According to the New York Daily News and other news sources, the National D-Day Memorial has added a bust of Stalin to its line-up of allied leaders. This has understandably caused a great deal of controversy. The defense is most elaborately discussed here.
Here’s my thinking on the matter: Sculptures at memorials have two different functions — one is to illustrate history, and the other is to honor the subject. In the absence of any specific indication to the contrary, I suspect that people understand a bust at a memorial, especially one placed alongside that of honored leaders (Roosevelt and Churchill), as fulfilling both functions. And this is true even if the sculpture tries to “embody the terror he instilled”; it’s always hard to convey condemnation of the subject in the sculpture itself, especially given the backdrop assumption of honor that I mentioned. And if the photo in the Daily News article represents the bust (I’m not sure whether it does), I don’t see much embodiment of terror there.
If that’s just how it’s displayed, that strikes me as very bad, because for obvious reasons Stalin does not deserve honor. He was a monster, not just by the standards of our time, but by the standards of his. The Soviet Union’s tenacity in fighting the Nazis — after Stalin had earlier helped the Nazis, both by allying himself with them and by earlier weakening the Soviet military with the purges — was indubitably critical in winning the war. Stalin might well have been important in ultimately contributing to that tenacity. But that important success doesn’t undo his horrific atrocities.
At the same time, nothing says that the bust inevitably honors the subject. There are such things as captions, which could be placed prominently on the sculpture, and the captions can easily put things in proper perspective. An explanation of Stalin’s crimes, and the aid that Stalin either deliberately or inadvertently gave Hitler, coupled with an explanation of the immense significance of the Soviet Union’s contribution to winning the War, and whatever credit historians say Stalin deserves for that, would sufficiently make clear that Stalin is not the moral peer of his neighbors Roosevelt and Churchill. (Of course, Soviet troops weren’t present at D-Day, but D-Day would have been at least very different, and likely impossible, if the Soviets hadn’t successfully engaged much of the Nazi army on the Eastern Front.)
It’s not clear to me whether such a caption is present. If it is not, then the memorial organizers should be severely faulted, for placing in a position of conventional honor someone who deserves hatred and contempt. But the solution would be to simply add the caption, I think, and not to remove the bust.
Andrew Berman says:
Are they going to also add him to the list of Axis leaders? He was on their side for the first couple of years, after all.
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November 20, 2009, 1:11 pmrbj says:
One could also look at the busts of leaders as stand ins for the soldiers (& sailors etc.) they lead. So while it might be a bit jarring, rather than Stalin, have a bust of a generic Soviet army soldier.
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November 20, 2009, 1:17 pmTamerlane says:
Just to be obnoxious may I mention the Spanish Civil War? (Yes, I know. I read Homage to Catalonia. Stalin’s forces there also fought a damaging and stupid side-war against Loyalist Trotskyite and anarchist troops. But the Soviets were fighting the Nazis long before France, England, the USA, or any other WW II allies.)
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November 20, 2009, 1:19 pmTamerlane says:
I second rbj.
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November 20, 2009, 1:20 pmDuffy Pratt says:
At what point of monstrosity does the caption become necessary? Would owning slaves be enough?
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November 20, 2009, 1:26 pmCJColucci says:
1. The Soviet Union contributed more in blood, treasure, and results to the destruction of Hitler’s armies than anyone else.
2.
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November 20, 2009, 1:31 pmCJColucci says:
2. Stalin was evil.
3. See Winston Churchill’s remarks on the subject of cooperating with evil folks to defeat greater or more pressing evils.
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November 20, 2009, 1:33 pmSteve says:
I agree with Prof. Volokh. It’s better to educate people with a full picture of Stalin and his history, as opposed to just trying to airbrush him out of the story.
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November 20, 2009, 1:41 pmDennis N says:
Stalin no more belongs at a D Day memorial than Roosevelt and Churchill belong at a Stalingrad Memorial. He was really not relative to the Day.
And Stalin does not deserve to be honored, in general.
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November 20, 2009, 1:43 pmDilan Esper says:
I don’t particularly have a problem with this, even though Professor Volokh is completely right about Stalin being a monster.
When you think about it, we see images all the time of the three wartime leaders together, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. There’s the famous photograph at Yalta, for instance.
Given that fact, I don’t think that anyone who saw images of the three leaders together, in connection with any sort of exhibit commemorating World War II, is going to have a difficult time understanding the context. And much as some (not Professor Volokh, but certainly others) might want to whitewash it or minimize it, Stalin was a crucial ally in World War II. It’s really impossible to have a discussion of the wartime Allied leadership without including him in the discussion.
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November 20, 2009, 1:48 pmptt says:
I’m no fan of Stalin, but maybe having to put up with his bust is a teeny, tiny bit of payback for having denied the importance of the Russian contribution to winning WWII. I suspect that if you polled most Americans, only a minority would be able to identify “the Russian front” and a majority of them would associate it with Hogan’s Heroes.
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November 20, 2009, 1:48 pmPubliusFL says:
Bingo. His relevance to D-Day, as opposed to the overall war effort, is so indirect that there’s no real reason to include him.
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November 20, 2009, 1:52 pmbartman says:
Why don’t we airbrush him out of all the Yalta photos? I mean, we won the war, so we get to write the history.
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November 20, 2009, 1:56 pmBill Poser says:
On the other hand, while Stalin and the Soviet forces had no direct connection, the free Polish forces were at the forefront of the landing and made a substantial contribution. It’s a shame that they are forgotten.
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November 20, 2009, 1:57 pmSmarty says:
Gee, no connecting the dots to how the Obama administration is honoring communists in ways never before imagined, couldn’t mention that communism was responsible for the Berlin wall, or how he says a strong China is good for the world and how he is supporting communists in Central America?
Obama and his minions are communist, this is just another part of the theme. You can gaze at your navel and find justifications and rationalizations for what he is doing, but it boils down to support for communism.
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November 20, 2009, 2:01 pmDennis N says:
I think that, in an overall WW-II memorial, Russia should be honored; the soldiers, not the leaders. The sort of thing I’d visualize would be three soldiers advancing more or less in line; a GI with an M1, a Tommy with an Enfield, and a Russian with a PPSh. I’d not even object to the Russian being slightly in front. Lord knows he earned that right.
But the leaders? Nah.
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November 20, 2009, 2:01 pmB.D. says:
Should we honor Stalin for his efforts in the Pacific theater? After all, he did declare war on Japan after Hiroshima.
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November 20, 2009, 2:06 pmRob in CT says:
I’m with the folks who think Stalin at a D-Day memorial doesn’t make much sense.
Stalin at a WWII memorial wouldn’t bother me in the slightest — what are you going to do, pretend he wasn’t the leader of the Soviet Union? Redact him from the History books? That helps nothing. Teach about Stalin. Teach ALL ABOUT HIM. And you will see the Monster that the rest of us see.
“Obama and his minions are communist, this is just another part of the theme.”
LOL.
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November 20, 2009, 2:09 pmRob in CT says:
Oh, and for those saying there should be statues of soldiers instead of leaders, hey, I’m all for that. Enough with glorifying the politicians and dictators.
My post above assumed that the usual “great man theory” of History was carrying the day.
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November 20, 2009, 2:10 pmStrict says:
LOL at the American perception that Churchill was some sort of moral giant.
Churchill was an imperialist and a violent psychopath. He advocated the use of genocidal tactics to put down colonial rebellions against British rule. (Boers in South Africa; Mahdi in Sudan; Mau Mau in Kenya; Kurds in Iraq — Churchill gassed Kurds to death in Iraq long before Saddam Hussein did).
He established the India Defence League — not to protect India, but to protect Britain from losing India and its hundreds of millions Indians enslaved by the British crown. He openly considered Indian people to be subhumans, beasts, savages.
I would even contend that the big problem we see today with a divided Korea is part of Churchill’s legacy. The original plan (Cairo, 1943) was for an undivided Korea. Then Churchill abandoned this idea at Yalta (1945) and at Postdam (1945). The decisions made at the Moscow Conference (1945) all but ensured that the Koreas would be permanently by allowing military buildup on both sides.
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November 20, 2009, 2:15 pmrajaram says:
I guess Churchill’s morality about what he’d have done to Germany after WW I, his general respect for darkies, and his responsibility for perpetuating colonialism (and the consequent massive deaths as a result of neglect and oppression) are beyond reproach.
