by Stanford9 on 07 May 2012 10:45 Gentlemen... Hopefully we're here to learn, so with due respect, why not just discuss amicably and stop the "Man, learn history" and "Try to read up some." comments?
"History" depends entirely on where you learn it, which particular system taught you, and yes I agree, what you then choose to read - and of course, on who wrote it. The French, Austrians, Germans, British, Dutch and so on all have totally different ideas of what "the actual historical truth" was. The more you read about events around Europe, the further you have to go back in order to attempt to understand the 1920/ 1930s and the rise of National Socialism. One has to draw a line somewhere and I personally found Napoleon's actions a reasonable starting point. If you move on from there, then conflict, empire building and loss, the invasion of neutral territory, political alignments and fear, the crass and vindictive way the allies treated Germany from 1918 on to WWII, the Russian revolution and rise in Communism across Europe, particularly in Germany and particularly in Bavaria, simply fueled the inevitable, someone would step in to gather the pieces. If one takes Eger in Sudetenland as a main seat of German National Socialism since as far back as the 1890's and compares it with the rise of Russian and French revolutionary ideas, then the Prussian siege of Paris, the Paris Commune, the fall of the Habsburg Empire and so on Hitler marching south and east to annex and reinforce his frontiers seems inevitable. All of this is relevant background to the question, as was the 1920s and 1930s financial turmoil. If one has an interest in these things, to compare it with today's European situation is also very relevant. Take what happened in Greece yesterday, no matter who one pins the blame on, the Greeks were very unhappy but they had the vote. What happened? Europe and the German solution were fairly well trounced and the main beneficiary was the hard right extremist neo-Nazi "Golden Dawn" party. Speaking as a French resident the Greek view of historical events is not the same as ours, though 18% of the French electorate also voted for the far right.
The Wiemar/ Barmat Brothers scandal, what happened between the Great War (to end all wars), and the late 1930s, the Anschluss and the allied sanctioned annexation of Sudetenland are all intertwined. as to the question "Was Austria considered an occupied territory?", the answer is 'that depends on who's asking whom'
Axis History Forum
This is an apolitical forum for discussions on the Axis nations, as well as the First and Second World Wars in general hosted by Marcus Wendel's Axis History Factbook in cooperation with Michael Miller's Axis Biographical Research and Christoph Awender's WW2 day by day.
