So, President Bush claims that at Yalta that we sacrificed small nations for security, and this is apparently a lie, because we sacrificed them for a lot of security, and it would cost a lot of lives to stand up for them.

We've established then that we allowed them to be wronged because standing up for them would have been costly? Aren't we just haggling over the price? Isn't he just arguing that it would have been too expensive to defend them? That's a reasonable position, but doesn't change the fact that a consequence of it was letting those nations rot under tyranny.

What, in a substantive sense, is the difference between arguing that it was too costly to save Eastern Europe from the Soviets, and, a la Pat Buchanan, it was too costly to save Western Europe from the Nazis? Relative hatred of the Nazis and the Soviets? Relative love for Western and Eastern Europe?

So in other words, Yalta is "sell out" not because the US handed Eastern Europe to the Soviets, but because Roosevelt didn't declare war on them?

The reason Eastern Europe came under Soviet domination had nothing to do with Yalta and everything to do with the fact of the Red Army defeating Germans and occupying that territory.

Since Stalin did not keep his promises made at Yalta obviously he did not think he made out like a bandit. That makes sense because those promises mainly concerned him holding and respecting free elections.

If we're going to blame anyway, maybe we should blame the Republicans because Eisenhower didn't support the East German uprising in 1953 nor the Hungarians in 1956. And since people here are intent on blaming others for the actions of the Red Army, Eisenhower is also responsible for the decision to allow the Red Army to seize Berlin. No doubt this is a much poorer record than Truman's actions in Greece, South Korea, and West Berlin. Maybe the John Birchers were right about him?

So now we know: Repuiblicans are Communist stooges. Thanks for the history lesson!

So in other words, Yalta is "sell out" not because the US handed Eastern Europe to the Soviets, but because Roosevelt didn't declare war on them?

The reason Eastern Europe came under Soviet domination had nothing to do with Yalta and everything to do with the fact of the Red Army defeating Germans and occupying that territory.

Since Stalin did not keep his promises made at Yalta obviously he did not think he made out like a bandit. That makes sense because those promises mainly concerned him holding and respecting free elections.

If we're going to blame anyway, maybe we should blame the Republicans because Eisenhower didn't support the East German uprising in 1953 nor the Hungarians in 1956. And since people here are intent on blaming others for the actions of the Red Army, Eisenhower is also responsible for the decision to allow the Red Army to seize Berlin. No doubt this is a much poorer record than Truman's actions in Greece, South Korea, and West Berlin. Maybe the John Birchers were right about him?

So now we know: Repuiblicans are Communist stooges. Thanks for the history lesson!

Argh, the curse of accidentally double posting strikes again.

Chris Durnell--

Odd. I've noticed that in your repeated postings here that you somehow think that the actions of a political party in the '50s or earlier automatically somehow makes a political point against their modern descendents. I don't spend all day thinking about the modern Democrats as the party of Jim Crow and slavery; if I were like you apparently I might.

Of course Eisenhower and others repeatedly chose our own security over liberating others. Of course one can criticize Democrats and Republicans in the past for their actions. Many have and will continue to choose their own security and lives over the freedom of others. Certainly we should feel a sense of shame in abandoning the Hungarians and the East Germans, though.

So many seem filled with such a furious passion that they cannot settle for arguing that betraying the people of Eastern Europe was necessary, expedient, unavoidable, or what have you. They seem to be forced to argue that it was somehow morally unblemished as well, to avert their eyes and pretend that there were no ill consequences.

John:

Love of America.

The most dishonest thing about this ridiculous column is that Heilbrunn completely ignores that Yalta was about more than land.

The most morally reprehensible part of the whole agreement concerned the "repatriation" of Soviet citizens.

This has been pointed out in the last week or so by folks responding to idiots like Heilbrunn, but they've largely focused on members of various Eastern European militaries, including the Red Army, who were sent back to their deaths.

But it was worse than that. The Soviets wanted everyone who'd been born in the Russian empire.

One of the best teachers I ever had, as a Jew spent the war hidden behind a false wall in a Dutch home. He had been born in Russia in about 1920, but his parents had emigrated to Germany soon after, and he had grown up there, his parents sending him and his sister to the Netherlands when things got really bad in the late 30s in Germany.

He wound up in the British zone when the war ended, and they were prepared to send him back to Stalin, to his death.

Only the intervention of American Quakers saved him.

To the U.S.'s credit, I think the Americans were less willing to go along with repatriation after the war. But the Brits, to their shame, seemed to have sent everyone back.

Chris:

Yes. Ike is to blame as well. We could still have nuked them safely in his presidency and ended the Cold War.

He's more blameworthy for the Iranian coup though.

Chris is right.

oj, you're confusing what you desire with what was feasible.

Nuking Moscow would have just encouraged a nationalistic response from the Russians not cheers and jubilation that the head Commies were glass.

There weren't any democrats east of the Rhine, so if the West was going to fight about anything, it wasn't going to be the freedom and democracy of Eastern Europe.

As a practical matter, in the summer of 1939 there was no way the West could have attacked the USSR except in alliance with Germany.

That appears to be Orrin's preference.

