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Title: WWII: The Rommel & Patton Plan - An American & German Alliance to crush the Soviet Union & prevent the Cold War
Source:
African Crisis
URL Source: http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=40844&
Published: Jan 5, 2009
Author: Jan Lamprecht
Post Date: 2009-01-06 18:46:08 by X-15
Keywords: None
Views: 1227
Comments: 51
I want to point out some very important facts about World War II which are generally forgotten. Much is made of the NAZIs and how evil they were, but we forget that even Churchill also hated the communists. In fact, Churchill advocated after WWI that the West should invade Russia. Churchill was the one who decided to ally himself with the Soviets in order to crush the NAZIs which he saw as the greatest threat. Churchill mentioned that the Soviets were the lesser of two evils. What nobody points out is that the NAZIs were a great threat, not so much because of their ideology, but because they were so extremely successful. When war finally broke out, within 6 months, the Germans had invaded and conquered several countries, including France. The problem with Hitler and the NAZIs was that they were exceptionally effective. How else can one explain how a mere 80 million Germans ended up fighting all of Europe, Russia, Britain, America and the British Empire... and... they nearly won! How could the Germans fight almost 10 times their own number with such effectiveness? It should make you think hard. Churchill hated the communists just as much, but I think for Churchill the real problem was that communism, while one could hate it, was actually quite weak. Communism destroyed its own host nation and so in the end communism wasn't such a threat. But NAZIsm was deadly. NAZIsm, if left unchecked, could probably have conquered the world if given a few decades. In terms of poison, communism was certainly more poisonous to the mind, but it lacked that energy which Hitler and the Germans unleashed. It lacked the military talent that some of the German generals had. Without the German generals, many of whom weren't even NAZIs, Hitler would never have got anywhere. In Germany, the army officers, mostly of Prussian descent, really did not like Hitler. But it was really they who were the final talent that allowed the Germans to achieve what they did. I once read a book by Fieldmarshall Erwin Rommel's aide. He made an interesting point. Rommel became very popular in Germany. Rommel did not like where the war was going and he and others plotted to assassinate Hitler. Rommel's aide mentioned something interesting that remained in my mind. He pointed out that Rommel had a plan of action of what he wanted to do when Hitler had been killed. His plan was to make peace with the Western world, and to then suggest to the Western world that they join Germany on the Eastern front and that they defeat the Soviets for once and for all to wipe out communism. Sadly, Rommel's plan to kill Hitler failed and Rommel was then told to either commit suicide or to be executed. Rommel chose suicide. Many German officers really hated communism. And many German officers were not happy with the idea of going to war with Britain and America. Hitler, I am sure, was also stunned and emboldened by the fantastic successes of his military, which went far beyond what he had imagined was possible. I knew nothing about General George Patton except that he was the commander of the most aggressive American army in Europe - and that he believed in reincarnation! Recently, a book was written suggesting that General Patton was murdered, possibly with the connivance of the US Govt and the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA. How accurate these claims are, I do not know. There may or may not be truth to some of it. I would not discount the idea completely, as you shall see. I want to reproduce some pages from a popular book written some decades ago about Patton, and from which they made a movie. I will reproduce it because of the wording contained in it, which I think is most important. But let me summarise: Patton was merely an American soldier fighting the enemy he was told to fight. So he fought the Germans and he called them names and said he wanted to crush them. And Patton fought with tremendous energy and motivation. When Patton reached Germany he and other senior army commanders were among the first to visit the concentration camps where they witnessed death and cruelty. It moved him and he wrote how terrible it was. But then Patton met the Soviet officers, their allies, and it sent shockwaves through him. Patton developed an unbelievable hatred for these people. He called them "Mongolian apes" and he realised that he was looking at America's next enemy. And Patton realised that these were the people who America would have to fight in the next war. He knew his own country would demobilise so he said there was no point in waiting until America's army was down to 2 divisions. They must attack the Soviet Union NOW! Patton even started talking openly about creating incidents within 10 days which would give him the excuse he needed to attack the Soviet Armies. And as Patton took charge of the Germans and looked at them, he said that America had fought the wrong enemy. He felt that the Germans had really had great potential. He actually felt sorry for them and was easy on them. Patton openly spoke about how the Americans should attack the Soviet Union and should forgive the Germans and ask the Germans to fight alongside them to destroy communism in the Soviet Union. Patton's talk freaked out his superiors. They thought he was a mad man. A friend of mine who has read the story of Patton, remarked to me that often, Patton was a man ahead of his time. Patton foresaw the Cold War long beforehand, and he wanted to solve the problem immediately while the American military was at the peak of its strength. And if Patton's plan had been followed and had worked, we might have been spared much pain across the world and in all of Eastern Europe decades ago, wouldn't we? I think Patton was just a straight talking American. A man who loved his country, and who believed in what he was fighting for. He was a direct man, with no great airs, who said that which was on his mind. And what concerned him was what they had fought for, and whether what they had fought for would, first and foremost, be good for America, and secondly, whether it was the right moral thing. Nobody has ever before mentioned that Erwin Rommel, a brilliant German military officer and George Patton, a brilliant American military officer, both, independently, thought and struggled (and perhaps even died for!), the same thing: That America and Germany should be aligned and should join together to destroy the Soviet Union and to rid Russia of the poison of communism for once and for all. Rommel died for his plan. If Patton was murdered, then he too died for his plan. It was a plan that could have saved America, and much of the world, a lot of trouble. Could it have prevented China becoming communist? I don't know. But it could have saved several countries in Eastern Europe. It could have prevented Vietnam, and Cuba becoming communist. It could have prevented several wars in Africa and South America and in Asia. It could have prevented Middle Eastern terrorism. It might even have prevented among the recent wars we have, and future ones, like the trouble with Iran (because Russia sponsors Iran's nuclear ambitions). It was a good plan then, and it still remains a good plan.
