Sex, fear and looting: survivors disclose untold stories of the Blitz

[LizzieMaine]

Possibly, if not probably. The USSR's primary interest in those territories was to provide a physical buffer against a resurgent Germany, which would have been decidedly less necessary, one hopes, in a Europe where Hitler became irrelevant or was removed in a coup after 1938. But then again, the Western powers had interfered in the Russian Civil War on the side of the Whites in 1919-20, and there'd be no reason to think that couldn't happen again, especially if a post-Nazi Germany were to align with Britain and France.

It's also possible that much of Europe might have gone Communist on its own -- France had a very powerful Communist party before and after the war, and so had Germany until the Nazis took over. Franco likely would have been beaten back in Spain had the Nazis had to abandon their aid to the Falangists in 1938-39, and the Spanish Republicans leaned pretty far to the left already. Italy very nearly went Red at the polls in 1948 -- and probably would have had the CIA not intervened -- so Stalin might have had his enlarged Sphere of Influence anyway, without firing a shot. Or, "Eurocommunism" could have made Stalin himself less relevant.

On the other hand, it's quite likely that without Hitler to worry about, Stalin would have concentrated far more of his attention on what Japan was doing. The Sons of Heaven were running rampant in China, and that had nothing to do with anything going on in the West, and since Japan is Russia's historic enemy, I can see Stalin far more worried about what was going on in Asia than on anything happening in Eastern Europe.

 

[3fingers]

Given that, what do you make of Patton (and others) stating that we fought the wrong war?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well, if that's what he believed, he should have given up that whole Third Army gig and had the courage of his convictions. I'm sure he could have gotten a job at the Reichsrundfunk right alongside Robert H. Best, Lord Hee Haw, and Mister OK. That's the exact line Herr Doktor Goebbels was shortwaving to the US all during the war.

I don't have a whole lot of respect for Patton after the way he acted as MacArthur's wormy little lackey at the Battle of Anacostia Flats in 1932. It doesn't surprise me in the least that he held such views.

Patton aside, though, that argument brings up something a lot of people forget -- there was a strong thread on the hard right in the US that believed fervently that we should have been fighting on the side of the Nazis. The National Association of Manufacturers was full of people like this, many of whom made good money double-dealing right thru the war: Standard Oil of New Jersey, Ford, and General Motors all had Nazi connections, and there was a lot of talk on the right, especially from 1937-39, that "we can do business with Hitler." This type of attitude was so common and so troubling that a best-selling book came out in 1942 under the title "You CAN'T Do Business With Hitler." But that didn't stop Esso, Henry Ford, or Alfred Sloan, among others.

Aside from the "business is business" Nazi-enablers in the US there was also a hard core of racial Nazis here. Their leader was Charles A. Lindbergh, whose broadcast of October 13, 1939 was essentially an appeal for Aryan unity, and there were a lot of pure-blooded 100 Per Cent American fascists, especially in the Midwest, where the McCormick press egged them on, who lapped that filth right up. There was a dirty, poisonous Fascist strain in the US in the last years before the war -- including everything from Coughlin's "Catholic Action" to militant factions of the American Legion -- and it led to incidents of terrorism, bloodshed and violence the "Greatest Generation" hypers don't tell you about.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Well, if that's what he believed, he should have given up that whole Fifth Army gig and had the courage of his convictions. I'm sure he could have gotten a job at the Reichsrundfunk right alongside Robert H. Best, Lord Hee Haw, and Mister OK. That's the exact line Herr Doktor Goebbels was shortwaving to the US all during the war.

I don't have a whole lot of respect for Patton after the way he acted as MacArthur's wormy little lackey at the Battle of Anacostia Flats in 1932. It doesn't surprise me in the least that he held such views.

Patton aside, though, that argument brings up something a lot of people forget -- there was a strong thread on the hard right in the US that believed fervently that we should have been fighting on the side of the Nazis. The National Association of Manufacturers was full of people like this, many of whom made good money double-dealing right thru the war: Standard Oil of New Jersey, Ford, and General Motors all had Nazi connections, and there was a lot of talk on the right, especially from 1937-39, that "we can do business with Hitler." This type of attitude was so common and so troubling that a best-selling book came out in 1942 under the title "You CAN'T Do Business With Hitler." But that didn't stop Esso, Henry Ford, or Alfred Sloan, among others.