If so, it's merely a matter of taste. It would not have been less morally ambiguous -- to use a weird phrase from a post yesterday.

By May 1945, the practical situation had changed. The US Third Army was within 2 or 3 days march of being surrounded by a vastly more powerful Red Army. Yalta was meaningless. Having eliminated Patton, no doubt -- following their practice in their conquest of Germany -- they would have struck at the weak, badly led and poorly armed allied front, the French on the middle Rhine, and reached the Atlantic by the end of June, rolling up the Ninth US and British armies.

Harry:

No, my preference would have been to sell arms to both and stay out.

Barring that we should have cut a deal with the German military and attacked the Soviets, then nuked Moscow.

Barring that we should have just come home and let the Soviets overextend themselves trying to run all of Europe.

Instead we took Eastern Europe from Hitler so we could give it to Stalin and then exhausted ourselves militarily, economically, morally and spiritually by the late '70s. Fortunately, Providence sent Ronald Reagan.

Harry,

Forgetting the P-51?

OJ,

We didn't take eastern Europe, the Soviets did.

And selling arms to both would have meant a Nazi dominated Europe with which to fight a Cold War. Well, except that it wouldn't have been cold - it would have been done against a maniac dictator with rockets and atomic bombs.

Harry,

At the end of the war we had troops in Czechoslovakia which had been ruled by a democratic government under Masaryk and the Beneses before the war. That was a substantive betrayal for no good reason. We could have stood our ground and not retreated, instead we traded Austria, which has become the classic pain-in-the-butt pseudo-neutral, for the Czechs.

Jim,
The P-51 did nothing in Korea,it would have been similarly meaningless against the Soviets.

OJ of course fails to mention what the impact of a Nazi Europe would have been on American politics. Appeasement wasn't just on one side of the Atlantic but there were plenty of folks in both parties like Joe Kennedy, Lindbergh, Coughlin, Wheeler, Nye, Gerald LK Smith who were pro-Hitler or convinced that Hitler was the wave of the future. Within 5 years of a Nazi-dominated Europe, there would be brownshirts running much of America whether as a result of formal Nazi aggression or a home-grown variety.

Another factor OJ forgets is that not only was Hitler loony but so were his advisers with the exception of Goering. Goebbles, Bormann and Himmler were if anything crazier than Shickelgruber himself. Stalin's advisers were by and large believers in realpolitik as Soviet policy after his death abundantly demonstrated until imperial adventurism in Afghanistan. A 'Cold War' against Hitler wouldn't have stayed cold long.

I would never argue that the decision to abandon the Eastern Europeans was a moral one, but it was the only militarily workable option for the reasons I've often stated. By rebuilding the West, we ended the threat of Soviet-style Communism there by the mid-50s. Our avoidable failures with respect were later in 1953 with respect to Germany but more importantly and disgracefully with respect to Hungary and Poland in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

There weren't any democrats east of the Rhine.

You overstate your case once again, Mr. Eager. There were democrats in groups and countries all over Eastern Europe. Admittedly many of the states of Central and Eastern Europe had short histories of democracy, and many had slid towards authoritarianism in the 30s-- although so had Germany; the fact that the Soviets killed or chased out most open and avowed democrats in Eastern Europe is hardly proof that there were none, or that it was impossible. If we had not defended Greece, no doubt you would be arguing now that there were never democrats there, either. Certainly many at the time thought that the Germans (and Japanese) were incapable of democracy as well.

Again, I agree that it was probably impossible to do anything, but I'm continually surprised with how musings, like Buchanan's, that perhaps fighting World War II against the Nazis wasn't worth the loss in lives, etc. are viewed as horrible, horrible, evil, morally suspect comments, whereas the idea that it wouldn't be worth the loss in lives to fight the Soviets is somehow above all reproach. Even if unavoidable, something can still be wrong or regrettable.

I've never understood how people are so quick to rise with charges of crypto-Nazism, yet get equally upset at charges of sympathy to the Communists for what seems to me to be nearly parallel situations.

Also, you certainly see people blaming the US for not becoming more involved before Dec. 7, 1941, or at least suggesting that it would have been morally better to do something earlier. Yet, just like stopping the Soviets, that seemed nearly impossible given public opinion.

bart:

In 1945, the P-51 was the best propellor-driven fighter plane in the world. In Korea, it faced MiG-15 jets. In 1945, there were no MiG-15s.

OJ: we wouldn't have been dropping A-bombs on Moscow because we didn't have any extras. IIRC, we had one for the Trinity test and one each for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that was it. The threat to continually bomb Japan with them was a bluff, because it was months before we had any more.

Mike,

The larger point is that we didn't stop tank advances by Russian equipment until well into the Korean War. How do you think that in very short order we ended up in the Pusan Pocket?

So how would we have stopped T-34s in 1945 if we couldn't stop them in 1950?

In any European campaign, the war would be one of movement and armor would have been pivotal and the Soviets were far superior to us with respect to armor both quantitatively and certainly qualitatively.

Bart:

The P-51 would have had most Russian soldiers crawling under the hulks of their burning tanks.

Then why didn't it do so in Korea only 5 years later?

Go read a geography book.

Different topography, different conditions, and most of all, limited use of armor and trains (as compared to the European theater).

