Stuff You Should Know - Why Would Anyone Want to Appease Hitler?

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

It seems ridiculously irresponsible with the benefit of hindsight, but the concept of giving Hitler everything he wanted was the policy among the UK and France as a way to keep the world from sliding into a second world war. Turns out it didn’t work.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Oh, no, no, no. Thank you. I'm glad you cleared that up for the new listeners who were like, oh, these guys are Nazis? I hadn't realized. No, this is, I really enjoyed studying this one because I, as you know, am not the biggest student of war. Hmm.

So I never, like, sat around and watched the history channel, and this one is very much a history channel type of episode. Mm-hmm. So I feel like I have a much better understanding of the lead-up to World War II. And also, it's amazing how much this reflects modern times and what's going on with Russia and Ukraine. For real, for real. I kept going like, oh, oh, oh.

Yeah. I mean, there's a very clear line you can draw between what the allies did to appease Hitler and what a lot of people are concerned that the West is doing to appease Putin right now. And you can also see, though, I think there's another lesson to be learned, too, where once you kind of understand what the allies did

pre-World War II, why they were trying to appease Hitler, which in retrospect from our position here in history seems like the dumbest, most cowardly thing you could have done, if you understand what their actual reasoning was for that and also that they didn't have the benefit of hindsight, then you can kind of understand a little more like what a weird position we're in right now, you know, or why people would even consider doing that to Putin now. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So I guess broadly, we should just say that appeasement was, an official policy leading up to World War, or, you know, they didn't know

that there was going to be a World War II, but looking back, once again, leading up to World War II, that the Western Allies took where, in a nutshell, they were basically like, you know what, let's sort of let Germany, and we need to point out, we're going to over and over,

that they did not know Hitler was the madman, we know him now, but. No, they mistook him terribly. Yeah, they were like, let's let Germany. I think Hitler just wants to kind of get Germany back on, on footing after World War I, and after the Treaty of Versailles kind of wrecked Germany. And we need a strong Germany in Europe and, like, let's give him what he wants.

And he says he'll stop there. And we believe him. Yeah. And like you said, they took Hitler to be just like any other statesman leading a European power, which was that he was a patrician colonizer, who at the end of the day answered to the aristocracy of his country. Yeah. And that really he was more a threat to other people, lesser people throughout the world,

whose lands he wanted to turn into colonies. And we just needed to bring him into the normal European way of doing things, and Germany will be back on its feet again. That was kind of the darker explanation of appeasement. Another explanation was they had just been through World War I. Yeah. A dozen years before when all this really kind of started. And no one was in the mood for a second World War.

So appeasement was the official policy by the UK and France and then some of their supporters over time that said, if we give you the stuff you're asking for now, we're hoping that eventually you're going to reach your limit, you're going to get what you want it, and you're just going to be calm and everything's going to be cool from that point on. We won't have to get in your way militarily, thus we'll avoid a war. So let's try this instead. So ultimately it was a way to prevent World War II. That was the entire point of appeasement, really, from the outset. Well, yeah, because, I mean, at the time, like you said, after World War I, none of these countries, what would end up being the Western allies, were in a great position. They were still trying to build up armaments, some slower than others. Germany wasn't in a great position.

So it's kind of interesting at the end. We're going to go over a couple of, like, alternate histories of different tax that could have played out or different plans that they could have taken. and who knows how it would have worked out. But I guess we should start with the Treaty of Versailles, right? Yeah, for sure. So this was after World War I, and the Treaty of Versailles came along and was signed, and it really pounded Germany. And some historians even say, like, it went too far as far as being punitive.

Germany had to reduce their army from 1.9 million troops to 100,000. They had to get rid of most of their Navy. And they had to hand back territories that it had taken over the last hundred years and then pay hundreds of billion dollars in reparations. Yeah. So not only was it like financially strapping them. Remember, this is the time when German hyper-inflation happened during the Weimar Republic, which is between World War I and two. This is why. And then also it was like demoralizing. It was meant to basically smack Germany down and be like, you're lesser now. We're punishing you. And so I saw a quote. I forgot to send it to you. I don't remember who said it. But essentially, they said, this is not a treaty. This is an armistice for 20 years.