Aside from the "business is business" Nazi-enablers in the US there was also a hard core of racial Nazis here. Their leader was Charles A. Lindbergh, whose broadcast of October 13, 1939 was essentially an appeal for Aryan unity, and there were a lot of pure-blooded 100 Per Cent American fascists, especially in the Midwest, where the McCormick press egged them on, who lapped that stuff right up. There was a dirty, poisonous Fascist strain in the US in the last years before the war -- including everything from Coughlin's "Catholic Action" to militant factions of the American Legion -- and it led to incidents of terrorism, bloodshed and violence the "Greatest Generation" hypers don't tell you about.

"I don't have a whole lot of respect for Patton after the way he acted as MacArthur's wormy little lackey at the Battle of Anacostia Flats in 1932. It doesn't surprise me in the least that he held such views."

And that aside, he ranks with one Thomas Jonathan Jackson as the most over-rated general in American history. Never was victorious in a battle unless he possessed superior numbers and interior lines. The most honest assessment of Patton was written by Andy Rooney in his autobiographical account, My War. I recommend it.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Of course, had the Western Allies taken Stalin up on his offer of an alliance against Hitler in the wake of Munich....(insert Alternate Rest of 20th Century Here.)

Touches on another subject: the treatment of Neville Chamberlain at Munich by most historians. The counterpoint: were France and Great Britain really ready in 1938 to take on Germany in armed conflict? Given what happened during the Battle of France nearly two years later, I'm skeptical. Arguably, Chamberlain may have delayed the inevitable, but that delay allowed at least some time for preparation.

But to your point: Uncle Joe committing divisions before he was attacked to bolster an essentially western alliance, or even to protect a Poland governed by a hostile anti- Soviet leadership? I don't see said hypothetical alliance working: the Soviet Union had a decimated army officer corps that, as bad as things were in the summer of 1941, would have been even more hobbled by an earlier outbreak of war.

 

[LizzieMaine]

For all the shock the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact generated in the press in 1939, it's surprising just how many commentators at the time saw it for what it was: a desperate stalling tactic that both sides knew wasn't going to last. It seemed like every paper and magazine had its own variation of the political cartoon of Hitler and Stalin bowing and tipping their caps with one hand, while holding a dagger behind their backs in the other.

The USSR had a treaty with Czechoslovakia before Munich, obligating them to protect that nation's interests in the event of a German move on the Sudetenland, and Stalin was furious that he was left out of the Munich conference, largely at the insistence of the British. And yet, the Soviets made their last effort toward an alliance with Britain and France in mid-August of 1939 -- a time when Hitler was still far from ready to fight a two-front war, especially with the Russian winter just nine or ten weeks away. I don't think the question is so much would the Soviets have been ready as it is would Hitler have dared to call the bluff, knowing he wasn't ready either? Who's the better poker player?

 

[Hat and Rehat]

It is indeed, but please note that British pilots were following orders.

I second your indeed. The only part I find a little overdone is rating the munitions in civilian body counts. It seems impolite, if nothing else.

Reap the whirlwind is a term derived from the proverbial phrase, "They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind", which in turn comes from the eighth chapter of the Book of Hosea in the Old Testament (Hosea 8:7). Its idiomatic meaning is to suffer the consequences of one's actions. The phrase was famously used by Arthur "Bomber" Harris in response to the Blitz of 1940 when he said:
"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naïve theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now, they are going to reap the whirlwind."

It was Nazi policy to break the will of a population by indiscriminate bombing of civilians. After failing to break Londoners will, Hitler turned his attention to the City of Coventry, his intention was to destroy it completely, to that end the word, to Coventrate, meaning to destroy completely, entered the English lexicon. Not my understanding of honour.

Bomber Command crews also suffered an extremely high casualty rate: 55,573 killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew (a 44.4 percent death rate), a further 8,403 were wounded in action and 9,838 became prisoners of war.

I said sometimes. I wish I could dredge up this full memory, but somewhere in my extensive reading within the last two months I read of Hitler refraining from some type of attack, though the allies weren't as reticent. I figure it's a bit like what Mike Tyson said; "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face."
I shrug and say, all's fair .... that always sounded like a truism to me.
Your numbers are astounding. That I didn't know.
We Americans experienced a different war.Other than Pearl Harbor, civilians lost husbands and sons, but the civilian population weren't ever under sustained attack. Our buildings were still standing.
It's little wonder that the Russians were particularly brutal to the defeated Germans. Their numbers were like Bomber Command casualties almost across the board.

 

[GHT]

I second your indeed. The only part I find a little overdone is rating the munitions in civilian body counts. It seems impolite, if nothing else.

