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Weighing evil: Soviets and Nazis — 94 Comments

  1. Visiting Poland some years ago, I asked someone we met about whether German Nazis or Russian Communists were more dangerous.
    Her reply: “My parents said that the Germans were every bit as nasty but they were usually more disciplined and often too busy to spend time making the lives of civilians miserable. The Russians, they said, were not always under the strict gaze of an officer, not always sober and were far more volatile and unpredictable for both good and ill.”

    One data point.

    I often see stats like: Nazi Germany killed 5 million people, the USSR killed 20 million, Pol Pot’s Cambodia far less but a higher percentage and China beats all 3 added together.

  2. Hate to think the intellectuals who supported communism were the same kind of people who think the Inflation Reduction Act is supposed to reduce inflation. But…

    I suspect, from what I’ve read of the times, that the support amongst the usual folks was because communism was made out to be, in every medium, every venue, implicit and explicit, “good”. And if you were for it, you were “good”. And if you were “good”, you had to be for it. And if you were not for it, you were “bad”. And if you were “bad”, you were so bad–the “good” being so “good” and so absolutely necessary–that a number of things were not yours any longer; law, justice, claim of life. Because you were getting in the way of “good”.

    The Nazis didn’t do this. Anybody know of a Nazi version of Pete Seeger? Anybody trying to spread Nazism to the common folks as a signal of moral virtue back in the day?

    It also strikes me that if you got far enough into communism and saw some uncomfortable things, one of your choices was to excuse them on account of the “good” that was coming. Beats acknowledging unspeakable moral errors. Besides, sunk cost. So, the “good” had to be really, really “good” and the “bad” even worse than you had thought. As a second-order effect, that made the “bad” people even worse and justified even less consideration as to law, justice, and claim of life.

    Maybe there was a German tenor who was a couple of spaces short of the big time who figured singing Nazi in popular music was his best career bet. I have no idea.

    I can see, even today, the lingering odor of “good” around communism, and not, of course, around Nazism, which leads me to believe my hypothesis may be correct.

  3. To paraphrase, “It’s the CORRUPTION, stupid…”
    For ideologically pure Aryans whose mission was to cleanse the world of vermin and usher in Nirvana, the Nazis were famously corrupt.
    Similarly, the “ideologically pure” Soviet Paradise wasn’t that much better. The rot, the utter dishonesty, just took a different form. Comrades? Party members? Proles? Social Justice? Equality? (Equity?…not forgetting…The Gulag?)

    The point being that totalitarian systems lend themselves to extraordinary corruption….

    (So maybe the real paraphrase ought to be, “It’s the TOTALITARIAN MINDSET, stupid…”?)

    Calling to mind another trite phrase: “Embrace the power of AND”…

    Which brings us to “Biden”, that latest Totalitarian wannabe, the “New Kid on the block”.
    “John Podesta: Biden’s New Green Investment Czar”—
    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18943/john-podesta-green-investment
    Key grafs (RTWT):
    ‘…What is concerning here is the pattern Podesta has established of being involved on both sides of the table, and transiting Washington’s revolving door. When the Biden administration chooses a “power broker” to be its decider over $370 billion worth of federal “investment” money that is intended to make green energy affordable, cost-effective or competitive with fossil fuels, we should not be surprised if large portions of that money will eventually be traced back to connections those companies have with that aforementioned power broker.
    ‘ This is why you do not want the federal government to have individuals who are not experts — who are operators and lobbyists — making important decisions like that. They will pass out cash to people who have made them money in the past, and who will make them money in the future, or who have employed their family members. It is corrupt and it is cronyism. When you give people the opportunity to hand out other people’s money, they are going to give it to families and friends. With Podesta, there is certainly a history of doing just that….’

  4. Germany had been nearly destroyed in WWI. Hitler and the Nazis promised stability. Russia was actually modernizing rapidly before WWI. The Czar tended to appoint military leaders by parentage, not ability. Competence was not a characteristic of the Czarist army. The state of the Russian economy before the Bolsheviks has been part of the exaggeration and excuses for the failures of the Soviet Union.

  5. Hannah Arendt made the point that National Socialism strove to eliminate those peoples whom biology had ordained to extinction and International Socialism strove to eliminate those classes whom history had ordained to extinction. Essentially the same system. National Socialists and Communists in the 1930s saw the other sides foot soldiers as potential recruits; just people who got some of the details wrong.
    What National Socialists carried out thoroughly against the Jews was also to be carried out against many others, including Aryans with disabilities.

