Something's happening in our culture. The Obama moment is allowing us to talk about stuff in a new way. I don't know what I think about Pat Buchanan's anti-war book, but it's interesting that Huffpo is giving Eric Margolis space to applaud it:
Finally, Buchanan points out a fact, also made by other historians and this writer, that we in the West have avoided facing for fifty years. World War I, the `war to end all wars,' produced a far worse conflict. World War II, waged to `liberate Europe from Hitler,' ended up handing half of it over to Stalin's despotism. This was, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn noted from the gulag, an historic act of `stupidity' by Roosevelt and Churchill, both of whom became enraptured by Stalin.
Buchanan's book deserves the praise it gets.
I don't quite understand why Buchanan is so wedded to the Republican party– (I suppose it is the abortion issue or maybe they have some dirt on him, who knows), but Buchanan deserves a lot of credit for legitimizing the anti-war position in conservative circles.
Doesn't surprise me that Phil Weiss thinks that WW2 was either a mistake or we actually got in on the wrong side. Fits in with his fan base also.
The thesis of allowing expanding imperial states to expand, does NOT strike me as rational nor as progressive, nor as a strategy to ultimately avoid war.
Buchanon's primary unspoken thesis as an anti-communist, from the reviews that I've read (I haven't read the book), are that the US and Great Britain made a mistake by regarding Germany as a common enemy, that the US should have regarded Russia as a common enemy together with Germany.
If that is an accurate summary, then that sounds to me to be abominable.
And, to blame WW2 on WW1, is also silly. WW1 created some conditions in which trouble brewed, but it was NOT a cause of nazi expansion.
Poland was a democratic sovereign state. It was rational for nations that supported democracy TO sign mutual defense pacts, as difficult as it was for Great Britain and France to manifest that.
Inquiry is useful. Revision of history in hindsight is far worse.
Phil,
I HOPE that you are not now flirting with the Buchanon/America First thesis that the US picked the wrong side in WW2.
Rich, now can you accept that your buddy is an out and out anti-semite.
Another piece of ignorance by witty;
"And, to blame WW2 on WW1, is also silly. WW1 created some conditions in which trouble brewed, but it was NOT a cause of nazi expansion"
That's what you get witty for not knowing real history. It was the crushing debt and conditions imposed on Germany from WWI that was the 'original nuget' for the rise of the nationalism espoused by the nazis.
You need to look at WWII events from the very begining, not just take up where the nazis and jews entered the picture.
Buchanan…there is a lot I don't agree with him on…but the fact is he is right down the line on foreign policy with every thing American founders set out regarding what the US relations with the rest of the world should be. At bottom WWII could have been avoided…but instead a lot of fractions threw fuel on the flames.
The importance of Buchanan’s book is that it provides some accurate context to WWII, which, employing revisionist history, the Zionists have been able to largely spin as a battle-royale over Hitler’s extermination of Jews (even though, at the time, what became known as the Holocaust was merely sub-text, and most people weren’t even aware of it). The Zionists have highlighted the Holocaust because they want to establish the ‘Good War’ as a “precedent” for America going balls to the wall to save Jews under siege (ie Israelis); and who is going to argue against the outcome of WWII? It’s as American as baseball and apple pie.
But in addition to WWI and its aftermath, the correct context to WWII is also Soviet Jewish Bolshevism and Stalinism, and their millions of murders. Jewish Bolshevism proves that segments of organized Jewry have a track record of producing radical, extremist, murderous ideologies, which incubate in a supremacist, ethnic fundamentalist interpretation of Judaism, and then draw upon Jewish networks for vanguard troops, sustenance, cohesiveness and validation. Zionism has evolved similarly, as hase Neoconservatism.
(Zionists have been able to suppress discussions of the Jewish Bolshevism context by claiming it is the province of neo-Nazis, even though the discussion discredits Nazism by drawing parallels between it and murderous Jewish Bolshevism; indeed, demonstrates that Nazism itself is largely an ethnic fundamentalist interpretation of Communism/Socialism).
It seems to be his rationale for appeasement.
I once heard Howard Zinn state that he wished he hadn't served as a bombardier in WW2, that he wished he had had a means to agree with Gandhi's suggestion that Germany be addressed by civil disobedience rather than war.
I couldn't believe it.
