Chilperic
Banned
Nice map now tell me where are Mussolini's demands?
Buy this book and do some reading http://www.amazon.com/Mussolini-Dennis-Mack-Smith/dp/0394506944
The green blob - Italys occupation zone including Grenoble and Nice???
Do you know the difference between a zone of occupation and a territorial concession?
Yes, and it would have been run more or less like a part of Italy. It might have been annexed to Italy later on if Hitler had been lenient..
Let me help you with use of your map for example.
The big yellow bit is a zone of German occupation.
Now look to the right at the blue bit that is a French territoral consession to Germany.
Strange of him to give somthing that has not even been asked for.
But he did ask for Nice, you even mentioned that.
He didnt ask for anything for fear of embarresment as having to ask the Germans.
He did make a first request for concessions but withdrew it very quickly.
But he did ask for Nice, you even mentioned that.
Well, he had to ask the Germans about things anyway, such as help for his disastrous attempt to conquer Greece and for the Italian Armys failures in the Libyan Desert.
If he has some sense he would have demanded Corsica, Tunisia and Nice.
Then launched an attack or Malta which he could have taken at that point.
With Malta and Tunisia in Italian hands re-supply of the Italian N African forces would have been much better.
Probably would have been enough to allow the Axis to take Egypt when Rommel arrived.
Malta would have been hard to take with the RN patrolling the Med and the Regia Marina were no match for them, as was proved at the Battle of Taranto.
He was pointing out that the National Govt had a majority anyway, so they could technically have governed as an emergency government, without Labour participation.Labour basically said that they would only join a coalition led by Churchill when the war started...
I would agree with this. The UK would simply be demanding more than Germany would be willing to provide.
If Germany is truly interested in a peace with the United Kingdom, it should have released Poland minus Posen and Danzig
and accepted Neville Chamberlain's offer of an "Easy Peace", which would probably be more likely than a peace deal where the UK would have to, at some degree, hand over Indonesia and the Congo into German Puppet Regimes.
For the sake of argument even if he succeeded in a vote of confidence in the House, what could he expect from Hitler? Any British PM who stood up and waved a treaty around proclaiming this meant peace with honour with Germany is impossible after Chamberlain.
There would need to be iron clad promises backed up by action like the immediate withdrawal of German military forces from France and from any other country where their presence could threaten Britain. Not going to happen.
The removal of any German and their allied airforces from within range of the UK. No way.
Some way to neutralise the threat of German naval vessels against the RN and merchant marine.
To top it all off the Italian navy would need to be neutralised as well as the army presence in Africa.
Why would the British government and more importantly the people accept anything else after the continual broken agreements?
He was pointing out that the National Govt had a majority anyway, so they could technically have governed as an emergency government, without Labour participation.
Yes, he might have offered, say, Norwegian or Dutch neutrality. So what? He would have not disarmed, of course, but he would have wanted the Norwegians and Dutch disarmed.
In other words, he could have come back whenever he wanted. And who, in Europe, could trust Hitler only on his word? Nobody who wasn't a fool, certainly not Halifax.
If Britain "truly" wanted peace. Here "truly" actually means "at whatever cost". Going for peace at whatever cost had been tried, and proved foolish.
Romanians accepted vassaldom to Germany "of their own will".
Here, the meaning is "at gunpoint", and anyway that took place after the moment in which Halifax could have become British Prime Minister. Back in March 1939, Romania had asked the British for help against the German demand of a position of monopoly as to the Romanian foreign trade, and the fame of the British guarantee to Poland tends to make obscure the fact that Romania was also given guarantees. Romania chose the German side because otherwise it would have ended like Poland. They would have been way happier without German meddling.
A final remark: why should Britain accept German hegemony? Only because it had been tentatively achieved, not earlier than a month before, and which was far from proven that it could be self-supporting? But Britain in the past had had way more of an empire overseas, and had never ever accepted the hegemony of one Continental country, and for very good reasons. It had opposed Spain and France. Trying to argue that having one lone Continental superpower was actually good for Britain really doesn't hold water – and even if it did in theory, it runs entirely against the grain of centuries of British foreign policies. Traditions which were probably much more ingrained in Halifax than in the less conventional Churchill, BTW.