  6. JimNorCal. After WW II was over, my father was assigned to duty there, being too badly hurt to go to the Pacific–until that later casualty lists came in. Paul Fussell had the same situation.
    My father spoke French and once asked a French woman what the Germans were like: “Tres correct.” This did not follow, apparently, on the eastern front including the inhabitants thereof.

    The Germans killed six million Jews, that we know of, because they kept records of this estimable undertaking. They killed uncountably more in the east, more or less ad hoc and numbers are unreliable. They are mixed in with all the others they killed for grits and shins. See “Hitler’s Willing Executioners”

    There’s another number. In “The Bomber War” by Neillands, the entirety of the bombing campaigns is reviewed. In speaking of the civilian casualties, he remarks, in trying to assign blame, that they died “of the war”.
    Unless one sets out to kill civilians–see the arguments about Bomber Harris–then their deaths in pursuit of winning the war–destroy a steel mill, for example–are not the aim of the raid. But the raid was necessary to win the war. Now what?

    Seems to me the blame would fall on whomever started the war, thus requiring such actions as got civilians killed, “of the war”.

    Thus all deaths in the ETO would fall on the Germans, unless one wanted to spare a few for Stalin’s early enabling of armaments and such like.

    You could even make the case that the resources required in the Pacific could have been used to win sooner in Europe and saved lives, so some of it is Japan’s fault. And then you reverse the process.

  7. Richard Aubrey– Apropos of your father’s conversation with the Frenchwoman, you might be interested in a documentary about the German occupation of Paris (1940–1944), titled in English “When Paris Was German.” It’s in French, but the English subtitles (except for the occasional pronoun confusion between “he” and “she” when referring to humans) are adequate:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTsOG3WVYPk&ab_channel=La2deGuerreMondiale

    It’s long (an hour and a half), but detailed; includes a lot of film shot by the occupiers themselves (the Parisians were forbidden to use or even own cameras), and covers a range of different topics, including the Germans’ fondness for sightseeing, the “collabos,” the looting of art, and– the documentary is unsparing about the persecution and eventual deportation of the French Jews. Neo might be interested in the documentary too for that reason.

    I think one reason the Germans were “très correct” in Paris– at least as long as the war was going their way– is that they saw France as a kind of earthly paradise full of desirable goods unavailable in Germany. An earlier German army (WWI) had a saying, “As happy as God in France,” referring to three things von Kluck’s soldiers wanted: good food, good wine, and bad women. IOW, the Germans had no motivation to be as destructive in France as they were on the Eastern Front– why trash your candy store?

  8. For a country that didn’t have any foreign soldiers on it’s lands during WWI; unlike France or Belgium, I find the argument about Germany being nearly destroyed in WWI, “interesting.” Germans were being starved by the naval blockade, true. War does unexpected things. Poor, poor Germany.

    Now, some sing the “Poor, poor Roosia” song.

  9. I have read stories about how much more vicious the fighting in the east was, compared to western Europe. And this was true from the early days of Barbarosa. A German infantry officer tells of a Russian whose legs had been blown off. He was propped, with tourniquets, in a damaged Russian tank, to operate the machine gun against the approaching Germans.

    As for intentions: It is invariably true that the left insists on credit for intentions, and no responsibility for failures. Our vice-president demonstrated this when she claimed the border was secure. Her interviewer told her that plainly, it was not secure in any way. Kamala insisted that because the administration intended the border to be secure, that’s what mattered.

  10. Germany was one of the most developed societies in the world in 1914 or 1933, second only maybe to the US. Russia was more advanced in 1912 than a lot of people thought, and poised for a great future, but still not as “modern” as Germany was or would be. When the Bolsheviks took over there was less of a modern civil society or economy than there was in Western countries, so Communism could sink in very deep indeed. When Nazism fell the Germans had more to build on than the Russians did when Communism ended, but the Germans were nonetheless very passionate about Nazism while it lasted.

