Monthly Archives: February 2024

The New Men.

Posted on by
Reply

            The First World War (1914-1918) wrecked European society.  Out of the wreckage appeared people who never could have risen in politics or society before the war.  Two of them were especially terrible. 

            Josef Stalin (1878-1953).  The sickly, abused son of a drunken shoe-maker and a devoted mother in a backwater of the Russian Empire.  Studied to be a priest, but opted for revolutionary politics instead.  He joined Vladimir Lenin’s tiny Bolshevik Party (1903), organized strikes and robbed banks for the Party, did some time in Siberia, and rose to become an important assistant to Lenin during and after the Russian Revolution (1917-1923).  After Lenin’s death, Stalin schemed his way into supreme power (1923-1928).

            Once he held power, Stalin launched Russia’s real revolution.  He “collectivized” agriculture (government ownership of all the land) to gain control of the resources needed for industrialization.  Several million peasants starved to death as a result.  He launched the “Five Year Plans” to industrialize Russia.  Russia became second only to the United States as an industrial economy.  His “Great Purge” killed off hundreds of thousands of Bolsheviks, managers, intellectuals, and soldiers—anyone who might form part of a challenge to his dictatorship.  Millions of others were deported to Siberian prison camps, where many died.  At home his petty cruelties drove his wife to suicide.  After Nazi Germany attacked Russia, Stalin led his country to victory (1941-1945). 

            Adolf Hitler (1889-1945).  Like Stalin, he had an unpleasant father and a devoted mother.  He thought that he wanted to be an artist, but he didn’t like the hard work involved.  He fought bravely in the German army during the First World War, then drifted into right-wing extremist politics.  Anti-Semitism and anti-Communism were his main themes.  He became a brilliant orator and a devious schemer as the head of the Nazi Party in a democratic Germany.  The Nazis didn’t count until the Great Depression paralyzed democracy.  He was appointed—not elected—head of the German government in January 1933.  People thought they could control the odd little man.  They couldn’t.  He didn’t play by any rules. 

            Between 1933 and 1939 Hitler created a dictatorship, pulled Germany out of the Depression, persecuted the German Jews, built up German military power, added Austria and part of Czechoslovakia to Germany, and became wildly popular among Germans. 

            Between 1939 and 1945 Hitler’s Germany conquered most of Western and central Europe, tried to murder all of the European Jews, expanded a European war into a Second World War that Germany could not win, brought down a rain of ruin on Germany, and became wildly unpopular among Germans.  Fifty million people had died and much of Europe and Asia were in ruins when he killed himself in April 1945. 

            Josef Stalin again.  After 1945, Stalin ruled Eastern Europe (Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania), and supported the Chinese Communists who won power in China (1949).  He imposed the same kind of government and economy on these countries that he had on Russia.  He clamped down on dissent once again, raced to build an atom bomb, and prepared to launch a new purge.  He died of a stroke in March 1953.  One of the “mourners” at his outdoor funeral caught pneumonia and died.  Bad habits are hard to break. 

Crossing the Line.

Posted on by
1

The trouble came when Hitler pushed well beyond the point up to which Appeasement made sense. 

October 1933: Germany quit the League of Nations and its disarmament conference. 

July 1934: Austrian Nazi “putsch” in Vienna failed; Italian Army mobilized on the Brenner Pass; Hitler denied all involvement.  So Mussolini wasn’t pro-German yet and he looked ready to fight.  That could be useful. 

March 1935: Germany announced rearmament in violation of the Versailles Treaty.  Conscription was restored and an air force (the Luftwaffe) created.  It turned out that Hitler didn’t share conventional economic beliefs about the sanctity of a balanced budget.  That makes all sorts of things possible. 

April 1935: At the Stresa Conference Britain, France, and Italy agreed to oppose forcible changes in European borders.  A “coalition of the willing” appeared to be in formation. 

June 1935: Anglo-German Naval Agreement.  Britain agreed to Germany violating the naval terms of the Versailles Treaty.  The French thought that it might have been nice if the British had told them about this before they read it in the newspapers. 

October 1935-May 1936: Italo-Ethiopian War.  A split between Italy, on the one hand, and France and Britain, on the other hand, opened.  The British didn’t want the Italians on the Suez route and the League of Nations enthusiasts wanted to oppose aggression (without resorting to war of course).  So they dragged the French along.[1] 

The key point here is that the French wanted Britain’s support in any war against Germany.  To keep that secure, one way was to follow the British lead in foreign policy.  People began to refer to Britain as the “English governess.”  Another, riskier, approach was to believe that Britain couldn’t afford to have France be defeated by Germany.  If you believed that, France could take a stronger line against Germany and assume that the British would get on board in a crisis.  Did French leaders want to take a stronger line or did they just want someone to blame? 

December 1935: Hoare-Laval Agreement became public.  French foreign minister Pierre Laval had talked British foreign secretary Sir Samuel Hoare into agreeing to cut a deal with the Italians so that Mussolini would not be permanently alienated from France and Britain.  When news leaked out, both men lost their jobs.  As King George V said to Hoare, “Ah well Sam, no more coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris.”  NB: You have to say it out loud. 

March 1936: Germany re-militarized the Rhineland in violation of the Versailles Treaty.  That is, they moved in troops and began to build fortifications.  Once completed, these measures would prevent France from making an easy and crippling attack on the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heartland. 

