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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
I sure do. Most European countries may not run on my exact set of principles and values, but no country does. The choice isn’t between Europe as it exists and Utopia. The choice is between Europe as it is and what it would have been like if most of the continent where run by Nazis. If the choice is between misguided policies and evil policies with a side helping of genocide, I favor the former.
I mean, if my choices are the E.U., Putin’s Russia, Communist China, or the Islamic Republic of Iran, I know which one I would pick to live in.
This also plays into the moral calculus over whether we were justified in the atomic bombings of Japan. The standard line of argument presumes the only alternative was a full-scale invasion of the Japanese mainland, and compared to this option the bomb certainly saved American lives and arguably reduced total Japanese casualties as well.
However, the Japanese may have been willing to sue for peace even prior to Hiroshima, if we had been willing to negotiate something short of unconditional surrender. I have read that at least a faction of the leadership was willing to surrender provided the Emperor were permitted to retain his throne. Considering that we allowed this anyway after the surrender, it seems a small concession to make. Of course we’ll never know for sure.
I would argue that Chile has democracy today because of Pinochet. If Allende had stayed in power, the country would probably look more like Cuba.
I was in Hawaii early on the morning of December 7th, 2014, sitting on the balcony of my hotel room in Maui, watching the sunrise. Wrote a very long philosophical post about the distance in time and miles. Hit post, and my browser crashed.
I was too sad to try to recreate it.
If you wish to debate truth, beauty and justice, that is one thing. In the world of real results, relative differences matter.
I’ll say that the Anglosphere gets top marks in both areas.
@arizonapatriot Are you going to review and reply to any of our comments, or what? I understand that people have lives, but there are 96 comments on your post, and others have stated their desire for feedback, etc., from you.
I saw a score or more warbirds flying over Waikiki on VJ-day 2020. Magnificent! Several of us there for a thing were sequestered in a hotel for quarantine. I was on flightradar24.com and our Signal channel, telling people where to look for the next flight, and what type of aircraft to expect.
Now we know why you’re so miffed.
It sounds like his definition of “institutions” includes only government institutions. Amiright?
Compare and contrast the Russian and Anglosphere roles in Syria.
The Soviets are a low bar but a very large and important one. I think comparisons with them are a very good idea. I wish our state security services would be a lot better than theirs than they are.
Compare and contrast Syria.
No, they are political and social institutions; for example, he includes religious institutions. The way I read it, institutions refer to any long-held and formalized ways of doing things. Institutions are the conscious and visible social and governmental manifestations of a shared unconscious cultural mind that has developed (like their language itself) spontaneously for generations or over centuries.
“The reason is, that the most attentive observation of the facts of history has invariably demonstrated to me that social organisms being every whit as complicated as those of all beings, it is in no wise in our power to force them to undergo on a sudden far-reaching transformations. Nature has recourse at times to radical measures, but never after our fashion, which explains how it is that nothing is more fatal to a people than the mania for great reforms, however excellent these reforms may appear theoretically. They would only be useful were it possible to change instantaneously the genius of nations. This power, however, is only possessed by time. Men are ruled by ideas, sentiments, and customs–matters which are of the essence of ourselves. Institutions and laws are the outward manifestation of our character, the expression of its needs. Being its outcome, institutions and laws cannot change this character.”
Later he states:
“Moreover, it is in no way in the power of a people to really change its institutions. Undoubtedly, at the cost of violent revolutions, it can change their name, but in their essence they remain unmodified.”
Notice “the mania for great reforms.” Sounds like what is going on today. This last sentence gives me some hope for the US in the long term.
Sorry to have neglected the responses during Tuesday. I was busy and didn’t check Ricochet, which is unusual for me. I appreciate all of the discussion, and will get to work trying to answer some of these questions.
It’s pretty late, so apologies for what will probably prove to be a string of responses.
I did try to mention this in the OP, but maybe I wasn’t clear.
The basic doctrine of the post-WWI settlement imposed by the victorious Western Allies was the “self-determination of peoples.” This was difficult, because the different national groups — often defined by religion and language — were intermixed. Moreover, even where a fairly clear distinction could be drawn between such groups, the implied borders might be problematic for reasons of trade or defense.
Under the post-WWI borders, many Germans ended up living in non-German countries bordering on Germany. Part of this was due to the complexity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which included both German and non-German peoples, and was not included in Bismark’s unification of Germany in the 1860s and 1870s. Part of it was due to the creation of Poland’s path to the sea at Danzig (now Gdansk).
