De Gaulle and French betrayal of Poland in Semptember 1939

[gebhk]

Hi Ijadw

Firstly

He was acquitted and a civil suit does not make him a criminal.

That is quite correct. What makes him or anyone else a criminal and guilty of a crime is committing a crime and not, as you claim, being found guilty by a criminal court. There are vast numbers of criminals who have never been convicted because they have never been caught, used their power and/or influence to avoid prosecution/conviction or because the prosecution failed for any number of technical or extraneous reasons. The opposite is also true, that is, that vast numbers of innocent people have been convicted either mistakenly or becuase of malicious prosecution. Such convictions did not make them criminals or guilty of anything. Let's not re-invent the English language.

Secondly, since you said

O.J. Simpson was acquitted by court ,and only some one stupid would dare to call him a murderer.

then you have to accept thatyou are calling millions of people stupid (including the Goldman family, the jury in the civil case who found in favour of his victim's relative, the judge in that case and the lawyers for the claimant and the perhaps millions polled on the question on many occasions since the trial and the authors of hundreds if not thousands of books and articles on the case) who dared and indeed either called him that outright or described his actions in a way that allowed no other conclusion.

[ljadw]

Hi Ijadw

Firstly

He was acquitted and a civil suit does not make him a criminal.

That is quite correct. What makes him or anyone else a criminal and guilty of a crime is committing a crime and not, as you claim, being found guilty by a criminal court. There are vast numbers of criminals who have never been convicted because they have never been caught, used their power and/or influence to avoid prosecution/conviction or because the prosecution failed for any number of technical or extraneous reasons. The opposite is also true, that is, that vast numbers of innocent people have been convicted either mistakenly or becuase of malicious prosecution. Such convictions did not make them criminals or guilty of anything. Let's not re-invent the English language.

Secondly, since you said

O.J. Simpson was acquitted by court ,and only some one stupid would dare to call him a murderer.

then you have to accept thatyou are calling millions of people stupid (including the Goldman family, the jury in the civil case who found in favour of his victim's relative, the judge in that case and the lawyers for the claimant and the perhaps millions polled on the question on many occasions since the trial and the authors of hundreds if not thousands of books and articles on the case) who dared and indeed either called him that outright or described his actions in a way that allowed no other conclusion.

1`NO :what makes someone a criminal is NOT what he did,is not proofs, but the judgment of a jury founded on conviction= a belief . .Criminals who are not convicted are not criminals and innocent people who are convicted are criminals .
It is not on the people, not on politicians, not on the media to judge ,but on a jury .And a jury needs not proofs,but only a belief .
2 Only some one very stupid would dare to call Simpson a murderer,because Simpson would sue him and demand millions of dollars as compensation . You can't call some one a murderer who has been acquitted by a court of justice from murder.

[ljadw]

"Bargains are not made with the intention to keep them" is nonsense.

As George F. Kennan wrote in his "The War Problem of the Soviet Union" (1935) post-Great-War diplomacy was friendly.
It meant agreements were kept ("Clausula rebus sic stantibus" was the only valid exception.)
The Soviets introduced adversary diplomacy and later Hitler adopted it.

Diplomacy is politics and in politics agreement are promises.
And promises /treaties are made /are signed with the hidden intention not to keep them if it is needed,if it suits you,and that applies for ALL countries :US did violate their treaties with the native tribes,Britain changed sides in the Spanish succession war, Russia did the same n the Austrian succession war,France looked the other way when its ally Russia was attacked by Germany in 1914, etc,etc..
International politics are based on what is called lies in international politics .
The Soviets said : we must eliminate fascism in Spain and 15 years later they did business with Franco.
Hitler paraded as the defender of the Western civilization against bolchevism but signed a treaty with Stalin .
And, all this is very good,otherwise none of the 8 billion inhabitants of earth would have survived .

[wm]

Very weak and ancient examples from entirely different times.
I'm flabbergasted that Adam and Eve weren't mentioned.

And the last example is false.
"France looked" not because they "looked" but because French diplomacy was so disorganized and inept they weren't able to respond quickly.

btw it was "If Russia is attacked by Germany" in the treaty - which actually didn't happen.
Russia attacked Germany.
So what are you complaining about precisely?

[ljadw]

Very weak and ancient examples from entirely different times.
I'm flabbergasted that Adam and Eve weren't mentioned.

And the last example is false.
"France looked" not because they "looked" but because French diplomacy was so disorganized and inept they weren't able to respond quickly.

btw it was "If Russia is attacked by Germany" in the treaty - which actually didn't happen.
Russia attacked Germany.
So what are you complaining about precisely?