September 1936-March 1939: Spanish Civil War.  The British and French tried to push through a policy of non-intervention.  Nobody paid any attention.  Germany, Italy, and Russia all intervened.  Germany and Italy sent troops, tanks, and planes to support the rebel Nationalists; Russia sent weapons and planes and secret policemen to support the government.  Idealistic people your age went to fight in Spain to defend the Republic against fascist aggression.  Franco, the German-Italian client, emerged victorious. 

November 1936: Rome-Berlin Axis proclaimed; Germany and Japan sign anti-Comintern[2] Pact.  Neither one was a real military alliance, but they did amount to an agreement to co-operate. 

July 1937: Japan invaded China.  The Japanese concentrated on conquering the heavily-populated coastal areas, where most of the British trade took place. 

March 1938: “Anschluss” with Austria.  Germany suddenly annexed Austria.  Again, a violation of the Versailles and other treaties.  Two things mattered.  First, the Italians didn’t block the German grab the way they had done in the 1934 “putsch.”  Germany and Ital were aligned.  Second, it put Germany on the southern (and largely unfortified, border of Czechoslovakia and on the frontiers of Yugoslavia. 

March-September 1938: Sudetenland crisis.  The German minority in western Czechoslovakia began agitating for self-government, then for independence.  The Germans had put them up to it.  This gave Hitler the opportunity to threaten to intervene to protect the “oppressed” German minority.  Czechoslovakia had an alliance with France.  France didn’t want to fight Germany unless the British were going to join in.  The British didn’t have an alliance with Czechoslovakia.  In theory, Britain could stay out.  However, if France fought Germany and lost, Britain would be up a gum tree.  So, if France fought, then Britain would have to fight.  For Britain the question became how to squeeze the French to urge the Czechs to give Hitler what he wanted.  That way France would not have to fight and the British would not have to back them up. 

The shock waves from an Anglo-French retreat would be severe.  Other countries in Eastern Europe, like France’s ally Poland and everyone’s enemy the Soviet Union would get the idea that the Western powers were abandoning the region to Germany.  Leaders there would have to adapt.  As one of the characters in an Alan Furst novel says, “We can’t just pick the country up and paste it on Sweden.” 

29-30 September 1938: Munich Conference.  Germany, Italy, France, Britain confer, excluding Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.  The conference stripped the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.  Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who had sought the deal, and Edouard Daladier, the French prime minister who had gone along with the deal, received heroes’ welcomes when they returned home. 

November 1938: “Kristallnacht.”  This was a domestic event inside Germany.  However, it had a deep international effect.  “We’re dealing with a bunch of barbarians.  Can they separate their behavior at home from their behavior in international affairs?  Probably not.” 

15 March 1939: Germany suddenly occupied “Rump Czechoslovakia.”  This Hitler had promised not to do just five months before.  Chamberlain began to think that Hitler was no gentleman.  Where would Hitler turn next? 

31 March 1939: Britain and France announced that they would defend Poland.  The Poles hadn’t asked for this guarantee.  The British and the French had just decided that they needed a trip-wire for war. 

7 April 1939: Italy annexed Albania (Albania!), which borders on Greece. 

April 1939: Britain and France extended their guarantee of borders to Rumania, and Greece; Britain re-established conscription (just as Germany had done four years previously).  The thing is, trained and equipped soldiers aren’t “dragon’s teeth”: they don’t just spring up out of the ground at the command of a magician. 

3 May 1939: Stalin replaced the pro-Western (and Jewish) Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov with his own villainous henchman, Vyacheslav Molotov.  What could that mean?  Those inscrutable Russkies. 

Spring-Summer 1939: Hitler starts badgering Poland over the “mistreatment” of ethnic Germans in the “Polish Corridor” (once part of Germany and lost in the Versailles Treaty).  A new “Sudetenland”? 

12 August 1939: Anglo-French delegation arrived in Moscow to negotiate an anti-German alliance. 

20 August 1939: Hitler secretly asked Stalin to let the German foreign minister, Ribbentrop, come to Moscow. 

23 August 1939: Nazi-Soviet Pact.  The public part of the treaty was a Non-Aggression Pact: Germany and Russia would not fight each other, regardless of who else they fought.  So the British and French negotiators went home.  The secret part of the treaty divided up Eastern Europe: Germany got the western two-thirds of Poland; Russia got eastern Poland and the little Baltic countries (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia), eastern Poland, and Bessarabia (from Rumania).  Stalin had regained the frontiers of tsarist Russia—more than Lenin ever did. 

23 August-1 September 1939: Hitler expected the British and the French to back down, abandoning Poland to its certain fate.  The British and French announced that they would not back down. 

1 September 1939: Germany invaded Poland. 

3 September 1939: Britain and France declared war.  Hitler turned to one of his confidants and asked “What now?” 

War raged in Poland, but it was “All quiet on the Western Front.”  At one place, the French and German lines were close together, without anyone shooting.  Overnight the Germans put up a big sign: “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer.”  On the following morning daylight revealed the French sign: “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite.”  Battle between these opposed ideal was now joined.[3]

[1] “Ethiopium”: waging war against a weaker country for poorly considered reasons, leaving you with a splitting head-ache and fuzzy memories.  See: Iraq.  

[2] The Third, or Communist, International—hence “Comintern” in SovSpeak–was an organization of all Communists parties in the world.  Utterly under Soviet control, it allowed the USSR to exert leverage on the domestic politics of foreign counties and to conduct espionage. 