After the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, it was natural for the remaining German peoples to want to become part of Germany. Austria sought to join Germany after WWI, as pointed out in the OP, but I neglected to say when — it was right after WWI, in 1918-1919. The Sudeten Germans, in western Czechoslovakia, didn’t like being part of that country. The Germans in the Danzig Corridor didn’t like being part of Poland, either.
I think that these were legitimate and understandable German grievances.
The severe military restrictions of the Versailles treaty were also legitimate grievances. Germany was left essentially unarmed and defenseless. How long would one expect the strongest nation in Europe to tolerate such a situation? Was Germany to be the only nation in the world that is denied the ability to defend itself?
These are the grievances that I consider legitimate.
As pointed out in the OP, Germany also had territorial ambitions in Ukraine and the Caucasus. As a realist, I don’t find this particularly objectionable. Even notice how we obtained, say, California or Hawaii?
I used to think that this was true, but recently was presented with historical facts that suggest otherwise. I don’t have a great source for this to cite, because it was a podcast. I think that it was a panel with Michael Neiberg, and a fine female historian named “Kate,” I think, but I can’t recall her last name.
In any event, you are correct that there was a naval competition before WWI, but the argument that I saw was that the British won. I think that this occurred under Churchill’s first term as First Lord of the Admiralty, when he announced a new British policy of responding to every new announcement of the construction of a German battleship by deciding to build two British battleships. The Germans ceased the escalation, I think.
The other thing that I’d object to is your characterization of the Kaiser as having “insisted on a high seas fleet.” Why should Germany be required to accept permanent naval inferiority? Maybe the British could win the naval arms race, but it doesn’t strike me as illegitimate for the Germans to want naval parity, or even superiority.
Remember that Germany faced a serious problem — they relied on imports of food and other important raw materials, and the British had the ability to blockade most German seaborne trade (except iron from Sweden). Britain essentially had a stranglehold on Germany’s windpipe. I don’t think that it’s fair to blame the Germans for not liking this.
By the way, I also don’t blame the British for wanting to have the upper hand. That’s ordinary great-power politics. I just don’t think that we should condemn such actions on one side, while presuming that the same actions on the other side are the natural and just state of affairs.
I’m aware of the pact, but it doesn’t factor into my analysis in a significant way. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed on August 23, 1939. The British and French gave their guarantee to Poland many months earlier, on March 31, 1939.
So I think that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a response to the unwise Polish guarantee.
Ironically, it seems plausible to me that the Polish guarantee was a significant factor leading Stalin to agree to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. I’m not sure if this was his actual motivation, but as a matter of incentives, absent the Polish Guarantee, Stalin might not have wanted to see German troops moved a couple of hundred miles eastward, and to his new border. The expectation that the German invasion of Poland would trigger a war with Britain and France might have led Stalin to believe that the Germans would be occupied for some time, and unable to launch a further attack eastward.
Remember that this occurred in late 1939, when the Fall of France in May-June 1940 seemed inconceivable.
Good comment. I may not have been clear in the OP.
I place the blame on Russia for mobilizing at all, not specifically for mobilizing against Germany. I agree that if Russia were to mobilize, it was a better decision to mobilize against both Germany and Austria-Hungary, for the reasons that you state.
In short, I think that Russia had insufficient interest in the Austro-Serbian dispute to justify launching a war on the Continental scale, though perhaps “justify” isn’t the right word. I’m not really attaching moral blame, but practical blame. I think that it was a geopolitical blunder of catastrophic proportions.
Justin, good questions. I’ll try to answer one-by-one.
I don’t think so, but I may not have been clear about my criticism of Churchill. He was out of government at the time of the Polish guarantee, though I think that he supported it.
My main “criticism” of Churchill was his presentation of a convincing, but one-sided, narrative of the war. I think that he did this brilliantly. Also, in fairness, he often did point out unfavorable facts, like Polish participation in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia or the brutality of the British and American bombing campaign against Germany.
I did have other criticisms of Churchill, for actions like: (1) violations of neutrality, as in Norway (pointed out in the OP) and also in French West Africa during Operation Torch; (2) the German starvation blockade of WWI; (3) the planned bombardment of Istanbul in the Dardanelles campaign in WWI. To be clear, the Dardanelles failed, but the plan was the terror-bombing of civilians in an enemy city. When the Germans did the same thing to the British in WWI, Churchill presented it as an atrocity — and then used it to justify massively disproportionate retaliation on Germany.
