Posted on 05/21/2008 6:49:34 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Last week we noted the bizarre arguments of Seattle Times editorial writer Bruce Ramsey, who tried so hard to defend Barack Obama against President Bush’s “appeasement” speech that he actually ended up defending Hitler for annexing Austria. His exact words were: “What Hitler was demanding was not unreasonable.”
If you think that’s an ahistorical pretzel of monumental proportions, though, you ain’t seen nothin’ — because here comes Pat Buchanan. According to old Pat, not only was the Anchluss not a problem, Hitler’s invasion of Poland was also perfectly understandable, given the Poles’ refusal to negotiate.
Those darned stubborn Poles were responsible for starting World War II, according to Pat: Bush Plays the Hitler Card.
German tanks, however, did not roll into Poland until a year later, Sept. 1, 1939. Why did the tanks roll? Because Poland refused to negotiate over Danzig, a Baltic port of 350,000 that was 95 percent German and had been taken from Germany at the Paris peace conference of 1919, in violation of Wilson’s 14 Points and his principle of self-determination.
Hitler had not wanted war with Poland. He had wanted an alliance with Poland in his anti-Comintern pact against Joseph Stalin.
But the Poles refused to negotiate. Why? Because they were a proud, defiant, heroic people and because Neville Chamberlain had insanely given an unsolicited war guarantee to Poland. If Hitler invaded, Chamberlain told the Poles, Britain would declare war on Germany.
From March to August 1939, Hitler tried to negotiate Danzig. But the Poles, confident in their British war guarantee, refused. So, Hitler cut his deal with Stalin, and the two invaded and divided Poland.
The cost of the war that came of a refusal to negotiate Danzig was millions of Polish dead, the Katyn massacre, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz, the annihilation of the Home Army in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, and 50 years of Nazi and Stalinist occupation, barbarism and terror.
There is sound solid logic for you. You would trust James Taranto's partial excerpt of and commentary on what Pat siad over what Pat in his own words said. You know, for instance, that in a court of law, Pat can introduce his statement as admissible evidence. Taranto's statement is inadmissible hearsay. His deliberate distortions are admissible as demonstration of his own slander. That it was slander is clearly demonstrated by your misunderstanding of what Pat said.
Actually, if you research what happened in all of those other places versus what happened in Poland, the Poles got far the worst of if. The German occupation of Czechoslovakia was brutal and oppressive and they killed a lot of people. For having resisted the oppression in Poland was far more brutal still.
There is a sound military rational why the difference. You want to signal that resistance carries a much higher price than cooperation. This is a strategy that the Mongols demonstrated with brutal effectiveness, and the Third Reich were superb student's of the Mongols' methods. Occupiers always want to coopt the occupied. It ties down less force and increases value of the economic exploitation of the occupation which in many circumstances was the point of the exercise.
Like I said, you can read the whole article, the entire article, the unexcerpted article, the article from introduction to conclusion, the article that Pat actually wrote rather than the one Taranto said he wrote here: Bush Plays the Hitler Card
I note well that in your efforts to indict Pat, following the lead of Taranto, you likewise cannot indict Pat on his actual words, and have to add your own words, the words Taranto seduces you into adding. But it is your words that are the indictable statements, not Pat’s whose words don’t quite stretch to the place you need to get them to to carry your own point.
If you think that’s an ahistorical pretzel of monumental proportions, though, you ain’t seen nothin’ — because here comes Pat Buchanan. [an irrelevant ad hominem to prepare you to accept the metaphorical pretzel of logic that Taranto is about to twist Pat's article into.] According to old Pat [another gratuitious ad hominem just to keep the juices flowing lest attention start to flag and to distract you from the even more outrageous trick of inserting unuttered words into Pat's mouth], not only was the Anchluss not a problem, Hitler’s invasion of Poland was also perfectly understandable, given the Poles’ refusal to negotiate.....Those darned stubborn Poles were responsible for starting World War II, according to Pat: Bush Plays the Hitler Card.
Of course, none of these words actually appear in Pat's article.
Pat never stated that the Anschluss was "not a problem" [and Taranto in his own linguistic imprecision leaves us to speculate in what a sense to take the unbeingness of the Anschulss problemwise]. Pat also never stated that "Hitlers's invasion of Poland was also perfectly understandable [again leaving us in the lurch in what sense to understand "understandable" i.e. does Toranto put the suggestion in Pat's mouth that Hitler's invasion of Poland was morally justifiable [he has certainly succeeded in this]; or a reasonable cause and effect consequence of Polish behavior; or merely rationally calculable in the sense of being the logical next step in Hitler's execution of his murderous scheme for Europe." Pat also nowhere states "those darned stubborn Poles were responsible for starting World War II." Having clearly stated that German irredentism was an issue and that Germany had made threats against Poland which it subsequently carried out, Pat has laid the factual basis for indicting Germany for starting the war. It would not have been necessary for Pat to draw explicitly the logical conclusion that follows immediately on the heels of the facts that he asserted, except that this short logical step is a leap too far for Pat's readership, in general and Taranto in particular.
