> france less so  i can admit that. they were idiotic to be so confident in their military given how things turned out, but their behavior up to 1940 was typical great power shenanigans. britain's choices were suicidal, though. they knew that they could only pursue the war further from 1940 by becoming america's bitch and having their empire implode, and they did it anyway. an axis-dominated europe still gave them the option of being a player; an american-dominated europe has them completely occupied by foreign interests and with a muslim london mayor to boot.    > why do you give hitler a pass for antagonizing and/or betraying all of his neighbors because i disagree with your claim to begin with. the only treaty that caused bad blood was the munich conference, and the collapse of czechoslovakia that caused this bad blood had a lot more going on (genuine slovakian separatism, polish annexations) than just germany grabbing more land. if that was enough to make germany's words mud, then the other european powers had betrayed everyone's trust a hundred times over before. just ask the greeks or the arabs how the post-ww1 treaties and promises worked out.  my point being that germany and poland could've come to an agreement. it wouldn't have been a happy agreement for poland, but they were between two superpowers and needed to make painful choices either way. britain was under no "international obligation" to guarantee poland, and they proved that themselves when they failed to declare on the ussr after their invasion and threw poland to the wolves after the war. they got poland to defy germany for their own interests. nothing wrong with brits pursuing british interests, but then that blew up on them and they were left with the situation in 1940. hitler's peace offers were in their best interests at that point. pursuing the war further was either spite or corruption, and it doomed them.
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