War and Peace

[M forever]

I do understand your point. You say that the pressure the victorious Allies put on post-World War I Germany increased Hitler's appeal. Yes, of course it did. And the World Crisis didn't help either. And that you mustn't humiliate a great nation, or 'cramp its style'. Agreed. But all I am saying is that Hitler, apart from being a reaction to the times in which he lived, also embodied things that went farther back. Which, I gather, you agree with?

I don't know how many more times you want me to repeat that. I said that several times over now, for instance, here:

By tring to suppress the natural course of events, they didn't *create* those extremists since they had already been there - and not just in Germany, a lot of the nonsense the Nazis and related political or ideological groups were into was very popular in many Western countries, much more than they want to admit now - but they certainly helped create the environment in which those extremists could actually come to power and unleash the concentrated economic power of Germany on half the rest of the world in the the most devastating war ever.

I am really a little helpless here. If I repeat the same point several times over but you keep ignoring it, what can I do? What Hitler and his friends embodied obviously went back a lot further than their contemporary political situation. It went back centuries, actually millenia. It wasn't anything new either. It was the same ages old claim for domination and superiority of some sort, racially, morally, religiously, whatever, the same kinds of mythological justifications that people have made up since before the dawn of times to group a following around themselves, head over to the next cave or country, smash those peoples' heads in and take their possessions. Or at least enslave them and rob them of their resources. The same kind of mindset that is behind colonialism, imperialism, or any other -ism or countless "religious" or "ideological" "crusades". Whatever the articular local and contemporary flavors of that particular ideological concoction were was just incidental and more or less irrelevant. Like any other ideologists, they just helped themselves to whatever elements seemed to serve the basic idea or purpose, whatever was the flavor of the day.

Thank you.  What an interesting and candid "take" on the matter!  Obviously an outsider's point of view, conditioned by an education in historical geopolitics and a failure to understand the moral center of America's national character.  Cynical, indeed!

It would be interesting to see what you would do with the "War on Terror" if you tried spinning it from a favorably idealistic point of view instead of this bitterly cynical vantage point which neglects America's history in armed conflicts outside of her hemisphere and the hard lessons learned in the 20th Century--perhaps the most painful of which is that accomodating the threat of violence rather than standing up to it only begets more and more vicious violence, and that it's far less costly in lives, capital, and human suffering to destroy a man-eating tiger when it first appears than after it's ravaged your village, home, and family.

OK, I read this several times over but I couldn't figure out if you were serious or sarcastic/cynical yourself here. It is really hard to tell! I give up. Which one was it, serious or cynical?

BUT with the essential proviso that in those times economic power went hand in hand with military power. Imperialism showed us how you simply took a land and wrung every resource out of it. As the cake had already been divided, only Europe remained for Germany to expand in. And in WWI it was already trying. Here is our essential difference.

Maybe. Or maybe not. In any case, if there was a "cake", as you put it, why shouldn't the country with the second largest population and the biggest economical power help itself to a piece of corresponding size? Only because they had been late at the buffet because of the late political unification of the country? Because other nations who had dug in suddenly decided that it wasn't OK to do so anymore? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. That was also the problem the Japanese had - they had fought on the side of the Western allies in WWI and just wanted a piece of their "cake", too. Why should they watch all sorts of Western powers divide up that "cake" in front of their noses in Eastern Asia but not line up at the buffet? There is also a story behind Japan's progression from a loyal ally of the Western powers in WWI to the other big bad guy in WWII.

Here I disagree. The attack on the Soviet Union and the extermination of the Jews - though the economic aspect is there, like trying to get to the Urals - lost Germany the war, and were strongly ideologically inspired, yes, almost religiously so. Stopping Bolshevism combined with gaining 'Lebensraum' combined with destroying the enemy of mankind (the Jew). In this case, when the Nazis spoke of the 'Weltanschauungskrieg' (war of world-views, see Krausnick's study with the same title) they spoke the truth. By killing the 'subhuman' Slavs, they lost all sympathy they could have got if they really wanted to build an empire with a future, and by killing the Jews they had to siphon off resources they could have used to increase their chances of winning the war.

