Tag: The Forced War

1,860 words

I enjoyed Fred Reed’s April 24 essay “Ignorance, Its Uses and Nurture,” which refers to universal suffrage in anything larger than a small town as a “crackpot” idea. In a mere thousand words, Reed painted the American public as entirely incapable and unqualified to understand United States foreign policy, let alone vote on it. Therefore, he concludes, the entire democratic system is a sham. Yes, the statistics he presents bolster his point admirably. But maybe not as much as epic burns such as this one: (more…)

Hitler issuing his declaration of war against Poland in the Reichstag on September 1, 1939.

2,746 words

Part 5 of 5 (Part 1 here, Part 4 here)

A German war with Poland was now a certainty, but a new continental war involving Britain and France was not. The most important obstacle to the widening of the conflict was that Britain quietly viewed French participation as an indispensable precondition of her own involvement, and the French had not committed themselves to action against Poland. (more…)

Winston Churchill and Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

1,907 words

Part 4 of 5 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here, Part 5 here)

Hitler’s cancellation of military operations for August 26 left him with only five days before September 1, after which, according to his generals, a military campaign in Poland would no longer be feasible. If war was to be prevented, it had to be done within this time. (more…)

Joseph Stalin and Joachim von Ribbentrop during the signing of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact on August 23, 1939.

1,852 words

Part 3 of 5 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 4 here)

By August 1939, everyone understood that a war between Germany and Poland was extremely probable. The great question was whether it might still be prevented from developing into a general European war. Hitler was under an important time constraint: since October rains transform Poland into a sea of mud, German military leaders warned him it would be unsafe to postpone the launch of hostilities past September 1. (more…)

David L. Hoggan

4,041 words

Part 2 of 5 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)

Given that both the United States and the Soviet Union were far larger and more powerful than Germany, and that the British themselves were still presiding over an enormous empire, one may wonder why Britain’s leadership was in such agreement on the supposedly urgent need to resist a far smaller power’s efforts to consolidate more of the German-speaking population of Central Europe within her borders. (more…)

2,781 words

Part 1 of 5 (Part 2 here)

David L. Hoggan
The Forced War: When Peaceful Revision Failed, 2nd ed.
Newport Beach, Calif.: Institute for Historical Review, 2023

David Hoggan (1923-1988) was an American historian who received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1948 with a dissertation on The Breakdown of German-Polish Relations in 1939. (more…)