History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

[Kepler]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

If Hitler had been a magic wizard, that might have helped too. The Nazis started from an immovable position of extreme nationalism. It was either full speed ahead with their dominance through superiority nonsense or cut the legs out from their entire movement with another "stab in the back". They were pot committed and couldn't afford to make a savvy political move.

Not in the West they weren't. The Nazi lebensraum policy was directed East. They rolled over the West to knock France out of the war so they could turn to their real objective: strike Russia, occupy Eastern Europe, depopulate it (primarily through literal starvation -- the actual strategy was called the "Hunger Plan" and it will make the hair stand up on the back of your neck), and then settle happy fertile Aryans there. The West Bank settlements on steroids. They had historical precedent: during the "Ostsiedlung" the Germans deliberately settled huge swaths of Central Europe, pushing out (or killing) the "native" Slavs ("native" because they were fairly new as well -- the whole region was basically a six-line highway from the steppe to the Elbe).

The Nazis would not have had a problem with a separate peace with the West. Allegedly they offered several versions but Churchill wasn't buying because he understood a Super Germany with essentially unlimited food reserves in the east and oil supplies in the Caucuses would always be an existential threat to Britain, plus he really wanted the US to get into the war.

The Germans were still bound by geopolitical realities and their general staff could count: they knew they wouldn't be able to hold Western Europe against American industrial strength so, like a star player in his walk year, why not trade it and get something for it?

I suspect the West was tempted because freeing up the western front would have meant the Nazis and the Commies bleeding each other to death in the snow while the West recovered and built strength for WW3. This was before wide understanding of the Holocaust and before anybody was thinking that a "magic wizard" bomb was going to come along and radically change the way a WW3 would be fought. It would also have given the French and British time to recover their possessions from Japan. It isn't as far fetched as it seems knowing everything we know now.

 

[LynahFan]

I think you're missing the biggie--which has largely been retconned in--but the war in Europe had the effect of ending the Holocaust. The level of German atrocity makes it a much simpler good guy/bad guy scenario on the grand scale.

The Chinese say, "Hi!" Japan killed at least as many Chinese as Hitler killed Jews.

 

[Kepler]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

The Chinese say, "Hi!" Japan killed at least as many Chinese as Hitler killed Jews.

Yellows don't count.

 

[LynahFan]

Yellows don't count.

Ah, right. I always forget that part.

 

[St. Clown]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

The Chinese say, "Hi!" Japan killed at least as many Chinese as Hitler killed Jews.

There are many, many more Chinese than there are Jews in the world. That makes it less genocidey.

 

[LynahFan]

There are many, many more Chinese than there are Jews in the world. That makes it less genocidey.

Sure, but there were only 71M Japanese to 80M Germans, so the Japanese were 15% more homicidal, on average. Plus, they had to take a boat, showing far more resolve than the Germans, who just wandered across the border into Poland to get their kill on.

 

[MaizeRage]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

Yellows don't count.

And the movies they produce are terrible.

RE: Nazis. I think we can at least agree they were bound by certain geopolitical realities that would have made negotiating a peace with the West an impossibility.

 

[Kepler]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

And the movies they produce are terrible.

RE: Nazis. I think we can at least agree they were bound by certain geopolitical realities that would have made negotiating a peace with the West an impossibility.

No, I'm arguing explicitly against that premise. Western democratic leaders probably could not have gotten away with the hypocrisy of portraying the Germans as the enemies of civilization in one breath and then negotiating with them in the next (though they did it easily enough with Uncle Joe). But the Germans considered the West as, at worst, off brand versions of Alpha Whitey, led astray by those pesky Jews and Commies. Hitler was allegedly more than a little surprised and rather personally offended that the Brits rejected his call for Anglo-Saxon-Germanic-Nordic solidarity in slicing up the Slavs. The Brits were, after all, practically as anti-Semitic as the Germans, and they had invented the concentration camp. The Krauts would not have been running afoul of their racial theories by throwing Western Europe a bone. Heck, they were allied with the Italians, who were somewhere down on the Aryan Purity Scale between the Spanish and the Greeks.

The Germans could have made that deal. We couldn't. As it turned out it's lucky we didn't, because when it came out after the war that the Nazis really were monsters, that would have been hella embarrassing.

 

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

On the perception of D-Day, I'd just add that after the stunning American victory at Midway in June 1942, just six months after Pearl Harbor, Japan's ability to threaten the US mainland, for the most part, cease to exist.

A German controlled Europe continued to be a direct threat to the US for the next several years. It wasn't until success on D-Day, the most massive invasion by sea in history, that an end to the threat posed by Hitler began to come into view.

Screwed over feels a bit harsh. I don't think they were capable of helping much if they had wanted to. Blame France for calling in their favor so early.

