"England" is sometimes, wrongly, used in reference to the whole United Kingdom, the entire island of Great Britain (or simply Britain), or the British Isles.

This is not only incorrect but can cause offence to people from other parts of the UK, particularly Scotland .

History of the making of the UK

1536 - Act of Union joins England and Wales

1707 - Act of Union unites Scotland and England, together with Wales to form the Kingdom of Great Britain.

1801 - The Irish Parliament voted to join the Union. The then Kingdom of Great Britain becomes the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1922 - Name changed to United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, when most of the Southern counties in Ireland choose independence.


Great Britain comprises only England, Scotland and Wales.

British Isles

The British Isles - made up of several islands. Great Britain is the largest and most important one.


So now this is all cleared up. Please don't derail the thread from it's actual discussion.

Hitler had to go to war with the Soviet Union at some point. Everyone knew the Nazis hated communists and vice versa, which is what made the partition of Poland such a surprise to the world. Germany and the Soviets were destined for conflict at some point once Germany started taking out the West. While a Cold War era may have occurred similar to what happened post WWII, it seems unlikely Hitler and Stalin would have trusted each other long enough for that to occur. As it turns out Stalin trusted Hitler too much and even after the invasion started Stalin did not believe it.

Interesting thread. I've read a lot on Barbarossa lately & tend to agree w/ Stim & above that it was both inevitable and reasonable at the time for Germany to think they could win.

One thing I haven't been able to find much on though is their thinking behind the declaration of war on the US. Anyone read/watch anything about that? I assume they thought that too was inevitable but I don't see any upside to taking the initiative other than possibly guilting the Japanese to help them on the eastern front.

They didn't declare war to Russia, because they wanted to give Stalin the choice to attack Germany also, just like in WWI. Even though it didn't work out as planned, it more or less forced Hitler to remove this threat by attacking Russia first.

A better question might be, "Why didn't the UK and France meaningfully engage Germany on land after declaring war on her with most of her forces in Poland?" WWII might have ended rather quickly if they had. They also didn't provide much aid to Poland, contrary to what they had promised.

When the UK and France declared war on Germany, they hoped

1. The Germans would back down in the face of actual war.
2. Failing that, that the Poles could hold out long enough for Western pressure to make a difference.

By the time the SU invaded, Poland had already effectively lost. There was nothing to be gained by alienating the SU.

The quick answer is that they lacked both the means and the will.

They couldn't just wave a magic wand and conjure an army out of thin air. The first deployment of the British Expeditionary Force wasn't complete until a month after the SU entered Poland. By the time the Germans attacked France in May 1940, some British units in France still hadn't received their full scale of equipment.

French forces did invade Germany in early September 1939. but lacked the equipment necessary for attacking the fortified positions of the Siegfried Line. Neither the western Allies nor the Poles had the necessary understanding of the speed of mechanized warfare. Their plans imagined developments to take weeks which in fact took only days. The terms of the Polish-French military convention called for a full-scale attack by the French Army 15 days after the start of the war. By then the Poles were already losing the decisive battle of the campaign and there was no longer any point in French urgency. The Anglo-French Supreme War Council only met for the first time on September 12th. They determined that neither nation had sufficient supplies or equipment to carry out a sustained offensive. They preferred to strangle Germany by blockade.

And there is another set of reasons, very much related to why there will be no western military response to the Soviet invasion of the Ukraine. After a prolonged period of peace, very few people want to see a return to a state of warfare. And rightly so, because war is a horrible thing. So in most countries, not wanting to fight will have led to letting their warfighting capabilities degrade below the minimum necessary to take effective offensive action against a determined aggressor acting against a third party. Instead they will, at best, only have sufficient forces to deter that aggressor from taking offensive action against them directly. So they will posture and bluster, but be unwilling and unable to actually attack the aggressor effectively. Furthermore they will not want to be seen as an aggressor themselves, so will fail to attack, preferring to stand on the defensive and claim what they mistakenly believe is the higher moral ground, when in fact they will have broken their promise to maintain the third party's territorial integrity.

The bottom line is that it's stupid to start a fight you cannot win.