[3] I stole that anecdote from Sir Denis Brogan, The Development of Modern France, 1870-1940 (1940), p. 729.    

Appeasement and Beliefs.

Posted on by
1

In the view of most Western people, what the Germans did inside their own country was their business, not a legitimate cause for international action. 

People were sad to see German democracy fail and a dictatorship be established.  The newspapers were full of terrible stories.  However, many countries were dictatorships of some type.  Russia, Poland, Austria, Italy, Japan, all those awful little Balkan countries.  (“Very Balkan” was a French slang term for bad behavior in public: a pimp slapping a prostitute on a street corner or big kids beating up on a little kid in an alley.)  It wasn’t a cause for war. 

In the same way, people were revolted by the treatment of the Jews.  Discrimination under the law, harassment, beatings, concentration camps where people were locked up under terrible conditions, and sometimes people died.  One could protest, so long as one was willing to have the Germans–or right-minded people in your own country—point out all your own misbehavior.  Britain and France had empires where the “natives” were badly treated on the basis of race.  The United States oppressed African Americans, often violently in the South.  It wasn’t a cause for war. 

Then there was a distinction between those who would have to defeat Germany and those who would benefit from the defeat of Germany.  Germany could only be defeated by a coalition of major powers.  Britain and France certainly, and possibly Russia if some way could be found to cut a deal with Moscow.  They would do the fighting and the dying, and they would pay the costs of the war.  Who would benefit?  Austria.  Czechoslovakia.  Poland.  Rumania.  Hungary.  Estonia.  Latvia.  Lithuania.  They would get to keep their independence.  Without looking at a map, can you tell me where these countries are located?  Would anyone else benefit?  The United States and Japan, and the Russians if they managed to stay out of the fighting. 

Then there was an emotional element.  This is hard to quantify.  The Depression seemed to prove that democratic capitalism didn’t work very well.  Britain, France, the United States, Australia, Canada, Belgium all suffered under high unemployment and economic stagnation for many years.  People were tired and demoralized.  In contrast, from all that anyone could tell from the newspapers and the newsreels shown in the movie theaters, the Russians, the Germans, and the Italians were happy, confident, and all hard at work building some new kind of civilization.  What would happen if the slacker countries had to go up against the over-achiever countries?  It wouldn’t be pretty. 

So, there were lots of reasons not to fight and very few reasons to fight.  The question then became “What are Hitler’s intentions?” 

Some people saw very clearly early on that Hitler meant to organize Germany for war and then to make Germany the most powerful country in Europe.  Sir Horace Rumbold, the British ambassador to Germany when Hitler came to power, and Winston Churchill, then a marginal politician, saw the situation with unusual clarity.  The French military intelligence service had him pegged right from the start.  For most other people, matters were not so clear. 

First of all, people believed that Germany had some legitimate grievances.  If you took Hitler to be a normal politician, then removing these grievances would end the problem.  Germany had been disarmed, but no one had been willing to make the first move to general disarmament.  If others would not disarm, then perhaps Germany would be satisfied with equality in armaments.  Nationalism said that all people who spoke the same language and had the same culture should belong to the same independent country.  Germans in Austria, the Sudetenland, and the Polish Corridor had been denied this right. 

Then, there was the question of who was really in charge in Berlin.  Most political parties had a left wing, a right wing, and a center.  Who was to say that Nazism was any different?  Probably there were “radical” or “extremist” Nazis, then there were “conservative” Nazis, and then there were “middle of the road” Nazis.  You might not be able to deal with the “radicals,” but surely you could work a deal with the “moderate” and “conservative” Nazis.  Furthermore, to which group did Hitler belong?  Finally, it took a while to understand the strength of Hitler’s grip on power.  The Nazis were only one force in German politics, so far as anyone could tell at first.  Would he Army, big business, all the traditional conservatives who had dominated German life since 1870 really allow Hitler to lead them into another, possibly disastrous, war?  Or would they overthrow him? 

For all these reasons it appeared sensible to seek a peaceful solution.  Of course, if Hitler actually did intend to munch away at the Versailles settlement by little bites only in order to make Germany strong enough to impose its will on every other country, as the dooms-sayers proclaimed, then Britain and France would have no choice but to fight to preserve their own independence.  Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. 

France and Appeasement in the Thirties.

Posted on by
1

For France, too, here was the memory of the First World War.  Most of the decision-makers of the Thirties had been through the first war.  Edouard Daladier, the prime minister who would eventually sign the Munich agreement abandoning France’s Czechoslovakian ally, had a chest covered with medals he had won in the trenches.  Marshall Petain, the senior military officer in the country, had made his reputation holding Verdun in the First World War.  One of those was enough for anybody.  They knew just what would be involved. 

There was a powerful pacifist movement.  Pacifism had an especially strong grip on the French school teachers, so it got passed on to the next generation as well.  French people didn’t really believe in the League of Nations the way British people did, so it had less support. 

The French population pyramid had a narrower base and steeper sides than did the German one, so French casualties in the first war would take a lot longer to replace than would German ones.  France would run short of 18 year-olds in the early 1930s.  These came to be called the “Hollow Years.”  Hard to have an army without soldiers, hard to fight a war without an army. 

France lacked the industrial base for rearmament.  France ranked behind Germany, Russia, and Britain as an industrial economy.  There was also less big industry and more small workshops than was the case elsewhere.  Hard to produce a lot or to impose standardization under these conditions.  Then, the “hollow years” also meant that there was a shortage of factory workers at the same time that there was a shortage of soldiers.  Pushed to an extreme, the argument could be posed as a choice between soldiers without guns or guns without soldiers.  Neither one seemed very promising. 

