The tone of the posts by Bill seem to indicate a wish to have it in black and white that the UK were entirely responsible for starting the Second World War. At the time I imagine people were doing their best to avoid war by doing whatever it took, treaties were signed probably in good faith but certainly I imagine with fervent hopes of not having war. How easy it is in hindsight to see that all hopes were in vain and basically war was inevitable.
Actually, I was quite sincere in opening the discussion by saying I do not know if the basic accusation by Lew Rockwell is correct or not. I still do not, hence my questions. I accept the recommendations by others that perhaps I'm not going to find the answer I seek here, fair enough. I'm not looking for black-and-white blame, I'm just looking for an answer to some basic questions.
Yes, I understand that Great Britain wanted to avoid war, and was even willing to do things it might otherwise not in order to avoid it. But I'm trying to get at what the root cause of a specific set of actions was, and I'm not getting any traction. It's not that I only want a certain answer, I just want an answer that has internal logic. Stating that politicians lie and everybody knows it isn't an explanation, it's an excuse. Yes, they lie, of course they lie, but why did they tell that specific lie? What was Poland to Great Britain and France, and why the very specific promises (so many divisions in thus and so days, etc) and then the declaration of war, and then the (apparent) betrayal of Poland?
These are questions that I feel are a pivot point. Understanding the reasoning at the time might do a great deal to help me understand what the overall strategy was for Great Britain.
I'm not pointing fingers at Great Britain or attempting to paint it in a bad light. Nations do what they do in the interests of themselves and their citizens. Is it possible that the UK had a strategy in mind when they failed to engage Germany early (the "Phoney War") to ensure that the USA would be required to enter the war? Were they waiting for Roosevelt to convince the American people to abandon their isolationist beliefs? Was it something else, like believing that a serious and successful attack on Germany would cement German-USSR alliances? Obviously it's a chess match, but people then knew the answers to these questions, and I would think they were written down somewhere.
I will have to do more research, and now that I'm intrigued, I will. I hope it does not lead me to conclude that the UK intended for a European war to become another world war, so that they would have the USA fighting on their side.
Some of the comments Lew Rockwell made do have some resonance to me. I see many good reasons for the US to have joined the fight against the Germans, but I'm not sure that we were
'fighting for Democracy' or even in self-defense. The Germans were not going to be in a position to invade the USA, even if they won all of Europe and split it up with the USSR. I could understand fighting to stop genocide of the Jews, that's a noble goal, but it doesn't really appear that this was one of the main causes of our entry into the war, historically. And we (the USA) have notably chosen not to intervene in other genocides since then, eh?
It would interesting to come to the conclusion that WWII was in fact not necessary from the USA's point of view, or that the UK actually intended from the start to draw the USA into it in order to ensure her own defense. I'm not saying that's what happened, but I'll certainly be doing more research into it. It's not personal and it's not anti-UK. My family line is Welsh on one side, English and German on the other, and although both sides landed in America well before the Civil War, I still know from whence I came.
.