There's a number of myths here. First of all, the Western allies didn't give a shit about the Russians, Poles, or Jews. You actually still believe that Britain declared war on Germany to save them! That is pretty amazing. Wow. That doesn't really explain though why Churchill tried to pact with Stalin in 1944 to divide up Eastern Europe into "spheres of mutual influence" and why that idiot actually believed Stalin would play along with that plan. As we know, he was very wrong and the result of that war was that all of Eastern Europe was enslaved by the USSR instead.
Another myth is that exterminating Jews cost them too much resources which could have been used better elsewhere. In fact, the way the jews were used as slave laborers actually at least made those costs even, maybe even gave them a "plus".
The war against the USSR didn't cost the Nazis any sympathies because, well, apart from the fact that they weren't all that popular with the Western powers anyway, those didn't really have any particular interest in "the Russians" either. In fact, they all feared the economic potential of the USSR should it develop further than it was in the 30s and, naturally, that those ideological influences of communism would contaminate the Western world as well.
Invading the USSR at that point in time wasn't really ideologically motivated either, it was very carefuly calculated even though the common soldiers were of course told they were fighting against the "subhuman Slavs". Who didn't have a much better opinion of Germans in general either, a heritage of WWI and older conflicts as well. BTW, did you know that during WWI, widespread pogroms against Jews were perpetrated by Russian forces and the targeted Jews fled westwards in large numbers, towards the German army to which they looked for - and got - protection? Pretty ironic, isn't it? Anyway, the attack on the USSR was in reality very calculated and didn't look like such a bad idea at the time either, from a military point of view. The Nazis knew that a conflict with the USSR sooner or later was very likely, and they decided that sooner was better than later because the USSR was seriously underdeveloped from an industrial point of view at that time. Plus Stalin himself had made sure that the Red Army lost most of its experienced officers in the political purges in the late 30s. The disaster the Red Army encountered when they invaded Finland, a country with a tiny and inexperienced military force, signaled to the German command at the time that it was a good time to preemptively invade. And, as we know, that even almost worked out. Fortunately, it didn't quite work out. Fortunately for us all today. Unfortunately for the countless Soviet people who lost their lifes in the war. We don't even know how many. 20 million? Maybe even 30 million? Those are the people who really won and at the same time lost WWII. All other contributions are only marginal compared to that enormous sacrifice. Yet even today a lot of Western countries ignore that and celebrate their own much smaller contributions as if they had singlehandedly prevailed against evil. There is something racist and nationalist in that as well.

To recognize the fact that punitive war reparations after WWI contributed to the conditions in Germany that permitted Hitler's rise to power is hardly the same as "blaming" other nations for it.

Not just the infamous reparations, many other factors as well. For instance, the French messing around in the Saarland and the occupation of the Ruhrgebiet in 1923 and the devastating effects that had on the German economy - Hitler and his friends couldn't have asked for better support for their extremist ideas. No matter if they agreed with other elements of the NS ideology, the majority of Germans basically agreed that it didn't make much sense that they should allow themselves to be pushed around by a much weaker country such as France which they later put into their place and dispatched within 3 weeks. Or the fact that the vast majority of German speaking people in Czechoslovakia wanted to be part of Germany or Austria (or both, since many Austrians also wanted to unite with Germany) but were forced to live as a minority in the CSSR and the promises to make both Czech and German official languages of the CSSR and other promises were broken, too - it is easy to see why those people welcomed Hitler as a liberator when he annexed the Sudetenland, no matter if they cared for his other ideas or not.

Agreed. I am just as cynical about the motives for war as you. How do you rate the current 'war on terror'? I see it as the last try of a fading empire (USA) to control central Asia, with all its resources, before India, Russia or China do.

Could be. The "war on terror" certainly is a farce. Economic interests of some kind certainly are behind that. If it is the last try of a fading empire I can't really say. But it kind of looks like that.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

What Hitler and his friends embodied obviously went back a lot further than their contemporary political situation. It went back centuries, actually millenia. It wasn't anything new either. It was the same ages old claim for domination and superiority of some sort, racially, morally, religiously, whatever, the same kinds of mythological justifications that people have made up since before the dawn of times to group a following around themselves, head over to the next cave or country, smash those peoples' heads in and take their possessions. Or at least enslave them and rob them of their resources.

