Hellas: did we change the course of WWII??

**Papewaio** · 12-27-2007, 02:40

Originally Posted by sapi

Just kidding, indeed ... you obviously meant to say 'Australians'

Australians aka 'West Islanders'...

**Sarmatian** · 12-27-2007, 03:17

Well, to the original question - it is utter nonsense picking one event and saying this changed the course of ww2. That could be said also for Germany's attack on Yugoslavia, which also delayed the attack on USSR. I mean, there are numerous occassions where smaller nations did their part, whether in providing information, sabotage, rescuing pilots, disrupting german lines of communication or the actual fighting. Just keeping order in the Balkans took up 32 divisions of Germany and her allies. Those divisions were badly needed elsewhere.

Did all that stuff had an effect on the course of the war? It sure did! But choosing one and claiming that it was THE event that changed the course of the war is plain stupid.

**Kraxis** · 01-03-2008, 05:54

Originally Posted by Sarmatian

Well, to the original question - it is utter nonsense picking one event and saying this changed the course of ww2. That could be said also for Germany's attack on Yugoslavia, which also delayed the attack on USSR. I mean, there are numerous occassions where smaller nations did their part, whether in providing information, sabotage, rescuing pilots, disrupting german lines of communication or the actual fighting. Just keeping order in the Balkans took up 32 divisions of Germany and her allies. Those divisions were badly needed elsewhere.

Did all that stuff had an effect on the course of the war? It sure did! But choosing one and claiming that it was THE event that changed the course of the war is plain stupid.

Please don't go about calling discussions stupid. This is not a place for nutkicking and small personal attacks.

You disagree, good, make your points. But it isn't as if this was presented as some kind of truth, it was put up for discussion rather than "yeah we are so cool because we won the war for you without knowing it."

You focus too much on the premiss of the discussion rather than the actual discussion, and that is as bad as doing the opposite. No need to come out fighting like that.

**Sarmatian** · 01-06-2008, 03:20

Originally Posted by Kraxis

Please don't go about calling discussions stupid. This is not a place for nutkicking and small personal attacks.

You disagree, good, make your points. But it isn't as if this was presented as some kind of truth, it was put up for discussion rather than "yeah we are so cool because we won the war for you without knowing it."

You focus too much on the premiss of the discussion rather than the actual discussion, and that is as bad as doing the opposite. No need to come out fighting like that.

Sory Kraxis, but I do feel that it is nosense. It's like when a nation wins the world cup, and you pick one player and say: "he cut out one pass, the opponent could have scored if he didn't, we could have lost that game" and declare him the guy who won the world cup. It could have been important, it may in fact saved the goal, but what about other ten players, and other matches? They all worked as a team, one was organizing attack, another one kept opposition at bay, another scored goals etc...

So for me it's the same type of nonsense saying that the player who intercepted one pass be recognized as the guy who won the world cup and choosing one minor event and saying that that event changed the course of the war...

Sorry about this football analogy, but I think you get the picture...

**Hound of Ulster** · 01-06-2008, 04:01

Don't mind the footy analogy at all, especially as it spot on in this case. Like I said before, every country that fought against the Axis played its part in Hitler's defeat, and lets not forget the Pacific, where the Chinese political factions, the Australians, the Dutch, the Indians, and the New Zealanders all played thier part in the victory over the Axis.

**Furious Mental** · 01-06-2008, 13:27

Don't forget the Fuzzy Wuzzies.

It is ironic but not really surprising that Ionis Metaxas opposed Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Fascists view history and human existence as a Darwinian struggle for survival between collective groups, e.g. nation, race, or religion. Even though nationalist fascists from different countries were united by their common ideology (especially hatred of communists) they never trusted each other because their goals were contradictory; they all wanted their own country to be supreme at the expense of others. This is why with a few exceptions Germany and Italy didn't put genuine fascists in charge of conquered and co-opted countries; they preferred malleable figures from the Old Right- generals, bureaucrats, aristocrats, etc. But, in any case, I don't think Metaxas was a fascist anyway. It seems to me that he was put in charge by the monarchy and then imitated genuinely fascist regimes (which were on the ascendancy at that stage), in particular to try to generate mass support for his regime. The regimes of Salazar and Franco were in the same vein. At that time Japan and Nationalist China also experimented with some of the trappings of fascism. It was certainly not national socialist, because that term refers specifically to the variation of fascism developed by Adolph Hitler and the NSDAP.