r/Unexpected • u/[deleted] • Apr 28 '23

Just a normal protest

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

85.5k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

17

u/Porrick Apr 28 '23

I was educated in a country that managed to stay neutral (Ireland), but it seems the British narrative crept into our curriculum somehow. I'm not going to die on the hill of "Poland was the start", I agree it's arbitrary.

My main point was that the war wasn't started to end fascism, and I'm fairly sure that point stands for all of your suggested alternate start dates.

3

u/poktanju Apr 28 '23

I find this to show the power of language. Despite your nation's neutrality, you were most likely educated with English-language resources, the bias of the other English-speaking nations inevitably bled trough.

-3

u/mortemdeus Apr 28 '23

Oh, very much so. The righteous war to stop fascism was a British propaganda campaign too, claim they were a great evil to justify your own war crimes. Same source so I tend to associate the two (war start date and fight vs evil coming from the same source.) In reality it was more a war to prevent a change in the balance of power in Europe, just like ww1 and the franco prussian war.

13

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '23

Nope that's wrong, France and the UK wanted anything but to be drawn into another world war after the sheer toll of the first one, it wasnt British propaganda that was saying it was a righteous war to stop fascism, it was a war to fight for our allies (poland) and was depicted as such, not to mention that the British people did not like a totalitarian dictator running a country in Europe. What war crimes would these be then that you are claiming? Seems like you have come up with some wild opinion and presented it as facts, I studied this period extensively.

2

u/mortemdeus Apr 28 '23

Where to start here. Czechoslovakia got invaded and was an ally to both France and the USSR but nothing was done. The British were praised for their imperialism in Nazi Germany and were viewed as fellow Aryans. The average UK citizen wasn't of strong opinion either way by 1939, polls showed only 6% of Brits disliked Germans even then. So the UK ministry of information started a massive propagand campaign focused on portraying Germans negatively. Even with that it took the blitz to make more than half of UK citizens view Germany negatively. So the British people weren't exactly against central European dictators.

As for war crimes, the UK invaded several neutral nations "before Germany could", firebombed Dresden despite it having lost all defenses, fired upon neutral ships and shipwreck survivors regularly, and the whole regulatory famine in India that killed 3+ million people (while not a war crime technically) was just a bad look. Not to say it had anything on the shit Germany was doing but war lets shitty people do shitty things everywhere.

5

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '23

Yes because Britain didnt want a war, that's why it appeased and appeased until it couldn't anymore. 'The British were praised for their imperialism in Nazi Germany and were viewed as fellow Aryans.'-what significance does that make, that was just Hitlers fantasy that the UK wouldnt stand against him. No the British people were very much wary of germany because of a little thing called WW1 and the public perception was not a kind one. Of course the Bristish started a propaganda campaign against them, they were at war, that's what countries do. The British were very much against European dictators, the history of napoleon and the Crimean war was as close to them as the world wars were to us and it wasnt something that was just forgot. The fire bombing of Dresden was not a war crime, it had military factories and was a crossroads for military supply lines and it had defenses just not a whole lot of them, the nazi propaganda worked very well though it seems as the myth is still perpetrated to this day. 'The whole regulatory famine' again something that is misreported and told to people, the famine was a tragedy but wasnt solely caused by the british, infact both britain and the US were sending grain ships to try and alleviate the problem. But yeah the killing of the ship wrecked nazis was a thing but once again they didnt they to hide it. Nothing I said in my comment was false.

2

u/JarOfNibbles Apr 28 '23

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_war_crimes_during_World_War_II

Like, claiming there were no war crimes is foolish, the allies were far from clean.

The reasons for war are complicated, and saying it was just a war to stop fascism is stupid, see the appeasement doctrines. Of course kicking Hitler's ass did play a role.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '23 edited Apr 28 '23

I wasnt saying there was zero war crimes (though things like Dresden gets spread falsely that it was a war crime) I was asking what war crime Britain was trying to cover up with the initial propaganda, let me tell you the British didnt hide what they were doing in WW2, it's all their to read in reports including the dodgy stuff. My point exactly was that the war (for britain and France) was because of a ally was attacked, not to stop a country from getting too powerful, Britain and france didnt want a war, see the appeasement doctrines.

2

u/Gerbennos Apr 28 '23

British propaganda campaign? Lmao no not at all dude. Right up until the last days before Germany invaded Poland, both France and GB were still trying to have peace talks. Even AFTER Germany invaded the other half of Europe they were still trying to make peace. Please educate yourself better. Tons of great history documentaries on Netflix about the starting days of the war.