I’m mainly objecting to the hypocrisy in these actions. I’m more of a realist in war, and while I don’t like it, I’m not surprised that countries will do terrible things to enemy civilians in extreme situations, and I don’t think that there’s much that can be done to stop it.
No, it’s not. Again, I don’t criticize Churchill for the Polish guarantee, as he wasn’t in office yet. I think that it was a foolish decision — like the Russian mobilization in WWI — and in this assessment, foolish is foolish, whether the decision-maker is an elected Prime Minister or the autocratic Tsar of all the Russias.
I do think that this question suggests a rule that I find dubious, implying that some particular foreign policy decision would be justified if made by an elected leader, but not justified if made by a dictator. If we’re going to make moral judgments in international politics, I’m inclined to think that the same rules should apply to all. Though, again, my principal judgments aren’t moral, but practical. I’m not criticizing crimes; I’m criticizing blunders.
No, I don’t think that this affects my analysis. The pact was against the Soviets, as I pointed out, and if anything it should have been supported by Britain and France (and the US).
I’m not sure how this relates to my criticism of Italy. I had to look it up, but I think that your report on the timing of Italian accession to the Anti-Comintern Pact is incorrect. It looks like the pact was signed between Germany and Japan in November 1936, then joined by Italy in November 1937. The Italian invasion of Ethiopia (called Abyssinia at the time) lasted from October 1935 to February 1937. I think that it was the foolish — and hypocritical — British objection to Italian annexation of Abyssinia that drove Mussolini onto Hitler’s side.
If I recall correctly, I think that Churchill makes the same point in his Memoirs of the Second World War.
No. Britain and France gave their guarantee to Poland in March 1939. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was probably a result of this, as it occurred later, in August 1939.
I realize that many of you may inherently object to German and Soviet reconquest of post-WWI Poland. There was no Poland for about a hundred years before WWI. It had long been part of Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. Poland was a creation of Wilson’s utopian dreaming. It had no chance of defending itself. This is a realist view, which doesn’t take account of moral propositions like the “self-determination of peoples,” ideas that don’t actually enforce themselves, and seem like rather childish wishful thinking to an old grouch like me.
The use of “spheres of influence” is an interesting phrase. You may not mean it this way, but it seems to imply that there’s something wrong about having spheres of influence. I think that they are inevitable, and wise. I do notice that many Americans seem to pretend that our massive sphere of influence just doesn’t exist.
I think that it depends on what you mean by “much of Europe.”
Putting aside The Sound of Music, I’m now inclined to believe that most Austrians either agreed with, or at least didn’t seriously oppose, the Anschluss in 1938. As I noted in comment #106 above, Austria wanted to join Germany in 1918-1919, and was blocked by the Western Allies.
As also discussed in #106, the Sudetenland was German territory, if by “German” we mean Wilson’s conception of the “peoples” who have a right of self-determination. Czechoslovakia was a haphazard mash of a country created by Wilsonian naivete, in my view, and perhaps the most foolish part of it was to put several million Germans in its territory, creating a grievance for both the nation of Germany and the Sudeten Germans that was to be resolved . . . how, exactly? By pretending that the strongest nation in Europe would remain defanged forever?
As I noted in the OP, I think that Hitler’s goal was clear — Ukraine and the Caucasus, plus a pathway to them. I don’t think that he had any interest in conquering to his north or west. It seems to me that he was provoked into doing so by the British and French declarations of war.
Next, I will say something about those declarations of war.
Against Germany, it was Britain and France that were the aggressors. Germany was the aggressor against Poland. But it was Britain and France that declared war on Germany.
By the way, I also think that it’s a terrible idea to focus on who is the “aggressor.” We were the aggressor in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel has been the aggressor, repeatedly. If you’re going to play the casus belli game, I think that you need a more sophisticated analysis of interests, provocation, and justification.
About the American declaration of war — Germany actually declared war on us first. But I think that they had good reason, as we were supplying their enemies with weapons and supplies for free.
Finally, part of the change in my thinking has been rejection of the idea that it’s somehow our job to protect everybody in the world. So Hitler wanted to take back the part of Poland that had been German for a century or more, and then the part that had been Russian, plus Ukraine and Caucasus. Not our problem! Not Britain’s problem, or France’s problem, either. Do you know whose problem it was?
Stalin’s.
So why in the world were the British and French, and then the Americans, coming to the defense of Stalin?
Maybe when Hitler was itching for a death match with Churchill’s “Uncle Joe,” we should have popped ourselves some popcorn and watched.