Taranto completely dodges and excerpts what Pat's article "Bush plays the Hitler Card" was actually chastising Bush for.
In short whatever Pat may or may not have done, Taranto stands as a self-confessed wire-fraud and forger of the Mary Mapes/Dan Rather kind.
Let me ask this. Forgetting Pat for a moment, on the historical record, did Poland make mistakes? Did Britain make mistakes? I think the answer is Yes. Does that mean they started the war or are "guilty" of what transpired. Of course not, but you feel you cannot admit the one without admitting the other.
Then either you can't read, can't comprehend what you read, or cannot think about what you comprehend in what you read, or two of the three or all of them.
How many times must I do this for you?
Once would be nice.
Except when they don't, and instead declare wars of extermination, and slaughter those who surrender wholesale. With the predictable consequence of getting their enemies to fight fanatically, and thus losing.
As for exploitation, Germany got more out of Russia and all of eastern Europe by trade prewar, than it ever managed to extract by wanton slaughter in the occupation. A few cameras and some electrical equipment readily bought a quarter of Ukraine's harvest. An occupying army that murdered millions cost more to send, and got no more out, ever. See Milward on the war economy figures.
Your revisionist excuse fantasies about rational Nazis are your own sordid delusions, not history.
They did? Really? I missed that piece of history. Tell us all about it. Tell us about the success of British arms on the continent kicking German ass from the invasion of Poland until D-day - absolutely no insult intended to the valo[u]r of my British blood cousins for whom I have the fondest affection.
You must be on LSD. There can be no other explanation for this fantasy. None.
Germany's war timing target was 1942. Because it came too early, it lacked self sufficiency in synthetics, especially synthetic oil capacity for highest octane av gas, and synthetic rubber capacity. There were huge 4 year plans involved to develop that capacity. But they weren't remotely ready for a long war in 1939.
The general staff knew it, and some contemplated a coup against Hitler in the Czech crisis because they were sure war then would led to defeat. The west's diplomatic weakness dissuaded them. When Hitler played the Russia card, he thought the west would be mad to go to war over Poland, and that he'd get away with swallowing it, as he had Austria and the Czechs.
When he got a war with the west anyway, it stayed "phony" until forces from Poland could be redeployed and long after, because there was practically nothing in the west, and ammo production especially had to be ramped before even contemplating taking on France and Britain actively.
The Germans then ran the war as a series of shoestring gambles, without fully mobilizing the economy. (Some opposed that as early as 1940, but whoever promised the most with the least was heard by the political leadership). They were still trying to complete long term construction, and also trying to shelter the populace from war expense hardships for political reasons. Thus the madness of attacking Russia without mobilizing the economy.
Germany's peak tank output was about as high as Russias, unsurprising since they had the same pre-war industrial capacity. But Germany didn't get to that peak until 1944, while Russia was already at that level by 1942. Russia alone outproduced Germany in tanks by 2 to 1, simply by getting to the fully mobilized level faster than Germany did. They got a "rectangle" of full tank production from 1942 on, Germany got a "triangle" of a slow rise to the same peak, late.
Despite Germany planning the attack on Russia 6 months before it happened and achieving surprise, Russia being economically disrupted in the first year by loss of 40% of its prewar industry, and huge losses to it manpower base through deaths and occupation and military mobilization, Russian industry was making 20,000 tanks a year by 1942. Why wasn't Germany? One, because they weren't ready for war. Two, because they let pride go to their heads and tried to win "on the cheap". Three, because they thought all along, they couldn't win a long war of attrition.
Well they couldn't, and it was a long war of attrition; ergo, they lost.
Less important, since it was really such economic factors that decided the war, is the tech side. Technologically, Germany had inferior tanks at the outbreak of the war, nothing to compete with KVs and T-34s, and worse in gun and armor terms than the French and better Brit stuff. (Somewhat better in soft systems though - comms, optics, etc). It also had fewer of them than the western allies, and only a seventh as many as Russia had. It has no lead in aircraft tech, though it did in readiness over all possible opponents but Britain. It had a tiny U-boat fleet of under 100 subs. Tech without the war hothouse probably wouldn't have moved as fast, but the near term future brought far superior heavy tanks, jet aircraft, advanced subs with homing torpedos, and guided missiles. Most of which weren't out soon enough to make any appreciable difference in the actual war. Shift the war 3 years later in tech terms and Germany is in much better shape.
War in 1939 by Germany was reckless on Germany's part. It was a gamble, it predictably lost, Germany was smashed like a dozen would be continental hegemons before it. Britain had been doing the like with regularity for two and a half centuries. Yes it always had allies to help. Its entire grand strategy (and morality) was always geared to having them. Germany's wasn't, evil reckless losers never manage it.
Whatever.
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