Please consider making sure Norway is woth capturing in HOI4

[Secret Master]

War crimes, genocide, attempts at genocide, and those sorts of things are verboten topics in the HOI forums. The discussion will stop now, or I will close the thread. You folks may want to reread the forum rules.

 

[Der Phonix]

Nobody should be in any serious doubt as to whether the Norwegians would support the Allies after they theoretically occupied the country as compared to Germany. They are both liberal democracies with a strong rule of law, and British troops committed very few if any war crimes during the whole war. Compare that to Germany and you can see who they would support.

That is a good point, although I'd say that the Norwegian politcal elite was more friendly towards the British than was public opinion. There wasn't much resistance when the Germans invaded either.

But Europeans generally didn't see it this way. Hence Beagas comment on revisionism. Europeans in the '30s didn't view colonialism as the evil we do now.

Even without that, the UK dominates Africa and India. In Europe outside of the mainland UK they occupy Cyprus, Malta and Gibraltar. Germany in the preceding 4 years have absorbed Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland (Who the UK and France are fighting Germany in aid of) One of these is a looming threat, the other is a power with a history of fighting to resist any power dominating the European mainland.

"But Europeans generally didn't see it this way" - more like the British didn't see it that way. Much of Europe didn't see Nazism as the evil we do now. As for colonialsim, the people subject to it undoubtly saw it as evil aslo back then, even if the British did not. The axis did much to point out the hypocrisy, which indeed contributed to the loss of the colonies after the war.

 

[Porkman]

That is a good point, although I'd say that the Norwegian politcal elite was more friendly towards the British than was public opinion. There wasn't much resistance when the Germans invaded either.



"But Europeans generally didn't see it this way" - more like the British didn't see it that way. Much of Europe didn't see Nazism as the evil we do now. As for colonialsim, the people subject to it undoubtly saw it as evil aslo back then, even if the British did not. The axis did much to point out the hypocrisy, which indeed contributed to the loss of the colonies after the war.

There was a Norwegian Resistance that was pretty active. It was actually told to lie low by the British who wanted it intact and providing intelligence and didn't see the point in making it engage in armed resistance in a place they weren't going to invade.

The Axis didn't point out the hypocrisy of colonialism, they just reverted back to the earlier and outmoded expansionist stage of it.

 

[Der Phonix]

There was a Norwegian Resistance that was pretty active. It was actually told to lie low by the British who wanted it intact and providing intelligence and didn't see the point in making it engage in armed resistance in a place they weren't going to invade.

The Axis didn't point out the hypocrisy of colonialism, they just reverted back to the earlier and outmoded expansionist stage of it.

Not the hypocrisy of colonialism itself, but the hypocrisyy in declaring war on a country because it violates the virtues of liberty, self-derermination and sovereignty (invading Poland), when much of the world is under military occupation by yourself. If the allies really had a problem with violations of these virtues, one would think they would have liberated their own subjects first.

The bottom line is that realpolitik was important during WWII, even though we today like to think of the whole conflict merely in terms of a good vs evil binary.

 

[unmerged(31881)]

"But Europeans generally didn't see it this way" - more like the British didn't see it that way. Much of Europe didn't see Nazism as the evil we do now. As for colonialsim, the people subject to it undoubtly saw it as evil aslo back then, even if the British did not. The axis did much to point out the hypocrisy, which indeed contributed to the loss of the colonies after the war.

Increasing local resistance was of course the main impetus.... but even secondary factors like US insistence (on attaining the former colonies as new markets) drove European imperial collapse far more than Nazi propaganda.

c.f. the Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere which quickly dissipated potential inherent in championing 'anti-colonialism'.

To bring the subject back to Norway... if taking it is made 'worthwhile' in game terms... the weakness of Quisling regimes should probably be reflected as well as the significant garrisoning cost necessary to prop up such façades. i.e. without the Wehrmacht there in strength, how long would that regime have been under the Reich's sway?

 

[Porkman]

Not the hypocrisy of colonialism itself, but the hypocrisyy in declaring war on a country because it violates the virtues of liberty, self-derermination and sovereignty (invading Poland), when much of the world is under military occupation by yourself. If the allies really had a problem with violations of these virtues, one would think they would have liberated their own subjects first.

The bottom line is that realpolitik was important during WWII, even though we today like to think of the whole conflict merely in terms of a good vs evil binary.

It's the evil vs. really ridiculously evil binary.