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#11. To: redpanther (#0)
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Countries Without a Draft circa 2001 (You'll need this soon if you have kids) RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP You know, Friend ... you might learn something if you'd keep your fingers idle and your brain aware for objective thinking.
Yes we should have and except for for the power of British Israelism, we might have been.
You know, Friend ... you might learn something if you'd keep your fingers idle and your brain aware for objective thinking. Just wondered because it sounds like opinion and not fact. That is all.
If you look at end of WW2, the Generals were to all return to their permanent grade, that would have made Patton Eisenhowers superior. I always thought that interesting.
From what I've read the Soviet armies were close to bled white at spring of 45. If the Germans had stopped them cold at Seelowe Heights, or better, put a whoppin' on them at the attempt to relieve Budapest in operation Konrad, they might have gotten them out of the war for at least a year if not a negotiated setlement. Granted, by Seelowe the Western armies were over the Rhine, and the Germans had taken a rare, acute heavy loss of armor in Konrad, so they would have been driving a lot of green iron if this had unfolded at that point. At wars end the Soviets had lost something like 82 or 88% of males born in, I believe it was 1922, and the cohorts for a few years on either side of that year exceeded 50%. It's what gave rise to the stereotypical portly, spinster, Russian Babushka of the 60's and 70's...
Bring on the Depression. Bring it the F*** ON! If digging ditches and eating beans for a few years is what it takes for me to see some worthless sacks of crap bankers and politicians living in sack cloth and being spat upon by my fellow Americans well... where's my shovel?!?!
Because we had to get the Japanese to attack us in order to have Hitler execute the requirements of his alliance, namely that he'd declare war on any attacker of Japan. With public sentiment running north of 70% pro or neutral towards Germany and Americans highly recalcitrant to get into another Eurowar, that was the only way it was going to happen.
Bring on the Depression. Bring it the F*** ON! If digging ditches and eating beans for a few years is what it takes for me to see some worthless sacks of crap bankers and politicians living in sack cloth and being spat upon by my fellow Americans well... where's my shovel?!?!
In retrospect the soldiers would buy that. Richard Keech, and my Grandfather, have commented that, had they known it was going to be as bad as it actually was, they would have fought to the last...
Bring on the Depression. Bring it the F*** ON! If digging ditches and eating beans for a few years is what it takes for me to see some worthless sacks of crap bankers and politicians living in sack cloth and being spat upon by my fellow Americans well... where's my shovel?!?!
After the fact, indeed. The Japanese were masters at barbarism. For obvious reasons, American history barely mentions their behavior. The most heinous I recall reading about was a Major that harvested the liver from live Australian POWs for his breakfast. MacArthur had him tried and hung within 30 days of the surrender. We all know of the Nuremberg trials for the Germans, little if anything about Japanese trials.
I'd read (I forget which book) that over 90% of the 1923 Soviet males were killed during WWII, which is such a tragic occurance that it is difficult to contemplate. The Soviet losses were so large that it almost seems like it can't be true. But it was. David Glantz wrote in "When Titans Clashed" that the Germans were very confused in mid to late 1944 because they kept identifying the same units all over the front. It turned out that the Soviets were running very low on manpower, and they were sending the same units all over hell to fight. I think the best solution would have been to come to some negotiated settlement in 1944, allow the Soviets to control the places they physically were, and end the war. Our stated policy of unconditional surrender didn't allow for that. Much has been written deriding that the Soviets were allowed to have Eastern Europe after the war, but for the most part, it was simply either acknowledging what had happened, or what obviously would happen prior to the war's end. Stalin did agree that he would allow self determination and free elections for the areas they controlled, and why anyone would believe he would allow that is beyond me, but that was part of the agreement that he did break. Regardless, why would anyone expect that the governments in the areas the Soviets controlled at the end of the war wouldn't be allied very strongly with them? It was natural and should have been expected that Communist governments would be elected in those areas. But what could be done about it? We were in no position to invade the Soviet Union (which would have been an epic fool's errand.) So, one had to either allow the war to end before the Soviets had moved very far to the east (and then let them decide if they wanted to invade further, but it would be aggression on their part at that point, since the war would be over) or accept that Eastern Europe would be controlled by the Soviets. It's hard to argue that Stalin wasn't a more evil man than Hitler, but one thing that he did was confine himself to depredations either against his own people, or people in places we didn't care about. Sometimes when I read pieces like this one that it's been forgotten that Hitler invaded France (I emphasize that because I think that the phony war would have continued indefinitely, since most of Europe really wasn't ready to spawn a global conflagration over the Polish question.) Barring that, it would have been very easy to ignore a war between Germany and the Soviet Union. Yes, Stalin was a monster, but he wasn't invading western Europe. Once the two front war started, we needed the Soviets far more than they needed us. They provided the anvil against which the Wehrmacht smashed itself. One of the things only mildly hinted at is whether Stalin implied that he was willing to negotiate an end to the war with Germany during the different conferences. I think he did (since he wasn't stupid, and only an idiot wouldn't imply that, in order to get what he wanted), and I think that FDR and Churchill had the seed of doubt planted that made them much more compliant to Stalin's demands than they otherwise might have been. The situation would have been much more difficult if rather than the reconstituted 21st Pz "Bread and Water" (men with stomach ailments) was replaced with Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler, or Das Reich.
