We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Farage thinks thousands of Brits should have died to save millions of Europeans, Guardian readers outraged Nigel Farage: the armistice was the biggest mistake of the 20th century
Farage is quoted as saying,
“But had we driven the German army completely out of France and Belgium, forced them into unconditional surrender, Herr Hitler would never have got his political army off the ground. He couldn’t have claimed Germany had been stabbed in the back by the politicians in Berlin, or that Germany had never been beaten in the field.”
Most of the Guardian commenters take this as proof of Farage’s bigotry and ignorance.
“That’s because he wasn’t doing the fighting. Even if he was alive at the time, little silver spoon establishment posh boys don’t do the fighting anyway. They send others to their deaths,” says commenter “steemonkey”, getting lots more recommends than the reply from “FenlandBuddha”:
“Actually the upper classes suffered worse proportionally than anyone else because you were more likely to be killed as a junior officer than a private. The Prime Minister Asquith lost one son, the Conservative leader Bonar Law lost two.”
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
>Guardian readers outraged
Are they ever not outraged?
I understand that the most dangerous type of service in WW1 was ‘military chaplain’ (Burleigh, IIRC). A sub-set of junior officers from posh backgrounds, I suppose.
I don’t always agree with Farage, but I always feel that one could have a reasoned debate with him about it. I’m glad we (or at least you lot in pommieland) have him.
I think what this boils down to is that the popular image of the Great War is at variance with the facts of the Great War. And that people, even intelligent people are loath to change their views.
Gary Sheffield has spent a lifetime trying to explain the achievements of the British army and yet every time he does so he runs into people who are utterly unwilling to change their views.
Something like 58 British generals died in the Great war, by the way.
Junior commissioned officer casualties were staggering in WW1, far above lower ranks as a proportion.
This extremist weasel just has absolutely no idea and no inclination to know, it’s just an opportunity to vent his hatred and bigotry.
Pop quiz: what was the casualty rate of New Labour polticians, or their offspring, in the Iraq War? Hmm.
Nigel Farage is quite correct – even at the time both “Black Jack” Pershing (the commander of American forces) and Marshall Foch (the French and overall Allied Commander) argued that the allies should have gone on – gone for the unconditional surrender of Germany (perhaps the restoration of the independence of Bavaria and so on).
When it was decided (by short sighted men) to go for the compromises of 1918 and 1919, Foch (in despair) called the settlement a “20 year truce” – he was exactly right (to the very year – 1939).
Germany had not been broken up and the evil dream of the German elite (academic as much as political – and the universities, contrary to what is often thought, where of the places where the later National Socialist party had wildly disproportionate support relative to its support among ordinary Germans in the 1920s and so on) to unify Europe under their domination, had not been destroyed.
Hitler (and many others) were indeed allowed to play the game that Germany had not “really” been defeated (thus leading to World War II) – the compromises of 1918 and 1919 cost tens of millions of lives (including hundreds of thousands of British lives during World War II). Also had Germany been defeated then such things as the cooperation between Weimar Germany and the Marxist Soviet Union (on such things as the propaganda campaign against the President of France and the Allies generally) would not have occurred. As well as no Nazi-Soviet pact of alliance (Black Flag socialists in alliance with Red Flag socialists).
[The whole Bismark project of “German Unification” was wrong – wrong from the start, as was “Italian Unification” come to that].
This is one of the (very many reasons) I hold the person-in-Kent to be dishonest.
He claims that there was no compromise in World War One and that there should have been (actually he holds that Britain should not have fought at all – allowing the German academic and political elite to gain control of the resources of the European continent and the sea coast next to this island, so that Britain could have been destroyed by the Germans later).
This (the legend that there was no compromise in the First World War – and that there should have been) is exactly wrong – there was compromise at the end of the First World War (the Armistice) and there should not have been.
Foch was right – and the politicians were wrong.
By the way…..
I do not think it is a good idea to read the Guardian comments (or the newspaper for that matter).
I know that the abyss (the void) exists I do not have to go and look at it to make sure it is there.
Do not look too long into Hell – it ends up looking back into you.