For much of the Thirties, France teetered on the edge of a civil war between Left and Right.  France had a strong Communist Party.  The appeal of the Communist Party among workers pulled the Socialist Party over toward the extreme left.  France had a strong anti-republican conservative movement and some people were drawn to a French form of fascism.  This pulled the conservative parties toward the extreme right.  The middle ground thinned out. 

In 1934 a slimy political scandal sent the right-wing groups into the streets in huge demonstrations that seemed like an attempt at a fascist coup.  In 1936 the Popular Front (an alliance of Communists, Socialists, and middle-class Radicals) came to power.  This triggered a wave of strikes that forced employers to raise wages, shorten working weeks, and accept mass unionization.  All of this slowed down industrial rearmament.  Tanks and warplanes were slow coming off the assembly lines.  Employers were outraged; middle class people were frightened by the presence of the Communists.  The Popular Front government then botched its economic policy causing many middle-class voters to drift back toward the right. 

The French interpreted the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) in different ways: the right thought that it resulted from a Communist plot and France was next on the list; the left thought that it resulted from a fascist plot and France was next on the list.  The left wanted an alliance with the Soviet Union, while the right thought that this would just allow the Bolsheviks to revolutionize France.  The right wanted an alliance with Italy, while the left thought that this was just French support for fascism and aggression. 

The pre-war and wartime alliances were gone.  In 1918 France had won as part of a powerful coalition.  Now Russia had become an anti-Western outlaw country; the Italians were leaning toward Germany; the British might support France when push came to shove, but they refused to support France’s allies in Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia); and the United States had retreated into isolationism. 

The Locarno Pact (1926) hindered France’s ability to aid its eastern allies.  Britain had promised to fight to defend France against a German attack, but not if France attacked Germany.  How could France support its threatened allies in Poland and Czechoslovakia against a German attack?  It could not move into Germany without international approval. 

So it wasn’t a case of “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.”  It looks to have been a shipload of people caught on a lee shore in a storm. 

Britain, Appeasement, and Today.

Posted on by
1

In the Thirties Appeasement made a lot of sense for Britain, up to a point. 

There was the memory of the First World War.  Most of the decision-makers of the Thirties had been through the first war.  Anthony Eden, briefly the Conservative foreign secretary in the mid-Thirties, was the lone survivor among three brothers who had gone to war.  Clement Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party, was generally known as “Major” Attlee, the rank he had attained in the war.  Neville Chamberlain, prime minister from 1937 to 1940, had spent the war trying to figure out how to stretch Britain’s limited manpower to meet the needs of both industry and the army.  They knew just what would be involved. 

There was a powerful pacifist movement.  Many of these people, and many others who were not pacifists, believed in working through the League of Nations, rather than resorting to war.  In a democracy, their opinions mattered. 

The Versailles Treaty seemed illegitimate.  John Maynard Keynes had begun to undermine the treaty as soon as it had been signed with his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace.  German historians had manipulated the diplomatic documents they had published after the war to make Germany look more sinned against than sinning.  Lots of British and American historians had written books based on these documents.  Lots of well-educated people had read these books and talked about them or written newspaper columns based on them.  British diplomats tended to be unsympathetic to the new nations of Central and Eastern Europe.  These countries seemed rickety, quarrelsome, and prone to Jew-baiting.  Perhaps someone should put the Austro-Hungarian Empire back together? 

The First World War had weakened the economic position of Britain.  To pay for massive imports of food, raw materials, and weapons, Britain had sold off many of its foreign investments and had borrowed heavily.  British shipping had been devastated by German submarines.  A second war would ruin it entirely by repeating the whole process on a bigger scale.  Should you fight a war that would wreck your country if there was some other alternative? 

The Depression made rearmament difficult.  It increased public spending for unemployment relief while reducing tax revenues.  To keep the budget balanced, something had to be cut.  Defense spending is what got cut.  The navy guaranteed connections to the empire, so it got the lion’s share of the smaller defense budget.  People were terrified about bombers destroying London in 24 hours, so the air force got what it needed for fighter defense.   This meant the army had to make do with scraps. 

Modern war required modern industry.  Britain’s industrial base had been badly eroded.  The long depression had left British industry un-modernized and long unemployment had de-skilled much of the labor force.  How would the country be able to rearm to match Germany? 

There were troubles inside the empire.  Most of Ireland had won its independence from Britain, depriving Britain of the use of the southwestern Irish ports used for convoying ships in the First World War.  In India Gandhi had begun his campaign of “militant non-violence” in an effort to drive out Britain.  In 1936 the Arab reaction against European Jewish migration to Palestine had led to an armed revolt.  Who needed to worry about a hypothetical German threat when you had several real ones in your face? 

There were other dangers than just Germany.  Britain’s empire mostly lay “east of Suez.”  In the Far East Japan was asserting its power, treating China like its special possession.  This threatened Britain’s trade with and investments in China.  The great port cities of Shanghai and Honk Kong were key parts of the empire.  Besides, if the Japanese got started in China, who knew where they might end up?   Britain might have to fight Japan.  If that happened then it needed to have secure supply lines to the Far East and the support of the Commonwealth. 

