Posted on 04/09/2008 9:47:21 AM PDT by Borges
"Yes, it was a good war," writes Richard Cohen in his column challenging the thesis of pacifist Nicholson Baker in his new book, "Human Smoke," that World War II produced more evil than good.
Baker's compelling work, which uses press clips and quotes of Axis and Allied leaders as they plunged into the great cataclysm, is a virtual diary of the days leading up to World War II.
Riveting to this writer was that Baker uses some of the same episodes, sources and quotes as this author in my own book out in May, "Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War.'"
On some points, Cohen is on sold ground. There are things worth fighting for: God and country, family and freedom. Martyrs have ever inspired men. And to some evils pacifism is no answer. Resistance, even unto death, may be required of a man.
But when one declares a war that produced Hiroshima and the Holocaust a "Good War," it raises a question: good for whom?
Britain declared war on Sept. 3, 1939, to preserve Poland. For six years, Poland was occupied by Nazi and Soviet armies and SS and NKVD killers. At war's end, the Polish dead were estimated at 6 million. A third of Poland had been torn away by Stalin, and Nazis had used the country for the infamous camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz.
Fifteen thousand Polish officers had been massacred at places like Katyn. The Home Army that rose in Warsaw at the urging of the Red Army in 1944 had been annihilated, as the Red Army watched from the other side of the Vistula. When the British celebrated V-E day in May 1945, Poland began 44 years of tyranny under the satraps of Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
Was World War II "a good war" for the Poles?
Was it a good war for Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, overrun by Stalin's army in June 1940, whose people saw their leaders murdered or deported to the Gulag never to return? Was it a good war for the Finns who lost Karelia and thousands of brave men dead in the Winter War?
Was it a good war for Hungarians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, Rumanians and Albanians who ended up behind the Iron Curtain? In Hungary, it was hard to find a women or girl over 10 who had not been raped by the "liberators" of the Red Army. Was it a good war for the 13 million German civilians ethnically cleansed from Central Europe and the 2 million who died in the exodus?
Was it a good war for the French, who surrendered after six weeks of fighting in 1940 and had to be liberated by the Americans and British after four years of Vichy collaboration?
And how good a war was it for the British?
They went to war for Poland, but Winston Churchill abandoned Poland to Stalin. Defeated in Norway, France, Greece, Crete and the western desert, they endured until America came in and joined in the liberation of Western Europe.
Yet, at war's end in 1945, Britain was bled and bankrupt, and the great cause of Churchill's life, preserving his beloved empire, was lost. Because of the "Good War" Britain would never be great again.
And were the means used by the Allies, the terror bombing of Japanese and German cities, killing hundreds of thousands of women and children, perhaps millions, the marks of a "good war"?
Cohen contends that the evil of the Holocaust makes it a "good war." But the destruction of the Jews of Europe was a consequence of this war, not a cause. As for the Japanese atrocities like the Rape of Nanking, they were indeed horrific.
But America's smashing of Japan led not to freedom for China, but four years of civil war followed by 30 years of Maoist madness in which 30 million Chinese perished.
For America, the war was Pearl Harbor and Midway, Anzio and Iwo Jima, Normandy and Bastogne, days of glory leading to triumph and the American Century.
But for Joseph Stalin, it was also a good war. From his pact with Adolf Hitler he annexed parts of Finland and Rumania, and three Baltic republics. His armies stood in Berlin, Prague and Vienna; his agents were vying for power in Rome and Paris; his ally was installed in North Korea; his protege, Mao, was about to bring China into his empire. But it was not so good a war for the inmates of Kolyma or the Russian POWs returned to Stalin in Truman's Operation Keelhaul.
Is a war that replaces Hitler's domination of Europe with Stalin's and Japan's rule in China with Mao's a "good war"? We had to stop the killers, says Cohen. But who were the greater killers: Hitler or Stalin, Tojo or Mao Zedong?
Can a war in which 50 million perished and the Christian continent was destroyed, half of it enslaved, a war that has advanced the death of Western civilization, be truly celebrated as a "good war"?
where to begin. In some parts (mostly Stalin) pat confuses the war with the peace agreements/spoils of war.
