B-29’S AGAIN RAIN FIRE ON NAGOYA; REICH TO SHARE BURDEN OF RULE (5/17/45)

Your Dad is one of my WWII heroes whether he served in combat or in support of others who did see combat. One of my uncles was an aerial gunnery instructor in the Army Air Corps for the entire war and never got closer to combat than an air base is south TX. Never the less, I consider him as one of my heroes along with several other close relatives who served in various positions. That includes my deceased father law who spent the last year of the war in the Philippines making ice cream for navy ships. There was also one who died in his co-pilot seat when his B-24 bomber crashed and burned in North Africa while taking off to bomb an enemy position somewhere in Italy. Another hero is a cousin who came home shell-shocked after the war in Europe ended. He never fully recovered and died at a very early age. No one is sure, but we all believe his early age death was at least partially attributable to his damaged nervous system. All those old boys are heroes AFAIC, and so is your Dad. Tell him I said so.

As for me, I was too young for Korea and too old for Viet Nam. If I had it to do over again I would probably delay college and sign up in the Air Force along with my high school best buddy who served 2 years of active service followed by 6 years in the Air Force Reserve. That program was available when I graduated high school but I wasn't interested at the time and went ahead with my parents plan for my college education, an effort on which I spent lots of their dollars but never completed.

Sorry for the very long post, I hope I didn't bore you to tears. I often lose track of time and space once I get started on a subject like this one.

Colorado tanker: "Wow, Joe, there's a blast from the past."

henkster: "My nose crinkles up and my upper lip curls back when discussing Pat Buchanan’s notions of history."

Picking up where we left off, I've re-read Buchanan's book up through the end of the First World War.
It's infuriating work, because so much of it is spot-on, but then he leaves out important data so as to emphasize his own points.

For example, in historical reality, the First World War was a war of choice for Germany, which first pushed it's Austrian allies to declare war on Serbia, then responded to Russia's partial mobilization with their own declarations of war against Russia and France -- simultaneous to full execution of their long prepared Schlieffen plan to invade Belgium.
But in Buchanan's telling, it was the Germans who were forced into war by... who...?
Why by those nasty Brits, of course, who sneakily failed to tell the Kaiser in advance that they would go to war to protect France.
But in reality, which Buchanan never denies, both the Kaiser and his General Staff full-well knew the Brits were pledged by 1839 treaty to defend Belgium.

And those Germans didn't care!
Quoting Buchanan:

'We must put aside all commonplaces as to the responsibility of the aggressor. Success alone justifies war

"...Warned that violating Belgium's neutrality could bring a British army across the Channel, Moltke told Tirpitz, 'The more English the better.'
A few British divisions could not stop the German juggernaut, and any British soldiers in France would be caught in the net along with the French, and unavailable for fighting elsewhere."

For Britain the options were: A). let Germany again defeat France as in 1871, also taking Belgium and Russia, becoming the undisputed dominant European power, or B). stand with France and Russia to defeat German aggression.

In Buchanan's words, here's what Option A would result in:

"Russia would have been defeated, but the dismantling of the Russian empire was in Britain's national interest.
Let the Germans pay the cost, take the casualties, and accept the eternal enmity for breaking it up.
A triumphant Germany would have faced resentful enemies in both France and Russia and rebellious Slavs to the south.
This would have presented no problem for the British Empire.
The Germans would have become the dominant power in Europe, with the British dominant on the oceans, America dominant in the Western Hemisphere, and Britain's ally, Japan, dominant in Asia..."

Buchanan's argument, in a nut shell: let the Germans win in 1914.

So here we are, 100 years later, and are we better off?
I think so, but as they say, "it's complicated..."

Thanks, Joe! Now that you have given me the Cliffs' Notes version, do I really need to read the book??

His argument about the Brits is completely off the mark. For centuries British policy was not to allow the establishment of any dominant power on the Continent. They always played balance of power politics. The Brits fought for nearly 15 years to stop Bonaparte from being the dominant Continental power.

And how was it in Britain's interest to have Germany defeat Russia? That's the anachronism fallacy. He wants 1914 Britain to have 1914 Germany defeat 1914 Russia to prevent the emergence of 1945 Russia. Russia in 1914 was hardly the juggernaut it was in 1815. Russia lagged badly in industrialization behind Germany, Britain and France. That translated into weakness in the new era of industrial warfare. Indeed, by the time of the Crimean War in the 1850's it was clear the Czarist Russian army was no longer the strongest in Europe.