Of course wanting power is universal, and so is violence, and so is misleading people to get their support and making them die for ideals, or a god or whatever. But in the West, ever since the Enlightenment, there has been a serious effort to transcend barbarity and irrationalism and the 'instrumentalisation' of human beings. And this is still going on. Of course it co-existed, in the 19th century, with the misery of the 'proletariat' and imperialism, so there is an insoluble ambiguity there, as ever. What we, in a sort of shorthand, call 'Auschwitz' is the most blatant failure of the Enlightenment project, because there rationality and barbarity were completely intertwined. For me the big question is - do I accept, 'live with' the inhumanity of man because humanity is flawed, or do I think humanity can develop? Sometimes I think only individuals can develop and grow and transcend themselves, and that mankind as a species is doomed because there is simply too much stupidity and selfishness and blindness around; at other times I think that because there are individuals who are able to transcend themselves, humanity might survive. So - I am both idealistic and cynical. What are you? Because I think this is what lies behind our discussion.

Maybe. Or maybe not. In any case, if there was a "cake", as you put it, why shouldn't the country with the second largest population and the biggest economical power help itself to a piece of corresponding size? Only because they had been late at the buffet because of the late political unification of the country? Because other nations who had dug in suddenly decided that it wasn't OK to do so anymore? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

No, it doesn't. And that's precisely the problem (that's the idealist in me speaking).

There's a number of myths here. First of all, the Western allies didn't give a shit about the Russians, Poles, or Jews. You actually still believe that Britain declared war on Germany to save them! That is pretty amazing. Wow.The war against the USSR didn't cost the Nazis any sympathies because, well, apart from the fact that they weren't all that popular with the Western powers anyway, those didn't really have any particular interest in "the Russians" either. In fact, they all feared the economic potential of the USSR should it develop further than it was in the 30s and, naturally, that those ideological influences of communism would contaminate the Western world as well.

I don't think that at all. The Allies did nothing to save the Jews (although I wonder what they could have done - bomb the camps?). What I meant was that the Nazis lost the possible support of the Russian population when they invaded the Soviet Union and indiscriminately killed anyone who was deemed to be a 'commissar'. Many Russians would have been glad to have been rid of Stalin and Communism.

Another myth is that exterminating Jews cost them too much resources which could have been used better elsewhere. In fact, the way the jews were used as slave laborers actually at least made those costs even, maybe even gave them a "plus".

Only a fraction of the Jews was 'allowed' to work themselves to death as slaves. The majority was simply murdered. The 'slave state' (Speer) was mainly populated by men taken from the conquered nations, like my uncle, who worked near Berlin.

Invading the USSR at that point in time wasn't really ideologically motivated either, it was very carefuly calculated even though the common soldiers were of course told they were fighting against the "subhuman Slavs".

It was both. Calculation and ideology went hand in hand.

BTW, did you know that during WWI, widespread pogroms against Jews were perpetrated by Russian forces and the targeted Jews fled westwards in large numbers, towards the German army to which they looked for - and got - protection? Pretty ironic, isn't it?

Antisemitism is not a German invention. There was a massacre in Poland after the war, too. Killing on an industrial scale is another matter, though. But here we touch on the whole debate about the 'singularity', or not, of the 'Holocaust' (don't like that word). And here, again, we come back to our assessment of human beings.

Fortunately, it didn't quite work out. Fortunately for us all today. Unfortunately for the countless Soviet people who lost their lifes in the war. We don't even know how many. 20 million? Maybe even 30 million?

I seem to remember 20 million was the generally accepted (and staggering) number.

All other contributions are only marginal compared to that enormous sacrifice. Yet even today a lot of Western countries ignore that and celebrate their own much smaller contributions as if they had singlehandedly prevailed against evil. There is something racist and nationalist in that as well.

Of course.

[Haffner]

the Western allies didn't give a shit about the Russians, Poles, or Jews.