Rivers of blood were spilled out over land that, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have worried his head over." Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
We do know that Bush The Elder was a dear friend of Emperor Hirohito, who escaped the punishment that surely awaited Adolf Hitler had he lived to capture. But, as we've all been taught in government schools, Hirohito was marginally involved with the Japanese war effort and was mostly held hostage to his military governors/ministers who were really responsible for the war effort. I prefer to overlook the fact that all the Japanese military fought and died for their Fueh...err, Divine Emperor.
"or people in places we didn't care about" Perhaps you should not transpose your cavalier attitude to Eastern European nations onto other Americans. At the turn of the century when America was industrializing, immigrants from Eastern Europe were the work horses in our factories and our mines and our railroads. They also performed back breaking work on our nation's farms. These Slovak, Polak, Ukie, and Czech immigrants worked for very little and produced alot for our nation. And let's not forget they were conscripted to fight in WWII in defense of America or so FDR said. They had family members left behind in those places "we" didn't care about and which FDR threw away to Uncle Joe as his prize. I think you might want to read Pat Buchanan's book "Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World" for other options that FDR and Churchill could have considered than throwing away whole nations to be devoured by the Communists.
Should be 4 parts here.
Let me clarify my comments. One of the tenets of international law has been for a long time that you can kill as many of your own people and we'll say lots of stuff about how bad you are but we won't do much else. I think, in part, it's because it's really hard to say how much you care about the inhabitants of a country with a bad government, then launch a war that kills tens of thousands (or in the case of the Soviet Union, millions) of them. The little "what-if" scenario I was discussing assumed that the war was already begun. I'll go into what I perceive as the other options available shortly. But surely you don't think that the US launching a war against the Soviets in 1930 was a workable scenario over the plight of the Kulaks? Regardless of the contributions to our nation by the Eastern Europeans, there was no way in hell FDR was going to launch a war over the treatment of Ukrainians, Georgians, Chechens, Ingush, Mongolians, Poles, or Czechs at any point prior to 1939. After the war was started, there was no way to change the situation on the ground, which is mostly what the various conferences during the war codified. As I explained in posts above, had we allowed the war to end in 1944 (which would have meant casting unconditional surrender aside-as they should have) was the only way to ensure that some of Eastern Europe would be possibly free from Soviet control. This was something that George F. Kennan emphasizes in "Russia and the West Under Stalin and Lenin." It was true that Stalin reneged on his pledge to allow free elections in the areas administered by the Soviets, but only a fool would have expected him not to (which is why FDR took his pledge at face value.) But, regardless, what was FDR to do? Continue the war and attack a country that he lauded as an ally, and whose form of government he doesn't seem to have been so averse to? That's who I meant when I said "we." It doesn't matter how we the people feel, if we'll be ignored by our leadership. In the future I'll be sure to differentiate more precisely between "we the people" and our government. Kennan's book if full of very good statements about the folly of our policy makers (and Kennan was one of them-he once said that he regretted what he said in his "Long telegram" more than anything else he'd ever written). I'm very imperfectly paraphrasing, since I'm on travel and unable to access the books at home. He says that in WWI we had an enemy less dangerous than in WWII, and forced the Russians to stay in the war when we didn't need them, which led to the Bolsheviks. In WWII, we had a far more dangerous enemy, and needed the Imperial Russians to be involved, but because of the folly of WWI, we didn't have them. I haven't read Buchanan's book, but it's on my list, after "The Theory of Money and Credit" by von Mises, and "We Who Were Against the War." Through reviews and other things he's written, I can kind of follow what he's saying. I'll say up front, just like I did in my first posts to this thread, that using the German Army to attack the Soviets after some kind of a settlement something that I consider to be a fool's errand even larger than our attack on Iraq. If we're going to "what if" prior to 1939, the very first thing that I say is that under no circumstances should a guarantee beyond "We'll eat paczkis prior to Lent" have been given to Poland. I'm pretty sure that I've said it in posts months ago, but I'll say it again: if you are a stronger nation and you give a security guarantee to a weaker nation, you have ceded your foreign policy making to them. That's usually not a good situation. Ask the Georgians. Without that guarantee, most likely some semi-logical people would have determined that, being bordered on two sides by two very strong states, peace would have to be made with one of them. As it was, Poland failed to do so. I don't think they had a particularly good option, but, such is the neighborhood. Figure out which one you hate the least, and become tolerated. Backtracking a little further, the whole Munich thing with the Czechs was made more difficult because Chamberlain believed that the Germans had a legitimate complaint over the plight of the Sudeten Germans. And, most likely Chamberlain knew that Britain was ill prepared for war, and if postponing it required the sacrifice of some Czechs, so be it. At least they weren't Britons. Had he not made the "peace in our time" statement, most likely Chamberlain wouldn't be maligned so much. As it was, Hitler wanted war in 1938 (because the military hardware balance was favorable to Germany at that time), and Chamberlain, sacrificing Czechs, bought Britain two years. Also, the Czechs peacefully became part of the German Reich and lost around 100K people during the war. The Poles didn't, and lost millions. There have been cynics who have wondered if the Poles wouldn't have been better off being betrayed. I'm sorry this post is so long, but I'm almost finished. The way I see it, the only way for Eastern Europe to not be a Soviet enslaved area is for the war to not start over Poland. Hitler probably would have invaded Poland at some point, because that area was required to invade the Soviet Union, which was the real goal. Had he not invaded France, the West wouldn't have been involved in the war, and Germany would have turned east, and attacked the Soviet Union anyway. I find it to be a difficult argument to say that the peoples of the Soviet Union would have been better off under this scenario either. The other problem is that the Soviets probably would still have defeated the Germans even without our help, and in that case, all of Germany would have been under Soviet rule, too.