Britain’s “lifelines to the Empire” ran south around the Cape of Good Hope (long and slow) and east through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal (shorter and faster).  In the Mediterranean, Italy had begun to throw its weight around.  Mussolini talked of the Mediterranean as “our sea” and about building a “new Roman empire.”  Italian radio propaganda from Libya stirred up the Arabs in Palestine.  The Italians had a growing interest in Ethiopia, at the head of the Blue Nile and adjacent to the Red Sea, which connected the Suez Canal with the Indian Ocean.  Britain might have to fight Italy.  If that happened it would be hard to fight Japan.  If the British had their hands tied behind their back in the Mediterranean, then the Japanese might grow more aggressive in the Far East. 

You couldn’t count on the Commonwealth countries to just blindly follow the British lead.  They had done that in 1914.  Where did it get them?  Gallipoli, Ypres, massive cemeteries.  Since 1922 they had demanded to be consulted before any British declaration of war.  Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, and Canadians valued the empire and would fight for it if it was in danger.  However, they saw Japan as the great danger, not Italy or Germany.  They had a really hard time understanding why they should go to war over places like the Sudetenland or “the Polish corridor” or the Sub-Carpatho-Ukraine (a.k.a. Ruthenia). 

The Americans and the Russians weren’t likely to help out.  Russia was a Communist country formally committed to overthrowing capitalist democracy wherever it existed.  While the Messiah tarried, the Russians made do with espionage and stirring up the Communist parties in Western countries to oppose the governments in power.  In 1936 Stalin started purging the ruling group in the Soviet Union.  Pretty soon he got around to shooting or deporting to Siberia most of the senior military officers.  What kind of army would the Soviet Union have after that?  Then, Poland, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary all were between Russia and Germany.  The Russians could only get at the Germans by entering these countries.  None of them were likely to agree to let the Russians in because who knew when they would leave?  (Well, 1989, that’s when.) 

The Depression hit harder in America than it did even in Europe.  Americans were preoccupied with their domestic economic and social problems.  They had disliked the experience of the First World War.  A lot of big talk about “making the world safe for democracy” had turned into squalid deal-making at Versailles.  Then the Europeans had ratted on their war-debts to the United States in 1934.  Now the United States was adopting “neutrality legislation” intended to seal off America from any more European quarrels.  The first law, the Johnson Act (1934) barred any American bank from lending to a country which had defaulted on its war debts.  Later laws would prevent the shipping of cargoes in American ships to countries which were involved in a war. 

So British appeasement before the Second World War did not arise from a few misguided or cowardly men.  It wasn’t just Neville Chamberlain and his umbrella.  Are there lessons here for our own time? 

Hitler’s War.

Posted on by
1

            Adolf Hitler created the Second World War.  He didn’t just start the war, he repeatedly took the initiative to expand it and to point it in new directions.  For this reason it is best labeled “Hitler’s War.” 

            The war really began in late-August 1939 when Hitler made a deal with Russia to divide Eastern Europe.  This led to the rapid conquest of Poland (Sept. 1939).  In late 1939 Hitler decided on war in the West at the first opportunity.  In April and May 1940 German forces over-ran Denmark and Norway.  In May and June 1940 they over-ran Holland, Belgium and France, driving the British army off the Continent.  Hitler was master of Europe!  Except that the British had now concluded that Mr. Hitler was not a very nice person at all.  (See: Charles I, Louis XIV, Napoleon I, Kaiser Wilhelm II.)  The British fought on, defeating Germany’s planned invasion by winning control of the air over the English Channel in the Battle of Britain.  The Germans then turned to starving out the British through submarine warfare in the Battle of the Atlantic.  This, too, failed. 

            Hitler’s victory forced other countries to make choices they didn’t want to make. 

Italy declared war just as France fell, then found itself at war with Britain in the Mediterranean.  The German conquests in Europe created a vacuum of power in the Far East.  Japan sought to exploit this to establish its own supremacy.  Germany’s defeat of France and the weak position of Britain terrified the Americans, who began to supply military assistance to the British (Lend-Lease) and to take a strong line against Japan. 

            Hitler widened the war in1941.  He responded to a local challenge by conquering Yugoslavia and Greece in Spring 1941.  In June 1941 he launched a huge surprise attack on his Russian ally, capturing millions of prisoners and conquering huge swaths of territory.  Alarmed that the war would end without their having any claim on territory, the Japanese attacked.  The air raid on Pearl Harbor was followed by the conquest of the Philippines, British Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies.  Soon after Pearl Harbor Hitler declared war on the United States.  Also in 1941 Hitler ordered the “Final Solution of the Jewish Problem”: this would involve the murder of millions through mass shootings in Russia and the construction of death camps in Poland. 

            The further course of the war is best summed up in the term “ocean barriers and land bridges.”  American forces had to cross vast oceans to reach their German and Japanese enemies.  An armada of ships had to be constructed and control of the seas won.  Worse still, the Americans and the British divided their resources between the European war, which mattered, and the Pacific war, which did not.  In contrast, Germany and Russia had no water barriers between them; they were in continuous contact from Summer 1941 to Spring 1945.  Neither side could break off, so the great majority of German casualties were suffered on the Eastern Front, while the British and the Americans made less of a contribution to the defeat of Hitler.  Until Summer 1944 the bombing of Germany destroyed cities without harming the German war effort. 

The war rushed to an end from Summer 1944 to Summer 1945.  The Americans and the British invaded France (June 1944) just as the Russians unleashed a gigantic attack on the Eastern Front.  Hitler’s empire crumbled, while the Americans banjoed the Japanese in a remarkable war fought across trackless ocean and trackless island jungle. 