The words war & honour are not exactly bed fellows. There are of couse, always exceptions to the rule. A good example would be the Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident that occurred on 20 December 1943, when, after a successful bomb run on Bremen, 2nd Lt Charles "Charlie" Brown's B-17 Flying Fortress, named "Ye Olde Pub," was severely damaged by German fighters. Luftwaffe pilot Franz Stigler had the opportunity to shoot down the crippled bomber, but did not, instead, he pointed out to the crew, their direction home. After an extensive search by Brown, the two pilots met each other 40 years later and developed a friendship that lasted until Stigler's death in March 2008.

But for every Stigler how many films do you see of Stuka dive bombers straffing a line of defenceless refugees? And on the subject of honour, whoever coined the term: "friendly fire," must have a warped sense of humour. Ain't nothing friendly about it if you happen to be in it's firing line.

 

[Hat and Rehat]

Like the city centres of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for example?

Hiroshima I find easier to stomach than Nagasaki. I'm not saying US forces were chisel jawed Boy Scouts that demonstrated how to war. The unconditional surrender demanded in WW2 was a new phenomena, though the first war's debacle at Versailles had some of the elements in the draconian measures regarding reparations. Something more reasonable would likely not have led to Hitler's rise.
US forces were already at war, with the government lying to the general public, with Japan through surrogate Chiang Kia-sheck, and turning out P-51s in very large numbers, well before Pearl Harbor. I follow the view that Pearl and the Pacific fleet were intentionally made weak to incite wild hopes of success in Japan, leading to the attack. Roosevelt, and military leaders as well, wanted in, even if the American people didn't. Acton's dictum about power is probably second only to the Biblical doctrine of original sin in terms of empirical evidence. That's the only reason Nagasaki had to happen. Power makes those that hold it itch to wield it. It should make us worry more about the people who are driven to get their hand on the levers.

 

[Hat and Rehat]

The words war & honour are not exactly bed fellows. There are of couse, always exceptions to the rule. A good example would be the Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident that occurred on 20 December 1943, when, after a successful bomb run on Bremen, 2nd Lt Charles "Charlie" Brown's B-17 Flying Fortress, named "Ye Olde Pub," was severely damaged by German fighters. Luftwaffe pilot Franz Stigler had the opportunity to shoot down the crippled bomber, but did not, instead, he pointed out to the crew, their direction home. After an extensive search by Brown, the two pilots met each other 40 years later and developed a friendship that lasted until Stigler's death in March 2008.

But for every Stigler how many films do you see of Stuka dive bombers straffing a line of defenceless refugees? And on the subject of honour, whoever coined the term: "friendly fire," must have a warped sense of humour. Ain't nothing friendly about it if you happen to be in it's firing line.

Britain was the most hated nation on the planet prior to lend lease and their treasury ending up in US coffers. They didn't rule the seas and preside over the largest empire in the world because they were so nice. They got away with a lot in the years before film, including straffing civilians, Iraqis in particular. Magna Carta and British Common Law were wonderful gifts to western civilization. The principles were often practiced selectively after the cliffs of Dover were no longer in sight.
The US ended up as the undestroyed country after the 2nd war, and had the wealth and will to build a new kind of soft empire, becoming the new most hated nation.

 

[Hat and Rehat]

And please don't take my comments as an attempt to single out the English as prime examples of perfidy. They just had more opportunity in those days of no sunset. There's an irony in the fact the Russians, Britain and the USA allied together, controlling 2/3 of the planet between them, against an axis that never controlled more than 4%. Hitler was a madman, but I have to feel some empathy for the German people influenced by his siren song. Il Duce could see the fasces in the architecture of Europe from when the city of the seven hills was the axe among the rods. One writer calls it the Roman Disease, of which The Reicht is an outbreak and even the EU evidence Europe still has a fever.
The Japanese are good imitators historically. If ideas like manifest destiny and the white man's burden are less than convincing, taking over Asia makes a certain kind of sense. England, another island nation, seemed to be doing pretty well, after all. Hirohito's armies were real bastards to those they conquered, but history is certainly replete with similar stories. The conscience of the Judeo-Christian west is the exception rather than rule in the broad view. Feudal Japan was very different than feudal Europe because of a different hierarchy of values. Beauty, strength and honor were dominant in Japanese culture, with compassion and nurture lower on the scale. Hari kari is birthed by feelings foreign to us in the west, even if we feel like we understand it. When westerners are handed the pistol to "do the right thing" the law or creditors are often the only other option. Maybe because we're taught that we all sin and fall short of the Gloria Deo we're more prone to cut ourselves a little slack. Traditional Japanese culture didn't understand the concept of "only human" the way a man or woman from the west would. At least, my observations lead me to the conclusion that this best explains the significant differences in how we view honor and death. We might scorn the blindfold, or even leap from the scaffold before they drop the trap, but carefully enact a ritual of supreme discipline before we insert the knife?
It's late and I'm waxing morbid.

