Anglo-American Ascendancy Lost in Unnecessary Wars
In a new book that will infuriate the fake conservatives who inhabit the Republican Party, Patrick J. Buchanan documents how British self-righteousness, delusion and hubris destroyed both the British Empire and Western ascendancy in two unnecessary wars launched by a small cabal of morons that ruled Britain.
Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War shows that the two world wars that destroyed European civilization began when England declared war on Germany, thus dragging in the Empire, Commonwealth and United States. This was a strategic blunder unparalleled in history. Mighty Britain emerged from World War II as an American dependency.
Buchanan cites such British notables as F.J.P. Veale, B.H. Liddell Hart and C.P. Snow to document that it was Winston Churchill who committed, in Veale's words, "the first deliberate breach of the fundamental rule of civilized warfare that hostilities must only be waged against the enemy combatant forces." It was Churchill, not Hitler, who first targeted civilian populations in World War II and caused the structure of civilized warfare to collapse in ruins.
The Americans quickly adopted Churchill's criminal policy of attacking civilians, culminating in the outrageous use of nuclear weapons against two Japanese cities, the slaughter of Vietnamese civilians, and the ongoing slaughter of Afghan and Iraqi civilians.
A popular American myth is that "the greatest generation" saved the world from Nazi tyranny. As Buchanan points out, the fact of the matter is that the Normandy invasion in June 1944 played little, if any, role in Germany's defeat. By the end of 1942, Hitler had lost World War II at Stalingrad, long before any American troops appeared on the scene. What the Normandy invasion achieved 18 months later was to keep the Red Army from overrunning all of Europe.
Although Buchanan's book is about how the British destroyed themselves, Buchanan is clearly thinking about America. In the closing pages, Buchanan shows how the Bush regime has broken from the sound policy of President Reagan and is replicating the British folly of self-destruction. "There is hardly a blunder of the British Empire we have not replicated," laments Buchanan.
The distinct American hubris that we are "the indispensable nation" and the braggadocio that we are an "omnipower" have us overcommitted in alliances that we cannot fulfill. Despite 25 percent of the Iraqi population killed, injured or displaced, the "world's only superpower" cannot even control Baghdad.
To deal with the pointless war we started in Afghanistan, we have had to sucker our NATO allies into a conflict that is no concern of theirs. Militarily overextended and with a faltering economy and collapsing currency, the cabal of morons that rules America still hopes to attack Iran and Syria, and to drive Hezbollah from Lebanon.
American idiots in think tanks are busy at work drawing up plans about how the United States is going to check China and prevent her emergence as a power beyond U.S. control. The Republican presidential candidate has boasted that he will challenge Russia and bring Vladimir Putin to heel.
Amazing. The world's greatest debtor is going to take on the two powerful countries with the largest trade surpluses. According to the World Factbook, an annual publication of the CIA, Russia's 2007 current account surplus is $465 billion and China's is $363 billion. In contrast, the U.S. current account deficit is $987 billion—an amount larger that the total deficits of all other countries in the world combined.
The out-of-pocket and already incurred future cost of Bush's wars of aggression is between $3 trillion and $5 trillion, every dollar of which must be borrowed. That comes on top of the unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government totaling $53 trillion. By any account, the United States is the world's worst credit risk. The "mighty" United States relies on foreigners to finance its consumption, its wars and the daily operations of its government.
When Buchanan looks at the collection of idiots that comprise America's ruling class, he despairs.
In truth, American power is already broken, and the country is already lost.
The country is lost, because the Brownshirt Bush regime has destroyed the U.S. Constitution with the complicity of the opposition party and the federal courts. There is no organized power that can restore the Constitution or even much concern that it has been overthrown.
The country is broken because American capitalists have moved offshore so many U.S. manufacturing, engineering and research jobs that U.S. imports now exceed U.S. industrial production. American dependency on imported manufactured goods, advanced technology goods and energy is astounding.
Moreover, the dependency is escalating dramatically. In March 2002, prior to Bush's decision to impose Israel's will on the Middle East, oil was $25 a barrel. Today, oil is $125 a barrel, a fivefold increase that has seen our oil import bill rise from $145 billion in 2006 to $456 billion presently—a $300 billion addition to a trade deficit that was already running $700 billion to $800 billion annually.
There is no possibility of the United States closing its trade deficit. The United States is able to survive such enormous deficits only because the U.S. dollar is the world reserve currency. This role for the dollar is nearing an end, as the world looks for more stable stores of value. Although oil is still nominally priced in dollars, in reality it is being priced in euros, as oil producers raise the dollar price with a view to keeping their oil revenues at a constant purchasing power in euros.
When the dollar loses its reserve currency role, foreign financing for U.S. trade and budget deficits will evaporate. U.S. living standards will collapse, and the indispensable omnipower will be just another washed up country.
For a world weary of "American exceptionalism," this can't happen too soon.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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Shouldn't Lincoln, Sherman and Sheridan receive some credit, along with Churchill, for their pioneering innovations decades earlier?
Pat's provocative book will find few friends among "conservatives." One cannot win attacking our participation in the "Good War." We have to wait another century before this can be discussed in polite conversation.
Also, I think the Luftwaffe's destruction of Rotterdam in May, 1940, the campaign of schreckliekeit, antedates any British attack on a German city. Thus, Hitler, not Churchill gets "credit" for the first air campaign of indiscrimminate destruction of a civilian target.
Not to defend Churchill, but the Rotterdam bombing was advertised as pure destruction for its own sake, as the German word to describe it would suggest.
Mr. James @ 1,
I am not exactly sure what "innovations" you are referring to; however, the late Thomas Ayers, in his book "Dark and Bloody Ground," which is essentially a biography of General Richard Taylor in the context of the Red River Campaign, cites a letter from a literate slave to his master. The slave is apparently one of hundreds that had been placed in the squaller of one of General "Spoons" Butler's labor camps. Butler was given to stealing property, hence the name "Spoons," including slaves. Apparently the slaves in the camp were being over worked, were malnourished, sick and dying. The slave wants his master to mount a rescue. Such camps would appear in the Churchill's Boer War, and would be copied in other places and times for nefarious purposes.
I hope this isn't another chronicles comment thread that degenerates into a discussion of the Civil war. The Civil war was not Mr. Buchanan's topic nor Mr. Roberts.
