From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Mar 11 2003 - 23:38:55 MST
Mike writes
> I suppose, for symmetry, the French won't be happy unless we give Iraq
> the same 21 years to disarm that they gave Germany back then,
No, Germany only started to re-arm, and was a threat after
Hitler's accession in 1933. So the French gave peace a
chance for 6 years, until Germany was stronger than France.
This is the noble sentiment of parity. The U.S. has many
nuclear tipped missiles that could be targeted on Iraq, and
so why shouldn't the West wait until Iraq and developed
and smuggled atomic bombs into the West. Wouldn't that
be fair?
The French would just let a bad situation get worse, playing
for time, hoping for some kind of rapprochement to develop
or a change in fortune, perhaps.
I don't get it. When it was too late, they didn't hesitate.
As soon as Poland was invaded, they declared war along with
the UK. Of course, the stakes were much higher for France
without a lovely channel to protect them, and they put four
million men on the line in 1939-40. Many of those units
were very good. But they had simply waited too long. As
always, since the formation of Germany, the Germans had a
three-to-two numerical advantage, and France could simply
not stand alone.
But why didn't they invade Germany in 1936 when Hitler
seized the Rhineland, and he would have been incredibly
easy to defeat? Somehow he knew they wouldn't, and he
was right.
Lee
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