De Gaulle and French betrayal of Poland in Semptember 1939

[Gorque]

portrayal of "the media" as marching in lock-step with each other isn't grounded in economic or political reality.

To be fair sometimes it pretty much is. However I like to see evidence of that before I believe it and in the case of newspapers this is relativewly easy (and easier still nowadays) albeit painstaking - in other words collecting a representative sample and analysing the content. A good example being Angus Calder's data (I forget alas the actual numbers) to support his proposition that British newspapers were predominantly anti-Jewish during WW2. Or for that matter, Wm's contributions on the subject of the NYT's denial of the Soviet famine and Hlodomor in this thread.

Hi gebhk:

What I am referring to when I wrote "as marching in lock step", within the context of the entire paragraph, refers to a conspiracy by "the media", as a whole or as a large group, to intentionally misrepresent in order to shape and shift public opinion to their point-of-view. We all know that the probability of keeping a shared secret is the inverse of the number of people that know of the shared secret, therefor I reject any notion of an industry wide conspiracy, mainly because of the numbers that would need to be involved in keeping such a secret.

In the former of your two examples, "British newspapers were predominantly anti-Jewish during WW2" did Calder prove that there was an actual collaborative intent to downplay news detrimental to Jews or was this an inherent bias, that is cultural, i.e., the way most people in British society of the time were brought up? And on that, I haven't the foggiest idea as I haven't studied British society and its norms for the period of the study, so...moving on.

[ljadw]

Take The Express (Lord Beaverbrook dictated the foreign news content ) .After having tried with Churchill and Rothermere to unseat Baldwin as leader of the Tories in 1930, he changed course and supported almost unconditionally the appeasement policy of McDonald,Baldwin and Chamberlain .
Suddenly ,after Munich,he changed course again and propagated the absurd stories of the Germans planning to attack the Netherlands, Switzerland,Romania and planning to Copenhague ,or to use a modern word,to Pearl Harbor the Royal Navy .
NOTHING of all this was true,everything was absurd .
Why gave he the order to spread these stories ?
Dawson censored anti German articles in the Times ,but,he also,changed course after Munich .

[Gorque]

About the media : how was the March crisis created ?
Because the Romanian ambassador in London came with the sensational and absurd and stupid news that Germany was planning an invasion of Romania,news for which he had no proofs and for which no proofs were later found .

What do you propose, that the media not report on this? Isn't this one of the raison d'etre of news organizations?

Let's recount some of the recent events of 1939. Germany annexes the Memelgebiet in March 1939, Germany intimidated the Czech President to accept a German Protectorate in March 1939, Germany secretly encourages the secession of Slovakia headed by a German friendly government in March 1939. In light of the above, I can understand the panic regarding Romania, especially when one considers that Hungary, which does border on Romania, has very friendly relations with Germany, especially after the first Vienna accord and has a large minority population inside of Romania, (second Vienna accord).

Not only did Germany and Romania not have a common border ( I suspect that the majority of the journalists could not show Romania on a map ),but the peace German army had not the needed divisions to invade Romania,a mobilisation would be needed and ,most important, an invasion in April of Romania would make an invasion of Poland in September impossible .
Than there was the primordial question of WHY Germany would invade Romania .And the British ambassador in Romania debunked the whole story .
Whatever, a lot of imbeciles in Whitehall were leaking this nonsense from the imbecile Tilea (ambassador ! )to the Tabloids and the crisis was created .
The whole story was on the same level as the story from Orson Welles about the invasion of the Martians .It proves only that you can tell people what you waGermanynt .

I believe Göbbels was having quite a field-day with the above and milked it for all that he could.

There was no need for panic in March 1939,no need for a guarantee to Poland and Romania .

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that the Polish government, prior to British involvement end of 1938 early 1939 were more amenable to reaching an accommodation regarding transit through the Corridor.

About the French and Mein Kampf :how many French could read German and how many of them were interested in the content of Mein Kampf ?The overwhelming majority of the Germans did also not read Mein Kampf .

That's a good question and since you asked, do you know? I don't, however what is relevant here is that A.H. put down his thoughts into words for all who were interested to read about the new Chancellor of Germany and what his intentions were.

And it is a very great mistake to think that Mein Kampf told what Hitler would do : Mein Kampf was written in 1925 and Hitler's foreign policy was not depending on what he said between 1920 and 1925 .
Mein Kampf was not the new Das Kapital,and most Russians were not interested in Das Kapital.

I disagree, A.H. hewed rather close to what he had written in Mein Kampf.

[Gorque]

Take The Express (Lord Beaverbrook dictated the foreign news content ) .After having tried with Churchill and Rothermere to unseat Baldwin as leader of the Tories in 1930, he changed course and supported almost unconditionally the appeasement policy of McDonald,Baldwin and Chamberlain .
Suddenly ,after Munich,he changed course again and propagated the absurd stories of the Germans planning to attack the Netherlands, Switzerland,Romania and planning to Copenhague ,or to use a modern word,to Pearl Harbor the Royal Navy .
NOTHING of all this was true,everything was absurd .
Why gave he the order to spread these stories ?
Dawson censored anti German articles in the Times ,but,he also,changed course after Munich .