And, as previously noted, there were MiGs flying in Korea. We had air supremacy in Europe.

Harry and Bart think that the Red Army was invincible. They were strong but the strategic and tactical situation was not nearly as hopeless for the West. Briefly, there are a number of things they ignore (some have already been discussed here):

1. US air power. Especially effective in destroying the Russian supply chain. How powerful are T-34s without gas?
2. US industrial power. The continental US was untouched and the Russians had no way to touch us. We could make good all material losses. Could the Russians have done so?
3. Soviet losses. Exactly how much more could the Russians have taken? Even Russia did not have a bottomless pit of manpower.
4. While the Russians may have driven to the Channel, would we have stayed still? Perhaps our forces in the Mideast and Italy may have driven through the Balkans and/or the Crimea to attack Russia from behind.
5. Soviet gains in 1944/1945 were made against German forces that were ordered to remain static by Hitler. They were then destroyed in place. I don’t think we would have made this mistake.
6. The US Army in 1945 was not the weakened thing that fought in Korea using WW2 weapons. It was a powerful force in its own right in 1945.
7. Once we disposed of the Japanese, we would have had massive new forces to deploy. Where would the similar reinforcements for Russia?
8. US Navy. Limited value of course but useful in launching amphibious attacks certainly.
9. The Bomb. Yes, in September 1945 we may have had none left but soon thereafter we did. Destroying Moscow may not have won the war but it would have been useful, no?

Taken as a whole, we were stronger.

Ali:

Response? There was nothing to respond to. They'd have been at each others throats fighhting to replace the Bolsheviks.

Papaya:

Yes, we had those three.

Brandon:

Why would one have won? How would it have controlled the other?

You're right Bob, but they had Stalin.

daniel:

Hitler would have kept them out. Once we let them in we should have let them roll to the Atlantic. It would have destroyed them forty five years faster.

Orrin:

No, my preference would have been to sell arms to both and stay out.

Barring that we should have cut a deal with the German military and attacked the Soviets, then nuked Moscow.

Barring that we should have just come home and let the Soviets overextend themselves trying to run all of Europe.

Crazy stuff, evil even.

Bart

OJ of course fails to mention what the impact of a Nazi Europe would have been on American politics. Appeasement wasn't just on one side of the Atlantic but there were plenty of folks in both parties like Joe Kennedy, Lindbergh, Coughlin, Wheeler, Nye, Gerald LK Smith who were pro-Hitler or convinced that Hitler was the wave of the future. Within 5 years of a Nazi-dominated Europe, there would be brownshirts running much of America whether as a result of formal Nazi aggression or a home-grown variety.

is right.

Yeah. we dodged both the American Nazi bullett and the American Bolshevik bullett by mere inches. It's a miracle the Republic survived.

daniel,

Orrin is a conundrum. Infuriating, batty, and all that, but if you think he keeps his right arm from executing a Hitler salute only by slapping it down with his left you're wrong.

Sometimes all I can do is join in with the Gov and chant, "oj, you so crazy".

But we all keep coming back so either we're gluttons for punishment or his good sides outweigh the bad.

daniel:

Yes, that's, as I said to start with, the difference. You think Communism and Nazism are viable alternatives. I don't.

OJ,

Mass murder.

The US was much more pro-German prior to WWI than WWII. Some of us need to get over our Lindbergh/Kennedy/Coughlin dreams.

Formal Nazi aggression against America? Another dream. Hitler couldn't cross the Channel and you think he could have done anything to us here?

Brandon:

Okay, but consider the infrastructure and manpower required for Hitler to control and execute all those tens of millions of Russians while simultaneously holding down everything else from the Channel to North Africa. How many Germans did he have to do that with? What of the rest of the economy? It's a silly notion.

Aside from anything else, Hitler was a gay secular Darwinist and likely soccer fan, who certainly threw like a girl. What's to like?

Hitler threw like a girl?

Obviously!

Star Wars was only the final nail and an unnecessary one. They'd died on the vine by the '30s. Hitler and then we saved them by giving them something to organize their people against.

Brandon:

A gay European? How could he not?

Orrin:

How about the argument that, if the U.S. hadn't taken on Germany, there is no way it would have developed the bomb for many, many years. It is impossible to imagine the Manhatten project outside of a command economy in wartime.

Also, are you not wildly overestimating how many people understood just what communism meant and why it was a threat? Paul Johnson recounts at length how in the '30s even American business was sucked into the "need for planning" and the idea that democracy might not be working anymore. Fact-finding missions to Moscow were not restricted to the left. Those who did understand tended to isolationism. You can't assume everyone would have just picked up a copy of Malcolm Muggeridge and seen the light. The '30s were an ugly decade of deceit and despair.

The terrible truth might be that it was the enslavement of Eastern Europe that revealed the systematic horror of the system. Without that, Russia would just have been a case of "good ideas, bad men " in the minds of most, especially if it wasn't invading anyone. We may have fought the war to defeat Nazism, but that isn't why we started the war. That was to stop German military conquests.

