We need to get Roosevelt's portrait off the dime and get someone loyal to American principles to replace it. Preferably Reagan, but Pinochet will do. That will give Conason something to really stew about.

Just need to ask the Eastern Europeans if the betrayal at Yalta was at least equal to or worse than Munich.

h-man is right -- this ludicrous adulation of FDR should finally come to an end.

How about "a traitor to his class"?

Seriously, he was a elitist dupe. He tried to apply his political charm (from the domestic front) to the foreign scene and it just didn't work. He had communists working for him. He should have known how rotten things were in Soviet Russia in 1933, but apparently he didn't say anything negative about Stalin until the last days of his life.

Trying to treat Yalta (or Tehran) like a Congressional porkfest just doesn't cut it.

Roosevelt singlehandedly destroyed fundamental American concepts of freedoms and rights.

The fact that one can even say he "singlehandedly" did so speaks to the very distortions of power he created. While the notion of U.S.-president-as-omnipotent-leader has its roots in Lincoln, it was Roosevelt who cemented it for good. FDR was the worst thing to happen to the United States, and to American freedom.

No no comparison. Idiots like you would take us into an inferno of war. What should Rosevelt have done? fought the russians? Used nuclear weapons? Hundred of Thousands or millions more lives lost for what? Freedom that would have come in another 50 years? I have to say I biased Because my grandfather fought in that war. Sneaking into Japanese harbors to plant explosives on warships. People like you make me sick. The army needs people. Why don't you join up, or are you a coward? I don't support this war, so I won't. People like you are going to drag us down into a pit that I don't think you will like. I think soon you will find that there is no god, no rest and no pity for what you and the president and these febel demos have gotten us into.

Mr. McHugh:

Yes, fought the totalitarians. Otherwise what was the point of the war? did Eastern Europe care that Stalin oppressed them instead of Hitler? They say not.

jim:

Well, he did get black-balled at Porcellian.

What are "febel demos"?

It is incredibly amusing to watch the foaming at the mouth that Bush has caused with what is not at all a novel idea, or even the first time Bush has said such a thing. Where's the nuance from the lefties on this one? The recognition that America making a deal with bad guys and defending it by saying it's the "realist" thing to do, is a bad thing?

Was Yalta more or less 'noble' than the Non-Agression Pact of 1939?

I know there must be a stock answer somewhere.

Jason,
I agree FDR did what he had to do at that time what was best for us at that moment......
But that still doesn't mean it was right, we still sold out Eastern Europe. THAT"S A FACT!!!
It had to be done, but you should at least grasp the fact that we screwed them over.
We did it to Eastern Europe and we did it to the Shia's in the first Gulf war.... it just the same old story different book.

Welcome to the world BDAEG65, its not black and white, its shades of grey. Welcome to the left point of view. America Killed a socalist president in El Salvador sending it into decades of civil war. Millions died in Vietnam. America has done alot of bad, but the promise of good outweighs the bad. If we had gone on to try a liberate those in the eastern block, millions more would have died, maybe my grandfather included. There was also not the will in the American people to go on to do it. Seeing as they were under comunist yoke for 50 years, what is worse, the pain of the millions who would have died in a war, or the pain of 50 years of repression. Being right is not always 100%. Or even 75%. But there is a right and wrong which have to be balanced to be on the side of right. Did we screw them over? How many millions of them would have died in the crossfire? One thing also.... Alot of those states you say we screwed over, supported Germany in the first and second World War.

And I have zero, nada, nil compassion for fascists.

Unless the fascists also happen to be communists...

Fascism ( Nazis ) and communism are at two opposite ends of the political spectrum. One cannot be a communists and fascist. Take a political course at your local community college.

I also don't really care for communism either. It's a fantasy based system.

Or fascists that support Islamic terrorists.

Mr. McHugh:

Sure, except that the Nazis were socialist, not classical fascists, and the Nazis and Bolsheviks were just different iterations of totalitarianism.

If it looks like a totalitarian, walks like a totalitarian, and quacks like a totalitarian....

daniel - As GWB has demonstrated, sometimes moral and verbal and financial support, as the US has provided for Lebanon and Georgia and the Ukraine in their democratic revolutions, can be surprisingly effective.

It may not have made sense for FDR to contest Eastern Europe militarily, but he could certainly have contested it morally and verbally. He chose to participate in the murder of hundreds of thousands of resisters to Stalin rather than denounce communism.

Mr. McHugh:

The extra millions would have saved tens of millions, trillions of dollars, and, most importantly, avoided the socialk destruction of the 60s and 70s that resulted from keeping America in a permanent war state.

daniel:

Most importantly, no Normandy. If you've already made that tragic error, use the German armed forces and rocket engineers. Arm the native populations. Blockade the ports. Bomb the cities. Nuke Moscow.

All with the very limited goal of liberating non-Russian territory and replacing the Bolsheviks.

How amusing to read a leftist's clarification of the word "fascist," considering the degree to which his ideological comrades have completely transformed the word into an ignorant, catch-all synonym for "people we think are bad."

Before trying to teach those on a right-leaning site about the meaning of the word, McHugh, perhaps you should hit all the leftie sites and give them a quick lesson first.

Jason,

Actually, one can be a fascist and a communist in a sense: fascism grew explicitly from communism. As David Ramsay Steele wrote a few years ago, "Fascism began as a revision of Marxism by Marxists, a revision which developed in successive stages, so that these Marxists gradually stopped thinking of themselves as Marxists, and eventually stopped thinking of themselves as socialists. They never stopped thinking of themselves as anti-[classical] liberal revolutionaries."

McHugh:

"Nazi" is a contraction of the German words for "National Socialist German Workers' Party." There's a reason for that. The only ideological difference between National Socialism (Hitler) and Marxist-Leninist socialism (Stalin) is that the German flavor was nationalist--"master race" and all that--while the Russians were internationalists (though that didn't stop them from nearly matching the Germans in their hostility to Jews). Both countries were ruthless tyrranies with secret police and command economies; the only significant difference was that the Germans did not nationalize private industry or collectivize agriculture--but that was a tactical decision by Hitler, who did not want to disrupt the German economy while he was building it up to fight the impending war.