Do you mean from an economic standpoint? I'm not anywhere near as historically informed as you are, M, yet I have read that many Jewish people were involved in the media during even the earliest parts of the Second World War, and by that time there were many beloved Jews in the American entertainment industry as well. I might be wrong.

[bwv 1080]

Quote from: Jezetha on February 02, 2008, 06:39:21 PM
Agreed. I am just as cynical about the motives for war as you. How do you rate the current 'war on terror'? I see it as the last try of a fading empire (USA) to control central Asia, with all its resources, before India, Russia or China do.

I wish our government would even think this strategically (not that the premise is not flawed).  I really doubt such a long-range plan was motivation for Iraq.  To think that politicians and government bureaucrats act in the long-term interest of the "American Empire" is as naive as believing they are waging a crusade to bring Mom, Apple pie and Democracy to the Middle East.  We have war in Iraq because a president with a penchant for big gambles could not resist the thought of remaking the MiddleEast with one decisive blow.  I am sure much more motivated by thoughts of re-election and legacy than preserving the American Empire.  Similarly no professional officer in the military will want to be left out of a conflict.   Furthermore the military, bureaucrats and cabinet members, once the bandwagon got rolling, quickly saw it was career suicide to raise any objections (just look at what happened to Gen. Shineki).  So a irrational government policy gets made on the basis of rational career decisions of all individual members of government.  The mistake is to think of the US or any country as an entity that takes actions - you have to look past to the individual incentives of those in power.  The US did not decide to go to war in Iraq, individuals in the Bush Administration did.

[bwv 1080]

On WW2 the evidence is clear that Hitler really did believe his own bullshit.  He repeatedly made irrational decisions based upon ideology and wishful thinking.  There was no economic gain for the Holocaust or the amount of depridations inflicted on the civilian population of Eastern Europe. As Jezetha said, a policy that took advantage of the population's hatred of Stalin would have worked much better.  Puppet states in the Baltic and Ukraine would have vastly helped the German war effort.  But this would have been anathema to the Nazi racial ideology

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I wish our government would even think this strategically (not that the premise is not flawed).  I really doubt such a long-range plan was motivation for Iraq.  To think that politicians and government bureaucrats act in the long-term interest of the "American Empire" is as naive as believing they are waging a crusade to bring Mom, Apple pie and Democracy to the Middle East.  We have war in Iraq because a president with a penchant for big gambles could not resist the thought of remaking the MiddleEast with one decisive blow.  I am sure much more motivated by thoughts of re-election and legacy than preserving the American Empire.  Similarly no professional officer in the military will want to be left out of a conflict.   Furthermore the military, bureaucrats and cabinet members, once the bandwagon got rolling, quickly saw it was career suicide to raise any objections (just look at what happened to Gen. Shineki).  So a irrational government policy gets made on the basis of rational career decisions of all individual members of government.  The mistake is to think of the US or any country as an entity that takes actions - you have to look past to the individual incentives of those in power.  The US did not decide to go to war in Iraq, individuals in the Bush Administration did.

States (and organisations and companies) may be composed of individuals, but they develop their own logic of survival and growth which an individual has to accept as natural if he or she wants to work for them.
Also - I think you underestimate the fact that a state is longer-lived that individuals, that a state must look ahead and make provisions (that's the way power works), and that there are elites in the USA that have been influential for decades and want to remain so. This Bush isn't the first to have waged war on Irak. The Bush family has been powerful for more than 70 years at the least. Also - just look at the site of the American Enterprise Institute, and see what their agenda was, before this millennium even started and 9.11 happened (if they haven't changed it since I last looked). Many of the names have become familiar as the driving forces behind the first years of the Bush administration. For geopolitical ideas - read Brzezinski 'The grand chess-game'. If you want to get a flavour, look at this:

http://www.centurychina.com/plaboard/archive/3633294.shtml

[bwv 1080]

