In public Hitler told the world: "I will not war against women and children. I have ordered my air force to restrict itself to attacks on military objectives." But in a secret message his commanders he authorised killing "without pity or mercy all men, women and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need." To the men he said: "Close your hearts to pity! Act brutally! ... This is to be a war of annihilation!"
The above photo was taken in the opening days of the attack on Poland by the Germans at the start of WW2. Two girls working in potato fields outside of Warsaw were deliberately targeted by low-flying German fighter planes. The girl in the photo is turning over her dead sister's body. This is not an isolated incident. Many such deliberate attacks were made on civilians.
I mention all this, because we have gained a commenter who has been taken in by Pat Buchanan's view of history. One that is mostly correct, but with the most incredible errors where it matters most.
Buchanan asserts that Winston Churchill is to blame for WW2. That "without Churchill, Britain might have accepted an armistice or sued for peace in 1940. The war in the west would have been over. Hitler, victorious, would have turned on Russia and crushed her, and the world would have been at his feet."
Then there's this doozy of a quote from his book:
Alan Clark, defense aide to Margaret Thatcher, believes that only Churchill’s “single-minded determination to keep the war going,” his “obsession” with Hitler, prevented his accepting Germany’s offer to end the war in 1940. “There were several occasions when a rational leader could have got, first reasonable, then excellent terms from Germany.”The assumption is that Churchill was unreasonably obsessed with Hitler at a time where there was no evidence that he nor the Nazi regime were so dangerous that they needed to be destroyed at all costs. The Holocaust of the Jews had not yet occurred, therefore any reasonable man would have mad peace with him.
There is only one problem with this theory. A large number of Poles made their way to first France and then Britain after the fall of Poland. There was a great deal of intelligence that made it's way out of Poland as to the fate of the populace under the Nazi regime. This information was made available to the British, so they were well aware of what was going on in Poland under the Germans.
In a broadcast on March 1st, 1941, eighteen months from the moment of the German invasion of Poland, Mr. Rackiewicz, the President of the Polish Republic, declared:It seems to me that Winston Churchill might have been more than a tad bit worried that the same fate would await Britain were he to accept Hitler's peace proposals. So, to say that Churchill was unreasonably obsessed with destroying Hitler, and by that obsession created WW2 is to completely ignore the reality of the occupation in Poland by the Germans.
"The Germans have murdered thousands of scholars, professors, artists, social workers, writers, and even priests. The flower of the Polish intellectual class and the finest sons of the nation, as well as young women and girls, are being deported to German concentration camps and prisons, and condemned to a lingering death of martyrdom.
"The Germans are systematically starving the population of Poland.
"With barbaric ruthlessness they are evicting hundreds of thousands of industrious people from their ancestral homes, robbing them of their lands, their houses, their property, throwing them down anywhere, without shelter and without means of sustenance, either to perish, or deporting them as slaves for forced labour in Germany.
"No one knows how many men, women and helpless children have perished of hunger, cold and torture in consequence of these monstrous practices.
"Walled-up ghettoes are being established in Polish cities, as during the darkest periods of the Middle Ages, and people are being persecuted for their nationality and creed.
"Simultaneously with the extermination of the nation Polish culture is being destroyed. Ancient monuments, temples of learning, museums, national memorials and theatres which escaped destruction by bombs and bombardments are being closed down, pillaged, broken up. The religion of the devout Polish people is being persecuted and their churches destroyed. All higher and secondary schools have been closed, the printing and sale of books are prohibited, the newspapers suppressed."
A report received from Poland in April, 1941, tells the same tragic story. We quote some parts of this report:
"Mass executions are a regular feature; in Palmiry, near Warsaw, there are the graves of several thousand Poles, including many prominent representatives of Polish political and cultural circles.
"Manhunts are organized in the streets of Warsaw and other towns, sometimes as many as 10,000 or more people being held under arrest. These people are afterwards sent to concentration camps or compulsory labour.
"The monstrous principle of so-called collective responsibility still reigns; a German policeman has only to be killed in a fight with a common bandit in some place or other for a Gestapo 'punitive expedition' to arrive and wreak vengeance by murdering hundreds of completely innocent people. Entire villages are sent up in smoke; frequently the peasants are locked up in sheds to which the Germans then set fire.
"Over 800,000 Polish workers from the 'Government General' alone are being transported to the interior of the Reich including young girls aged sixteen, as to whose ultimate destination terrible reports are in circulation.