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November 20, 2009, 2:17 pmVirginian says:
I know nothing! Nothing!
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November 20, 2009, 2:17 pmDilan Esper says:
By the way, what Strict says about Churchill being overrated. Even the one thing he justly gets credit for– his prescience in correctly estimating the Nazi threat while others were slow to do so– is tainted by the fact that he was agitating for war with the Germans at a time when Britain was deeply unready to fight Germany’s war machine. The appeasement policy bought Britain crucial time in which it could build up its military and enlist allies in the effort to fight the Germans.
Churchill was simply an uber-hawk who was right about one particular matter and was wrong about lots of others.
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November 20, 2009, 2:20 pmegd says:
Chiang Kai-shek has as much relevance to D-Day as Joseph Stalin. Why he isn’t included among the “leaders of the Allied forces” is unclear.
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November 20, 2009, 2:20 pmStrict says:
“Should we honor Stalin for his efforts in the Pacific theater? After all, he did declare war on Japan after Hiroshima.”
Stalin agreed at Yalta (Feb. 1945) to declare war on Japan. The agreement was for Stalin to declare war on Japan three months after the fall of Germany.
It just so happened that Hiroshima happened three months after the fall of Germany.
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November 20, 2009, 2:21 pmrajaram says:
oh, didn’t see strict’s comment as i was writing my own. well said, strict. reading churchill’s six volume memoirs of the second world war, which also got him an undeserved nobel for literature, was truly vomit inducing given his open racism and gloating about his murderous intent and behavior. truly a case of winner’s rewriting of history and morality.
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November 20, 2009, 2:21 pmCrazyTrain says:
Yes, Stalin & the Russian people (and other peoples of the Soviet “republics”) deserve A LOT of credit for the tenacity they showed fighting the Nazis. And, by leaps and bounds, they bore the biggest brunt of Nazi aggression as among the 3 principal nations of the Allies (obviously, not including ethnicities such as Jews & Gypsies among the “Allies”). But even in doing that, Stalin also authorized some pretty egregious war crimes against the Germans and others — an official policy, basically, of raping and pillaging German towns as they entered Germany from the East. As a Jew, my sympathy for the Germans at this time is not exactly high. And also, knowing what the Germans did to the Russians, Ukranians, etc., it is not hard to see why the Soviets responded in kind. However, it still ain’t right and it’s another reason why Stalin does not deserve a place of honor next to Churchill & Roosevelt.
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November 20, 2009, 2:30 pmSandy MacHoots says:
This is a D-Day Memorial, not a WWII Memorial. Stalin had nothing to do with D-Day. It would be much more appropriate to put up busts of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Charles DeGaulle, and Władysław Raczkiewicz, whose troops DID fight in considerable numbers in Normandy. You might also add the leaders of Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Greece, and the Netherlands, all of whom (but not Russia) had troops involved there.
This is going to play real well in Poland. And France. (Stalin, but no DeGaulle?) And the Russians will like us so much more for putting up a bust of this guy. Just brilliant all around.
Speaking of historical ignorance, how many of our countrymen know that 200,000 Polish soldiers and sailors fought on our side from 1941 onwards, and then watched us betray them completely at Yalta to make Stalin happy. The Poles certainly do. Fast-forward to 2009 . . . .
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November 20, 2009, 2:33 pmGordon Langston says:
I’m in some agreement with those who see his relevance to D-Day in the same light as Churchill’s relevance to Stalingrad.
Lend-Lease was extremely instrumental in Russia’s ability to oppose Germany.
Let there be statues but make Roosevelt’s twice as large.
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November 20, 2009, 2:34 pmStrict says:
As far as this “never run, never surrender” attitude that Churchill is famous for, it ignores the facts of the British retreat from Norway, and from Dunkirk, France.
It’s easy to never retreat when you are stuck on an island and have nowhere to retreat to.
Churchill was great and heroic and inspirational when was shoved with his back against a wall during the Blitz, but he can’t take credit for not stepping backwards when there’s already a wall behind him.
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November 20, 2009, 2:35 pmStrict says:
“Stalin had nothing to do with D-Day.”
lol
1. Stalin demanded that the Allies invade Nazi Europe (opening up a Western front). Stalin’s demands were not something the other Allies took lightly. See Tehran Conference.
2. If the majority of German divisions were instead deployed in the East, fighting Stalin, doesn’t that mean a lot of German forces were thus unavailable to defend Normandy from an Allied invasion?
Nope, nothing to do with it at all.
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November 20, 2009, 2:45 pmStrictly Speaking says:
Why isn’t Paul Robeson’s bust included in the D-Day memorial? After his loyal support of Hitler’s great nemesis Stalin, surely he is deserving. The memorial committee must be racist.
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November 20, 2009, 2:54 pmepeeist says:
I agree with those noting he’s irrelevant to D-Day.
However, I could see that “setting the stage” (D-Day’s place in WW2) by indicating all major Allied and Axis powers and leaders (including Japan, likewise irrelevant to D-Day, and Italy?) might involve all Allied leaders. If so, then include Stalin’s bust, because he was an Allied leader. To do something else is tantamount to historical revisionism.
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November 20, 2009, 2:56 pmBama 1L says:
Stalin was a direct cause of D-Day; that is, if Stalin had not led one of the Allied Powers, there would have been no D-Day. This is for two reasons, one relating to Stalin’s goodness (being on our side) and one his badness (being an evil dictator):
1. Stalin, as a partner in the alliance against Germany, kept insisting that the Americans and British take some of the pressure off him by getting involved meaningfully in the war against Germany. Peripheral theaters did not satisfy him. Instead, he demanded that we start a real second front in northwestern Europe. Otherwise, we might have followed the British inclination to take on more “soft underbelly” projects in the Mediterranean.
2. Stalin, as a monster whose long-term policies were likely inimical to Anglo-American interests, had to be stopped from conquering all of Nazi-controlled Europe. This made it imperative to begin ground operations in northwestern Europe. Otherwise, we might have relied on the airmens’ inclination to win the war through bombing and let the nice Russians occupy whatever they cared to.
So I can’t see leaving him out.
Stalin’s presence also forces the visitor to wonder whether D-Day came late and the many American (and few British) officers advocating a 1943 landing–likely costlier and leading to a harder campaign in France than was actually fought–were correct. Had we invaded earlier, we might have met the Soviets further east, though at greater cost to ourselves.
I also have issues with the idea that Churchill was great through-and-through, but I don’t want to see this thread turn into a referendum on Roosevelt, either.
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November 20, 2009, 2:57 pmSmarty says:
First, Stalin agreed to side with Hitler. When Hitler turned on him, we helped him and he “joined our side”. Then when it was certain that Hitler would lose, Stalin did what he could do for himself and the USSR, allies be damned.
He was an ally only in that we were all fighting Germany. He was not a “leader” of WWII, he was a scumbag opportunist and a tyrant.
And he had nothing to do with D-Day.
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November 20, 2009, 3:17 pmAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
But then the Soviets invaded Poland in concert with the Nazis. Supporting opposite sides in the Spanish civil war is not nearly the same as the cooperative invasion and dismemberment of Poland.
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November 20, 2009, 3:20 pmPintler says:
At the time of the Rhineland and Sudetenland crises, Germany’s war machine wasn’t ready to fight either. Hitler himself said:
“The forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-racking in my life. If the French had then marched into the Rhineland we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance.”
IMHO, if the French and British had intervened in 1936, the Third Reich would have ended in 1936.
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November 20, 2009, 3:25 pmPintler says:
He could have reached an accommodation with Hitler, which Hitler (and quite a few others) thought was his only reasonable course of action. He could have agreed to preside over a Vichy England instead of risking it all fighting. Without England, no air campaign, no base for D-day, etc. Hitler would have won.
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November 20, 2009, 3:34 pmOff Kilter says:
Some have already put Churchill in perspective. The same could be done to FDR, now sainted but at the time hated by a significant percentage of the populace; domestic government spying came into its own under his rule and gross civil liberty suppressions above and beyond Korematsu–as if that weren’t enough–were due to his efforts.
I had a history professor once who said that Hitler was guilty of many crimes, but the greatest was setting the bar so low that Churchill and FDR looks good by comparison.