Rivers of blood were spilled out over land that, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have worried his head over." Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
I spit on international law. It is illegitimate and unconstitutional. Also you are wrong. Ask Saddam.
That's great, you can spit on international law. But are you saying that everywhere on earth that governments suck should be invaded by the US?
Rivers of blood were spilled out over land that, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have worried his head over." Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
No we should stay here and work on fortress America.
I agree with that. Garet Garrett notes in "The People's Pottage" that immediately following WWII, when contemplating the defense budget, even Senator Taft noted that no one could invade us, yet they still voted for vastly increased spending. I believe that even today, no one could invade us, therefore there is no reason for us troops to be all over the world, that we should bring them home, and make sure that there is enough combat power physically here to make it an impossibility to contemplate invasion of the US. I'm a little confused, though, at your objection to my previous statement that attacking one's own people doesn't warrant invasion by the US. Are you saying that they should work on fortress America in Iraq?
Rivers of blood were spilled out over land that, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have worried his head over." Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
There will always be wrong in the world. As one of the founding fathers said. Or something like this. We shouldn't go out looking for monsters to destroy. We can't send our troops to every bad spot in the world, nor should we. We should just look out for ourselves and trade with other nations and be peaceful. Not this 5000 page fake free trade bullshit either.
Side note. I have a movie I downloaded a while back. Called Raid on Rommel. I haven't watched it yet but it sounds like a good one. I like those old war movies.
I agree, but U.S. national policy has been demonstrated to be otherwise since Abe Lincoln invaded the South.
I agree. That's why I have always been against the Iraq war, and that's why I also referenced that it was generally accepted that governments could kill their own people without anyone intervening. When that violence spills out over national boundaries, that's when the time to look at what's going on begins. But that doesn't mean that intervention is the right course of action, either. I've often thought about Bismark saying that the Balkans weren't worth the life of a Pomeranian grenadier (though it's apocryphal and he likely didn't say it), he didn't say that because he was fond of a pithy turn of phrase, but because some things just aren't worth worrying one's head over. Conditions suck in many places, and in nearly all of them, there's not a lot that can be done to alleviate it. It's just the way things are. And military action is definitely NOT going to help alleviate conditions. I also agree that we don't need managed trade agreements, we can manage international trade ourselves without government help.
Rivers of blood were spilled out over land that, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have worried his head over." Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
I think the movie is in part about an attempt to kill Rommel that took place in North Africa, where five Brits were killed. I forget the name of the commander, but they attacked a house where Rommel had been days earlier, they didn't understand that Rommel was going to be more far forward that was perhaps prudent, so he wasn't there. Rommel demanded that they receive a funeral with honors. The episode is recounted in Desmond Young's "The Desert Fox."
Rivers of blood were spilled out over land that, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have worried his head over." Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
I am not familar with that. I'm sure I could learn something from you.
I think I have or have seen that one too.
Your term is more accurate. It isn't free trade it is managed trade. It if was free trade it would be like 1 page. And I would be to import medicine from Canada and buy machine guns from China.
Abe Lincoln is a curious fellow. It is unfortunate that he was assassinated. It would have been interesting to know how he would have dealt with things such as reconstruction. I wonder if he would have denied the state their equal sufferage in the senate as requied by the constitution. And of course the 14th amendment (which is really the 15th).
It's an unsourced quote, but allegedly he said that the next major war would come from some foolishness in the Balkans, and that the whole of the region wasn't worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. For an American analogy, the word Pomeranian could be changed with "Appalachian" or "hilljack" and it would carry the same meaning. In the mid 1800's Pomeranians were considered backwards uncouth people.
Rivers of blood were spilled out over land that, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have worried his head over." Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
b. I find it to be a difficult argument to say that the peoples of the Soviet Union would have been better off under this scenario either. a. Of course not. FDR would rather use Eastern European immigrant conscripts to fight and die in continental Europe to liberate his tribe from the Nazii death camps. Roosevelt let Pearl Harbor go down because he desperately wanted America in the war. Sending Russia supplies and armaments was not enough for Roosevelt and some of his Cabinet ministers. I have zero respect for FDR. He was a communist at heart. He wanted to be on the side of Stalin, and not because it was good for this country. b. I've got news for you. Ukrainians, Poles, and Czechs have never seen themselves as "peoples of the Soviet Union." They were fiercely independent peoples, especially the Ukrainians, who were taken by force by the savage Bolsheviks, whose Revolution and militarism costs were unwritten by Wall Street tycoons like Jacob Schiff and Armand Hammer. The Eastern Europeans were betrayed by America in several ways.
Not to mention the trading with the enemy act that he used against us Americans. Screw him
Indeed. Did you know that Roosevelt sent Stalin money plates from our Treasury so that they could print our money at will??????? There was never a reason for it nor any accounting.
