The Beginning Of World War 2

Oh dear!

 

It does not surprise me in the slightest the drongos they pick on that prog are desperate for fame. .It makes good TV. for the masses
For the contestants it is character building due to the fact you are shown in your true colours on prime time television and the true colours are normally twonk based and from there if you can learn you do learn.

onwards and upwards

by the way
Wild Wood 2 started on the eleventy twelth of Mapril fourty thirty nine

 

Overall an aimless programme with a background of a past winner being 45 years of age and claiming expertise in football club management.Reminds me of a supermarket who, to draw government subsidies had many employees, some over 60 years of age on the payroll as apprentices.

But the question seems to be simple but if a candidate stated 1935,that would have surprised the Amstrad man...the year that Hitler introduced conscription and revealed his Luftwaffe.

 

No surprise at all. Most Americans don't know anything about WWII.

 

Plans for a resurgent Germany were being laid even before the ink was dry on the Versailles treaty and when Hitler was still an unknown. Military aircraft development and manufacture was moved to Sweden (and later to the USSR) Work started on the design of tanks under the cover of tractor development. Schemes were established for pilot training overseas . Plans for a re-expansion of the army were prepared. Work began on the the design of new artillery and small arms. All before 1933 - the German military was already preparing for WW2 before Hitler came to power - he inherited and backed this but he did not initiate it and in response the German army lent him its support.

Reparations are somewhat of a red herring as these were lifted in 1932 before Hitler came to power. Their lifting made Germany more credit worthy and facilitated the raising of bonds some of which were used to finance rearmament.

Without Hitler WW2 might have come a little later but it would still have come and indeed when Germany was better prepared for a long war and less handicapped by some of his criminal lunacies. It suited post war West German governments seeking support for reunification to push the line that WW1 had been everyone's fault and that WW2 was purely the responsibility of an Austrian madman taking advantage of resentment fuelled by an unjust Versailles treaty

 

I would be more surprised if anyone under 40 years old did know within 10 years either way.

 

I think you may be making a common conflation of Total war with Absolute or Unrestricted War which is defined as a conflict in which no political, moral or legal limitations are observed on the methods used or their scope*. Total War is sometimes defined as the complete mobilisation of all resources, physical, social and psychological, civilian and military solely for the waging of warϯ but the problem is that no society, not even the most abject anthill like slave states, can sustain mobilisation at this level for very long without collapsing. Total War may be better viewed as the greatest mobilisation of national resources practicable given the political and economic circumstances.The war on the Eastern Front was very close to Unrestricted or Absolute War with almost no restrictions observed. In the West both sides observed some rules but in both cases Total War prevailed withe both Axis and Allies attempting to maximise the proportion of national resource dedicated to the needs of war.

* Oxford Living Dictionaries
ϯ Roger Chickering and Stig Forster, A World at Total War, Cambridge University Press, 2010. Page 2

 

Sapper is dead so wont be able to reply