A Plan for Peace in Three Parts - Part III

"Your interpretation of capitalism necessarily leading to armed conflict belongs to the imperial era, which thank God we are supposed to have left behind. It is also chiefly the interpretation relied on mostly in Marxist theory, which I reject".

I didn't say Capitalism necessarily leads to armed conflict. I stated it (Capitalism) requires expansion and engagement. That doesn't necessarily mean that the U.S.A. has to expand as a nation by conquering or taking over land but Capitalism itself does require expansion (business). The nature of business requires constant engagement with other countries. Through this engagement, some countries who have not yet caught up to the 21st Century and others who are barely there, are exposed to our way of life....be it through trade, the internet, satellite TV etc etc. Some countries view our way of life as hedonistic, impure and immoral. Believe it or not, MTV is seen as a threat to their religion, to their views etc. No different than Mrs. Gore running around back in the day screaming that the end of the world was near if we allowed explicit lyrics onto records and cd's. The difference is, Mrs. Gore wasn't willing to blow herself up and take 3,000 innocent people with her. The people we're talking about are willing to do so and have done so. It may be hard for some America's to understand, but some people WANT to live in a mud hut, controlling their own life, the life of their family, praying 5 times per day and as long as they have enough to survive they don't want outside influences threatening any of that. This is everyday people I'm speaking of not radicals. Once our influence reaches them, through trade, TV, radio humanitarian assistance projects etc....conflict is inevitable because radicals then convince these everyday people that their very way of life is being threatened by the evil West. That is why conflict will continue, radicals will continue to stir the pot of hate and we will continue to have problems in this part of the world, whether we support Israel or not, Egypt or not or any other Country that's friendly towards the West. The lines were drawn long ago. Either they want to join the rest of the world and modernize or they can look toward the Native Americans and see how sticking to your way of life worked out for them. All people are forced to adapt to changing times sooner or later. The Arabs/Persians/Pashtuns will eventually figure this out.

Believe it or not, MTV is seen as a threat to their religion, to their views etc. Originally Posted by DTorchia

Actually I agree with them on that score.

IMHO MTV is not only a threat to their civilization BUT TO OURS.

Sometimes I wish I were a mullah so I could stomp out the nihlistic poison that network dishes up to our youth as "entertainment."

Regardless I personally believe that the US could have easily stayed out of both world wars. Neither Germany or Japan sought to conquer the United States. My interpretation of how the US came to be involved would be too much of a digression.

Are you freaking serious? We could have avoided WWII by simply abandoning se pacific and ignoring the attack on Pearl Harbor? We could have avoided WWII after Germany declared war on us, FIRST?

Have you ever seen "Men Who Stare At Goats?" as I think you've had way to many mind altering influences......

Sometimes I wish I were a mullah so I could stomp out the nihlistic poison that network dishes up to our youth as "entertainment."

WOW, so freedom of speech means nothing to you? How about you exercise control and change the channel or turn off the tv? Or, lets get this country back to where parents actually where responsible for parenting?

Are you freaking serious? We could have avoided WWII by simply abandoning se pacific and ignoring the attack on Pearl Harbor? We could have avoided WWII after Germany declared war on us, FIRST. Originally Posted by kittyloveratx

Of course not once things had gotten that far...

The body of scholarship to which I'm referring argues that the German declaration of War and the Pearl Harbor attack were brought about by US actions which were provocative at the least, and more probably purposefully intended to spark war.

See: P. Buchanan, "Churchill, Hitler, and 'The Unnecessary War:' How the British Lost It's Empire and the West Lost the World."

Also see:
Thomas Fleming, "The New Dealers War, " and "Illusion of Victory"

Among historians there is no controversy that neither Japan or Germany held the conquest of the US as a war aim. Japanese aims regarding the US were to compell a negotiated settlement with the US which would remove the US from the Phillipines, etc., and permit the Japanese access to petroleum, iron, etc. lost via the US embargo.

Yup, that's why hitler had plans to invade the u.s. after operation Sea Lion..... Wow, ok, I see you read things that have zero basis in any fact, so keep on believing!