His proposal was actually for a very brief period of reconstruction, not the oppressive pogrom levied upon the South when John Wilkes Booth whacked him. The reconstruction we got was punishment for his assassination as well as payback from the more radical Republicans in the U.S. government. That doesn't lessen my assessment of Lincoln as a tyrant, though.
I call bullshit. Provide some evidence please.
How about the fact Lincoln was going to deport every black out of the U.S. back to Africa? The only good thing he was ever going to do in his life, and Booth unwittingly put an end to it.
Have pug, will laugh.
You have bullshit call to wrong speculation. Anyhow I have heard that rumor. I used to believe it and maybe it is true. But I think it was a rumor now.
Indeed. Booth was a little hasty in dispatching the tyrant.
Oh, it's true. He had already deported some. Look up the history of Liberia in Africa.
Have pug, will laugh.
I didn't think I had written anything inflamatory or particularly anti-Slav, but I'll try to clarify myself a bit more. I completely agree that Poles, Czechs, Ukrainians, Chechens, Georgians, Ingush, Ossetians, and probably a few hundred other nationalities were taken by force by the Soviets, from 1917 through 1945 and a few beyond that (some prior to that, by Imperial Russia). There's not a hell of a lot that the US or you or I can do to change that. In all the posts I've done above, I've been simply accepting the reality of the situation, framed by my idea that sometimes things just suck, and there's little that outside forces can do about it. If they've got issues with the situation, the individual peoples are the ones who have to work to change it, and many (if not most or all) attempted to do so, and failed. If we continue the "what-if" further back, the time to have stopped this was when that fool Wilson decided to pressure the Kerensky government to stay in WWI, when we really didn't need them to. After the Bolsheviks gained power, the options became limited. We, and the British invaded at Murmanks in 1919. A Czech division held much of the Trans Siberian Railroad until around 1920, but it didn't do a lot of good. After the 1920s, the US wasn't in any position to overthrow the Communists. It can be argued that, absent American Lend-Lease aid, the Soviets wouldn't have survived, but in various books, David Glantz has discussed that, and found the idea lacking. It is true that even today you'll find old Russians who will recount "Villys, Studebakers, and Spam", thinking about the Great Patriotic War. Both he, in his books, and me in my travels have found that. Here in the US we have tended to over emphasize Lend Lease, while the Soviets tended to downplay it. The things in greatest importance that we sent to them were: railroad rolling stock, trucks, food, and raw materials. In 1941, Lend Lease made absolutely no difference whether Moscow fell or not. Appreciable amounts of goods didn't arrive until months after 7 DEC 1941 (the day the German advance was finally stopped.) The Germans were stopped not because of our efforts, but because of the massive and largely downplayed efforts of the same peoples who were forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union. Not becuase they loved Stalin (and he was smart enough to de-emphasize the government in propaganda, and framed it as a defense of the motherland) but because the Germans were killing every man, woman and child they found in the Ukraine. The Soviet peoples were forced into a Faustian bargain: die quick or die slow. Don't fight the Germans, and be killed, or fight the Germans, survive, and live under an different evil bastard. They made the choice: sometimes being alive is better than being dead. How does this play into the discussion of US aid to the Soviet Union? Well, absent US aid, the Germans would have had some additional Luftwaffe assets to use, and the strategic bombing campaign wouldn't have taken place (the Soviets lacked significant strategic bombing assets; they focused on where the aircraft really made a difference, at the tactical level, like the Germans.) But, since German production didn't peak until around DEC 1944, one could argue that our bombing campaigns forced the Germans to be more efficient. As Glantz says in the conclusion to "When Titans Clashed, How the Red Army Defeated Hitler," had the US not played a major role in the war, it is likely that, after another year or so of bloodletting, Red Army soldiers would have had their boots in the English Channel after liberating France. Absent the rail rolling stock, the Soviets would have outrun their logistical chain sooner, so they would have been forced to have more battles of penetration and encirclement, but their eventual success was very likely. The Red Army didn't fight so hard because they loved Communism, but because what the Germans were doing was worse than what their own government was doing. Regardless, I'll reiterate that how the individual American of Slavic descent felt about what FDR was doing was absolutely irrelevant, because he didn't care at all, any more than King George the W cared about what the American people felt about his invasion of Iraq.
