The Tragic Legacy of
World War II Lives On
American Spectator,
by
Doug Bandow
Original Article
Posted By: Pluperfect,
8/16/2020 5:32:25 AM
World War II, the most brutal, destructive, and murderous conflict in human history, was finally, mercifully racing toward a close 75 Augusts ago. In early May German units and personnel had rushed to surrender, preferably to the Western allies. On May 7, General Alfred Jodl signed his country’s formal surrender.
Alas, the war in the Pacific continued. At that time U.S. forces were in the midst of the battle for Okinawa. That fight did not conclude until June, after roughly 130,000 military deaths, the vast majority Japanese. Even more civilians died, roughly half of the island’s population of 300,000. Imperial Japan’s cause was hopeless —
Reply 1 - Posted by:
lftrn97 8/16/2020 7:52:21 AM (No. 511495)
Sorry, Hitler didn't fight the war and run the,death camps, the German people did. Between WWI and WWIi what did this "superior culture" cost the world? In lives? In resources? In retarding the progress that could have been achieved in peaceful times?
11 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Paperpuncher 8/16/2020 8:31:48 AM (No. 511535)
And after all this we have decided to cease teaching history in schools. Young people today have no clue about WWII. The death toll estimate of 70 to 80 million deaths is as accurate an estimate as we can get. The vast majority of these deaths were civilian populations. The hot war of WWII created the cold war afterwards. The impact on world history this war had is certainly larger than any other event in the history of mankind.
If we forget. If we don't teach history, we are very much doomed to repeat it. I am sad.
22 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Strike3 8/16/2020 9:20:25 AM (No. 511602)
Good summary of the war with one glaring omission. It was the Russian Winter that defeated the German army there, not the Russian soldiers. By the time the Germans reached Moscow, they had been beaten by sub-zero temperatures, heavy snow and equipment failures. The US was so happy that the wars were ending that we let the Russians claim much of the spoils in both Germany and Japan and we paid for that mistake for decades. We learned so little that we made the same mistake with Iraq by letting ISIS take over the country simply by walking in.
15 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
red1066 8/16/2020 9:41:37 AM (No. 511638)
Just watched a program leading up to the use of the atomic bombs on Japan. When interviewing men who would have been involved in the invasion of Japan, each one said they were glad the atomic bombs were used, because it saved millions of lives.
12 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Cat Ballou 8/16/2020 10:20:35 AM (No. 511685)
Or you could look at WWII as a resetting of the world, needed to get rid of evil.
6 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
jeffkinnh 8/16/2020 12:44:32 PM (No. 511842)
"Our objective today must be to prevent another plunge by humanity into such a deep, terrible abyss."
What a wonderful thought. The problem is, now as was true then, none of us are prescient. We see through a glass, darkly. The article implies a lot of coulda, woulda, shoulda possibilities. For example, should we have given Russia the control that allowed them such post war domination and the evils that have come from that? Perhaps not. At the time, could anyone envision those evils clearly and accurately? Of course not. What would have been required to put Russia in a tighter box? More war? Europe was ruined. Would a war weary and hurting America choose to continue to fight with a new enemy, the USSR, to achieve constraints for an unclear purpose? Would the European nations, at the front with Russia, accept the certain assaults from the USSR such action could launch? The USSR wasn't blatantly attacking us. What would justify such a continued sacrifice?
Actual geopolitical actions are usually not those that are the right thing to do but the possible thing that might be done. Given that none of us know with any certainty what will come, you yield to the likely and the possible and even the momentarily convenient. It also depends on WHO is around and WHO is in charge. BO killed people with drones with little impact on the situation. Trump killed high value targets with drones with intent to influence the current situation. I would evaluate Trump far more effective today. 20 years from now, maybe I would be proven wrong. I doubt it but I'm not conceited enough to ignore the possibilities.
I'm not sure what the author would seek to do. He would seek to "prevent another plunge by humanity". As he pointed out, ONE EVIL MAN shaped the direction of the WWII. Without foreknowledge, how would you deal with that if such a man rose again. Would we recognize him? Would eliminating such a threat actually trigger the slide into the abyss? If we sought to ignore him, he might dissipate as so many of these men do. Castro was contained and rendered mostly impotent. However, each decision made could yield unknown results.
We might wish to prevent catastrophe, but we lack the ability to know how to achieve our ends with assurance. In the end, we can honor our principles and summon the fortitude to uphold them. The future will have to take care of itself.
3 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
NYbob 8/16/2020 2:11:36 PM (No. 511945)
Sort of makes you miss the Romans who had it together till all the usual human weaknesses rotted them out from within. Sound familiar? The ONLY thing the American Experiment has going for it is enough humility to concede that humans aren't the ultimate moral authority, that they need constant guidance by a set of rules founded on the best ideals of freedom, responsibility and morality based on the foundations of Judaeo-Christian religion. A guideline that served us well as we tried to improve our United States, the Constitution. No wonder the constantly braying donkeys hate it. Everything it stands for gets in the way of their rule breaking, hate mongering and rule by mob.
As fantastic as our founding principles are and as wonderful as the Constitution is, they require every baby born here to understand those historic ideas and to fight for them when the time comes. The rats were devious and smart enough to simply take that away from the education of millions for decades. Generations of parents failed, the educational system failed and most of all our 'leadership' failed.
Hitler should have been another loser with 30 gang members, but Germany and the rest of the world failed to call him out or confront him when he could have been stopped without needing a world war to do it. Of course you could say the same about Stalin and Mao and every other tyrant.
2 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
GO3 8/16/2020 2:58:05 PM (No. 512003)
Sorry again, it wasn't one man, it was at least hundreds of leaders and functionaries who were true believers of whatever perverted system they were running. Also, the Japanese were on the march into Asia before the Germans got rolling.
As far as General Winter goes, it certainly was a factor. But the much admired German operational art made mistake after mistake in the Russia fight. The critical errors concerned Ukraine. The big mistake was if they had just put off their racial cleansing and held the einsatzgruppen in Germany for say, two years, the Nazis would have had a huge manpower advantage from the Ukrainians who initially viewed them as liberators. There were even sizable German enclaves in Odessa which would have been of great assistance (my German language professor graduated from Univ. of Odessa). True, many did fight for the Germans, but the oppression of the untermensch put a damper on whatever good will they had initially.
The other thing was the supposed great German military thinkers and their determination of the schwerpunkt (mass against the enemy's center of gravity) was anything but in the Russia campaign. Take a look on Google Earth and the most advantageous terrain to Moscow was - you guessed it - through Ukraine. The Russians wisely had most of their forces there, but advancing through the forests with Army Groups North and Center used up valuable time. Eventually, more precious time was chewed up by having to transfer Panzer Corps to Army Group South on rail lines which had to be changed to support the different gauge of the German trains. (Logistics was another weak point of the German Army). Time and opportunity on the Eastern Front had been lost.
As Bandow says, the Germans had the largest population in Europe and an excellent industrial base. German regiments, battalions and companies were amazing fighting units. That doesn't mean they had the best operational and logistic leadership despite the hype in the newspapers - thankfully for the allies.
1 person likes this.
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