(Some) Answers to (some) Correspondents

Just a few points (alas I can’t deal with everything) in response to comments. Mr ‘P’ makes the standard mistake of the ‘anti-appeasement’ faction, by assuming that the very odd and illogical course of events between March and September 1939 was fore-ordained, and would have happened even if Lord Halifax hadn’t pressed for the mad guarantee to Poland, which allowed that country to take complete control of Britain's foreign and defence policies.

 

By the way, I don’t think the hindsight-tinged reminiscences of defeated German generals at Nuremberg give much of a guide as to how Germany would have behaved if opposed in 1938 . Czechoslovakia’s position after the Anschluss was militarily indefensible, as the annexation of Austria had made the Erzegebirge fortifications irrelevant (look at a map).

 

Britain and France were in no position to take any significant action in support of Prague.

 

The whole point is that, without the Polish guarantee, Poland, Germany and the USSR would all have behaved very differently. I should say it is virtually certain that Poland would have conceded German demands over Danzig and the corridor, and renewed her 1934 non-aggression pact with Germany. There would have been no Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, no autumn war, no Blitzkrieg, no May 1940 invasion of the West. I suspect Hitler would have turned his attentions towards Romania (for its oil) and Yugoslavia (for its long-term strategic value in a future attack on the USSR) . This would also have postponed the Holocaust, which did not begin until the invasion of the USSR. While Germany was still at peace with western Europe, Jews in Germany were certainly horribly persecuted, and individually beaten up and killed. But Jews, especially children, were still being allowed to leave the country, and there was no official policy of mass-murder, as there was after the Wannsee conference of early 1942 (though of course deliberate massacres had taken place during the invasion of Russia and the Baltic states) .

 

He also doesn’t seem to see that Britain (and France) would never have been in danger of disadvantageous peace  negotiations with Hitler if they hadn’t declared war on Germany in the first place. The country which declares war and then sues for peace can expect to be humiliated, robbed and stripped by its conqueror, who will naturally ensure that his former foe cannot easily threaten him again.

 

In fact, by declaring war from a position of weakness (as we did)  we gravely endangered our navy, our air force and our gold reserves, all of which Hitler would have demanded had we sued for peace.  He would have taken some parts of our empire, too. (the irony is that it was our allies, the USA, who ended up taking our gold and forcing us to give up our empire and scrap most of our navy).

 

As for the balance of power, had this been our real objective, the only serious step we could have taken would have been the one we eventually adopted far later and in much worse circumstances – an alliance of necessity with Stalin, paid for by giving Stalin a free hand in the Baltics and Eastern Europe (though less free than the one we gave him at Yalta).

 

We wouldn’t do that  because we thought Stalin was horrid (though we were happy to make a pact with anti-Semitic, undemocratic Poland, which had disreputably seized a bleeding chunk of Czechoslovakia after Munich) , so he wouldn’t agree to a deal. Would sucha  deal in 1939 have been so much worse than going to war with Hitler without an army, being swiftly beaten and driven into the sea while losing billions of pounds worth of equipment by today’s values, going bankrupt and nearly getting ourselves occupied? I can’t see why.

 

But if we weren’t prepared to make such an alliance, I can’t see that making one with the broken reed of Poland was preferable to armed and vigilant neutrality. The second policy was adopted by the USA, which came out of the war richer and more powerful than it went in (in many ways at our expense). And nobody of any moment sneers at the USA for doing so. So why would it have been wrong for us?.

 

There’s no parallel with modern Russia’s reasonable desire to protect its sphere of influence after years of provocation. Anyone who really wanted this country to be independent would welcome a counterweight to the EU on the European continent, I should have thought.

 

I am never sure whether people have had sense of humour failures or are trying to be funny, but my mention of Mr Erdogan’s moustache was, of course, a joke. Evil dictators tend to have these odd facial growths. Need I say more? Perhaps.

 

The point about shoving the clocks forward is one of 'who whom'? Ahd also one of trading standards. I like to get up early and to go to bed early. So that is what I do. I have no desire to impose my habits on anyone else. I adapt to the world as it is. But I resist the attempts of others to impose their different choices on me.

 

By shifting time away a full hour (or more if they could get away with it) from its true natural position, they make it less pleasant and convenient for me to live my life as I wish.

 

Try it this way. If people like me had somehow managed to bamboozle politicians into believing that ‘daylight-saving’ could be achieved by jamming the clocks one (or more ) hours *back* from their true natural position, then those who are now clock-changers would object that they were being forced to endure light mornings they did not want, and dark evenings they disliked.  

 

But here’s the difference. I would side with them. I don’t believe there’s a true majority for this meddling, in either direction. Some would be suited by one, and some by the other. But since time is not arbitrary, but depends on noon coinciding (reasonably closely) with the sun being at its zenith, the default should surely be nature. As I’ve said before, altering any other measure of objective reality to give a false reading would vary between being mad (thermometers and barometers) inconvenient, dangerous  and damaging (speedometers) to being an actual crime (weights and measures) .

 

I am sure it’s only because most people don’t really understand the clock-shifting procedure and its effects (most are clueless about whether the clocks should go forwards or backwards on any given occasion, until they are told by the media) , and naturally assume that authority knows what it is doing (one of outr biggest mistakes), that this crazy performance continues unchallenged.

In the course of arguing against Berlin Time, I at last understood what was actually involved.  And I am completely convinced that shifting the clocks is useless at best, harmless at most.

 

I would note that this morning, when I had an unmissable appointment in London, I got up at my normal time (by the clock) which was 4.45 by GMT. And so, for the first time in many weeks, I got up in pitch darkness. I have felt bleary, tired and jetlagged all day, and I have no doubt this will persist for some days, as it always does. I can see no good reason why this was inflicted on me. If others want more daylight when they’re awake, I suggest they get up earlier. They’ll be amazed at how many establishments from shops to stations to swimming pools are open early already, and perhaps they might campaign for some of them to open earlier, if they think it so important, rather than inflict their wishes on millions of others who are inconvenienced by them.

 

Defenders of abortion try to equate it with miscarriage and still-birth. These are not the consequences of deliberate human acts, and cannot be treated in the same way.

 

My parallel between Crimea and North Cyprus is not intended as a condemnation of Turkey’s behaviour in 1974. As I’ve written here before, I sympathise with Turkey’s action in many ways. Like Moscow, Ankara was provoked.  I’m just saying that those who condemn one must condemn the other. And, as NATO plainly doesn’t do this, its inconsistency reveals that its real hostility to Russian action is not principled, but has another cause.