Rivers of blood were spilled out over land that, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have worried his head over." Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
I'll sleep on what you wrote before I post a reply. I'm very upset reading over your justification of "our" strategy in WWII. Some things do pop into my mind after first consideration of your post. One thing "we" could have done was not elect a Communist like FDR to office. He was a traitorous pig who surrounded himself with communist sympathizers as advisers and cabinet appointees and their fellow travelers continued to betray our nation after WWII into the Cold War. Secondly "we" should have heeded the warnings of Lindbergh to stay out of Europe's war. Hitler and Stalin would have mauled each other to death. And btw, the Eastern Europeans did not fight in the Red Army because they feared Hitler more than Stalin. They fought in the Red Army because they had NO HOPE, no one in Europe or America cared about them, and the NKVD - which Americans like Hammer and Schiff put into power - were following in the rear guard. If given a ray of hope, I believe those Eastern European Christian conscripts would have fought to the last man against the Stalinists and NKVD. By throwing "our" hat in with Stalin, we condemned tens of millions of Slavs, Poles, and Ukrainians to a quick death working in the Gulag slave camps prior and post WWII. Let me remind you that it was a dumb Polak who broke Ultra for the allies. And the oldest university in Eastern Europe located in Kiev ( still active to this day) was established in 1654, when "we" had not gone beyond the intellectual benchmark of offering booze and smoking peace pipes with the North American Indians. I'm just sprinkling those facts of cultural info for your contemplation - "we" sentenced millions of very smart Eastern European Christian peoples ( 80% of Americans still identify themselves as Christians) with a proud cultural history to be treated like draw animals when "we" ( FDR) hitched our destiny to that of Uncle Joe and the communists. And before I close - let "us" not forget that Hitler was an amateur mass murderer piker with his tiny project wherein he killed only 18 Million Christians and Jews in his concentration camps as compared to Uncle Joe's over-the-top Gulag death camp totals. I'm sorry but I can't quite work up any rah-rah enthusiasm for FDR's decision to align our nation with arguably the worst war criminal in modern history. What did we gain that was so unique and valuable due to participation in WWII which we could not have enjoyed staying on the periphery and picking up the pieces, the spoils of war because Stalin and Hitler destroyed each other's totalitarian regime? Ireland and Sweden and Switzerland remained neutral and these 3 nations seem to have done quite well - high standard of living for their peoples. Postscript: I recall reading that Churchill was somewhat concerned that he was odd man out because of the instant magnetism between Uncle Joe and our "beloved" and highly venerated FDR, who, imo, was crippled in regards to his moral fiber and conscience. FDR sold out America for his personal beliefs.
I most strongly agree that this was a great crime. historian says that this couldn't have been averted in any case. Perhaps he is right, I don't know. I'm not erudite enough to argue with him on this point by point. Practically speaking though, it's hard to imagine that the Russians would have gone beyond taking the whole of Germany. I'm sure that that, in addition to the prizes to the east, capturing the Ruhr would have been plenty for Uncle Joe. Politically, practically and logistically all of Central and Eastern Europe would have been a big enough gulp to swallow and digest. I any case, had the Russians threatened to go beyond the Rhine alarm bells would have gone off poste haste within the Anglo American camp and this country would have suited up to cross the Atlantic in any case. I don't think that one Red boot would have set foot in the Channel under any circumstances. But the point of all this argument is not simply, as we see on TOF where they are refighting the Second World War, to rehash all the possible combinations and permutations, but to come to moral conclusions about the choices that leaders and peoples make. For me, the chief lesson resides in the danger that comes of the arrogance of power and the self-righteousness that this breeds among the people. Arrogance: a + rogare. It means not asking. You don't ask. You do. You create your own reality and stop asking questions of yourself and everyone else. The critical faculties that make rational decision making as well as civilized life possible are throttled. The results are inevitible. It's a lesson that our fellow citizens should study carefully. There are lots of other lessons that we could learn from the Late Great Misunderstanding. I have work to do though, and I am out of gas here. Perhaps you'd like to add to the list, scrapper? (PS: Fantastic thead, scrapper and historian.)
I'm sorry I provoked such an emotional response, that was not my intent. The thead began with a fairly narrow "what if" type of scenario that I believe would not have done any good. I try to keep the "what if" variables few in discussions like this, because it can very quickly descend into something that is completely fiction. Therefore, I accepted in the scenarios and later discussions that the US got involved in the war, that the various countries were led by the same people, and the same actions were taken. True, I did foray off into somewhat different subjects, but the same assumptions and constraints were used. "Secondly "we" should have heeded the warnings of Lindbergh to stay out of Europe's war. Hitler and Stalin would have mauled each other to death. And btw, the Eastern Europeans did not fight in the Red Army because they feared Hitler more than Stalin. They fought in the Red Army because they had NO HOPE, no one in Europe or America cared about them, and the NKVD - which Americans like Hammer and Schiff put into power - were following in the rear guard. If given a ray of hope, I believe those Eastern European Christian conscripts would have fought to the last man against the Stalinists and NKVD. " I agree that we could have stayed out of the war, Hitler had no real way of attacking us. It's a what if with lots of variables, but, without US entry into WWII, we must be prepared to have all of continental Europe being the Soviet Union. I'm assuming here that Germany still invades France. David Glantz in various books has persuasively argued that barring US aid, the Soviets would still have defeated the Germans. I've said in previous posts that Moscow didn't fall in 1941 because of the awesome endurance and sacrifice of the Soviet peoples, not because of US aid to the Soviets. Of the aid received, the most important was trains, trucks, food, and raw materials. There were a few units outfitted with American tanks, but not many of them. Our tracks tended to be very narrow, and they foundered easily in the terrain of the Soviet Union. Without our aid, the sacrifices the Soviet peoples would have been called upon to make would have been even greater, and the war likely would have lasted a bit longer, but the Soviets would probably still have defeated the Germans. For the rest of the quote above, that's exactly what I was saying in previous posts, that because Einsatzgruppen were killing every man, woman and child