Posted on 05/11/2005 9:08:36 AM PDT by EveningStar
If the objective of the West was the destruction of Nazi Germany, it was a "smashing" success. But why destroy Hitler? If to liberate Germans, it was not worth it. After all, the Germans voted Hitler in.
If it was to keep Hitler out of Western Europe, why declare war on him and draw him into Western Europe? If it was to keep Hitler out of Central and Eastern Europe, then, inevitably, Stalin would inherit Central and Eastern Europe.
Was that worth fighting a world war with 50 million dead?
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
Pat's apparently gone round the bend. What a loser!
They're not even new or original odd ideas; the whole article is basically recycled from some controversial British historian whose name escapes me at the moment.
Blasphemy!!! HERESY!!!! You're not allowed to SAY that!!!! EVERYBODY knows that right-wing Naziism is, was, and always will be the ULTIMATE EVIL!!! The MSM, Public Schools, politicians, and literati all tell me so ... and they would never lie about anything.
Even in that context, it's an absurd debating point. Pat seems to think that if Hitler had just been left alone, he wouldn't have attacked France. Which IMO is complete nonsense.
What was WWII about? Like all wars, it became something much different than what it was when the conflict started. And although I don't think much of FDR, I'm not sure what he could have done differently regarding the Soviet Union's occupation of central and eastern Europe after the war - unless he would have waged war with the Soviets after Hitler's fall - something I doubt the American people would have supported.
"So did Soviet occupied East Germany abandon the German language for Russian or did they just keep speaking German?"
Ooh, you got me. Boy, what keen insight. I surrender.
bumppity
Lasting shame?
You misspelled "crime against humanity".
On another thread [the same subject] I was comparing them as 80-proof vodka vs. 190 proof Everclear grain alcohol. Look at the relative ease and speed of denazification of Germany (or de-fascization of Italy) and compare with the difficulty of decommunization in Russia.
I find your position.....well, unrealistic.
You should get and read a recently released book titled "Wilsons War". Yes, it is talking about President Wilson but no, it is not talking about WWI. The author is Jim Powell. He writes extremely well, uses a ton of very good research and his arguments are very well thought out.
Today's discussions of Germany at war in the 1930s tend to ignore that WWI was not only a military defeat for Germany, the WWI treaties turned it into an economic basket case for decades; they carved up German territory to the benefit of the Poles, the Czecks, the Russians, Hungary and others; they prohibited Germany from having "overseas" territories (like both France and Britain continued to have) and they required Germany not only to disarm but to help France rearm. On top of that, it seems, from Mr. Powell's point of view, that without U.S. intervention in the 11th hour of the war, it simply would have stopped with a stalemate, with no one having gained or lost much territory, without massive and disproportionate economic burdens on Germany alone, with a healthier democracy and economy in Germany and less carving up of Eastern Europe. Mr. Powell goes on to demonstrate many other critical events that, possibly, may not have grown out of a western Europe where no one won WWI.
I am not at the point of agreeing here with Buchanan, on how we should or should not have gone to war against Hitler, but Jim Powell's book does make one question whether or not WWII was inevitable, as an outcome of our helping end WWI, at the time and in the way we did. I can see, carrying Mr. Powell's arguments a step further, that there might be room for an argument that Germany may have been at war with France and England, by the late 1930s, without Hitler or the Nazis or the Holocaust, simply due to how WWI ended. We have constantly tended to view both wars through the prism of France and Britain; while their views gloss over their own contributions to what Germany became.
Get Mr. Powell's book. It may not bring you to agree with Buchanan, but it should change how you view Europe and particularly our "allies" of two wars over there.
He ends his book with some broad conclusions about what he sees as parallels in our time. I disagree with him over how much today's circumstances differ from the 1940s, in kind and in substance. His book is still a good read; especially now when the configuration of Europe is changing so much as is our choices of allies and partners over there.
Don't forget or underestimate the Eisenhower follow-up. Disgraceful.
FMCDH(BITS)
As to whether a Thousand-Year Reich would have been easier to live with than communism turned out to be, I have no particular desire to judge - it's sort of like deciding whether you want to put up with AIDS or the Black Plague. "Neither" is a perfectly acceptable answer, and "neither" is what we ended up with, no thanks at all to the isolationists such as Buchanan who would have had us put up with both.
Actually he makes several valid points, even if you disagree with his conclusion. However, everyone on this board sees fit to regress to DU'ers and just call him an idiot rather than rebut his argument.
I do think that he is correct that communism was worse than Nazism. And I agree that the Eastern European fall to communism was a major defeat. The question is, could we have won the war against the Germans without allying with the Russians? If yes, FDR and Churchill were right to enter the war, but made a serious tactical error. If no, the question of whether we should have entered the war hinged on whether the Germans would have invaded Western Europe had we not entered. Buchanan thinks no, I think the obvious answer is yes.
I sympathize. Cheer up though, they have Ward Churchill, Noam Chomsky, Castro and Streisand on their side. Not to mention radical islam. : }
After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, German declared war on the United States, I guess we could have surrendered and made Pat happy.
Which I rub their noses in every chance I get!
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