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November 20, 2009, 3:36 pmJMA says:
Which beaches did the Russian forces assault on D-Day?
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November 20, 2009, 3:51 pmLeo Marvin says:
Agree with those who say Stalin (with clarifying captions) at a VE-Day memorial, Yes, at a D-Day memorial, No.
And thanks to Smarty for the comic relief.
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November 20, 2009, 3:51 pmStrict says:
“Which beaches did the Russian forces assault on D-Day?”
What beach was Roosevelt on?
If the test was “directly participated in D-Day,” then the monument should only include the soldiers, not the leaders. Which is fine by me.
The Russian forces provided the diversion to make D-Day possible. The majority of Nazi forces were busy fighting the Russians, opening up weak spots in Western Europe for the D-Day forces to try to exploit.
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November 20, 2009, 3:56 pmegd says:
By that logic, we should position a bust of Hitler at the D-Day memorial. Without his decision to betray Russia (admittedly, before the Russians betrayed him) and open a second front, D-Day would have been an abysmal failure. We would have maintained the ‘soft-underbelly’ approach, and maybe much of Europe would still be united under the German empire.
Or lets congratulate Hirohito, for bringing the United States into the war. Without the actions of the Japanese navy, there wouldn’t have been a D-Day (at least no American troops would have been involved).
There are a lot of reasons that resulted in D-Day, and a lot of people had a hand in making D-Day possible. But the forces were under British and American command, with the U.K. and the United States providing the bulk of the forces.
The only other countries who deserve to be recognized at a D-Day memorial are Canada, Poland, and free France. The rest is just a side show.
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November 20, 2009, 3:58 pmNew Pseudonym says:
All the Potsdam photos I have seen depict Clement Atlee, how does Churchill get credit for this?
The use of poison gas in Iraq is not established in fact. If Churchill’s memo concerning the use of tear gas on Iraqis makes him reprehensible, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter are all reprehensible for using it on me.
Not to mention the hyperbole in the rest of the post “psycopath” “genocide.”
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November 20, 2009, 3:58 pmMark says:
Don’t kid yourself. The U.S. government has done business with anyone to get what it wants. Mass murderers, terrorists, religious fanatics. And we are the greatest bestest country that ever existed. Cue Patriotic Music.
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November 20, 2009, 3:59 pmRyan Waxx says:
You’re right! Why are we worrying about captions on heroes of the people like Stalin when where the caption is really needed is on the bust of FDR, explaining how Amerikkka went on to bathe in the blood of innocents the world over, making the evils of Stalin, Hitler, and Churchill pale in comparison.
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November 20, 2009, 4:19 pmCrazyTrain says:
There is certainly some truth to this (setting aside the hyperbole), but we don’t put up statues of all those monsters though.
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November 20, 2009, 4:28 pmDennis N says:
I’m not at all sure D Day would have been achievable in 1943. We did not have the logistical capability, the materiel, the tactical skill, nor the strategic positioning in 1943. There is a great chance the invasion would have been a complete defeat.
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November 20, 2009, 4:31 pmBama 1L says:
egd, I think the D-Day Memorial’s rationale for including Stalin is that he was (1) an Allied leader (2) relevant to D-Day. (1) is not in question but (2) seemed to be. Hitler and Hirohito weren’t Allied leaders.
I think I would have used a different rationale and possibly continued to leave him out. But I don’t own the memorial–although maybe we all will soon.
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November 20, 2009, 4:35 pmJMA says:
My bad, Strict; your analogy is spot on. I forgot how Stalin bled and died millions of times on the push to Berlin. >.>
...I bit my tongue. >.<
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November 20, 2009, 4:42 pmAnderson says:
Even the one thing he justly gets credit for– his prescience in correctly estimating the Nazi threat while others were slow to do so
What Pintler said. Read Lukacs, Five Days in May, or Kershaw, Fateful Choices. Churchill could’ve deferred to Halifax and Chamberlain, and Britain would’ve been out of the war.
The overestimation of Churchill in some circles should not detract from his greatness. It’s flawed greatness, but what other kind is there?
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November 20, 2009, 4:44 pmsureyoubet says:
Where is the bust of William Lyon Mackenzie King? The Canadians were on Juno Beach that day.
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November 20, 2009, 4:50 pmBill Poser says:
The Soviet Union contributed nothing to the defeat of Japan. It’s activities consisted entirely of taking territory from Japan for its proxies (North Korea, Manchuria) or its own colonies (Southern Sakhalin, the Kurile Islands, the latter still occupied by Russia).
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November 20, 2009, 5:04 pmStrict says:
“All the Potsdam photos I have seen depict Clement Atlee, how does Churchill get credit for this?”
Ummm...ok. Check the photos again — look for the fat guy.
Churchill was there. Churchill also was there for the issuing of the Potsdam Declaration, which re-affirmed the principles of Cairo, but did not include any provisions for what becomes of Korea.
The US wanted to establish a presence in Korea; so did the Soviets. The Churchill compromise was that each would get half.
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November 20, 2009, 5:05 pmAnderson says:
Attlee won the election in the midst of Potsdam.
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November 20, 2009, 5:10 pmStrict says:
“My bad, Strict; your analogy is spot on. I forgot how Stalin bled and died millions of times on the push to Berlin”
What analogy?
Roosevelt wasn’t there at D-Day. He was in the US, saying public prayers.
I personally wouldn’t mind omitting Stalin from a D-Day memorial; but “he had nothing to do with it” isn’t the reason why.
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November 20, 2009, 5:10 pmStrict says:
“Attlee won the election in the midst of Potsdam.”
Yes. So? Churchill wasn’t there as Britain’s lead representative?
The Potsdam Declaration was issued by Churchill.
Obama won election in November; that doesn’t mean acts by Bush in December get attributed to Obama.
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November 20, 2009, 5:13 pmAnderson says:
The Soviet Union contributed nothing to the defeat of Japan.
This is not quite true, as Max Hastings’ last book shows.
Besides ample fighting in Manchuria, the effect of the Soviet non-renewal of its treaty w/ Japan was combined with the atomic bombs to diminish whatever futile hopes Japan clung to.
Not much, but not “nothing,” is all I’m sayin’.
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November 20, 2009, 5:14 pmDilan Esper says:
IMHO, if the French and British had intervened in 1936, the Third Reich would have ended in 1936.
Considering that it took the combined forces of the US, the USSR, and Great Britain to defeat Germany, and only then after a years-long fight, your humble opinion that the French (?????????) and pre-buildup disarmed British could have beaten the Germans in 1936 is built on sand in this instance.
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November 20, 2009, 5:14 pmAnderson says:
Strict, read strictly, please. I didn’t say that Churchill didn’t issue the Declaration, just that both he and Attlee, at different times, were at the Conference.
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November 20, 2009, 5:17 pmAnderson says:
Dilan, Germany was by no means rearmed in 1936 either.
I think the French, Brits, and Czechs (don’t forget the Czechs) could’ve taken Germany in 1936. The will however was lacking.
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November 20, 2009, 5:21 pmBill Poser says:
Anderson@
Okay, yes, the Soviet Union did contribute a tiny bit to the defeat of Japan, but not much. Given that it took Hiroshima to persuade the Japanese military to surrender even after clear military defeat in most areas outside of the home islands, I doubt that the change in the position of the Soviet Union had much impact. They knew that they would soon lose the oil fields in the East Indies and that once that happened their goose was cooked.
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November 20, 2009, 5:42 pmStrict says:
“I didn’t say that Churchill didn’t issue the Declaration, just that both he and Attlee, at different times, were at the Conference.”
Oh yes, of course. I should have been clear that my point was not directed to you, but to the poster who wrote “All the Potsdam photos I have seen depict Clement Atlee, how does Churchill get credit for this?”
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November 20, 2009, 5:46 pmJerrod Ankenman says:
What beach was Roosevelt on?
Utah, actually.
Oh, you mean Franklin.
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November 20, 2009, 6:01 pmDilan Esper says:
I think the French, Brits, and Czechs (don’t forget the Czechs) could’ve taken Germany in 1936. The will however was lacking.
The French had nothing, the Czechs had little, and the Brits were basically disarmed. So you are talking about 2 armies that the Germans walked all over and one that had no chance of beating the Germans even after a crash-expansion after Munich.
This is what Matt Yglesias likes to call “the Green Lantern theory of foreign policy”, the idea that you can accomplish anything if you have enough will.