And it was somebody who looked at this. In 1990, and 20 years later, World War II broke out because it was so punitive. There was no way that the German people were not going to eventually rise up in retaliation for this. And we were going to have a second World War. So a lot of people point to that treaty as being the thing that didn't necessarily directly lead to World War II, but it laid all the groundwork to create a. populace that was in a vengeful mood that would be willing to support somebody like with such nationalistic fervor as Hitler. Yeah, and that's what Hitler was cooking up from the beginning. He was

basically like, hey, we, we want to get Germany back together. We need to get all of our rightful lands, basically where any Germanic peoples are and where anybody is speaking German. And also, as we'll see, help out any German minorities to our east, you know, which is Russia and the Soviet Union at the time because they're going to come into play. And he whipped up this nationalistic fervor that everyone in Germany got behind. And that's, you know, what eventually would, of course, lead to World War II. But I guess we should take it sort of chronologically because there were a series of appeasement starting in 1935, kind of one after the other until finally, you know, they could take no more. Yeah. And just bear this in mind, well, you're hearing all of these like high points of

how we moved toward World War II, thanks to Germany, Hitler followed this awareness or this belief by the U.K. in France that what Germany really wanted to do was climb back out of from under the Treaty of Versailles and just get back to where they were before. So Hitler followed that to a T. All of his demands, all of the aggressions that he made were based on the Treaty of Versailles. And yet, in retrospect, now we realize, now these were, he was always going to try to go way further than that.

He was just playing upon the suppositions of the allies at the time. Oh, God. I mean, after studying all this stuff, he played them for such suckers. He did. And what makes it a little worse, though, too, is he wrote all this stuff out in 1925. In my comp, it's all laid out. Oh, yeah. That push to the east you're talking about where he wants to make more room for German nationals that are outside of Germany, the Lebenstrom,

which basically says, we're going to Russia eventually. Like, they knew this for 10. 10 years before he really became a huge problem and everybody just ignored it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. He's like, I wrote a book about it and I guess you guys don't read German because I basically said what I was going to do. Right. All right, so 1935 was the first sort of wave of appeasement

and this was the Anglo-German Naval Agreement basically where Britain said, you know what? We know that you're breaking the Treaty of Versailles because we know you're building up your navy even though you were supposed to scuttle your navy and go ahead and build a new fleet. A lot of people saw that as just sort of an initial surrender to what Hitler wanted, but Britain knew that they were cheating already.

They had MI6 on the ground, specifically an agent named Carl Kruger in their U-boat design office, which was a secret program at the time. And they thought, hey, maybe we can get them to build fewer U-boats by endorsing them building these really big expensive battleships. It costs a lot of money and a lot of raw materials, and it'll kind of kill their U-boat program. It didn't exactly work. They were supposed to build 72 submarines and ended up building 54, but I don't know if they were like, you know, hooray about that. So, yeah, that in and of itself is a problem, like this grand policy of like making them spend resources, it really didn't lead to that big of a reduction.

But geopolitically speaking, it basically said the U.K. was endorsing now German. breaking the Treaty of Versailles by agreeing with them that Germany could build its Navy back up. Yeah. There was also another thing that had nothing to do with Germany

but really played into this later on. France was led by a couple of different appeasement, pro-appeasement prime ministers or premieres during this time. And they were good friends with Italy. And Italy invaded Ethiopia, as you'll remember from our Holly Salasi episode.

Yeah, yeah. In 1935, and France said, you know what, go with it, Italy. We don't care about that. Just promise us that if things go down, if the S hits the fan or Les S hits Le Fann, you will be on our side against Germany. And Italy said, yes, definitely. You got it 100%. And then they just went and ravaged Ethiopia. Yeah.

And we all know how that turned out in the end. Exactly. So in 1936, those first two were 35. In 1936, Germans West, the Rhineland, they wanted to remilitarize that area. That, again, went against the Treaty of Versailles because that was supposed to be a buffer zone, the western part of Germany. And there was a chance here to forcefully respond here because they had Czechoslovakia and Romania saying, like, hey, you know, we got your back if you want to do anything, but France and Britain basically did nothing. No. Again, Francis kind of said, nah, we're kind of busy with our own stuff, as we'll see, right? And a lot of people also, and who were heading the politics in Western Europe at the time, were like, yeah, good on them. Germany. They got that taken away from them in the Treaty of Versailles. Let them have it back. That's Germany, you know? Yeah.