    There’s a sense that Communism was idealistic in a way that Nazism wasn’t. There may be some truth in that, but now that biologism is coming back into its own we may come to see Communism and Nazism as close competitors once again. Both Soviet Communists and German Nazis saw themselves as engineering a new humanity and getting rid of all those who stood in its way. The Soviets followed an economic ideology and the Nazis a biological one. They each had serious blind spots – large groups that needed to be eliminated or suppressed to achieve their vision. Certainly, there may be a lesser of two evils, but it’s not any kind of positive good.

  11. PA+CAT, the Nazis certainly pillage France, sending entire factories to Germany, along with food and other economic commodities. Yes indeed a real Candy Store.

  12. Neo: pp. 82-88 is correct. Maybe I”ll re-read it, if I can summon the stomach.

  13. Considering the despicable behavior of the Germans towards just about everyone prior to WWI (the Polish part of Germany was practically apartheid) and the brutal Russification of all ethnic groups in Russian Empire maybe the political system was just an excuse for a natural inclination towards authoritarian brutality. Little wonder their neighbors hate both of them.

  14. I think the numbers were 7 out 61 million in world war one a staggering number of dead and wounded.

  15. OK, Miss Neo. That’s twice this week you’ve done this to me. You’re starting to get inside my head.

    A few years ago I had this very conversation with a liberal acquaintance. We were talking about something political when he mentioned how bad the Nazis were.

    I replied “The Nazis were horrible, no doubt about that. But the Communists were worse.”

    Him: “No they weren’t. What makes you think that?”

    Me: “They killed a lot more people. The Nazis killed about 12 million innocents. The Soviets killed about 30 million. The Chinese Communists killed about 50 million.”

    Him: “The Russians killed 30 million other whites. The Chinese killed 50 million other Asians. But the Nazis killed people of other races. That makes them much, much worse.”

    What he was saying was that the reason genocide is wrong is not the mass murder. It’s the racism. It also explained why he thought America was so evil in WWII. We were fighting the Japanese, not just the Germans.

    I’ve known for a while that liberals and conservatives see the world differently, and that difference explains at least some of the animosity between the two groups. But it’s only been recently that I’ve realized just *how* differently we see it. It’s enough to question whether a reconciliation is even possible.

  16. There is a theory that Germany was trying to do in Europe what Britain had done in the rest of the world. I don’t buy it. Germany was even more brutal in Africa in the early 20th century than even the British were, and Hitler was trying to do things in Europe that Britain wouldn’t have dared attempt in Africa or India or the Middle East.

    But Britain was able to make friends and allies of its colonial rivals, France and Russia, in the early years of the 20th century. That they weren’t able to do so with Germany, with whom they had no direct colonial rivalries, may be one of history’s great failures of diplomacy.

    It makes me think of our current problems. We pay diplomats to diffuse conflicts. Sometimes it isn’t possible. Sometimes they don’t even try. Sometimes the need for an enemy overrides the desire to resolve conflicts.

  17. Mkent, your liberal friend is–strange. Well, he is surprising to me, but his ideas do explain a lot.
    The Japanese were torturing and killing Chinese and many other peoples in the Pacific rim–but they did not see them as “other Asians.” The Chinese, Filipinos, etc. were seen as NOT JAPANESE, i.e., not of the Japanese race. The Chinese did not see “other Asians” as the same race/ethnicity as themselves, either. And don’t get me started on the Russians.
    I must say as well that I think most Americans are unaware of the extent and nature of the Japanese atrocities during WWII. For example, I only found out last year, quite by accident, about Unit 731 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731). Strangely, I first heard about it through an alternate history novel. I had never seen information about it in a history book, nor did I learn about it in school. Maybe I am just unusually ill-informed, but I would not bet on it.
    And I find it strange that Liberal Friend, like the Nazis, sees the Jewish people as a “race.” Wow. What an interesting comment all around!
    And I see what you mean about reconciliation being, perhaps, impossible. How terrifying that a fellow citizen believes that mass murder is not wrong in itself.

  18. Well they were in a hurry the slaughter of the herero in namibia was nearly up there with king leopold in the congo

    To deny that germany did not have a catastrophic end of the war is foolhardy

  19. As to my discussing the attaching of “good” to communism but not to nazism as part of the reason the former still has some apologists, and had them a good deal longer afte WW II than the latter…who’s “good” these days and who’s “bad”?
    And what is justified as regards the “bad”?