I don’t think that Germany’s ambitions would have been sated. As I stated, I think that Hitler wanted to conquer Ukraine and the Caucasus. Not our problem.
This is a good question, which I addressed in part in #5 above. Austria wanted to unite with Germany in 1918-1919, long before Hitler or Nazism was on the horizon. I admit that I haven’t looked into the details of Austrian public opinion, either in the 1918-19 or 1937 time frame.
I’ve studied quite a bit about WWII, though, and I don’t recall any reports of significant Austrian opposition to being part of Germany. This seems to be true of Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania as well, though I think that these were German allies rather than part of Germany. On the other hand, in places like Poland and Yugoslavia, where there was popular opposition, we saw insurgent fighting. Others might be able to better inform me about this detail, though.
No, not really.
Again, I don’t inherently object to “aggressive” actions. Countries are aggressive quite often. It’s how we conquered the bulk of our own continent, for the most part.
I may be repeating myself, but my view is reasonably simple. Hitler had ambitions to the east. These were a threat to Stalin, and pretty much irrelevant to Britain and France. The sensible course, to me, was to do nothing.
Perhaps this would have avoided any major war altogether. Had Britain and France remained neutral, I don’t think that Hitler would have invaded France. Hence, no Fall of France — hence, any attack that Hitler might have made on Russia would have created a threat of a two-front war. He might, or might not, have been willing to take the chance.
Remember that when Hitler actually invaded Russia in June 1941, he was virtually victorious throughout the rest of Europe. VDH points this out in The Second World Wars. The US was not in the war, and Britain was on its knees.
“Relatively small” compared to what? OK, it’s small compared to Africa. So is the Continental US. Europe, even without Russia, is a pretty big place.
I’m a bit confused by the rest of this question. You mention “control by Nazi Germany,” but don’t specify which part of Europe you mean. As I’ve stated previously, I think that Hitler wanted Poland, and Ukraine, and the Caucasus, and had alliances with other important parts of southeastern Europe (Slovakia, Hungary, Romania). He took the Czech lands, but my impression was that he would have preferred an alliance with them. My evidence for this is that the Slovaks, Hungarians, and Romanians didn’t resist, and he didn’t conquer them. In fact, rather understandably, they viewed the Soviets as a bigger threat.
Which does come full circle to one of my main points. The policies of Britain and France seem, at least in hindsight, carefully designed to bring their own countries to ruin and sacrifice all of the countries that they supposedly wanted to protect, for the sake of — you guessed it — solving Stalin’s problem.
I don’t think that my suggestion is a myth. The Germans obviously had good reasons to unite with Austria and Sudetenland. Those were German peoples, and they were completing the work of German unification. This isn’t strange. Italy had a similar period of unification in the 1800s — Garibaldi and all. (Not the Garibaldi from Babylon 5.) Britain even had such a period, though for the most part it was during the olden times of Wessex and Mercia and Northumberland and whatnot.
As to invading Poland — Poland was a contrivance that was impossible to defend, concocted by Woodrow Freakin’ Wilson, of all people. Why are conservatives defending that? There had been no Poland for a century or more. It’s as if we somehow lost a war, and were forced to cede Arizona and Southern California for a time to some new Mexican-ish country — Aztlan or something — and then expected to abide by that loss of territory forever.
One of the most ironic examples, I think, is Alsace. As I understand it, Alsace was essentially German in the 1600s, when it was conquered and annexed by France. In 1870, a newly united Germany took it back. This was somehow considered an outrage, so France took it back after the victory in WWI. But, you know, the French ended up on our side, so our myth holds that they must be right.
As I pointed out in prior comments, I think that your analysis gets the dates wrong.
The British and French gave the Polish guaranty before the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The point of that pact was the partition of Poland. You say that it “went out the window when the Soviets took their half of Poland” — which was effectively simultaneous with the signing of the Pact. Checking the dates:
Total elapsed time — 25 days. During which Britain and France did essentially nothing, except to declare their foolish war on Germany. Which they didn’t even prosecute, by the way, which is why it is called the “Phony War.”
What’s the big deal about unrestricted submarine warfare?
I know that this was a British propaganda point. I say hogwash.
Can you name the most successful campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare in history? I’m pretty sure that it was the American submarine war against the Japanese in WWII. It didn’t sink as much tonnage as the Germans, but I think that we had a better kill ratio, and it absolutely crippled the Japanese merchant fleet. Our merchant fleet grew yuugely, despite the U-boats.
