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Losing My Religion
No, I’m not turning away from my faith in Jesus, which began when I reached the ripe old age of 36, back in early 2004. The religion that I’m losing is the American religion that might be called “We Won The War.”
This may be a troubling post for some of you. I’m pretty confident that I would have found it very troubling and offensive, myself, about five to ten years ago. I’d appreciate a critique of these thoughts.
So, back to “We Won The War.” I take this phrase from a 2018 book by Peter Hitchens called The Phoney Victory. I highly recommend it. Peter Hitchens is the younger brother of the famous atheist Christopher Hitchens. Like his brother, Peter was a Marxist in his youth, of the Trotskyite variety, but unlike his brother, Peter ultimately turned to conservatism and Christianity. He has an interesting story, told in more detail in another book, The Rage Against God.
Peter Hitchens writes about the British version of this religion or mythology, “We Won The War.” It comes complete with a Savior, Winston Churchill, and an antichrist, Adolph Hitler. Looking back, it seems that I was raised in this religion. Interestingly, for me, even the American version identified Churchill, rather than FDR, as the Savior. In my case, I was such a big fan of Churchill that I read and re-read his Memoirs of the Second World War, his book about WWI (The World Crisis), and his History of the English-Speaking Peoples.
Today, I’m inclined to view Churchill as a brilliant propagandist. This has led me to question many of the WWI and WWII narratives that Churchill promoted.
I think that the narrative starts with the idea of German guilt for WWI, which I now view as quite misplaced. The work of recent WWI historians like Michael Neiberg and Christopher Clark has been particularly significant for me on this issue. (Both have excellent lectures available on YouTube, if you’re interested.) My current view is that Russia is principally to blame for the expansion of the war, which otherwise would have been a localized Balkan conflict between Austria and Serbia. The Austrians mobilized first, against Serbia, and then the Russians mobilized against both Austria and Germany.
It may seem strange that Germany responded to Russian mobilization by attacking France, but this was strategically understandable, as Russia and France were allied against Germany. Technically, as far as anyone knew, the Russo-French alliance was defensive only, so France was not obligated to join in Russia’s war against Germany. But: (1) Germany had no way to know whether there was a secret agreement, and (2) in any event, it would have been very risky for France to allow Russia to face the Germans and Austrians alone, as a Russian defeat would leave France vulnerable.
So, in August 1914, the Germans launched a massive assault on France, hoping to drive France out of the war. The Germans succeeded with this strategy in 1870 and 1940, but not in 1914.
Britain’s entry into the war is also questionable. If I remember correctly, Niall Ferguson wrote a book (The Pity of War) placing blame for WWI on the British, for intervening unnecessarily. I don’t place the bulk of the blame on Britain, but I do agree that British involvement further expanded the conflict, and probably made it more difficult to settle. It also led to dubious British actions like the starvation blockade of Germany, an action generally considered to be something akin to a war crime at the time.
The US entry into the war was odd, though the Germans didn’t help themselves with the absurd Zimmerman Telegram. (The Zimmerman Telegram, for those not familiar with this particular historical tidbit, was a telegram from Germany to Mexico seeking an alliance against the US, and offering Mexico recovery of US territory in the southwest taken by the US in the 1840s.)
Wilson campaigned in 1916 on his success in keeping us out of the war, then plunged us into the war in 1917, and compounded the problem with his unrealistic ideas about the shape of a post-WWI Europe.
The Russians, of course, collapsed into an eventual Communist revolution, and lost huge territories in the east to Germany. Germany, though, was defeated in the west, in large part due to the pressure of the British starvation blockade, and also due to the US entry into the war. I think that there is some justice in the German claim that they were misled into a cease-fire based on some fairly mild terms (or rhetoric) offered by Wilson, while the actual Treaty of Versailles was more punitive than the Germans had some right to expect.
The worst part, though, was the collapse of the imperial system in eastern Europe, which had been pretty stable for about a century (aside from the catastrophe of WWI, of course). The victorious Western Allies declared the principle of the “self-determination of peoples,” and carved a variety of small, largely defenseless nations out of the former territories of the Austrian, Russian, and German empires. (Less from the Germans than the others, though it did include that Danzig corridor that so annoyed them later.)
Worse still, once the principle of “self-determination” was established, the Germans would naturally expect this to apply to them, as well. Austria sought to unite with Germany, an action that the Western Allies would not allow, and there were significant German minorities in Czechoslovakia and Poland. This set the stage for Hitler’s actions in the years preceding WWII.