There was also the Anschluss, which was a different category after the remilitarization of the Rhineland, because this was where they annexed Austria. Austria was a sovereign nation. It was not a part of Germany before World War I, as far as I know, please God, don't let me be wrong about that one. And Germany just said, Austria, you're now part of Germany. You guys are Germanic by heritage, so you're just part of Germany now. And the world just turned their heads and said, yeah, I guess that's fine too. You know, Germany's doing its Germanic thing. Yeah, and, you know, we're going to talk a little bit about public opinion here and there,

but at the time, this was March 1938, and this was Neville, Chamberlain as PM in Britain. And the Brits didn't want to get involved. There was about a 25% in a survey were in favor of, you know, a determinant policy. So, you know, I guess that's not aggression, but determined. Yeah. Most people were in favor of continuing to just kind of go along with Germany, restabilizing or regaining what it had before the Treaty of Versailles. Because again, this is what people are thinking. But if you'll notice, we've started to pick up speed a little bit here, like bigger things are starting to happen. That was March of 1938 when they took over Austria. And then in September, Hitler had been basically making speeches

where he was saying, hey, there's this part, he called it the rump of Czechoslovakia that butts up against Germany. That's really actually Germany. It's called the Sudetenland. And it's just basically this mountain range, Czechoslovakia doesn't care about it, but we care about it because we're reuniting Germany again. So we want that. And We're going to go take it whether you want us to or not. And Neville Chamberlain and P.M. Eduard de Dahliae all ran to Munich to meet with Hitler on his own ground and said, here, what do you want? Well, let's make a deal. Yeah.

And Hitler said, well, I've told you what I want. I want this northwestern part of Czechoslovakia. We call it the Sudetenland. And they said, all right, you can have that, but you got a promise. Like, you know, put your hand on this Bible. raise your right hand and you've got to promise you're not going to do

anything else in Czechoslovakia that's it it stops there and this is where things are really I feel like echoing what's going on in Ukraine like hey Putin you know

eventually you're going to get this stuff that you've conquered but you're going to stop there right and that's what happened back then the Czechs were an ally to France in Britain at the time they were not even invited to the summit again

echoing things that we see going on today And at the time, there were even some German generals that thought, like, early on in September of 38 when this happened, they were like, hey, listen, if the allies get behind Czechoslovakia here, we could be in trouble. So there was some kind of bluff calling happening, basically, but Britain kind of said, no, let's let them do this. And they steered France to do the same and pressure Czechoslovakia to submit, and that's what happened. Yeah, and Czechoslovakia is like, fine, they can have the Sudeten land. And we weren't even invited, but we'll go along with it because our ally, France, is telling us to you. Keep in mind, an ally is not just like, we're friends with you.

We think you're pretty cool. An ally means like you usually have some sort of documents or treaties saying, like, if somebody tries to take part of your country, we're going to come back you up militarily. And when the chips came down, France said no, because Great Britain was steering them. And one other point about all this that's kind of hidden in there, Great Britain was in a position to steer France because you could make an argument that it was still. the world's superpower. The empire was on the wane, but still by the 30s, 25% of the global population and 20% of the Earth's landmass were under British control. So Britain was in a global position to basically set the stage of how to deal with Germany, and the UK decided appeasement was the way to go, so everybody else kind of followed along. Yeah. All right. So that's September of 38.

They give them that, you know, they say you can have this portion of Czechoslovakia as long as you promise not to go in. Seven months later in March of 1939, he went into the rest of Czechoslovakia, just like he wrote in his book, basically. So, you know, Hitler reneged on that promise, of course, to leave Czechoslovakia the rest of it alone. And that was like the real decisive moment, because I think, I feel like that's when Hitler was probably like, man, these guys are cowards. And they're letting me do whatever I want. And very quickly thereafter, that was March of 39. September of 39 is when he invaded Poland. And then it was on.

Yeah. And even before he invaded Poland, once he reneged on the Czechoslovakian deal, the Munich Agreement, he showed the world. Like, I'll tell you whatever you want to hear. I'm not going to back it up. So he immediately destroyed the policy of appeasement. Like appeasement policy had about as much traction as like a, yesterday's non-winning lotto ticket

that you'd find in the gutter covered in gum and maybe a little bit of blood from somewhere. Yeah. Like that was appeasement after the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

I got there eventually. Yeah, but, you know, Poland was invaded and that's really what kicked off like the beginnings of World War II. Hitler tried to provoke war with Poland by saying, hey, I want Danzig, not the band.

No, but still. The city of Danzig, and Prussian territory that was granted to you in 1919 after World War I that we feel like is ours. And Britain and France, you know, they made guarantees to Poland at the time, but in August, it was pretty shocking at the time. The Nazis and the Soviets signed a pact to partition Poland out and basically said, you come in from the east, we'll come in from the west, and Poland is ours. And two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Yep. And I think that is a great place to stop.