And the Germans had no idea Britain would enter a war to defend France? That's just dishonest. The French-British Entente was well known to the Germans (as was the British-Russian Entente). In fact here is a German cartoon from the period showing John Bull stepping out with Marianne as a harlot. The German sword reveals how the Germans intend to deal with the couple.

Colorado tanker: "Now that you have given me the Cliffs' Notes version, do I really need to read the book??"

It's well written, highly nuanced, interesting and much (but not all) of the data you'd need to argue against Buchanan he includes, right there.
So use it as a whetstone to sharpen your own understandings & arguments.

On Amazon there are hundreds of reviews, some highly informed & well written, but I want to copy just one of them here, yes, for the purpose of getting your blood boiling, and showing you how short a distance it is from Buchanan's nuanced writing to something far darker:

"Patrick Buchanan joins the league of authors who rightfully dethrone the 'man of the century', Winston Churchill.
Churchill, a man of aristocratic descend, a man of abysmal political judgement, ruthless and reckless, bloodthirsty in his inner soul, was the man who was ultimately responsible for the decline not only of the British Empire, but for the Decline of the Abendland as we witness it today.

This historical review was long overdue.

The German 'Kaiser' who had in 25 years of regency not fought one single war, much to the contrary of the haughty later victorious allies, England, France, Russia, and the US, was insidiously dragged into the first World War because England, and foremost Winston Churchill, thought Germany was becoming too strong, economically and politically.
While the old empires England and France and the US were morally fully entitled to have their colonies and to rule the seas, Johnny-Come-Lately Germany, was not to have her slice and to leave her merchant fleet at the mercy of the green-eyed British.
France and Russia had their own motives to destroy Germany.

"Buchanan unfortunately fails to point out that the German speaking regions west of the Rhine "Elsass and Lothringen" had been annexed by the French king Louis XIV in the 17th century when the German principalities were too weak to resist the marauding French armies.
After the French-German war of 1870/71, which was declared by the French, France had to cede these German regions to the German Reich.
The German conditions for peace in 1871 were mild compared to those which would be imposed onto her by the victorious allies in 1919.

"After Churchill had successfully starved Germany into submission by 1919, one of his many crimes against humanity, German lands were torn from the Fatherland, millions of Germans were against their own will put under the rule of foreign countries, the country plundered.
The seeds for Hitler's rule were sown.
Above all, the vengeful clique of western statesmen, who forced Germany to sign that Carthaginian treaty in Versailles, knew already in 1919 that they we were paving the way into a new bloody war.
They knew very well that what they were doing to Germany was a villainous crime.

"Were the Germans and Hitler not right to demand their century old territories back ?
Imagine if England had lost Cornwall to France ?
Would the English not have done the same and reclaimed their lands ?
The English and their leaders Baldwin, Hallifax, Eden, and last but not least Chamberlain, tacitly supported German moves to right the wrongs of Versailles.
Austria, which had been forbidden by the allies to unite with Germany in 1919 and the Sudetenland were united with Germany.
All that had been achieved without spilling a drop of blood.
True, Hitler was a dictator, but who was not ?
Austria had been a dictatorship under Schuschnigg, Poland under Pi'sudski , Spain under Franco, Russia under Stalin, Italy under Mussolini, the Czech Republic under Benes.
Also true, Hitler should not have made the remains of the multiracial Czech republic a "protectorate", but how many "protectorates" did the British, the French and the Americans have ?
As Buchanan emphasizes, this was not Britain's backyard and it was not a reason to go to war with Germany.
In March 1939, in order to halt Germany's successful re-unifications, the British panicked and they signed away their empire when they gave the 'pigheaded' Polish Gen. Beck a guarantee which would lead straight into part 2 of the Second 30 Year European Civil War.
The Germans shall not have their old city of Danzig back, let alone the other lands that they were forced to cede to the Poles in 1919.

"True, Hitler dreamt of swallowing the Ukrainian wheat fields, but given the English sea blockade from 1914-1919 which had killed millions of German civilians, was that not of an existential necessity for Germany, as was the control of the seas for the British ?
Besides, the Ukraine had a substantial German speaking population that despised Stalin who had been terrorizing them for many years.

"To return to our 'hero' and the 'man of the 20th century' Winston Churchill.
Although all these events in Middle and Eastern Europe posed no threat to England's security, the English declared war on Germany, because Germany, this time with force, wanted to re-united the old German town of Danzig with the Fatherland.
Why did Chamberlain and the English panic in Sep 1939 ?
Germany and Hitler, had always wanted to be 'brothers in arms' and friends of the British, they had never even though about attacking the British, the Kaiser's mother was English.
Hitler had even offered troops to protect the British Empite.
But instead of taking the hands of the Germans the British boot-licked the greatest mass murderer at the time, Josef Stalin, and Churchill admitted 'I really like that man.'
By 1939 Stalin had killed at least 20 million of his own people, apart from Poles and Baltic people.
A thousand times more than Nazi Germany.