Hitler is often portrayed as a madman. I don’t see any madness in his plan. It was ruthless. He accurately perceived a problem faced by the German nation: inadequate natural resources, especially farmland and oil. He targeted Ukraine and the Caucasus as the regions that could satisfy these requirements. Conveniently, these areas were ruled by the horrid Soviets, so Hitler might have expected relatively little objection from the West.
Not so, as it turned out, though the British and French were slow to react to Hitler’s initial moves. I think that the legitimate German grievances relating to the post-WWI borders of the newly-created Poland and Czechoslovakia explains much of this British and French reticence to act, through the Munich Conference in 1938.
The fate of Czechoslovakia is more complex than it is typically portrayed (though to his credit, Churchill does point out the connivance of Poland). After the agreed German annexation of the Sudetenland, both Poland and Hungary took chunks out of Czechoslovakia, and then Slovakia declared independence. Hitler then moved into the power vacuum in the rump Czech state, and ended up forming alliances with Slovakia and Hungary.
I have come to view the British guarantee to Poland, shortly in advance of the German invasion in 1939, as a bizarre action. Hitchens makes this point, at length, in The Phoney Victory. The British and French had no practical way to defend Poland, and it’s hard to see why they thought that it was very important. Poland had been partitioned between the Germans, Russians, and Austrians for about a century before WWI. Poland was in the path of Hitler’s planned invasion of the Soviet Union, which was hardly a secret after the publication of Mein Kampf.
So why was Britain — and especially Churchill — so keen to defend Poland? It drew them into a disastrous war, which resulted in British bankruptcy and the loss of the Empire. What was the point? To defend Stalin? Stalin, by the way, ended up as the major victor of WWII.
Many of Hitler’s outrages seem to have flowed from this British decision. The French joined the British, but my impression is that the British were leading the way. I don’t see any reason for Hitler to have invaded Denmark, or Norway, or the Low Countries, or France, absent the foolish guarantee to Poland and the Anglo-French declarations of war on Germany. (It appears that Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway to forestall British efforts to cut off Swedish iron shipments via Norway’s coastal waters, which led the British to commit an act of war by mining the territorial waters of then-neutral Norway.)
Hitchens reports something that I don’t recall reading or hearing before, about the American attitude toward Britain at the start of WWII. Apparently, we were quite annoyed at the British for having defaulted on their WWI debt. We agreed to supply Britain and France in their war with Hitler’s Germany, but demanded cash payment — and gold — right up until a de facto bankruptcy hearing for the British Empire before our Secretary of the Treasury. Confident that the British had paid us all that they could, we then adopted Lend-Lease and started supplying arms and war material to Germany’s enemies.
For free.
Gee, I wonder why Hitler ended up being annoyed at us?
Then there’s Japan’s war in China. Japan was bogged down in a land war in China for years, and we were making good money on the consequent trade, especially in oil. But for some reason, FDR decided that we couldn’t stand for Japan to rule part of China. You know, much the way that we were then ruling the Philippines. So FDR embargoed oil sales (and other exports) to Japan, an action that would cripple the Japanese war effort.
I don’t recall reading or hearing an analysis of the response that FDR’s administration expected from the Japanese. It should have been pretty obvious that the Japanese would need an alternative source of oil, conveniently available to them in the Dutch East Indies and British Malaya, which were virtually defenseless at the time. (The Dutch had been conquered by the Germans, and the British had their hands full fighting the Germans and the Italians.) A Japanese attack toward the East Indies, though, would open the Japanese flank to American forces in the Philippines, a risky move for the Japanese. So it seems, to me, that it should have been no surprise for the Japanese to conclude that the least-bad of their options was an attack on the US. This was provoked by FDR, in violation of the principle of free trade declared by FDR himself in the Atlantic Charter, just a few months earlier in August 1941.
Further, what was the uniting factor behind our eventual Axis opponents, Germany, Italy, and Japan? They were part of the Anti-Comintern Pact, an alliance specifically aimed at the tyrannical and potentially expansionist Soviet Union. Why would Britain — or the US — want to take the Soviet side in such a conflict?
I’ve rambled for quite a while here. This is all pretty complicated, I think, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of the events leading to the two catastrophic wars of the 20th Century.
The story that we’re taught, though, is very simple. Hitler was a madman and a monster, launching wars of “aggression.” So was Mussolini, in a smaller and more contemptible way. Why, Mussolini had the temerity to conquer Ethiopia, outraging the British and the French. That’s right, the British and the French, who between them ruled just about all of the rest of Africa at the time. Let’s not forget Japan, portrayed as a Yellow Menace that was somehow going to be invading California soon, and which supposedly attacked us for absolutely no reason.