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So, Chuck, where we left off, Hitler had just invaded Poland. and the U.K. and France declared war on Germany. That's right. It took a lot. What that showed everybody was that appeasement was dead. The whole policy had just shifted now to either containment or out and out war now that they had declared war. But this was like there was a lot of reasons for appeasement to have been tried. We talked about some of them.

But a big one was the U.K. was really whole. holding on to that world's greatest superpower status as hard as they could. And another World War put that in like real jeopardy. It put them in a precarious position. Yeah. I mean, they were, you know, everybody was trying to rearm themselves. Like I said earlier since World War I, some a little quicker than others. I think the United States, as we'll learn, was it making the greatest rearmament effort because Congress was kind of chilling the purse strings back when they could do stuff like that. But the writing was on the wall for the UK. They were like, we're not in any position, even though we're supposedly the world's greatest superpower to fight Germany, Japan, and Italy all at the same time to prevent them from expanding their territories. Like, that's just not a possibility. And we might have to enter an alliance with the U.S. If worse comes to worse, we might have to enter into an alliance with the USSR. And that's just going to make them, I mean, that's going to,

lessen their stance and their power worldwide if they have to do stuff like that. Yeah, and with their prestige or power lessened, like, on the world stage, that's the kind of thing that can spark decolonization movements. So they were worried about Jamaica, they were worried about India, they were worried about Nigeria, all of a sudden being like, the UK has over-extended itself, now is the time to declare independence from the UK. And not just the prestige that was lost, but more to the point, the resources, the raw materials, all the stuff that Great Britain extracted from these colonies, that would be lost as well.

So what Great Britain wanted was no war pleas, at least in part, to preserve its empire. Other people who were in the British Parliament and government basically said, we're going to have to go to war. It's inevitable. But we're supporting appeasement right now because we need to stall for time to rearm ourselves, like you were saying. Right, which, as we'll see, also allowed Germany to do the same, either through rearmament by building things or by storming Czechoslovakia, and all of a sudden they had all their stuff. But appeasement was popular for a long time.

Throughout most of the 1930s, the public didn't want to go to war. Again, they were shaking off of World War I hangover still. No one wanted to go to a war that was more technologically advanced, like pretty rapidly since the end of World War, one. Right. For a second World War, I think in 1937, 62% of British men said they wouldn't volunteer, and 78% of women said they would not urge their husbands to go fight. And even after the Munich Agreement, when Czechoslovakia was left hanging out to dry, 75% still approved of appeasement in Great Britain. Yes. And so there was like a lot of anti-war anxiety. Apparently

people had died by suicide, there were mental health problems, all of the appeasement, pro-appeasement sentiment was also bolstered by the Times. And I believe the BBC, too, which portrayed Hitler as a moderate, basically saying, like, it could get way worse than this guy. Let's just deal with this guy. And then the reason why this matters is because at the time, Britain had recently enfranchised its women, like more and more people were voting. So the public opinion about stuff mattered more and more to the people calling the shots politically. And we'll also see that also turned the politicians' views against appeasement as public opinion changed on appeasement too.

Yeah, for sure. And, you know, there was a string of PMs that were all for it. Neville Chamberlain was the third British PM. He was in there from 37 to 40 during this time of appeasement. So it wasn't just Chamberlain. I think he's kind of, there's two things I feel like. from Great Britain that are remembered is, and it, you know, it depends on how you want to look at it.

But I think a lot of people eventually frame Neville Chamberlain as a coward and Winston Churchill as a hero, because he was one of the only ones that was like, this guy, Hitler, like, I don't think you guys see the writing on the wall here. He's not going to stop, and this appeasement thing is no good. Yeah, and he also, I mean, he stood alone, basically, in his party, the conservatives were like, yeah, we're all pro appeasement, at least at the time. So he definitely stood on his own.

In France, France also had lost a lot of people and a lot of money in World War I and was not very eager to do a redo of it. But they were still anti-Germany. Like France was not a friend of Germany. They did not want to be friends with Germany. Their alliances were against Germany. But ultimately, and this is what's crazy to me, it was racked by far right and far left internal political conflict at the time?