My wife went up to him after the speech (we had produced an audiobook of A People's History and were acquainted with Howard.).
She thanked him for his war service, and stated that "its possible that I wouldn't be here today if you hadn't served."
Rich, your really missing the point. To a guy like Ed, the idea of your wife not being here, her family wiped out. That would be a good thing, not bad
"Poland was a democratic sovereign state."
Poland was NOT democratic. It was fascist. Poland even invaded Czechoslovakia, alongside Germany, in 1938, looking to grab land for itself.
"It seems to be his rationale for appeasement."
Speaking of appeasment, liberalism has been appeasing, pandering to and coddling the Judeofascist wing of organized Jewry for decades in America, which is how it has managed to snake its way to the top. The mainstream Right is appeasing it, too, by getting behind Neoconservatism. Who is challenging it in a serious way? A handful of anti-Zionist Jews, libertarians, authentic conservatives, Palecons, and the anti-religous Left.
The neo-Nazis? They're actually now supportive of it because they see it as a bastion of racial conciousness in a world increasingly overtaken by "mud people." SOG, how does it feel to have neo-Nazis as comrades?
"Poland was a democratic sovereign state." – Richard, Poland was NOT a democratic state at all interwar.
Pilsudski dominated politics, and then the cabal of generals ruled.
It had a small democratic window before Pilsudski's fascist coup.
Having said that, Pilsudski had nothing whatsoever with any anti semitism – if anything, he wanted a big Poland with lots of nationalities, including Jews (Ukrainians, etc) all living in harmony.
Hence the name – COMMONWEALTH Poland.
So, was he a good guy or a bad guy?
He was a (polish) patriot and tried to do what (he thought) was best for his country.
I only wish I could say the same about most American politicians.
It's very obvious Witty and SOG have not kept pace with all the facts
and records that have surfaced about the origins of WW1 leading to
WW2 since the days Huns ate Children and, later, when our true buddy was Stalin and his minions.
Read a student's official history or social studies textbook book written in 1850 in a particular place, then one official in 1900, then again in 1950, 1960–check them out over scores of years–history is constantly being rewritten after the politics of the moment have gone safely by–imagine when Bush's records eventually get unsealed–think the school book text might change? Revisionism is a canard. History changes as our knowledge increases and the culprits have long passed away.
Also, on Ed point's at the end of his last post–there is a German Neo-NAZI web site put up by the group–I forgot what they call themselves, but they have a logo too–they praise Israel and deplore anti-semitism because they think Israel leads the way
for the future, a valiant warrior nation fighting to the end against
the growing masses of sub-humans.
Ed. Anon. Can you list the top neo-nazi web sites. I think it would be of interest to Phil and the rest of his fans. I wouldn't know what to type in. You guys are obviously experts.
Rich:
I say again. Your buddy phil obviously thinks that Hitler was a misunderstood fellow. Explain to me why he isn't a piece of shit like Anon, Ed, Eva and the rest.
I saw a weird documentary by this Jewish bloke called Jamie Kastner called Kike Like Me, in which he cornered a polite Buchanan about Israel and the Lobby's power in the US. Pat eventually tired of being insulted rather than interviewed, and kicked him out.
One effect of the neocon War Party's disasters has been to drive formerly opposed people like Margolis and Buchanan into each other's arms, most often at Justin Raimondo's excellent site, there to coalesce into a realist force to be reckoned with.
They still disagree about a lot of things, but they obviously agree there's bigger fish to fry right now.
You know Glenn actually I kind of agree with Buchanaan now. If we hadn't got into the war the Japs could have taken New Zealand and Austrailia. Then maybe they would have shot your parents or grandparents. That would have been fun, wouldn't it.
Soggy, here's the web sites you requested:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3551269,00.html
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/german-neo-nazis-supporting-israel
Amos Kolleks’s "Restless"
The State of the Israeli State and the Return of the Wandering Jew
By LARRY PORTIS
Israel is the eye of an ethnic hurricane, sucking in fanaticized Jews thanks to its iniquitous “Law of Return” and spewing out its most sensitive souls in reaction to the racist culture engendered there.