More than a bit harsh IMO. The US had only a very small military, and no Navy in 1790, having dismantled the Navy after the Revolution. The US had a defensive treaty with France which did not include supporting France when the French declared an offensive war on most all of Europe in 1792/93. Entering the conflict would likely have been disastrous for the US.
Meanwhile the Jacobin's and Robespierre seized power by killing off their primary rivals, the Girondins, suspended the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the 1793 constitution, and put the nobility and the rest of the "enemies of the revolution" to the blade during the reign of terror. Keeping in mind that's the same nobility that were US allies and diplomatic contacts during the American revolution, it's not surprising the US wanted to stay out of it. France was a mess. In fact, the great American revolutionary war hero, the Marquis de La Fayette, (and co-author of the Declaration of the Rights of Man) was imprisoned by the First Republic in 1792 and there remained for 5 years, until freed by Napoleon, who's government the Marquis subsequently refused to join.
By 1795 the US had signed the Jay treaty with Great Britain, and in France, Napoleon was gaining power, having successfully put down a royalist rebellion in Paris in October. By 1796 the French Navy was decimating American shipping trade, having collected over 300 American vessels in that year alone, which directly led to the re-creation of the US navy and the initial creation of the US Marine Corps. By 1798, the Quasi-war began with open conflict between French and American Naval vessels, not ending until the Convention of 1800.

It's difficult to see how the US not only could have, but should have, supported the French in their wars against the continent.

However, all the French did was not forgotten. In a speech at the Marquis de La Fayette's tomb (often mis-attributed to Pershing) on July 4th, 1917, shortly after the American Expeditionary Forces began landing in France, US Army Col. Charles E. Stanton famously said the following:

"America has joined forces with the Allied Powers, and what we have of blood and treasure are yours.
Therefore it is that with loving pride we drape the colors in tribute of respect to this citizen of your great republic. And here and now, in the presence of the illustrious dead, we pledge our hearts and our honor in carrying this war to a successful issue.

Lafayette, we are here!"

 

[Kepler]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

A confusion resolved: the dude the Gadsden Purchase is named after was the grandson of the dude the Gadsden Flag is named after.

 

[Kepler]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

The US had a defensive treaty with France which did not include supporting France when the French declared an offensive war on most all of Europe in 1792/93.

That's a bit simplistic, since the continental monarchies were massing to lead a royalist attack against the revolutionary French government. But it is true that the French declared war first, to try to push into the Netherlands and fight the war off French soil. Armies were provisioned via foraging, which was a nice way of saying stealing the occupied territory's assets, so it was important to play road games whenever possible.

(In the event the French completely bollixed it because their military was equal combinations of untrained, unpaid, and undisciplined.)

So by the letter of the treaty you are correct, though in spirit it's a bit disingenuous. From a standpoint of realpolitik it was the obvious choice, but it did kind of put a damper on America's "Yay, liberty!" slogan.

 

[MaizeRage]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

No, I'm arguing explicitly against that premise.

You are though, by saying numerous times that there was no way the West would have accepted a treaty, so it's a non-starter.

I also think you're discounting the feelings of the general German population. Nazi leadership may not have had specific interest in the west, but the popularity of their movement wasn't based on high-minded(such as it was) racial rhetoric, it was based on picking at the wound of the previous generation. Getting another helping of the same wasn't going to go over well.

 

[Kepler]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

You are though, by saying numerous times that there was no way the West would have accepted a treaty, so it's a non-starter.

I also think you're discounting the feelings of the general German population. Nazi leadership may not have had specific interest in the west, but the popularity of their movement wasn't based on high-minded(such as it was) racial rhetoric, it was based on picking at the wound of the previous generation. Getting another helping of the same wasn't going to go over well.

I think you're right that a lot of older Germans wanted to rub France's nose in it after Versailles. WW1 was an atrocious instance of victor's justice and to give away the store on the western front would have been a tough sell. But there you have the wonders of dictatorship: Hitler didn't have to worry about losing the next election, and a win over Russia with all the German propagandists going full out on destroying das Steppenwolf 24/7 would have given the Germans as much of a hard-on for Manifest Destiny as we had.

Plus, Hitler had already managed to transfer the villain of that piece to the Jews and Commies and other "enemy within." Like a good old McCarthyite red scare, his domestic, um, program would have kept the really vengeful volk entertained.

One way Hitler gets his peace with the west: put enough early enough into jets that the Luftwaffe wins the Battle of Britain. At that point the English can watch their cities get lit up every night with about the same retaliatory capability as Saddam 3 hours after the Gulf War started, or they sue for peace. Even if Winnie had held stiff, the Brits would have eventually cracked. Jerry could have been especially smart and only bombed the south, setting up a great schism between the Oxbridge Snots and the How Green was My Valley types. Heck, the Scots might have seen it as a chance to bolt.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

So, we won the Iraq war and won the war in Afghanistan by all accounts. What did we win?

 

[Kepler]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

So, we won the Iraq war and won the war in Afghanistan by all accounts. What did we win?