I read that article on-line. So many ad hominem attacks on Farage. But he is right. An armistice is a festering sore and shows no victor although the allies forced the Germans to put their guns down. Ludendorf supported Hitler’s rise to power. If Ludendorf had been crushed he would have been laughed at. But he was a war hero. QED. The idiots at the Graun are mostly Labour tribalists and hate Tories and loathe UKIP.
Labour “tribalists”?.Perhaps–but, apart from those who run/maintain the presses, few of them are working class.
I feel that I must agree with Nigel Farage on this. It is true, as Patrick Crozier writes, that historians such as Gary Sheffield have clearly demonstrated that the truth of the First World War is very different to the popular image that it has. The history of ‘The First World War’ as a cultural object is fascinating. It is really in the 1960’s that the modern image began to be formed – ‘Oh What a Lovely War’ and so on. This was reinforced by appalling popular histories and later by the likes of ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’ – which I found very funny by the way, but not history.
Paul, forgive my ignorance, but: person-in-Kent? I don’t get the reference.
I believe “person-in-Kent” = (the late) Alan Clark
As it happens I think Farage is wrong. In November 1918, the French were exhausted and the British almost exhausted. The British alone had suffered 300,000 casualties in the 100 Days Offensive. The Americans had plenty of men but lacked experience. It is difficult to see how the Allies could have mounted anything significant in 1919.
At the same time, in the Armistice, the Allies had pretty much achieved their war aims. IIRC Germany lost its battle fleet, its submarines and a huge proportion of its artillery and machine guns. They also had to evacuate the occupied territory.
What is amazing is how the “Stab in the back” myth got going. In November 1918 the Germans knew perfectly well they had been beaten. At the front, they were retreating everywhere, men were surrendering in droves and they had run out of bandages. Even Ludendorff had admitted defeat. At home the people were starving.
Patrick:
I think you have contradicted yourself there. If the French and British were exhausted, the Germans were absolutely shattered. Their war economy had collapsed, the Kaiser had abdicated, and the country was on the verge of revolution. They really did need to be thoroughly beaten, not allowed to march out of Belgium in military order.
I always remember watching a TV interview with one of the British veterans, who said morale was excellent in November 1918, because they knew the Germans were beaten and on the run. They wanted to finish the job, and I wish they had, because then there would have been no Second World War.
As to 1919, if the war had even gone on that long, the allies had already worked up what they called Plan 1919, which reads like something close to Blitzkrieg, using tanks and aircraft in a combined air/land offensive. The Germans would have not had a chance, but given the way their home front had collapsed, it would not even have come to that.
Interesting. I need to think about that.
Not sure about Plan 1919. IIRC that was Fuller’s nonsense. I find it difficult to believe that tanks would have been any more successful in 1919 than they had been in 1918. Especially without radio communications.
Patrick Crozier,
FM radio at that.
At the beginning of the Second Transnational Unpleasantness Englander tanks were equipped with AM radio.
At the Armistice the population’s of Britain and France wanted Peace like they wanted Peace at Any Price in 1939.
However while Germany was in a state of collapse an invasion might have united them, it’s one of those unknowns.
Patrick:
By 1919 American war production would have been finally up to speed. The plan was to build 4,500 Mark VIII tanks. Meanwhile the RAF had put in large orders for the Sopwith Salamander, an armour protected ground attack version of the Snipe. As far as I am aware, it remains the only dedicated close air support aircraft the RAF ever ordered, for as part of their creation myth they soon adopted the strategic bombing creed. But really, I do not think the war would have continued into 1919, Germany was completely beaten, morale in their army had collapsed and they were surrendering in droves. They knew they were beaten in 1918, which is why they accepted the armistice. It was in the 1920s that they managed to convince themselves that they had never really been beaten, only stabbed in the back.
Is Mr Farage the new ‘Thatcher’? His mere name driving collectivists to frenzied frothing?
Had the First War of German Aggresion ended in total defeat for Germany, Foch’s 20 year truce might have held, or an anti-Soviet NATO might have been developed by 1936, but we can only speculate.
