Started with a lie

[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.

[Kraxis]

Hey wait a moment... I wasn't saying that Hitler was right, merely that he wasn't exactly lying. Yes, he might have created the problem himself (though I do think they were marginalized even before Hitler came to power), but he didn't lie.

Credit should be given where credit is due, even if it is bad credit.

[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

[Rosacrux redux]

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

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

I think you are wrong here. Because, following the wake of nationalism after the Enlightment (now that's an oxymoron...) the aim for every "people" that have found (or thought they have found... ) their "national identity" was excactly that: Ein land = ein volk.

Everybody took a shot at that - or was forced by external factors (see AHE) to follow that path. Sure it was usually implemented poorly, because it is a rather unnatural way to sort things out - nations are an artificial invention most of the times and in many occassions failed miserably. But you can't say it wasn't a goal- it was what everybody was aiming for.

Numerous attempts at ethnic cleansing (even large-scale genocide, as in Turkey 1914-17 and Germany during WW2), a huge number of separatist movements, and other similar incidents, declare in the most vocarious fashion that the effort to creat homogenous single-nation states was and in most occassions still is, the case.

The effort, not the outcome. That is quite different, as I said before. But it is a very, very, very tried "solution". Which has proven to be more of a problem than a solution, anyway...

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I think you are wrong here. Because, following the wake of nationalism after the Enlightment (now that's an oxymoron...) the aim for every "people" that have found (or thought they have found... ) their "national identity" was excactly that: Ein land = ein volk.

Everybody took a shot at that - or was forced by external factors (see AHE) to follow that path. Sure it was usually implemented poorly, because it is a rather unnatural way to sort things out - nations are an artificial invention most of the times and in many occassions failed miserably. But you can't say it wasn't a goal- it was what everybody was aiming for.

Numerous attempts at ethnic cleansing (even large-scale genocide, as in Turkey 1914-17 and Germany during WW2), a huge number of separatist movements, and other similar incidents, declare in the most vocarious fashion that the effort to creat homogenous single-nation states was and in most occassions still is, the case.

The effort, not the outcome. That is quite different, as I said before. But it is a very, very, very tried "solution". Which has proven to be more of a problem than a solution, anyway...

Good points. I never said it wasn't a goal for the participants, but you are correct in that I am taking a more structural read on events and not fully addressing the obvious efforts towards an ein reich-ein volk situation that so many of the participants attempted. Most of the combinations I referenced were the "compromise" solutions enacted in the face of these competing tensions. The theme you bring out is important, and vital to understanding how Europe ended up with those artificial conglomerates.

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

[Papewaio]

Then why are most democracies more diverse then despotic regiemes?

[hoom]

Uhm, can anybody actually name a war that was not started based on a lie? (or at least a part truth)

[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.