I would have thought after Vietnam and Iraq, that sort of thinking would be thoroughly discredited. But apparently not.
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November 20, 2009, 6:16 pmSandy MacHoots says:
There are monuments to Allied commanders at the museum, including Eisenhower and Bradley, and to the units that fought in Normandy. Presumably we need to add some monuments to Zhukov and the Soviet 68th Army. They made it possible, after all.
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November 20, 2009, 7:05 pmA. says:
Stalin is easily the most evil man in recorded history. He murdered tens of millions, oppressed hundreds of millions, and destroyed a huge chunk of the world and its population.
Roosevelt is the worst president this country has had since Lincoln. His revolution shifted the culture and political institutions dramatically in a pernicious direction and stripped millions of many of their basic rights.
Churchill was, at worst, off-color.
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November 20, 2009, 7:40 pmAnderson says:
The French had nothing
Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power at 635:
Had the French chosen to send their own troops in, the Germans would have been driven out within a few hours despite Hitler’s orders for them to resist.
Ian Kershaw agrees. Hitler vol. 1 at 588–89.
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November 20, 2009, 7:41 pmAaron says:
I appreciate the history lesson. Seriously.
@A. —
Stalin is “easily” the most evil man in recorded history? Where does one draw the line between him and the second most evil man in history? Or the third? I think its best we stay away from determining who was worst vs. second worst. Certainly describing that determination as easy to make is dubious. Sure, he was an evil bastard, no argument here. But worse than Mao and Hitler and Pol Pot?
Roosevelt was worse than Andrew Johnson? Really? He may have made some poor decisions, but your assertion that he stripped millions of many of their basic rights doesn’t really stand up to the giggle test.
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November 20, 2009, 7:59 pmKoba Da Dreadlocked says:
ya’ll be trippin
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November 20, 2009, 8:05 pmA. says:
@Aaron
Andrew Johnson? Besides a spot of white supremacism and anti-Reconstruction recalcitrance, what do you ave against him? FDR, just for starters, established the administrative state, throttled any meaningful concept of property rights, and killed what little Lincoln&c had left of federalism, not to mention his strained relationship with civil liberties during world war two and his despicable (non-)handling of the Holocaust. Yeah, I’d say FDR is worse than him.
As for ranking devils, I think the number of people killed and oppressed by the Soviet Union during and after Stalin’s long, terrible reign dwarfs all comers. Pol Pot&c, for all their sins, didn’t get the chance to commit evil on Stalin’s scale. Mao is at least in the running, but he didn’t spread evil beyond his boarders in the way Stalin did, didn’t rule as long, and ruined fewer lives. Indeed, just looking at China and Russia today should tell you who messed his place up worse. If, however, you really feel adamant that Stalin is no more than the third– or fourth-most-evil, neither his final relative rank (of the three Allied leaders) nor his legacy should change much.
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November 20, 2009, 8:30 pmPintler says:
@Dilan, I wasn’t there, but William Shirer was, and wrote ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’. These quotes are from my 1960 edition:
p. 293 ‘As Jodl testified at Nuremberg, “Considering the situation we were in, the French covering army could have blown us to pieces”
It could have — and had it, that almost certainly would have been the end of Hitler, after which history might have taken a quite different and brighter turn than it did, for the dictator could never had survived such a fiasco. Hitler himself admitted as much. “A retreat on our part,” he conceded later, “would have spelled our collapse.“‘
As to the Sudetenland a couple of years later, p 366, again quoting Jodl (discussing invading the Sudetenland in his diary): ‘...it is the opinion of the Army that we cannot do it as yet because most certainly the Western powers will interfere and we are not as yet equal to them.’
This is the great tragedy of WWII — unlike WWI and the Civil War, it could have been easily prevented.
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November 20, 2009, 8:38 pmLeo Marvin says:
Do I take that to mean you think Lincoln was our worst president since Buchanan? If so, were there any worse than him before that?
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November 20, 2009, 8:47 pmjcm says:
“but D-Day would have been at least very different, and likely impossible, if the Soviets hadn’t successfully engaged much of the Nazi army on the Eastern Front.”
Mises answered to that:
“Stalin devoted all his energy to the organization of a standing army of a size the world had never seen before. But he was not more successful than Lenin and Trotsky had been. The Nazis easily defeated this army and occupied the most important part of Russia’s territory. Russia was saved by the British and, above all, by the American forces. American Lend-Lease enabled the Russians to follow on the heels of the Germans when the scarcity of equipment and the threatening American invasion forced them to withdraw from Russia. They could even occasionally defeat the rearguards of the retreating Nazis. They could conquer Berlin and Vienna when the American airplanes had smashed the German defences. When the Americans had crushed the Japanese, the Russians could quietly stab them in the back.”
That is without American Gold, American Jeeps, American tanks, American ammunition and Americans arms there was no chance of russian response.
But Stalin profited on the american generosity to send hit-men and spies 4000 out of the 6000 delegation sent to the USA to pick the help were the former .
And yes if in 1935 , France and Great Britain were able to stop Hitler . They stopped Germany in 1923.
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November 20, 2009, 9:09 pmMark Field says:
If Mises really said that, he was out of his mind.
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November 20, 2009, 9:49 pmDNJ says:
I strongly dislike Churchill’s attitude towards India, but this is not true. His racial views were complicated and there is no clear answer to whether he was racist; it depends how you define racism. But to suggest that Churchill regarded the Indians as Hitler regarded the Jews is absurd. He saw the British as civilizing the Indian people; if they were “subhumans, beasts, savages” then they would not have been able to be civilized.
Consider the following quotation from a minute issued by Churchill on 14 October 1939:
“First Lord to Second Sea Lord and others concerned, and Secretary
There must be no discrimination on grounds of race or colour [in the Royal Navy]... I cannot see any objection to Indians serving on H.M. ships where they are qualified and needed, or, if their virtues so deserve, rising to be Admirals of the Fleet.”
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November 20, 2009, 10:03 pmDilan Esper says:
Anderson:
Since we already know that the French Army was completely pathetic when the Germans actually attacked, it’s fanciful to argue that they actually could have beaten the Germans. The French Army sucked.
There are big ideological reasons why people lie about this. As I said, the idea that mlitary force always works as long as you have the will is a notion that many hawks are invested in. So, yes, it’s easy enough to find people who claim that it was easy to beat the Germans. History shows what BS this is, and your thinking killed 58,000 brave Americans in Vietnam and 4,500 in Iraq fighting completely pointless wars.
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November 21, 2009, 12:15 amLeo Marvin says:
Does Anderson really strike you as someone who’s prone to that sort of thinking, or easily fooled by someone who is? I certainly don’t know enough to take sides in your argument. I’m just surprised this is how you’d describe his position.
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November 21, 2009, 1:48 amPerseus says:
With that line of thinking we should add a bust of Hitler to the memorial for foolishly waging a two-front war.
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November 21, 2009, 3:42 amRicardo says:
That’s quite unfair. When the Nazis invaded France, the government and a substantial proportion of the civilian population of Paris evacuated far in advance of the German troops. They did this in order to spare Paris any bombing or destruction caused by war. By contrast, Britain put up a strong fight against the Nazis in the Battle of Britain just following the French capitulation and never considered evacuating London despite the thousands of civilian casualties and substantial destruction caused by German bombing.
FDR could also be criticized quite easily for interning 100,000 Japanese civilians during WWII and not doing much of anything to address lynching or Jim Crow in the south. FDR refused to publicly support an anti-lynching bill in the 1930s out of the (correct) fear that the Democratic Party would lose the South if he did. In general, the search for heroic individuals who would satisfy all our modern moral ideals is very difficult for individuals born before the 1920s.
That said, I agree with the comment above about Stalin’s irrelevance to a D-Day Memorial. Ideally, the Memorial would spend more space commemorating those who actually put themselves in harms way.
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November 21, 2009, 7:48 amPintler says:
That WWI, Vietnam, and Iraq were bad ideas doesn’t mean that Munich was a good idea. You can go to war too late as well as too soon.
If you have sources that think Germany was a match for France and Britain at the time of the Rhineland and Sudetenland, I would really like to know about them. That is a very contrarian position, and I’d really like to read it.