Thanks for the article, Ed. I'll finish it a little later. As far as that goes they are both Totalatarian movements ( Which I despise ) with the only difference being economic systems. But I thought that would be to nuanced for the right wing crowd here, expecally since they like to call Nazis "socialists". Hilter had all the Socialists in his party killed right after he took power. ( night of the long knives)

And as for this....

"The extra millions would have saved tens of millions, trillions of dollars, and, most importantly, avoided the socialk destruction of the 60s and 70s that resulted from keeping America in a permanent war state."

What millions would we have saved? The Soviets had a far larger army on the ground then we did ( they did most of the fighting against Germany during WW2 ), closer to the line of battle then we did, with far more experience, and a better tank ( The T-34 ) then ours. We could have hoped for at best, a stand still, or gotten pushed off Eroupe altogther. Then we would have been in a hot perment war. ( Jesus save me from your followers) Or would "God" have come down from heaven to save his armies agianst the heathen Communists? You are crazy. Get some help.

Well, then, what the heck is Bush waiting for?

He should nuke Peking or shut up about Roosevelt.

As Billy Carter might have said, "There's more Chinese than there is Poles."

the only significant difference was that the Germans did not nationalize private industry or collectivize agriculture--but that was a tactical decision by Hitler, who did not want to disrupt the German economy while he was building it up to fight the impending war.

The reason he didn't do it was because he was a Fascist. Mussolini called fascism "Corpratism". Hilter WAS FUNDED BY THOSE SAME CORPORATIONS. They supported him and gave him money. Hilter broke Unions. How can he be a Socialist, whose bedrock is the union, but he goes and breaks unions and declares them illegal?

Characteristics of fascism

1.Militant nationalism, proclaiming the racial and cultural superiority of the dominant ethnic group and asserting that group's inherent right to a special dominant position over other peoples in both the domestic and the international order
2.The adulation of a single charismatic national leader said to possess near superhuman abilities and to be the truest representation of the ideals of the national culture, whose will should therefore literally be law
3.Emphasis on the absolute necessity of complete national unity, which is said to require a very powerful and disciplined state organization (especially an extensive secret police and censorship apparatus), unlimited by constitutional restrictions or legal requirements and under the absolute domination of the leader and his political movement or party
4.Militant anti-Communism coupled with the belief in an extreme and imminent threat to national security from powerful and determined Communist forces both inside and outside the country
5.Contempt for democratic socialism, democratic capitalism, liberalism, and all forms of individualism as weak, degenerate, divisive and ineffective ideologies leading only to mediocrity or national suicide
6.Glorification of physical strength, fanatical personal loyalty to the leader, and general combat-readiness as the ultimate personal virtues
7.A sophisticated apparatus for systematically propagandizing the population into accepting these values and ideas through skilled manipulation of the mass media, which are totally monopolized by the regime once the movement comes to power
8.A propensity toward pursuing a militaristic and aggressive foreign policy
9.Strict regulation and control of the economy by the regime through some form of corporatist economic planning in which the legal forms of private ownership of industry are nominally preserved but in which both workers and capitalists are obliged to submit their plans and objectives to the most detailed state regulation and extensive wage and price controls, which are designed to insure the priority of the political leadership's objectives over the private economic interests of the citizenry. Therefore under fascism most of the more important markets are allowed to operate only in a non-competitive, cartelized, and governmentally "rigged" fashion.

There's no point going off on a tangent about how "socialist" the nazi's were.

The point is - what "historical falsification" was there in Bush's speech? None. Eastern Europe was sold old and it is something to be ashamed of. Yes it might have been "realpolitick", and one can make many arguments against fighting Soviet control, but the plain fact is that Yalta condemned millions of people to decades of communist totalitarian rule.

It is quite right to say that it followed in the "unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact". It /was/ unjust, and it followed those even more shameful sell-outs.

Reading about how Britain sold out the Czechs makes me ashamed to be British.

A perfectly valid criticism of FDR. What is he, a saint?

On your list of the nine supposedly distinctive characteristics of fascism, nos. 2, 3, and 5 through 8 also describe the USSR. I would further submit that items 1 and 4 are simply restatements of my point, which is that the ideological difference between Hitler and Stalin was that Hitler was a nationalist while Stalin was a nominal internationalist (though he sure played the "Mother Russia" card hard after 1941!) That leaves #9, which describes Hitler's and Mussolini's implimentation of centralized economic planning. Not all that different, in practical effect, from Stalin's or Mao's.

A godless tyrrany is a godless tyrrany is a godless tyrrany. Call it fascist, socialist, corporatist, or dress it in calico and call it Aunt Florence, it's still evil, and the only good tyrant is still a dead one.

Well, you've just proven their point, Mr. McHugh, just a little looser than communism.

Liberty is the opposite of those, sir. They are 2 sides of the same coin.

Socialism kills - and it has quite magnificently, free markets feed.

Alastair:

Secular saint, yes. But we Americans don't ever accept that anything we did was wrong. It's the nature of democracy--we'd be blaming ourselves.

Like I said, both are Totalatarian systems, differing on economics ( I stated this earlier if you read ) Fascism has PRIVATE property, which communism has none. I despise Totalatarian systems.

But I see Sandy wants to repeat the NAZI=Socialism thing. Whats in a word? I can say I'm the queen of France, but that doesn't make it so. Naziism=Corpratism, meaning power by the corporations.