Btw this day is a bad day for Axis battleships, with the Royal Navy’s Swordfish biplanes crippling Mussolini’s navy on 12th November 1940* at Taranto, and 4 years to the day later, Tallboys rained on the Tirpitz, capsizing it.
* the raid started just before midnight.
The Germans were running home in November and they would not have turned to fight in France except in self defense if pushed- until they reached Germany.
Then, who knows?
Mr. Farage is wrong, though. The Allies got the peace they dictated, which is exactly what would have happened if there had been more fighting and “surrender”. (However that differs from an armistice, what with the Germans abandoning their positions and weapons, admitting Allied troops to Germany, and sailing their whole fleet to Scapa.)
The politicians lost the war the soldiers won in 1918.
I disagree about the value of the stab in the back myth, too. Most Germans knew their country lost the war, and that peace was imposed by the Allies despite the German military’s will. They knew that the military caste had been running things since 1914, and that their Emperor, Generals and men abandoned the Western front. They knew that the blockade starved their children.
Kings don’t run and hide from victory.
For that matter, the French and British cultures reacted as though they were defeated- which they were- even though they “won” the war.
The failure was in allowing the Hun to even talk about rearmament, never mind actually to rearm. The French or British could have easily prevented both.
Fighting on into 1919 was simply not possible. The German armistice offer was everything the Allies could possibly have asked for(surrender of the best part of all their armed forces, most notably), and denying it would have been politically impossible. I’ve read Churchill’s description of when the offer came in, and he says the first reaction was “This is going to be a joke”, but as they read through it, there was no guarantee they could even think to add to better ensure Allied victory on the battlefield. The Allies were fighting for victory, and they thought they had it. The terms basically *were* an unconditional surrender, and turning it down is not something the British or French soldiers or public would have gone for.
The problem was Versailles, not the armistice. It was simultaneously cruel and insufficient, so when the first flush of anger had worn off 15 years later, the Allies felt guilty about it and were okay with taking their boot off Germany’s neck, but they’d never been cruel enough to actually destroy the German power base or kept in place long enough to dull their anger, so as soon as the boot came off they leapt back to being the most powerful nation in Europe almost instantly.
Aren’t we forgetting the social changes that occurred in the ’20’s? Did the flu not change Europe at least as much as the after effects of the war? I have no position on this btw, and almost no knowledge. I’m just thinking out loud. I would be very happy to learn.
“Defying Hitler”, the posthumously-printed memoir of Sebastian Haffner describing life in Germany during those years, is fascinating and, I think, relevant here.
After the turmoil of the Great War, several failed revolutions, and the chaos of the Weimar Republic’s bout of hyperinflation, with the introduction of a new stable currency in 1924 things in Germany had returned to normal. Here’s is Haffner’s description of the public mood:
I suspect that even if the Allies had gotten that unconditional surrender, the Third Reich would still have arisen and World War 2 would still have occurred. Without “the stab in the back” Hitler would simply have used some other convenient justification. The German psyche demanded it.
I suspect that even if the Allies had gotten that unconditional surrender, the Third Reich would still have arisen and World War 2 would still have occurred. Without “the stab in the back” Hitler would simply have used some other convenient justification. The German psyche demanded it.
If Germany had been occupied and dismantled, as should have happened, the German psyche could have pissed up a rope.
Germany was occupied, and its military was dismantled(even if the nation itself was not). The problem is that Allied guilt over the terms of Versailles meant their hearts weren’t in it.
Alsadius:
The French may have occupied the Rhineland for a brief period, but that is not what I had in mind. Germany needed to be broken up into its constituent parts, and militarily occupied as it was after WWII.
I don’t believe that Allied (ie British and French) governments were ever really “guilty” about Versailles (definitely not the French), they simply lacked the guts and leadership to do anything about Hitler when it would have been easy, such as the remilitarisation of the Rhineland.
Fascinating post Laird, thank you for that. It reminds me of Ludwig von Mises’ Omnipotent Government, written after WW2, but an account of political thinking in Germany up to that point, and having finished it, my executive summary of its message of the Germany of that time was four words ‘Germans are mostly bastards’, but all they had to do was change their ideas.