 

[Harp]

And that aside, he ranks with one Thomas Jonathan Jackson as the most over-rated general in American history. Never was victorious in a battle unless he possessed superior numbers and interior lines. The most honest assessment of Patton was written by Andy Rooney in his autobiographical account, My War. I recommend it.

I will differ on both counts. Jackson was capable, very much so, and it must be remembered that he could
have taken Washington after First Manassas-had he not been denied on the field by no less personage than
Jefferson Davis. His friendly fire death crippled Lee and the Confederacy as a fighting force.

Patton availed the concentration of force maxim and displayed remarkable grasp despite personal faults.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I will differ on both counts. Jackson was capable, very much so, and it must be remembered that he could
have taken Washington after First Manassas-had he not been denied on the field by no less personage than
Jefferson Davis. His friendly fire death crippled Lee and the Confederacy as a fighting force.

Patton availed the concentration of force maxim and displayed remarkable grasp despite personal faults.

My opinions here, and I'll confess upfront a bias that is more one of West over East, rather than North over South. I maintain that the outcome of that horrible, bloody conflict was decided in the West rather than within those 90 miles between Washington and Richmond. History has given the armies of both sides in the west short shrift, largely because there was more press coverage (again, on both sides) in the east.

Lee's (and by extension, Jackson's) successes have more to do with the quality of the middle rank field grade of the officer corps (the majors, lt. colonels, and colonels) of the Army of Northern Virginia than any particular leadership at the top, in my opinion. The Army of the Potomac certainly suffered greatly in that regard (Pope's disaster at 2nd Manassas and Burnside's failure at Fredericksburg illustrate how even good plans can go awry if timing is lost- and I place blame for that squarely upon the field officers of the respective commands).

The western armies of the Confederacy were handicapped in comparison to the ANV at the mid- level command. VMI, South Carolina Military Academy (Citadel), and West Point men abounded within the ANV- and that lack of expertise was a disadvantage to the Confederate armies of the west. On a positive note, Patrick Cleburne's performances in the Army of Tennessee was stellar. My opinion is that he was the South's finest division commander, and his death at Franklin (Don't get me started on Hood in Tennessee in late '64!) was the greatest blow to the western armies of the Confederacy since Albert Sidney Johnston was lost at Shiloh.

As to Patton, it's difficult to see how fortune ever permitted him to enjoy anything but a large concentration of forces.

 

[GHT]

Britain was the most hated nation on the planet prior to lend lease and their treasury ending up in US coffers. They didn't rule the seas and preside over the largest empire in the world because they were so nice.

I'm not surprised that it was hated, (and envied.) At its height it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1922 the British Empire held sway over about 458 million people, and that's after losing The Americas, one-quarter of the world's population at the time, and covered more than 22,000,000 square miles, almost a quarter of the Earth's total land area.
Britain was critical for the Industrial Revolution because it had the cultural and legal framework necessary for it to take place. The British Empire spread that framework, along with industrial advancements made first in Britain and capital, across the world.

Put simply, the British were centuries ahead of the rest of the world in terms of economics, finance, and liberty. We owe the modern world to Anglo culture. The prerequisites for the Industrial Revolution were a culture based on private ownership, strong conceptions of property rights, and a legal system based on the rule of law to settle property disputes. And having these prerequisites was the distinguishing factor between England (later Britain) and the European continent. By the end of the 17th century, especially after the Glorious Revolution (1688–89), Britain threw out the last vestiges of arbitrary rule and became a society firmly resting upon individual rights and the rule of law.

 

[Harp]

As to Patton, it's difficult to see how fortune ever permitted him to enjoy anything but a large concentration of forces.

A professor of mine was visiting prof at the War College when Martin Blumenthal, editor of The Patton Papers
was in residence, informed him that Patton had had an affair with his niece (Europe WWII) and the general's
family were none too happy about this particular revelation. So, he excised all reference out of trove.