Jim Hamlen,

Spend a little time reading the Congressional Record from 1933-12/7/1941 and tell me it's a pipe dream again, please. I don't agree with Philip Roth's musings by any means, but there were Nazis in America, who were getting elected, who did have popular followings. A successful military campaign by the Third Reich rolling over France and Britain, countries Americans for whatever reason were conditioned to admire would have only added to the Nazi mystique, giving them more supporters and more people desirous of appeasing them. When this is combined with the racial attitudes of the period, which were the worst in American history, it doesn't take a lot to see where it was headed.

Bob,

To respond to each of your points in series.

1. In 1945, air power required us to be able to take off from someplace. Attlee and Labour was in charge in Britain. The Brits were also starving and had been far worse hit by the V-2s than the Blitz. Communists had a solid 40% of the Continental vote. There was no stomach for the war.

2. Your point about industrial power is a fair one. However, Russian industrial power was for the most part 2500-3000 miles from London, in the Urals. It was just as untouchable as the American. You also underestimate the consumer market in America which would have demanded an end to war. How many years could we go without new tires?

3. Soviet losses. How many more losses could we take? The only war we fought with significant loss of life was the Civil War. Every war fought by Russia has had significant loss of life, since Peter the Great whacked Sweden. Russian manpower had certainly not been exhausted in 1945.

4. Your counterattack theory just doesn't jibe with the facts. Greece nearly was lost anyway during its Civil War, and to this day the Communists remain significant players in their politics. Turkey maintained a studious neutrality during WWII and kept at least somewhat friendly relations with the Soviets. Irregulars like the Yugoslav partisans would have also given us problems.

5. The US military was powerful but the US population wanted the boys home. You ignore the power of the peace movement on the home front, combined with a desire to return to normalcy. The military cuts were popular.

6. America wasn't the only country with a significant presence on the Japanese front. The Soviets kept an enormous military along the Chinese border and there were several very large battles with the Japanese during the war. They were pretty inconclusive but Siberia was no open border.

7. A static German military goes against about 2 and half centuries of Prussian military theory. But assuming you are correct, you again ignore the popular support the Communists had in Western Europe. One of the major contributions to the German war effort of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was that the Soviets ordered their Communist railroad union workers to sabotage French trains against the French war effort. When this was combined with the pro-Nazi treachery of the French general staff, it should come as no surprise that the French effort collapsed in less than 3 weeks. Similar sabotage would have occured throughout our theatre.

8. The US Navy might have had limited value as aircraft carriers but that's about it.

9. The bomb would have been in Russian hands pretty quickly. They got it in 1949 as it was. There would have been anti-nuke campaigns all across America once military action against the Soviets began. Also, it is over 1500 air miles from London to Moscow, virtually all of which would have to be flown over hostile enemy land, not empty ocean, in planes which could be easily shot down by anti-aircraft fire as they went slowly and at low altitude.

If you want to make the argument that we should have confronted the Soviets over Hungary and the Suez, I would agree. By then, the local Communist parties in Western Europe were weakened, the British Labourites even understood the Cold War, our industrial might was far greater and we had planes that could have hit them and hit them hard. The home front also understood the severity of the conflict.

Peter,

The Manhattan Project as a percentage of GDP or of the military budget was pretty small.

Yeah, well, just about everything the U.S. has ever done in the area of foreign affairs is a small part of the budget. Even Vietnam was a small part of the budget. It's one of the reasons so much vitriol comes your way. I'm sure the U.S. could end AIDS in Africa, colonize Mars and bring fresh water to all with just a small part of the budget. But it does take will and focus.

bart:

There were no Nazis, except under your bed at night.

OJ,

Spoken like someone from Western Essex County, a hotbed of Bundist and pro-Nazi activism before WWII, and espionage during it.

The people I mentioned were either outright Nazis or Nazi sympathizers and were all people in elected office or with significant followings in the media or both. As a factual matter, discrimination against Jews in education, housing and employment even by state institutions was at an all-time high and the conditions for Blacks in much of the US were an atrocity. Racist ideology was acceptable in popular American culture, as the success of Stepin Fetchit and Willie Best(Sleep n Eat) demonstrate.

Anti-Semitism isn't Nazism. Nor was admiration for what fascism had achieved, which even Churchill shared. There were no Nazi leaders in American politics. Not even sympathizers. And the only "spies" ever arrested were totally hapless and their trial an embarrassment to everyone but FDR.

admiration for what fascism had achieved...

That would be what, exactly? At least try to have a better answer than "opposing Communism." Not seeing any reason here to think your anti-anti-Nazism is any less foolish, to be extremely polite, than the anti-anti-Communism that killed liberalism.

Bart:

If you think that racism was worse in 1940 than in 1850 (or 1870), you are sadly mistaken.

And if there were so many neo-Nazis in government in 1940, where did they all go on Dec. 7 (or Dec. 11, if you prefer)? Things were worse in 1916, when lots of German sympathizers were actually jailed.

Stop quaking about jackboots and goose-steps. They may have frightened lots of Europeans in the late 1930s, but only a few Americans were fooled. Don't continue the myth.

I'm not taking sides on whether it would have been better to have supported Hitler v. Stalin or Stalin v. Hitler.

Orrin's crazy if he thinks leaving all Europe -- east and west -- to those two guys was the best idea.

