Started with a lie

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

WWII. France invades Germany, bringing France and Britain into the war, NOT the other way around, as most British and French historians I've read. They don't deny it, they just conveniently skip the fact France actually invaded GERMANY in a rather pathetic assault, then Germany turned the Panzers out of Poland and blasted the French.

[Adrian II]

WWII. France invades Germany, bringing France and Britain into the war, NOT the other way around, as most British and French historians I've read. They don't deny it, they just conveniently skip the fact France actually invaded GERMANY in a rather pathetic assault, then Germany turned the Panzers out of Poland and blasted the French.

On 3 September 1939, both Britain and France declared war on Germany after Hitler refused to abort his invasion of Poland. France and Britain had guaranteed Polish borders in March 1939. No historian I've read glosses over the fact that these countries declared war on Germany. Whole books have been devoted to that one fateful day and the discussion going on in capitals and military headquarters.

[Strike For The South]

The spainish american war the U.S.S Maine

[Red Harvest]

The spainish american war the U.S.S Maine

Not really a lie. A lie requires intent to deceive. It wasn't really known what caused the explosion on the Maine at the time, but people believed it was the Spanish. Opportunists jumped on it, particularly the press. Not that some of them didn't do deceptive things, but at the time it was not known what caused the explosion.. The Spanish got the rap, even though it is most likely that it was a problem with the situation of the powder magazines, etc.

Similar happened with the Gulf of Tonkin from what I recall, although parts of this one might be better classified as a lie. Quite a bit of confusion, belief by the sensor operator that torpedoes were in the water, etc. There were several incidents involved.

[Strike For The South]

Not really a lie. A lie requires intent to deceive. It wasn't really known what caused the explosion on the Maine at the time, but people believed it was the Spanish. Opportunists jumped on it, particularly the press. Not that some of them didn't do deceptive things, but at the time it was not known what caused the explosion.. The Spanish got the rap, even though it is most likely that it was a problem with the situation of the powder magazines, etc.

Similar happened with the Gulf of Tonkin from what I recall, although parts of this one might be better classified as a lie. Quite a bit of confusion, belief by the sensor operator that torpedoes were in the water, etc. There were several incidents involved.

I see I bow to your wisdom

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Latest best theory on the U.S.S. Maine is a slow burning coal fire in the forward coal bunker. After slowly burning for hours undetected (an all-too-common problem of the era) the heat alone set off the powder bags in an adjacent magazine. Hearst did the rest.

France did indeed launch an assault on Germany as a way to belatedly "intervene" on behalf of Poland, but the event came to nothing. To argue that this was the trigger for the second world war, however, flies in the face of a good volume of historical documentation.

Seamus

[Red Harvest]

Latest best theory on the U.S.S. Maine is a slow burning coal fire in the forward coal bunker. After slowly burning for hours undetected (an all-too-common problem of the era) the heat alone set off the powder bags in an adjacent magazine. Hearst did the rest.

Yep, the magazines were not well situated. Coal fires like this are stil a problem for power plants, coal trains, and the like. It is rather easy for a fire to start in a mound of coal from spontaneous oxidation and heating from what I've gathered. Various things can cause a pile of coal to start heating from the inside, this can lead to a fire. I've not worked with coal much myself, but I am aware it can provide its own heat to ignite a fire.

[Meneldil]

WWII. France invades Germany, bringing France and Britain into the war, NOT the other way around, as most British and French historians I've read. They don't deny it, they just conveniently skip the fact France actually invaded GERMANY in a rather pathetic assault, then Germany turned the Panzers out of Poland and blasted the French.

Actually, the invasion was quite successful, and would probably have reached Berlin in a few weeks at most, but the French Etat Major (mainly composed of WWI generals whose war strategy was totally outdated) decided to retreat and to wait for the Germans.

Clemenceau was probably right when he said "War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men."

[caesar44]

WWII. France invades Germany, bringing France and Britain into the war, NOT the other way around, as most British and French historians I've read. They don't deny it, they just conveniently skip the fact France actually invaded GERMANY in a rather pathetic assault, then Germany turned the Panzers out of Poland and blasted the French.

Oh the poor Germans

[Franconicus]

Back to the topic! I am not looking for lies in wars or lies without warsd or false reasons. I just wonder if there are more false 'accidents' that were taken as a cause to start a war.

What about the Vietnam war. Wasn't there a faked attack at a US ship that was taken as cause for the US government?

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Oh the poor Germans

And those poor Americans. All those wars. Caesar, he told us to list a lie, so live with it. Just because you're seemingly anti-German...

[Kraxis]

What about the Marco Polo Bridge Incident? I honestly don't know, so tell me. Was it a ruse from the Japanese?

About the Sudenten Germans, they were not directly opressed, but they were indeed a marginal population, they were pushed back in the line for jobs, couldn't get high official jobs and so on. Opression? No! Unjust treatment? Yes!
So Hitler did have something to back him up, he just blew it out of proportions and added the statement that Germans should be together. Bam, and you have a good argument when the opposing states are weakly led.

[Franconicus]

About the Sudenten Germans, they were not directly opressed, but they were indeed a marginal population, they were pushed back in the line for jobs, couldn't get high official jobs and so on. Opression? No! Unjust treatment? Yes!
So Hitler did have something to back him up, he just blew it out of proportions and added the statement that Germans should be together. Bam, and you have a good argument when the opposing states are weakly led.

