Forum:Hess Agreement

So the first half of Walsh's first scene, the leadoff of Chapter 2, largely fills the function of giving a quick recap of the major threads of the series up to this point. (The second half involves him more or less telling his Scotland Yard tail that his, Walsh's, "lot" are going to "make trouble." No details, but if he's going to discuss such things so nearly-openly with the enemy, I worry the dramatic tension we'd anticipated might suffer.)

Anyway, the recap includes some much-desired new information: specifics of the Hess Agreement. For one thing, the communique Hess carried was addressed to both Chamberlain and Daladier; the assumption was that London would forward it to Paris.

Apparently Hitler realized that just because Chamberlain and Daladier had stood up to him at Munich didn't mean they weren't complete pussies, because the Agreement is ridiculously one-sided. All Hitler offered was the withdrawal of German troops from territories beyond the recognized prewar Franco-German border. Czechoslovakia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway all stay occupied--Walsh was clear on that point. So if Britain and France both complete the Big Switch Back, the Wehrmacht can project its power right back to their doorsteps.

There's no information on an agreement for how to handle the running proxy war in Spain, and nothing like "Germany will be obligated to double-cross Italy in North Africa upon British request," as we've suggested elsewhere. (It is worth noting, by the way, that Hossbach did not include Italy in his rundown of SecCo members in Chapter 1.) Maybe the outline Walsh provided was incomplete, focusing only on those items which were of direct interest to the big picture. It seems counterintuitive that there'd be so few clauses to so significant a diplomatic agreement, especially since Walsh implied that negotiations between Hess and Chamberlain's government (and Daladier's, I guess) went on for some little while in TBS.

Anyway, I create this forum to ask how we want to handle it now that there's finally some information on the Hess Agreement. I always figured I'd write a new article, but there's so little meat to what we've learned that there hardly seems to be a point. Another option would be to write it into the transitional section between the sections that deal with the first two stages of the war on World War II (The War That Came Early). Or maybe something else altogether? Turtle Fan (talk) 06:30, July 31, 2012 (UTC)