55):
don't know enough about this stuff, but from what I've read,
it wasn't because they were unprepared and didn't have enough
bombs and things. Apparently it was about poor leadership at
that point.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah. I couldn't find enough by that myself to speak
confidently on it. All I know is that France did
not put up much of a fight from what I
remember from the history books. Yeah, well, let's talk about that, Chuck,
Let's talk about those alternate histories, especially with the view
of armament. Because Neville Chamberlain, when he basically couldn't get
a coalition government together anymore after Hitler rinegg Don the
(34:25):
Munich agreement, and he was replaced like we saw with
by Winston Churchill in nineteen forty. That same year he
died of cancer after Chamberlain was removed. But he spent
that time basically saying like I bought us time. Appeasement
bought us time to rearm. And he's right, like you
showed like Britain did have a chance to rearm. But
(34:47):
there was a really critical window that we know about
now where that policy of appeasing in order to rearm
didn't make sense, and that was about nineteen thirty to
nineteen thirty nine. And the reason was is because France
and the UK were rearming at a rate close to
Germany and were actually even overtaking it a little bit,
(35:09):
and they could have put up a fight against Germany
and probably one especially together combining their stuff in nineteen
thirty eight. By nineteen thirty nine things had changed. Germany
had gone even further overdrive into war production, but more
to the point, they had taken over Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia had
all sorts of munitions factories. Czechoslovakia had all sorts of
(35:32):
people you could could script into free labor aka slave labor.
There's all sorts of stuff that happened when they took
over Czechoslovakia and it tipped the balance whipped way up
in favor of Germany's military after that. So that period
nineteen thirty eight to nineteen thirty nine, appeasement did the
exact opposite, and it made the war way worse than
(35:53):
it would have been had the UK and France said
this is as good as going to get we gotta
go now.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Well yeah, and you know, it also possibly made the
war worst and a lot of people say it definitely
made the war worse than it would have been because
in nineteen forty Britain's holding out against Germany and they're
both seeking resources all around the world that you needed
to get to win a world war, and that just
(36:19):
expanded the war basically made it into a global thing,
a much larger thing than it might have been otherwise. Right,
deterrence might have avoided all of that if they would
have formed a grand alliance and bonded their powers early on.
You know, because I mentioned earlier there were even generals
within Germany's it's kind of a bluffing game. Like, hey,
if these guys get together, like, we're not the best
(36:41):
position right now. And so while they were buying time,
it helped Germany increase their war chest. And yeah, that's
the rest is history.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Right, But speaking of alternate histories, there were other options
that the UK had on the table, and now speaking
about them, like in retrospect, it's mind boggling to even think.
But the first one's a little more understandable or palatable.
Had the UK simply just not declared war after Germany
invaded Poland, that was an option to them on the table.
(37:12):
They didn't have to do it. France had already set
the precedent of not backing up Czechoslovakia when it was
taken over by Germany. The UK could have just not
done that too. And one thing that could have backed
this up, that could have supported actually that position in
the UK just sit back and let it play out
on its own, because it was inevitable essentially for the
(37:35):
USSR in Germany to clash because of that Lebenschrom policy.
That policy of the East actually belongs to Germany and
we're going to go take it right.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
Yeah, And you know that played out by eventually with
Operation Barbarossa with the invasion of the Soviet Union in
June nineteen forty one. Some people say like, and you know,
of course this sounds completely ridiculou to think up now
with hindsight. But some people are like, you know, the
UK could have allied with Germany early on. They I mean,
(38:09):
I think one of the reasons they didn't. It's not
because they knew this Hitler guy was a madman. Again,
that came later. It was because of the colonies that
you were talking about that they had all over the world, right,
Germany also had colonies all over the world, and they
had a conflict. I think Britain wasn't gonna say here,
why don't you, why don't you take our African colonies?
(38:30):
And Germany definitely didn't like the way Britain looked at race.
They had a pretty different idea on that. And so
if they had any kind of alliance, they would have
had surrendered their liberal imperialism and they really weakened their
status as in international superpower.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Yeah, they would have had to fall in line with
basically the way Germany viewed the world. Yeah, just wrapping
your mind around that is not easy to do. Like
the UK doing that, and Kyle, who's our man on
the end in the.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
UK, right, Yeah, he's right in I six agent exactly.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
He pointed something out that I thought was pretty interesting
too that he basically said, the fact that Crystal knocked
and the news of what the Germany had done to
its own Jewish citizens, Yeah, how that turned British public
opinion just basically showed like, even if Britain did try
to allie with Germany, it was never going to work out. Yeah,
it was probably the least likely of all of it.
(39:23):
And then also, Chuck, you can't help us being Americans
to wonder could America have sat out World War two?
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Yeah, you know, we declared war after Pearl Harbor on
Imperial Japan. That followed or following that, Germany declared war
on US in December nineteen forty one, and you know,
maybe we could have evaded getting involved in the European theater.
We definitely got mired in the Pacific theater with Japan.
(39:53):
We weren't really It's not like the US wasn't on
the Nazis radar, but we weren't really a big part
of their foreign policy in the nineteen thirties. Yet right,
because again, isolationism was kind of our bag at the time.
Our army wasn't very big. We had in nineteen forty
we had five divisions compared to Germany's one hundred and
forty one. And Congress definitely was not going to like
(40:14):
get behind Roosevelt entering the European theater at the time.
