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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: 1293
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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#1. To: X-15 (#0)
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.
Have pug, will laugh.
Most were not. Patton could never have succeeded because Washington under Roosevelt was being run by Soviet Spies. Mostly Jews. Harry Dexter White (Weiss) being the controller.
I think you hit the most important part of the problem, one that has been recently derided, namely that our military is controlled by the civilian leadership, who would have gone crazy had something been done to start a war with the Soviets. It would have set an extremely bad precedent for Patton to attempt to mold policy through his actions in that fashion. Whether MacArthur was correct or not, he was attempting to usurp the power to direct the course of the US from Truman, which is why he was sacked in 1951. Patton was, according to this account, attempting to do that also. It doesn't justify him being killed, though. The circumstances around his death were always suspicious, my father, who is probably around the same age as you (he was drafted to serve in Korea in 1952) always said that Patton's car running into a tanker and him being the only injury, which turned out to be fatal was very strange, but perhaps his services were no longer required, and he was written out of the script, just like Rommel.
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
Neither Patton nor MacArthur were armchair generals. They were tacticians and strategists of the highest caliber. Beyond that, both understood the political background of the run up to WW2. Both generals were maligned by the US media, from day one. Mac was called "dugout Doug" because of his HQ on Corregidor being within a tunnel. Yet that exact scenario and location had been written into war plan orange in...1919... that when the Japs invaded the Philippines, the Army would withdraw to Corregidor and the tunnel was stocked with provisions years before 1941. In Korea, Mac asked Truman for 30 nukes and that the war would be over in ten days. Truman lost his nerve and we know the result. As for Patton, when the Battle of the Bulge started in 1944, he was the ONLY senior General in Europe. Ike and Bradley were in England playing cards. Patton started making plans that day. Like them or hate them, Patton and MacArthur were the best of the lot.
It's a huge what-if drill to contemplate, but let's take a look at this idea. Rommel's car was strafed on 17 JUL 44, and he committed suicide 14 OCT 44. But, let's assume that in the few weeks after the D-Day landings, Rommel opened up the Western Front to the allies. He did contemplate doing this, but the unconditional surrender policy prevented anything from coming from it, even had he done so. But let's say that the allied leaders realized what a gift they were getting, and they accepted the surrender, and some form of negotiated settlement was reached, and now US, British and German forces were ready to fight alongside each other by July 1944 (which would be a hell of trick to pull off, especially since the peoples of all those countries were used to fighting each other as a fight to the death mere days earlier.) The first question has to be: where were the Soviet armies in July, 1944? They had, by June of 1944, reached the outskirts of Poland. So, in theory, all of Germany could have been saved, and Poland, Hungary and Romania also. The best situtation would have been some kind of negotiated settlement that ended the war and stopped the Soviets where they were. True, the Ukraine and Belorussia would be Soviet, but there was little that could be done to fix that. There's an adequate map here: http://www.onwar.com/maps/wwii/eastfront2/efrnt4445.htm I haven't read all that much about Patton, but the few quotes I've seen where he's talking about this seems to indicate that he was basing his expectations of what the Red Army was capable of on what the Germans were saying, and they were probably the only army in history to caricature their opponent as much more inept than they really were. 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. Would the American people settle for three more years of war, against someone only weeks previously had been an ally? I don't think they would have.
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
True. The only issue I have with MacArthur was his handling of his troops in Correigedor, when he would go out to watch the bombs fall, but didn't visit his troops once who were under siege on the island. That was unconscionable, and the planning of the retreat should have been handled better rather than letting them retreat without medical supplies, food, water or ammunition. Aside from that, both men were extremely brave and extremely capable on the battlefield. I've often wondered in Ike hated the Germans so much because they had the audacity to surrender before he had a combat command during WWI. There's a quote of his where he talks about WWII being such a personal thing to him that he would never invite a German commander to dinner like Monty had. I would think that Monty had quite a larger bone to pick with the Germans than Ike would, but Ike seemed to be far more incensed by 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
Matter of record, Mac held...8... Silver Stars prior to WW2, I think number two in our history. In WW1 he would do his own scouting. Also Mac Was born in 1880 and was 61 years old at time of Corregidor. Plan Orange was written to the letter to fight a withdrawal to Corregidor, which Mac did and in the plan was the information that...there would be no relief effort"...and there was none. The US territory was invaded by Japan and we invaded North Africa ten months later, not the Philippines.
You know, I hadn't even considered his age in all of this. He was an old man in WWII, and a REALLY old man for Korea. 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.
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
MacArthur knew full well that there was no one coming to their rescue, he could not tell the troops that. All of the men were written off as expendable years before 1941 and MacArthur knew it. It is all in the records. When Roosevelt ordered Mac to Australia, he expected to find some American troops there...there were none and he was livid...there were a few officers to form a HQ, no soldiers. Roosevelt did not insist on fighting to the last man, to which Mac would have never agreed. When he left Corregidor, he told Wainwright, surrender when you deem it fit. How does one tell 60,000 Philippine and American troops that no one is coming to rescue us, we were written off years ago?????
Were you macarthurs adviser?
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
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#2. To: X-15 (#0)
Without the German generals, many of whom weren't even NAZIs,
#3. To: Cynicom (#2)
#4. To: historian1944 (#3)
Whether MacArthur was correct or not, he was attempting to usurp the power to direct the course of the US from Truman, which is why he was sacked in 1951.
#5. To: X-15 (#0)
#6. To: Cynicom (#4)
#7. To: historian1944 (#6)
True. The only issue I have with MacArthur was his handling of his troops in Correigedor, when he would go out to watch the bombs fall, but didn't visit his troops once who were under siege on the island.
#8. To: Cynicom (#7)
#9. To: historian1944 (#8)
#10. To: Cynicom (#9)
(Edited)
#11. To: redpanther (#0)
ping to thread
"Corporation: An entity created for the legal protection of its human parasites, whose sole purpose is profit and self-perpetuation." ~~ IndieTx
#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.
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