Here’s another one (Shirer, p 424, quoting Manstein, a leading German armor commander, about the Sudetenland): ‘If war had broken out, neither our western border nor our Polish frontier could have been effectively defended by us, and there is no doubt whatsoever that had Czechoslovakia defended herself, we would have been held up by her fortifications, for we did not have the means to break through’.
If your logic is that the Germans walked over the French in 1940, so they could have done so in 1936 or 1938, you are aware that the German military increased dramatically in that time period? To quote Jodl again (if anyone is not familiar w/ Jodl, he’s not a neocon chickenhawk theorist, he was the WWII German chief of staff), Shirer p. 424, at the time of the Sudetenland: ‘It was out of the question, with five fighting divisions and seven reserve divisions in the western fortifications, which were nothing but a large construction zone, to hold out against 100 French divisions. That was militarily impossible.’ (emphasis added)
While granting a qualitative difference between the French and German armies, since we’re talking about Stalin :-), isn’t he quoted as saying ‘quantity has a quality all its own’? 100 divisions is a lot more than 12. The military professionals of the German high command, speaking after the fact and with full knowledge of the deficiencies of the French army are unequivocal in their belief they would have lost. Hitler himself believed he would lose. If there is a serious history of the period that disagrees, I would love to read it. WWII historians argue endlessly about a lot of things — was invading Italy wise, was the bombing campaign wise, should MacArthur have bypassed the Philippines, was the broad front advance across France a good idea, and so on — but this is the first time I have heard it posited that Germany could have defeated the allies in 1936/38.
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November 21, 2009, 7:54 amRicardo says:
Dilan, at the peak of WWII, government spending as a percentage of GDP in the U.S. jumped from 20% to over 50% and after the war it plummeted down to the low 20s. It’s fair to say that Americans devoted 30% of all goods and services to the war effort during WWII. Nothing like this since the Civil War had ever occurred (even WWI was tiny by comparison) and nothing like it has happened since. That’s not to mention the draft, strict rationing, and many, many other sacrifices that Americans made during that time.
Vietnam and Iraq may well have been un-winnable but in terms of national will-power they do not even come close to the degree of will-power demonstrated during WWII. Iraq and Vietnam were both fought with the idea that Americans could largely carry on life as usual while American soldiers risked their lives in remote places. I think it is fair to say Americans would not have tolerated and will not tolerate anything close to the degree of sacrifice required of them during WWII for a conflict like Iraq or Vietnam.
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November 21, 2009, 8:00 amCaptainchaos says:
“And if the photo in the Daily News article represents the bust (I’m not sure whether it does), I don’t see much embodiment of terror there.”
One is hard pressed to conceive of what could possibly symbolically ‘embody’ Stalin’s terror; a statue which depicts him consuming the bodies of Slavic infants, blood and gore dripping from his fangs, perhaps?
“The Soviet Union’s tenacity in fighting the Nazis — after Stalin had earlier helped the Nazis, both by allying himself with them and by earlier weakening the Soviet military with the purges — was indubitably critical in winning the war.”
That “tenacity” was itself the product of Stalin’s terror, to wit: machine guns placed at the backs of Russian soldiers to mow them down in the instance they retreated, their families sent to be worked to death in the gulags if they surrendered, and the bombing of Russian POWs.
Also interesting, Stalin well planned to invade Western Europe, the result of which would have been the turning of it into one giant Katyn mass grave. The decapitation of the gene-pools of peoples which would then be replaced by an alien elite was the Bolshevik method, no?
“At the same time, nothing says that the bust inevitably honors the subject. There are such things as captions, which could be placed prominently on the sculpture, and the captions can easily put things in proper perspective.”
How about this caption: “In 1932–33, the year Adolf Hitler came to power, ten million Ukrainians were slaughtered by the butchers Kaganovitch and Yagoda a few hundred miles of Germany’s eastern border.”
“...would sufficiently make clear that Stalin is not the moral peer of his neighbors Roosevelt and Churchill.”
Oh? I suppose the incineration of Dresden and the quasi-implementation of the Morgenthau Plan are non-events. The question should arise, just what was won, ultimately, for the sons of Europe? The triumph of two systems, which, when taken to their logical conclusions ensure annihilation, whether the slow-trickle genocide enabled by liberal capitalist democracy or, as one man once put it, “the bloody Bolshevization of the earth.” After all, what should it matter to us if “principle” won out but our people die? The lesson to those that love their people should be clear: The wages of the sin of betraying your own blood is death.
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November 21, 2009, 8:53 amdavod says:
“But D-Day would have been at least very different, and likely impossible, if the Soviets hadn’t successfully engaged much of the Nazi army on the Eastern Front.)
Let us not forget the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact. Would Germany have invaded Poland without the agreement.
The USSR took its share of the spoils when Germany invaded Poland.
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November 21, 2009, 9:26 amdavod says:
“He’s part of the narrative,” said Pumphrey [The sculpter]. “We may not like Stalin, but if he had not challenged Hitler on the Eastern Front, then victories on the Western Front may not have been possible.”
WTF! I suppose the USSR could have surendered.
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November 21, 2009, 9:36 amerp says:
Gee Frankie gave his Uncle Joe all of eastern Europe. Wasn’t that enough?
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November 21, 2009, 9:54 amCaptainchaos says:
James Bacque, author of Other Losses, wrote:
“The math is simple: about 1.5 million German prisoners alive in allied prison camps at the end of the war never came home, nor were their deaths reported to the German government, their families, the International Red Cross, or the UN. The figure was determined by the Adenauer government in Germany, submitted to the UN, and has never been disputed by anyone. Thus, when Other Losses came out in 1989, alleging deaths of about one million in French and American camps, that left about 500,000 to be accounted for. They could have died only in the KGB camps, because there were not half a million prisoners in any other camps in the world. Thus, in effect Other Losses was predicting that when the communists opened the KGB archives, they would show deaths of about 500,000. And lo and behold, when Gorbachev brought down the communist rule, and the archives were opened, I went there, and found the Bulanov Report which showed that 356,687 Germans died in Soviet captivity, plus another 93,900 civilians taken as substitutes for dead or escaped prisoners for a total of 450,587.”
Imagine that, sound documentation to back up claims of atrocities.
The words of Iyla Ehrenburg, a Soviet propagandist, in a pamphlet distributed to Soviet soldiers:
“The Germans are not human beings. From now on, the word ‘German’ is the most horrible curse. From now on, the word ‘German’ strikes us to the quick. We have nothing to discuss. We will not get excited. We will kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day ... If you cannot kill a German with a bullet, then kill him with your bayonet. If your part of the front is quiet and there is no fighting, then kill a German in the meantime ... If you have already killed a German, then kill another one — there is nothing more amusing to us than a heap of German corpses. Don’t count the days, don’t count the kilometers. Count only one thing: the number of Germans you have killed. Kill the Germans! ... — Kill the Germans! Kill!”
Incidentally, or perhaps not, Ehrenburg is the source of the alleged four million people exterminated at Auschwitz; that number has officially (see the plaque outside the camp itself) been reduced to 1.5 million. Even Rudolf Hoss, the one time commandant of Auschwitz only claimed three million exterminated, which must have been the result of a momentary lapse in concentration on his part as it was his job to know what went on in that camp — perhaps the fact that his statement was produced under torture produced said lapse.
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November 21, 2009, 10:28 amCaptainchaos says:
More from Ehrenburg:
“Use force and break the racial pride of these German women. Take them as your lawful booty.”
Kaganovitch, Yagoda, Ehrenburg. Collective guilt is a sword with two edges.
From Comrade Trotsky:
“The movement of the colored races against their imperialist oppressors is one of the most important and powerful movements against the existing order and therefore calls for the complete unconditional, and unlimited support on the part of the proletariat of the white race.”
The “colored races” galvanized by explicit calls to their racial pride, the White working class encouraged to betray all such loyalty and be submerged in a sea of mongrelization (the genocide of the bed chamber — total racial destruction) whilst the true instigators keep their blood pure.
Class war and culture war as a proxy for race war. Amalek must die. The blood Bolshevization of the earth.
The words of Revilo Oliver:
“...for the Germans of 1939–1945 gave proof of a heroism and courage unsurpassed in all history and unmatched in modern times. They were also the only nation that had a rational perception of the realities of the modern world and the exigencies they impose–the only nation that dared to perceive and confront the deadly danger that impended over all civilized mankind–the only nation on whom there does not now rest the inexpiable guilt of the Suicide of the West.”