I plan to read Pat's book but the thesis is well known. Lloyd George warned in Sept 1939 that going to war with Germany was a mistake.
Sadly, large numbers of Anglo-Americans love war (cf McCain) which is why we are constantly setting off on these senseless wars that achieve nothing. I expect more of them in the future.
David @ 2,
I am certainly no apologist for Hitler, but the bombing of Rotterdam was in direct support of German troops fighting in the city. It was not the strategic bombing of a purely civilian target. In fact, German ground forces sent up flares to call off the over ninety bomber raid. About one third of the air group saw or correctly interpreted the signal and turned back. Two thirds went on to drop their bombs to suppress a determined Dutch defense of the heart of the city. (There is some debate as to whether the German army fired the flares to avoid "friendly fire" or whether the flares were actually meant to turn back the bombers. The fact that one-third turned back suggests that the intent was the former.)
What is true is that the bombing of Rotterdam was seen as a threshold crossed and the British within days revised their air battle doctrine to include military targets in civilian areas which would expand civilian casualties.
It is also true, that the Germans, seeing the effect of the Rotterdam bombings threated other Dutch cities and by such threats got a quick capitulation of the Dutch.
Noting having read the Mr. Buchanan's book, I do not know whether or not he was talking about such bombings or not.
pablo H @ 4
Lincoln's war of aggression against the South was one of the many 19th century wars of nationalists/imperialists against smaller polities in America, Germany, in Italy, in Russia and else where. There is an objective correlative between the bloody actions of these wars of nationalism and the wars of the 20th century. So, if we refer back to the "Civil War," it is hardly a "degeneration." In the 21st century American context of the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan, one of the obvious objective correlatives between the events of 1860 to 1877 is the Republic Party itself and the elites in whose interests it acts. However, I note that the thread has already moved on.
That would be Schrecklichkeit, transliterated as "terror", not schreckliekeit.
Here is what Jack Bernstein wrote in 1985. It seems that they are ready to spring the trap now.
Quote:
Israel could trigger a large scale Mideast war, a large war which Israel could not win alone. Then the New York leg of the New York/Moscow/Tel Aviv Triangle would use its influence on the U.S. Government to send U.S. military forces to aid Israel.
...
At some point during the war, when the U.S. military is deeply involved and the U.S. citizens demoralized, the Zionist oriented Jewish International Bankers will make their move. Evidence leads to the conclusion that it is these bankers who own the Class A Stock of the U.S. Federal Reserve, America's central bank. In this position of power, these Zionist bankers, can, and likely will, trigger an economic collapse in America — like they did in 1929 when they caused the stock market crash and started the severe depression of the 1930's.
Since the money system currently used in the U.S. is not backed by gold, silver or anything of value, the paper dollars and tin coins now in use will be worthless.
In the resulting state of confusion and in an effort to obtain food and other necessities, the American people will accept the 'New States Constitution' which has already been written. This will place the American people under the dictates of One-World Government run by the Zionist oriented International Bankers and Zionist/Bolshevik Jews.
Exactly what direction the war in the Mideast will take only the New York/Moscow/Tel Aviv Triangle and God will know.
When it is all over, the main losers will be:
The American people.
The Arab people.
The Sephardic Jews and that portion of Ashkenazi Jews who are for justice and freedom.
The only winners will be:
The Zionist International Bankers and the Zionist Bolshevik (communists/socialist) Jews.
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/israel.htm
Not having read the book I cannot comment on the details. Certainly it is an interesting premise from a theoretical standpoint. However, as many of these kinds of efforts tend to be, when you fall to what if's, should have's and could have's the history itself is muddled. For instance the assertion that the Nazi's were already whipped in 1942 with fall of Stalingrad regardless of anglo-american effort. If there had been no anglo-american effort German forces would have been more concentrated on the Eastern front and more difficult for Soviets to overcome. Hitler's own madness and senseless strategies overruling his generals also contributed - where does one stop the what if's? Much more interesting is the application of the premise to today's US policies, attitudes and interests. We are suffering the consequences of our hubris, in both blood and treasure.
They were indeed wortheless and insane wars. But one cannot sympathize with the German leadership or the culture from which it spawned in any of its incarnations: royal, totalitarian, or democratic. Germany is a beautiful country whose past achievements in art and present achievements in industry are to be respected. But Germany also has the unique distinction of being the only country during the twentieth century to have three times aggressed a small, harmless nation that none of those three times threatened or posed any threat to Germany. Serbia's scars in human and material loss have been many. I recently personally saw a government building across the street from the pock-marked main maternity hospital in Belgrade that remains wrecked. That the US aided Germany in her third and finally successful destruction of Yugoslavia should be an embarrassment to Americans. Yet, I don't think most will realize this, particularly if they read her news- (sic) papers:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121071687146789749.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
Mr. James,
You forgot about Napoleon. The original pudgy, narcissist, develish bully. He did wonders for the innovation of civilian massacre.
This sounds like a good book that I should like to read. Growing up, one of our neighbors was a German lady who was a half generation older than my parents. She had been a young woman during WWII. She was always visibly depressed, but kept a beautiful yard, and so as boy I made friends with her. Later I found out from other neighbors that one night during the last week of the war (when the outcome was certain), while she was out in the country, her entire extended family, cousins, aunts, friends, and neighbors in Munich were obliterated by carpet bombing. This is something I remember that changed the way I thought.
Many of us may remember that before these wars was the "Red menace," when Marxists promised to upturn the whole world in the great International Revolution. The International was organized in every large country and many small, and the "Internationale" was the "national" anthem of the (Red) Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had become the de facto home base for the International and on the eve of the war had lined up more than four million Red troops and 200,000 tanks in Poland for the invasion of western Europe. Churchill had earlier written Poland a blank check for unconditional support in the event of hostilities with any country, but ignored the Soviet Union's invasion and eagerly signed over the whole country to the Soviet Union. In the US, Roosevelt pretended to adhere to the neutrality that American law demanded, but in actual fact was bankrolling the Soviet Union while supplying it with supplies, munitions, and armaments. Despite official publicity to the contrary, Britain and the US were solidly behind and the principal backers of the International Communist Revolution from the beginning.