War had ruined virtually the whole world, and had revealed that people were capable of anything (Auschwitz and Hiroshima).  There would be no easy peace. 

The Thirties Made Simple.

Posted on by
Reply

The economic crisis. 

            The Americans built more than they could sell and loaned more than they could afford to lose.  When the American economy tanked in 1929-1930, American banks called in the loans they had made to German banks; the German banks called in the loans they had made all through Eastern Europe; countries started going bankrupt; and nobody bought American stuff, so…well, you get the picture. 

            Germany stopped paying reparations to France and Britain; France and Britain stopped paying their war debts to the United States; the United States stopped lending money to Germany; Germany…well you get the picture. 

            Companies went bankrupt; unemployment soared (to 25 percent in the United States); governments balanced their budgets by raising taxes and cutting spending; companies went…well, you get the picture. 

The political crisis caused by the economic crisis. 

            Democracy is good at handing out pleasure; it isn’t so good at handing out pain.  (See: health care reform, Social Security reform, cutting the US deficit.)  Fighting over who suffered from the Depression paralyzed democracy in France and Britain, almost brought down democracy in the United States, and destroyed democracy in Germany. 

            Where democracy survived, it had to adapt (see: New Deal in USA) and it focused like a hawk on internal issues.  Not everyone liked the changes. 

            Where democracy did not survive (or never existed) radical governments brought their countries out of the Depression faster and better than anywhere else.  Nazi Germany and Communist Russia were the great success stories.  Lots of people thought “If democracy is just the freedom to starve; maybe we should give dictatorship a try.” 

The international crisis caused by the economic crisis and the political crisis. 

            Adolf Hitler wanted to smash France, take over all of Eastern Europe as far as the Ural Mountains, starve most Poles and Russians to death, get rid of Europe’s Jews in some way, re-build Berlin to look like Rome on steroids (see: Washington, DC), and then retire to the Alps to paint. 

            Germany broke the Versailles treaty by rearming (1934); by re-occupying the de-militarized Rhineland (1936); by taking over Austria (1938); and by threatening war to get a big chunk of Czechoslovakia (1938).  On top of that, Germany helped the anti-government rebels in Spain (1936-1938), and stirred-up the German minorities scattered across Eastern Europe (and Argentina and Pennsylvania). 

Italy and Japan piled on.  Italy conquered Ethiopia and took over Albania.  Japan invaded China, telling the Americans to mind their own business. 

The democracies hoped that these nasty men would just go away.  Perhaps giving them something would make them nicer.  (See: appeasement.) 

Then Hitler took over what was left of Czechoslovakia (March 1939) and started in on Poland (Spring 1939).  The British and French decided to fight the next time. 

Josef Stalin thought that the western democracies wanted to push Hitler east so that he wouldn’t bother them.  Two can play at that game.  He did a deal with Hitler. 

Germany attacked Poland.  War came on 1 September 1939. 

The Twenties Made Simple.

Posted on by
Reply

There were three pillars of the post-war order.  All were built on sand. 

The Illusion of Peace. 

            The continuation of war by other means.  America and Britain shanked France by defaulting on a promised alliance treaty against Germany.  France demanded complete fulfillment of every other part of the Versailles Treaty as a way of keeping Germany down.  When Germany defaulted on reparations payments in 1922, France occupied the Ruhr for a year and forced Germany to surrender. 

            The real peace settlement.  However, France—foolishly—had been living on American and British credit, so the Anglo-Americans forced France to surrender in turn.  The Dawes Plan (1924) greatly reduced Germany’s reparations debts, then provided American loans to get the German economy, German reparations, and European war debts to the USA moving again.  The Locarno Treaty (1925) gave a British guarantee to defend the Franco-German border against military action—by either country.  So, no more Ruhr Occupations.  Germany won, France lost.  No guarantees for Eastern Europe. 

A Fragile Prosperity. 

            The American System.  Mass production, assembly lines, standardization, and efficiency led to low costs, low prices, huge sales, and enormous profits.  Think Henry Ford here, but it applied to lots of other people.  American prosperity led to lots of purchases from abroad and lots of American loans all over the world.  America served as the locomotive pulling the world ahead.  So far, so good. 

            Shadows on the Land.  During the war high prices and the collapse of European exports led to a massive increase in production and industrialization everywhere else.  After the war, prices collapsed and Europeans returned to exporting goods.   Frankly, there was just too much stuff being produced for the size of the market.  Prices went down.  Fine, except that lots of people had borrowed money to expand production.  Their incomes went down without their debts going down.  Solution?  Make even more stuff.  Fine, except that forced down prices even more and made it even harder to pay debts. 

A Weak Consensus on Liberal Values. 

            Restoration.  After the war everyone wanted to put everything back just the way it had been and pretend that the war hadn’t happened.  Partly, this meant returning to a belief in representative government and civil rights, a market economy, faith in human reason, and belief in Progress.  America and Western Europe did this, while Germany and parts of Central Europe became democracies for the first time.  Science, medicine, and technology made great strides.  Prosperity revived.  Peace seemed to be restored. 

            Challenges to this orthodoxy.  Russia and Italy established dictatorships, then experimented with government control of the economy in place of the market.  Democracy soon failed in Central and Eastern Europe.  Scientists, doctors, and philosophers insisted on the power of the sub-conscious and the irrational in human behavior, and on “relativity” and “uncertainty” in science. 