Amos Kollek is a director who combines the sensibilities of New Yorker John Cassavetes and his fellow Israeli Amos Gitaï in one of the most powerful films I saw this year at the Mediterranean film festival in Montpellier, France. In doing so, he poses a fundamental question: is there any resolution to the conflicts inherent in a society controlled by a theocratic state founded upon racist premises? This is the question that advocates of “peace” between Israelis and Palestinians find difficult to face. Moreover, they find it especially difficult to even ask the question, much less offer a realistic solution to it….
ENTIRE ARTICLE –
PS. Russ Feingold for Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (replacing Biden)
Brain dead: SOG
Empathy dead: SOG
Morality dead: SOG
But Phil wants you to keep posting, to see the real Witty.
Kudos to Phil
Buchanan's thesis is well within that of the American revisionist historians of both world wars.It is very clear that the mistreatment of Germany following the First World War was a major factor in causing the rise of the Nazis. It is equally indisputable that Communism in Russia until the early 1950's was a Jewish movement. Hitler's identification of Jews with communism was common to all Europeans and many Americans of the day.
The causes of the war were: (1) British balance of power politics; (2) German expansion; (3) Soviet attack plans against Europe in 1941; (4) Roosevelt's desire to use intervention to solve the depression; (5) Jewish desire to punish Germany.
The disastrous consequences of the war justify an argument that it would have been better to ally with Germany against Stalin on the grounds that the lesser evil was preferable to the greater evil. The Holocaust does not enter into the calculation because whatever the true number of Jewish deaths, that number does not compare with the far greater number of deaths already caused by the Jewish communist regime in Russia.
THE BEST WAR EVER-OR WAS IT?
“The Best War Ever: America and World War Two” by Michael C.C. Adams, is a useful corrective to many of the “good war” myths cherished by Americans-but only within limits. The book is very good on the realities of combat and the moral indistinguishability of the contending armies. It even makes some unpopular concessions on the greater fighting ability and efficiency of the Wehrmacht-as established by an Israeli military expert, no less. Thus, Martin Van Creveld in “Fighting Power” established that the American army was much more bureaucratic than the German, with too much “top to bottom” mismanagement. The Germans, by contrast, encouraged individual initiative in the field. There was also much more genuine camaraderie in the German army in which the individual Germans (or frequently non-Germans) felt themselves members of a team. This flies in the face of what Americans have been taught to believe about the supposedly “rigid” Germans. But the conclusion is born out by America’s own investigations. According to US Army Colonel Trevor N. Dupuy who conducted a study of the Normandy campaign theWehrmacht outfought the Americans and British, inflicting a 50% higher casualty rate than it sustained. The Germans achieved this despite massive allied numerical and air superiority. The utter terror of the fighting is revealed by the fact that virtually all American troops had to be taken out of the front lines after thirty days of consecutive combat. That was all they could stand. Troops would prove brave in one battle and then crack in the next. The horror was indescribable. Adams quite rightly emphasizes the filth and mangled body parts which littered the battlefield. In the John Wayne Hollywood version of the war every soldier dies with his body parts intact. It wasn’t that way on the battlefield where soldiers burned alive in shattered tanks. Splattered intestines, blown off legs and missing genitals were the gruesome reality of the fighting. Soldiers were admonished by their commanders to “keep their assholes tight” before going into combat. Virtually all soldiers shit-in-their pants during the war because the ghastliness made bodily functions uncontrollable.