This is part of the hypocrisy problem that I keep seeing. The “We Won The War” faithful have this extraordinary outrage for certain actions, like “unrestricted submarine warfare” or “aggression” or “violation of neutrality” or “targeting of civilians,” but only when it’s the other side doing it. When the exact same things are done by us, or by our allies, there’s never a peep. This is one of the reasons that it seems like a religion, to me.
I’ve read extensively in history. I did not reach these conclusions from any Leftist authors or speakers.
I’m not sure that I could even list the WWI and WWII books that I’ve read. Everything by Churchill; Shirer (both The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and The Collapse of the Third Republic); VDH’s latest; Tuchman’s Guns of August; Ian Toll’s series about the Pacific War; Niall Ferguson’s The Pity of War; Peter Hitchens’ The Phoney Victory; John Keegan’s The First World War.
On WWI in particular, I haven’t read their books, but I’ve listened to several great lectures by Michael Neiberg and Christopher Clarke.
Finally, though, there is no chance whatsoever that I’m heading toward the Democrats, or that I’m going to end up libertarian.
What I seem to be seeing is a manifestation, in foreign policy, of the strange phenomenon pointed out in Michael Anton’s latest column, discussed in the latest post by MWD B612 “Dawg” (here). Progressives do stupid things that lead to disaster, and then so-called “conservatives” make sure that they can’t be changed.
So you might notice that two quite socialistic Democratic Presidents led us into WWI and WWII, respectively. The intervention in WWI set the stage for WWII. The intervention in WWII helped just about nobody but Stalin, at least no one of significance. We were stuck with a 45-year Cold War to contain the Communist monster, because we sided with that monster and crushed the two major powers, Germany and Japan, that were containing it.
This is actually mentioned, without detail, in Anton’s column, when he notes that so-called “conservatives” think that “the most heroic act of the 20th century was not D-Day or the moon landing but William F. Buckley, Jr. purging the Birchers.”
I’ve come to think that the Birchers were right, for the most part. I think that they were right about the foolishness of our interventions in both World Wars.
I think that you could argue that my old religion, “We Won The War,” had a somewhat good motivation behind it. Our foolish actions did leave the Soviet monster unchecked. What were our leaders to do? Tell the truth?
Explain that they were naive fools, who ignored centuries of understanding of the balance of power in favor of their Left-Progressive utopian fantasies, leading to the two most catastrophic wars in human history, and leaving Joseph Stalin as the clear winner? And now we have to risk global armageddon, spend trillions of dollars, rebuild those countries that we just blasted to rubble so that they could compete with our industrial workers, and engage in one pointless bloody war after another in areas of no strategic interest to us, because Wilson and FDR were idiots?
Well, that would be a hard sell. Even harder, probably, once you notice that Alger Hiss was advising FDR at Yalta.
Yeah, so think you and all of the anarchists. Well, you’d be anarchists if you had any consistency, I guess.I’m editing this one. My response was snarky. Sorry about that. It’s getting pretty late.
Your comment was snarky too, though.
The freedom issue raises a couple of other points, though. Once again, I think that it’s related to Michael Anton’s recent article. Much of the modern conception of “freedom” wasn’t what they meant at the founding, I think. It’s more of a Leftist-Progressive idea, it seems, emerging in the early 20th Century. But now the “conservatives” are eager to make sure that we can’t undo the damage.
Our Founders repeatedly said that our system of government would only work with a moral and religious people, and for a good 125-150 years, routinely identified this as a Christian country. Christian morality was generally enshrined in law, though usually at the state level. “Freedom,” I think, principally meant living under the laws established by the majority, mediated through the checks-and-balances of our representative system.
It’s getting a bit late, and I’m going from memory here, but I recall one of the Federalist Papers pointing out that the fundamental protection from government overreach is the votes of the people. Yes, Federalist 51 discusses the virtues of a system of checks and balances, but I don’t think that these alone can protect liberty, and even this one stated that: “A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
Those auxiliary precautions might help a bit, but I don’t see any viable way for government to be controlled contrary to the will of the majority of the people. The courts might hold the line, for a time — though over the past century or so, the courts have been guilty of quite a bit of government overreach, too.
This leads me to an uncomfortable conclusion. It’s actually the essence of the British system, in which Parliament is supreme. You have to trust the People. Yeah, with a capital P.
I know, they may be untrustworthy sometimes. They — I should probably say we — may make mistakes. We can correct those.