"So it came that when Chamberlain resigned in 1940 after Churchill personally had botched the British invasion of Norway, which constituted a flagrant violation of Norwegian neutrality, Churchill became PM and he embarked on a brutal crusade against a European brother nation which was unique in European history and turned a European War into a World War.
This time, the German people should be bombed into submission which culminated in the raid of Dresden by 700 Lancaster bombers.
An estimated 50.000 - 200.000 civilians burned in their homes and in the streets crowded with refugees.
A hero's work.

"In the end Churchill had lost it all : the British Empire was gone, sold to the Americans, 100 million East Europeans were under a brutal Communist dictatorship, and England was soon to be no longer white.

"Was it just to declare war on Germany because she had violated the Versailles Treaty and she had tried to use force to re-unite her former territories with the Fatherland ?
Maybe.
But was it wise to declare war on Germany ?
Certainly not.

"Winston Churchill was certainly a successful warrior, but a man of abysmal political and often even disastrous military judgment and he will be regarded as the man who was ultimately responsible for the Decline of the Abendland and for the fall of the White Race which had bled itself to death in the greatest Civil War of European history.

"Buchanan's book is highly commendable, although many aspects are not new to the informed reader and certain other aspects are left out completely.
If you had believed that Germany was the root of all evil in the 20th century, you will have to think again."

My point: from Buchanan's carefully written, nuanced words, it is a short hop-skip & jump to the dark side of human nature.

Sorry I missed the fun yesterday but had to do double duty at the Indy 500 followed by a wedding.

If I understand what you said about Buchanan correctly, he is claiming Churchill dragged Germany into World War 1 in 1914 against Germany’s wishes? I’d like to see the evidence for that. I could cite the historical evidence to the contrary but I don’t have time this morning to write a three volume treatise. Best sources to read on this are Fromkin’s “Europe’s Last Summer” and Herrman’s “The Arming of Europe and the Making of the First World War.” It’s pretty clear that World War 1 was in fact instigated by the Germans.

As for World War 2, the comments on the book review are chilling, mostly for a willfull blindness of the historical record. I don’t hide the fact that I am a Germanophile, but the historical record of 20th Century Germany is “spotty” at best.

I have never liked historical revisionism that served to promote a personal agenda. Usually such revisionism comes at the price of objectivity. It would appear Buchanan serves that purpose.

Thanks for debunking Buchanan.

Did you attend the 500, or merely watch on TV like most? I suspect you try to attend annually. If you don't mind:
* Where do you sit?
* What can you see from there?
* What's the whole experience like?

I don’t mind at all. I went to my first 500 in 1979, did not go to the race when the boys were little, but have been going for about the past 10 years or so with them. I have been to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway well over 100 times in my life, and my sons are both approaching that number as they go more often than I do. There are other events there than just race day on Memorial Day weekend.

* Where do you sit? * What can you see from there?

The last 8 years we sat at the entrance to turn 4. From those seats we could see the cars enter turn 3, the north short chute, all of turn 4 and the top half of the front straight. We could not see as far as the start/finish line. The advantage of those seats was seeing so much of the track. The disadvantage was not much passing took place in front of us.

This year we moved our seats to the exit of turn 1. We can see the cars enter turn 1, go through the south short chute and exit turn 2 onto the back straight. While we see less of the track, most of the passing takes place in the last quarter of a straight, and we can see them finish a pass for position. Plus, turn 1 has the advantage over turn 3 because the best competition takes place when the cars go green after a caution, and they put on their moves at the green flag going into turn 1. Although this year for some reason, maybe due to the wind, the best passing seemed to be up in turn 3.

We are going to try to keep moving our seats closer to the apex of turn 1 and stay as high as we can. The Holy Grail of seats are the upper deck in turn 1. It seems like you are right on top of the track. Seating for qualification day is general admission, so we grab those seats when we can. Of course, for race day you can’t buy those seats. You have to inherit them. Seriously; those seats have been held by the same families for two or three generations.

* What’s the whole experience like?