Hi ljadw:

I have no idea as to their motivations. What do you opine that their motivations for shifting their stances were?

[gebhk]

Hi Gorque

Don't disagree with anything you say. However, 'marching in step' to me simply implies people doing the same thing at the same time and my only point was that it happens (and does not of course, of itself, imply some sinister plot unless you are a conspiracy theory nut). When it comes to the news, the main news is the news and it is not surpriring that there is frequently a degree similarity across the spectrum. When it comes to opinion, people by and large don't want to be persuaded of something new, they just want their biases confirmed and newspapers have to make a living like everyone else. Thus a lot of the time there will be differences between newspapers as they cater for different niches (sometimes even newspapers from the same 'stable') but certain biases are universal and when addressing these, there will be an unsurprising unanimity in editorial comment too.

I think also that one needs to bear in mind that in the period in question there was a degree of deference to 'social supoeriors' that is not in evidence today. I doubt many papers would have called the prime minister 'Boris' or 'BoJo' in 1938. I would also suggest the utterances of Lord Lahdydah BOF, sod, QC, Minster for Tosh and Codswallop, would have been more likely to be taken at face value just because of his social standing than they would be today.

In relation to my examples, my only point was the methodology used ie a review of the evidence as systematically as possible with numbers given. Don't quote me on this, as I recall Calder assessed some 80-odd fictional Jewish characters presented in the British press during the war years and found all but <5 were negative stereotypes. So very much in the cultural bias drawer. Next time I am in the attic I will have a look to see if I can find the relevant passage.

[Gorque]

Hi Gorque

Don't disagree with anything you say. However, 'marching in step' to me simply implies people doing the same thing at the same time and my only point was that it happens (and does not of course, of itself, imply some sinister plot unless you are a conspiracy theory nut). When it ocmes to the news, the main bews is the news and it is not surpriring that there is frequently a degree similarity across the spectrum. when it comes to opinion, people by and large don't want to be persuaded of something new, they just want their biases confirmed and newspapers have to make a living like everyone else. Thus a lot of the time there will be differences between newspapers as they cater for different niches (sometimes even newspapers from the same 'stable') but cerstain biases are universal and when addressing these, there will be an unsurprising unanimity in editorial comment too.

I think also that one needs to bear in mind that in the period in question there was a degree of deferen to 'social supoeriors' that is not in evidence today. I doubt many papers would have called the prime minister 'Boris' or 'BoJo' in 1938. I would also suggest the utterances of Lord Lahdydah BOF, sod, QC, Minster for tosh and codswallop, would have been more likely to be taken at face value due to his social standung than they would be today.

Hi gebhk

I agree with your insights regarding the similarity in the news as well as bias confirmation. The British press currently are brutal, and not just to the P.M.!

In relation to my examples, my only point was the methodology used ie a review of the evidence as systematically as possible with numbers given. Don't quote me on this, as I recall Calder assessed some 80-odd fictional Jewish characters presented in the British press during the war years and found all but <5 were negative stereotypes. So very much in the cultural bias drawer. Next time I am in the attic I will have a look to see if I can find the relevant passage.

Cool, Whenever you get the chance, this would be an interesting read. The most interesting things that I find when looking through old newspapers are the smaller articles and the advertisements. Sometimes they give greater insight as to what was actually transpiring at the time. Sort of like "Alltagsgeschichte"

[ljadw]

Take The Express (Lord Beaverbrook dictated the foreign news content ) .After having tried with Churchill and Rothermere to unseat Baldwin as leader of the Tories in 1930, he changed course and supported almost unconditionally the appeasement policy of McDonald,Baldwin and Chamberlain .
Suddenly ,after Munich,he changed course again and propagated the absurd stories of the Germans planning to attack the Netherlands, Switzerland,Romania and planning to Copenhague ,or to use a modern word,to Pearl Harbor the Royal Navy .
NOTHING of all this was true,everything was absurd .
Why gave he the order to spread these stories ?
Dawson censored anti German articles in the Times ,but,he also,changed course after Munich .

Hi ljadw:

I have no idea as to their motivations. What do you opine that their motivations for shifting their stances were?