I am not complaining .
And :your knowledge about WW 1 is lacking : it was Germany that declared war on Russia, not the opposite .
About France : your claim that the French diplomacy was inept and disorganized is an unproved opinion :French diplomacy was not inept and not disorganized : it had a treaty with Russia of which the meaning was that Russia would help France if France was attacked by Germany, not the opposite . A war between Russia and Germany ,whatever would be the outcome,was very good for France . The same as a war between Poland and Germany .It were only the media and the woke public opinion that forced France to declare war on Germany on 3 September 1939 .
That the examples were from other times,is irrelevant .Realistic diplomacy = realpolitik and is still used today .When Nixon and Kissinger went to Peking, they threw Taiwan under the bus, because better relations with Peking were better for the US than the alliance with Taiwan .
The occupation of a part of Poland was good for the USSR,thus one the wokes in the West and even the Poles should not whine about it .
In 1944 and in 1948 Stalin abandoned the Greek communists,because this served the Soviet interests .
Certain people in France were drinking champagne after the defeat of Poland,between the existence of a Polish state prevented an alliance between France and the USSR .
Poland did not attack Czechoslovakia,because such an attack was not in its interests . If it was,Poland would have done it .
The only one who could prevent a German attack on Poland was Stalin,and he had no reason to do it .He was looking for whom who would give him a bigger reward.
The only one who could prevent an inevitable Polish defeat was also Stalin,but Poland refused,wisely,a possible Russian intervention .
The moment Hitler took the decision to attack Poland, the dies were cast :finis Poloniae .If Hitler won, he would remain in Warsaw, if Stalin won ,he would remain in Warsaw .
Thus the Polish complains that other people were to blame for their misfortunes,are, although comprehensible, based on nothing :no one had an obligation to prevent the misfortunes of Poland and no one could prevent them.
At the start of the first war against Iraq,old Bush accepted the help of Syria, because it was in his interests .At the end he incited the Kurds to revolt against Saddam ,but gave Saddam total liberty to crush them , because a Kurdish state was not in the interests of the US . Was old Bush to blame ? No : he had no obligations to the Kurds but only to the American people .

[gebhk]

1`NO :what makes someone a criminal is NOT what he did,is not proofs, but the judgment of a jury founded on conviction= a belief . .Criminals who are not convicted are not criminals and innocent people who are convicted are criminals .

Sorry, but this is utter codswallop. I recommend consulting a dictionary before pontificating on the meaning of the English language.

Only some one very stupid would dare to call Simpson a murderer,because Simpson would sue him and demand millions of dollars as compensation . You can't call some one a murderer who has been acquitted by a court of justice from murder.

And yet thousands, indeed millions have done so either explicitly or implicitly, verbally and in print, as the most casual search on the Internet will tell you and have not been sured. Not only that, but a civil court has said the same and it too has not been sued. On the contrary, it has been OJ Simpson that has been ordered to pay millions in damages. So why push theories which have been proven false by a mountain of evidence?

Again, I can only assume you are pulling our leg or trying to distract us from another of your manipulations or errors? Oh yes, still waiting for the evidence that:

Poland was convinced/convinced itself that Hitler was bluffing.

[Gorque]

Very weak and ancient examples from entirely different times.
I'm flabbergasted that Adam and Eve weren't mentioned.

[ljadw]

1`NO :what makes someone a criminal is NOT what he did,is not proofs, but the judgment of a jury founded on conviction= a belief . .Criminals who are not convicted are not criminals and innocent people who are convicted are criminals .

Sorry, but this is utter codswallop. I recommend consulting a dictionary before pontificating on the meaning of the English language.

Only some one very stupid would dare to call Simpson a murderer,because Simpson would sue him and demand millions of dollars as compensation . You can't call some one a murderer who has been acquitted by a court of justice from murder.

And yet thousands, indeed millions have done so either explicitly or implicitly, verbally and in print, as the most casual search on the Internet will tell you. Not only that, but a civil court has said the same and it too has not been sued. On the contrary, it has been OJ Simpson that has been ordered to pay millions in damages. So why push such obviously incorrect speculations in the face of such obvious and well-known facts?

Again, I can only assume you are pulling our leg or trying to distract us from another of your manipulations or errors? Oh yes, still waiting for the evidence that:

Poland was convinced/convinced itself that Hitler was bluffing.

A civil court can not say that some one is a criminal .

[gebhk]

A civil court can not say that some one is a criminal .

It certainly can say so implicitly as was the case here. It found that, even in strictly legal terms, he had caused the deaths of his victims. Since those deaths were self-evidently murders, any reasonable person can draw the obvious conclusion.

So let's move on from this patent distraction to some evidence that:

Poland was convinced/convinced itself that Hitler was bluffing.

