Talk:World War II/Archive 3

Archived at: Talk:World_War_II_Archive_1

Should we keep Finland in the "minor Axis power" ? The Finland had a terrible choice between Stalin and Hitler. They had a war with the Soviet when they where allied to Hitler. When Hilter broke his alliance with Stalin they helped the Nazi to fight the Soviets and then fighted the Nazis themselve, they had no other choice than realpolitik IMO.

Ericd 21:28 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)

A good point, Eric. On the face of things, I agree with you. The only worry I have about it is that it might open a whole can of worms. Are there other countries that the same could apply to? Where would we draw the line? Tannin 23:22 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)

The comment about realpolitik has not to be in the article, but I insist about removing Finland from Axis powers. The case of Finland is very special : - Finland wasn't at war during all the WWII and was never at war with all the Allies. - They had help from the Allies during the first war against USSR. - The agreement with the German was not a full aliance Finland only let German troops cross it's teritory, this caused war with the UK but not with the USA.

Ericd 23:45 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)

OK, I guess we can deal with any flow-on effect to other countries if and when we have to. Tannin

Hmmm... Tannin I would insist about removing France from minor allied powers simply because who were the major allied power in 1939 : France and UK. More seriously we should do something else : removing minor and major and adding a comment for special cases like Finland, France, USSR, USA and certainly others. Ericd 00:10 Apr 2, 2003 (UTC)

Sure, France had a lot of troops and ships and aircraft, but they played a very minor role in the war just the same - and, indeed, fought on the Axis side as Vichy France, whicch was nominally neutral but try telling that to (for example) the 7th Div AIF soldiers who died. Tannin