That Germany, which on the eve of war had an army the size of Sweden's, armed with shovels, could possibly have staved the Red tide, no one suspected. The German successes put Britain and the US in the awkward position of having openly to support Communism.
The government of Britain was forced to send its own troops when Germany overran the Soviet Union. If it is true that the America's entry in the war did not change its outcome, there is still the unpleasant facts of American financial backing of the Soviet Union since the Bolshevik Revolution (American citizens also staffed it at the highest levels) against the wishes of the American people. To get around this, the International Revolution was quietly forgotten, the war became a crusade against the Huns, and the saps who were willing to do anything for a regular paycheck – including carpet-bombing entire civilian populations of pristine Medieval cities – became the "Greatest Generation."
Scholars writing for Chronicles have pointed out that Yankee capitalists, particularly the Republican Party, have always shown partiality to the centralizing policies of Marxism; it is useful that Buchanan shows that the unconditional support of Marxism was also "delusion and hubris" that "destroyed both the British Empire and Western ascendancy in two unnecessary wars."
@7andy
What do you mean the New York/Moscow/Tel Aviv Triangle?
The New York/Tel Aviv/ London axis is trying to overthrough Putin. Have you not read or seen the news? There has never been such a large scale media assualt against any leader since the last Tsar of Russia when the US and Europe had him overthrown and installed the communist regime there.
I'm not bothered about the Middle East most of the countries are US colonies Qatars a perfect example. I'm more concerned with Us and Europe destroying christian countries like Serbia and Russia.
Unfortunately for Mr. Roberts, he, like many other establishment conservatives, has too high a regard to Reagan and other recent Republican leaders.
What about Reagan's policies was "sound"? It was he who cut the reigns off of the Federal Reserve and allowed Greenspan to print as much money as he wanted, which created the stock market bubble we have today. It was Reagan and his bellicose speeches that paved the way for George W Bush. It was Reagan who made it acceptable for the government to accumulate huge amounts of debt to build up its military. Sure, other presidents did these things to a degree, but Reagan was the first to do them on the huge scale that is done today.
The awful truth is that this country hasn't had a strong leader with the peoples' interests at heart in a very, very long time.
Regarding civilian deaths in war: With modern technology, you can kill thousands without ever having to see your targets. Thus civiliatian deaths are just too easy to inflict (both accidently and not). It's easier to kill children if you just push a button and don't have to see them die. It's just part of the world we live in today. If Hitler or Churchill hadn't done it first, someone else would have.
David is mistaken and Robert Peters is correct. Buchanan quotes Liddel Hart: "When Mr. Churchill came into power, one of the first decisions of his government was to extend bombing to the non-combatant area." Buchanan continues, "While the Luftwaffe had bombed cities, Liddell Hart noted the critical strategic and moral difference with what Britain was doing: "Bombing [of Warsaw and Rotterdam] did not take place until German troops were fighting their way into these cities and thus conformed to the old rules of siege bombardment."
Buchanan goes on to allow Churchill to describe his new policy of shattering German cities in order to "de-house" the German people. The goal was to destroy 50% of all German homes.
There is no doubt that many of Lincoln's generals were war criminals. However, Buchanan is writing about Churchill's shattering of the rules of civilized warfare in the 20th century. Allegedly, civilization had advanced beyond the time of Lincoln's massive war crimes against the South.
Any author of any opinion piece making commentary on America's state might want to read up on the people who make most of its foreign policy. Prof MacDonald's trilogy is background information that should be required reading to understanding the mindset of the foreign policy elite that we in America have inflicted upon ourselves. Deepseated paranoia, mistrust and the stark view of of their place in humanity it should be little wonder they took to the butchers of history for their outlook. All in all they are just another set of bad actors, any of them could have filled a cabinet seat in Lincoln's administration.
The War to Prevent Southern Independence is relevant to any discussion of U.S. history because it is the pivot.
This anti-British stuff is being carried a little too far. It was the Germans who erected a totalitarian state and invaded smaller countries and boasted about it, after all. You are tending toward letting the Germans off the hook. Whether the U.S. should have entered the world wars is another question. Compare Churchill to any American leader of the 20th century. None even come close.
Hitler and Stalin were the co-architects of WWII in Europe, both executing the mutual capability of extreme brutality found in their historically closely related although divergent ideologies on individuals, peoples and countries, at first together and then against one another. Neither claimed to be part of a constitutional, federal or republican tradition. In fact, they boastfully proclaimed the opposite. Neither did either embrace any tradition of liberalism or conservatism, although Hitler usurped elements of the latter. They sought to destroy both.
Not having read Mr. Buchanan's book, I cannot know if he attempts to answer the question why the French and the British and later America, countries which had to one degree or another the traditions which were antithetical to those of Hitler and Stalin chose to enter the war and to execute it in the fashion in which they did.
For most of my life, the answers have seemed obvious: they were the bad guys, and we were the good guys; they embraced the alien ideologies of communism and fascism, and we lived all of those things which I have already outline supra; they would have eventually invaded us, etc. Yet, as I have come to understand the difference between the rhetoric and the reality of Mr. Lincoln's war and the obvious difference between the rhetoric and the reality of our current wars which are being waged in our names, and here I would include Clinton's Serbia/Bosnia war, as well as the emerging realities of Vietnam which I as a teenager did not understand, I must ask and have asked about the discrepancies between the rhetoric (propaganda?) and reality of WWII, beginning with Roosevelt.
Mr. Buchanan's book is then, I suppose, a must. Which raises the question already posed on another thread: Will he distance himself from McCain, and how can he not if what is said to be in this book is there?
Didnt the NAZI`s first target civilians with arial bombing at Guernica in 1937?
PCR and Mr. Roberts: My comments reflect a long ago reading on the subject of the German bombardment of Rotterdam. Still, if I recall correctly, the Wermacht forces attacking the city, including the elite Liebstandarte SS, were being held up. Hitler is reported to have said (ordered?) that the city be razed to the ground for standing up to the Fuehrer's finest forces. So, while it may be that the bombing had the effect of assisting the German attacking forces, it strikes me that that was incidental to the satisfying Hitler's irritation at the Dutch defense.
Sorry, that's PCR and Mr. Peters.
