Nigel Farage: The armistice was the biggest mistake of the 20th century

[LeftishBrit]

Britain and its allies should have continued the first world war for another six weeks in order to achieve an unconditional German surrender, even at the cost of another 100,000 casualties, according to the leader of Ukip, Nigel Farage.

Describing the armistice that ended the first world war as the biggest mistake of the entire 20th century, he claimed that a slightly longer conflict would have prevented the conditions which gave rise to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis coming to power in Germany some 15 years after the Treaty of Versailles.

....The Ukip leader, whose hobbies have included touring first world war battlefields with a group of friends, said: “The consensus is that the Treaty of Versailles was too punitive. It led directly to German hyper-inflation, which in turn led to seven million unemployed, and which in turn led to National Socialism.

“But I don’t actually think Versailles was the mistake. I believe the real mistake, the anniversary of which we remember today, was the armistice.”

(More retroactive warmongering at link):


http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/nigel-farage-the-armistice-was-the-biggest-mistake-of-the-20th-century/ar-AA7EllO

[T_i_B]

1. UKIP: Wrong about almost everything, almost all of the time.

Farage is simply wrong in his theorizing about what could have happened in the run up to the disastrous treaty of Versailles. His preferred version of what should have happened would not have prevented the calamities that followed in Germany.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Who is this dipshit who says...

things would have been better if we made the Germans even worse off?

[LeftishBrit]

3. He's the leader of UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party)

Supposedly for people who want Britain to get out of the EU; but in practice a haven for disaffected RW Tories who think Cameron is too liberal; and for all manner of xenophobes, homophobes, climate-change deniers, pseudo-populists on the economic far Right, and general all-round nutters. Basically, the nearest British equivalent of the Tea Party.

Strangely enough, he is married to a German. Don't know what she thinks of all this!

[T_i_B]

4. Also notable for being completely publicity mad

Never off BBC news or out of the papers. It appears that there is very little Farage won't do for publicity.

Also notable for having quite a large amount of OTT security with him wherever he goes.

[TreasonousBastard]

7. I suppose it's just another burden of being a great nation...

that we allow these assholes the microphone.

[truebrit71]

5. Fucking wanker...

....Just completely ignorant beyond words...So, the Germans would have been LESS pissed off if we'd rejected surrender and killed another 100,000 of them instead, yes?

[Abnredleg]

6. He's referring to the Stab in the Back myth

As mentioned in the link, this was a key part of the rise of the right wing in Germany in the post WWII period. This was the notion that the German army was undefeated on the battlefield but betrayed by civilian politicians. Untrue, of course, but the myth was a powerful weapon against socialist and Jews, and numerous historians believe that the political dynamics would have different if the German army had been convincingly defeated on the battlefield.

I'm not convinced by the argument, particularly since you still would have likely had punitive armistice provisions, but it has around for a long time and has been advanced by a number of scholars.

[TreasonousBastard]

8. This is a dangerous argument...

to imply that your courageous and successful military was simply sold out by craven politicians causes all sorts of mischief when people start believing it.

I've heard this before, and with something as complicated as WWI it has a certain substance, but rather than understand the subtlety of dealing with the choices of more death and destruction, including starvation, or a bad deal to end it all, it gives the Hitlers of the world grist for the mill.

[LeftishBrit]

9. From a much greater thinker than Farage - and one who risked and eventually lost his life in the war

http://english.emory.edu/LostPoets/Dulce.html

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176833




Farage would have been more like one of the people attacked here, by another far greater person, Siegfried Sassoon:

http://allpoetry.com/Base-Details