Motivations : money ?,ideology ?
Whatever, I found the following on the internet (I will give the source later )
'' Versailles rested upon a series of illusions
1 Tranquillity in Europe could be secured by the general extension of representative democracy .
2 A stable European order could be created through the universal application of the principle of national self-determination .
3 A stable new European system could be fabricated without the participation of either Germany or Russia .''
My comments : these three points were imposed by a US professor,without any knowledge of European history, and who became president in 1913 .
The history of Europe since 1919 has proved that these points were totally wrong .
People in Eastern Europe did not want representative democracy and do not care about it .
These points were generally also accepted in the UK and in France, but to a lesser extent : Bonnet was more realistic than a lot of British politicians .
From all this, I deduce the following :
the Allies won in 1918 and thus presumed that their ideology also had won and that they could impose their ideology on the defeated countries .When Hitler claimed originally that his aim was to give the German people the same rights as the Allies =national self-determination, all those naive and for a lot of them also hypocritical liberals ,believed him ,as the aim of the war was to make the world safe for democracy ,and as the German people supported Hitler, the result was that Germany was a democracy ,a German democracy .
But,when Hitler appeared to be a realpolitiker,the indignation in the Anglo-Saxon world was enormous,as every one believed that realpolitik had caused the war .As war was bad (war was The Somme and Passchendaele ),some one who started a war,was a criminal .
Why do I say that a lot of these liberals were hypocrites ?
Because the beneficiaries of point 2 were those who fought with the Allies:Poles and Czechs could have self-determination .Ukrainians, Germans, Austrians not .
The Armenians were also denied self-determination, because they were the victims of a hidden racism : they were not considered as whites .
When Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, Eden, an appeaser approved this ,as Hitler returned only in his backyard .
When the Sudeten Germans wanted the Anschluss to Germany,the liberals said yes (self-determination after 20 years )but objected to Hitler's threats ;the German answer was :when we were weak,there was no self-determination for the Sudeten ,this proves that force only rules the world .
But when Hitler demanded the return of Danzig, than self-determination no longer applied .
Intelligent people in Whitehall (they were a minority,but still they existed ) knew very well ,and ACCEPTED,that Munich did not only signify the Anschluss of the Sudeten Germans, but also the vassalization of Czechia and Slovakia .
Conclusion : as long as the Germans did present themselves as poor ,innocent victims of the Treaty of Versailles, they got what they wanted.But,when they played realpolitik (as Britain had done since centuries ) they became the bad guy .
And they no longer got anything : the WW 1 caricatures appeared again in the British media : the goose-stepping monocled,yelling Boche was there again .
Before 1914 the attack on Poland would not have resulted in a general war,as the politicians of those days applied the principle : war is the continuation of policy by other means .
In 1939 war was a crime and Hitler a criminal : on 3 September 1939 Chamberlain said (was forced to say ?) :our aim is the total destruction of Nazism ( in other words : of Germany )

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ljaw,

You post, "Tranquillity in Europe could be secured by the general extension of representative democracy."

It seems to have largely worked so far.

Cheers,

Sid

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ljaw,

You post, "Tranquillity in Europe could be secured by the general extension of representative democracy."

It seems to have largely worked so far. Liberal democracies tend not to go to war with each other.

Cheers,

Sid

[ljadw]

Yes ? Also in Ukraine ? Also in former Yugoslavia ?
If the 160 million inhabitants of Russia are satisfied with the authoritarian regime of Putin,this proves that the general extension of representative democracy is an illusion and that they do not want it .

[ljadw]

And Northern Ireland,and the Basks ?
To impose Western ideologies on the populations of Eastern Europe and thus to look at them with contempt has resulted in a failure and has deepen the gap between Eastern and Western Europe .
The same has happen in Africa, ME,Asia .

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ljadw,

Yup, also in Ukraine and Yugoslavia.

The 144 million inhabitants of Russia now have little freedom to gather hard information not fed to them by the state, or express dissent. They are definitely not living in a liberal democracy. Indeed, it is doubtful they are living in a democracy of any sort. They are therefore not in a position to evolve or express their free will.

The practicalities of extending representative democracy everywhere are certainly questionable. However, its advantages for the populations that have adopted it have proved real.

Cheers,

Sid.

[ljadw]

The advantages for the populations that have adopted ''liberal '' (ha ) democracy can not be a reason to impose this political system by force on other countries .
About Russia : what you are saying is true,but it is also irrelevant,because it is their business,their choice:if they prefer an authoritarian system,we have not the right to impose our system, And, as all dictators rule with the consent of their people, what is the difference between our system and theirs ?

[ljadw]

Source for Versailles resting upon a series of illusions :
The Times and Appeasement P 2 .

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi ljadw,

You post, "The advantages for the populations that have adopted ''liberal '' (ha ) democracy can not be a reason to impose this political system by force on other countries." True.

You post, "About Russia : what you are saying is true,but it is also irrelevant,because it is their business,their choice:if they prefer an authoritarian system,we have not the right to impose our system," Nor is anyone trying to impose any system on Russia apart from its own government. Nor, due to that government's authoritarianism, do the Russian people have a meanigful choice in this.

You post, "And, as all dictators rule with the consent of their people....." No they don't. They rule despite any informed opinion their people may have one way or the other. By definition, a dictator doesn't require "consent" by very virtue of being a dictator.

You ask, "what is the difference between our system and theirs?" Under our system the rulers have to be more responsive to the priorities and needs of the population, by virtue of periodically facing relatively free and fair electoral processes. This is not an obvious feature of dictatorships.

Cheers,

Sid.