petr - you seem to be responding in this thread to posts on other threads, and saying "you" without giving any indication which "you" you are referring to. It gets things a bit confused doing it that way.

I think you (petr) misinterpret the point I was making about the Baath coup - the point is that people responding instantaneously to what happened then might have made the judgement that it was a good thing, and it took soem time before it transpired that it wasn't. As you say, the same kind of reactions were to be seen in the context of the Nazi rise to power.

The overall longterm consequences of the war could well, in the same way, turn out to be a great deal worse than many people assume at this time.