Yeah, yeah. They were kind of in an inter-stailmate almost. Right. And so they were, whether they wanted to be or not, they were fairly drawn into domestic affairs rather than foreign affairs. And it wasn't until Edward Deladier, who became prime minister,

that they really started to branch back out into foreign affairs, but even then they were pretty pro-opheasement. So they didn't really have much of a stomach for going into a Second World War, understandably, but they didn't feel like they were in a place to do anything. So essentially they just went on the defense. They didn't, they weren't going to go into a policy of containment or anything like that. Yeah, yeah. As far as the U.S. goes, at the time, we had

FDR in there. Roosevelt was in there. And he endorsed appeasement, like, officially. He endorsed the Munich Agreement. They were into isolationism at the time and trying to stay neutral. And we were also in no position militarily, because like I mentioned, we were kind of, you know, we were also depleted by World War I and moving along a little slower than even other eventual allied countries because Congress was kind of pulling those purse strings a little tight as far as building the military back up. Yeah, and I think that you can make a case that any country that was involved in World War I really lost its appetite for war after that, like to an amazing degree. Understandably. For sure. And then there was another group of pro appeasers.

who was the Britain's aristocracy. And the reason why is because they wanted things to just basically, let's just go back to where we colonize other places and really it's the aristocracy running things and we're all related and I'm your cousin, and you're my cousin and we're all three somehow married. But we all run everything, we're all just crazy rich. Let's keep doing that.

And they saw Hitler as somebody who could help keep that kind of status quo or get back to that kind of status quo. the group that was opposed to Hitler, though, they were the Soviets and they were communists. And the aristocrats who enjoy wealth inequality do not typically like communism or communist. So they wanted to steer Britain away from any kind of alliances with the USSR that could support communists or socialists in Britain and their causes and more toward Hitler because Hitler's policies kind of jobbed with the aristocracy's views a little more.

Yeah. And I mean, they were sort of actually. actively courting one another because they saw Hitler as somebody who could, you know, like you were saying, kind of let them keep their lifestyle in check. Right. And Hitler in Germany did nothing to make them think otherwise. You know, they were playing on the spirits of communism for sure. They're like, you know, you got a lot of dough.

You know what happens when communism happens. And that, you know, sent a chill through the British aristocratic scene. Yeah. They were known to say, crookie. Break time? Or shall we go on? with Churchill. Give me a break, Chuck.

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all right so we mentioned churchill sort of briefly before churchill was like we said one of the sort of few outspoken um dudes that was like no we can't do this he visited germany in 1932 and he was like these nazis mean business i don't think you guys understand what's happening here and he said if we can see to hitler uh things are going to get much worse We have to rearm ourselves, you know, quicker and get those factories to work. But, you know, that's the kind of thing that can wreck an economy. So that's if people are wondering like, well, why didn't they all just rearm as fast as they could? It's because it costs a ton of money in people.

So it's not great for the economy to have to build that war machine back up. But he was pounding the drum to do so. Yeah. And his whole take on Hitler, including the Munich Agreement, which he called a total and unmitigated defeat. This is where the allies went to Hitler and said, we'll let you have part. of Czechoslovakia, just don't invade the rest of Czechoslovakia. He, like, when Neville Chamberlain came back to the U.K., he was, like, basically waiving the agreement and saying he had negotiated a peace for our time, that essentially

aggression from Germany was done, we were all going to live in peace again, and it lasted a year before we were at war with Germany. So it made Chamberlain look pretty bad. It made Churchill look like very foresightful and exactly the kind of guy that you would want to fight Hitler. So essentially, after they got rid of Chamberlain, the UK went to Churchill and said, you don't like Hitler. We understand that. We don't like Hitler anymore now.

And so you're up. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of people said that was his aim, was to increase his political profile. And, you know, who knows if that was his aim. But it worked. He took over his PM in 1940 after Chamberlain, like you said. And he wanted, he basically later on was like, hey, if we would have. had a policy of deterrence instead of appeasement,

we might have prevented this war to begin with. You know, Britain and France should have strengthened our relationship, and that was our best hope was maybe to form what he called the Grand Alliance with the Soviet Union even and Eastern European countries. Right. But the Soviet, you know, there was a lot of distrust of the Soviet Union, especially, you know, like we mentioned, the aristocracy,

who wanted to hang on to their pounds. And, of course, what Stalin was, doing, you know, they didn't trust that either. So he was not going to get support from the British or the French to sort of be tougher. No, but as we'll see later, it was not a bad plan. Could have changed things dramatically. Yeah. One of the other things that made Churchill such a strident voice about opposing Germany is that he had intelligence, I guess as a minister of parliament, he had men on the inside. Yeah. And he had an intelligence report from somebody in Germany saying that Germany had a mean spirit of revenge,

brutality amounting in many cases to bestiality and complete ruthlessness. And this is at a time when Chamberlain and Deladier are basically saying, like, Hitler's a friend, we just need to keep negotiating with him. He's getting reports about how they're just brutal and ruthless, and those panned out to be true. Yeah.

