Forum Lurker,

What I said was:

"Had either Britain, or France, acted with regard to Germany in 1933 in the manner that the current President of the United States and his government has acted with regard to Saddam Hussein in Iraq - There would have been no Second World War in 1939."

If Britain or France reacted strongly to German rearmament in 1933 Germany would have stopped in its tracks.

If the French had reacted to the German re-occupation of the Rhineland in 1936 Germany would have been stopped in its tracks.

I was not posing any question about America confronting Germany in 1933.

The German army in 1933 was little more than a glorified police force.

The German Navy in 1933 was practically non-existant

The German Air Force in 1933 did not exist.

Hitler's Nazi-Germany made secret agreements with Russia and Italy, that allowed Germans to train as pilots and with tanks in Russia, German U-boat Captains and crews were initially trained by the Italians.

The Annexation of Austria in 1936, nearly sounded the death-knell of the "Blitzkrieg" concept - the tanks were hopelessly unreliable - Guderian mentions tanks having to be drawn by horses to points that would enable them to then drive triumphally into Austrian towns and through villages. Looked damn convincing too, but toally useless.

As a show of good will, during the run up to the signing of the German-Russian Non-Aggression Pact, Hitler threw his armaments industry open to the Russians for inspection. At that time the Russians could not believe how poor the German armour was, the heaviest they had was the Panzer Mk IV, at that time purely an infantry support tank armed with a 75mm L24 gun.

One totally unexpected windfall for the Germans was the acquisition, during the 1938 occupation of Czechoslovakia, of a large number of Czech t-35 and t-38 tanks (hundreds of them) - compared to their German counterparts they were better armed and more mechanically reliable. These machines provided the bulk of German armoured formations used against the Poles and against the Dutch, Belgians, French and British when Germany struck west in 1940. Later once the faults in the German designs were ironed out, the turrets were removed from these Czech machines and used as static defence points, and the hulls of the t-35's and t-38's were converted to mount larger anti-tank guns (Marder I) and as self propelled artillery (Wespe).