Practically speaking, if you were going to throw down against one or the other, the only one reachable was Hitler.

It would have been better, of course, to have dealt with both while they were militarily helpless. That was not an option, because Christians -- who in the 1930s were, on average as scared of Bolshevism as Orrin still is -- were backing Hitler to contain the beast.

Nobody gave a crap about democracy in eastern Europe, and the war certainly was not started over any tender feelings for the Poles. (The Czechs were the least fascist of the Cordon Sanitaire states but hardly democratic.)

Anyhow, by 1945, the Red Army was the biggest, meanest bully on the block and could have, with a flick of its wrist, enveloped Third Army, which was way overextended.

This would have been conventional warfare, the only kind that existed in May 1945.

It would have been over by June, P51s or not. The Red Air Force had dealt satisfactorily with the German Air Force, which was inferior to the USAAF and RAF in 1945 but not vastly so.

Read the memoirs of the guys who were flying the P51s, like in 4th Pursuit Group. They were wary of the Red Air Force.

The easy test of which side was superior is to simply ask: who could not advance?

In 1944, the Reds cynically stopped for several months before Warsaw. All rightwing nuts fault them for this (as they should) which implies that, if the Russians had wanted to, they could easily have advanced against the Germans.

On the other side, the advance was also stopped, for about the same length of time. Only in western Europe it was not because of a cynical delaying tactic. The US and Britain were unable to advance against the 10% of the German army they faced.

Had the Red Army decided to mop up in May 1945 (which it might have thought prudent had there been no Yalta agreement) it would have been no contest.

Orrin would not care, but if the Russians held about 500,000 US prisoners, I don't think that any American president would have decided the thing to do was use Abombs in August or September.

Morality is a poor guide in choices like this.

Besides, I don't see why it was more morally ambiguous to fight alongside Russia against Germany in 1942-45 than it was in 1917-18.

joe:

Gotten their society reorganized and economy growing again several years before the rest of us. It seemed a miracle at the time. None of those who were impressed were fooled for long though, not Churchill, nor Lindbergh, nor many of the others.

Harry:

Of course WWI was a colossal waste--that's why so few Americans wanted to go back in WWII. They were right.

None of those who were impresses were fooled for long ...

I didn't ask you what their sham accomplishments were. Try again.

I am sitting this one out.

So should I have. OJ's got pupils the size of dimes over the prospect of nuking Moscow. Harry's got pupils the size of dimes over the prospect of a half -million American POWs. Have a nice evening.

joe:

"Gotten their society reorganized and economy growing again several years before the rest of us. It seemed a miracle at the time. None of those who were impressed were fooled for long though, not Churchill, nor Lindbergh, nor many of the others."

They were though infamously impressed initially.

Star Wars was only the final nail and an unnecessary one. They'd died on the vine by the '30s. Hitler and then we saved them by giving them something to organize their people against.

20 million russians died in that war. Everything west of Leningrad-Moscow-Stalingrad (more than half of European Russian) was laid waste by fighting and the Scorched Earth policy of the retreating Germans. Nothing of economic value remained west of this line. The only time Stalin was threatened with loss of power was when he had his nervous breakdown in the days after the start of Barbarossa.

Please site evidence that the Soviet Union and Stalin's rule would have collapsed by itself in the 1930s without a German invasion.

Please explain - in detail - how exactly all the devastation of WWII actually helped the USSR survive longer than it would have.

This should be entertaining.

The reason totalitarian dictators kill so many of their own citizens is because they'd be so hard to control otherwise.

There was nothing of value to begin with. Bolshevism had failed.

The same way it has helped Castro and the Kims and helped American liberals. War justifies all things.

Liberals are fond of saying that (Roosevelt and) WWII pulled us out of the Depression and saved the nation. Why wouldn't the same be true for Stalin and the continuation of the Soviet state?

Totaliatrian regimes need war to the threat of war to justify their vile treatment of their people. The false distinction made between fascism and bolshevism sustained Stalin's western supporters for decades, obviously it still does. The war was fought in defense of 'mother Russia' and trational Russian values. The guys in the front lines were not figting for Stalin. Once the war was ended the destruction of the churches, the executions through forced labor and starvation as well as the destruction of what was left of the objects of traditional Russian patriotism could continue.

jim:

We made it true.

daniel:

No, that Castro has survived as long as he has because we pretended to be an enemy, however ineffectually (also because we took the portion of the population he needed to kill otherwise to stay in power).

Remember Clausewitz: Defense is to Offense as 3 is to 1.

The Russians would have had interior lines of communication, ours would have been exterior.

Amateurs talk strategy, Professionals talk logistics.

Harry has mastered the distinction.

OJ, an amateur, has not.

Jeff:

So they'd have quickly gotten the word that the Communist leadership was gone. Officers would have been fragged at record pace.

daniel:

What devastation? There was nothing in the USSR to devastate any more than there is in Cuba.

daniel:

The USSR was a wasteland long before Hitler got to it.

Your problem seems to be similar that of Harry, Kissinger, Schlesinger & company--you think Bolshevism was a success.

Yes, and a barely surviving USSR didn't matter. You're getting there.