"The first stage of fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power"

--Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Fascist Dictator of Italy

The German National Socialists (Nazis) claimed to be "socialist" much like any branch of Socialism, but some scholars argue that the term "socialism" in "national socialism" did not meaningfully extend beyond propaganda purposes, and that, in practice, the Nazis allowed (friendly) capitalists to thrive while liquidating socialists everywhere else (including from within their own party in the Night of the Long Knives). Unlike 'national socialists,' many socialists who consider themselves nationalist reject the racialist theories and totalitarianism of the Nazis, though racial tolerance is not necessarily a socialist ideal. (see:Socialism and Nazism). - Wikopeda
( and we all know it certainlly isn't a Republican ideal )

Mr. McHugh:

Those are characteristics of Nazism, not fascism. The two have unfortunately been conflated.

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1367/

"Fascism has PRIVATE property"--that would be news to anybody who happened to Jewish in Nazi Germany or its occupied countries.

Socialism kills - and it has quite magnificently, free markets feed.

And they would feed on you too..... If it were not for the controls put into place during the 1930's. Before they were put into place, the markets and economy suffered crashes worse then any we have experienced in the past 60 years. Though not as bad as the Great Depression, they were enough to send many people off a bridge and into a river. And they happened EVERY 20 YEARS.

Harry:

Unfortunately nuking went out of style.

If you weren't a Jew, you could have private property ED.

daniel:

Innocent? none.

I've got an off-topic observation/question. Well, not really off-topic, because it has to do with trying to write an ON-TOPIC response to one of the posts here:

Why am I unable, in IE6, to highlight specific blocks of text in comment threads here? When I go to copy a certain sentence or paragraph -- using the standard right-click/move-mouse procedure -- it winds up highlighting virtually the entire page. I can't define and copy the part I want, for pasting into a new comment.

Jason:

They did after the New Deal too. They ended with Volker and Reagan.

Secular saint, yes. But we Americans don't ever accept that anything we did was wrong. It's the nature of democracy--we'd be blaming ourselves.

There's no point going off on a tangent about how "socialist" the nazi's were.

The point is - what "historical falsification" was there in Bush's speech? None. Eastern Europe was sold old and it is something to be ashamed of. Yes it might have been "realpolitick", and one can make many arguments against fighting Soviet control, but the plain fact is that Yalta condemned millions of people to decades of communist totalitarian rule.

It is quite right to say that it followed in the "unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact". It /was/ unjust, and it followed those even more shameful sell-outs.

Reading about how Britain sold out the Czechs makes me ashamed to be British.

A perfectly valid criticism of FDR. What is he, a saint?

For OJ and ALISTAIR. FDR made the best choices he could at the time. Maybe you would like to dicuss Saint Ronnie instead, and his selling of weapons to Iran, or maybe Saint Nixon and his crimes? or how about Saint Bush and his mess-up that caused Gulf War 1. As much as you would like to tear someone great down to make yourselves feel better about yourselves and your ideology, I ain't giving out free passes no more.

SP,

It's not isolated to the BJB--I think it's a Moveable Type bug. What I've been doing when posting on the BJB is to type a little of my comment and then switch to preview mode, which also shows previous comments. For some reason, on that page, I can highlight individual words and sentences just fine.

OJ

If your talking about the little slow-downs we had during 1945-1980, we would have crashes every 20 years 1800-1920 where the market would loose ALOT of it value. Nothing ended with Reagan. We had a bad ressession ( but not a crash) around 1991-1993. Why do you think Clinton got elected?

O, for the good old days when rightists called him Franklin Delano Rosenfeld.

Alastair -

To some he is a saint - a professor of mine instigated a physical confrontation with me when I suggested (well maybe more than suggested) that FDR's deal didn't put an end to the depression.

I'm not really sure what good are all these Yalta threads here over the past few days. We simply don't know what could have happened in a situation with so many variables. What's important is that we recognize that the EE's got the shortest straw and that we extend an extra helping to them now that we have the opportunity.

I can't make any sense though of OJ's seeming assertion that a half-nazi Europe and a half-commie Europe would have been equally as bad for western society. Surely Nazism would have been far worse -- Nazi European culture would have been far more palatable to Americans (and Brits) than the soviet culture was. I guess I'm just picturing Kennedy in Harris's Fatherland going over to kiss Hitler's ring.

I don't Think it would have been any Kennedy, Robert , JF, or Ted going over there Shelton, But I'm sure Bush and his granddaddy sure would have been over there to kiss Hitlers ring. And it sounds like you would have enjoyed it. And that it why you Right-wingers disgust me. Anything for power.

We're not giving out free passes, either, Jason.

We're not giving out free passes, either, Jason.

I know. It's more like scorched earth with you people and I hope people on the left realize this. I'm also afraid of the rights reaction when they do realize this and decide not to back down anymore.

Your side has been scorching earth for quite a long time now, the lefts meltdown is because we are finally challenging them.

It's been 70 left years, Jason, time for fresh thinking.

You forgot Joe Sr., he was willing to kiss the ring.

"For OJ and ALISTAIR. FDR made the best choices he could at the time."

Jason - that's debatable (obviously). But was he capable of making a mistake? The point is not that he was wrong (I think he was), but that the choice made was still something to be ashamed of. I find it hard to doubt that he didn't agonise about it, and knew that the decision was, at heart, something he would despise.

Hindsight is 20/20 - but understanding the difficulties faced by actors at the time is no reason to not see the bad outcome of their choices.

Psss, BTW, don't forget 1994 in that mini-recession.

" ... the feeble betrayal at Munich ..."

This made me laugh as it has long been my wont to refer to Roosevelt as Feeble Frankie.

Wow Jason - maybe calm down just a bit. Of all the comments in this thread mine would seem to be almost supportive of your views. For this you call me disgusting nazi loving right-winger. You also might want to check up on the family history of your beloved Kennedy clan (esp in relation to nazism)before casting stones at the Bushes.

we are finally challenging them

I see no sorched earth from the left. I see years and years of Lying, hassrassing, intmidating, buying off, killing by those on the right against the left. Assasinations of latin leaders who said they were socialists. Now, since there is no real external enemy, you have to turn your hatred and fear against your fellow Americans. Fear and hatred is what keeps you together. If you didn't have that, well the world would be a much more peaceful place. Stalin, Hilter and Mao hated Liberals. Twisted, depraved individuals all of them. You think your in good company? I think, in a few years, 5-10, we'll all find out how hollow and lacking of any "morality" your ideology is. Just bend over, its all gonna come right back at you.