in the Ukraine, the Soviet citizens were put in an unenviable position of having to choose which way to die. If the Germans got there, the Soviets were fairly certain of being killed. If they fought the Germans, there was an extremely good chance of dying, while if one refused to fight or ran away, there was pretty much a 100% chance of dying. So what to choose? If one chose to fight the Germans, at least there was a chance of survival, even if the prize was living under the bastard Stalin. Sometimes being alive is better than being dead. Had the Germans treated Ukrainians differently, it is likely that the whole of the country would have rose up to fight against the Soviets. That they didn't seems to indicate that the depredations of the SS were bad enough to make them fight for Stalin. I didn't think that I was being particularly kind to FDR, I've called him an idiot and a bastard at various times in this thread, but he can't be explicitly blamed for giving Eastern Europe to the Soviets at the various wartime conferences, for the reasons I've listed in prior posts. Those conferences did have provisions in the agreements where Stalin agreed that he would allow democratic elections in the countries administered by the Soviet Union. Anyone who expected that to happen in any kind of a fair way was a fool. FDR and Churchill did also tend to give Stalin even more than he asked for at the conferences. In part it's because they feared that Stalin would negotiate terms with the Germans and leave the war. It wasn't likely, but he probably implied willlingness to do so, because of the three men there, he alone knew exactly what he wanted, and he was far more shrewd and cunning than FDR was. The unconditional surrender policy gave Eastern Europe to the Soviets, and as I noted in my first or second post in this thread, the very best thing that could have happened was for a negotiated end to the war in 1944. True, the Ukraine would not be saved from Stalin, but, after the war started, it was too late for that, barring Hitler being able to negotiate an end to the war in 1942. Given what the Germans did in the Ukraine in the areas they controlled, I can't say whether that would be better or worse than what they'd already been through with Stalin. But a settlement in 1944 would have saved most of Poland, and pretty much all of Central Europe. Unconditional surrender meant that the war would continue until somewhere, US/British and Soviet forces met each other. Anyone with a map could see that it was probably going to be in Germany that the event took place. That policy gave Eastern Europe to the Soviets. That blame can be laid firmly at the feet of FDR and Churchill, for instituting it, and then not recognizing that it was going to make the war longer. I think the first thing that I wrote that you took offense to was my remark that so long as Stalin was killing his own people, little was going to be done. Once he crossed into other countries to kill other peoples was when action can begin, and that there were people we didn't care about in the Soviet Union. In this one and future ones I will use "US Government" instead of "we." It doesn't take much of a leap of logic to see why killing one's own people isn't considered to be an military response event (at least until the Clinton administration.) If we say that Stalin's starving of the Ukrainians warranted a military response (I know you've never said that it should go that far, but for sake of argument, let's say that it does, since that's really the only way to stop it), then we've suddenly justified every attack the US government has done on another country, whether they're a threat to their neighbors or not. If we accept that as true, then Clinton's Balkan adventure is only bad because he waited so long, the Iraq war is fine, we should in the future invade the Sudan, nearly every country that ends in -stan, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, and any future country identified to have a bad government. It's a hell of a tough sell to say that the US government cares about a captive people while it's killing thousands of them. It may be true that some of the captive peoples believe that a new government is worth dying for, but the US government should not make that choice for them. I have no issue with individuals assisting, and the US government should have no say in the matter when they choose to do so. "I'm just sprinkling those facts of cultural info for your contemplation - "we" sentenced millions of very smart Eastern European Christian peoples ( 80% of Americans still identify themselves as Christians) with a proud cultural history to be treated like draw animals when "we" ( FDR) hitched our destiny to that of Uncle Joe and the communists." I disagree with your contention that the US government under FDR condemned the Ukrainians. The US government under Wilson did that. We can what if that one: what if JP Morgan didn't underwrite all of the war bonds of France and Britain, and what if we had a president who wasn't a Morgan man during that time who was going to ensure they got paid? By FDR it was too late to do much about it. Once House went to Moscow and pressured the Kerensky government to stay in the war, the fate of Russia and the Ukraine was sealed. I don't think that in 1932 Hoover was going to be able to get a declaration of war against the Soviet Union because Stalin was starving Ukrainians. Sure, the US government could have sent food to them, but there was no mechanism that could be used to ensure they received said aid. The Army Air Corps couldn't air drop it, the Navy couldn't float it up various rivers to them, and any attempt would be stopped by the Red Army. As I've said, individuals could help, and some probably tried. Robert Higgs a few days ago on www.lewrockwell.com remarked that during the depression many Americans left here and went to the Soviet Union. They most likely didn't have a good go of it there, especially since they had probably read articles by Duranty and other fellow-travelers talking about how wonderful it was there. Once the war started, there was little the US government could do to change the lot of the Eastern European peoples, aside from doing what the article that began this thread says: use the German Army remnants and the US and British Armies to invade the Soviet Union again. I reject that, because I don't see how inflicting even more death on a group of people who had already lost more than 20 million of their number in the war (over 50 million deaths from the 1930s to the end of WWII for the Soviets) would have served the purposes of anyone, especially when there wasn't a very likely chance of success. That also assumes that Truman would have undertaken the invasion. FDR definitely would not have countenanced that. I have a hard time saying that in order to the save the Ukrainians we should have invaded the Ukraine and killed hundreds of thousands more of them.
Rivers of blood were spilled out over land that, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have worried his head over." Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
ping to thread
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#12. To: Old Friend (#10)
Were you macarthurs adviser?
#13. To: Turtle (#1)
(Edited)
It's well-known that Patton wanted to partner with the Germans to fight the Bolshevists. We should have been on the Germans' side right at the beginning.
#14. To: Phant2000 (#12)
Were you macarthurs adviser?