It's really irrelevant when you think about it whether or not Germany and Japan "intended" to go to war with the United States. The fact is, and this is indisputable no matter what body or research you read, Japan and Germany both had complete domination of their hemisphere in mind. A Germany that controlled ALL of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Russia and a Japan that controlled all of Asia was completely unacceptable to America as it should have been. Do you really think we should allow two countries to control ALL the resources in the world? Of course we we were not going to go along with that. It's debatable even without the alleged provocations you mention if Germany and Japan would not have come around to attacking us eventually. That however is a moot point. We had allies in the world, allies we had made pacts with, resources around the world would have been threatened had Germany and Japan's conquests gone unanswered, not to mention the continued slaughter of millions of people. The World knew it, the World responded and the aggression and expansion was stopped.

Yup, that's why hitler had plans to invade the u.s. after operation Sea Lion..... Originally Posted by kittyloveratx

Did you get this from a WWII-era comic strip or someplace?

That's laughable.

It's really irrelevant when you think about it whether or not Germany and Japan "intended" to go to war with the United States. The fact is, and this is indisputable no matter what body or research you read, Japan and Germany both had complete domination of their hemisphere in mind. A Germany that controlled ALL of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Russia and a Japan that controlled all of Asia was completely unacceptable to America as it should have been. Do you really think we should allow two countries to control ALL the resources in the world? Of course we we were not going to go along with that. It's debatable even without the alleged provocations you mention if Germany and Japan would not have come around to attacking us eventually. That however is a moot point. We had allies in the world, allies we had made pacts with, resources around the world would have been threatened had Germany and Japan's conquests gone unanswered, not to mention the continued slaughter of millions of people. The World knew it, the World responded and the aggression and expansion was stopped. Originally Posted by DTorchia

Oh please stop it with this moralizing about the evils of Hitler and the Japanese. It's just NOT TRUE that "the whole world KNEW this evil MUST BE STOPPED," etc. etc. That's merely what Americans who supported the war after December 7 wanted to believe.*

After having been dupped into the First World War [which accomplished none of the lofty goals promised] the American people were rightly suspicious about repeating that mistake again. The American people wanted neutrality, just as the Sweeds and Swiss and Spainish and Portuguese and a whole lot of other people were able to maintain. The didn't want to sacrifice their lives again like 1918 and have nothing to show for it.

If you have an argument to make then back it up with scholarship and the kinds of elements really used by governments in their decisions for war, not this moralizing tabloid blather which is nothing more than stale propaganda from the era in question.

There's something called the Monroe Doctrine, and it pertains to the entire western hemisphere.

Neither Japan or Germany had any designs WHATSOEVER on the half of the planet we live on....PERIOD.

Japanese territorial war aims were limited to a defined "co-prosperity sphere" which included very definite areas, most of which were presently colonies of other [European] powers. The Japanese war was a colonial war of seeking to take colonies from European powers.

As for Germany EVERY HISTORIAN WHO KNOWS THE FACTS knows that Germany only invaded the west in 1940 because England and France REFUSED to negotiate peace after they declared war on Germany when Germany and the USSR together invaded Poland.

That's right.....Germany did not invade Poland by itself - the USSR invaded Poland with it.

And yet where is all your moral outrage you claim the world had against the USSR? Why was it all reserved for Germany alone? You won't find it because the moral element in the West's case for war against Germany was a sham. It was a continuation of the same moralizing they used to rally opinion in their favor in 1914. It's propaganda - not real motivations.

France and England used the Polish invasion as a PRETEXT to DECLARE WAR ON GERMANY ALONE, and then began a huge mobilization in anticipation of invading Germany as many English and French politicians wished to do in 1918.

The Germans tried to negotiate with them from Sept. 1939 through March 1940 but they refused. Finally the Germans pre-empted DEFENSIVELY by attacking the west in May 1940 in a campaign they actually thought they wouldn't win. The Germans were as surprised as anyone else that the French and English armies collapsed. The German western attack in 1940 was a defensive campaign just as the German attack there in 1914 was similarly defensive. In international law there is something called "pre-emption" when someone has threatened to attack you and is in active preparation to complete such --- the German attacks on France in 1914 and 1940 were both correct under law.

German territorial war aims absent the threat from England and France were in the east only. Germany only sought hegemony over the USSR, and had to swallow Poland first to pursue that. Germany really did want a huge empire of living space and hegemonic dominion - but in the east only. They had no motives for anything more than that, and they intended to pull out of France, Norway, etc. as soon as the war was over, which would have happened soon except that the US showed up and FOUGHT ON THE SIDE OF STALIN AND THE COMMUNISTS. This happened formally when Hitler declared war on the US, but the truth is that the US wasn't neutral anyway, and the German declaration was simply recognizing the inevitable. The US was already at war with the German navy in the Atlantic well before Hitler's declaration. The US was already massively supplying Stalin and England. The US just started a draft, and undertook a massive military expansion WELL BEFORE PEARL HARBOR WAS BOMBED. If you look at the dates the keels were laid on the Essex class carriers and Ohio class battleships you will see they were started BEFORE Pearl Harbor. The US had already started its war footing before December 7, and in fact the only reason why the fleet was there at all was because it was moved there from San Diego as part of it all. The US never kept it's Pacific fleet in Hawaii except for shortly before it was attacked there.