"All the Polish universities and secondary schools have been closed down; special commissioners have been appointed to liquidate them. In the 'incorporated' areas all the Polish elementary schools have also been liquidated. Throughout the occupied area Polish cultural property is being pillaged on a great scale: the most valuable articles in museums, art collections, libraries, and scientific laboratories have been carried off to Germany, and stolen by German officials for their private use.
"It is forbidden to publish any Polish books, or periodicals; in the 'Government General' there are only a few official German publications in Polish; in the 'incorporated' areas the Polish language has been completely eliminated from public life. The Poles are humiliated and shamed by the occupants at every turn.
"Simultaneously a mass expulsion of Poles is going on from Poznania, Pomerania, Silesia and those parts of central and southern Poland which have also been 'incorporated' with the Reich. Polish towns such as Poznan, Gdynia, Bydgoszcz, Lodz, Kalisz, Plock, Wloclawek, are given an appearance of being German towns by means of incredible violence. The Germans are talking of deporting a further three to four million souls."
Related Articles by Pat Buchanan:
Was WWII Really 'The Good War'?
Was WWII Worth It?
Man of the Century
Related Link: The German New Order in Poland ~ published for the Polish Ministry of Information by Hutchinson & Co., London, in late 1941.
Such is his twisted logic, such is the stark misunderstanding of Hitler's ambition, that he (and others like him) try to convince us that Hitler not surrendering in 1940 was entirely Churchill's fault:
ReplyDeleteTo deprive England of its last hope for victory, Hitler invaded the one nation that more than any other would bring the Reich down. Hitler’s invasion of Russia truly met Bismarck’s definition of preventive war: “Committing suicide—out of fear of death.”
If you think this statement through very carefully, I should be able to rest my case.
Alas, many will think that Hitler would have only reacted rationally if Churchill hadn't believed Hitler to be an insanely despotic dictator capable of the worst of atrocities.
Strangely, Churchill being proven correct, and therefore unpredictable even with 20-20 hindsight, doesn't seem to carry much weight with such people.
Again, I say (to paraphrase Burke): The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to think appeasement or negotiated peace is going to change the eventual outcome. Yep, war is ugly, but...
One of the many problems I have with Pat Buchanan's views on history is the very heavy usage of hindsight that he makes.
ReplyDeleteMuch of his stuff is true but only visible clearly to us now - not at all clear to the people making the decisions at the time.
His approach could be sumarised up as "if we knew then what we know now we would have made different choices" really! thats a suprise!
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ReplyDeleteHindsight is otherwise known as Historical Scholarship! The only time hindsight can be a distortion is when you're judging culpability. Otherwise it's simply understanding the situation better than the contemporaries and it's vital for understanding the mistakes of the past and distilling sound wisdom for current and future action.
Pat Buchanan is making the argument precisely because people are repeating the same mistakes today.
BTW we now have three threads about war, with myself being the only representative in opposition. If you keep spreading the argument I am not going to be able to address the volume.
ReplyDeleteUniversal, I don't expect you to address the volume. I expect that you'll read a perspective you've not come across before and re-think your position.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, I'll link all the threads together in my next post that I might end up finishing tonight after I've taken the kids to their swimming lessons, made dinner and tidied up.
I expect that you'll read a perspective you've not come across before and re-think your position.
ReplyDeleteNot come across before? This is Neo-conservative foreign policy 101, I've heard it all before.
I used to agree with you on a number of points. But I read perspectives I hadn't heard before and re-thought my position and that lead me away from aggression and naive interventionism to peace and non-interventionism.
Can you explain to me how non-interventionism helped Rwanda, DRC and Sierra Leone for example?
ReplyDeleteWasn't aware there were too many people who doubted the legitimacy of WWII, though certain actions within it are certainly open to some questions. Hitler was the type of person who was both meglomaniacal and had the means (ie no containment) to do what he wanted.
ReplyDeleteStrange, strange viewpoint from Buchanan, not something I would have picked from him at all, unless maybe he thinks that the war was fundamentally the root of Soviet power.
Sorry - ignore my comment. It is off topic. Lucyna has outlined exactly why Buchanan's appraisal of the situation is flawed, and this must be rebutted for Buchanan's book to be worth further critique (and there remains much to critique).
ReplyDeleteActually Rwanda, the Congo and Sierra Leone are great examples demonstrating my point. Rwanda is especially representative of the whole.