[ljadw]

To cause the death of people does not mean that one is a criminal .And that these deaths were self-evidently murders is your opinion,which is irrelevant : a court said that he was not a murderer.
"Obvious '' conclusions from ''reasonable ''persons have no place in the world of the law. Judgments are not made by reasonable persons ,but by judges/juries .That's the basic of the first lesson about the law .
And of course Poland knew that Hitler was bluffing ,because
1 the diplomatic conditions for an attack did not exist
2 if Hitler was serious, he would have ordered a mobilization and Poland would know this :there were no evidences for a German mobilization which means that there were proofs that Germany did not mobilize .And this means that Hitler was bluffing as he did a year before in the Summer concerning Czechoslovakia .

[wm]

And :your knowledge about WW 1 is lacking : it was Germany that declared war on Russia, not the opposite .

I've said that the treaty required Russia to be attacked.
Russia wasn't attacked. The declaration of war wasn't an attack either.

France looked the other way when its ally Russia was attacked by Germany in 1914

What really happened:

Perhaps more important than what the French said to the Russians in St Petersburg was the timing of the visit. The long absence from Paris from 16-29 July may have been crucial to the outcome of the crisis.
…
In the event, the two-week absence seriously skewed French decision-making. During the six-day return voyage, Poincare and Viviani were at sea in more senses than one. Wireless telegraphy was still primitive and Poincare claimed in his memoirs that 'fragmentary and incomprehensible' wireless messages from the Eiffel Tower deprived them of a clear picture of the Serbian crisis.

The absence of senior ministers and advisors compounded the weakness of the government machine in Paris.
Acting foreign minister Jean-Baptiste Bienvenu-Martin, minister of justice, was irresolute and unequal to the job, spending barely any time at the Quai d'Orsay.
His shilly-shallying encouraged the German and Austrian envoys to suppose that France would qualify her support for Russia.

Interdepartmental rivalry hampered coordination - a Berlin telegram of 21 July reporting preliminary notice of German mobilization was not received by the war ministry until 28 July. Army commander General Joffre protested at this 'inexplicable delay' but he himself delayed passing on important information to war minister Adolphe Messimy.
Grandeur And Misery: France's Bid for Power in Europe, 1914-1940 by Anthony Adamthwaite

About France : your claim that the French diplomacy was inept and disorganized is an unproved opinion :French diplomacy was not inept and not disorganized :

The over-optimistic mood of 1914 concealed serious structural shortcomings - economic, demographic, and military.
Equally important, however, were leadership attitudes and the deficiencies of the government machine.
A complacent, overconfident, and incurious leadership employed a casual, almost careless, style of governing.
The combination of incoherent informality at the top and rampant bureaucracy at lower levels discouraged systematic reflection and assessment.

Grandeur And Misery: France's Bid for Power in Europe, 1914-1940 by Anthony Adamthwaite

[ljadw]

1 Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August 1914 and attacked Russia already on 2 August 1914 ( attack on Kalisz ),while France remained neutral .
2 Only on 3 August ,after and because Germany declared war on France and attacked her, did France declare war on Germany .
The fighting on the Eastern Front started before the fighting in France .
3 The visit of Poincaré with Viviani to control him to Russia had nothing to do with the French refusal to honor the treaty with Russia,as the meaning of the treaty was NOT that France would help Russia but that Russia would help France (which it also refused to do before 1914 ). Since a long time the treaty was dormant, ever dead and the elections in France in July made any French aid to Russia impossible ,as the socialists who were very hostile to the Czar and full of admiration for Germany had won these elections : Jaures was the master in France and if it depended on him,France would remain neutral .
And I disagree totally with Adamthwaite : incoherent informality and rampant bureaucracy existed also in Russia,Britain and France . The French foreign policy in the Summer before the war was the same policy as in the past : France was isolationist,insular and did not trust other countries .
The average Frenchman did not even trust the inhabitants of the next village,and was very suspicious to those of Paris,thus why should he fight and die for Russians, people he considered as incultivated ,barbarian ?

[ljadw]

Other point : Poincaré and Viviani returned on 29 July, two days before the German DOW on Russia,thus they had enough time to be informed about the latest news .

[wm]

1 Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August 1914 and attacked Russia already on 2 August 1914 ( attack on Kalisz ),while France remained neutral .

Not true.
Kalisz, a border town, was set on fire by the Russian Army and abandoned. The German Army subsequently entered the undefended town.
Anyway, the point is that it's not true that "France looked the other way."

And I disagree totally with Adamthwaite : incoherent informality and rampant bureaucracy existed also in Russia,Britain and France . The French foreign policy in the Summer before the war was the same policy as in the past : France was isolationist,insular and did not trust other countries.

Unsupported opinions.

[gebhk]

And of course Poland knew that Hitler was bluffing ,because
1 the diplomatic conditions for an attack did not exist
2 if Hitler was serious, he would have ordered a mobilization and Poland would know this :there were no evidences for a German mobilization which means that there were proofs that Germany did not mobilize .And this means that Hitler was bluffing as he did a year before in the Summer concerning Czechoslovakia .

So no evidence just idle speculation.