Regarding West Pointers, VMI, Citadel, I tenured all brand of shave tails in the Army and I'll take a Mustang any day....
Not all, of course. My group commander and detachment CO, and team exec were all Pointers and excellent men.

 

[p51]

I once heard a vet explain the atomic bombs and firebombing of Germany and Japan with a story of a guy he grew up nearby. The local thugs took a disliking to his neighbor for some reason. One day, they tried to set fire to his house, and shot his beloved dog in the process. His wife and daughter almost didn't make it out of the house in time.
He got home, found what had happened and wen looking for who he thought had done it. He caught up with them in a local corner bar and they scoffed at him, thinking nothing would happen. They thought wrong, as he pulled out a baseball bat and broke at least one limb on each one of them. Shattered the face of the guy who's bragged about starting the fire.
This, in an era where the cops might look the other way if either skids were greased or they didn't like who got the beating. The latter is what happened here. Some claimed he caused the fire later that burned down the house of one of those thugs, but nobody went looking.
In other words, they kicked a man where it hurt and he came back and gave it back tenfold. Nobody ever messed with him again, even in his old age, the vet said. Everyone assumed that whatever they did to him, they'd get it back so badly it wouldn't be worth it.
That, the vet explained, is an object lesson on what we did as a nation in Europe and Asia.
Take what you will from it, but I never forgot the story.

"Thank you for your service."
That sets my teeth on edge, but I probably should have raised it in another thread.

Yeah, I get it from time to time (I got out as an Army Captain in 2006) and the only time I got shot at was by a Marine in a CONUS training exercise (I bet he's still doing pushups for that).

 

[Edward]

Touches on another subject: the treatment of Neville Chamberlain at Munich by most historians. The counterpoint: were France and Great Britain really ready in 1938 to take on Germany in armed conflict? Given what happened during the Battle of France nearly two years later, I'm skeptical. Arguably, Chamberlain may have delayed the inevitable, but that delay allowed at least some time for preparation.

History has indeed been cruel to Chmberlain on those grounds. Of course, much of that history waswritten by Churchill, whose much vaunted military successes don't bear great scrutiny. Those who would challenge the populist "Greatest Briton" view of Churchill usually suggest that he was that hard man needed to win the war, capable of taking those hard decisions and so on. Personally, I'm not wholly convinced of the "but for Churchill, Hitler would have won" argument. It's intersting that when a similar argument is made for Stalin (with much greater justification), it is so often dismissed out of hand. Churchill once said "History shall be kind to me, for I intend to write it." How right he was!

I second your indeed. The only part I find a little overdone is rating the munitions in civilian body counts. It seems impolite, if nothing else.

Enormously distasteful, and doubtless it would be wholly unacceptable today. Also pretty stupid, given the mileage Goebbels got out of the 'Murder Inc' boys, but then those men weren't in that job for their ability to think of political nuncesand consequences, more simply to facilitate killing sufficient of the enemy, and/or their civilians, in order to win the war. I imagine they were encouraged to do whatever it took to achieve that end - and dehumanising their civilian victims was probably a big help in how they dealt with it.

It's little wonder that the Russians were particularly brutal to the defeated Germans. Their numbers were like Bomber Command casualties almost across the board.

There certainly was a lot of revenge being taken, in much the same way that revenge as a significant factor in British bombing of German civilians after the Blitz, even as the official propaganda demonised the Luftwaffe for it. The saddest story in many ways is how, as the allies pushed towards Berlin, far more women were raped, by a very significant margin, than had been by the Nazis. In part, ironically, this was down to the Nazis' notions of teir own racial superiority, though when you see the sorts of attitudes perpetuated in the French phrasebooks handed out to allied troops, you do have to wonder how much those added to the problem.

Hiroshima I find easier to stomach than Nagasaki. I'm not saying US forces were chisel jawed Boy Scouts that demonstrated how to war. The unconditional surrender demanded in WW2 was a new phenomena, though the first war's debacle at Versailles had some of the elements in the draconian measures regarding reparations. Something more reasonable would likely not have led to Hitler's rise.

The resentment caused by the "Versailles Diktat" was a very significant factor in Hitler's rise to power. I do often wonder if that could have been avoided had Gustav Streseman lived a few years longer, given how effective he had been in renegotiating significant chunks of that settlement.