States (and organisations and companies) may be composed of individuals, but they develop their own logic of survival and growth which an individual has to accept as natural if he or she wants to work for them.
Also - I think you underestimate the fact that a state is longer-lived that individuals, that a state must look ahead and make provisions (that's the way power works), and that there are elites in the USA that have been influential for decades and want to remain so. This Bush isn't the first to have waged war on Irak. The Bush family has been powerful for more than 70 years at the least. Also - just look at the site of the American Enterprise Institute, and see what their agenda was, before this millennium even started and 9.11 happened (if they haven't changed it since I last looked). Many of the names have become familiar as the driving forces behind the first years of the Bush administration. For geopolitical ideas - read Brzezinski 'The grand chess-game'. If you want to get a flavour, look at this:

http://www.centurychina.com/plaboard/archive/3633294.shtml

But again the point is that states do not act or plan - individuals within governments acting under much more short term incentives - lasting no longer than their career goals - make state policy.  I do not believe anything more than this is at play.  Even granting, say, the 70 year old elite Bush cabal, how has the war in Iraq futhered their interests?  We sure as hell have not got any oil out of the deal. 

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

I do not believe anything more than this is at play.

Okay. I can't fight a belief.

[drogulus]

I am really a little helpless here. If I repeat the same point several times over but you keep ignoring it, what can I do? What Hitler and his friends embodied obviously went back a lot further than their contemporary political situation. It went back centuries, actually millenia. It wasn't anything new either. It was the same ages old claim for domination and superiority of some sort, racially, morally, religiously, whatever, the same kinds of mythological justifications that people have made up since before the dawn of times to group a following around themselves, head over to the next cave or country, smash those peoples' heads in and take their possessions. Or at least enslave them and rob them of their resources. The same kind of mindset that is behind colonialism, imperialism, or any other -ism or countless "religious" or "ideological" "crusades". Whatever the articular local and contemporary flavors of that particular ideological concoction were was just incidental and more or less irrelevant. Like any other ideologists, they just helped themselves to whatever elements seemed to serve the basic idea or purpose, whatever was the flavor of the day.

    Niall Ferguson addresses this in some detail in The War of the World, which was discussed in the reading thread. You might want to read it. It's certainly true that the forces of ethnic separatism were pervasive throughout Europe, but you still have to deal with the phenomenon of extermination centrally directed as a matter of policy and philosophy, radiating out of Hitler's Germany. I don't think this was the case in Turkey, where the massacres were due more to the loss of control by the imperial center. That would be more in line with Ferguson's thesis of imperial breakdown leading to ethnic warfare. But the NAZI regime trying to kill all the Jews of Europe reminds me of 19th century German philosophy. Hitler wanted to "absolutely negate" the Jews, not just kill them. That would be more like Rwanda than the Russian pogroms. It seems the Rwandan holocaust owes its inspiration to a development out of Belgian "divide and rule" racialism.

      Another writer who has interesting things to say on the consequences of imperial breakdown is Robert Kaplan. You might want to read Eastward to Tartary, about his journey through the decayed wreckage of the Ottoman and Soviet empires. And the grand master of the sort of thing Kaplan does is V.S. Naipul, whose 2 books on travels in the Islamic world are devastating. I haven't read Orwell, or even Kipling. I'll have to rectify that some day.

     Are empires planned? For the most part no, though occasionally a Hitler or Napoleon (or Caesar) comes along whose personal ambitions make it seem like a plan. Maybe it's their plan. For the most part conspiracy thinking is sterile. It leads you to look for hidden evidence instead of properly analyzing the evidence that's in plain sight, so it's a waste of energy.

[Sean]

Quotes

Agreed. I am just as cynical about the motives for war as you. How do you rate the current 'war on terror'? I see it as the last try of a fading empire (USA) to control central Asia, with all its resources, before India, Russia or China do.

Could be. The "war on terror" certainly is a farce. Economic interests of some kind certainly are behind that. If it is the last try of a fading empire I can't really say. But it kind of looks like that.

You guys should agree more with what I've been trying to say about 9/11.

[M forever]

We are having an actual discussion among actual grown up people here, Sean. You on the other hand are just a pseudo-intellectual egghead with some pretty childish "views" concocted from some half-understood bits and pieces and a hearty dose of paranoia. So no, there is no reason we should agree with you more.