When dealing with questions like war aims, motivations and decision making please refer to some historians who have interviewed the principals and studied the archives and documents.

I know the position you're putting forward is commonly held among the public here, but it isn't based on any historic evidence....none. It's what people here were told at the time, but it's wrong.

*Pretty much everyone in the US supported the war effort in the first few months, but this soon changed when the Allies later declared that their war aims were not only to defeat Germany and Japan to force their withdrawl from occupied lands, BUT TO CHANGE THEIR GOVERNMENTS. The "unconditional surrender" Allied declaration was unprecidented in warfare heretofore, and brought tremendous suspicion upon Allied leaders as to what their true motives were. American public support for the war effort changed to the point that fully 60% of men under arms in the US had to be drafted because of the erosion of public support for allied war aims.

TAE, once again, you manage to make any civil debate on the subject...well....impossible. Given the atmosphere that's currently going on with other threads and the board in general, I'm not going to argue with you. Your tone is insulting as usual. You are NOT the only person to have studied history on a college or University level and simply because you attempt to overpower and demean any other person's knowledge other than your own does not make you, nor your assertions correct. Since you were not personally involved in WWII, your reliance on books, professors and other historical works is just as subject to be wrong as another person's historical books and studies on the same subject. Historians have DIFFERENT accounts of the events leading up to and during WWII.
I'm completely prepared for you to argue next that the Holocaust did not occur or was grossly exaggerated. Given your views toward Israel, that argument coming from you would not surprise me. Then again, I guess Hitler only wanted the Jews out of Germany, not the rest of Europe? Have you even BOTHERED to read "Mein Kampf"? How much time did you spend living in Germany?
I was raised and educated there in German schools. My historical studies and perspectives come not only from the United States but also from German history on the issue of WWII. Exactly how many German veterans of WWII have you personally spoken with? Men who fought in the Army, on various fronts and others who were part of the Nazi political regime? Both of my Uncles were part of the Hitler Youth and my mother and all of her family lived through WWII in Germany. I have not only "read" and "studied" WWII, I have spoken to many people involved in the war, both in Germany and the United States. Historians have argued both sides of the coin for many years.

I completely reject your arguments but since I'm currently watching the UFC fights, I find myself more interested in them than in arguing these subjects point for point with you. Enjoy your Saturday evening.

Ok, UFC fights are over, back to the debate. What I'm about to write is straight from Hitler's mouth. He spoke it, he wrote it down, he lived it. Audio tapes of his speeches, reading his writings all confirm this.
Hitler was furious with the concessions that Germany made during the treaty of Versailles in 1919. He felt that German politicians and royalty had sold out the German nation and it's people.
Hitler was intent on re-establishing Germany as a superpower, economically AND militarily. He also wanted to to re-establish the German "empire" ie...restore it's borders back to where they were in 1871. He called this....."lebensraum"......liv ing room or greater space, for the German people.
He knew from the beginning that some of this may be negotiated through threat of force and some would require military AGGRESSION. It is absurd, ridiculous and shameful to now try to practice revisionist history and say "Germans pre-empted DEFENSIVELY". Besides Hitler's ambitions for more "lebensraum" for Germany, he also wanted to cleanse EUROPE of the "Jewish problem". Hitler felt it would do no good to simply "rid" Germany itself of the Jews as long as (in his opinion) they controlled much of the banks, industry and trade in other European countries.
These two issues alone, his stated and documented goal of creating "lebensraum" through military and diplomatic conquests, and his desire to rid Europe of the "Jewish problem", make it laughable to think that Hitler was thinking or acting in "defensive" terms.
England held out hope that war could be avoided. You quote one madman's cooperation (Hitler) with another (Stalin) as proof of WHAT? Stalin KNEW that his army was ill-prepared to deal with the German army in 1939. He too felt that by appeasing Hitler early on, cooperating with the invasion of Poland, he could buy time to assess and prepare for Hitler's real motives. Stalin was no fool. He wanted and needed a buffer between Russia and Germany. He was well aware that once Germany seized all of Poland, the German Army would be right on his doorstep. Creating a buffer and buying time was the logical choice.
Ever hear of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Russia and Germany? It set out to divide northern and eastern EUROPE under German and Soviet spheres of influence. Neither Germany nor Russia seriously believed the pact would hold and Hitler viewed Stalin as an enemy even while the pact was negotiated. Hitler wanted time to prepare for his eventual offensive against Russia. Stalin wanted time to ratchet up his industries and produce the war material needed to hold off and deal with Germany.