This is so over the top and beyond belief I don’t know where to start. Therefore, I will say nothing and let the article speak for itself...
Cohen contends that the evil of the Holocaust makes it a “good war.” But the destruction of the Jews of Europe was a consequence of this war, not a cause.
Come on Pat, Hitler planned the Final Solution in the 30’s for crying out loud. It was going to be put in place regardless of whether WWII was fought or not.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Methinks Pat jumped the shark some time ago.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Off his meds again, I see.
"The war" did NOT create the holocaust, you incredible idiot. Hitler opened Dachau and Ravensbruck and Buchenwald in 1933, the Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935 and Kristallnacht was in 1938.
But the destruction of the Jews of Europe was a consequence of this war, not a cause.
True. Hitler didn't do a single evil thing to the Jews of Europe until he was attacked. (Way to display your antisemitism, again, Pat. Sounds like he's dancing a little on the edge of holocaust denial to me.) And there was no Lenin before Stalin; the Soviet Union in all its magnificent destruction just appeared - POOF - when the first American troops showed up in theatre. And Mao decided to be the murderous marxist he was simply because the US bombed Hiroshima.
What on earth is wrong with him?
No war is “good”. Some are necessary. WWII certainly was for the US, and the war we’re in now against the updated Islamist version of Nazis is too.
In fact, Buchanan puts the end date of WWII too soon. The issues that arose from the Hitler/Stalin pact to divide Europe were not fully resolved until 1989-91, with the fall of the Soviet empire that was the successor to the Third Reich. So in reality, what we call WWII lasted for fifty years.
Puts our present situation in somewhat more realistic perspective.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Pat is such a nitwit. The terminology "Good War" is a leftist formulation which by implication views Korea and Vietnam (to say nothing of Iraq) as "bad" wars. In a broad sense, no war is "good"--the serious term should be "necessary," some more than others.
And the above bit about Poland is mealy-mouthing at its finest. Most of the Polish population losses were not in the "war"--they were genocidal killings committed by bureaucrats far from the battlefield. These types of killings were why the war was necessary.
and Nazis had used the country for the infamous camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz.
On the positive side, this is as close as Pat's come to repudiating his occasional flirtation with Holocaust denial.
YES IT WAS A GOOD (NECESSARY) WAR!
Two monstrous tyrannies, the German Third Reich and the Japanese Miltarist dictatorship, were swept away, much to the benefit of the people who had been subjugated by them and subject to, in some cases, evils beyond description. Pat should go vist Dachau, or Madjanek, or Auschwitz - maybe he would get a better appreciation for 20TH century industrialized murder.
That the Soviet Union survived intact and we had to parry with them for another fifty years is a separate question.
The benefits of the war to us and Western Civilization are almost innumerable.
Hitler was going to attack the USSR. Sooner or later. No matter what. And he was going to colonize it. That left the Slavs as potential slave labor. Bot the Jews in occupied Russia? Buchanan’s an ass.
Sorry your boys lost, Patrick.
They used Poland for Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Maidjanek, and one other. Auschwitz-Birkenau was in Upper Silesia. Buchanan can’t even get that straight.
Hitler also had plans to totally get rid of the Polish race by 1975, through forced sterilization, starvation and other means.
You're too kind. :) It's just a different kind of holocaust denial. Pat's got two functioning brain cells and they're both antisemitic.
And about those camps - sounds like Pat is suggesting that Poland should have just shut up and taken the occupation, and Britain shouldn't have honored their treaty (is he related to Chamberlain, or just an avid student?), and if they had, the horror of Treblinka and Auschwitz wouldn't have happened. What is he smoking? Hitler opened up 4 concentration camps - IN GERMANY - six years before he ever invaded Poland. The camps in Poland just made the other ones a little less crowded.
Pat Buchanan is the right's Jimmy Carter.
The good was we lived to fight another day. Just how many more such ‘days’ can Western Civilization take? Rivals are standing by.
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