You are right Shelton, I have a hard time with it all. Most of the Well-off families in America liked Hitler. Another bad point for America. But I can say the Kennedy children are doing better then the bush children in so far as the principles I believe in. The bushes haven't changed. The Kennedys have.

Jason: The liberals that those stalwart leftists hated are what you call right-wing extemists, not our current socialist left who they would have used, but despised.

David,

If you think about it in a certain way, Stalin was a conservative within his form of government.

Hitler was conservative within his form of government.

Mao was conservative within his form of government.

They all hated intillectuals. liberals, people who
wanted more freedom. To think, to question, to live.

I hope you're not talking about Allende.

Look up the Allende Myth @ val e-diction.

You should also read the link on fascism OJ posted, there was an interesting conversation there, IIRC.

who ID'd fascism as RW?

And as to scorched earth, well, it depends, for starters, on how old you are. And then your experiences.

As to Kennedys and principles, what are they?

Jason -

They all loved the artists and intellectuals who agreed with them.

"Mao was conservative within his form of government."

Hey Orrin, does this count towards your contest? ;)

"The Bushes haven't changed."

Yeah, that W, always chillin wit da dictators.

That's why they love him in Tblisi.

(The mind boggles.)

Mr. McHugh:

Because George Bush raised taxes. There was no recession. The last one was the one that ended liberalism for good, in the early 80s.

Ed:

Let's assume Mr. McHugh doesn';t have a by-line.

Mr. McHugh:

Your comparisons are entirely appropriate. Nixon and Bush I were quite as guilty as FDR of botching the ends of wars.

"Now, since there is no real external enemy, you have to turn your hatred and fear against your fellow Americans. Fear and hatred is what keeps you together."

You are exactly right. Fear and hatred of those who threaten individual liberty -- which we hold above all else -- has indeed become a characteristic of those on the right. Conservatives are interested in CONSERVING the ideals of individual liberty that the left has been intent on destroying for the past century-plus.

We'll quit fearing and hating the left when you folks start championing the values of freedom; when you quit misapplying words such as "rights" in cases where you're actually talking about special privileges for some that take genuine rights away from others; when you stop exalting a facade of "equality" over the reality of liberty. In other words, we'll quit fearing and hating you when you get with the game and catch up with the 1770s.

And if we've assassinated socialist leaders, in Latin America or anywhere else, then good for us, good for freedom, and good for humanity.

Mr. McHugh:

I wish you were right, but Castro and Chavez are still alive.

JFK married a Nazi, for cripessakes and his little brother was the best ally the Soviets had in the 70s..

Shelton:

How was the America, Britain or Europe of Fatherland worse than that of 1964?

Stalin ... Hitler ... Mao was conservative within his form of government.

By the exact definition: conservative = bad.

If private property is so important, I would love to see what Jason says about Robert Mugabe.

And if the bedrock of a socialist government is a labor union, please explain Solidarity and Lech Walesa.

I don't know if a labor union is the bedrock of socialist government. But socialism is certainly the bedrock of any unionism that is afforded special protections by government -- in the form of the NLRA in the U.S., for instance.

Maybe Orrin could explain why Bolshevism was worse than tsarism.

It couldn't be that it killed a lot of people. Christianity killed at least as many, and he doesn't object to that.

As near as I can figure his beef is that Stalin killed people without saying god made him do it.

If he'd invoked a deity -- any one, apparently, judging from Orrin's appeasement of Islam -- it would have been OK.

Jason:

Now, since there is no real external enemy, you have to turn your hatred and fear against your fellow Americans. Fear and hatred is what keeps you together. If you didn't have that, well the world would be a much more peaceful place. . . . I think, in a few years, 5-10, we'll all find out how hollow and lacking of any "morality" your ideology is. Just bend over, its all gonna come right back at you.

Awful lot of categorical judgments in there. If you'd bothered to read any of the discussions on this site before going into troll-mode, you might've noticed that this is a pretty individualistic bunch here, not at all like the stereotype you've probably imbibed at Democratic Underground. You think we're marching in lockstep? I don't agree with everything OJ says, OJ and Bart and AWW and AOG and Joe and Buttercup all have their differences from time to time, and nobody agrees with Harry except Harry! [:-)] We manage to have a lot of lively disagreements here, and even educate each other a bit from time to time, without being insulting.

The point of intellectual engagement is to win converts, not flame heretics.

Harry;

The Tsars weren't killing many by the 20th Century and Russia was evolving towards the End of History at a reasonable pace.

David Cohen:

Bringing to mind something Thomas Sowell once said, roughly paraphrased: The Left puts itself at the very center of the ideological universe with everybody else -- from fascists to monarchists to social conservatives to free-market conservatives -- cast as "the Right."

Wow, I go away for the evening and I come back to this troll-fest. He is certainly on intimate terms with hatred and fear.

I'm not so sure that FDR had any choice but to agree to the partition of Europe at Yalta. Their army was already there, and ours was in no shape to push them out. Yet, do the political/military realities which FDR had to face in early 1945 make the decisions made at Yalta any less unjust than those made @ Munich and between Molotov & Ribbentrop? The answer is NO!

It is Conason, not the President, who's making the utterly cheap remarks here. The President is practicing good politics and doing it well. I did chuckle at his jabs about Karl Rove being GWB's "chief thinker" and Ann Coulter being a "noted fabulist."

OJ:
May I please have my thoughts downloaded for tomorrow one hour before the usual appointed time? Oh, and the lock on my in-line marching boots is a bit loose, please tighten it. Thank you.

OJ:

According to Paul Johnson's Modern Times, the Okhrana numbered 15,000 and was the largest secret police organization in the world at that time; the Cheka numbered a quarter-million full-time agents. Russia had executed about 17 people a year for all crimes; the Cheka was executing 1,000 people a month just for political offenses by 1918.