I think you will also find that one of the prime reasons that it was decided to let the German army March back with the arms was the inordinate (though possibly well founded) fear that a true socialist revolution would take place in Germany. The theory was that the army marching back armed would be a force able to used by those moderates in power to prevent a full on revolution.
And I agree with Patrick Crozier about Fuller’s fantasy, however with a pause to bring their supply chain across the recently captured territory the British Army of late 1918 was capable of pushing on Ito the Rhine at least, and the German army would have been increasingly incapable of even a token resistance. At that stage even the Belbiums were advancing ! The U.S. armies were in a mess, huge casualties and a chaotic supply situation, but against a drastically weakened German army they should have been able to push forward. The French, probably best in support although the best of their troops were still capable, just very war-weary.
I’m watching a similar narrative unfold in Russia. The myth being propagated, and lapped up, is that Russia was strong and respected in the days of the USSR and then suddenly a handful of people (who naturally were nothing to do with Russia, really) gave it all up and surrendered unnecessarily. The West rushed in, led by the Americans, with the sole purpose of grinding Russians’ noses into the dirt and dismantling their country. They very nearly succeeded, but fortunately Putin descended from the clouds to save the nation, and is setting about restoring Russia’s place in the world and thanks to him Russia is strong again and will never again be subject to humiliation at the hands of the Americans.
Of course, the reality is that Russia persisted with an idiotic system of economic and political management despite the West telling them not to, and it inevitably collapsed around their ears. Rather than take the women and children as slaves, shoot all the men, and plough salt into the earth the West took pity on their former sworn enemies and offered them well-intended but hopelessly naive advice on how to build a market economy – naive because it failed to take into account the fact that far too many Russians would rather kill each other in order to get filthy rich than do some work and add some value. Having contributed to the almighty mess that Russia became, certain state-backed thugs rose to the top and accepted Putin as their leader who spent about 7-8 years providing some much-needed stability before the oil price rose, stoked his ego, and sent him into the delusion that he is some kind of Peter the Great figure who is destined to restore Russia’s place at the global top-table. Which is a fine aim, but thus far he’s managed to shoot down an airliner, ban the import of Lithuanian cheese, help himself to a peninsular he can only access in summer, and the traffic lights in most Russian towns still don’t work.
As with Germany, the second time around, the West might not be so charitable.
They had never learned to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful, and worthwhile, how to enjoy it and make it interesting. So they regarded . . . the return of private liberty not as a gift, but as a deprivation. They were bored, their minds strayed to silly thoughts, and they began to sulk.
Fascinating idea. The implication is that liberty is eroded in a nation not because of wicked politicians, but because of bored, sulking, voters who have “not learned to live within themselves”.
While what he’s saying is probably true, there were plenty of other chances to stop Hitler without shedding blood. The easiest place would have been when the German army entered the Rhineland in 1936. Quoth Hitler:
After the war Guderian claimed if the French had started to move he would have withdrawn his forces back across the bridges as quickly as possible, orders or no orders. He also believed the loss of face would have meant the end of Hitler as a nationalist leader.
There were other opportunities as well. Do we really need to bring up the Munich conference, where the Czechs were served up to Hitler on a platter?
Dr Evil @ November 12, 2014 at 12:19 pm: Ludendorff supported Hitler’s rise to power.
Ludendorff participated in the 1923 Munich putsch, but he became very disillusioned with Hitler afterwards – well before 1933. In 1933, he wrote to Hindenburg warning him against Hitler: “I prophesy to you that this evil man will plunge our Reich into the abyss and will inflict immeasurable woe on our nation.”
I’m not sure Farage is right.
The Germans knew they’d been defeated in 1918, and it took the extraordinary powers of Hitler to get them into another Great War. It’s not at all clear that forcing German surrender would have made much difference.
I see a very different mistake made in 1918 (and afterward). The Allied Great Powers (Britain, France, the U.S., and Japan) could have insured there would never be another major war. They could have permanently disarmed Germany, and imposed strict limits on the arms of every other nation. They could have said: no one but us may have warships, warplanes, tanks, or artillery.
But they had to establish mechanisms with teeth to enforce the ban, and a Peace Legion to provide security to small countries and re-establish order in places like Turkey, Russia, China, and Mexico.