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November 21, 2009, 11:09 amAnderson says:
Dilan, the fact that will is not *sufficient*, does not mean that it’s not *necessary*. Please don’t confuse me with the “Green Lantern” school of foreign policy.
Since we already know that the French Army was completely pathetic when the Germans actually attacked, it’s fanciful to argue that they actually could have beaten the Germans. The French Army sucked.
This is probably a myth. Ernest R. May’s Strange Victory is a good place to see why. 1940 was at bottom an intel failure by the French — they failed to guess where the Germans would come, put their worst troops there, and suffered accordingly.
In 1936, Germany’s rearmament was much less well along, whereas the French, being scared of the Germans, had a decent army — certainly enough to chase the Germans back across the Rhine, probably enough to win the “war” outright, and very likely enough to deal Hitler a political blow he couldn’t have recovered from.
It was Hitler’s string of victories that made the Army believe it didn’t dare topple him, and the Rhineland was first in the string. Counterfactuals are just that, counterfactual, but it’s difficult to see Hitler staying in power after such a humiliation.
(P.S. — Thanks, Leo!)
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November 21, 2009, 12:41 pmPintler says:
BTW, Hitler himself is a classic example of that idea failing. He overruled his generals early in the war (during the first Russian winter counter offensive???) when they wanted to make strategic withdrawals. When the overstretched Germans managed to hang on nonetheless, Hitler decided that was evidence that anything was possible if only he willed it strongly enough, and he viewed subsequent defeats as the result of weakness in his general’s wills, instead of being over matched by the Soviet army.
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November 21, 2009, 2:01 pmSandy MacHoots says:
In WWI the French were certainly not strong enough to defeat the Germans, but they were chiefly responsible (despite horrendous strategic leadership) for holding them in check for the three years prior to U.S. intervention. They did much, much better against the Germans than the Russians did.
In 1940 the Germans had 141 divisions, many of them veterans of the Polish campaign, to throw against 144 French divisions. Four years before there had been only 12 divisions, many of them still only partially trained and none with battle experience. The German Rhineland invasion force was about 20 battalions and some planes. German conscription had only begun the previous year. A French mobilization would have raised 100 trained divisions. All of this is presumably why Hitler promised his worried generals that he would abandon the Rhineland if the French crossed the border. Hitler guessed correctly that France would not want to spend the money to intervene, that the British didn’t care, and that the Italians — who were getting pissed at Britain over Ethiopia — would do nothing.
To say that France in 1936 could not have crushed the German forces in the Rhineland (when Germany still had to worry about sizeable Polish, Russian, and Czech armies on its borders) because four years later France was defeated by Germany is a stretch.
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November 21, 2009, 2:58 pmDavid Nieporent says:
Yes, but young Mr. Yglesias, armed with a philosophy degree from Harvard, knows differently, never mind that his pithy little quote about a comic book character cuts precisely the opposite way from the one Dilan is trying to use it for. (Nobody claims that the U.S. could win in Vietnam (or Iraq) with “will,” but rather with “will plus the United States military.” Whereas the liberal counterargument is that the communists couldn’t lose because they had more will.)
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November 21, 2009, 2:59 pmStrict says:
“I strongly dislike Churchill’s attitude towards India, but this is not true. His racial views were complicated and there is no clear answer to whether he was racist...
Consider the following quotation from a minute issued by Churchill on 14 October 1939:
“First Lord to Second Sea Lord and others concerned, and Secretary
There must be no discrimination on grounds of race or colour [in the Royal Navy]... I cannot see any objection to Indians serving on H.M. ships where they are qualified and needed, or, if their virtues so deserve, rising to be Admirals of the Fleet.””
So? He said Indians could serve the British military. That’s like saying I am not a racist because I believe that my black colonial subjects could work real hard in my cotton fields (for free!).
From wikiquote:
Winston Churchill: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”
(In conversation to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India. This quotation is widely cited as written in “a letter to Leo Amery” (e.g., in “Jolly Good Fellows and Their Nasty Ways” by Vinay Lal in Times of India (15 January 2007)) but it is actually attributed to Churchill as a remark, in an entry for September 1942 in Leo Amery : Diaries (1988), edited John Barnes and David Nicholson, p. 832:
During my talk with Winston he burst out with: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”)
Churchill wasn’t racist? LOL. He hated Indians, considered them beasts and uncivilized. He was partly responsible for the famine that killed millions in Bengal in the 1940s, and he actively stoked the flames of hatred between Hindus and Muslims as part of the British “divide and rule” colonial strategy. Churchill was quoted as saying that the Hindu-Muslim antipathy was “all to the good,” even though it resulted in the murder of more than 1 million people, and the displacement of tens of millions more.
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November 21, 2009, 5:04 pmAnderson says:
People born in 1879 were racist? Alert the media!
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November 21, 2009, 5:23 pmStrict says:
“People born in 1879 were racist? Alert the media!”
Well, if you are a world leader whose racism lead to genocidal and imperialist policies, then it’s a problem; especially if it’s a leader who is currently being glorified.
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November 21, 2009, 6:26 pmDilan Esper says:
If you have sources that think Germany was a match for France and Britain at the time of the Rhineland and Sudetenland, I would really like to know about them. That is a very contrarian position, and I’d really like to read it
I have a pretty obvious source, which is that the French army couldn’t even put up a fight when the Germans attacked. Neither could the Czechs. And as for the British, they needed YEARS plus the Soviet and American armies to defeat the Germans.
The idea that it was a piece of cake to take care of the Germans is a counterfactual that assumes that an army that kicked everyone’s asses was easily beaten by the same folks whose asses it kicked.
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November 21, 2009, 6:29 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Dilan, you seem to have a hard time understanding that the German army which won big in 1940 is not what Germany had in 1936. You acknowledge that the British needed time to build up their army, but seem to think the German military was static throughout the whole time period. Germany needed time to build up its army, too. In 1936, it wasn’t prepared to fight the French.
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November 21, 2009, 7:03 pmPintler says:
@Dilan: times change. The Grand Armee that conquered almost all of Europe in the early 1800s was defeated at Waterloo. The German army in 1936/38 was no where close to the German army of 1940. Germany was limited to a 100000 man army until 1935, and no modern armor or combat aircraft. They cheated as much as they could, with glider clubs and Hitler Youth rifle clubs and so on, but they simply hadn’t had time to build up enough to face the allies. This wiki page has a graph of military expenditures. Germany doesn’t pass France alone until 1938, and then Germany is spending only as much as France and Britain together. In 1936 France and Britain outspent Germany by 50% or more.
On one hand, I have your opinion. On the other I have the opinion of the German general staff, both at the time (1936/38) and after the war, with the insights gained by defeating France in 1940. They categorically disagree with you. Despite losing the war, the German general staff are not, AFAICT, viewed as incompetent by the participants in or historians of WWII. If you are going to persuade, you’ll have to explain why you think their assessment was wrong.
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November 21, 2009, 7:56 pmCaptainchaos says:
“Well, if you are a world leader whose racism lead to genocidal and imperialist policies, then it’s a problem; especially if it’s a leader who is currently being glorified.”
I take it you must be referring the Prime Minister Netanyahu, who now leads the apartheid state of Israel in which guest workers must sign a contract by which they forswear sexual relations with Israeli citizens, in which marriages between Jews and non-Jews are not legally recognized, in whose torture chambers anything goes, even unto genital mutilation. It should rightly fill us all with pride that the people who have been so very instrumental in pathologizing our own peoplehood, in the minds of our people, can comfortably pursue their sadistic racial fascism on our tax dollars.
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November 21, 2009, 9:26 pmDavid Nieporent says:
Responding to quasi-neo-nazi trolls is probably a waste of time, but the above claims are, to use a technical term, false.
(By calling these false I am not implying that any of his other claims are true.)
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November 21, 2009, 9:35 pmDilan Esper says:
Dilan, you seem to have a hard time understanding that the German army which won big in 1940 is not what Germany had in 1936. You acknowledge that the British needed time to build up their army, but seem to think the German military was static throughout the whole time period. Germany needed time to build up its army, too. In 1936, it wasn’t prepared to fight the French.