            Then there was “The War.”  Who could believe slogans about the Triumph of Reason or the Inevitability of Progress after that? 

The Costs of the First World War.

Posted on by
1

First, the war cost Europe its system of international security. 

That system had depended upon a balance of power among the five great powers (Germany, France, Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Britain) and on the managed decline of the Ottoman Empire. 

The Ottoman Empire collapsed.  France got Syria and Lebanon; Britain got Iraq, the Trans-Jordan, and Palestine; the Greeks tried to seize much of Turkey and got a bloody nose.  Who would now organize the Middle East? 

The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed.  Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, the remnant of Austria, and an enlarged Rumania emerged out of the ruins.  Post-war Central and Eastern Europe was made up of weak, quarrelsome “Potemkin” countries.  Ethnic minorities were scattered throughout the new countries and territorial disputes festered.  “Ruthenia, Land That We Love.”  The collapse of a single large market gave way to competing national economies.  Who would now organize Central Europe? 

The tsarist empire collapsed and the borders of Russia were driven back hundreds of miles.  Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and an enlarged Rumania (Bessarabia) all emerged from the ruins.  Russia went through a revolution, civil war, and famine.  Russia sought to export revolution to other countries by force of arms and by conspiracy.  Russia repudiated its international debts.  Communist Russia became a rabid dog of a country. 

Britain turned toward near-isolation in Europe as it dealt with domestic problems and imperial issues.  The British economy slumped soon after the end of the war, leaving it with a million men unemployed for many years.  The “staple industries” of pre-war British prosperity were ruined: cotton-spinning, ship-building, coal.  Rebellion broke out in Ireland and the British were too stupid to do the obvious thing.  Imperial security was threatened through conflicts with France over Europe and the Middle East, with Japan over the Far East, and the US over economic issues.  In Europe, Britain wanted a restored prosperity and stability. 

France emerged from the war “bled white,” without reliable allies, and fearful of German revival.  The population structure of France had long differed from that of other European countries, so the casualties of the war had a different effect.  Twenty years after the First World War, France would enter the “hollow years” of few draftees.  The French tried to replace their lost Russian alliance by negotiating treaties with Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia.  This was like trying to replace a sumo wrestler with circus dwarves.  The refusal of the American Senate to ratify the Versailles Treaty ended the Anglo-American security guarantee offered to the French in exchange for concessions on the treatment of Germany. 

Germany emerged from the war with its military power and territory significantly reduced, and with a heavy reparations burden imposed on its economy, but with its real power relative to every other country greatly increased, and a deep sense of grievance against virtually everyone.  German population rebounded from the war losses much faster than did that of France.  To the east and south Germany was bordered by small, weak countries in need of foreign investment and technical expertise.  Germans were enraged by the war’s outcome. 

Second, the war cost Europe its dominant position in the world. 

The foundations of European economic leadership were ruined. 

During the war European industries had shifted from producing consumer goods (for either the domestic or the export market) to producing military goods.  Foreign producers had expanded their own industry to take up the slack.  For example, Japan captured the Asian textiles market.  Indian, Latin American, and North American producers had done similar things.  They also had exported goods to a Europe that could not provide for itself.  How were Europeans to re-gain these markets after the war? 

Wartime losses of gold and the liquidation of foreign investments had transferred wealth from Europe to other countries.  Japan and the United States were the big winners here.  However, the income from “invisibles” (income from foreign investments, interest on loans, fees for insurance, merchant shipping income) had long covered a European payments deficit.  Now these were all gone. 

The war left behind a huge tangle of debts.  All the Allied belligerents had borrowed from Britain, then from the United States.  Britain also had borrowed from the United States.  How were these debts to be re-paid after the war? 

Germany owed reparations to the victors.  Initially, these reparations were supposed to cover actual damage to property (mostly in France and Belgium).  Subsequently, they were expanded to include pensions to widows, orphans, and disabled veterans, and separation allowances to the troops (generally one year’s pay).  This massively increased the sum of reparations, but there was no way to calculate the exact amount or figure out a payments scheme until 1921. 

Non-European states saw their power greatly increased.  Japan rose as a power in the Far East by seizing the German colonies north of the Equator, by seeking to dominate a China in the midst of civil war and revolution, and by expanding its navy.  Even more importantly, the United States revolutionized its position in the world.  From 1914 to 1918, the United States went from being the greatest debtor nation in the world to being the greatest creditor nation.  During the war the Americans set out to build a “Navy second to none.”  In short order the Americans had raised and trained an army of four million men.  After the war the United States began to muscle its way into Latin American markets that Britain had long dominated.  

Nationalism in the non-western world greatly increased.  Turkey emerged out fo the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, driving out French, Greek, and British forces, then compelling the wartime victors to negotiate a new peace treaty with the Turkish Republic.  In the Middle East Arab nationalism appeared.  Egypt gained a nominal independence that did not satisfy the desires of the Egyptians.  In India, Gandhi began his campaign to force the British to leave.  While they were trying to fend off Japanese imperialism, the Chinese nationalists also adopted an anti-Western stance.  Even in the “White Dominions” (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada), the British found the members of the Empire pushing back against London’s authority after the war.  The Chanak Crisis in 1922 led to the fall of prime minister Lloyd George. 

Third, the war cost Europe its stable society based on bourgeois values. 