Please don't take my remarks personally. If I didn't respect you I wouldn't be arguing with you about this.

I still have yet to hear a rebuttal to the fact that Germany invaded the west in May 1940 because France and England declared war on Germany in August 1939, while completely giving Stalin a pass in his own attack on Poland. That was the cause of the war in the west, not "German aggression," and the fact that the Germans were in Africa was a consequence of that situation. Otherwise the Germans would never have been in Africa, and were happy otherwise to leave Africa to Moussolini and his bizarre sense of adventure.

If the German occupation of the western countries was the "aggression" you claim, then can you explain why tens of thousands of people in countries such as France, Belgium and Norway ACTUALLY JOINED THE GERMANY ARMY TO FIGHT ON THEIR SIDE?

In Norway, where some of my own relatives volunteered to fight on the German side, the Germans outfitted an entire division, the "Viking Division" of the Waffen SS. Most Norwegians were relieved when the Germans showed up because the British had been penetrating the country with their own anti-German commandos and intelligence agents who where supporting communists there. The only thing the Germans did while in Norway which the people objected to was their attempt to loot the national gold reserves, which was duely prevented.

In countries such as France, Belgium and Italy where there was resistance to occupation TO A MAN THESE RESISTANCE FIGHTERS WERE COMMUNISTS WHO WERE SEEKING TO OVERTHROW ANY NON-COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT THERE.

The so-called "French resistance" which the US and Britain supported, were to a man hardened communists who took their orders from Stalin. As soon as the war was over DeGualle had to undertake a campaign to get rid of them. The same was true in Italy. In the Italian elections of 1948 the US kept a flotilla of ships in Naples to support a military coup in the event that the communists won.

The real story of the war in Europe is not the picture of "German aggression" which you distortedly portray, and there are no historians which would differ from these simple facts. In particular, there is no question that the war in the west was caused by the French/English declaration of war on Germany in 1939.

I do apologize however if you find my commentary uncivil. I'm sorry that my commentary has taken a strident tone, but I get frustrated when I see international conflict boiled down to moralizing terms, melodramatic terms.

The Second World War was about a lot of things, but in reality none of it's causes had anything to do with moralizing. Those propagandistic notions are for the un-schooled public. Those who participated in the decisions for war had moral considerations as the last things on their minds. Nor did morality play any part in the conduct of the war by the allies. The allied leaders were well aware that their strategic bombing campaigns were war crimes, and that's principally why the allied leadership never criticized the Germans for their own murder of millions of people along the way. Both sides murdered millions of ordinary people to further their goals.

Morality had nothing to do with that war....nothing.

It appears that historians DO differ on your account:
The term appeasement is most often applied to the foreign policy of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain towards Nazi Germany between 1937 and 1939. His policies of avoiding war with Germany have been the subject of intense debate for seventy years among academics, politicians and diplomats. The historian's assessment of Chamberlain has ranged from condemnation for allowing Hitler to grow too strong, to the judgement that he had no alternative and acted in Britain's best interests. At the time, these concessions were widely seen as positive, and the Munich Pact among Germany, Great Britain, France and Italy prompted Chamberlain to announce that he had secured "peace for our time".[3]

