Not sure if your remarks were in response to my post or not, Daniel.

My remarks were in reference to your post #11; they were of course addressed to those of a sincerely Left radical perspective, asking them to consider the implications of their potentially valid critiques being put to use in other arguments -- arguments with which they may not agree and may deeply oppose ......or at least one would expect they would deeply oppose. A challenge, in other words: if they have some self-respect, they might raise some objection to being used

Anyhow, to be clear, I think a strong case can be made that Churchill was a war monger and Hitler did really want peace - at least in relations between their two respective countries.

Hitler had more warlike tendencies towards the USSR, which he loathed with a passion (the feeling, I think it's clear, was entirely mutual). However, I think it likely the other 'great powers' could have restrained Hitler and discouraged him from attacking eastwards...had that been their real intention.

In other words, I think it is true that the impulse for war in 1939 came primarily from the west.

An insupportable belief, given the copiously documented evidence from the German sources themselves. The western powers steadily and consistently gave in to each of Hitler's demands; they might well have "restrained Hitler" at some point. But that in itself concedes the point that there was some need to restrain the man in what he was doing

What is clear from the record (and records) is that Hitler systematically moved for strategic military positioning with the aim of regional hegemony, all on the basis of a racist-ueber-nationalistic ideology. But some may still believe the Austrians and the Sudeten Germans "belonged to" the German Reich and the German Volk. And some may believe Hitler's stated goal of acquiring Lebensraum in the east was justified.

However, I think it would be mistaken to see Churchill as the key player in triggering war. In late 1939, he was still a rather marginal character, although his star was once again on the ascendancy.

Hitler was not, of course, exempt from blame. His desire to resolve the Danzig issue was understandable and probably justified. The citizens of Danzig did, it seems, overwhelmingly want union with Germany, Hitler's proposal for a land corridor was not unreasonable. Poland, it seems, did not negotiate in good faith.

So it was really Poland's fault..........for not negotiating "in good faith" with the Nazi government which had shown itself to always negotiate in good faith -- issuing ultimatums, instigating "disturbances" and coups d'etat, and gobbling up territories piece by piece. I guess Poland and the Polish people got what they deserved for this bad faith, though: the Nazi hierarchy was kind enough to locate all the big extermination camps on Polish lands

Nevertheless, invading Poland was a high risk strategy. One might also take the position it was immoral. Similar debates surround the invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqi army in 1990. Saddam had a point - and was probably encouraged to go ahead by winks and nods from the American Government - but it was still rash to invade.

However, both Saddam and Hitler were fooled into thinking that they could take a gamble and gain their territorial aspirations - then negotiate with with the rest of the world from a position of strength. A fatal mistake in both cases.

In Hitler's case, he might also have thought that if the western powers objected to his invasion of western Poland, they might do so in an even-handed way and condemn both Germany and the USSR (which invaded the Baltci States and eastern Poland shortly afterwards). How wrong he was.

So it's never really Hitler's fault. He was "fooled into thinking," "he might also have thought"......... I could just as easily speculate that Hitler saw himself as a man with an historic mission/destiny to annihilate the threat of Communism and its "geopolitical sponsor state" (the USSR), and that "he might have thought" the Western powers would be glad to see him do that. But there would be much substantive evidence for that speculation (viz., in Hitler's own public and private statements, of all things). Is there similar substantive evidence for your speculation, or are there just the twists and turns of an apologetic for Hitler and Hitlerism (i.e., Nazism -- what's Nazism without Hitler)?

As to the use of history, I think it this a complex issue.

The 'official' version of WW2, in which Hitler WAS the ultimate evil dictator and sole perpetrator of the war, certainly has its contemporary ideological uses. I object to many if not all of them.

Might violent anti-Jewish sentiments might be unleashed if there if full and open debate about WW2?

I doubt it very much There is nothing inherently vengeful in a revisionist analysis of WW2. By making it possible to regard WW2 as yet another war that need never have been fought, it provides the basis for a consistent anti-war position.

As usual, this sounds very reasonable, although we seem to be digressing further from "Churchill and Hitler" and on into "revisionist (history) analysis" and still further on into the unleashing of "violent anti-Jewish sentiments"........???????

Revising history goes on all the time; it seems to be integral to the very idea and process of historical study itself. (See Eric Foner's Preface in Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, in which the first sentence is, "Revising interpretations of the past is intrinsic to the study of history.") If that's the case, why would there ever be a specific label of "revisionist" (history/analysis) attached to certain arguments, viewpoints, etc.?

I believe it's because some consensus develops about particular political agendas being served by such arguments, viewpoints, "scholarship," etc. Although the simple issue with a revisionist analysis of World War II may be about the lack of honesty of Revisionists, the really critical issue is the larger one -- what interests are being served by their lies?