That's an undercount, too, because the Cheka ran secret courts (unlike the Okhrana, which had to turn people over to civil authorities) and didn't keep good records. Plus, they were running concentration camps within weeks of their establishment as a secret police force.

Robert Conquest quotes somebody in his new book who notes that there's not much a visitor saw in 1970s Russia that he couldn't have seen in pre-tsarist Russia. And, of course, they were feeding themselves and exporting grain before the Revolution, and the Bolsheviks very nearly didn't hang on to power. How sad that it turned out like it did.

OJ:

Russia was indeed making great social strides under Alexander II and to a lesser degree under Nicholas II (Alexander III attempted to stop the societal evolution that was taking place). Harry can't/won't see or admit this however, because of his Stalin love and his rebellion against christianity.

Unless my memory has betrayed me, Solzhenitsyn makes the case that the Tsars were less murderous than the Bolshies somewhere in the first third of Gulag Archipelago I. Of course, Liberals hate Solzhenitsyn a lot, so he may not carry much weight with that crowd.

OJ: The 1964 America of Fatherland was ruled over by president for life and quasi-fascist Joe Kennedy. The actual 1964 saw the passage of the Civil Rights bill. The "60s" didn't really start until 68 or 69.

Daniel: Although this is my least-favorite of OJ's tropes, I remain convinced that he is not a secret Nazi sympathizer. Something much more subtle is going on here. (Although it is legitimately annoying to American conservatives, particularly those who are classical liberals, to be saddled with responsibility for Hitler, a leftist through and through, and to see Stalin, equally though differently evil, get a pass.)

OJ believes that, as a self-consciously Utopian and universalist Judeo-Christian commune, the United States is morally obliged to free the oppressed peoples of the Earth and bring them into our free and moral communion. This includes the use of military force, perhaps not as a first resort, but certainly not as a last resort. Thus, his willingness to concede that WMD's were a ginned up excuse for war.

This fits in nicely with his (perfectly defensible) understanding of American military history as a series of more or less ginned up, voluntary (in the sense of not existential) conflicts. I tend to agree with him here: no president has ever failed to get us into a war and with all of our wars there were other, perfectly good alternatives involving not going to war. I believe a slightly weaker version of this theory, but I also believe that all but one of our wars were perfectly justifiable on grounds of national interest. This is OJ's problem: if our wars are justified, either ex ante or ex post, as having been in our national interest, narrowly construed, then we have no tradition of going to war for other people's freedom and are less likely to go to war in the future for other people's freedom.

Which brings us to WWII. Although people disagree, it is clear to me that the war was not existential. Neither Japan nor Nazi Germany had any intent or ability to invade North America. Ultimately, we would have had to fight Germany, but we wouldn't have been forced to it to protect our existence for decades. Was it ginned up? Absolutely. President Roosevelt was determined to get us into the war and did so. Lend-Lease and the Japanese embargo were both casus beli and in fact demonstrate how reluctant the Axis was to take us on.

So far, so good. WWII is a voluntary war that the President manipulated us into with good rhetoric about "freedom." But we do leave half of Europe enslaved and made common cause with the kind of monster that, OJ argues, we should be in the business of slaying. Thus, his argument that we should have gone to war with the USSR and that not getting rid of Stalin and Hitler both is as bad as not getting rid of either, so if we weren't going to finish our business, we never should have started.

From some things he has said, I also get the impression that he really hates the 60s counterculture, which is fair enough, and blames it on WWII, about which I'd have to hear more.

The defense rests.

Ooops, make that read "somehow worse".

OJ -

Wow, this thread took off last night.

The answer to your question about Fatherland is that the Europe of the book was superficially better off than a soviet Europe would have been (was).

While the world economy, the state of the arts, the day to day lives of the people, etc all benefited from a Nazi rather than commie victory, in the long run these superficial benefits would have made it more difficult to topple the Nazi regime. It is a case of it having to get worse before it can better.

The "otherness" of the soviet empire was one of the most important factors in the West's eventual triumph over bolshevism. Had Hitler won it's a real possibility that the west-friendly face of Nazism could have spread its smile across the water into the USA - a charm that the soviets never possessed in any real measure. The Nazis were just liberal-western enough to have gotten a welcome mat rather than an iron curtain.

Or in the simplest of your terms - a Nazi victory would have postponed the "end of history" longer than a soviet victory.

Daniel: Huh? You've got to distinguish between the positive and the normative. Just because I describe a situation, doesn't mean I approve or disapprove of it. As it happens, I'm all for our having gotten into WWII and approve of everything FDR did to get us into it. But make no mistake, he meant to get us into the war and he did -- just as every President who has tried has been able to get us into war.

How would we have reacted to a supposedly neutral country that insisted on arming our enemies more or less for free? How would we have reacted to a foreign power from the other side of the world coming into our region and telling us that we had to pull back and mind our own business and refusing to sell us supplies necessary to our war effort? Now, I think that both decisions were the right decision -- because I think that getting into the war was the right decision -- but I'm not surprised that the Germans and Japanese resented it. By the way, the idea that Roosevelt wanted us to get into the war is not particularly controversial.

As for whether WWII was voluntary, I'm using "voluntary" to mean "not existential." That is, we could have avoided the war and the United States would still continue to exist. In particular, we could have continued to sell Japan oil and scrap steel; we could have unfrozen their assets; we could have not interfered with the co-prosperity sphere and, if push came to shove, we could have abandoned Hawaii. In theory, we could have abandoned Hawaii, which at the time was more or less a colony, but that's almost impossible to imagine Americans doing. If, however, Yamamoto had managed to sink the carrier fleet, we wouldn't have had many options in the Pacific. (By the way, I'm not arguing that Japan was justified in attacking Pearl Harbor. It wasn't. But embargoes are recognized as being one step short of war and so war, whether justified or not, was predictable.)