Well Kraxis, I think it was not really a lie. In the Sudetenland the majority of the population was German (as far as I remember). So according to the right of self-determination they should have belonged to Germany. I think that the government became more and more distrustful against them when Germany's power raised again and Germany occupied Austria. Hitler installed and supported a local terror group that fought the government. Government reacted and opressed the German population more and more. So Hitler could use the problem he had created himself.

[Watchman]

Eh, the "one people one state" principle was seriously tried exactly once - after WW1. It turned out to suck beans and caused endless grief to everyone concerned, and would most likely have ended up in the dusty locker of other dubious Edwardian paraphenelia (like phrenology...) after WW2 had assorted separatists not kept it alive for fairly obvious reasons.

[Franconicus]

Sorry, I do not agree! After WW 1 there was no '1 people one state'. And that was part of the problem and helped Hitler in the beginning (Austria, CSR and even Poland). After the WW2 they made it better: many Germans had to leave the areas they lived before: Poland, CSR, Rumenia ... . And in the Saarland people could vote weather they wanted to be part of Germany or France.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Eh, the "one people one state" principle was seriously tried exactly once - after WW1. It turned out to suck beans and caused endless grief to everyone concerned, and would most likely have ended up in the dusty locker of other dubious Edwardian paraphenelia (like phrenology...) after WW2 had assorted separatists not kept it alive for fairly obvious reasons.

I disagree. The 1-p-1-s has almost never been employed in any systematic way. Take just the continent of Europe for example.

The Congress of Vienna affirmed the idea of a unified Belgium crafted from two peoples, the Flems and the Walloons as well as a Russia that included the Ukraine. The AHE itself was a motley collection at best, and they hosted the gathering.

Versailles, following the Great War (always loved that particular oxymoronic misnomeration ), carved up the AHE, Montenegro, and Serbia into several states: Austria, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary. While Hungary and Austria could make a fair claim as to being one "people" the rest of the area included: Croatians, Serbians, Bosnians, Montenegrans, Macedonians, Czechs, Slovaks, and Sudeten Germans (plus a few I've probably missed). This was done because all of the groups involved felt entitled to most of the Balkans since their group had, at some point in history, been in control of a large chunk of it. The area was hardly calm throughout the inter-war period.

Yalta and Potsdam divided up the spheres of influence, and Soviet domination squelched internicine rivalry for decades, but the dissolution of the USSR in 1989-1991 left the area free to decide things for themselves. As you know, Czechoslovakia has split, Yugoslavia has splintered, and many of the factions within the region promptly went to war to conquer the rest. Were NATO forces withdrawn, this would likely continue.

Separatist movements in the Basque region and in Ireland want to re-draw their corners of the map, Spain continues to have some level of strain between the Andalusian and Catalonian components of that country, and Italy has effectively separated itself into two separate entities with a shared foreign policy.

....And that's just Europe. If you want to go into the disconnect between the lines on the map and the tribal "people" boundaries in Africa, we could spend a few weeks just sorting out the contenders and their claims.

One-people-one-state has NEVER really been tried, save where geography has allowed for nearly complete homogenization (i.e. Japan -- and even there some might argue about Hokaido). Could the 1-p-1-s model actually work to defuse tensions and conflict if it were implemented? Not sure, but with humanity in control, I always err on the side of cynicism.

Seamus

[caesar44]

Just because you're seemingly anti-German...

evil , me love Germans , me love them .
How one can be an anti 85,000,000 individuals ? What is an anti-German exactly ? Please explain .

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

evil , me love Germans , me love them .
How one can be an anti 85,000,000 individuals ? What is an anti-German exactly ? Please explain .

Very well Ceasar, maybe I was wrong. But I stated a fact, and that reaction was completly uncalled for.

[Meneldil]

Not really. You sure stated a fact, but added some really uncalled for comments such as 'NOT the other way around, as most British and French historians I've read' or 'France invades Germany, bringing France and Britain into the war'.

Now either, you intended to make some revisionism, or you don't really know what happened in 1939, but your vision of the events is far from what happened in reality.

[Del Arroyo]

"People-hood" is fluid, just as are geographical borders and the landscape of power. People can grow together and grow apart-- and even if you did get everyone split up into nice little homgenous communities, it wouldn't be long before they started dominating one another and mixing things back up.

The only important rule is that in order to have a viable state, the unifying factors must overpower the entropic factors (I think that's what entropy means). And it is true that democracy works much more efficiently if applied across a more-or-less homogenous population-- too much diversity can break it.

DA

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Not really. You sure stated a fact, but added some really uncalled for comments such as 'NOT the other way around, as most British and French historians I've read' or 'France invades Germany, bringing France and Britain into the war'.

Now either, you intended to make some revisionism, or you don't really know what happened in 1939, but your vision of the events is far from what happened in reality.

Alright. Britain was already in the war. This book was written by a team of British military historians about the Panzer divisions. France did invade Germany first. Most historians belonging to the former allies simply leave that out of their books. My version of events was quite close to what happened in reality, aside from the change I listed above.