As I said, the French sucked. They sucked in 1936. They sucked in 1940. Counting on the French Army is about as effective as counting on divine intervention.
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November 22, 2009, 1:11 amDilan Esper says:
This wiki page has a graph of military expenditures. Germany doesn’t pass France alone until 1938, and then Germany is spending only as much as France and Britain together. In 1936 France and Britain outspent Germany by 50% or more. On one hand, I have your opinion. On the other I have the opinion of the German general staff, both at the time (1936/38) and after the war, with the insights gained by defeating France in 1940. They categorically disagree with you. Despite losing the war, the German general staff are not, AFAICT, viewed as incompetent by the participants in or historians of WWII. If you are going to persuade, you’ll have to explain why you think their assessment was wrong.
They were telling people what they wanted to hear. WW2 produced a whole lot of Churchillian types who desperately wanted to believe that will and force could have stopped the Nazis. And given Hitler’s staff was in a whole lot of trouble, they were going to say whatever they figured people wanted to hear.
As for military spending, that’s a really stupid argument. As I said, the French army proved it was worthless. Not just defeated, but worthless. They couldn’t even put up a fight. To say that an army that couldn’t even last a couple of months with the Germans could have beaten the Germans just a couple of years earlier is the height of stupidity.
Bottom line, the best thing to do was what Chamberlain did– appease and buy time to build up the army and get allies. Churchill was horrible even though he was right about the threat– had he been in charge, Hitler would have conquered Britain.
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November 22, 2009, 1:15 amDavid Nieporent says:
You can keep repeating it, and it won’t make any more sense. Even if your assessment of the French army were accurate, you don’t seem to grasp that in 1936, Germany’s army (and its tactical position) was even weaker.
You haven’t presented a single fact in support of your position, and when people point out that German officials themselves disagreed with you, you invent silly arguments for why they must be lying, instead of just accepting that your assessment is based on nothing at all. (I thought it was supposed to be the neoconsevative hawks whose entire argument is “France sucks.”) Why not look at what actually happened when France attacked an unprepared Germany?
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November 22, 2009, 4:18 amPintler says:
Jodl was putting entries in his diary in 1938 that he thought the victorious allies would want to read in 1945?
As a thought experiment: if Germany could have walked over the Allies in 1936, and the German generals and Hitler knew it — why didn’t they?
Hitler doesn’t impress me as the kind of chap to let his opponents build up so as to make a fair fight of it.
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November 22, 2009, 11:26 amCaptainchaos says:
“Responding to quasi-neo-nazi trolls is probably a waste of time, but the above claims are, to use a technical term, false.”
But were it so, Dave.
Read:
“In 2001, then-labor and social affairs minister Shlomo Benizri said: “I just don’t understand why a restaurant needs a slant-eye to serve me my meal.”[6] Even Jews of Chinese descent suffer harassment and poor treatment by immigration police.[2]
Employers have also been known to impose humiliating restrictions on Chinese workers in their employment contracts. In 2003, a report by The Guardian stated that Chinese workers at an unspecified company had been required to agree not to have sex with or marry Israeli women, including prostitutes, as a condition of getting a job. An anonymous Israeli lawyer, however, claims that these contracts only appear legal but could be proven illegal if challenged in court.[7]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_people_in_Israel
“Slant-eye,” and this from a guy named Shlomo, why John Smith should sacrifice his peoplehood on the alter of the Holocaust is a mystery to me.
And if you liked the first one, you’ll like this even more:
“Couples not considered Jewish according to Jewish law will be able to tie the knot in a civil marriage, following a consensus on a bill reached Wednesday between Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann and Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar.
This is the first time that the religious establishment has given the go-ahead to a civil marriage and divorce procedure. However, the bill drafted by Friedmann and Amar, will be restricted to cases in which both spouses are not considered Jewish according to Jewish law (halakha).”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/883612.html
My G-d, now people in Israel who are not even considered Jewish — according to Jewish law — can be married. How progressive.
Now Dave, there is something you must begin to know, if you wish to have any knowledge of what goes on in this life, and it is this: If a (White) man scratches just beneath the surface of Jewish superfice he will find a mass psychology that is profoundly antagonistic to his peoplehood. And if he loves his people, and wishes them to live and not die, he will become acquainted with a perhaps painful truth, that he cannot serve two nationalisms — his own and another’s — when the latter regards his own as a mortal threat.
Our nation — what was that ever but freedom in a virgin land which facilitated the flowering of Northwestern European Man’s progenerative abilities? — once a city on a hill, has become a nearly exhausted ember on a dung heap.
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November 22, 2009, 1:03 pmDilan Esper says:
As a thought experiment: if Germany could have walked over the Allies in 1936, and the German generals and Hitler knew it — why didn’t they?
Because it made sense for Germany to build up its military too. You can conquer territory, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can hold it.
Jodl was putting entries in his diary in 1938 that he thought the victorious allies would want to read in 1945?
So nobody has ever covered his butt in case something goes wrong?
You’d have a better case on all this if the French put up a valiant fight, held the Germans at bay for a year or two, and then finally fell. In that instance, you could argue that the French Army could have defeated the Germans before the buildup.
But the French didn’t do that. The best analogy to you argument would be to argue that Saddam Hussein could have defeated the Americans before the Reagan defense buildup. That’s essentially what you are arguing– that an army that showed itself to be completely outmatched, not just valiant but eventually beaten, could have kicked ass and took names just a couple of years earlier.
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November 22, 2009, 1:34 pmCaptainchaos says:
“Responding to quasi-neo-nazi trolls is probably a waste of time,”
This is precious. Recall, Lindbergh was a god, and after having spoken his conscious, and the truth, as only a good and honorable man could do, he was henceforth rendered to the obscurity of an unperson. That’s right Dave, I am not a morally normal man who wishes to do his duty by his people, but an unperson. Do you even think as you type, or is the Pavlovian sufficient for you? Perhaps one should not hold it against you, it is for most. For that is usually all that is called for to gain one’s status and self-righteousness.
As for me, I can do no other than to stand by my people, loyal unto death; and leave none of the devil’s handiwork in place, not in our land, not in our blood. Our enemies have no natural right to follow and hound us to extinction, the right we have to continue to be presumes a life that must be, in the main, exclusively our own. It is nothing that they do not ask for themselves, but there should be no mistake, we certainly are not soliciting their permission.
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November 22, 2009, 1:46 pmCaptainchaos says:
What is really at issue here? I will tell you all. It is the proposition that belief in the traditional Holocaust narrative and philo-Semitism is the sine qua non of moral rectitude. A profession of belief, and actions consistent with that, to serve Jewish interests above all others, the one power before which all must bow. Even unto granting a reluctant, partial immunity to Stalin and Bolshevism (Bolshevism — a nadir of brutality so hellacious one is well founded in wondering if it were not vampiric demons who effected it). The Jewish commenters in this thread are at peace with that, so long as Germany, and the German people were utterly destroyed. I do not realistically expect them to give up their especially execrable brand of moral particularism now, not after all this time. But for you, you White men, you must know, and if not should be told, that the right of your people to exist is a right absolute. It does not depend in the least on your obeisance before any externality — certainly not one which commands you to serve it lest you be damned. What could such a counter-contention be but a depraved insanity.
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November 22, 2009, 2:33 pmLeo Marvin says:
Quasi?
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November 22, 2009, 2:56 pmPintler says:
The US Army would decisively overmatch Iraq in 1990, in 2000, and in fact at any time since WWII, as you would expect given that the US is a vastly larger, richer, and more populous country than Iraq, as any detailed examination of the order of battle would show.
But on the subject at hand, respectfully, I am arguing that the generally accepted view among military historians is that the Allies could have defeated Germany easily in 1936, and fairly easily in 1938.
These are fundamentally arguments in which the details matter — how many battalions, in what kind of terrain, with what kind of equipment. I have not tallied those in detail personally, walked the Czech border fortifications, etc, but the people who have made a point of such study after the war, and were active participants, are IMHE unanimous on the subject. Now, I may have missed a source — I have only read (at a guess) a dozen memoirs and histories covering that period (which is not covered as well as 1939 onwards), and maybe there is a new one out with recently declassified info or something. That’s why I am interested in your sources — I don’t think you were a participant, and so your information must come either from your own independent research, or, like mine, from a book. If you went through the archives yourself and it’s your own unpublished research, fine. If it’s from a book, I’d like to evaluate it myself. But just glossing over it and saying ‘it’s simple and obvious and I don’t need the details to say that’ is not convincing, any more than if you were a global warming denier saying the same thing.
