He claimed that the view that Britain "had not made her prospective position sufficiently clear to Germany to deter war" had been removed as a factor by more recent scholarship, uncharaceristically without citation. Weinberg, V II, p. 6.
When he notes that more recent scholarship has removed a factor which had nevertheless very much been on peoples' minds back in the 1930s, one immediately can assume that there is a later Whig interpretation on which Weinberg is relying which would not pass even a smell test.
On the other hand, and incongruously, he notes "the reluctance to risk war with Germany was reinforced by the continuing feeling, especially in some circles in England, that the peace settlement at the end of the war had been unfairly harsh to Germany," for which he cites Donald C. Watt.
So, he has Whig cherry picked feelings from the 1930s with which he agrees, and Whig distinguished those from those other feelings, also from the 1930s, with which he does not.
Finally, he shows that Germany had been left (in spite of the terms of the ostensibly unfair 1919 settlement) stronger than any European power other than Russia.
This seems to be a Whig hindsight fallacy for a state of affairs which he admits it was not so clear to them at the time.
This post is dedicated to J C D Clark.
This also clashes by implication with his claim that Britain had made its prospective position clear as a deterrent based on relative strength and therefore awareness of the threat Germany prospectively would pose by hostilities.
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