So there were a lot of reasons why it looked
like the US maybe could have avoided that mess.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Yeah, but historians say probably we were going to get
drawn in one way or another, because, like you said,
Germany did declare war on the US essentially to show
Japan like, hey, we're in this together. You guys, just
handle the US. So that was going to happen, whether
we tried to stay out of it or not. And
then he also knew that we were a threat and
(40:47):
that we would eventually be online armament wise to really
make a significant contribution. He predicted by nineteen forty two.
I think we started before then. And then even more
than that, Roosevelt was already giving permission for US battleships
to shoot and destroy U boats that were operating in
the Atlantic because they had started targeting American shipping and
(41:09):
Hitler was not very happy about that, So the US
was probably not going to be able to stay out
of World War two.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
The alternate history, I guess that gets meatchuck is was
the earliest when Germany remilitarized the Rhineland and flagrant violation
of the Treaty of Versailles. Had the UK and France intervened,
this is nineteen thirty six. I mean, imagine if they
had just done something then and contained Hitler then, and
(41:39):
remember there was this courtship period or whatever, where you know,
Germany hadn't really wasn't really sure about Hitler at the time.
Had he been undermined that thoroughly on the international stage,
who knows would have happened to him as the leader
of Germany, right, And they could have done something because
at the time France had one hundred thousand troops near
(41:59):
the border with Ryanland. Germany only moved thirty five thousand
troops into the area. Prints could easily repel that and
been like, it's your move, Germany, what are you gonna do?
And Germany might not have done anything. And even if
Hitler had done something, it probably would have been against
the advice of his military advisors. So now he would
(42:21):
have personally been taking Germany to war. That's a lot
to seek your reputation on. And that one thing in
nineteen thirty six could have completely avoided the death of
tens of millions of people and it didn't do it
because of internal left right politics.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Wow, oh man, that that was good stuff. Like this
is my favorite kind of stuff. You should know when
forty five minutes later, like I know, probably one hundred
percent more than I knew before about World War Two.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Very nice, Chuck. Yeah, I didn't know almost any of
this either. I love that stuff too. And I know
we just talked about the US and in the UK
and France's alternate history. But if you want to come
up with an alternate history of for World War Two
in your country, let us know, hit the history textbooks
and come back with what you got. And we'd love
to get that kind of thing. In the meantime, while
(43:13):
we're waiting for your listener mail, we'll listen to Chuck
with a new listener mail.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Yeah, somebody just sends this man in the High Castle
no plagars and please, which I never saw or read.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
I didn't either, but it's supposed to be pretty good.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah, maybe I'll check that out at some point. It
sounds like it'd be right up my own.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
It's too depressing for me, that kind of stuff. That Yeah,
and like things that normalize billionaires, I can't take it anymore.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Like d Snyder, All right, what is this? This is
from Chris? Oh yeah, this is just a nice thing. Hey, guys,
wanted to write in for a while now. First of all,
I always appreciate the wide variety of topics you cover,
especially the ones born of your own natural curiosities. As
a former middle school science teacher, I saw my primary
role as instilling curiosity in my students and modeling for
(44:03):
them how to chase those curiosities, and your approach really
resonates with me. But the one thing I didn't pay
enough attention to back when I was in the classroom
was the art of communication that you guys display in
every episode. If I still had a classroom full of students,
I would use your show not only for the content,
but also for lessons in respectful communication. So much discourse
we hear today is loud and angry and doesn't give
(44:24):
people space to express themselves without being interrupted, mocked, or
refuted somehow, you guys seamlessly pass the baton of communication
to one another without speaking over one another, contradicting each
other's in complete thoughts or negotiating the communication flow through
general awkwardness. Even when one of you have a follow
up comment that may provide a differing or correcting perspective,
(44:45):
you always give space for the other to finish their
thought before weighing in, and the follow up comments are
thoughtfully delivered and received. Thanks so much for all you do.
I appreciate your authentic, respectful delivery of interesting content. You
guys keep my brain awake and smiling. And that is
from Chris Christine Sewell in Bloomington, Illinois And Chris. One
(45:05):
of the reasons is because we almost always agree with
each other on this stuff. I disagree, so it makes
it kind of easy.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Yeah, no, for sure. And that's something that still kind
of surprises me to this day, where like just our
common view is so in step with one another. Where
I mean, like there's so many things that are different
about It's like our personalities are pretty different.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Bladly different.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
Yeah, I would say, will we sure, I'll go with that, Okay,
But when you come down to like, what do you
think about this? What do you think about this? What
do you think about that? It's generally in the same
not even ballpark, in the same hot dog stand of
the same ballpark.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
Yeah, I don't think the show would have worked for
so long if you and I just were sort of
at odds over every little thing. And I think that
stuff that Christine is talking about too is so much
of media today is set up to do that because
that gets ratings, I guess. So they'll put people that
they know have different viewpoints and put them down in
chairs next to each other and that's just like.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
The Yeah, but it's like the Simpsons taught us, if
you just don't look, it'll eventually go away. So you
don't like that kind of media, just don't watch it.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Well, thank you Chris. That was really really nice. We'd
love hearing that kind of stuff. That's just a really
kind email, and we thank you for it. If you
want to be like Chris and send us a kind email,
we are always open to receiving one of those. You
can send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts, My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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