Does this in ANY way sound to you like England and France were itching for a war with Germany prior to the Polish invasion? In fact, let's take your argument of the Pre-emptive strike. Having seen Hitler's MASSIVE build up of an OFFENSIVE Army, (most of his military build up focused on offensive rather than defensive weapons systems) over the course of the 1930's (which by the way were in VIOLATION of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, a treaty Germany had signed) and his threatened attack on Czechoslovakia actually led to Chamberlain flying to Berchtesgarden to negotiate in the hopes of avoiding war in Europe. All this was on the heels of German troops marching into Austria in March of 1938.
So Hitler's intentions were no mystery, however the leaders of Europe and the United States were divided on how to stop Hitler from carrying out his intentions. I simply cannot believe that you would try to portray Germany as only launching a defensive war against the West when he had already occupied two European countries PRIOR to the Polish invasion of 1939, hence PRIOR to England and France declaring war on Germany. This is what I mean by revisionist history. It has NOTHING to do with moralizing or who had the upper hand in morality during the war. Even though we could debate on this forever, killing civilians during bombing raids on cities to bring about a quicker end to the war, and systematically enslaving and exterminating people in concentrations camps, to me at least, is completely different.
As I stated, I have no bone to pick with Germany as a nation. I grew up there, I served in the Army there, half of my family is from there and I still have relatives there. I speak, write and read the language fluently. I truly enjoy the country and debated for quite some time whether to make my permanent home there or in the United States. However, none of that has ANY bearing on history nor the fact that Hitler INTENDED to dominate at the very least, all of Europe. Again, you can cite revisionist authors but what you cannot do is erase the words that came out of his own mouth in the many speeches he gave and in the book "Mein Kampf" written over a decade before WWII. "

What happened at Munich was in fact appeasement of a kind, but only because Britain was not yet prepared for war. In fact Munich marked the beginning of the British and French mobilizations. These mobilizations were to take two years to complete, and they were still in no way ready when the Germans attacked in May 1940. The Italians' mobilization schedule was actually five years, and explains their poor performance despite the fact that they had the best tanks and aircraft in production at the time. In May 1940 the French had the largest and best tank force in the world, and they outnumbered the Germans. However the Germans had just introduced radio communications into their tanks, which was a force multiplier which allowed their tanks to be exactly where they needed them.

What happened in Britain and France in 1939-40 was like what happened here in 2001 when people in government here wanted to re-visit the peace given to Iraq in 1991. They wanted to go back in and finish the job.

The same thing happened in the war of 1812, when the British came back and kicked the shit out of the Americans, attacking and burning down the new capital at Washington D.C.

The war in Europe had one dimension which was the warfare between states which can be easily seen on the map. But another dimension was the ideological struggle between communists and anti-communists going on in every country. When a country like France or Norway was being subverted by foreign countries using their communist 5th columns, often the people of those countries looked favorably to occupation by another country if it's purpose was anti-communist in nature.

When the Germans rolled into Ukraine and western Russia they were greeted as liberators, and many peoples in those areas volunteered to join the Germans. However the National Socialists' racial views toward all the peoples in the East determined that they would fall under a harsh occupation policy in which their lands and resources were stripped from them, and their lives brought to utter misery.

But in the west it was a different story.

Btw most of the British aristocracy was opposed to war with Germany. Most English members of the peerage, including the Royals, were opposed to the declaration of war against Germany issued in Sept. 1939. Most members of the British establishment favoring war were in the Labour party, but included several notable Torries such as Churchill. The British press was solidly in favor of war, as was the mass of public opinion.

You mention the creation of fighting units such as the Viking SS Division and others. What you did not mention was the fact the proportionate to the population, the number of people from German occupied countries serving in German led units was rather small. Many of the anti-communist partisans in Norway that fought against the Russians later fought on the western allied side. Recruitment for the SS Divisions in particular (due to the German SS divisions suffering heavy losses) was aggressive. However some of the units railed against being led only by German officers which later led to the creation of SS units led by non-German officers.
Irregardless of this, when you take in the total number of volunteers for these kinds of units vs the population of occupied countries in whole, the % was rather small.
It may surprise you to know that some Germans actually made their way to the United States for the sole purpose of joining the U.S. Army, and many German-Americans already living in America joined the U.S. Army.
You mention a British and French attempt at mobilization prior to the war being declared. It is no different than today, you're right. We, (the USA) always keep an eye on China, Russia etc. Many of the weapon systems we procure are part of an arms race, more so from the 1950's-1980's. Did that mean we WANTED to go to war with Russia or China? No, but we did want to keep pace with their arms build up as a form of deterrence. All of Europe watched as Hitler rose to power and began a massive build up of the German arms' industries, the German military and his diplomatic and pressure tactics to expand Germany's "lebensraum". His stated goals to ERASE the "shame" of the 1919 Versailles treaty left few in doubt what his ambitions were. He had declared them openly after all and his massive military build up proved he was serious. In this light, of course France and Britain were going to ratchet up their own military, no different than our own country did for the last 40 years. That does not prove that they intended to attack Germany. Their diplomatic efforts during the periods of 1937-1939 in fact show otherwise.