This is my least favorite of OJ's hobby horses, and he's completely wrong about the usefulness of fighting Germany even if it meant propping up Stalin. He is mostly, though not entirely, right about Yalta. The three things that should give us pause about Yalta are FDR's health; the presence in the US delegation of Soviet spies; and that FDR should have known that, at the very least, the US would have a U-235 bomb by the end of the year and probably at least one Pu bomb.

There are two points that ought to be made about beating the Russians.

First, by the end of the war in the Pacific, the SeaBees could turn a Japanese airfield into a field capable of supporting B-29 airwings in about 2 and a half months. We invaded the Marianas in late July, had them secure by mid-August, construction began while the battle was still going and the B-29s landed in mid-October.

Second, a second plutonium core existed at Los Alamos at the end of the war. If I have the story right, it was actually out the door for the trip to the Pacific and a scheduled August drop before Groves called it back because HST had suspended atomic bombing. Oppenheimer had promised three more bombs in September and then increasing monthly production scheduled to peak at 7 per month starting in December.

Orrin's crazy if he thinks leaving all Europe -- east and west -- to those two guys was the best idea.

Exactly right.

It would have been better, of course, to have dealt with both while they were militarily helpless. That was not an option, because Christians -- who in the 1930s were, on average as scared of Bolshevism as Orrin still is -- were backing Hitler to contain the beast.

Gratuitous swipe against Christians.

Morality is a poor guide in choices like this.

No, morality is especially important in choices like this.

Of course it was a swipe against Christians, Eugene. But there was nothing gratuitous about it.

Lots went into making Hitler, but Christian panic over Bolshevism -- a needless panic, according to Orrin, since it was already a failure -- was as important as any other factor.

But if you think morality is a guide, why aren't we in Tibet? Or Darfur?

To demand, as Orrin does, the abandonment of the war against Japan in order to prosecute a further war against the USSR to rescue Poles is racist, because it would have condemned equal millions of Chinese, Koreans etc. to die.

Is a Korean worth less than a Pole?

The Japs were limited to their home islands. They weren't going to bother anybody. 60 million Chinese died because we made Communism seem a viable system.

We are in Darfur.

daniel:

What's the difference?

And 50 million Chinese died because of a Christian crusade.

But who's counting, they were not Poles, right?

The US never engaged a tenth of the Imperial Japanese Army and for every one of them we killed, they killed or wounded one of us.

The guys who were there at the time (my father among them) were anxious to have the Russians do the dying, as they had against the Germans.

The US came out of the war well because it did so little of the actual fighting, as Britain had found in the 18th century that it paid in the medium run to subsidize Prussians and Austrians to kill Frenchmen.

Americans have no stomach for casualties, as the outcry over the minor Rapido butcher's bill attests.

I'll leave the last word to Stephen green of Vodka Pundit who shreds an argument similar to OJ's that was recently made by Pat Buchanan (see http://vodkapundit.com/archives/007819.php):

Let's look at the world, if the West had chosen not to fight in 1939.

We have two possible scenarios. In the first one, Hitler's Germany beats Stalin's Russia.

Buchanan's beloved Poland? It is stripped of Jews, and then of Poles. Poland, for all of Pat's protestations, ceases to exists. Then something similar happens to Russia. If you don't know, Hitler had grand designs on European Russia. 100 million Russians were to be either killed, deported to Siberia, or used as slave labor. Everything up to the Ural Mountains (including the Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic States) was to be incorporated into the Greater German Reich. Anyone not cooperating was, as already described, to be shot, enslaved, or deported.

In this scenario, would it matter if the Low Countries or France had never been invaded? Hardly. Faced with a Empire greater than any even Napoleon ever dreamed of, Western Europe would have become, well, exactly what it became under real-timeline German occupation.

These are historical facts. Buchanan knows them. He's hoping you don't.

And if Stalin won?

Things would have been nearly as bad – but still worse than they were in reality. Instead of an Iron Curtain "from Stettin in the Baltic to Triest in the Adriatic," Stalin would have controlled all of Europe. Perhaps Britain would have remained free, as a Western Cuba off the coast of the Soviet Empire.

And Pat's beloved Poland? Yeah, the Poles would've been free, all right – free to have their faces smashed by Stalin's boot.

These are historical facts. [Judd, er I mean] Buchanan knows them. He's hoping you don't.

Please notice that the Hitler Wins scenario - the one for which Pat pines - is even darker than the Stalin Wins scenario. Stalin, for all his evil ways, never made plans to deport entire nations to Siberia, nor did he send entire classes of people to gas chambers. Stalin "only" wanted to impose communism, no matter how many millions of people he had to kill to do it.

Hitler's murderous desires were far greater.

And if [Orrin Judd, er I mean]Pat Buchanan, the Nazi apologist, has decided to forget that…I hope you won't.

You know, now that I think about it, has anyone seen Orrin and Pat in the same place at the same time? Hmmmm....

Except that those are the two least likely scenariuos, believed in only by those who believe in the efficacy of totalitarianism.

Harry:

And would have done even better had we done less. You're really getting the hang of it.

Except that those are the two least likely scenariuos, believed in only by those who believe in the efficacy of totalitarianism.

