Posted on 09/02/2009 5:58:34 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
By 1930 Verdun had been transmogrified almost into a dirty word in French schools. Throughout the late 1920s, the First World War was increasingly reinterpreted in the West as a futile bloodletting. International “Merchants of Death” and greedy capitalists, not the Kaiser’s aggressive Prussian militarism, were now seen as the true causes of that recent horrific war. A punitive Versailles Treaty — and not the failure to invade, occupy, democratize, monitor, and transform a defeated Germany — was seen as the real mistake on the part of the victors.
Britain and France all but disarmed. The Maginot defensive line, England’s island status, the new and welcomed art of appeasement (originally, lest we forget, a suitably liberal and humane idea), growing socialist movements, the League of Nations, and a new pacifism were all seen as substitutes for Neanderthal notions like deterrence and military preparedness. Perpetual peace was supposed to follow — and not another war with Germany a mere 20 years after the last one. Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, and the rest begged to differ.
(snip)
So there is no need to mention what follows next in this tired old script. We may experience another attack like 9/11, given that many terrorists must now believe that the United States either cannot or will not go after them in the manner of the last eight years
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
VDH ping.
Great analysis as usual.
Just a partial list. Much more at the link: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index
Time after time, Western leaders have convinced themselves that magnanimity is a better defense than military preparedness. Until the next attack. Is Obama about to lead us on another cycle?
Ping !
Let me know if you want in or out. Links:
FR Index of his articles: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index NRO archive: http://author.nationalreview.com/?q=MjI1MQ== Pajamasmedia: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/ His website: http://victorhanson.com/
Yet they think we are the dunces while clinging to their own mistaken dreams.
“Kaiser’s aggressive Prussian militarism,”
is a nice revisionism except for the fact that war was celebrated and welcome in every western country. French were eager to pay back the Germans, people were convinced it will all be over in few month. It was a bloodletting too, something that broke back of the French as a nation (never to recover), bankrupted British empire and Germany, pushed Russia over the brink and into communist abyss.
Pacifism/appeasement was a direct result of having one generation of people wiped out. France lost over 4% of its total population, to compare.. if scaled to current US population it would be over 13 million killed. Add to that about 10% of population wounded.. (that would be around 30 million in current US population) think about it..
I agree with everything but the last part; if America experiences another 9/11, what we can expect is martial law and dictatorship, not any kind of backpedalling from the current appeasement policy.
I am afraid he is right, and that the BO administration is laying the groundwork for another inevitable attack on our country and our interests. Peace through strength. “Messianic and postnational” indeed.
Someone here a few years back told a tale of visiting a small town somewhere in the British Isles.
The town had a memorial to those lost in the Great War. Carved in stone were the names of about 200 men.
Also carved in stone on the same memorial, a few decades later, were the names of those men lost in WWII.
All four of them.
The Great War had wiped out the entire adult male population of that town.
A very under-appreciated factoid by the left.
from dimk: "is a nice revisionism except for the fact that war was celebrated and welcome in every western country. French were eager to pay back the Germans..."
Sorry, pal, but that's really stupid talk -- a combination of German propaganda and abysmal western education. In fact, the Great War was started by German leadership pushing Austria against Serbia, declaring war on Russia, and then invading Belgium and France.
France & Belgium declared war on no one, invaded no one. Britain was the only ally to declare war on Germany in 1914, and then only after Germany invaded neutral Belgium.
The long-lasting German effort to shirk blame for starting WWI is, of course, highly understandable. But it's simply not true, and we should not accept it.
See Fromkin: "Europe's Last Summer".
from dimk: "...pushed Russia over the brink and into communist abyss."
"The war" did not "push Russia over the brink," Germany did -- in a "sealed train," sending the Communist "baccillus" into Russia in order to achieve with politics what they could not militarily: Russian surrender.
The German high command not only "infected" Russia with Lenin, they supported him financially until he succeeded. Their pay-off, of course, was the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
Unfortunately it isn't quite like that in practice. Such doctrines are predominantly the product of people who view the stupidity of war (no argument from this veteran on that point) and conclude that it took place because the governments of the time were insufficiently clever and high-minded. And that they, being clever and high-minded, may avoid whatever mistakes that gave rise to the preceding war by measures short of it.
It's an attractive model but it does have a flaw, that being the equally clever and not high-minded, or rather those whose ideology permits them to conduct war in pursuit of something else. These, like the appeasers, tend to be utopians with their own vision in mind - Hitler, Stalin, and yes, bin Laden. They are effective because they understand their counterparts, and they understand them because they are, in the final analysis, so very similar.
Just a thought.
Look at the papers from the time, pretty much everyone was excited to finally stick it to the germans. Belgium did draw a bad deal from it. Maybe germans pushed Austria against Serbia.. however assassinating Archduke AND his wife might have had something to do with it too you know..
Lenin took power way after the first revolution (that forced Czar out). Kerinsky and the rest continued the war which empire was losing by that point in a spectacular fashion. As much as people want to believe in opposite Russian empire was in bad shape when war started. Then completely incompetent command of the army etc did the rest. Russian loss to Japan 10 years earlier was the first sign of the end.
You are correct about the Russians. They even had a name they called those who were “Germanic”.
What Germany did to Europe early in the last century, China is doing to Africa early in this century: Sudan, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Liberia, etc. It is to China’s advantage to have civil war throughout Africa, and they are taking advantage.
And through BO's manufactured crisis (nuclear, biological, whatever -- anything will serve his purposes), our freedom will go to waste.
What I love about Free Republic: The Instant Education, (often with illustrations), just minutes after a question is raised by another FReeper’s post.
Thanks!
Of course common people of all countries were "enthusiastic," because they were naturally patriotic. Their "enthusiasm" lasted until the first major bloodshed stripped away everything but fear and determination.
Can anyone seriously argue that the average French soldier was more or less "enthusiastic" than typical German or Austrian soldiers? I don't think so. So common "enthusiasm" was meaningless.
What matters is, which country's leadership wanted war and started war? Yes, of course, no average citizen in 1914 believed their country started the war. But looking back carefully through all the documentation, it's most clear that one country's leadership did want war and did start it. That country was Germany.
If you wish to debate how, why and when it all happened, I'm happy to do that. But again, I'll recommend David Fromkin's book: "Europe's Last Summer".
And while you're at it, read Barbara Tuchman's: "Guns of August". It is excellent, but devotes only ONE SUMMARY PAGE, just before chapter 6, to all those events which Fromkin's book covers in great detail.
The two books together will give you a pretty good understanding of what happened, and why.
Here's the bottom line, according to Fromkin: the war's outbreak was driven by the German General Staff, specifically its chief, General Helmuth von Moltke (the Younger), whose chief aid in charge of war plans had been an unknown colonel named Eric Ludendorf.
Of course the Russian Empire was in bad shape -- that's not even debatable. But when the Tsar was overthrown, it was by real democrats (small "d") highly friendly with and probably even supported by the Brits. These people were determined to keep Russia in the war, however badly it went -- for reasons of obvious benefit to the Brits and French in the West.
Lenin's crowd was the "peace party" sent & paid by the German General Staff (read: Ludendorf), specifically to take Russia out of the war, and so free up hundreds of thousands of German troops (50 divisions) to fight in France.
And it ALMOST worked -- if not for the good showing of a plucky band of new allies in June 1918, then fighting their most critical battle at a place called Belleau Wood.
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