Neither Hitler nor Stalin were co-authors of WWII. Too many forget basic facts of that war: that the Soviet Union was dedicated to the proposition of world revolution from its inception in 1917 and that a mutual non-aggression pact is anything but an alliance.
Stalin was not the architect of the war for the reason that the International Revolution was planned long in advance and by others. This was publicized, even boasted about, so for any educated person to be unaware of that is simply inexcusable. Hitler was not the architect of the war for a number of obvious reasons. Germany had recently been disarmed and had a tiny army of literally shovels as late as 1935, and although they made an impressive attempt to arm themselves in the four years before the Soviets' planned invasion of Europe in 1939, they admitted in 1941 both in public speeches and in private to heads of state (such as Finland's) that had they known how extensive the Soviet 25-year arms build up really was, they would not have bothered to defend themselves. Hitler's Germany was the little upstart that got in the way; it was the element that nobody had reckoned.
The other thing that strikes me frankly bizarre is that educated people are actually shocked that Yankee capitalists would form an alliance with Red Communists. They actually believe the silly propaganda that our capitalist government allied with Communism to defend freedom, or something else equally preposterous. Many even seem to deny that the alliance actually occurred, or that it happened at the last minute and grudgingly or that the Germans were somehow secretly allied to the Soviets without telling anyone. But the facts – well known – are clear: both Churchill and Roosevelt were behind the Soviet Union from the beginning of the war financially and with overt acts of aggression. This is not new nor is it a secret.
The government of the United States had long ceased to be a part of any tradition that was constitutional, republican, or actually federal (<foedus). Germany is its alibi and the victors write the history. There is nothing that one historian writes about that period that is not directly contradicted by another. But we all believe the official narrative and are afraid to ask questions. Vae victis.
Charlie T. Surely the Luftwaffe bombed Guernica. The extent of the damage has come under review in recent years. One has to remember that the event was both a fact and an opportunity for propaganda for the political left in Europe at the time. The game would have been to make the attack out to be the most horrible ever imagined. And, of course, Picasso was no supporter of the Nationalists.
PcH
Come, come. It strikes one as bizarre to state that Hitler was not an, if not the only, author of the war. Most certainly, the attack on Poland was launched by none other than Germany, despite its putatively puny military. What is one to make of the diplomatic events of August, 1939. What of the Hossbach memoir? A.J.P. Taylor may be correct that Britain's failure to induce the Polish government to send a plenipotentiary to Berlin in August, 1939 to negotiate on the Polish Corridor, but this can hardly deny Hitler's intent.
British prosperity, and thus its ascendancy of power, was based on the Industrial Revolution, which occurred first in the East Midlands.
American (and Soviet) power ascendancy came from mutual victory in WWII, Atomic and Nuclear weaponry, and (for America) relative post-war, industrialized economic prosperity. (England remained socialize until the 1950s and the Soviet had a hard feeding its people due to its backward economic theories).
Indeed, the notion of a joint Anglo-America power ascendancy is a myth, as the English lost its empire by over extension, took devastating losses in the world wars, and passed on the economic gains experience in postwar America by clinging to War Socialism. At best, after 1945, England became America's lap dog and partner in an Anglo-American CULTRUAL ascendancy, but never a Anglo-American power Ascendancy. (Unless we count the fleeting moment of Nazi defeat -- but that involved an Anglo-Soviet-American power ascendency.)
Now, PJB is correct that America is now losing its power ascendancy, due to its counterproductive overextension in warfare and imperialism. Apparently, despite having won Independence, we have decided to follow our Colonial Master's failed course of action -- Warfare and Imperialism. And, our hubristic and unbounded faith in American Exceptionalism is about to receive a rude awakening. Indeed, $4/gallon petrol is already catching the attention of the rank and file.
[As for the Anglo-American world CULTURAL ascendancy, that basically CANNOT be lost in the foreseeable future. Indeed, that ascendancy was more or less permanently fixed by the fact that England and the US, and two a lesser extend other Anglosphere colonies such as Canada and Australia, were the first countries to create a middle-class leisure culture as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the harnessing of petrochemical energy. By virtue of being first, we were the first to develop a middle-class consumer/leisure economy and popular culture. Thus, all countries that followed in so doing, and that are following now, are largely mimicking their English-Speaking forerunners (why reinvent the wheel?), thereby making middle-brow English-Speaking pop culture THE international standard:
English is THE international language; Association Football is THE international sport; and English-style dress THE international sartorial standard. This will not change even if America and the Anglosphere Commonwealth standard of living drops tremendously. Indeed, others will simply carry on where the formerly prosperous, native English speakers ]eave off.]
PcH at 22
I very obviously am not aware of the facts and the knowledge which flows out of those facts to be able to hold the same understanding of the genesis of WWII as do you.
Given your statement, "so for any educated person to be unaware of that is simply inexcusable," I must conclude one of two things: I am uneducated, and in many cases that is indeed true; or despite my alleged education, I am without excuse. I am quite uncertain as to whom I should turn to seek excuse, and if I were to seek it that it would be given.
Having said all of that, I am not even sure to which post or set of posts you were responding.
That Stalin wanted to expand Soviet influence over Europe is obvious to me. That Hitler wanted to control the vast Eur-Asian hinterland and crush the Bolsheviks in the process is also obvious to me. That Poland was the common ground on which their respective first moves would take place in practical terms is also obvious to me.
That the motives of the United Kingdom and the United States were other than what was stated publicly is also known to me. In my post, I stated that Stalin and Hitler made no pretense of being constitutionally-minded, federally dedicated or republican oriented as well as no pretense of being liberal or conservative or "democratic." However, in the West there was the pretense thereof. It was my hope that we could unwrap a conversation which through facts and knowledge that different contributors to these fora would show the disingenuousness of Churchill and Roosevelt.
I am fully aware that the Wehrmacht knew that there was little to no chance of victory over the Soviet Union, this knowledge among the high command predates 1941. I have always assumed that the British and the Americans knew this as well but have no proof thereof. I am also aware that when Hitler learned of the overwhelming material superiority of the Soviet Union that he regretted ever launching Barbarossa. However, I have never read, and I have read quite a number of formerly classified document in German that the Germans said that they would have just given up. Do you know where I could get those transcripts?
I have never believed the propaganda which you rightly sited.