#15. To: historian1944 (#8)
(Edited)
#16. To: historian1944 (#5)
He also said that they had eaten everything on the hoof to get where they were, so it would be easy to destroy them. It's at least partially true, but what happens when they retreat to the rear again, just like they'd done for generations, destroying everything on the way. The Soviet manufacturing centers were very far away from Moscow, well out of range of nearly everything, and the Soviets were able of manufacturing weapons at a far greater pace than the Germans could. They were building up to 1600 T-34s a month at one point. To destroy the 1944 Red Army (which was a far more formidable foe than in 1941) would have taken a couple of years, and a tremendous amount of bloodshed.
#17. To: historian1944 (#8)
It is kind of interesting that we actually get attacked by Japan, yet focused our attention on Germany for much of the war. Kind of makes one wonder exactly why we even bothered to try to get the Japanese to attack us in the first place if we were going to largely ignore them.
#18. To: Cynicom (#9)
Roosevelt did not insist on fighting to the last man, to which Mac would have never agreed.
#19. To: Axenolith (#18)
In retrospect the soldiers would buy that.
#20. To: Axenolith (#16)
#21. To: Cynicom (#19)
little if anything about Japanese trials.
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#22. To: historian1944 (#20)
It's hard to argue that Stalin wasn't a more evil man than Hitler, but one thing that he did was confine himself to depredations either against his own people, or people in places we didn't care about
#23. To: X-15, Buchanan, WWII, The Unnecessary War (#21)
#24. To: scrapper2 (#22)
#25. To: historian1944 (#24)
One of the tenets of international law has been for a long time that you can kill as many of your own people and we'll say lots of stuff about how bad you are but we won't do much else.
#26. To: Old Friend (#25)
#27. To: historian1944 (#26)
That's great, you can spit on international law. But are you saying that everywhere on earth that governments suck should be invaded by the US?
#28. To: Old Friend (#27)
#29. To: historian1944 (#28)
I'm a little confused, though, at your objection to my previous statement that attacking one's own people doesn't warrant invasion by the US. Are you saying that they should work on fortress America in Iraq?
#30. To: historian1944 (#28)
#31. To: Old Friend (#29)
We can't send our troops to every bad spot in the world, nor should we.
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#32. To: Old Friend (#29)
#33. To: Old Friend (#30)
#34. To: historian1944 (#32)
I've often thought about Bismark saying that the Balkans weren't worth the life of a Pomeranian grenadier (though it's apocryphal and he likely didn't say it), he didn't say that because he was fond of a pithy turn of phrase, but because some things just aren't worth worrying one's head over.
#35. To: historian1944 (#33)
The Desert Fox."
#36. To: historian1944 (#32)
Conditions suck in many places, and in nearly all of them, there's not a lot that can be done to alleviate it. It's just the way things are. And military action is definitely NOT going to help alleviate conditions. I also agree that we don't need managed trade agreements, we can manage international trade ourselves without government help.
#37. To: X-15 (#31)
I agree, but U.S. national policy has been demonstrated to be otherwise since Abe Lincoln invaded the South.
#38. To: Old Friend (#34)
#39. To: historian1944 (#24)
a. Regardless of the contributions to our nation by the Eastern Europeans, there was no way in hell FDR was going to launch a war over the treatment of Ukrainians, Georgians, Chechens, Ingush, Mongolians, Poles, or Czechs at any point prior to 1939.
#40. To: scrapper2 (#39)
a. Of course not. FDR would rather use Eastern European immigrant conscripts to fight and die in continental Europe to liberate his tribe from the Nazii death camps. Roosevelt let Pearl Harbor go down because he desperately wanted America in the war. Sending Russia supplies and armaments was not enough for Roosevelt and some of his Cabinet ministers. I have zero respect for FDR. He was a communist at heart. He wanted to be on the side of Stalin, and not because it was good for this country.
#41. To: scrapper2, historian1944 (#39)
Sending Russia supplies and armaments was not enough for Roosevelt
#42. To: Old Friend (#37)
It would have been interesting to know how he would have dealt with things such as reconstruction.
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#43. To: Cynicom (#41)
Did you know that Roosevelt sent Stalin money plates from our Treasury so that they could print our money at will???????
#44. To: Old Friend (#43)
I call bullshit. Provide some evidence please.
#45. To: Turtle (#44)
#46. To: Turtle (#44)
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#47. To: Old Friend (#45)
Anyhow I have heard that rumor
#48. To: scrapper2 (#39)
#49. To: historian1944 (#48)
(Edited)
I completely agree that Poles, Czechs, Ukrainians, Chechens, Georgians, Ingush, Ossetians, and probably a few hundred other nationalities were taken by force by the Soviets, from 1917 through 1945 and a few beyond that (some prior to that, by Imperial Russia). There's not a hell of a lot that the US or you or I can do to change that.
#50. To: scrapper2 (#49)
By throwing "our" hat in with Stalin, we condemned tens of millions of Slavs, Poles, and Ukrainians to a quick death working in the Gulag slave camps prior and post WWII. Let me remind you that it was a dumb Polak who broke Ultra for the allies. And the oldest university in Eastern Europe located in Kiev ( still active to this day) was established in 1654, when "we" had not gone beyond the intellectual benchmark of offering booze and smoking peace pipes with the North American Indians. I'm just sprinkling those facts of cultural info for your contemplation - "we" sentenced millions of very smart Eastern European Christian peoples ( 80% of Americans still identify themselves as Christians) with a proud cultural history to be treated like draw animals when "we" ( FDR) hitched our destiny to that of Uncle Joe and the communists.
#51. To: scrapper2 (#49)
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