Middle- and upper-class supporters of Enlightenment values (sometimes called Modernism) were gravely weakened.  Casualty rates had varied by social class.  In terms of percentage, not absolute numbers, the upper and middle classes had born the brunt of the war in all countries because they had provided the bulk of the junior officers. 

The upper and middle classes had suffered huge economic losses during and after the ar.  No country had universal social welfare systems.  Members of the industrial working classes were covered in some places.  However, the middle and upper classes depended upon a lifetime of savings and inherited wealth to pay for a middle-class lifestyle, retirement, the education of their children, dowries for daughters and setting sons up in business or the professions.  Wartime and post-war inflation, taxation, and the shift in income distribution had undermined the resources of many of these people. 

      The middle ground of politics thinned out as post-war politics was radicalized and polarized.  The political middle ground, where people could find a basis for compromise, thinned out.  On the left, Communist parties following Russian Bolshevik orders competed with Socialists, who were discredited by having supported the war effort.  This pulled one wing of politics toward the extreme left.  On the right, fascist parties competed with traditional conservative parties.  This pulled the other wing of politics toward the extreme right.  The big losers here were the traditional “liberal” parties of left and right.  Individual liberty, a small government, and a free market offered few attractions in post-war politics.  Certainly, young people and veterans were not much attracted to such parties. 

            Before the war widely-accepted conventional liberal views had held that humans were governed by reason, that compromise offered the best solutions to political issues, that history was a story of continuing progress, that science served mankind, and that one could regard the future with optimism.  Before the war, a few thinkers had argued that people were driven by the sub-conscious, by impulse, and by individual assertiveness more than by rational thought and a co-operative spirit, and that there were limits to human understanding.  The ideas of Einstein, Freud, and Nietzsche, among others, were known to a relatively small number of well-educated people willing to entertain radical ideas and their racy implications.  However, these ideas were not generally accepted.  After the war, however, the pre-war “fringe” thinkers began to look like prophets of the new age.  These views, usually in a popularized form, became fashionable. 

            Furthermore, wartime governments had systematically violated the tenets (NOT “tenants”) of liberal doctrine.  Free trade had been abandoned for import and export controls imposed by the government.  Passports had been introduced to regulate the movement of people from one country to another.  A gold-backed money supply had been replaced by freely-printed paper currency.  Individuals had been conscripted for military service or for industrial labor.  Governments had closed small, inefficient companies to shift their labor and machinery to larger, more efficient firms in order to better support the war effort.  Censorship hid many truths from people, while propaganda sought to whip up the emotions, rather than appeal to reason. 

            Most of all, looking at the casualty totals, who could believe in Reason or Progress? 

Some Questions.

Posted on by
Reply

            Special Counsel Robert Hur harmed President Joe Biden by explaining exactly why he did not charge him with any crime.  Hur’s report makes it clear that Biden could have been charged with “willful retention [and un-authorized sharing with the ghostwriter of his memoirs] of national security secrets.”  When Biden left office in January 2017, he took with him classified documents, mostly regarding Afghanistan.  He soon shared some of this material with the man ghostwriting his memoir.  Moreover, in a February 2017 session, he told the ghostwriter that he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.”  That is, in February 2017, Biden knew he had classified documents in his possession. 

On the one hand, there is a Justice Department policy against charging a sitting President.  So, Biden would have to be charged either after the 2024 presidential election (if he loses) or after the 2028 election (if he is re-elected). 

On the other hand, Hur described President Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”  Hur’s report offered examples that are painful to read.  In October 2023 interviews with the Special Counsel’s team, Biden several times “did not remember when he was vice president.”  Nor could he recall when his son Beau had died.  As a result, Hur believed that “It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his 80s—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”[1] 

Fair enough.  A “well-meaning, elderly man” is how any fair-minded person now would describe Joe Biden.   Still, there are unanswered questions.  Biden’s mishandling of classified documents began in 2017, at the end of his second term as Vice President.  Is Hur arguing that Biden could plead “memory problems” for events as early as 2017?  Or is he only arguing that Biden would cut a pathetic figure if charged in 2025 or 2029? 

That is, when did Biden’s memory issues begin?  In a February 2017 session with his ghostwriter, Biden had difficulty “remember[ing] events.”  Were his issues already apparent during—at least—the later part of the Obama Administration?  Had they remained stable or progressed by January 2020, when he began his run for president?  Did friends and family members, and doctors have a sense of his limits?  Only they can answer those questions.  (Well, tell-all memoirs from Obama or Clinton officials might add something after the whole unfortunate Donld Trump matter is resolved.)[2] 

Would he have defeated Donald Trump in November 2020 if the American people had possessed a full knowledge of his state of mind?  More importantly, can he defeat Trump in November 2024 now that this information is available?  Polling doesn’t offer much help to the Biden camp.  Biden is trailing Trump in most polls.  One polls has shown that a Trump felony conviction would about even things out, no more.  Another poll reported that voters who see democracy as threatened are evenly divided in their support for Democrats and Republicans.[3] 

It’s an awful choice that American voters should not be forced to make. 

[1] Michael D. Shear, “In Biden’s Exoneration, Political Hazard Emerges,” NYT, 9 February 2024. 

[2] Some presidents have hidden their medical problems from the public view: FDR wasn’t often photographed in his wheel chair; Kennedy concealed his Addison disease; Wilson’s entourage hid his totally disabling stroke.

[3] William Galston, “A State of the Union for the Middle Class,” WSJ, 7 February 2024