{"id":104151,"date":"2026-08-09T04:00:05","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T08:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=104151"},"modified":"2026-08-08T15:31:56","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T19:31:56","slug":"how-to-launch-the-apocalypse-death-of-democracy-27-q3-1939","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/08\/09\/how-to-launch-the-apocalypse-death-of-democracy-27-q3-1939\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Launch the Apocalypse &#8211; Death of Democracy 27 &#8211; Q3 1939"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"854\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hhIX_zxjKQU?si=cHl_UGbamupXFKMC\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>World War Two<\/strong> and <strong>Spartacus Olsson<\/strong><br \/>\nPublished 8 Aug 2026<\/p>\n<p>This is Step 27 in the Death of Democracy: LAUNCH A WORLD WAR &mdash; the moment when the collapse of democracy, diplomacy, and collective security culminated in an attack that would engulf the world.<\/p>\n<p>In July and August 1939, Adolf Hitler turned the destruction of German democracy into the instrument for launching a European war.<\/p>\n<p>While Nazi Germany armed Danzig, mobilized reservists, prepared its U-boats, introduced civilian rationing, and manufactured stories of Polish aggression, Britain, France, Poland, the United States, and the Soviet Union made a final series of increasingly desperate attempts to prevent catastrophe.<\/p>\n<p>At the center of the crisis was the failed effort to construct an Anglo-French-Soviet alliance against Nazi aggression. Negotiations foundered on delay, mutual suspicion, the Baltic states, and the Soviet demand for military passage through Poland. Stalin then chose an agreement with Hitler: the Molotov\u2013Ribbentrop Pact and its secret protocol divided Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence and prepared the way for the destruction of Poland.<\/p>\n<p>Inside Germany, there was little repetition of the supposed national enthusiasm of August 1914. Nazi leaders and <em>Wehrmacht<\/em> commanders ranged from confidence and opportunism to anxiety and fatalism, while many ordinary Germans feared that Hitler had finally pushed Europe beyond the point of no return. Yet propaganda, repression, and six years of dictatorship had stripped the population of any effective means of preventing the war.<\/p>\n<p>The next episode will conclude the series with an epilogue examining what the destruction of the Weimar Republic teaches us about defending democracy today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>World War Two and Spartacus Olsson Published 8 Aug 2026 This is Step 27 in the Death of Democracy: LAUNCH A WORLD WAR &mdash; the moment when the collapse of democracy, diplomacy, and collective security culminated in an attack that would engulf the world. In July and August 1939, Adolf Hitler turned the destruction of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,1117,1118,7,5,1119,230],"tags":[432,457,969,1197,228,269,433],"class_list":["post-104151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-france","category-germany","category-history","category-military","category-russia","category-ww2","tag-diplomacy","tag-fascism","tag-hitler","tag-interwarperiod","tag-poland","tag-propaganda","tag-sovietunion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-r5R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104151"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104152,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104151\/revisions\/104152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}