WWII - was Britain wrong to be involved?

[NewJerseyMemories]

Originally Posted by botticelli

Evidences show that Hitler had no plans to attack west Europe and his targets have always been east and central Europe and ultimately Soviet Union. In fact, Hitler admired the British empire and had no intention to fight against the UK at all.

Instead, Britain decided to provide a war guarantee to Poland, when it knew better than anyone else that Poland couldn't be saved - Britain and France simply were not capable to doing that. And due to the UK/France support, Poland rejected Hitler's demands about Danzig flatly - an area which belonged to Germany to started with where 95% residents were German. So instead of losing a small portion of Poland to Germany, Poland lost all its territory to Germany AND Russia, along with half a million lost lives. All this for what? Honour?

By declaring war on Germany and with the US neutral at that time, the only way Britain could win the war was to collaborate with Stalin. And in 1939, when Hitler hasn't murdered anyone by force, Stalin has already massacred tens of thousands. Which is worse?

If the war was about saving central and eastern Europe from Nazi rule, then did the west achieve the goal by replacing such a possibility with surrendering the entire east Europe to Stalin, for half a century?

Hitler may be a mania, but he was not stupid. It was never his intention to conquer France/Britain, not to mention conquer the world. His goal was modest - to be a European superpower and co-exist with Britain, which was a naval and colonial power. Hitler hardly expanded the German naval force to compete with Britain, something Germany did during WWI, and he hardly fought to bring down the overseas Britain Empire. In fact, he wanted the Britain empire to stay because if it were lost, Germany would not be the one to benefit from it.

Hypothetically, Britain didn't have to declare war on Germany. If Germany was taking Poland, so be it - Britain was utterly unable to prevent it from happening with its tiny army compared with German's to begin with, so the war guarantee was worthless. Hitler's next goal was evidently Russia, which Britain hated more than Germany. By choosing to fight against Germany, Stalin was the greatest beneficiary - he was given two entire years to prepare for war when Hitler had to fight on the west front. The Soviet Union suffered the greatest loss, but it also became the biggest winner at the end of the war, although it didn't hesitate carving up Poland with Germany and took Finland etc. If that hadn't happen, the entire east Europe, along with China, probably didn't have to suffer from all the communist dictators either. Britain and France declared war on Poland and a bunch of other small nations pretending to protect them from Germany, only to completely abandon it to Hitler/Stalin and eventually to the Soviet Union, what's the point? What exactly is gained?

As a result of the war, despite being a winner, Britain was bankrupt, had to give up all its colonies one by one, and essentially downgraded to America's little brother because it owed the US so much debt.

Was WWII the greatest blunder of British diplomacy? Wouldn't everyone be better off without Britain to be involved at all? The exceptions are Soviet Union and America of course.

No one is going to defend Stalin here, but why are you making out Hitler to be some poor, misunderstood bad boy who only wanted Germany to be powerful? Do you not know how he planned to accomplish his goals???