I think you'll find once you actually start studying military history you'll find that very few wars actually end in stalement.

And nearly none in modern times with one side dominating the other for any considerable period of time. There'd have been a putative but exhausted winner without the capacity or will to control tens of millions of enemy people.

And nearly none in modern times with one side dominating the other for any considerable period of time. There'd have been a putative but exhausted winner without the capacity or will to control tens of millions of enemy people.

Being ignorant of WWII history you are obviously unaware that Hitler had no intention of ruling over tens of milions of enemy people. He intended to exterminate them.

As far Stalin, ruling tens of millions of enemy people is exactly what he accomplished after 1945 through puppet Communist parties in Eastern Europe. The USSR did so for almost half a century, considerable period of time. There is no reason why this system of satrapies could not be extended to the Atlantic if Soviet arms got that far (though the Communist parties of France and Italy probably would have achieved a level of independence from Moscow similar to that of Tito's Yugoslavia).

As for active resistance by native populations to either regime during he war, it was largely a myth. As Albert Speer once responded when asked about the French resistance, "What French resistance?". Except for Tito's guerrilas (who had the advantage of rough, mountainous terrain) the Gestapo effectively minimized guerilla movements throughout occupied Europe. And when formal resistance occured (such as during the Warsaw uprising), even a German army retreating in defeat was able to quickly and effectively crush it. Post war resistance to Stalin by Ukrainian nationalists and others throughout Eastern Europe was exterminated by the NKVD by the end of 1945. In both cases, that vast majority of occupied people collaborated with the Nazis and Communists.

I don't say that Hitler or Stalin could have successfully ruled a conquered Europe - history does. Facts say they could have.

But being in deep denial and ignorant of history I'm sure you'll disagree. Or maybe you're not ignorant. Maybe your dumb as a rock stupid or blinded by ideological fanaticism, which amounts to the same thing. Or maybe you're just a liar who knows he's wrong but lacks the manhood necessary to admit it.

Either way, you and your opinions are beneath contempt.

Which of course doesn't mean I don't enjoy coming on your blog to bitch slap you.

daniel:

How? Where were all the Geremans going to come from to control and exterminate the Slavs. You make some cl;aim to military expertise--what does kmilitary doctrine say about the number of troops required to control the entire population of Europe?

How? Where were all the Geremans going to come from to control and exterminate the Slavs.

The same ones that exterminated 6 millions Jews and a near equal number of other undesirables in a matter of a few years after the Wannasee Protocol (you're not a Holocaust denier as well are you?). The Slavs being more numerous would have taken atmost a couple of decades.

You make some cl;aim to military expertise--what does kmilitary doctrine say about the number of troops required to control the entire population of Europe?

When these populations are exterminated, there is no need for troops to control them now is there?

As for the Soviet method of indirect rule through puppet Communists, that was proven successful in Eastern Europe for half a century.

You're fun to bitch slap OJ.

Seven million unarmed civilians who even their fellow citizens wanted out of the way is easy, how do you do entire national populations? Where were the USSR's Nazis who were going to run Russia for them? Have you actually given any of this any thought or are you just regurgitating what's been tamped into your head?

Seven million unarmed civilians who even their fellow citizens wanted out of the way is easy, how do you do entire national populations?

Refer to the history of the Ukrainian famine of the 1920s. The Communists had no troulbe killing whole populations numbering in the 10s of millions. Why would the Nazis be unable to do the same? If anything, the Nazis showed themselves to be more efficient in these matters.

Where were the USSR's Nazis who were going to run Russia for them?

Not needed when the Russians have been exterminated like the Jews in preparation for German colonization.

Have you actually given any of this any thought or are you just regurgitating what's been tamped into your head?

Have you actually given any of this any thought or are you just regurgitating your sick fantasies?

Trying to starve all of Russia wouldn't have been very efficient. So, in your argument you start with the Slavs extermninated and thgen think it'd be easy to control the empty lands? Novel, if inane.

OJ:

Would not have been efficient?

Don't go throwing that word around without some notion as to what it means in this context.

Otherwise, you are using it as empty support for an assertion.

Daniel:

IMHO, you have deeply supported and effectively argued your POV.

Trying to starve all of Russia wouldn't have been very efficient.

It would have been relatively easy with German control of the Black Earth lands of south Russia.

The Ukrainian famine lasted only two years, from 1932 to 1933. An estimated 14 million people died of starvation, mostly in Ukraine but also in the North Caucasus, Kazakhstan and Russia. At 7 million dead per year this is a more efficeint kill rate than the Nazi death camps and without the need for expensive infrastructure or transport of the victims.

So, in your argument you start with the Slavs extermninated and thgen think it'd be easy to control the empty lands? Novel, if inane.

Well without Slavs resisting the colonizers, colonization becomes rather easy. Which is exactly what the Germans planned.

OJ, why do you insist on embarassing yourself?

daniel:

Why do your Slavs collaborate with the Germans because so docile but are invincible when they face the American military?

What does collaboration have to do one way or the other with man mad famine?

without Slavs resisting the colonizer

Again you are being dishonest OJ. The complete quote is as follows:

So, in your argument you start with the Slavs extermninated and thgen think it'd be easy to control the empty lands? Novel, if inane.