And they would have to ignore all the screams of “Unfair!” from the lesser countries.
It could have been done. The cost would have been a tiny fraction of the cost of WW I; less than the cost of maintaining large national armies and navies.
But none of the leaders could think that far outside the box. They thought a peace of exhaustion would hold indefinitely; they let their guards and controls lapse. (One wonders whether this history influenced J.R.R. Tolkien, when he described how Gondor let its watch over Mordor lapse, allowing Sauron to re-establish his realm.)
Rich,
They could have permanently disarmed Germany, . . .
Permanently? Are you kidding?
. . . and imposed strict limits on the arms of every other nation.
Ah, world government. The way to everlasting peace.
I’m watching a similar narrative unfold in Russia. The myth being propagated, and lapped up
As Robert Fulghum said, “myth is more potent than history.” It doesn’t matter what actually happened, what matters is what everyone believes happens. And so the delusional never learn from history.
Of course the SITBM might not have made any difference at all- sending the message doesn’t mean it sells.
And the allies could have disarmed the world as far as fleets and aircraft went, which would have done the job.
Rich, any such arrangement would have fallen apart! London and Washington tried to arrange such limitations amongst themselves after the war, and failed. more countries would have meant more arguments. And America had isolationist beliefs- an American President instigated the League of Nations, but Congress nixed the idea.
That WW1 was not concluded properly goes without saying, WW2 proves this point beyond any doubt.
The question is: what should have been done in 1918-19? There are two possibilities: 1. The plan recommended by Keynes (among others) – reconciliation, leniency, help in reconstruction (Marshal plan) – and the hope that this would have made Germany a good, civilized, cooperative member of the West.
The other possibility: 2. harsher treatment, occupation, dismembering, dismantling of industrial capabilities.
I don’t believe plan 1 would have worked.
So, it’s a pity that Britain and France were too weak and exhausted to impose plan 2.
Nicholas (natural Genius) Gray @ November 13, 2014 at 11:42 pm: Rich, any such arrangement would have fallen apart! London and Washington tried to arrange such limitations amongst themselves after the war, and failed.
The arrangements between the U.S. and Britain worked fine. But of course the U.S. and Britain were friends and neither country was going to initiate new wars of aggression.
… more countries would have meant more arguments.
Only if the Four Powers pay attention to the arguments. They didn’t realize they didn’t have to.
What the “statesmen” of the period failed utterly to see (or even imagine) was that permanent, effective barriers to future wars could never be established by mere cooperation; that such barriers had to include coercion; and the inevitable protests of lesser nations could be overridden.
And America had isolationist beliefs- an American President instigated the League of Nations, but Congress nixed the idea.
The League of Nations was based on two dangerous illusions.
First, it assumed all nations are equal. This insured that the Great Powers would give it no real authority, as it would be at their expense. (The UN tried to avoid this by having permanent members of the Security Council. But the UN doomed itself by including a criminal state.)
Second, that all nations will always want to avoid war by cooperation. This was always a pious hope, but it was forced on the League by the reaction to the first illusion.
American isolationism was certainly an obstacle; however IMHO the rejection of the League was at least as much because of the obvious illusion of its premises.
Another reason a true international order was not possible was the racism of western leaders, especially Woodrow Wilson. They would never consider giving Japan a place in the system, and Japan was already too strong to be shut out. (Though at that time, not a criminal state.)
The problem was not the terms of Versailles. It was how the terms were presented, and the discontinuity between the peace Germany thought it was going to get and what they actually got. If the Allies had been up front with the Germans on the likely territorial losses in the East, a scope of the indemnity, and future military restrictions, the German army would either have needed to accept the terms (and not lie that Germany had not been defeated), or continue fighting which would have lead to a German collapse by spring 1919 at the latest which would have lead to a German acceptance of those terms.
The Germans would not have been happy with the terms, but they would have accepted them at some point as the price for peace. They would have been no dolchstosslegende because nobody could deny Germany was defeated, or that Germany was tricked into accepting the terms. Germany might still have been upset, but they wouldn’t be able to blame the democratic politicians who were willing to work within the international system. Instead, the democrats were blamed, and those who sought to restore Germany by overturning the international system took power.