Finally, I'm agnostic about a war against the USSR in '45, mostly because I hate "what if" history. But our chances were not quite as bleak as you make it out. First, I'm not sure why I should take your view over George Patton's. Second, within two or three months of deciding to go, we could have been nuking Russia every ten days or so. Whether that would bring down the USSR depends entirely on the reaction of the population, and my best guess is that they would have rallied to the government, but there's a good chance it would have freed eastern Europe. Nevertheless, I agree entirely that there was no political will for that war at all.

David Cohen:

If you read some of the Roosevelt-Churchill correspondence, it becomes clear that Roosevelt wanted to take every feasible step to assist Britain; he was just afraid of getting too far ahead of public opinion. Why people get upset when historians point out that Roosevelt wanted to help our loyal ally defeat an unquestionably evil empire is beyond me.

Daniel: Huh? You've got to distinguish between the positive and the normative. Just because I describe a situation, doesn't mean I approve or disapprove of it.

My apologies for having misread your post and your intentions.

After reading 5000 comments on Yalta and WW2 this week, I think that David's 5/12/05 12:08 PM comment is one of the sanest. I do disagree about "what if" history though. It is such fun since there is no way to either win or lose the argument.

All this chatter about Yalta has clarified my thinking on one issue. It was immoral and wrong.

We had no real reason to ratify the fait accompli in the east. Even if Bart and Harry and others were right about Russia v. US in a war, such a war would not have started on May 10, 1945. After years of propaganda in both US and Russia glowing about the other, no side would have started shooting immediately. It would have taken some time for the necessary adjustments to thinking to occur. Much like it did in real life as the Cold War gradually unfolded.

We certainly lacked the will to free the east regardless of our ability. I think that absent Yalta, we would not have had a shooting war in Europe in 1945. Stalin would have kept the east of course in any event absent force. Would even Stalin have risked open war on the US when he had his buffer already in existence? Remember that the Soviets had penetrated the Manhattan Project so he had a good idea about our emerging atomic capacities. Until 1949 or so, Russia did not have the Bomb. Would he have risked his life to conquer a little more of Europe? Doubtful. So, we gained nothing by Yalta but lost some moral highground.

I think that President Bush and the presidents of Georgia and Latvia were quite right to say that Yalta was in the tradition of Munich and the 1939 pact and that our victory was incomplete.

Hard to believe the left-right thing is still so confusing to 'liberals'.

bob,

While I agree that the Russians were going to gobble up Eastern Europe no matter what FDR said or did at Yalta, there is another factor. Until the a-bomb was available, American military planning required Soviet assitance in the final assault on Japan, first with the invasion of Manchuria and later during the invasion of the Home Islands. The Russians did the first and the a-bomb made the second unneccessary.

Hind sight is always 20:20, but at the time of Yalta we still needed the Russians and did not want the risk the USSR sitting out the last stage of the war against Japan.

Daniel: I agree with you about hindsight, and hindsight about what FDR should have known is particularly difficult, but...

By January '45, the Manhattan Project scientists knew that they were going to be able to make a U-235 bomb. The "dragon" experiment, in which a U-235 slug was dropped through a just-sub-critical mass, had proven the design. They were, though, still underestimating yield. The Pu bomb, too, was pretty well along, although success before the end of the war wasn't certain.

We have to suspect that, because of his health, Roosevelt didn't either know or understand as much about the prospects of having a working A-Bomb in the short term as Stalin did. As OJ has rightfully said, no president ever did anything as reckless with the national security as FDR did in running for a fourth term.

Well, I guess if you don't count Jews, Tatars, muzhiks, hungry mothers, Polish patriots, Finnish patriots and factory workers, tsarism hardly killed anybody.

As for the idea that the USSR would not have taken on the western allies, that perhaps understates Stalin's paranoia. Had he not gotten acquiesence at Yalta it seems possible that he'd have simply continued on west.

I don't like 'what if' history either but if you cannot look at a situation map and figure out the likely results of future military movements, then we could save a lot of money by firing all the generals.

Patton was dead meat in May 45 if Konev had been ordered to take him.

In the late '30s, there was not much interest in the US, except perhaps among some recent immigrants, in the political future of eastern Europe, for the good reason that it seemed hopeless. No democrats there.

There was rather more optimism about China, which in retrospect looks naive, but US policy toward Japan was emotionally based on Christian (read Lucean) fantasies about 500 million saved souls.

FDR responded to that, politically and personally, but as Jonathan Unger has documented, the US left Japan alone until it started moving to the resources of Indochina.

As Churchill wrote later, there was a time when Hitler could have been stopped with the stroke of a pen. There were many reasons why he wasn't, but a principal one was Christian support for a bulwark against bolshevism.

If that support was to be paid for in dead Jews, well, few Christians thought that an excessive price to pay.

Mr. Eager;

What if large parts of the Soviet Army had gone over to the Allies during such a war? Even Nazi Germany ended up with over a million Soviets under arms for Germany. Far more believable promises of elections and the overthrow of Stalin might well have turned much of the Soviet forces in Europe.

Harry:

Yes, so why undermine the bulwark having spent the Jews? FDR gave us the worst of both worlds.

One has to be a complete fool to believe the Soviets were going to send troops to fight in Japan. Oh, never mind....

One has to be a complete fool to believe the Soviets were going to send troops to fight in Japan. Oh, never mind....

General Marshall and the War Department obviously weren't as smart as OJ.

Marshall was a very fine bureaucrat and a decent man. No one thought him a very bright geopolitician.

All the people screaming for war against the Soviets in January 1945 seem to forget that:

1) Nazi Germany was not defeated yet.
2) Japan was not defeated yet.

Hitler, Himmler and the rest all thought they could make a negotiated deal with the Americans and Brits against the Soviets. Everyone in 1945 - Democrat and Republican - would never agree to that. But President OJ obviously would. Question - does President OJ request Himmler to give Eisenhower the Nazi salute or shake his hand?