Awesome. And I don’t use that term lightly. While IMS hosts other events, and we go to a lot of them, there is a special electricity in the air at Indy on the day of the Indy 500. We leave at 8:00 a.m. to get to the track, if we have time we do a bit of gawking and then go to our seats. I suspend my limit of one breaded tenderloin per month in May, as IMS serves one of the best ones in Central Indiana. Maybe it’s the atmosphere. There is nothing like the flying start of the Indianapolis 500, where the roar of 33 cars is matched by the roar of 250,000 throats. At three hours, the race is not overly long either; no longer than a nine inning baseball game. When the race ends around 3:00 we hang out and wait for traffic to die down before we leave. It’s a long, full and exhausting day with the sun, crowd, noise and action.

Sounds like a total blast. Thanks for sharing!

I've never been and probably never will, so it's fun to get your insider's viewpoint. I've never missed it on TV. I've been becoming a NASCAR fan the last year, but I've always been an Indy fan.

Indeed, in the '50s, I think before it was televised, my Dad used to listen on the radio as he puttered in the garage. It was (or at least seemed to me) a ridiculous broadcast: "Down to you, Joe, in Turn 1." "There they go! Over to you, Bob, in Turn 2." "There they go! Now to you, Bill, in Turn 3." "There they go..." Except, of course, when they crashed, caught fire, and died, which seemed to occur annually back then.

The comment you quote does indeed come from the dark side.

The bottom line for me is WWI was a stupid war that didn't make sense for anyone to fight. But they did.

My dad always listened to the Indy 500 on the radio but never went, even when he lived in Indiana.

When I was a kid we were visiting relatives during Memorial Day and the Goodyear Blimp had some kind of problem and landed in a farmer's field not far from my grandparents' house. It was pretty cool to see up close and personal, at least it was for me as a kid.

henkster: "If I understand what you said about Buchanan correctly, he is claiming Churchill dragged Germany into World War 1 in 1914 against Germany’s wishes?
I’d like to see the evidence for that."

"Dragged"? That was the Amazon reviewer's word, one "Cato Maioron": "The Kaiser was.... insidiously dragged into the first World War because England, and foremost Winston Churchill, thought Germany was becoming too strong, economically and politically."
My word was "forced" as in: "it was the Germans who were forced into war by... who...?"

Friend, I'm certain you know the propagandist's art consists largely of convincing people to "ignore what's in my right hand (i.e., slavery, holocaust) while I focus your attention on this bright shiny object in my left hand (i.e., that wicked "Ape" Lincoln or Winston Churchill)".
And yes, I am saying that trying to defend Nazi Germany while ignoring the Holocaust is like trying to defend our Confederacy while ignoring slavery.
In both cases that would seem an impossible task, and yet, amazingly, in both cases it does not prevent many people from trying.

In this case we are talking about Buchanan's masterful efforts to convince his readers that the First World War was a necessity for the Kaiser, < sarc> because of those wicked Brits, who did something terrible... something unacceptable... something totally unexpected... yes, for once in the entire history of the human race, those wicked Brits lived up to the obligations of their 1839 treaty with Belgium, to protect them against foreign invaders, and so declared war on Germany when the Kaiser's army crossed the border into Belgium.
Then, those Brit-devils, they sent enough troops to actually make a difference...

Further, dastardly Brits never told the Kaiser that some had informally agreed to defend not just Belgium, but also France itself, an agreement the Brits themselves didn't know they had, until after the German army was already on the move...
So, obviously, the Kaiser thought he had a green light and so did what he had to do, what anyone would do, donchaknow: he declared war on Russia, France, Belgium, launched axis armies into Luxembourg & Serbia, I mean, how could anyone blame him for that? </sarc>

So, actually, if that's the argument -- the appearance of a green light (or at most yellow) caused the blitheringly stupid German Kaiser to miscalculate and launch a war he could not quite win -- if that's the argument, then I'd like to propose < sarc> the #1 villain in this story is... (wait for it...), yes, Woodrow Wilson!
How can that be?
Well, you see, just weeks before the whole thing kicked off, Wilson sent his personal emissary, Col. House, to visit Europe's capitals, and in an effort to win friends, to ahem, "reset" the relationship, House told the Kaiser just what the Kaiser wanted to hear: that the US, Britain and Germany are natural ethnic relatives, should always be friends and even allies against all those other nations... etc.

So there's your green light, that's what "forced" the Kaiser, and "dragged" him into declaring war on the rest of Europe -- House's false representation that, when push came to shove, the US and Britain would line up with Germany against France, Russia, Italy, etc., etc.

Like I said: ignore what's in my right hand (a German war of aggression) and focus your attention on this bright shiny object (that evil Churchill) in my left... </sarc>