notyou2 wrote:a6mzero wrote:Let me spell it out.one version by revisionist is hitler never intended to start a world war. It occurred because he was just a poor diplomat.
Initially he was a good diplomat, he sent Chamberlain home with a false sense of security and a treaty averting war with Great Britain and the Commonwealth to buy Germany time.
One good decision among a thousand bad ones does not make for a "good" anything.
Do you say of your doctor, "He saved the life of this one patient, so I think he's a good doctor. Of course, a thousand other patients died."?
He gambled on the Sudetenland and won, but he totally misunderstood what process was at work and was led to the false assumption that the western allies wouldn't fight for eastern Europe, which was just plain stupid.
Hitler failed to get Franco to repay his enormous debt to the Axis and enter the war, which at the very least would have prevented operation Torch, and probably much else. He failed to bring Turkey in to the Axis despite 10 years of trying, and in fact they eventually entered the war on the Allied side. On the other hand he did get Iraq to enter the war prematurely, which was a purely symbolic victory as the Allies dismembered Iraq before lunch and installed a pro-Allied regime. The alliance with Japan was just plain stupid. America might very well have focused on Asia and ignored the war in Europe if there was no alliance between Germany and Japan. Absolutely nothing was gained and a lot was lost by that deal. Hitler failed to make any meaningful diplomatic offers to numerous anti-Communist forces in the U.S.S.R. There were all kinds of ethnic enemies of Russia and ideological enemies of Communism that would gladly have joined the fight against Stalin in return for independence, but there was a silly parody of independence offered to the Ukraine and nothing offered to any of the others.
Just a long, long list of moronic decisions to balance off a handful of good ones.