President OJ doesn't care that the entire world would see this as a great betrayal. President OJ doesn't care he has to explain to American families why more of their soldier sons will die in a war against the Soviet Union. Or why he would either fight both the Nazis and the Soviets at the same time, or rearm the Nazis we were just fighting to fight with us. I'm sure that would be real popular with GI Joe.

President OJ doesn't care that he chooses war with the Soviets without an act of war of them to us. Nor that Japan, which did attack us, still has yet to be defeated.

President OJ also doesn't care that he must explain to the American people why he attacked the Soviets without Congressional approval even though he opposed war with the Nazis when he was simply Senator OJ.

President OJ doesn't care because President OJ is obviously superman, immune to the needs of a war-weary American public or the short minded desire of 1940's America to save American lives.

If only President OJ could turn his Wayback machine to a time when President OJ and his friends were all of draft age so they could fight for complete ideological purity and die in the thousands. Perhaps then he and all the other brave conservatives who choose to fight the Viet Cong in the National Guard and through college deferments could all experience the bliss of fighting in the war they want. But alas, the Wayback machine is stuck in 1945 and Mr Peabody is nowhere to be seen to fix it.

Guy, I am surprised at you. You generally show more sense on this sort of issue.

Anyone who has talked to fighting men -- or even read Robert Graves and a multitude of other vets -- understands that while soldiers may enlist to defend their country, or their homes or some political idea, once the fighting has gone on for a little bit, they fight for their fellow soldiers.

This phenomenon is universal, and probably never more strongly evinced than on either side of the Eastern Front 1941-45.

We could argue about Paulus turning his coat, or the hiwis at length (if anybody here knows anything about it; obviously Orrin doesn't), but there is no question that the Red Army in May 1945 would have hung together, and equally obvious that it would never have switched sides if there were any Germans on that side.

It was widely believed in July 1941 that it wouldn't stand. In the Pentagon in early 1941, US officers were placing bets on whether the Red Army would collapse in 3 weeks or 6 weeks. There were few, if any, takers for longer.

Despite Orrin's fantasies, the Red Army stood and fought. The NKVD had something to do with that later on, but it fought hard early on, and hundreds of thousands of surrounded Red Army troops fought their way back to their own lines, rather than, as Orrin fantasizes, accepted an easy out in a stockade. (It turned out not to be an easy out, but the Russian privates didn't know that in mid-1941.)

Harry:

People will defend their homelands. They won't defend conquests, no matter how many of them Stalin was shooting.

Chris:

Just get the shooting going and you don't have to explain anything, that's how FDR got us to Europe in the first place after a bombing in Pearl Harbor.

Just get the shooting going and you don't have to explain anything, that's how FDR got us to Europe in the first place after a bombing in Pearl Harbor.

OJ, now you're back to claiming FDR was sly, cunning, Machiavellian manipulator who got us into war. A few posts ago you claimed he was an idiot. He can't be both. What a see here is a "little boy liar" who keeps getting caught in his lies and has to keep coming up with lamer and more elaborate stories to cover up his lies.

BTW, you neglected to mention that Hitler declared war on the United States after Pearl Harbor, not the other way around. Did Hitler do that on secret orders from FDR? If not how exactly did FDR get us into the European war after Pearl Harbor?

Marshall was a very fine bureaucrat and a decent man. No one thought him a very bright geopolitician.

Especially not compared to the strategic genius and military expert that is Orrin Judd. Whence comes this depth of knowledge of all thing military oh wise one? Was it your vast military experience or perhaps in depth academic study.

No wait,you don't have either....

As I said before, "Amateurs talk about tactics, professionals talk about logistics". "Bureaucrats" like Marshall win wars, not tacticians like Patton. Without the bureaucrats of the General Staff, Patton never would have made it out of the US. So when "bureaucrats" like Marshal do invasion planning for either Normandy or Japan they know what they are talking about - not pathetic armchair generals like yourself. So when Marshall said Soviet participation was essential to finishing the war against Japan, he knew what he was talking about.

But as I said it wasn't just Marshall, it was also the War Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Though of course we all know that your strategic and military genius doth exceed all of theirs. But who else should we add to you list of "fools"?

How about professor Ernst May (Defense Department historian):

"Japanese die-hards . . . had acknowledged since 1941 that Japan could not fight Russia as well as the United States and Britain. . . ." Studying the actual surrender, May also concluded that since Moscow had been the outlet for numerous Japanese peace feelers, the Russian declaration of war, when it finally occurred, "discouraged Japanese hopes of secretly negotiating terms of peace," and that in the end, "The Emperor's appeal [to end the war] probably resulted, therefore, from the Russian action, but it could not in any event, have been long in coming.."

How about the official history of the British Imperial Staff:

"The Russian declaration of war was the decisive factor in bringing Japan to accept the Potsdam declaration, for it brought home to all members of the Supreme Council the realization that the last hope of a negotiated peace had gone and that there was no alternative but to accept the Allied terms sooner or later."

How about Japanese Navy Chief of Staff Admiral Toyoda:

"I believe the Russian participation in the war against Japan rather than the atom bombs did more to hasten the surrender."

How about Japanese Army Vice-Chief of Staff General Kawabe:

"Since Tokyo was not directly affected by the bombing, the full force of the shock was not felt. . . . In comparison, the Soviet entry into the war was a great shock when it actually came. . . . It gave us all the more severe shock and alarm because we had been in constant fear [that] the vast Red Army forces in Europe were now being turned against us."

How about General Douglas MacArthur:

GENERAL MARSHALL said that he had asked General MacArthur’s opinion on the proposed operation and had received from him the following telegram, which General Marshall then read: "I believe the operation presents less hazards of excessive loss than any other that has been suggested and that its decisive effect will eventually save lives by eliminating wasteful operations of nondecisive character. ... The hazard and loss will be greatly lessened if an attack is launched from Siberia sufficiently ahead of our target date to commit the enemy to major combat. I most earnestly recommend no change in OLYMPIC.