It also would have given the Germans a chance to offer revisions and eliminated their complaint of a “dictate”.
The Allies didn’t give the Germans the chance because the Allied diplomacy was hopelessly fouled up with too many contradictory claims. They didn’t want the chance for Germany to pull a Talleyrand in Vienna where he managed to play the Allies off one another and got France a very favorable peace. The result was Versailles.
The problem with Versailles was not the terms – it was the process by which those terms were delivered.
Farage is basically correct. Germany should have been properly defeated and that means unconditional surrender. She should then have been broken up as a previous commentor has said, restoring the old kingdoms. The fact is there has been nothing but trouble in Europe since German unification and the basic problem remains to this day.
IMHO, Hitler, or somebody like him, would have arisen anyway. A couple of years ago, I read a French children’s story set in the 1820’s (written some years after) which depicted a background of the deep sense of humiliation felt in France following the defeat of Napoleon, and the economic impoverishment which ensued. There was undoubtedly the same sentiment in 1920’s Germany, and it would probably apply in any state influenced by a sense of nationalism. It persisted in the American Confederate states for a century. It is observable on war memorials in Alsace, where by 1870 the people believed themselves to be French, even though they had only been part of France for 200 years, and still spoke a German dialect; the inscriptions are in honour of those who were conscripted into the German army (in both wars) against their will.
Possibly the reason that a similar thing didn’t happen after WW2 was that (a) the occupation forces were far stronger, (b) Germans was more concerned about the Cold War, (c) there was a national embarrassment about the Holocaust, which has only now started to go away.
Let’s bring this idea more up to date: ifIraq 1 had been carried out to a better conclusion and Saddam had been driven from power in a controlled way by the coalition there would have been no Iraq 2. OK, the latter was illegal and probably a war crime – that is not my point. The point is Iraq could have been forced to reconsider its policy and introduce more accountable government 20 years earlier.
Those who heard Nigel speak at St Brides Church would have been impressed by his breadth and detailed knowledge as well as by his original ideas about the myths of WWI. It was the same evening that the government were making such a mess of avoiding a vote o the EAW and the contrast in relative competence cannot be ignored.
I concur with Nigel; Germany should have been thrashed. I have seen no mention of the Royal Navy; the matelots kept the Imperial Fleet bottled up. Jutland was the only big fleet action; materiallly a loss for the RN – we lost more ships. However strategically a success as the Imperial Fleet never again put to sea. The blockade of Germany continued right up until the Treaty of Versailles and starved Germany into accepting the treaty; a straight copy of the Anaconda policy used by the Union against the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Germany however still held large tracts of France & Belguim; they marched home fully armed and with their heavy weapons – not what you expect of a defeated army.
As for any content in the Guardian; too thin for curtains and too thick to wipe your bottom on.
I think it is reasonable to suggest that had the allies gone on to defeat Germany totally then a solution could have been imposed on Germany similar to the solution imposed after WWII which would have prevented the rise of the Nazis – but that would also have required that the French in particular did not seek revenge against the Germans (which is unlikely). I cannot say that the armistice was a mistake, because the total surrender of the Germans short of giving up their territory was a great prize that limited further loss of life.
I think we have to remember that WWII became possible because of demographics. It occured 21 years after WWI. In other words WWII was not fought by the same people that fought WWI. Lessons were not learned by those that had been children at the time of the earlier war. Some (but not all) Germans were eager to hear what Hitler had to say about Germany being “stabbed in the back”, about Germany’s descent into decadence, about the weakness of democracy as a political idea, about fear of Bolshevism. Hitler was able to blame foreigners for just about everything that was wrong with Germany and could go worng in the future.