But then, I have to admit that I don’t really trust the American people. I’d like to, but I feel as if I’ve been burned too many times.
Worst, I fear, we are no longer a moral and religious people. Quite the contrary. Well, except for the “religions” of Wokeism and We-Won-The-War, but I don’t think that these are what the Founders had in mind.
I’ve been coming to think that the inhumanity of the Nazis toward the Jews, or the Japanese toward the Chinese, while terrible, simply wasn’t our problem. It’s not our job to protect other people or countries. If we make it our job, we: (1) usually fail, (2) typically at high cost, and (3) don’t even get much thanks.
I also notice that our, um, immigration to and occupation of the territory of the US was pretty rough on the Indians. There weren’t as many of them, and we killed them rather more slowly, but it wasn’t pretty.
I agree that we should be self critical. However, I think you are taking an approach that is so critical, it fails to appreciate the positive role the United States has played in the world since 1945 and continues to play.
The United States during the Clinton administration ultimately did not intervene in Rwanda in 1994. The result was that hundreds of thousands of Tutsis were killed.
One can make an argument regarding US intervention in Rwanda either way, that the US should have intervened or that it was correct to not intervene. However, if one takes the attitude that whenever the US intervenes, the US is acting no different than Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union or Putin’s Russia, that is going to distort any analysis of the pros and cons of a US intervention.
Fascinating comments. Jerry, thank you for elucidating. I have read a a fair amount of military history of WWII, but much less so about the geopolitical origins of WWII or WWI. I have long thought that the Germans unhappiness with the Treaty of Versailles was completely understandable, but this discussion has filled in many details. I have been and remain quite fuzzy on who is to blame for starting WWI, but it has been clear to me that the Treaty of Versailles was a root cause of WWII thanks in large measure to our most evil president, President Wilson (yes more evil than Biden, but Biden is gaining) and company.
I have learned a great deal from all the comments here.
That combines a straw man with the elision of Putin with Hitler. Impressive!
I’m glad that we didn’t intervene in Rwanda. I looked into the conflict in moderate detail, some time ago, though I forget the specifics now. My general conclusion was that it was a long-standing mess, and the supposed “good guys” weren’t particularly good.
For me, this is another example of “not our problem.”
We did intervene, at about the same time, in Serbia and Kosovo. To defend Muslims, for some reason. By bombing Serbian civilians, in a conflict in which we had no practical interest.
Finally, you may be misunderstanding my argument in your final sentence: “if one takes the attitude that whenever the US intervenes, the US is acting no different than Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union or Putin’s Russia, that is going to distort any analysis of the pros and cons of a US intervention.” Maybe not. My main point is that people object to German “aggression,” as if “aggression” is always wrong. But by supporting US actions, you must concede that “aggression” is not always wrong. Then you have to get into a complicated casus belli analysis, and then that is often skewed, in other ways referenced earlier. For example, “spheres of influence” are terrible things when other powers want them, but are something like the “arc of history bending toward justice” when we do them.
And what we’re usually trying to do is to force our system on people who might not want it. Which I don’t think is our business.
Jerry, I think this might be the most significant part of your analysis.
I have used an analogy to advocate for US intervention abroad, at least in some situations. For practical-pragmatic reasons, the US can’t intervene in every conflict.
But here is the analogy I have used.
A serial killer is on the loose. He has already killed 24 people. But none of those 24 people are my relatives or friends or co-workers. So, perhaps I conclude that this serial killer isn’t my problem.
However, that could be a short-sighted attitude towards this serial killer. Maybe this serial killer has written some letters explaining why 15 of his victims deserved to be killed. Maybe some of them disrespected him.
Maybe this serial killer has written that he is only going to kill certain types of people and not others. And I fall into the category of people that this serial killer says he does not plan on killing. So, should I conclude that this serial killer isn’t my problem? I think this would be short-sighted.
A better approach would be to link up with other people and try to find this serial killer and detain him, to prevent him from killing more people.
I can defend my interest in identifying and detaining this serial killer in two ways. I can claim that I want to detain this serial killer out of self-interest. I can also make a more abstract moral claim that detaining this serial killer is the morally right thing to do.
When we look at the behavior of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany in the 1930s, we could shrug it off, as you have, and say, “this isn’t our problem.” But I think in making it our problem had a positive impact on the world. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were defeated and the United States became, in a sense, the world’s designated driver. The result is that the world has been much more peaceful and prosperous from 1945 to 2022 than it was in the previous century.