How about Brig. Gen. MacFarland (during a White House Strategy briefing held on 18 June 1945):

An important point about Russian participation in the war is that the impact of Russian entry on the already hopeless Japanese may well be the decisive action levering them into capitulation at that time or shortly thereafter if we land in Japan.

How about the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), in a report entitled "Unconditional Surrender of Japan" dated April 29, 1945:

"The entry of the USSR into the war would, together with the foregoing factors, convince most Japanese at once of the inevitability of complete defeat."

And of course,General Marshall:

"The impact of Russian entry [into the war] on the already hopeless Japanese may well be the decisive action levering them into capitulation at the time or shortly thereafter if we land in Japan."

Now you tend to ignore reality and facts in the same way water rolls off a duck's back. But come on OJ, aren't you tired of being a laughing stock?

danielk:

All you need is intelligence and a library card.

daniel:

Sly? He nearly lost the entire fleet at Pearl. He was a moron.

OJ, That's not a response. That's the weak pawings of a trapped rabbit.

So why don't you prove to me that you are not stupid or a liar and respond to my points directly and with the same level of detail I did. Provide evidence and site sources as I have done.

You stay at home and live off your wife, I'm sure you have plenty of time on your hands to do this.

Because I find them mindless ranting, unworthy of vserious response. Raise one point at a time and I'll happily refute them. None are very hard.

Because I find them mindless ranting, unworthy of vserious response. Raise one point at a time and I'll happily refute them. None are very hard.

You're lying again OJ, I've made many, mnay points. None of which have you refuted or even responded to (ignoring them in a cowardly fashion is not a response). If it's not hard to refute my points or my arguments, kindly do so.

Put up or shut up.

He was a moron

Ignoring your infantile consirpacy claims tha FDR engineered the attackon Pearl Harbor, you haven't explained yet how FDR got Hitler to declare war on us. Could a moron do that?

OJ, you're trapped in a rhetorical web of your own contradictions. Check mate. Game over.

Make one at a time.

Daniel:

You guys are arguing apples and broccoli. On logistics, you can make point after point and build a nice-looking wall. On each individual brick, you may have a case. But the wall is founded on history and human nature. And OJ has you beat there. And snapping your fingers for answers is something a good trial lawyer doesn't really do. It makes you sound like a bad nun at a bad high school.

For example, your questions about Soviet entry into the Pacific war. Why is it a surprise that the US military says Soviet participation is/was vital? Of course we want the Russians to die instead of our boys. OJ's point is that the Japanes armies in Asia meant nothing in terms of ending the war. They couldn't go home to help, they weren't on the offense - they were finished. Let them sit (and rot).

Harry is right, men fight for their fellow soldiers. They get mad when their buddies are killed, and they want to fight back. The trick is to make the 'getting killed' part so impressed on them that they cannot fight back. Like what we did in 1991. Perhaps the big German mistake (among the many) was failing to kill Stalin and the party leadership in June/July 1941. Did they even try?

Jim,

Logistics ARE the foundation of military plans, not the wall.

Using your template, Inchon is inexplicable. As is Patton's breakout in July 1944. As is Sherman's march to the sea. As is Midway. As is Washington crossing the Delaware.

I understand what you mean - but you run the risk of sounding like George McClelland.

daniel:

Indeed, FDR declared war on Germany first.

Inchon was logistically well planned. Patton's advance was stopped due to lack of fuel. Sherman lived of the countryside. Washington's operation lasted a matter of days.

No logistics, no plan.

Inchon was idiotic and only good fortune kept it from being a disaster.

Orrin, you're just making stuff up again.

The guys who planned Inchon had done dozens of successful amphibious operations. They understood the requirements and the risks.

It wasn't luck.

As for trying to invent a difference between people 'defending their homelands' but not 'defending conquests,' the Italians contradict the first, and the Japanese the second.

Harry:

Yes, not everyone will fight, but the one thing folks can be made to fight for is the homeland. Even the French do once in awhile. We rolled the Japs up rather quickly and defeated them easily by just skipping their overextended empire and taking out civilians with nukes. It's a nice template for victory over the USSR.

Yes, not everyone will fight, but the one thing folks can be made to fight for is the homeland. Even the French do once in awhile. We rolled the Japs up rather quickly and defeated them easily by just skipping their overextended empire and taking out civilians with nukes. It's a nice template for victory over the USSR.

Again OJ you reveal your abject ignorance of things military. The pacific island hopping campaign against isolated Japanese garrisons was nothing like a continental campagin against a Russian front defended by over 300 divisions.

daniel:

The front wasn't manned.

Orrin, you're betting -- using your countrymen's lives as chips -- on a play that lost in 1941.

Other than your fantasy that everyone hated Stalinism -- demonstrably not true, even in 2005 -- what evidence do you have.

The Japanese were a special case, similar to the Muslims.

Even Germans gave up fighting when they were defeated in the field. The Japanese -- and the Iraqis -- don't react that way.

It is not so clear that, without the nukes, the Japanese would have not resisted an invasion. Nobody, but nobody, who was there at the time thought they'd stop fighting. They hadn't at Okinawa.

We nuked Moscow in '41? Shouldn't that be in the history books?

The front wasn't manned.

Gee, who then took Berlin against fierce, fanatical die-hard Nazi resistance?

Are you being deitful or stupid withthese bizarre statements of yours?

The front wasn't manned.

Gee, who then took Berlin against fierce, fanatical die-hard Nazi resistance?

Are you being deceitful or stupid with these bizarre statements of yours?

OJ

Why don't you and your buddies just fess up? Roosevelt hatred is merely Nazi love and Jew hatred focused on one individual.

There was a reason classic FDR haters of the 1940s called him "Franklin Delano Rosenfeld".

It's the reason why you don't care if the Nazis had killed all the Jews.

It's the real reason why you wish the Nazis had won. Scratch an FDR hater and find a Hitler lover.

daniel:

Japan. We didn't man the front, we just bombed them from above. Easy wenough to do Russia the same way.