US forces were already at war, with the government lying to the general public, with Japan through surrogate Chiang Kia-sheck, and turning out P-51s in very large numbers, well before Pearl Harbor. I follow the view that Pearl and the Pacific fleet were intentionally made weak to incite wild hopes of success in Japan, leading to the attack. Roosevelt, and military leaders as well, wanted in, even if the American people didn't. Acton's dictum about power is probably second only to the Biblical doctrine of original sin in terms of empirical evidence. That's the only reason Nagasaki had to happen. Power makes those that hold it itch to wield it. It should make us worry more about the people who are driven to get their hand on the levers.

By the standards of the time, I can certainly see how bringing the war to a faster end and saving American lives that a land invasion would cost would have been the only consideration, and Japanese civlian lives seen as irrelevant. It's interesting too that they never seem to have considered such a solution in Europe; granted, I don't know how much they knew about fallout and such at the time, though I suspect it wasalsoeasier to justify such action given the ethnic differences, and the way in which wartime propaganda had been able to so effectively dehumanise the Japanese. Of course, there were also other reasons to double down with the second bomb: one alone may have been enough to send a message to Moscow about US nuclear capability, but two would do it better. Two also ensured a faster end to the war and more damage to Japan, with the hope that absent the Japanese threat the nationalist Chinese could concentrate on andbea the Maoists (of course, this didn't quite pan out). I also firmly believe that a factor was the desire for the field data in a live test: Fat Boy and Little Man were of different designs. Ironically, for all those horrifies me, I can't help but wonder if worse could have happened wit more capable nuclear bombds later on had we not had Hiroshima and Nagasaki as warnings from history.

Britain was the most hated nation on the planet prior to lend lease and their treasury ending up in US coffers. They didn't rule the seas and preside over the largest empire in the world because they were so nice. They got away with a lot in the years before film, including straffing civilians, Iraqis in particular. Magna Carta and British Common Law were wonderful gifts to western civilization. The principles were often practiced selectively after the cliffs of Dover were no longer in sight.
The US ended up as the undestroyed country after the 2nd war, and had the wealth and will to build a new kind of soft empire, becoming the new most hated nation.

Much is made of Magna Carta, though it is celebrated all too often asan achievement in itself rather than a very, very tiny step which, much against the desire of its framers, led to much more egalitarian results a long time later. The Barons who forced King John to sign it were interested only in shoring up their own rights, and John almost immediately rescinded it. Far fom an achievement, it was, in its own terms, a failure. It's worth remembering that Britain, which didn't introduce Universal Suffrage until as late as 1928 (and even then ignored its usurpation in Stormont for decades), was significantly behind many other parts of the world on that front.

Put simply, the British were centuries ahead of the rest of the world in terms of economics, finance, and liberty. We owe the modern world to Anglo culture. The prerequisites for the Industrial Revolution were a culture based on private ownership, strong conceptions of property rights, and a legal system based on the rule of law to settle property disputes. And having these prerequisites was the distinguishing factor between England (later Britain) and the European continent. By the end of the 17th century, especially after the Glorious Revolution (1688–89), Britain threw out the last vestiges of arbitrary rule and became a society firmly resting upon individual rights and the rule of law.

THat last statement is highly disputable - tough not witout veering even further into the political, I fear. The view that the British Empire helped its colonies "advance" is certainly a popular one in England. Views in those former colonies often rather differ.

 

[Edward]

Touches on another subject: the treatment of Neville Chamberlain at Munich by most historians. The counterpoint: were France and Great Britain really ready in 1938 to take on Germany in armed conflict? Given what happened during the Battle of France nearly two years later, I'm skeptical. Arguably, Chamberlain may have delayed the inevitable, but that delay allowed at least some time for preparation.

History has indeed been cruel to Chmberlain on those grounds. Of course, much of that history waswritten by Churchill, whose much vaunted military successes don't bear great scrutiny. Those who would challenge the populist "Greatest Briton" view of Churchill usually suggest that he was that hard man needed to win the war, capable of taking those hard decisions and so on. Personally, I'm not wholly convinced of the "but for Churchill, Hitler would have won" argument. It's intersting that when a similar argument is made for Stalin (with much greater justification), it is so often dismissed out of hand. Churchill once said "History shall be kind to me, for I intend to write it." How right he was!

I second your indeed. The only part I find a little overdone is rating the munitions in civilian body counts. It seems impolite, if nothing else.

Enormously distasteful, and doubtless it would be wholly unacceptable today. Also pretty stupid, given the mileage Goebbels got out of the 'Murder Inc' boys, but then those men weren't in that job for their ability to think of political nuncesand consequences, more simply to facilitate killing sufficient of the enemy, and/or their civilians, in order to win the war. I imagine they were encouraged to do whatever it took to achieve that end - and dehumanising their civilian victims was probably a big help in how they dealt with it.