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November 22, 2009, 3:10 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
I was being charitable. I’m not sure the “neo” prefix is needed either.
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November 22, 2009, 3:56 pmCaptainchaos says:
“Quasi?”
I forgot, it is not the proper station of a White man to possess a smidgen of verbal IQ, and certainly not an IQ 2 SD above the mean. Apologies.
After all, the “Wannsee Conference Protocol” is alleged to have been written by Eichmann in which it is suggested that Jews were to be sent to the East with all alacrity, yet, were to construct the then non-existent roads there as they went — leaving aside that they were ultimately sent thence by train. But, Eichmann, and his superiors, were never accused of being morons; so, a bit of a crack in the cosmic egg then?
A more likely scenario? The “Protocol” is in fact a forgery concocted by the German-Jewish lawyer Kempner whom went back to see to the leveling of his former (auxilary) nation, and that it was not in fact “discovered” by him.
“The best analogy to you argument would be to argue that Saddam Hussein could have defeated the Americans before the Reagan defense buildup.”
What else could decent (White) men do but take as an article of faith the existence of Saddam’s gas chambers, er, I mean his WMD. You know, because Judith Miller, wife of editor Jason Epstein, of the NYT told us it was true.
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November 22, 2009, 4:01 pmAnderson says:
Wow. You meet so many ... different kinds of people on the internet.
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November 22, 2009, 7:01 pmLeo Marvin says:
I feel like a skunk got into my living room through the cat door, and I’m too transfixed to chase it out.
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November 22, 2009, 7:36 pmjohn thames says:
PARTNER IN ABSENTIA
Certain patriotic groups are outraged by the proposal to erect a monument to Joseph Stalin at the national D-Day Memorial. Actually, they should be overjoyed. Such a monument would demonstrate that Joseph Stalin was the real beneficiary of the D-Day invasion. Every German soldier killed by the Normandy invaders was a gift to the Soviet Union. It is true that Stalin and the Red Army did not land at Omaha and Utah beaches. But every German soldier present at Normandy was absent from Russia – and that is what Stalin wanted. It was “Uncle Joe” who wanted the second front in France – and that is what the Normandy invasion gave him. The slow advance of the Americans and British through France – and it was very slow indeed – made the westward advance of the Red Army that much more rapid.
The D-Day invasion was a gift to Stalin – and it is time that it was so recognized. Some shall object that portraying American soldiers as servants of the Soviet Union distorts history and insults their sacrifice. In fact, it merely confirms the isolationist objections to American involvement in the war. Putting up a monument to Joseph Stalin at the D-Day Memorial no more insults the soldiers of the American Army than putting up a monument of Joseph Stalin patting Franklin Roosevelt on the head would demean the WW2 Memorial in the nations capitol. But a Joseph Stalin Memorial would not be complete without a tribute to those he served. WW2 is known these days as the “liberation” of Europe. It is therefore only fitting that the D-Day and WW2 Memorials should commemorate the identity of the liberators. Thus, there should be busts of all the chief “liberators” in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Rumania. The names and busts of Marcus Wolf, Hilda Benjamin, Jacob Berman, Hillary Minc, Hersh Smolar, Helena Volinska, Walter Groz, Rudolf Slanski, Mattias Gottwald, Ana Pauker, Jacob Broitman, Ilke Wasserman, Matyas Rakosi, Ernest Singer, Benjamin Auschpitz, Moses Kahane and many others should loom large as exhibits.
The victory of American soldiers did not enshrine Americans as commissars over half of Europe. It made commissars of a group that had supposedly been exterminated. How appropriate then, that the leader of this elect group of “Chosen” commissars, should be glorified as a partner in absentia of the Normandy, D-Day invasion.
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November 22, 2009, 10:46 pmStones Cry Out - If they keep silent… » Things Heard: e96v1 says:
[...] Stalin and a war memorial. [...]
Dilan Esper says:
Pintler:
I am not sure to what extent it actually is a historical consensus, but when the consensus doesn’t make logical sense, it doesn’t make logical sense.
And there are certainly quite a bit of incentives for everyone to want to say this, from former Nazis who needed to cover their butts to all the people who would like to believe that there was some magical solution that could have avoided WW2.
So you have something that people would like to believe but which makes no logical sense based on the actual results. That’s not saying it COULD NOT be true– only that it’s like believing that a team that went 70–92 in the baseball season would have won the world series if it weren’t for one injured pitcher. It’s really hard to believe that an army that lost as decisively as the French did was assured of victory such a short time earlier.
I should say one other thing about this– at most, what your historians could establish is that the French had the MILITARY CAPABILITY to beat the Germans at that point. That’s a lot different from saying they would have beaten them. Wars are determined not only by capabilities, but by strategy, troop morale, and a whole bunch of other factors.
Chamberlain’s approach– even though he grossly underestimated the Nazi threat– was a heck of a lot less risky than rolling the dice and going to war at a time when the British military was really underbuilt and understaffed (and stretched thin maintaining an empire). Imagine what would have happened if Britain had rolled the dice and lost.
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November 23, 2009, 1:28 pmHerb Spencer says:
Several points: The French and British were fighting the Germans long before the Russians were, and France had surrendered over a year before Hitler invaded the USSR in 1941. The British went to war in 1939 because Germany violated Poland, just as they did in 1914 when Germany violated Belgium. The Yale project that unearthed and analyzed the Kremlin records relating to the Spanish Civil War confirmed that Stalin used that opportunity to kill Trotskyites and other enemies, along with naive Americans, there as he did everywhere else. As for Churchill’s alleged racism, the first lesson any historian learns — and the first one s/he seems to forget once draped with a JD — is that you NEVER report the past in terms of the present. Editorialize and opine as you will, but then you’ve become, to paraphrase Somerset Maugham, “not a historian but a politician [or journalist], and deserve to be treated as one.” And, your opinions generally suffer the effects of future shock as well.
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November 23, 2009, 1:39 pmPintler says:
Not given the changes in the German army over that period. It’s like saying that the US beat Japan decisively in 1945, and so would have beaten them in the Philippines in 1942, or that the allied success at D-Day means the same thing could have happened in 1941. When countries are rapidly rearming, a couple of years can matter a great deal.
Indeed. IIUC, the prevailing opinion is that it wouldn’t have been a protracted war, because Hitler would have been deposed. The German people like him because he had pulled them out of the economic funk, and the generals liked him for starting to restore the military, but a lot of people thought he was mad to risk confrontation before Germany was fully rearmed. In fact, when he rolled the dice against such long odds and succeeded, it empowered him against later critics (when, e.g., he decided to invade the USSR, and his generals objected, he could just point out that his gambles worked before). Sorry, no cites for the German mood of the time, this is from memory.
You are certainly playing for keeps at that level, and that’s why simplistic analyses must be avoided. People using Munich to justify the second Iraq war are off base, IMHO, as were people using Vietnam to object to the first one. I think we probably agree on one thing — the outcomes of wars are difficult to predict a priori (1), and they can be easier to get into than out of. I guess I disagree both with people who say that war is never the answer, and those who think it’s the only answer. It is sometimes the best of the bad choices available, but one should never plan on a cheap or easy war, or engage in one lightly.
(1)One of the most poignant video clips I have seen is a group of British soldiers marching to the embarkation port right after WWI broke out, when everyone was still expecting a six week war. It’s a big holiday — pretty girls blowing kisses, flowers being thrown, all the troops smiling. And watching it, you know that the overwhelming majority of those troops died in the war, and your mind’s eye flashes ahead to the scenes of trench warfare, and it makes you want to cry.
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November 23, 2009, 3:55 pmPintler says:
I just strolled to the used bookstore to see if I could find a source for the 1936 German order of battle, alas w/o success. I did find Liddell Hart’s ‘History of the Second World War’, 1970 ed., which has a brief prelude chapter that states (p. 6, citing German archives captured after the war):
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November 23, 2009, 4:56 pmLeo Marvin says:
Where’d the Nazis go?
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November 23, 2009, 9:47 pmLeo Marvin says:
Now I feel like Tony Soprano with the ducks.
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November 24, 2009, 5:32 pm