We mentioned FDR in the U.S. earlier that officially they supported appeasement because they would not, you know, sign any kind of formal agreement with the U.K. or France. But on the inside, the administration was definitely trying to kind of say, hey, UK, you've got to change your stance here.

You got to, like, Hitler means business and only your military can deter this guy at this point. But on the outside, they were, you know, officially like, hey, we're not involved. This appeasement sounds pretty good to us. And like we said, you know, the people, of Britain were largely for it. And most of the people were, didn't want to go back to war until

the Kristallnacht on November 1938. That's when Germany, you know, for the first time, attacked its own citizens and destroyed Jewish businesses and synagogues. It killed about 100 Jews and arrested about 100,000. And that's when the public at large kind of all around the world was like, oh, okay, that's what this guy's about. This cannot stand. Right. And remember, now, with the UK having all of these new voters, their opinion mattered. So that helped change things, too. Yeah, I wish I knew how to say too late in German. You don't?

You didn't learn that in high school? No, I was trying to think if I could think. Can you sound it out letter by letter? No. Oh, wait, you'd have to know the word to do that. No. I remember what Knutzen the Mouse did at Hans Peters' house, because I remember reading that chapter over and over and over.

What did he do? I really don't remember, but my friend Radd and the cartographer in Montana, he'll be the only person in the world that gets that joke because it was just a lot of stuff about Knutze and the mouse and his owner, Hans Pader, who's, you know, that German textbook stuff. Okay, was that like the German high school class as equivalent of the Little Prince in the French class? Yeah, probably. Gotcha. I understand exactly what you mean. Yeah, it's fun on a big show like. this to make a joke for one human, so I hope Brad listens. No, why not? So there's one other group, Chuck, that we didn't talk about what they thought of

appeasement, and that was the Nazis themselves in Hitler, and it's... They loved it. Yeah, probably not a big surprise. They saw it as a clear sign of weakness by the world's leading powers that they, that Hitler and Germany could do whatever it wanted, and France and the UK were just going to bow their knees and their heads in front of Hitler. And the people of the, of Germany itself also picked up on this, too. Like, Hillary had, remember, he had taken power.

It wasn't like, you know, he wasn't fully supported yet. There was like a courtship period that was still, things were up in the air. But when he came back and said, I got back the Rhineland, I got back Sudetenland, I got his Austria. What's next, you know? And I did it all without a single shot fired. Yeah, yeah. guys just gave it back to us because that's what they think of Germany with me leading it. The German people just went nuts, and Hitler was the guy.

He was Der Fuhr. That was the day Hitler became Der Fuhr. Yeah. That's it. Man, you just walked off of a History Channel show. You dropped the mic in the sound studio and left. One thing we can say is that appeasement did achieve the aim of rearmament. That was kind of one of the goals, like we said a few times, is that, you know, everyone was trying to put this off so they could build back up their.

their war stock or whatever. And that happened. Britain spent less on arms than Germany did from 1935 to 1939, but they had the highest proportion of their GDP devoted to building up their armaments in 1940. And in 1930s, they rebuilt the Navy to, you know, once again, the world's strongest Navy. Shout out to British Sea Power, one of my favorite bands. And early on, you know, they had outpaced Germany. And, you know, we're going to talk about the alternate histories here shortly.

Like, if they had had done something, they're in a pretty good position. They, between Britain and France, their coalition had a five-to-one armament superiority over Germany early on. And France, the fall of France in 1940, apparently, and I don't know enough about this stuff, but from what I've read, it wasn't because they were unprepared and didn't have enough bombs and things. Apparently it was about poor leadership at that point. Yeah, I couldn't find enough by that myself. to speak confidently on it. All I know is that France did not put up much of a fight from what I remember from the history books.

Yeah. But let's talk about that, Chuck. Let's talk about those alternate histories, especially with the view of armament, because Neville Chamberlain, when he basically couldn't get a coalition government together anymore after Hitler reneged on the Munich Agreement, and he was replaced, like we saw with by Winston Churchill, in 1940. That same year, he died of cancer after Chamberlain was removed. But he spent that time basically saying, like, I bought us time, appeasement bought us time to rearm.