Without going into details, I think this answer is sufficient: bigotry and ignorance


But as long as we're digressing, let's take a different example -- one which certain anti-"Zionist" members of this Forum routinely feel confident in injecting into nearly any discussion: John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his murder in the street. There has been "revisionist history" about President Kennedy and "the Kennedys" since the Kennedy Administration briefly graced this land. If it's not CIA men covering their butts and laying blame on two dead men who held sway over everything for all of 2 years and 10 months ("the Kennedy Vendetta"), it's the latest gossip from a "primary source" claiming Robert Kennedy took time out from a grueling, late-starting presidential campaign in order to have a sex party with a group of 15-year-old girls (see C. David Heymann's "candid biography" -- aka, a large pile of shit)

Ironically, the very far right started pushing a "Jews killed JFK" argument from the day the man was killed -- but then they blamed everything on Jews

Whose interests are served by revisionist history about "the Kennedys"? Hard to say exactly, and there could be a number of interests involved.... but in general is it safe to say that the interests are those of people who are not real fans of what "the Kennedys" stood for and tried to accomplish? I think so .... and so it's mostly nauseating to me to see people regularly using the names of John and Robert Kennedy to bolster arguments that promote bigotry and ignorance. But of course many in "the research community" may overlook the fact that there has been one Catholic who served as President of the United States, and his service was extremely brief and terminated extremely violently ........... (mere bigotry not being a sexy enough issue, evidently: the most powerful man on earth, young, eloquent, charismatic, progressive -- and a Catholic; it's not as if certain minds would look at that and think The Antichrist had appeared .... and ought to be dealt with appropriately)

I seriously doubt that some would understand that perspective. But then again, there are probably plenty of people who will assume the sincerity of those who routinely express an allegiance to "the Arab cause" or "the Muslim cause" by way of an apparently thoroughgoing critique of "Zionism" ........ without being aware that such themes are also characteristics of the very far right

How's that for digression?

None of the bloody wars of the 20th century were necessary, IMO. True, they prompted acts of great courage and spurred on technological advances in war-related fields. Yet all of them, on balance, were a bloody stupid waste of human life and effort.

The USA was better off by far in its pre-war, pre-CIA condition...a regional hegemon yes, but not an aggressive super-power with a secret state apparatus borrowed from the British but expanded and bloated to the point of global malignancy.

In its pre-New Deal, "pre-CIA condition," the United States of America was a racially segregated country dominated by the interests of monopoly capitalism and dominating the nations and peoples south of its border. The lives of non-whites were hardly worth a penny.

After World War II, Americans had to start to deal with the implications of what their own country "really stood for" -- hard to reconcile so many black Americans having served in the war with an at best second-class citizenship in their own country; and even harder to reconcile the realities of racism and segregation in one's own land in light of what occurred in Nazi Germany. The question started to be raised, in reference to minorities (i.e., "other" human beings): "Could it happen here?"

This of course was an after-effect of our involvement in the war that was ultimately extremely important and positive. Quite different from the reasons for being in the war.... My understanding is that the war against the WW II Axis powers had something to do with an attempt to confront nation-states bent on military conquest and domination of other peoples. Have you heard different?

It's good, though, to see these views formulated in this way, as they are essentially the basis for my earlier post, and for my objection to so much of what we see in this Forum: Evil first came into the world with the CIA; the CIA is a gigantic Monolith that is the only real Evil in the world ....... a highly useful idea, that so-called radicals of every stripe (from sincere humanists to John Birchers to neo-nazis) can all agree on together, and that some can use to promote entirely offensive agendas

Europe - from Ireland to the Urals - would have been better off to avoid the devastation of WW2 war. Peace was also possible - and much preferable to war - in the far east as well.

This assumes that Japan and Germany were not bent on military conquest, and domination of other peoples on a large scale ...... or that such conquest and domination was a good thing. Just like back in the day (viz., America First Isolationists), there seems to be a fine line -- and one hard to decipher -- between being sincerely pacifist, and being pro-Fascist

If one believes - as you do - that many millions of Jews died in WW2, it is hard to argue that the Jewish people would not have been much better off without WW2 as well. Whatever the figure, WW2 clearly plunged millions of European Jews into a dangerous and terrifying maelstrom in which many perished in quite horrific circumstances. They would have been better off without it, wouldn't they?

European Jews would have been "better off" without Nazi Germany.

Most fundamentally, one cannot build a secure future on shaky ground. We need the firm rock of historical truth - or at least an honest attempt to ascertain the truth. Even white lies are dangerous if they are on a grand scale and require legal sanction for their maintenance.

The ultimate villains of WW2, IMO, are the powerful people who orchestrated it. They almost certainly did not suffer from the war. They profited. After the war, they were more powerful than ever.

It is in the common interest of humanity as a whole to expose and restrain those whom Bob Dylan called the Masters of War.

Sie sind so voll von Scheisse.

"truth" "humanity"

after a while, with enough exposure to it, your tangled rhetoric is an incitement to vomit