ReplyDeleteThe 1994 massacres in Rwanda didn't just appear out of nowhere. Rwanda was claimed by Germany in the 1880s and Belgium took over during WWI. The Belgians created an artificial "racial" distinction between the Tutsis and the Hutus and treated them as different ethnic groups even though they aren't. They issued official racial identity cards, had separate school systems, prevented Hutus from gaining positions in Government and treated the Tutsis as racially superior all due to their "divide and rule" policy and a fair amount of class prejudice and racism (The Tutsis tended to be taller and have lighter skin and were considered to have Caucasian ancestry). Subsequently distinct and competetive group identities developed.
There were a number of further interventions such as the deposing of King Yuhi Musinga, however the most applicable instance would be during the rise of Rwandan independence. In the 1950s the Tutsis started demanding independence due to the erosion of their previously colonially enforced privilege and the Belgians turned to the Hutus, thinking they could be more easily controlled, and spurred them to revolt. This resulted in a genocide of between 20 - 100,000 Tutsis. The UN came in and held a referendum on which political system Rwanda should follow, and as a result Rwanda became a Republic. Following this 150,000 Tutsis were exiled and all remaining Tutsis were barred from Government and Hutus started blaming anything negative on the Tutsis. Many more instances of violence erupted over the next 20 years building up sentiments of resentment and tension and so the stage was set for significant strife.
When the economic problems of the early 90s occurred the ethnic tensions increased and at that time the French President was pressuring Francophone African nations to be more democratic. This riled up the Tutsis who had been restricted from holding political office and severely restricted from positions as even civil servants. The Tutsis started a bloody civil war and as a result the French sent in troops and artillery to bolster the Hutu controlled Rwandan Army which temporarily paused the advance of the Tutsis. The conflict resumed however and in 1994 the killing of the Rwandan President Habyarimana spurred the Rwandan Military, with civilian support, into exterminating the Tutsis entirely, nearly 1,000,000 Tutsis were killed.
If Belgian and France had a non-interventionist foreign policy the establishment of the two artificial groups would not have occurred, conflict between the them would not have erupted, there would have been no impetus to commit any initial genocide and therefore subsequent episodes and there would have been no naive interference sparking off a civil war. Interventionism caused this horrific tragedy and those in Sierra Leone and the Congo.
Every intervention always brings with it unintended consequences that often have extremely destructive and wide reaching effects. If we stop using aggression to solve problems and instead use prudent diplomacy unblinded by naive ideologies we would have a much more peaceful world.
Actually they tried "diplomacy" in 1939 (and before) - basically gave away Czechoslovakia in order to buy peace.
ReplyDeleteDidn't work, all it did was show Hitler the western powers were unwilling to stand up to him.
The invasion of Poland was a result
Universal, great summary, and misses the point.
ReplyDeleteThere are reasons for people going bonkers and murdering other people. I get that. At a personal level, or by nation, it works the same.
Then you say: Every intervention always brings with it unintended consequences that often have extremely destructive and wide reaching effects
Now, we can't do anything about the past actions of people. But what we can do is take action at the time.
Nearly a million people died in Rwanda, and the UN military leader on the ground at the time said he could have prevented most of the bloodshed if he had the support to intervene.
You appear to be arguing that by intervening, less lives lost, because your theory is intervention is always bad. What? 800,000 people died by not intervening. Your excuses for inaction did not save any of those lives, and whatever tensions created by intervention buy us time to figure out a better solution.
So does a policy of non-inventionism always work? Well, seems to me we intervened and stopped Hitler from murdering millions. We then failed to intervene and take out Stalin when he was weak, and up to 60 million died and the world was on the brink of annihilation several times over the next 40 years. Lesson - interventionism can help.
Why not end the police force? Stupid to intervene and stop murders, because they were created years ago by some other intervention I suppose?
Anyway, back to WWII. Lucyna has outlined how Hitler said one thing, appeared to be mild at the outset of the war, but documents and actions prove he was always going to wage brutal war and had genocide as part of his master plan from the outset. How do you explain the specific facts Lucyna presents that diminishes Buchanan's theory?
Perhaps the position of dogmatic non-intervention assumes you are the super-power in the game, one who enjoys the luxury of good defence and time to ponder, rather than one disadvantaged who is coerced to act one way or the other.
ReplyDeleteCould you please direct me to your reading Universal?