Well without Slavs resisting the colonizers, colonization becomes rather easy. Which is exactly what the Germans planned.

Or maybe you just have trouble with reading comprehension.

Orrin, I'm used to your heterodox views of Christianity, but even I am surprised to find you doubting the Nazi ambition to eliminate the Slav untermenschen.

Harry:

I don't doubt Hitler's intent, just his capacity. I don't believe in the efficacy of Socialism.

daniel:

Sorry, didn't realize you were acknowledging that you do start with Germany having been able to kill 180 million people while holding all of Europe quiet. Boy, that Hitler was right about their being supermen.

OJ, the CPSU that actually ruled Russia and killed 10s of millions of people never numbered more than 5% of the population of the USSR.

This same tiny number of people engineered a famine in the Ukrain that killed 7 million people a year using very primitive techniques. The number could have easily been higher but the CPSU made sure certain loyal elements of the peasantry recieved enough food to survive. Had they gone all out a death rate of at least 10 million per year would have been easy to achieve. Mao achieved even higher per annum death rates using even more primitive techniques during the "Great Leap Forward".

Since Hitler was only concerned with European Russia west of the Urals, he planned to eliminate the 100 million Rusians and other minorities in this area. Do the math. 100 million people divided by 10 million per year means a completed genocide in about a decade.

Given the willing collaboration of the rest of Europe, what "holding down" would the Germans have to do? As Albert Speer remarked "What French resistance?". There was no need for the Nazis to be supermen, only that they be ruthless.

As for your remarke to harry, Socialism has always been extremely efficient at killing large numbers of people. If you weren't ignorant of history, you'd know that.

daniel:

yes, it's pretty easy to kill your own people. Rather harder to take anoyther country and kill its citizens. Even Hitler didn't try killing the Poles or French, just their Jews, gypsies and other unpopular minorities.

Again your ignorance is showing. Hitler never intended to kill the French, they weren't untermensch by his definition. The Poles and other Slavs were next on the list after the Jews, Gypsies, etc. (haven't you been following these discussions?).

Why is it harder to kill off another country's citizens? The Romans did it all the time,and all they had was the short sword. The Mongols depopulated northern china and all they had was the bow. Hutus did it to the Tutsis with machetes. You want to do it to the Russians with nukes. Killing the alien "other" is always psychologically easier than killing your own kind.

OJ, just be a man and admit you're wrong.

The Romans didn't kill them, just made them Roman. The Hutu and Tutsi are a fine example of internal killing.

No one cares enough about the other to kill them unless they share a society. Nazism was simply applied Darwinism and while domestic Jews and gypsies were a threat to Germany the Slavs of Russia weren't.

But the point isn't the desire to kill, which Hitler undoubtedly had, but the capacity, which you've yet to address, other than to say: "assume the Slavs are already dead..."

The Romans didn't kill them, just made them Roman.

OJ, your own title includes the Latin phrase "Carthego delenda est". I hope you aren't to stupid to know where that quote came from and what the Romans did to the Carthaginians after the 3rd Punic War. Hint; they did not make them Romans. Nor did they make into Romans the Jewish Zealots who were defending the Temple in AD 70. Nor a host of tribes, kingdoms, cities or rebellious provinces. "They made a desert and called it peace.

Do you know anything at all about history?

The Hutu and Tutsi are a fine example of internal killing.

Rwanda as an artifical country with nonsensical borders offered no such example.

No one cares enough about the other to kill them unless they share a society. Nazism was simply applied Darwinism and while domestic Jews and gypsies were a threat to Germany the Slavs of Russia weren't.

Gee I guess that's why the Nazis only killed German Jews and not any Jews from any other nation in Europe. As usual OJ your stupidity and/or deceit remains awe inspiring. A further question is why are you such a hateful bigot who does not care what hapened to the Jews?

But the point isn't the desire to kill, which Hitler undoubtedly had, but the capacity, which you've yet to address, other than to say: "assume the Slavs are already dead..."

He had more capacity and resources than those who engineered the Ukrainian Famine or China's Great Leap Forward. Your argument is akin to Holocasut denial and relies upon the same tactics.

daniel:

The exception proves the rule.

All countries have "artificial" borders unless the population is ethnically pure, which is the precise point.

But not Slavs.

He didn't even have the capacity to defeat England or the Soviets or to fight Spain. Socialism, neither National nor Bolshevik, is not as effective as you think

Oh as for fighitng in Spain, the Franco regime was a pro-German neutral. Except to get at British Gibraltar there was no need for Hitler to attack Spain. Had the Germans decided to do so, their operational plan (codenamed Felix) would have brought them to the Rock within a matter of days. But there was no pressing need to do so since British shipping and convoys did not go thru the Med but around the Cape.

Do you know anything at all about WWII history?

You "believe" a great deal OJ, but you know little. And understand less. And you're deceitful when caught in error. Which makes you an intellectual coward and beneath contempt.

Whic is why I enjoy bitch slapping you on you home turf.

Except to get at British Gibraltar there was no need for Hitler to attack Spain.

tee hee