In this context, the only connection with the stuff you said there is that you are one of those gullible people who would follow a dictator like Hitler if he happened to hit the right nerves with you. Your conspiracy theory BS certainly reminds us very strongly of how some people back then thought there was some kind of Jewish world conspiracy.
You also remind us on a small scale of the confused and un-selfcritical mindset that people like Hitler have, with all the same basic elements, the failed artistic/intellectual ambitions, the confused and paranoid world view, the frustrations born from massive rejection, the world-improver fantasies. Same stuff all that, except that you are - fortunately just some guy ranting on the net while Hitler was actually in a historical and political situation in which he could live out some of his fantasies. But you would be pretty dangerous, too, if you got a chance to be in power.

[Florestan]

I think WWII had a clear moral winner: Poland. Attacked from three sides by the crushingly superior forces of Nazi Germany and Soviet Union (aided by tiny Slovakian forces), wiped off the map for the third or fourth time, suffering a devastating Nazi and Soviet occupation, abandoned shamefully by their British "allies" in the hands of the Soviets the Poles somehow managed to reborn from their ashes and are a hard nut to crack for Germany and Russia even today.

My hat off to Poland!

[Sean]

I admire your psychoanalysis there, your vivisection of my amazing mind M, it's just incredible isn't it.

You on the other hand are just a pseudo-intellectual egghead with some pretty childish "views" concocted from some half-understood bits and pieces and a hearty dose of paranoia.

I can see how I might appear an extremist nut thank you, always a compliment in a way, but actually I do have a core of cold objectivity and only feel passion when I actually sense a reason for it: this has confused a lot of people- who never sense anything.

(I'm working on some extremist notes on the expression of the Veda in human sexuality right now- great stuff.)

In this context, the only connection with the stuff you said there is that you are one of those gullible people who would follow a dictator like Hitler if he happened to hit the right nerves with you.

Well it's the uncritical gas chamber builders and so forth who just did what they were asked and never questioned the system, exactly like most of the pupils and students today who consequently do well and get good grades, that are the followers. Even with my Wagnerian passions I'm not really emotive at all, in fact this passion and dispassion often in the opposite places to others, again unsettles them if you want to know.

Your conspiracy theory BS certainly reminds us very strongly of how some people back then thought there was some kind of Jewish world conspiracy.

Interesting. My bile though is directed towards the evolving character of society not some dull bunch within it.

...the frustrations born from massive rejection...

No, I'm more tragic than that, but I'll give it a miss.

...situation in which he could live out some of his fantasies...

I'm hoping to live out a few more I can tell you.

Nice thread though M, seriously- I'll try to contribute as an adult. I did do a war studies module once on the holocaust.

Here's a question- why is was that the Nazis hated the Jews is a matter of debate, and some scholars I remember reading said they couldn't explain it. Wouldn't the simple explanation be that they represent a threat to Christianity- not accepting the Messiah and apparently thinking how cool they are being the chosen race etc. Does this square with Hitler's interest in religious archeology, even the Holy Grail?

[Florestan]

IHere's a question- why is was that the Nazis hated the Jews is a matter of debate, and some scholars I remember reading said they couldn't explain it. Wouldn't the simple explanation be that they represent a threat to Christianity- not accepting the Messiah and apparently thinking how cool they are being the chosen race etc. Does this square with Hitler's interest in religious archeology, even the Holy Grail?

Firstly, the Jews have never represented a threat to Christianity.
Secondly, do you really think Hitler and his thugs were church-going Christians?

[Sean]

Firstly, the Jews have never represented a threat to Christianity.

Of course they are.

[Florestan]

Of course they are.

Ok, enlighten us: in what way are the Jews a threat to Christianity?

[Sean]

If they're right the Christians are wrong, and their was no real Christ.

[Florestan]

And you call this a threat? 
By this logic, one could say that Hindus or Buddhists are also a threat to Christianity...

A real threat to Christianity was Islam, which at certain moments in history had the power either to conquer the Christendom or to force the conversions of whole Christian communities. The Jews never had neither the power nor the desire to do that.

[MN Dave]

And you call this a threat? 

Well, if they don't believe in your one main belief, some would call it a threat to your belief system and therefore yourself.

[Florestan]

Well, if they don't believe in your one main belief, some would call it a threat to your belief system and therefore yourself.

Some narrow-minded fanatics would, for sure.