There are no questions which I am afraid to ask and given my faith, no answers which I am afraid of.
Any facts and knowledge which you might wish to share would be well welcomed.
gnelson
Quite correct. A slip of the fingers.
Big M @ 29
There are misconceptions of historical events because the person with who holds those misconceptions lacks the facts, which if available, would dispell the misconception. I know that this is true of me.
There are false histories based on the deliberate misinterpretation of known facts or on counterfeit facts. I have been guilty of falling for such false histories, in my case out of ignorance.
There are those histories with some foundation in fact which are extrapolations that are actually plausibility arguments. These are quite often seen to be true. Various intricate conspiracy theories are often spun from this platform.
There then appear to exist those histories which come from the minds of the enlightened post-modern gnostics. They simply have insight into the "truth" which us lesser mortals cannot fathom. The Straussian neocons come to mind; however, given what I have encountered an certain Internet sites, these modern gnostics are not limited to Leo Strauss and his disciples.
So, let us take your statement given infra:
"Eastern Europe was handed over to Soviet tyranny because Eisenhower was wasting his time worrying over some German redoubt."
The existence of the Alpenfestung or National Redoubt as the Allies called it was in fact one of the most successfully ochestrated intelligence and propaganda operations the Nazis ever pulled off. Indeed, Eisenhower radically modified his plans, moving on a broad front rather than a narrow one which would have more quickly taken his forces to Berlin. On the one hand, the Nazis seemed to themselves hold to the plan of the Alpenfestung; on the other, they saw it and fostered it as a ruse. Some ministries were evaquated there, and there was an elaborate plan to move Allied POW's there and use them as hostages for negotiations. It seems that the Nazis believed that when the Allies met in central Germany they would fall out with one another and that the rump Nazi government, holding out it the Alpenfestung, could negotiate with one side or the other. Hitler, aware, of course, of the plan and having signed off on subtexts of it, nevertheless, never signed off on the plan itself and remained in Berlin. His most fanatic followers, given that his power rested on the cult of personality, remained with him in Berlin. The opportunists among the Nazis, and their number was legion, simply began to attempt to make their own accommdations.
However, you are correct, in my understanding, in so far as the assumed existence of a National Redoubt had a profound effect on the way Eisenhower moved his forces into and across Germany. Assuming all other things were equal, and that is an assumption which I do not make, it did impede the Allies beating the Soviets to Berlin; however, based on other historical facts, I do not think that the Allies intended to beat the Soviets to Berlin. I am sure that there are contributors to this very thread who have their own understandings as to why the Allies "allowed" the Soviets to take Berlin. It would, I believe, be a good discussion.
Self-righteous Americans will continue to slaughter civilians in the name of some grand cause and continue to believe to the very end that they are the salt of the earth.
RMP-
I am no one special. Just picture me, potsherd in hand, as Job on the ash-heap.
Part of the reason for addressing no one in particular is to avoid making things personal. Other peoples' feelings are important.
Ha ha. You have a funny sense of humor which I have noticed before; my compliments. I bet you are well received by your students for affability.
I don't think they said they would have "given up" but that they would not have been able to have mustered the domestic political support to launch a defense in the first place. I think the "Coffee Drinkers" essay mentions this, and certainly the talks with Mannerheim on the train do (the sound quality is good, and transcripts are in German and English); other late speeches address the point as well.
------
Anyway, my opinion is that too much emphasis is placed on a country that was a flash in the pan. It may be interesting that a state smaller than Texas could fend off the Soviet empire, but no one would disagree that all centralized, authoritarian government is something to tear down. The point is that the US, from the beginning, was in a war on the side of a regime that for decades had promised to stir up by violence a totalitarian regime here, thus fitting a pattern that began with the WBS of fighting wars against the interests and freedom of the little people, as is going on right now.
Now back to my ash-heap; I have to scrape some boils off.
PcH @ 32
You and I are likely not as far apart on this issue as it might seem. I tend to attempt to drown my kittens in the warmest possible milk, so when I am discussing the causes of WWII in Europe in the post-modern and PC world, given the nature of the propaganda that has usurped even the "Greatest Generation," I like to begin with things like the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Stalin's supplying of food stuffs to Hitler in the run up to the war; the mutual Nazi-Soviet Invasion of Poland, Stalin's fifth column in France, abetting the Nazis; Nazi training in the Soviet Union for the attack on the Eben-Emael Fortifications in Holland.
I then raise another sequence of questions as to British and French motives in declaring war on Germany over Poland.
I then look at German readiness and publicly and privately articulated intentions toward France and the United Kingdom prior to up to 1939.
This is the equivalent of an intellectual "sapper" operation.
PcH
Your words:
"It may be interesting that a state smaller than Texas could fend off the Soviet empire, but no one would disagree that all centralized, authoritarian government is something to tear down."
I had the privilege of hearing, on several occassions Dr. Franz Josef Strauss, the CSU leader of Bavaria. He was in many ways Germany's George Wallace. He was a Bavarian nationalist and a German patriot, and he knew the difference. In one of the speeches which I heard, a speech given to some German and U.S. intelligence personnel, he quipped that for a country the size of Texas with few natural resources that had declared war on communisim, capitalism, Zionism, free mansonry, and the Boy Scouts and had found itself fighting the Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom and about fifty other countries, Germany had actually no performed too badly. He was proud of that. He took heat in the press the very next day; but he absorbed the heat just like he absorbed Bavarian beer.
To another point which you made in your other post, I give the following story.
At the Aschaffenburger Gespräche (Aschaffenburg Discussions) in 1978, I believe, the first of these annual discussions, the topic was Hitler. It was sponsored by the ZDF and Dr. Guido Knopp, who does lots of historical documentaries for ZDF and the Volkshochschule of Aschaffenburg. There were numerous guests including Jochim Fest and David Irving, who has gotten himself into no little trouble of late. During the question and answer secession, open to the public, a very imposing man rose and identified himself. He was SS General Karl Wolff, the man said to be between Hitler and Himmler, the man who negotiated with the Allies for the early surrender of German and Italian forces in Italy and the man said to have been charged with arresting Pope Pius XII, an act which he did not carry out. (There are a lot of questions about this.) To be sure, the room gasped when he announced who he was; however, the moderator allowed him to speak. In an informal gathering after the secession, Wolff again made an appearance. There he said that he had begun negotiations with the Allies because he had determined that Germany would not win the war. Getting to your point, Wolff also stated that he came to that conclusion late but that others he knew of had secretly held that position since the announcement of Operation Barbarossa. Wolff was a survivor and sly as a fox; yet, I do not know why he would make up that little fact in the realtively meaningless context of a post-forum party. Other documents which I have since read support his assertion.
