British style poppy for November 11.

[Mike_Oettle]

Thanks, Todd, for that contribution. As you say, the history of both wars is complicated, and I am uncertain how close I am to overstepping the guidelines.
But I do feel it necessary to mention that the end of the 1914-18 conflict was not, as Hitler and many of his compatriots wanted the world to believe, an act of internal sabotage in Germany, but an actual military defeat in the field on the western front.
It was military defeat that triggered the collapse of the German and Austrian governments (at several levels) and their replacement with republican regimes and, in many instances, separatist nationalist aspirations (as in the lands that became Czechoslovakia).
And over and above the Mitteleuropa plan, pre-war Germany also had a Mittelafrika plan, in which the Germanised Belgium would cede its Congo colony to Germany, which would then link up its African holdings through the annexation of Angola and the French colonies between the Congo River and Kamerun.
So, for instance, the South African seizure of German South West Africa was not purely an act of British imperial expansion, but also a defensive move against an aggressive enemy.
The German forces in SWA had already invaded South African territory before the South African army turned its attention to that country.
Regards,
Mike

[Lallans]

Update on the white poppy issue that came up earlier: the local leftist ladies did deposit two white poppy wreaths on the Canadian National War Memorial and local TV news that evening showed a young chap removing them while remarking that they consitituted a "desecration." This was NOT me.