  20. M Smith–

    One theory about the ability of the French and the British to ultimately understand each other even after the long rivalry stretching from the Hundred Years’ War to Waterloo is that both countries had been Romanized to an extent that Germany never was. There is a documentary titled “The Lost Legions of Varus,” about the battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9, which Roman historians afterward referred to as the clades Variana, the Varian disaster. The loss of three full Roman legions to an ambush staged by a loose alliance of Germanic tribes led to a Roman withdrawal to the Rhine and subsequent exclusion of what is now Germany (Julius Caesar was the first Roman writer to refer to the region as Germania) from the Roman Empire. Arminius and his tribesmen may have won a battle but lost far more in the long run.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93Wb9aa0-6Q&ab_channel=Odyssey-AncientHistoryDocumentaries

    The other disaster that set Germany on a different historical course from France and the UK was the Thirty Years’ War. A map of Germany as it was in 1618 shows a crazy-quilt of small duchies, kingdoms, free imperial cities, prince-bishoprics, and other tiny principalities that were repeatedly overrun by the mercenary armies of Denmark, France, and Sweden as well as the troops of the Holy Roman Empire– until peace was finally concluded in 1648. It is estimated that the German population as a whole declined by 38% over the course of the war, as civilians died from plague and starvation as well as violence from the soldiers who pillaged their towns and villages. Germany did not become a unified country until 1871 (after the Franco-Prussian War), and that was bound to affect its sense of national identity.

    Russia, of course, is an entirely different story, partly due to its use of the Cyrillic alphabet as well as its various languages and tangled territorial history. German, English, and French at least have the Latin alphabet in common.

  21. There was some over-the-top propaganda in WWI which turned out not to be true. So when the news of Japanese atrocities started coming out of China, they may have been discounted.
    Comes the Rape of Nanking. Bad as advertised but the difference was that there was a semi-autonomous foreign enclave. Huge numbers of western witnesses. Letters, diaries, pictures. Tried to help as they could. No longer any question.

    What is really weird is that the Japanese got world wide adulation for their treatment of the Russian POW in the Russo-Japanese War. Delegations were sent to see how the medical issues were handled. What happened? Sort of an attempt, more or less, in the orientation film for occupation troops, “Our Job in Japan”. On youtube.

    Showalter, in “Tannenberg” about the first big fight in the eastern front in WW I details the extremely, and not just by contrast, civilized behavior of German forces in Russia.

    For the savagery of the Eastern Front in WW II, see “Zhukov’s Secret Defeat”.

  22. an experiment which the human race was bound to make at some point in its [d]evolution, the logical conclusion of virulent anti-Semitism).

    On a smaller scale, various conquests not participated in by our European ancestors show similar ‘logical conclusions’ in many points of human evolution – consider for example the century in which Islam installed itself over parts of three continents as the ‘good’ people, with license to dispose of dissenters in wholesale heaps of humans.

  23. Richard Aubrey– For the savagery of the Eastern Front in WW II, see “Zhukov’s Secret Defeat”.

    Do you have a specific link for that? All I could find were a series of references to “Zhukov’s Greatest Defeat,” i.e., the Rzhev battles in 1942 and early 1943, aka the “Rzhev Meat Grinder.” If that’s the conflict you’re referring to, it was indeed savage. If I’m missing something, please let me know– I gather that the Rzhev battles were an embarrassment to Soviet military historians after the war because of their felt need to protect Zhukov’s reputation.

  24. Different era of japanese, yes i first heard of unit 731 in the x files in the 90s

  25. J: “And I find it strange that Liberal Friend, like the Nazis, sees the Jewish people as a “race.” Wow. What an interesting comment all around!”

    Just a co-worker, not a friend, but yeah. And while I knew everything you mentioned in your post, it was clear that those things didn’t matter to my co-worker. So, yeah, very interesting. But the comment did cause something to click that hadn’t before.

    The class struggle aspect of traditional Marxism never really caught on in America. America’s lower classes had too many luxuries and America had too much social mobility for class to enter our collective consciousness like it did in Europe. But what we did have that Europe largely didn’t was racial discord.

    So American Marxists substituted race for class, and slavery became America’s “original sin” that allowed a form of Marxism to take root. Racism became not just a sin but the worst sin possible (sexism is second). Since Nazism became tied to racism, Nazism became evil incarnate and not just one of many ideologies that led to mass slaughter.