Mr. Roberts @ 31,
It would be my hope that Southerners could be shaken from their thrall with this empire. For it was under the guise of a "noble cause," actually conjured up after the fact, that we were trampled down; yet, we have become the all too willing Janissary of that very empire even as it marginalizes us, removes our symbols from public display and airbrushes us from history.
Is that really Paul Craig Roberts in the comments? If so, welcome. Can we expect a PCH endorsement of Chuck Baldwin for President? He is better on the War and foreign policy than Barr.
Hello,
i am a native german.
Rotterdam and Warsaw were attacked, because they were fortified cities. And it is allowed to attack such cities.
Remember Rome. The germans declared Rome an open city and no fighting took place, because all german units had left Rome.
Guernica: Some say, the city was attacked on purpose. Others say that the smoke of Guernica burning and the poor targetting equipment are to blame.
But according to same documents the german General ordered the attack on the bridge outside of Guernica and not Guernica itself.
But i remember something of abaout a year ago. A former soldier of the British Army was beaten to death by immigrants. Did he fight for uncontrolled immigration?
And do you know, that when the war ended, that about 5000 US POWs fell into russian hands? Stalin said they could be repatriated only through a Black Sea port. But only 3000 returned to America.
And the same happened in Korea, Vietnam.
Wouldnt it been better to have followed Pattons advice? Begin in Normandy, Halfwaystop Berlin, Next stop Moscow?
Superior Anglo-American morality is one of the greatest myths in history. Drawing on British sources, Buchanan reports Churchill's plans to drop anthrax cakes on German pastures in order to infect the cattle and through the animals the German people. The anthrax cakes were tested on Gruinard Island, off Western Ross in Scotland. The area was not cleared of contamination until 1990.
Another Churchill plan was, in Churchill's words, to "drench (with poison gas) the cities of the Ruhr and many other cities in Germany in such a way that most of the population would be requiring constant medical attention."
Another Churchill plan, one actually implemented, was the firebombing of Dresden, a war crime that killed as many as a quarter million civilians. British Air Marshall "Bomber" Harris described the event: "In two waves three hours apart, 650,000 incendiary bombs rained down on Dresden's narrow streets and baroque buildings, together with another 1,474 tons of high explosives. The fires burned for seven days."
Buchanan adds: "The morning after the Lancasters struck, five hundred B-17s arrived over Dresden in two waves with three hundred fighter escorts to strafe fleeing survivors." AP reported: "Allied war chiefs have made the long-awaited decision to adopt deliberate terror bombing of German populated centers."
Buchanan reports: "Boasted Curtis LeMay of his famous raid on Tokyo, "We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo that night of March 9-10 then went up in vapor in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined."
A.J.P. Taylor reports that "all civilized restraints, all considerations of morality, were abandoned" as the consequence of Churchill's policy of warring against non-military civilian targets." "It is absurd to consider morality on this topic," said Churchill to his RAF planners.
F.J.P. Veale concludes: "The indiscriminate bombing of civilians, enemy cities, and civilian property brought about a terrifying and unprecedentedly destructive reversion to primary and total warfare" as once practiced "by Sennacherib, Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane."
Buchanan concludes: "Churchill played the lead role in Western man's reversion to barbarism."
The great moral Anglo-Americans have gone on slaughtering civilians ever since: in Vietnam, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somolia and fully intend to do the same thing to Iranians. All the while we continue to regard ourselves as the salt of the earth, the "exceptional, indispensable people."
The war to save Poland from Germany led Poland and the rest of aastern Europe under the tyrranny Stalin. The conflict with Poland were about disputes over german cities and german population living in Poland. Danzig/Gdansk is a good example. Hitler did not want a world-war, but the Britts wanted to maintain their own power-balance in Europe. The politics of interventionism in other soverign nations internal affairs are typical for both USA and the former USSR. The truth is that if it wasnt for the Waffen SS (a collaboration of free soldiers) the red army would have invaded Paris long before it was "liberated" by the allies. Hitlers was an anglofile and did not want to take England while he had the chance.
The war was not about national-socialism, but about power-balance. It was not about Poland but the fear of a strong German power in Europe.
Now Europe is devastated under Amrican massculture and political correctness. We are invaded by all the muslim populations you decide to bomb around the world. You even helped to build a muslim nation on our christian european soil, Kosovo. Is it then strange if european conservatives like myself are sceptic about American politics?
Your currency are about to crash by the way and you economy are built on international debt. Your neocon government are doing everything to destroy what is good in your country and systematically trespasses your Constitution.
My hope, as a european, therefore goes to Russia, orthodox Russia, as a new geopolitical center on our Continent. I am sure they can do a better job for us than USA.
Whatever the sad condition of the contemporary U.S. and whatever hope may be placed for the West in Orthodox Russia, it is absurd to whitewash Nazi lust for conquest as merely expression of the old balance of power game. Hitler was a ruler of intolerable cruelty who brought Stalinist tyranny and terror to Western Europe. A large part of the German population shared in the lust for conquest and the bullying and extermination of small nations. No lover of Western civilization can possibly excuse the Nazi effort to destroy it.
Clyde Wilson
You are, in fact, completely wrong. Hitlers pact with Stalin, Molotov-Ribbentov was very short-lived and he was very clear that bolshevism was the major threat to the European civilization. His misstace was of course, his racism and that he excluded the slavs from his own narrow worldview. But it is completely false to say that he wanted Stalin to invade Western Europe, since Wehrmachts war on the eastern front and the heroic efforts of Waffen SS did exactly the opposite. Hitler was no more brutal to Europe than the allies whose "liberation" was in fact opposed by many of the so called "liberated people" in western Europe. Did you even heard of the murder of european nationalist, many in the french resistance against Vichy, who were murdered by US after the war? Thousands of european right wing intellecutals, many of them opposed to Hitler, was murdered! But the biggest difference is what came after the war from the USA and american cultural hegemony in Europe: multiculturalism, feminism, liberalism, flower power, free abortion and the sexual revlution. Do you think this was a better alternative than national-socialism? Let it be clear that I am not national-socialist. In fact I oppose Hitlers anti-semitism and racism, but I am not stupid. The winners write the history. Sadly, USA won the war.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, I rest my case.