And he's right, like you showed, like Britain did have a chance to rearm. But there is a really critical window that we know about now where that policy of appeasing in order to rearm didn't make sense. And that was about 1938 to 1939. And the reason was is because France and the UK were rearming at a rate. close to Germany, and were actually even overtaking it a little bit. And they could have put up a fight against Germany and probably won, especially together, combining their stuff in 1938. By 1939, things had changed. Germany had gone even further overdrive into war production, but more to the point, they had taken over Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia had all sorts of munitions factories. Czechoslovakia had all sorts of people you could conscript into free labor, aka slave.

labor. There's all sorts of stuff that happened when they took over Czechoslovakia, and it tipped the balance way up in favor of Germany's military after that. So that period, 1938 to 1939, appeasement did the exact opposite, and it made the war way worse than it would have been had the U.K. and France said, this is as good as it's going to get, we got to go now. Well, yeah, and, you know, it also possibly made the war worse, and a lot of people say it definitely made the war worse than it would have been because in 1940 Britain's holding out against Germany and they're both seeking resources all around the world that you needed to get to win a world war and that just expanded the war basically made it into a global thing a much larger thing

than it might have been otherwise. Deterance might have avoided all of that if they would have formed a grand alliance and bonded their powers early on that you know because I mentioned earlier there were even generals within Germany's kind of, it's kind of a bluffing game. Like, hey, if these guys get together, like, we're not the best position right now. And so while they were buying time, it helped Germany increase their war chest. And yeah, the rest is history. Right. But speaking of alternate histories, there were other options that the UK had on the table. And now speaking about them, like in retrospect, it's mind-boggling to even think. But the first one's a little more

understandable or palatable, had the U.K. simply just not declared war after Germany invaded Poland. That was an option of them on the table. They didn't have to do it. France had already set the precedent of not backing up Czechoslovakia when it was taken over by Germany. The U.K. could have just not done that too. And one thing that could have backed this up, that could have supported actually that position in the U.K. Just sit back and let it play out on its own, is that it was inevitable, essentially, the USSR and Germany to clash because of that Lebenchrom policy, that policy of the East actually belongs to Germany and we're going to go take it, right? Yeah, and, you know, that played out by eventually with Operation Barbarossa, the invasion

of the Soviet Union in June 1941, some people say like, and, you know, of course this sounds completely ridiculous to think of now with hindsight, but some people are like, you know, the U.K. could have allied with Germany early on. They, I mean, I think one of the reasons they didn't, it's not because they knew this Hitler guy was a madman. Again, that came later. It was because of the colonies that you were talking about that they had all over the world. Germany also had colonies all over the world, and they had a conflict. I think Britain wasn't going to say here, why don't you take our African colonies, and Germany

definitely didn't like the way Britain looked at, at race. race. They had a pretty different idea on that. And so if they had any kind of alliance, they would have had surrendered their liberal imperialism, and they really weakened their status as an international superpower. Yeah, they would have had to fall in line with basically the way Germany viewed the world. Yeah, just wrapping your mind around that is not easy to do, like the UK doing that. And Kyle, who's our man on the inside in the UK. Yeah, he's our MS-6 agent. Exactly. He pointed something out that I thought was pretty interesting, too. He basically said the fact that Crystal Knocht and the news of what Germany had done to its own Jewish citizens, how that turned British public opinion, just basically showed, like, even if Britain did try to ally with Germany, it was never going to work out. That's probably the least likely of all of it. And then also, Chuck, you can't help us being Americans to wonder, could America have sat out World War II?

Yeah. You know, we declared war after Pearl Harbor on Imperial Japan. That followed or following that, Germany declared war on us in December 1941. And, you know, maybe we could have evaded getting involved in the European theater. We definitely got mired in the Pacific theater with Japan. We weren't really, it's not like the U.S. wasn't on the Nazis radar, but we weren't really a big part of their foreign policy in the 19th. 30s yet. Right. Because, again, isolationism was kind of our bag at the time. Our army wasn't very big. We had, in 1940, we had five divisions compared to Germany's 141. Mm-hmm. And Congress definitely was not going to, like, get behind Roosevelt entering the European

theater at the time. So there were a lot of reasons why it looked like the U.S. maybe could have avoided that mess. Yeah, but historians say, uh-uh, uh-uh. probably we were going to get drawn in one way or another because, like you said, Germany did declare war on the U.S. essentially to show Japan like, hey, we're in this together, you guys just handle the U.S.