Cognitive dissonance is the process by which the human mind, once possessed of an idea it likes, persists in believing in that idea regardless of the strength of other ideas or the conflict of that idea with reality. Hitler was able to use this fact in his favour, creating myths in the mind of Germans that were popular, and became fastened in the minds of many. Consequently, even today, Germans still believe they are superior to other nationalities and still believe that those other nationalities would be better off if Germany was running the show – it is their will to power across all of Europe that is running the show today exactly because only Germans believe this, and nobody feels strong enough desire to stand up to German will (well, not quite yet anyway, but I feel it is coming…)
About 20 years ago, I studied French and our class had an Alsatian as the ‘native’ speaker to converse with. Our teacher told us that he spoke French and English with a ‘German’ accent, and outside Alsace in France, he was taken for a German. Unable to discern his accent in French, we asked him to say something in English, he then said ‘Vot do you vont me to say?’.
But language, accent and speech do not a nation make, ideas matter.
Can I just say this is one of the most interesting series of comments I’ve ever read?
The Guardian, What a total waste of time and effort. Polly Toynbee and her ilk seem like inhabitants of another planet.
My mother was born in Germany in 1927. She always said that it was very dangerous when people became dissullusioned with the mainstream parties, which is what happened in Germany with her parents’ generation in the 1920s. They wanted something different, which they got. Of course UKIP are nothing like the Nazis, however the political zeitgeist which they exploit is similar. I do think this cynicism against the main parties (whose members are all crooks and/or incompetent) and belief that new parties are wonderful (full of idealistic, principled people) and have the answers to everything is blinkered and misplaced. Actually UKIP is full of human beings…who are as principled/unprincipled, competent/incompetent, idealistic/cynical as people in other parties. However unlike other parties they have never held power and been tested..so they can perpetrate the myth that they are ‘above’ ordinary politics, more in touch and can offer simplistic (untested) solutions to complex problems.
Farage is undoubtedly right – and the final destination should have been St Petersburg, not Berlin – but I understand why those at the time thought differently. It was a war we did not want and therefore we did not prosecute it with sufficient resolve, with the best of intentions.
If I may be permitted to make some further, possibly off-topic, and probably too-late comments:
1. WWI was not fought over the borders between France and Germany. Nor was WWII. Both wars were fought over eastern territory (Serbia and Poland respectively). Both were fought primarily between the Germans and the Russians, although Russia as an economically weak country was never able to carry its cause alone. The western powers were only interested to prevent the unification of Europe under a single government, not to rearrange borders.
2. While Versailles punished Germany, the 1945 settlement unarguably punished them more. Germany was broken in half, did not receive an armed forces until the 1950s, and remained notionally non-sovereign under the Treaty on the Final Settlement with respect to Germany in 1994(!). I suggest that the main problem with Versailles is that it did not even attempt to set up a stable power balance in the East. The only alternative to setting up a stable power balance in the East was for the western powers to permanently commit to backing a defensive alliance in the East that included Germany – the 1945 solution that couldn’t be implemented in 1919 because the western powers never occupied Germany nor took control of its foreign policy.
3. In all the talk of the depression, marginal parties promoting extremists, etc. there is a twenty ton elephant in the room: the Soviet Union was also a revanchist totalitarian state that attacked all its neighbours and ultimately permitted WWII by making a pact with Nazi Germany that released it from the possibility of a two-front war. The Soviet Union did not emerge because of crises of capitalism or because of western foreign policy; it’s a leftist creation through-and-through and as solid as a state gets in the 30s. Even if we don’t get Hitler, what is the Soviet Union going to be doing in the 40s and 50s? Sitting within its borders, as determined by the deprecated Brest-Litovsk Treaty and a series of messy border conflicts thereafter? The Soviets were waiting for any opportunity to invade Europe without being confronted by a grand alliance of the UK, France, Germany and Italy. This is the principle significance of the Nazi movement: it divided the non-communist powers against one another.
I submit that WWII was the natural outcome of having fought an initial war over the Balkans and Eastern Europe in which both sides lost, without establishing an alliance that was strong enough to protect the new buffer states. It had little to do with western treatment of Germany as such, nor with the Depression, nor with imperialism or any of the other conventional betes noir. The same question that was on the table in 1914 was still on the table in 1939. It remains on the table – in the guise of Russia’s amorphous border with Ukraine – to this day. The possibility of WWIII has been taken off the table by NATO and the bomb, not friendly diplomacy and fiscal stability.
The Left hate UKIP obviously, but look at this.
Heinrich Heine