It's little wonder that the Russians were particularly brutal to the defeated Germans. Their numbers were like Bomber Command casualties almost across the board.

There certainly was a lot of revenge being taken, in much the same way that revenge as a significant factor in British bombing of German civilians after the Blitz, even as the official propaganda demonised the Luftwaffe for it. The saddest story in many ways is how, as the allies pushed towards Berlin, far more women were raped, by a very significant margin, than had been by the Nazis. In part, ironically, this was down to the Nazis' notions of teir own racial superiority, though when you see the sorts of attitudes perpetuated in the French phrasebooks handed out to allied troops, you do have to wonder how much those added to the problem.

Hiroshima I find easier to stomach than Nagasaki. I'm not saying US forces were chisel jawed Boy Scouts that demonstrated how to war. The unconditional surrender demanded in WW2 was a new phenomena, though the first war's debacle at Versailles had some of the elements in the draconian measures regarding reparations. Something more reasonable would likely not have led to Hitler's rise.

The resentment caused by the "Versailles Diktat" was a very significant factor in Hitler's rise to power. I do often wonder if that could have been avoided had Gustav Streseman lived a few years longer, given how effective he had been in renegotiating significant chunks of that settlement.

US forces were already at war, with the government lying to the general public, with Japan through surrogate Chiang Kia-sheck, and turning out P-51s in very large numbers, well before Pearl Harbor. I follow the view that Pearl and the Pacific fleet were intentionally made weak to incite wild hopes of success in Japan, leading to the attack. Roosevelt, and military leaders as well, wanted in, even if the American people didn't. Acton's dictum about power is probably second only to the Biblical doctrine of original sin in terms of empirical evidence. That's the only reason Nagasaki had to happen. Power makes those that hold it itch to wield it. It should make us worry more about the people who are driven to get their hand on the levers.

By the standards of the time, I can certainly see how bringing the war to a faster end and saving American lives that a land invasion would cost would have been the only consideration, and Japanese civlian lives seen as irrelevant. It's interesting too that they never seem to have considered such a solution in Europe; granted, I don't know how much they knew about fallout and such at the time, though I suspect it wasalsoeasier to justify such action given the ethnic differences, and the way in which wartime propaganda had been able to so effectively dehumanise the Japanese. Of course, there were also other reasons to double down with the second bomb: one alone may have been enough to send a message to Moscow about US nuclear capability, but two would do it better. Two also ensured a faster end to the war and more damage to Japan, with the hope that absent the Japanese threat the nationalist Chinese could concentrate on andbea the Maoists (of course, this didn't quite pan out). I also firmly believe that a factor was the desire for the field data in a live test: Fat Boy and Little Man were of different designs. Ironically, for all those horrifies me, I can't help but wonder if worse could have happened wit more capable nuclear bombds later on had we not had Hiroshima and Nagasaki as warnings from history.

Britain was the most hated nation on the planet prior to lend lease and their treasury ending up in US coffers. They didn't rule the seas and preside over the largest empire in the world because they were so nice. They got away with a lot in the years before film, including straffing civilians, Iraqis in particular. Magna Carta and British Common Law were wonderful gifts to western civilization. The principles were often practiced selectively after the cliffs of Dover were no longer in sight.
The US ended up as the undestroyed country after the 2nd war, and had the wealth and will to build a new kind of soft empire, becoming the new most hated nation.

Much is made of Magna Carta, though it is celebrated all too often asan achievement in itself rather than a very, very tiny step which, much against the desire of its framers, led to much more egalitarian results a long time later. The Barons who forced King John to sign it were interested only in shoring up their own rights, and John almost immediately rescinded it. Far fom an achievement, it was, in its own terms, a failure. It's worth remembering that Britain, which didn't introduce Universal Suffrage until as late as 1928 (and even then ignored its usurpation in Stormont for decades), was significantly behind many other parts of the world on that front.

Put simply, the British were centuries ahead of the rest of the world in terms of economics, finance, and liberty. We owe the modern world to Anglo culture. The prerequisites for the Industrial Revolution were a culture based on private ownership, strong conceptions of property rights, and a legal system based on the rule of law to settle property disputes. And having these prerequisites was the distinguishing factor between England (later Britain) and the European continent. By the end of the 17th century, especially after the Glorious Revolution (1688–89), Britain threw out the last vestiges of arbitrary rule and became a society firmly resting upon individual rights and the rule of law.

