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Today, September 1st, 2009, marks the 70th anniversary of Nazi Germany's attack and subsequent invasion of Poland. This event is considered by many, though certainly not all (myself included), to be the start of WWII. By the time this greatest conflict in human history would be over it would engulf most of the globe and in its wake would lie over 60 million dead.
Now it would seem to one as simple as I that it would be worthy of making note of today's date in that we now live in a world that was forever changed by the events of this terrible war. The survivors of it are still amongst us, albeit they are now disappearing rapidly. But as I browse the online news sites and watch my local morning news I can find nothing of the commemoration of this date in the headlines other than one passing mention before going to sports on CBS. Maybe they'll have something on later today. The exception to this, however is the BBC News ( BBC NEWS | News Front Page ) that has extended coverage on the events and ceremonies taking place in Poland today. So I'm left to wonder about this; is it really soon enough for us to start forgetting about September 1st, 1939, the opening round of such a monumental and historical event, in less than a lifetime?
As I began reading the OP, one interesting thought jumped into my mind. How would Europe be different today, for better or worse, if WWII had never occurred and there had never been a Hitler?
And, as an aside, how would the Middle East be different, since Israel most likely would not have come into existence had there been no Hitler and WWII.
As I began reading the OP, one interesting thought jumped into my mind. How would Europe be different today, for better or worse, if WWII had never occurred and there had never been a Hitler?
Hmmm... the capitalists and the communists would have fought it out sooner, and not coldly -- maybe beginning in Spain.
My family kept after my dad for stories of when he was in WWII. He started carrying around a small tape recorder and, when he thought of something that happened, he would put it on tape. When he finished, they (my parents) had it transcribed and then it was a family project getting it in book form. Nothing that would be in a book store, even though that's kind of what he wanted, but something for family and a few friends. He starts when he went for his physical and ended coming home after the end of the war. He was on a boat coming back for R & R when they got word the war was over. I've read this book several times and wouldn't take a million dollars for it.
Hmmm... the capitalists and the communists would have fought it out sooner, and not coldly -- maybe beginning in Spain.
The shell casings were barely cool when the Caps and Coms started duking it out in Korea. Without WWII, we'd never have developed the atomic bomb, so your war might have been various Korea-like skirmishes around the world, without any nuclear threats, which is exactly what did happen.
Interestingly, without WWII, we might have a world in which there are no nukes and there is no Israel.
The shell casings were barely cool when the Caps and Coms started duking it out in Korea. Without WWII, we'd never have developed the atomic bomb, so your war might have been various Korea-like skirmishes around the world, without any nuclear threats, which is exactly what did happen.
Interestingly, without WWII, we might have a world in which there are no nukes and there is no Israel.
There probably would have been a spiritual home, an Israel, established for (but not only by) the Jews anyway; Jews already lived in the area, Eastern European Jews had been settling in Palestine in goodly numbers since the 1800s and the idea of a Jewish state was shaping up before the Great War. I dont know what relations were btw local Arabs and Jews before the British got involved. Possibly a city-region would have been created inside Jerusalem like Mecca, for dispersed Jews to visit at least once in their lifetimes. Jews would have continued to migrate there no matter what though.
Caps and Coms, which way would Germany have tipped? Maybe the League of Nations would have had the foresight, or been persuaded by the Caps, to forgive its war debt. But if the West didnt alter its position and no strong native leader arose, maybe the German Coms (Das Liebnarod) would have wrested control first, paid the war debt with help from the USSR, stabilized the economy, and established a strong, pre-angered Com position in the best location in Europe. (And they would have kicked out the "international banker" Jews, who could move to Palestine!)
I dont know what relations were btw local Arabs and Jews before the British got involved. Possibly a city-region would have been created inside Jerusalem like Mecca, for dispersed Jews to visit at least once in their lifetimes. Jews would have continued to migrate there no matter what though.
Your answer there is that the relations varied from poor to okay depending on the area, gradually deteriorating as the Zionist era went on and more Jews made Aliyah.
The deterioration came about, in my reading, partly due to the simple population pressure shifting the balance of strength away from Arabs and more toward Jews in a land of water scarcity. Another major factor was the combination of relative progress and modern values. The golden age of Islam had ebbed centuries before, replaced with the increasingly feeble hand from Topkapi Palace, then by British colonial officials. In the meantime, Jewish immigrants worked their butts off and made advances in living standards that had never occurred before in the region--embarrassing to many local Arabs, and enough to inspire some jealousy.
Plus, most Jewish immigrants were European and free-spirited enough to emigrate to Palestine, thus relatively modern in outlook, and not prone to a conservative lifestyle; in women, in particular, this jolted the local Arab (usually Muslim) way of thinking. A lot of Jews worked hard (on kibbutzim and moshavim) and felt, not unreasonably, that part of the payoff for hard work was to cut loose a little when the day was done. They also gained a certain amount of psychological confidence in their Jewish identity, edging away from the 'above all, don't fight back' mentality of centuries in European minority status, more toward a '*********; come get me if you think you're tough enough' outlook.
Summary: an Arab/Jewish conflict was probably going to come in Palestine at some point if Jews kept emigrating there, because it was not so much a religious conflict as a cultural one, Western vs. Middle Eastern--and there's only so much room. Unsurprisingly, Israel's Jews became very Middle Eastern themselves as they learned to defend the place they chose as a homeland.
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