this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
1095 points (99.1% liked)
Brand New Sentence
172 readers
736 users here now
Showcasing the brazen and nouveau in English communication.
- Be cool to each other.
- Post title must be the sentence, include username if available.
- Link for context if possible.
- Tag NSFW where applicable.
I'm looking for another mod, someone chill. DM me if you're interested.
founded 6 days ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I vehemently disagree on the world learning nothing.
Chamberlain's appeasement policy was motivated by lessons learnt from WW1.
The "sitting war" that left Poland all alone against Germany while Germany's western border was wide open was due to lessons learnt from WW1.
The French defensive strategy was a direct result of lessons learnt from WW1.
The US reluctance to get involved was due to WW1 experience.
Even the crippling reparations for Germany that helped the Nazis rise to power in the first place were a result of lessons learnt from WW1.
My point is: The entire world learnt lessons from WW1. They did the best they could to prevent another war just like it.
But without the benefit of hindsight, they didn't realize how much had changed in the few interwar years, so they learnt all the wrong lessons.
Chamberlain wasn't appeasing Germany, he was negotiating an alliance against Russia.
So much of the grade school education on the prelude to WW2 was calling France/England surrender monkeys. Very little details how the fascist movement had infiltrated these states and was fueling the movements in Germany, Italy, and Japan.
The massive debts assigned to the loser countries after WW1 and the stagnant industrial growth among the "winners" (such that they existed) propelled the planet into a Great Depression.
These were the same colonial patterns that had produced conditions for the First World War.
The countries that broke this pattern - Russia following the Bolshevisk Revolution, Germany under the Weimer and then Nazis governments, Japan during the Meiji Restoration and Taishō period, and the US under FDR - rapidly emerged as imperial powers best positioned to capitalize on stagnation of the Old World.