So that was going to happen whether we tried to stay out of it or not. And then he also knew that we were a threat and that we would eventually be online armament-wise to really make a significant contribution. He predicted by 1942, I think we started before then. And then even more than that, Roosevelt was already giving permission for U.S. battleships to shoot and destroy U-boats that were operating in the Atlantic because they had started targeting American shipping, and Hitler was not very happy about that. So the U.S. was probably not going to be able to stay out of World War II. Yeah, for sure.

The alternate history, I guess that gets me, Chuck, was the earliest when Germany re-militarized the Rhineland. In flagrant violation of the Treaty of Versailles, had the UK and France intervened, this is 1936. I mean, imagine if they had just done something then and contained Hitler then. And remember, there was this courtship period or whatever where, you know, Germany hadn't really, wasn't really sure about Hitler at the time. Had he been undermined that thoroughly on the international stage, who knows what would have happened to him as the leader of Germany, right? And they could have done something because at the time, France had 100,000 troops near the border with Rhineland. Germany only moved 35,000 troops into the area. France could have easily repelled that and been like, it's your move, Germany.

What are you going to do? And Germany might not have done anything. And even if Hitler had done something, it probably would have been against the advice of his military advisors. So now he would have personally been taking Germany. Germany to war. That's a lot to stake your reputation on. And that one thing in 1936 could have completely avoided the death of tens of millions of people. Yeah. Didn't do it because of internal left, right politics. Wow. Oh, man. That was that was good stuff. I like, this is my favorite kind of stuff you should know. And 45 minutes later, like, I know probably 100% more than I knew

before about World War II. Very nice, Chuck. Yeah, I didn't know almost any of this either. I love that stuff, too. And I know we just talked about the U.S. and the U.K. and France's alternate history. But if you want to come up with an alternate history for World War II in your country, let us know. Hit the history textbooks and come back with what you got.

And we'd love to get that kind of thing. In the meantime, while we're waiting for your listener mail, we'll listen to Chuck with a new listener mail. Yeah, somebody just sends this man in the high castle. No plagiarism, please. Which I never saw or read. I didn't either, but it's supposed to be pretty good. Yeah, maybe I'll check that out at some point.

It sounds like it'd be right at my alley. It's just too depressing for me, that kind of stuff. That and like things that normalize billionaires can't take it anymore. Like D. Snyder. All right, what is this? This is from Chris. Oh, yeah, this is just a nice thing. Hey, guys, wanted to write in for a while now.

First of all, I always appreciate the wide variety of topics you cover, especially the ones born of your own natural curiosities. As a former middle school science teacher, I saw my primary role as instilling curiosity in my students and modeling for them how to chase those curiosities, and your approach really resonates with me. But the one thing I didn't pay enough attention to back when I was in the classroom was the art of communication

that you guys display in every episode. If I still had a classroom full of students, I would use your show not only for the content, but also for lessons in respectful communication. So much discourse we hear today is loud and angry and doesn't give people space to express themselves without being interrupted, mocked or refuted. Somehow you guys seamlessly pass the baton of communication

to one another without speaking over one another, contradicting each other's incomplete thoughts, or negotiating the communication flow through general awkwardness. Even when one of you have a follow-up comment that may provide a differing or correcting perspective, you always give space for the other to finish their thought before weighing in. And the follow-up comments are thoughtfully delivered, and received.

Thanks so much for all you do. I appreciate your authentic, respectful delivery of interesting content. You guys keep my brain awake and smiling. And that is from Chris, Christine Sewell in Bloomington, Illinois. And Chris, one of the reasons is because we almost always agree with each other on this stuff. I disagree. So it makes it kind of easy. Yeah, no, for sure.

And that's something that still kind of surprises me to this day where, like, just our comments. in view is so in step with one another where I mean like there's just there's so many things that are different about it's like our personalities are pretty different wildly different yeah I would say wildly sure I'll go with that okay but the but when you come down to like what do you think about this what do you think about this what do you think about that it's generally in the same not even ballpark in the same hot dog stand of the same ballpark yeah I don't think the show would have worked for so long if you and I just were sort of at odds over every little thing and I think that's stuff that Christine is talking about, too, is so much of media today is set up to do that

because that gets ratings, I guess. So they'll pit people that they know have differing viewpoints and put them down in chairs next to each other. And that's just like, bleh. Yeah. But it's like The Simpsons taught us, if you just don't look, it'll eventually go away. So you don't like that kind of media. Just don't watch it.

Yeah, agreed. Well, thank you, Chris. That was really, really nice. We love hearing that kind of stuff. That's just a really kind email. and we thank you for it. If you want to be like Chris and send us a kind of email,

we are always open to receiving one of those. You can send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts,

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