Posted on 03/20/2018 8:38:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
Victor Davis Hanson is a conservative icon, well known and respected; a prolific author of twenty-plus books and current occupant of a chair of historical, military, and agrarian classical studies; a Ph.D. from Stanford; and the founder of classical studies at University of California at Fresno. ;Now he occupies a chair at the Hoover Foundation of Stanford University.
I first came to know him reading The Western Way of War (1989), which explained the reason for the lethality and effectiveness of Western armies throughout history. ;This past year, he wrote one of his best books: The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict was Fought and Won (Basic Books, 2017).
Hanson titled the book for the fact that there were at least two major wars going on in World War II, and it is a mistake to think of the Axis Powers and the European and Pacific wars as a one big theater of war.
Hanson also sets up the thesis that the Axis Powers succeeded initially only because of the hesitance and even fecklessness of the Allies during the late thirties, when the Nazis and the Bushido Empire expanded without resistance to take regional control and acquire influence, and even more while the major Allied powers pretended not to see the threat or, in some cases, refused to do anything to stop the aggression.
For the French, English, and Americans, the problem was a collective memory of the carnage of WWI and the commitment to pacifism, or at least weak responses to evil and aggression that resulted.
When the Allies committed to unconditional surrender, the game was over. ;
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
He was on Fox News yesterday or the day before
I have a ping list for Victor Davis Hanson. I’ll be glad to add you if you want to be on it.
Yes, I’d like that, thank you.
You have been added. :)
Which was in retaliation for Prussia imposing a 5 billion franc war indemnity and taking Alsace and Lorraine from France at the end of the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. And Prussia justified that because of the indemnity Napoleon imposed on Prussia in 1807. So, it could be said that the roots of WWII go back to Napoleon.
It’s like the “Troubles” between England and Ireland.
Finding a villain is about as defining as finding a Yankee.
Deja Vu all over again - Europe and the Muslim invasion.
Agreed. Started reading it and am just into "From Poland to the Pacific".
The only quibble I have with him is that if Japan hadn't attacked Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, the U.S. would have stayed out. Everything I have read about that time was that Japan worried that if they didn't take out the American fleet, their flank would be open to attack when they went into the Dutch East Indies. They felt they HAD to attack, counting on quick victories and then a negotiated peace giving them hegemony over the area.
Then they screwed up their timing of the Declaration of War.
the major Allied powers pretended not to see the threat or, in some cases, refused to do anything to stop the aggression.
“Deja Vu all over again - Europe and the Muslim invasion”.
Very good point. This time we won’t bail them out and they’ll probably never free themselves.
At that point the Japanese were as committed to their overall plan of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere as the Nazis had been to lebensraum - the commitment that had, despite all good sense, impelled Hitler to attack Russia when Stalin was already happily selling him all the oil he needed. You might say - this is my conclusion, not Hanson's - that it was too much of a commitment to ideology that trapped them both into continuing the plans that eventually doomed them.
You suggest that the U.S. might have accepted the new status quo if the Japanese hadn't gone ahead with Pearl Harbor, and I agree (so does Hanson). Hanson further states that if they had stopped short of Singapore, the British might have done the same. Call it hubris. The Japanese plan was to engage the U.S. Navy in a giant surface action as they had the Russians in 1905, and we simply wouldn't give that to them.
Everybody thinks Americans are like everybody else on the planet. We are not...
The rest of the world consistently fails to understand HOW the United States is different. Even the Confederate States failed to grasp the impossible reality of forcing a negotiated peace to end the Civl War that would allow them to secede.
Others forget or never knew what it took for people to come here, create a nation out of wilderness, survive, and prosper. They do not understand what most of them were leaving from.
They cannot comprehend how much the patriots who founded this country detested and feared large, powerful, centralized governments. Therefore, they cannot understand the true basis and reason for the Second Amendment.
The United States may to slow to anger, but once we go to war, the "diplomats" and "politicians" get to Shut the Front Door and Color.
We may be magnanimous in our treatment of a defeated foe, but imposing Unconditional Surrender on our enemies is hard-wired into our DNA.
Clausewitz (and most of the rest of the world) is flat out wrong in thinking that War is the continuation of politics by other means. It is much more important than that, it is about national survival. If it comes to war, the United States wins, and our enemies lose, completely, totally, and unconditionally.
And by "rest of the world", I think maybe we could include the hard left - it's not that they just don't seem like Americans, it's more like they hate Americans.
People were tired after WWI.
And rightly so. Europe lost an entire generation to a meat grinder. One could argue they still havent fully recovered. Wilson dragged America into that carnage kicking and screaming.
Less than a generation later we were again embroiled in two horrific wars because we fell asleep at the switch.
L
Yes, France in particular was played out; after all, it happened on their turf. I enjoy reading Gertrude Stein who wrote marvelous memoirs of living in Paris and the countryside during the war. Somehow, she managed to have fun while living quietly as a Jew in Occupied France.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.