    It took a while for me to digest that conversation, but once I did, I think I got a better understanding of the American left. That hasn’t given me any insights into how to defeat them, but it has helped explain why some previous efforts didn’t work.

  26. There is a fair amount of evidence that the Japanese A-bomb program was not limited to a few scientists and their chalkboards. Rather, they had an extensive industrial program in the very north of Korea, and actually succeeded in testing a bomb offshore a day or so after Hiroshima.

    How did they hide it from the American occupiers? The plant was captured by the Russians, who didn’t want the U. S. to know they had it. The Japanese who worked on the program were told to keep their mouths shut, for the obvious reason that if Japan had a bomb, they would have used it ruthlessly. Better to act dumb and be the victim.

    Had we had some idea we could have done testing in the area of the Korean industrial area before the Chinese invasion.

  27. om: I had indeed heard of the Rzhev Meat Grinder– I simply wanted to check with Richard Aubrey as to whether his source referred to the same series of battles. Some sources have slightly different names for the same slaughterhouse.

  28. Nazis, Communists, and the odd inclination of the American Leftists aka Progressives aka Democrats to value intention more than results in re mass murder and genocide.

    https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/09/why-middle-class-is-being-destroyed.html

    Friday, September 30, 2022
    “Why the middle class is being destroyed”

    That’s the title of an article at American Greatness. I don’t necessarily agree with all the author’s arguments, but he makes an intriguing case that deserves our attention. Here’s an excerpt [which I have shortened].

    . . .
    The elitist argument for destroying the middle class is simple. If everyone on earth used as much energy as Americans use, global energy production would have to more than quadruple. That fact roughly applies to all natural resources. We might argue—and we should argue—that innovation can deliver a middle-class lifestyle to 8 billion people without catastrophically depleting critical natural resources or causing unacceptable harm to the earth’s biosphere, but apparently that’s not a choice the elites want to make. And they don’t have to.

    Explaining this refers to another development … which is how artificial intelligence and other technological innovations will make the existence of a middle class unnecessary.

    In their book [The Bell Curve], Herrnstein and Murray ask, “what is the minimum level of cognitive resources necessary to sustain a community at any given level of social and economic complexity?” By implication, they suggest that if the average IQ of a population is low or in decline, that jeopardizes the potential of the population to advance or even maintain their standard of living. But the consensus among today’s elites is that broadly distributed intelligence in a population is no longer necessary.
    . . .
    The controversy over one chapter in Herrnstein and Murray’s book should not diminish the fact that, way back in 1994, their work anticipated two of the most decisive trends in the world today: The emergence of a cognitive elite, and, for the first time in history, the almost total convergence of intellectuals with the financial elite. The consequence, an apparent consensus among the two groups to destroy the middle class to protect their own interests while claiming they’re saving the planet and promoting “equity,” should surprise nobody.

    There’s more at the link, and it’s well worth reading.

    There’s plenty of supporting evidence for the author’s argument. To take just one example, a few weeks ago we discussed “A deliberate plan to cull the human population?”. We’ve also mentioned the ideas of Israeli technocrat Yuval Noah Harari, who’s on record as saying:

    “… we just don’t need the vast majority of the population, because the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like artificial intelligence [and] bioengineering, Most people don’t contribute anything to that, except perhaps for their data, and whatever people are still doing which is useful, these technologies increasingly will make redundant and will make it possible to replace the people.”

    I’m sure that makes you feel just as comfortable as it does me . . .

    Throw some sand and grit in the progressive gearbox. It’s fun!

    This is the article Peter cited, by Edward Ring:
    https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/20/why-the-middle-class-is-being-destroyed/

  29. This is the article Peter cited, by Edward Ring:
    https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/20/why-the-middle-class-is-being-destroyed/

    Ring has a long prologue about how the two elites converged, as explained by Herrnstein & Murray, which was interesting (I read The Bell Curve a long time ago, and don’t remember many details, other than my conclusion that the flap over their IQ research was unwarranted).