Unlike the South, a disinterested history of Germany 1918-1945 has never been written. Some scholars, such as Patrick Buchanan, Dr. Roberts and the Southerner Dr. Peters, have taken a look here and there and have come up with daring conclusions, but the history remains that of the victors, that of Yankee partisans and their Communist proteges. Southern historians have their hands full rightly defending the honour of the South and cannot be expected to take on the greater peril of the Germans; "blood-and-soil" types know even less of what they would of what they talk about or what they try to mimic.
Much primary resource material has been published online, removed by the PC police, put up again, the publishers arrested, the documentation shows up again – yet must of us are content to believe the official histories without even looking at any of it.
One favorite official line is that Germans were bent on the abstraction of "world conquest". Simply put, that was never a possibility, since the Germans scarcely had the resources to defend their own tiny state, much less take one the tens of millions of the Soviet imperial armies and the matchless power of the British Empire and the US empire, which alone greater was than all of Europe and the British Empire combined. German "world conquest" was simply a repackaging of the Communists' own well-publicised boast for world conquest by way of the bloody International Revolution, a boast supported empirically by the tens of millions troops and hundreds of thousands of tanks lined up in Poland to make good the boast.
Another official line is the abstraction "totalitarian" to describe the interim government of war-time Germany. This term likewise is appropriated from Soviet Union. The scholarly consensus is that the Soviet Union was totalitarian and that of war-time Germany was authoritarian (the US today is authoritarian, but unlike Germany is under no threat of genocidal invasion) and with important differences. The German government frequently attacked, even in private conversations among themselves, the totalitarianism of the Soviets, the loss of rights of its citizens, the ruthless brutality leading to the murder of upwards of 80 million Russians, the bloody suppression of Christianity, and so on. We do not know what the long-term peace-time government of Germany would have been. Even so, there are a few scattered references, from the creation of an elected senate, the establishment of autonomous German states with autonomous leaders. A lengthy plagiarism from Lincoln was removed from Mein Kampf and its contributor censored not only because it was plagiarised, but also because it advocated for a too central government. Hitler himself is quoted as stating he hoped to establish a federation along the lines of the American states as they were originally – but nothing more specific is readily available.
Criticising German interim war-time government as authoritarian is like criticising Cinncinatus for accepting the dictatorship of Rome. The Soviet Union and the Comintern, agitating in every Western power, made no secret of their desire for world conquest, and their practise of genocide was no secret. Unlike the South, the Germans had a faint inkling of the conquest they faced, and unlike the South, they had a few short years to fortify.
Another official line is that they took over smaller countries. But that too is no longer admitted in the scholarly consensus, as PC as it is. Austria had always been German, and its merger ("Anschluss") was accepted by the international community under international law. Sudetenland also had always been German, and its vote to join Germany also met the requirements of international law. These rejoining of these regions with Germany would be much like West Virginia rejoining the Old Dominion.
Northern and western Poland had been Germanic since the time of the Beaker Folk, had been resettled by Germans beginning before 800, yet the German government agreed to let Poland have it, and made an alliance with the earlier Polish government. Since those regions of Poland held a large native German population, it should be no surprise that Polish partisans, following the British assassination of the Polish President, at the urging of Churchill and backed by his blank checque (never honoured), created tens of thousands of German casualties and 40 000 German deaths. This was an overt act of war which had the German government defended themselves from would necessarily have meant a new regime, and Germany and the West would have been quickly overrun by the totalitarians from the East.
The war was said to have started when the citizens of Dantzig voted to join Germany. But that is no more credible than that battleship Maine started the US war with Spain, or Lusitania, heavily laden with illegal arms, began the US contribution in WWI.
Churchill blamed Dantzig's referendum when Churchill began WWII with the words "a state of war exists" between tiny Germany and the might of the British Empire, and France declared war, too. France was bigger than Germany and had a larger army and navy. When Germany won, France was allowed autonomy, Frenchmen were not conscripted, and French troops contributed a division of free-willing volunteers to the SS. WWII was thought to have been averted and there was cheering on the streets of Europe.
However, the Soviet Union had amassed tens of millions of troops and tanks with which to invade all of Western Europe. Documents released after the fall of the Berlin wall even give the date for the Soviet invasion of the Western world planned long in advance and supplied by its capitalist allies.
One could add the Norwegian expedition, which British battle groups were on their way to invading; Iceland, which the US did invade; the Italian debacle in the Balkans which overextended the Italians' German allies,... These are the strategies of a war in progress, preceding the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe and the Allied conquest and occupation of Western Europe after the Soviet empire, the largest country on the face of the earth, failed to subdue tiny Germany in their way of the Soviets' boasted, publicised world conquest.
A disinterested history of Germany 1918-1945 has never been written. The official line is wholly false and the scholarly consensus only a little better. It would be unfair to expect Southern historians to tackle the German question at the peril of the Southern cause. They have little in common. Yet, we cannot adequately understand our times without learning from the period immediately preceding it. The official dogma has proven false on everything historical, so to take it up in this case does not help efforts for truth. The Marxist struggle for bloody world conquest never ended, it just reverted back to subverting governments from within under different names, whether neo-liberal, neo-conservative, Frankfurter, Straussian, politically correct, decontructionist, post-modern, ad nauseam.
Already, Buchanan's book and Dr. Roberts comments here strongly indicate that the truth and the official line are irreconcilable. Everything we think we know must be scrutinized and scrutinized again. If it is commonly believed, it is probably untrue.
Buchanan's book makes it clear that the demonizations of the Kaiser and Hitler are loaded with propaganda. Most of the history that Americans know is nothing but propaganda.
The roots of what Buchanan treats lie in the Boer War.
Paul Craig Roberts' economic analysis is on target.
The question is what now?
Gentlemen,
To undertake the task, which I believe must be undertaken, to deconstruct the lies and distortions of the propaganda apparatus of the United States government from Lincoln to the present by attempting to rehabilitate Hitler and National Socialism is utter, complete and total folly.