THat last statement is highly disputable - tough not witout veering even further into the political, I fear. The view that the British Empire helped its colonies "advance" is certainly a popular one in England. Views in those former colonies often rather differ.

 

[Hat and Rehat]

Wow! I'm not sure what happened to the text in this post when I quickly posted it to deal with something else. Part of it is that I forgot to bracket quote, but it looks too incoherent for that single cause. I'm tempted to just delete it and start over, but enough is clear that I will try to untangle the rest later. I am waiting for a response about an eBay situation that causes concern, but I also promised my wife I would purchase and marinade a leg of lamb for tomorrow.
[QUOTE
In other words, they kicked a man where it hurt and he came back and gave it back tenfold. Nobody ever messed with him again, even in his old age, the vet said. Everyone assumed that whatever they did to him, they'd get it back so badly it wouldn't be worth it.
That, the vet explained, is an object lesson on what we did as a nation in Europe and Asia.
Take what you will from it, but I never forgot the story. [/QUOTE]

That is a good story, P51. One of the best storytellers I've ever personally known told his stories so well that, when he was describing events I was part of, I really wished I remembered it happening that way That was how I actually felt. We all need that kind of story sometimes. In the aftermath of war, arguably most of all. It's difficult to look at the carnage that war produces; death tolls, casualties, widows, orphans, crippled soldiers, refugees and all the rest. When one lets it sink in just how much destruction was done, we usually seek a raison d'etat, some pure value to make it all worthwhile, lest we're forced to the view of Macbeth when informed of Lady Macbeth's demise. Of course, populations already have ready made raison that begins with the first rattling of sabres, often in very grandiose ambitions; Make the World Safe for Democracy, a War To End All War. Promises like that should evoke laughter, but we often (usually?) believe what we want to believe. It seems to be in our nature, and I've come to see the futility of kicking the goads.
There's something else, as well, that isn't in my experience. My roots are fairly young in this country, beginning, other than one set of great grandparents, after the dawn of the 20th century. My own surname comes to me through an only child father, and his father was the only living scion of the family I ever knew. He never really spoke much of his father, but I know he was a successful saloon keeper until prohibition shut him down. After that he owned a grocery on Chicago's South side, which included some business out the back door. He died before his wife, leaving her destitute, and my Grandpa provided for her until she also passed. I think he had a very poor view of his father after that. However, I digress. Grandpa had no military service because of timing in the interwar period. By Peal he was raising a son in elementary school and supporting their small household. My Dad's number was coming up during the Korean conflict, so he went to Great Lakes Naval base to enlist. Basic was in Vniairgi Beach
Yeah, I get it from time to time (I got out as an Army Captain in 2006) and the only time I got shot at was by a Marine in a CONUS training exercise (I bet he's still doing pushups for that).[/QUOTE]

I once heard a vet explain the atomic bombs and firebombing of Germany and Japan with a story of a guy he grew up nearby. The local thugs took a disliking to his neighbor for some reason. One day, they tried to set fire to his house, and shot his beloved dog in the process. His wife and daughter almost didn't make it out of the house in time.
He got home, found what had happened and wen looking for who he thought had done it. He caught up with them in a local corner bar and they scoffed at him, thinking nothing would happen. They thought wrong, as he pulled out a baseball bat and broke at least one limb on each one of them. Shattered the face of the guy who's bragged about starting the fire.
This, in an era where the cops might look the other way if either skids were greased or they didn't like who got the beating. The latter is what happened here. Some claimed he caused the fire later that burned down the house of one of those thugs, but nobody went looking.
In other words, they kicked a man where it hurt and he came back and gave it back tenfold. Nobody ever messed with him again, even in his old age, the vet said. Everyone assumed that whatever they did to him, they'd get it back so badly it wouldn't be worth it.
That, the vet explained, is an object lesson on what we did as a nation in Europe and Asia.
Take what you will from it, but I never forgot the story.
Yeah, I get it from time to time (I got out as an Army Captain in 2006) and the only time I got shot at was by a Marine in a CONUS training exercise (I bet he's still doing pushups for that).

 

[GHT]

I am waiting for a response about an eBay situation that causes concern, but I also promised my wife I would purchase and marinade a leg of lamb for tomorrow.

Before cooking the leg of lamb, make a number of incisions with a sharp pointed knife, then press a clove of garlic into each incision. Best tasting lamb you will ever eat.