    IMO, the Left’s dismissal of genocide (when it can’t be turned to support their narrative of America Bad) relates to the observation at the end of this segment:

    Although parts of The Bell Curve have been hotly debated, these two predictions—the formation of a cognitive elite, and the alliance of the cognitive elite with the affluent—resonate strongly today. They explain one of the root causes of globalism. Herrnstein and Murray even predict the rise of “the custodial state,” which they define as “a high-tech and more lavish version of the Indian reservation for some substantial minority of the nation’s population, while the rest of America goes about its business.”

    The problem with that prediction, however, is that it suggests America will divide into three classes: the cognitive elite and affluent class, the middle class, and a permanent underclass of the cognitively deficient, completely dependent on the “custodial state.” That would have been bad enough, but that’s not quite what is happening. Instead, the elites in America, joining with their counterparts in most of the rest of the developed world, are engineering a future where there will only be two classes: the elites and a permanent underclass.

    Not everyone who is highly intelligent or independently wealthy embraces the extreme climate and equity agenda. Many still see that such a flawed agenda is bound to impoverish and embitter billions of people. While there are powerful incentives to go along, and powerful disincentives to resistance, minds can be changed. The prevailing consensus can be broken.

    To avoid turning the vast majority of humanity into livestock, which is where we’re headed, requires presenting alternative scenarios. Appealing to those elites who retain a shred of common sense and common decency is not impossible. Protecting the planet and promoting fairness does not require rationing and racism. Elaborating on those basic facts may yet convince a critical mass of elites to change the course we’re on.

    Meanwhile, to try to fully understand the reason America’s elites are distancing themselves from everyone else, and engineering the destruction of the middle class, another curve has explanatory value: the curve of population growth in the world.

    After a few millennia of slow growth, the human population began to skyrocket. Rising from 190 million in the year zero to nearly 1 billion by 1800, by 1928 it had doubled to 2 billion, hit 3 billion by 1960, and then added another billion every 15 years. World population now stands poised to break 8 billion within the next year or two.

    I would love to know how the population estimates prior to the last couple of centuries were made, but that’s a digression. What counts is the effect of the huge increases in those last 200 years.

    You don’t have to be a member of the cognitive elite to see the human population cannot continue to double every 40 years indefinitely. And it won’t. Several possible causes have been identified to explain the relatively recent and steady reduction of birthrates around the world, but the decline is indisputable. Humanity most likely will reach its peak population within a few decades, if not sooner, after which the total human population will be aging and shrinking. How fast it will shrink, and what that will look like, though, brings us back to the role of the elites.

    Herrnstein and Murray in their predictions and prescriptions for Americans coping with the rise of a financial and cognitive elite didn’t take into account global population demographics. They also didn’t anticipate the rise of the green movement as a moral pretext for the destruction of the middle class.

    The elitist argument for destroying the middle class is simple. If everyone on earth used as much energy as Americans use, global energy production would have to more than quadruple.

    And so forth, as Peter cited.

    Ring is not the only one to suggest that “saving the planet” is code for “saving the benefits of the planet for me and my friends” — very much like the communists whose professed intentions for justice and equality for the masses always generated vast inequalities between the people and the communist leaders.

    “Green on the outside, red on the inside” is the maxim.

    What is coming is a ruthless meritocracy that will admit only those individuals with the skills to do work that can’t be replaced by algorithms and robots. There won’t be many openings. In most professions and trades, to the extent human involvement is still necessary, competence will be secondary to affirmative action because automated procedures and artificial intelligence prompts will tell workers what to do.

    By blending and flattening the population of the world’s cognitively normal, the cognitive elite will be able to pacify and manage them, distance themselves, and have exclusive access to whatever property and privileges they consider not sustainable or desirable for everyone to enjoy.

    For example, even if it becomes possible to deliver a middle-class lifestyle to the entire global population of aging billions, the elites may ask, “Is it desirable?” And if it becomes possible to deliver life extension therapies inexpensively with nothing more than a gene modifying injection, the elites may also ask, “Is it desirable?” Why should elites care about any of this if an underclass of machines that do not require these things can do all the work for far less bother than an underclass of humans?

    Meanwhile, the ongoing expansion of the custodial state is concurrent with the average IQ of Americans shifting into decline. This shouldn’t be surprising. The so-called Flynn Effect, the theory that social and economic progress caused IQ scores to rise in the early 20th century, has now been thrown into reverse. Many factors could explain this reversal, but because it is happening universally, we might start by implicating a degraded system of public education, a dumbed-down media, the diversions of mindless, endless online rubbish, the collapse of [actual] meritocracy, and the replacement of the pursuit of excellence with the quest to acquire status and rewards by defining oneself as a victim.