As partisan as I can be about things Southern, even there, I refuse to exchange one fabrication of history or another, no matter how appealing that new fabrication may be to my sentiments and to my cause.
The ideology of National Socialism is a spawn of left-wing Hegelianism just like its two other ugly sisters: Marxism in all of its forms and social democracy in all of its forms.
The atrocities committed by the Nazis were not some anomaly or merely the collateral damage of an otherwise "noble" war. Those atrocities flowed right out of the heart of the ideology which, by the way, is not fully encompassed in Mein Kampf but in a codex of ideology.
For the sake of argument, I will stipulate to some givens: Europe had a right and even obligation to defend itself from Soviet Bolshevism led by Stalin and Germany was the country geographically and militarily positioned to lead that defense; however, when Germany and Europe allowed Hitler and the Nazis to become the leaders of that cause, then any "nobility" associated with it vanished.
Having Hitler and the Nazis leading the "cause" made the work of the British and U.S. propaganda machines easy.
Also, it does the Kaiser a disservice to have his good name linked to that of Hitler.
Well said, Mr. Peters. Generally, I think it is a mistake for Americans to become too invested in sorting out past power struggles in Europe, which is a bottomless pit. Very true, fresh historical views are always welcome, but there is nothing fresh about the sugarcoating of Nazi Germany, which has been around since the thing itself. Poor little Germany, being picked on by everybody and only striving to defend Western Civilization from Communism! (by destroying Poland and dividing it up with the Communists). It is so good to learn that Der Fuhrer, the 1000 Year Reich, the Gestapo, the SS, and civilian death camps were only "authoritarian" and not "totalitarian"! (Just Frederick the Great updated, apparently.) And all of those bad things were imported by Germany into Western Europe in imitation of the Communists. Germany was conquered because it was a totalitarian state following the hallucinatory military plans of a meglamaniac. All of its real patriots and wise men understood that. Nazi Germany is still the best example we have of totalitarian nationalism. It did not defend Western Civilization, but killed millions of Westerners and tried to destroy Western civilization in behalf of crazed German nationalism, which was an ideology and not patriotism.
What is telling about Western hypocrisy is that Poland was divided by the Hitler-Stalin pact, but when the two powers goggled up Poland, England and France only declared war on Germany. The guarantee they gave to Poland did not extend to the half of Poland grabbed by the Soviet Union.
My post at 47 does not in any way preclude your post at 48. When dealing with this matter, I usually raise several questions for discussion:
1. Why did England and France decide to fight at all over Poland? Given their past actions, it was certainly not some great moral imperative compelling them to go to the defense of Poland.
2. Why did England and France, claiming to be Western "democracies," not fight over Czechoslovakia which was, in relative terms, much more "democratic" than Poland?
3. Why did England and France completely ignore the fact that as the Wehrmacht blitzed eastward across Poland the Red Army lumbered westward across Poland, consuming the Baltic states in the process as per the Hitler/Stalin Pact?
I also note that Hitler was not militarily ready to launch a two-front war, that Hitler had no public inclination and no proven private ones to make war against the French and the English and that the Nazis, even as late as 1939, did not completely control German public opinion and that there was no will on the part of the general German population to go unprovoked to war with England and France. By declaring war when they did, England and France gave Hitler cause as well as pretext to position forces against the West. In addition, England and France denied themselves time to prepare for a war with Germany, assuming that the Germans would have eventually turned their attention to the West after finishing things in the East.
I have found that one can ask these and other questions without becoming an apologist for Hitler, the Nazis and their atrocities.
Since C.S. Lewis' Prince Caspian is now in cinemas, one can call on a metaphor from the book. Some of the speaking animals and other creatures of Narnia, pressed to make war against the men, wish to conjure up the witch simply because she was allegedly once the enemies of men. Fortunately, they did not make that mistake. I refuse to make that mistake with Hitler. He is the witch in this story, much more dangerous than the liars which we wish to deal with, although he was once their enemy as well. I intend to leave him in hell along with C.S. Lewis' witch.
What's with all this emotional blathering? The only substantive remarks of late are being made by Dr. Roberts. Now we're talking about witches and animals that talk. What's next? Harry Potter's rejection of Hermione? And what has the South got to do with Hitler? Isn't saying that European History is a "bottomless pit" really mean "I can't contribute substance here?"
Dr. Roberts' comments about Allied hyprocisy in regard to Poland is interesting, since they signed it and the rest of Central and Southeast Europe to Stalin -- and never defended Poland from anyone.
Oh wait, I forgot, Stalin and Hitler were secretly married in 1911. Communists and Nazis are really the same thing, I saw it on the History Channel.
Stay tuned. Hitler feeds treacle to Edmund.
Passing Through @ 50
Based on Mr. Roberts' review, I intend to purchase Mr. Buchanan's book; and I will likely agree with most if not all that Mr. Buchanan has to therein say.
I might perhaps, if I went back over Mr. Roberts' review supra with a fine-toothed comb, find something to quibble over; but it general I am in full agreement with the points of the review.
I would invite you to go back over my posts on this thread; however, I believe that you will find that my only point of difference with Mr. Roberts' was with his sentence in which the Kaiser and Hitler were linked. I, in fact, do not disagree with his contention that much of what the American public has been presented has been propaganda.
However, I can be no apologist for Hitler and the Nazis. Your assertions notwithstanding, they were anti-republican, anti-constitutional, anti-federal, anti-Christian, Jacobin, centralizing, totalitarian murderers, and that on a grand scale, murderers who usurped much of that which was noble and good in European and German culture, warping it to an extent that makes it difficult to redeem.
I agree with you one hundred percent in the matter of Poland. I made that clear in my previous post.
I was going to post a comment here, but that has been done for me by Messrs. Peters, Wilson, and Roberts in posts 45 through 49. Exactly what I would have said, though likley not as comprehensively as these gentlemen have done it. They seem to have covered most if not all points, except for questions of the holocaust, which, even if not as bad as all the propaganda says it was, was still inexcusable.
Amen to that! My thoughts exactly. The only thing I can add to it is the question : can a really disinterested history ever be written? I've never read one, myself. Is there any historian who is disinterested in his subject?