We had Quisling governments in both strategic places for the better part of a decade? Kids die immediately in a drone strike rather than lingering through starvation under our embargoes? Some of our companies got really rich?

Yeah, I got nuttin'.

These wars are like Renaissance wars: you don't win anything, it's just an endless succession of setting the pole position for the next one. The Brits could have warned us: that was the story of the last hundred years of their Empire.

We're probably getting some awesome tech out of it, though.

 

[St. Clown]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

So, we won the Iraq war and won the war in Afghanistan by all accounts. What did we win?

In Afghanistan: Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Drone.
In Iraq: A giant bag of dicks.

 

[Kepler]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

In Iraq: A giant bag of dicks.

This is actually a perfect description of the entire Middle East. Iran, Iraq, Syria (all sides), Hamas, Fatah, Likud, the Saudis, AQ and ISIS. A giant bag of dicks. A pox on all their houses (now well into its 12 thousandth year).

 

[Slap Shot]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

In Iraq: A giant bag of dicks.

Conjures up a favorite Louis CK bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT7xc_XqYO8

 

[Wisko McBadgerton]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

That's a bit simplistic, since the continental monarchies were massing to lead a royalist attack against the revolutionary French government. But it is true that the French declared war first, to try to push into the Netherlands and fight the war off French soil. Armies were provisioned via foraging, which was a nice way of saying stealing the occupied territory's assets, so it was important to play road games whenever possible.

(In the event the French completely bollixed it because their military was equal combinations of untrained, unpaid, and undisciplined.)

So by the letter of the treaty you are correct, though in spirit it's a bit disingenuous. From a standpoint of realpolitik it was the obvious choice, but it did kind of put a damper on America's "Yay, liberty!" slogan.

Well, perhaps it is simplistic, but it is the main gist that Hamilton based his neutrality argument on. President Washington agreed. Jefferson did as well but thought that they should put US neutrality up for bid and get something out of it. Not sure if that's covered in Hamilton because I haven't seen it. (Although I heard Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has!)

I'd say that when they stormed the Bastille and set up a national convention of representatives, the US was all for it. But by spring 1793 when word reached Washington that France was at war with Britain, (and the rest of Europe) Louis XVI, the great supporter of the American rebellion, and his family had already been murdered along with thousands of others, Layfayette was ordered arrested, and the Revolution had fallen into the hands of a brutal dictatorship in the form of the Committee for Public Safety. It's hard to see Washington risking the country to support the course the French Revolution had taken at that moment in any case.


Regarding the Nazi's seeking a separate peace with the West: That was in fact the idea behind the Ardennes Offensive. (The Battle of the Bulge) Hitler committed his last reserve Panzer Division in an attempt to break out through the Ardennes (as they had in 1940) and rush to the coast to seize Antwerp, which was at the time, the only deep water port available to the Allies. Had they succeeded they would have split the Allied armies and severely restricted the flow of allied supplies into the region while also taking the huge stockpiles in Antwerp for themselves. With Allied forces in the North cut off, Hitler believed he would have been in a very strong position to sue for peace in the west. He may very well have been.

As it turned out though two major things went wrong. One, when a certain German General came to a fork in the road, he went left. Had he gone right, he would have almost certainly encircled the 99th and parts of the 2nd and destroyed them. Instead the heavily outnumbered 99th remained free and fought a retreating action on the flank, inflicting an 18:1 casualty rate upon the Germans which was obviously unsustainable. And second, the 101st Airborne, completely surrounded, out of food and all but out of ammo, in Bastogne, refused to surrender the key access point to the road system that would allow the Germans to run Armored divisions free to the coast. (NUTS! was the famous reply to the Nazi demand for surrender.) That and Patton's willingness to push elements of the 4th Armored beyond all limits and reason to disengage from battle, rush north 100 miles and re-engage in an immediate attack which broke through one day after Christmas, relieved the spent 101st, and denied the Germans a way west.

 

[Kepler]

Re: History - questioning the winners and how we arrived at this point

Regarding the Nazi's seeking a separate peace with the West: That was in fact the idea behind the Ardennes Offensive. (The Battle of the Bulge) Hitler committed his last reserve Panzer Division in an attempt to break out through the Ardennes (as they had in 1940) and rush to the coast to seize Antwerp, which was at the time, the only deep water port available to the Allies. Had they succeeded they would have split the Allied armies and severely restricted the flow of allied supplies into the region while also taking the huge stockpiles in Antwerp for themselves. With Allied forces in the North cut off, Hitler believed he would have been in a very strong position to sue for peace in the west. He may very well have been.

I thought it was just buying time for German scientists to make breakthroughs, plus the perennial miscalculation by dictators that democratic populations will lose the will to fight if the war is protracted enough. (Spoiler: this only happens if the war is stupid. WW2 is perhaps the only example in history of a war that wasn't stupid.)