    IMO, the posited reliance on brilliant AI and dumb humans is very much misplaced, even if the technology does improve (for some values of improvement) over the near future.
    Murphy will see to that.

    Once the middle class is gone, or at least effectively suppressed (see: raiding random folks with FBI SWAT teams just because they can), the cognitive elite, defined as the almost total convergence of intellectuals with the financial elite, will find that their desirable life style is not sustainable, for them or anyone else.

  30. I agree with this comment from Peter’s post at Bayou Renaissance Man:

    Eric Wilner said…
    It’s not a meritocracy in the usual sense; it’s more of a club with tightly restricted membership, and the existing members get to decide who has enough of the right sort of “merit” to join. So, pretty much a new aristocracy. Membership is automatic for children of existing members; new peerages (whether life or hereditary) are created through an process that’s thoroughly opaque to outsiders but must surely be virtuous.
    In terms of actual meritocracy, my prediction for some years now has been that (1) current AI work will never get anywhere near producing true artificial intelligence, but (2) development of expert systems and suchlike will soon lead to a situation in which computers can perform the skilled trades (physician, airline pilot, and so on) better than all but the best human, at which point no human will have the ability to practice those trades in order to become the best. Hence, human progress will stagnate, skills will be lost, and the next Carrington Event will return us to the Stone Age minus the aeons of accumulated skills needed by ordinary Stone Age humans.
    (For a fine example of the effect, see AF447. The pilots had lots of seat hours, but hadn’t built the skills to be at the top of their trade, and when the computer suddenly gave up in despair they couldn’t cope.)

  31. Richard Aubrey My father spoke French and once asked a French woman what the Germans were like: “Tres correct.” This did not follow, apparently, on the eastern front including the inhabitants thereof.

    I knew a Dutchman who was a young teen during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. He too spoke highly of the Germans as well-behaved. Never mentioned the Jews or even the looting of occupied Europe for some reason….

  32. “I knew a Dutchman…”
    Did you ask him about the “hunger winter” of 1944-45?

  33. Rather, they had an extensive industrial program in the very north of Korea, and actually succeeded in testing a bomb offshore a day or so after Hiroshima.

    Not buying.

  34. The soviets killed off their intellectual class leaving serfs and criminals to run the country after their wars. The Germans didn’t do that.

  35. Germany was one of the most developed societies in the world in 1914 or 1933, second only maybe to the US.

    The Maddison Project has compiled estimates of domestic product per capita for 1913, stated here in 2011 currency units.

    United States: $10,108
    Australia: $8,220
    Britain: $8,212
    New Zealand: $8,212
    Switzerland: $8,172
    Canada: $7,088
    Belgium: $6,727
    Netherlands: $6,454
    Denmark: $6,236
    Argentina: $6,052
    Germany: $5,815
    France: $5,555
    Hapsburg lands, German provinces: $5,523
    Uruguay: $4,838
    Chile: $4,836
    Sweden: $4,581
    Norway: $4,515
    Ireland: $4,361
    Italy: $4,057
    Finland: $3,365
    Hapsburg lands, Hungary: $3,344
    Hapsburg lands, Bohemia / Moravia / Galicia: $3,341
    Spain: $3,067
    Panama: $2,927
    Congress Poland: $2,772
    Japan: $2,431
    Hong Kong: $2,354
    Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, Ottoman Empire: $2,311
    Tsarist Russia: $2,254
    Cuba: $2,120

  36. I believe it was Orwell that used to ask the communists, “where’s the omelet?”. The omelet was never ready.

  37. neo: “The Nazis killed a lot more than 5 million people.”

    OK fine. And we’ll never have anything approaching exact numbers, I’d guess. But the intended point was that Communism killed in numbers that leave Nazis a long distance behind.
    A long long distance behind.

  38. Authoritarians seem to come in two flavors, benevolent (bennies) and malevolent (malvoys).

    Malvoys want to rule the world. They are superior. Everybody else is inferior. Thus, they have the right to rule. You are a thing to be used for their glory. Cannon fodder at the front, slave labor in the rear, or annihilated in the death camps if inconvenient or rebellious.