It is interesting to see people objecting to Putin’s potentially cutting off supplies of oil and gas to Europe, a tactic apparently considered perfectly fine when we did it to Japan in 1941.
They were evil, we were good. The brave British, especially, were good, led by the indomitable Savior Churchill. You know, the Churchill who imposed the starvation blockade on the Germans in WWI. The Churchill whose failed Dardanelles campaign aimed at the massive naval bombardment of the Turkish civilian population of Istanbul. The Churchill who illegally mined those Norwegian territorial waters, then expressed outrage at the German invasion that this triggered. The Churchill who presided over the deliberate terror-bombing of women and children in German cities.
I’m not claiming that the Axis were a bunch of great guys. They did terrible things. So did our side, which included Stalin’s Evil Empire. War is hell.
There’s no changing the past. We might be able to learn a lesson, and the lesson that I’ve come to learn is the wisdom of our Founders, who cautioned against involvement in foreign wars. They are costly in blood and treasure. We often have little understanding of the cultures and nations involved, but are inclined to want to force our ways on them. Perhaps worst of all, if we take sides and help one side win — the Soviets in WWII, for example — we might find out that they are just about as bad as the side that we opposed.
Moreover, the policy of “unconditional surrender” adopted in WWII eliminated three major checks on Soviet expansionism, placing the burden of the Cold War on us. In hindsight, this seems like a bad decision.
It is impossible to be certain of the outcome of various alternative choices. If Britain had not guaranteed Poland, what would have happened? If we had not supplied Britain and the Soviets, or had not embargoed Japan, what would have happened?
My impression is that the general answer is something like: Germany and Japan would have conquered the world, and would have come after us. Something like the premise of the Amazon series The Man in the High Tower.
I’ve come to doubt that this is true, and even to view it as a bit paranoid. There are precious few examples of successful conquest of this type. Most of the time, a conqueror becomes bogged down pacifying the territory it has occupied, and the occupation ends up being a drain on resources, not an addition. This was true of the Soviet occupation of eastern Europe and Afghanistan. It was true of our own occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. It was true of Napoleon’s various conquests.
I’d be curious to hear from those of you who disagree with this. I used to disagree with my present view, quite strongly. Maybe some of you could address two issues:
- Part of the motivation for America’s 20th Century policy seems to be the promotion of “liberal democracy.” Do you even like this? The location of the most obvious success of this policy is Western Europe. Do you like the EU? Do you like its policies? Do you like its culture, its focus on the Rainbow agenda, its undermining of traditional faith and culture, its crusade against Climate Change, its bureaucratic Leftism?
- Part of the motivation for America’s 20th-century policy seems to be a sense of pride for being defenders of, well, something. The people that we like, it seems. The French, and the Jews, and the Ukrainians (at the moment). The Taiwanese. Some of the Afghans and Iraqis, perhaps.
My new view of things still troubles me a bit, as it makes me far less inclined to think favorably of our country. My old religion, “We Won The War,” was comforting in some ways. It made me feel good about myself, and about America. I just don’t buy it anymore.
Published in General
Why is it that you think the only lessons to be learned over NAZI germany only pertain to Jews? Do you think it’s impossible to commit atrocities against other groups of people?
So in nazi germany, students were taught in school that Jews were the enemy that were intent on destroying the German way of life (communism did intend that, did it not?) What debate are we having over education in this country?
/bang head on wall,
If you want to assume the worst of everything I try to say, fine.
I’m done.
But there is a huge HUGE difference between wanting to learn from the past vs thinking everything should be destroyed. You should know better than to think I want the latter alongside the left.
What I want is to ask questions without being attacked for having asked or inquired. But that’s too much for you guys. And it always is we’re nazi germany is concerned. The only lesson to be learned that is ALLOWED is that nationalism is evil.
Everything else is verboten, so don’t you dare look to closely.
It is so silly to call any detention of people at all “concentration camps” that nobody is going to pay attention to your other arguments. People were purposed murdered in concentration camps in Nazi Germany. That was their primary purpose.
As they say “You heard it here!”
So your only way to judge is by knowing the future. That’s kind of my point. People in the 1930s didn’t start there. They started someplace far more innocent. Sometimes in places seemingly justified.
That is verging towards “There’s a Nazi under every bed.”
It’s paranoia.
Do you not know what a concentration camp is??? That wasn’t their primary purpose. It may have become the purpose, but it wasn’t primary when they first started.
I don’t think the definition of “concentration camp” is “any place where innocent people are held.”
Look, if you think it makes me a leftist to take an honest assessment of human nature, fine.
But it is the absolute basis of conservatism that the heart is deceitfully wicked.