World War Two is fondly remembered by many Americans but that is only because America was the only nation whose civilian population escaped the consequences of the war. In all other countries, Russia, Germany, Britain, Japan, India, China and Southeast Asia, civilians suffered terribly. Millions died of starvation, firebombing raids, expulsions at wars end and mass rape. None of this happened in America. In addition, the war was sanitized for Americans by a very strict censorship. Most Americans never saw, and were never allowed to see, what was really going on in Europe (just as they are never allowed to see what is really happening to the Arabs in Palestine now). In addition, most of the Americans inducted into the military during World War Two were not combat troops. Adams establishes that of over two million Americans inducted into the World War Two armies only 365,000 of them, or 15%-20% were actual combat troops at any given time. Thus, most Americans who came home to brag of their exploits had never seen front line action. That made it very easy for them to regard the war as “good”. The actual front line troops, who were rarely interviewed, felt no such way about it. Michael Adams makes much of the segregation of black units during World War Two and the “prejudices” of the time. But he does not mention that black troops broke and ran against the Germans in Italy. Nor does he mention that approximately 50% of all rapes committed by American forces in Europe were committed by blacks. American troops in both Europe and the Pacific routinely murdered prisoners. In the case of the Japanese the Americans probably had some justification because of the horrible Japanese record on the mistreatment of prisoners. The evidence for this was strictly censored during the war and for decades later. On the home front there were massive shortages of goods during the war and a huge black market to compensate. Enlistments to the army dropped off markedly in the weeks after Pearl Harbor. Women did work in the factories during the war but to a much lesser extent than claimed. In fact, contrary to the myth of “Rosie The Riveter” the majority of American women remained in the home during the war. Many women felt guilty about going to work because they conceived that their primary duty was as homemakers and raisers of children, not breadwinners. This legend of women’s lib arising out of World War Two has been promoted by feminists to bolster their agenda. But as Adams shows, most women gave up their jobs when the men came home because they wanted to. The war also led to huge demographic changes, particularly as blacks moved north out of the south to work in the factories. There were numerous race riots and mutinies as a consequence. World War Two also led to the creation of the post-war suburban society.
“The Best War Ever” falls short in its failure to examine objectively, or even to mention, the findings of the World War Two revisionist historians. Thus, if one examines Adams extensive bibliography there are no books listed by Harry Elmer Barnes, Charles Tansill, Charles Beard, George Morgenstern, David Irving, Arthur Butz, Germar Rudolf, Viktor Suvorov or many other historians who have contributed so greatly to overturning the conventional interpretations of the war. In professor Adams defense, he does provide a reasonably fair description of the origins and course of the war in his opening chapters. He fairly describes the mistreatment of Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler’s territorial annexations in Europe and the progress of the war. He even admits that Adolf Hitler was not insane in any meaningful sense and concedes that both Aryan supremacy and anti-Semitic attitudes were common among both the English and Americans of the day. Professor Adams does not go into the reasons for that anti-semitism, as he does not discuss the well-documented Jewish disproportion in communism or the alleged “contract with Jewry” of David Lloyd George. But at least he admits that anti-Semitism was a condition of the times, not the unique disease of Adolf Hitler. Adams also concedes that Hitler did have some genuine achievements to his credit, improving living standards for Germans and raising them out of the chaos of the Weimar Republic. He does this in the context of explaining why the Germans chose to follow Hitler rather than falling into the logical trap of reasoning backwards from later purported events. “The Holocaust”, the myth of the extermination of six million Jews in purported “gas chambers” is, of course, missing from “The Best War Ever” for reasons of professional survival. The set up at Pearl Harbor is not directly addressed either, although the ominous transfer of the American Pacific fleet from San Diego to Hawaii is mentioned in passing. On one point, Professor Adams is absolutely correct. If we mythologize World War Two, we distort the real lessons of history. If we make World War Two a morality play in which America “saved the world”, then we establish a standard of egocentrism by which we are entitled to attack any nation which supposedly “threatens the world” the same way Hitler and Tojo supposedly “threatened the world”. “The Best War Ever” was published by John Hopkins University Press in 1994, three years after the first Iraq war. That timing may, or may not be, coincidental. But certainly the warnings of the book seem prescient in the aftermath of Iraq War Two, Somalia, Serbia and Afghanistan.
“The Best War Ever” largely ignores the geo-political consequences of the war and concentrates on the domestic impact. Thus, the rise of communism after the war and the resulting Cold War as confirmation of the fears of the pre-war isolationists is omitted from the discussion. The favoritism of the Soviet Union as an “ally” during the war as the precursor to the McCarthy investigations of the 1950’s is ignored, as are the post-war rise of Zionism in the Near East and America as successor-in-interest to the crumbling British Empire. The expansion of communism in the Far East as a consequence of the war and the subsequent wars in Korea and Vietnam as real estate problems deriving from the dismemberment of the French and Dutch colonial empires is likewise not addressed. The abandonment of America’s traditional neutrality and non-intervention in the affairs of Europe is simply taken as a given, “isolationism” being too horrid an ideology to defend. Thus, “The Best War Ever” is not a perfect book. But, as an examination of the war on the domestic front and an honest evaluation of combat behavior on all sides, it has much to recommend it.
“The Best War Ever: America and World War Two”
by Michael C.C. Adams
1994 John Hopkins University Press