Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II (Post 337798)

watch your language man, people here have been banned for less..

Originally Posted by Dutch_851 (Post 337800)

Woah there Bongo mate, you took my statement entirely out of context.

There's no-one more emphatic than I in affirming that we bloody won the Battle no matter what any of the latter day excuse mongers drone on about.

I wasn't making any excuses for anyone, but it is my opinion that but for the Channel and the existence of the Royal Navy, Germany's land and airforces combined would've stuffed us. Until such time as the empire, the dominions and the U.S. came to our aid.

But I repeat, we did win and won hands down.;)

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II (Post 337792)

No, by British and German historians alike. It's not stuff I'm making up, it's all in boring history books man.

Let's not take this to a silly level: the German empire had a long, glorious heritage, and the German pride was a transversal feeling that put together the peasant with the noble. The humiliation and the impossible economic demands of Versailles were a provocative humiliation.

from Wikipedia

Of the many provisions in the treaty, one of the most important and controversial required Germany to accept responsibility for causing the war (along with Austria and Hungary, according to the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the Treaty of Trianon) and, under the terms of articles 231–248 (later known as the War Guilt clauses), to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions and pay heavy reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers. The total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion Marks (then $31.4 billion, £6.6 billion) in 1921 which is roughly equivalent to US $442 billion and UK £217 billion in 2011, a sum that many economists at the time, notably John Maynard Keynes, deemed to be excessive and counterproductive and would have taken Germany until 1988 to pay.[2][3] The final payments ended up being made on October 4, 2010,[4] the 20th anniversary of German reunification, and some 92 years after the end of the war for which they were exacted.[5] The Treaty was undermined by subsequent events starting as early as 1932 and was widely flouted by the mid-1930s.[6]

Originally Posted by bongodriver (Post 337807)

Oh well in that case I'm awfully sorry, god forbid that a little patience might have seen a political and peacefull coclusion to this, from this moment on I shal endeavour to murder any Pole, Jew, Human of questionable genetics/ethicity to make amends for the serious wrongdoing we caused the Germans.

Originally Posted by bongodriver (Post 337807)

Oh well in that case I'm awfully sorry, god forbid that a little patience might have seen a political and peacefull coclusion to this, from this moment on I shal endeavour to murder any Pole, Jew, Human of questionable genetics/ethicity to make amends for the serious wrongdoing we caused the Germans.

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II (Post 337812)

you're looking at the effect, not the cause.

Had the Germans not been humiliated like they were after WW1, their morale wouldn't have been so down (let's not forget that in the 20s German industry was back with its pre-war glory), their economy wouldn't have been crippled, so they wouldn't have needed a political and military revenge, so Hitler would have kept on being a $hit painter and get banged in jail again and again instead of doing what he did.

The French really wanted to use all of Germany's resources for the next 80 years (!!!) to live off their WW1 victory, now if that's not an all French provocation I dunno how to call it..