It is the left that believes humans can be perfected, which is why they are more willing to destroy people who don’t live up to their expectations of perfection.
If I’m guilty of anything here, it’s for wanting to understand how it happened. Not to excuse it, but because it CAN happen again.
That you guys decide to strawman that isn’t my problem and says more about your small minds.
When did I ever say that the only lessons to be learned about Nazi Germany pertain to Jews? You are the only one who brought the Jews into this conversation. Are you replying to somebody else’s comment by mistake?
If you are saying that the debate over education in this country is about teaching school children that the Jews are the enemy then I have no idea what you are talking about.
I’m kind of enjoying the ride. It is certainly a different perspective!
You might have me on that point. My bad.
I agree that it is valuable to conduct an honest assessment of human nature.
But you seem to go further than simply say, “the heart is deceitfully wicked.” You seem to equate Hitler with the Prime Minister of Australia.
It’s one thing to disagree with Australia’s covid policy. It’s quite another to say, “Australia has concentration camps. That puts them on the same moral plane as Nazi Germany.”
Maybe you don’t agree with Jerry, the person who started this post, when he says that the US made a mistake in fighting Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. But when you imply moral equivalence between Nazi Germany and today’s Australia, it can lead one to believe this.
I never said you wanted everything destroyed. I said you mentioned that “Ukraine and Russia were both corrupt with human rights abuses” as a way of taking the blame from Russia for its invasion.
I have no idea where you got the notion that any of us are saying that the only lesson learned from Nazi Germany is that “nationalism is evil.” I don’t recall anybody even bringing nationalism up. Again, are you confusing us with some previous commenter?
Russia does perceive NATO as a threat. I know it’s supposed to be a defensive alliance, but it’s the strong right arm of the West. And when elected Governments are overthrown by Western backed colour revolutions (like in Ukraine with Maidan) that’s a cause for concern for countries which are in the other camp.
Also – Russia would argue that the Donbas and Crimea aren’t really part of Ukraine, as per the wishes of the people.
Without dismissing both these concerns it’s hard too paint Russia as completely at fault (or the West, for that matter).
In Eastern Europe and Russia the emancipation of the Jews came from the Left, not from the Right. Projecting the present day Right’s views of the Left (and the Right) onto the past and onto people in a different time and place with their own situation probably obscures more than it illuminates. jmho. Let’s not forget that the Yishuv and the State of Israel were built by Labour Zionism, not by the Right wing or Religious.
What “emancipation” of the Jews are you talking about? The liberation from the concentration camps?
Most of those were liberated by Soviet troops as well, just given the geography of the thing, but for your easy reference:
That’s another way of saying that Putin’s regime sees movements demanding representative government as a threat because Putin is a dictator. NATO consists almost entirely of representative governments.
Ukraine isn’t a member of NATO or the EU. But it does have a representative government, which is problematic for Putin, who would rather Ukraine be under his dictatorial rule.
Putin is not much more tolerant of representative government in nearby nations as Stalin was.
Debatable.
Not debatable.
I don’t think we can trust the polls out of the Russian controlled areas of Ukraine. Putin does not exactly have a great record of allowing dissent or free elections.
The problem with that premise, though, is that the Russians have been killing an awful lot of civilians. If they were really trying to protect ethnic Russians or reunite historically Russian territory, then it doesn’t make a lot of sense to kill the people you’re liberating. Putin isnthe aggressor and there really isn’t a good reason for it.
As for NATO, Russia now has more NATO members on its border than before. Shocking that invading a neighboring country didn’t convince other European countries that Russia wasn’t a threat.
As Pontius Pilate said in “The Life of Brain,” You sound very sure, Have you checked?”
But I’m debating it.
I would add that if Russia was so concerned about ethnic Russians in Ukraine, why didn’t he just offer them Russian citizenship and moving expenses. They are right next door.
If wise cracks could win the war….
Zelensky became President of Ukraine through an election process. Same for every member of the Ukrainian parliament.
If you want to come up with different terminology to describe Ukraine’s government, fine. But to say that Ukraine’s government and Russia’s government are both authoritarian is just a linguistic way of blurring differences, sort of like how “concentration camps” is used to mean a Nazi concentration camp and a concentration camp in Australia.
That one was not a wisecrack. Serious question. All sorts of countries have done that sort of thing.
I don’t think it is a wise crack. If Ukraine was really a terrible place for an ethnic Russian to live and Russia were a good place for an ethnic Russian to live, ethnic Russians in Ukraine would pack up their stuff and move to Russia.
The Russian people are demonstrating this principle by more than 100,000 of them leaving the country in the wake of the invasion. The proverbial “Voting with your feet.”