    Malvoys want to be god, so they are especially hard on people, such as Jews, who worship a different one.

    Bennies, on the other hand, want to save the world, which means they also need to rule it. The motivation is completely different. Malvoys want to enslave you for their own good. Bennies want to enslave you for your own good.

    They possess superior wisdom and compassion. Anybody sufficiently woke will plainly see this and submit to the compassionate collective will. Those who resist are clearly evil and must be destroyed.

    The glorious quest for universal equity will require foot soldiers at the front and laborers at the rear. You should be grateful for the chance to serve the cause wherever you are needed. Those who are insufficiently motivated will need to be sent to gulags for retraining, all for their own good and the good of the cause.

    Those who worship gods other than the grand collective, such as Jews, are exclusive, not sufficiently equitable, and thus must be destroyed for the good of the whole.

    Nazis are Malvoys.

    Communists are Bennies.

    Slavery is evil. Your motivation for enslaving is irrelevant. That’s the most important lesson for us humans to learn.

  39. AesopFan…”(For a fine example of the effect, see AF447. The pilots had lots of seat hours, but hadn’t built the skills to be at the top of their trade, and when the computer suddenly gave up in despair they couldn’t cope.)”

    See my post Automation, Aviation, and Business and the links:

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/57060.html

    The link to the ‘Children of the Magenta Line’ video is broken, here’s a replacement:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs&t=13s

  40. *Sigh*

    When I referred to Germany as one of the most developed societies in the world in 1914, I was referring to its industry and technology. It was also a leader in science and scholarship. Consider the number of Nobel Prizes Germany received in the early 20th century. When I mentioned 1933 I was referring to all that, plus the techniques of modern media and corporate finance.

    I don’t think anyone in their right mind would consider Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or Argentina to be industrial powerhouses at that time, whatever their GNP derived from natural resources and agriculture. All four countries also had a sense of themselves as cultural and scientific backwaters. The world may have wished to be as rich as they were but it didn’t look to them as the cutting edge of historical development.

    The sense at the time was also that Britain was too heavily invested in textiles and old technologies while Germany was advancing into chemicals, electronics, and other new fields. Britain’s opinion leaders at the time often felt their country was stuck in the past, not leading the way into the future. That feeling may have been exaggerated, but it was widespread at the time, and after.

    Nor were the Scandinavian countries much of a match for Germany’s industrial power, and weight in the world. When we talk about advanced societies in the 1920s, the hum and movement and energy of urban life is a large part of our understanding. So is the application of new technologies. Sweden attracted some interest because of its social policy experiments in the 1930s, but it didn’t reflect the urban future in the way that Germany did.

    Now we live increasingly in a suburban or post-urban epoch. We may not think of urbanization and industrialization as the wave of the future, and can think more highly of countries once considered provincial backwaters, but it wasn’t like that a century ago.

  41. I have not commented here before, I’m not a regular reader.
    I wanted to say, first, that I am very impressed with the quality of the comments, which have given me some new and interesting sources both related to history and to our current strife. I look forward to following those links.

    I believe it was Richard Pipes’ Russian history book that cited Russia as having the fastest-growing economy in the world prior to WW I. I used that argument against some still-Communist Russian acquaintances in 1996 in Novosibirsk (the wife was called “Nellie”, which was a nickname for “Ninel”–Lenin spelled backwards). It is quite an effective argument against the supposed benefits of the Revolution.

    I have not seen noted above that Hitler and Stalin plotted together to invade Poland, with the USSR grabbing the eastern third of the country–which they still have. It all came apart, of course, when Hitler inevitably betrayed his erstwhile ally, and Stalin was naive enough not to believe that Hitler had actually invaded Russia.

  42. Doesn’t matter what your impressions are, M Smith, or what some nebulous ‘anyone’ would ‘consider’. They were not producing goods and services with the alacrity of these other countries.

  43. PA+Cat,

    Germany also had a sense that it’s moment in the sun had come and that Britain was the rival to take on and surpass. That’s something that traditional historians stress.

    Christopher Clark and others point out that British diplomats had been able to smooth things over with France and Russia, but they fell into alliance mode and didn’t try for a reconciliation or a rapprochement with Germany. The Foreign Office was Francophile. French was the foreign language they learned (or failed to learn very well), and France was the country they were most familiar with. Alfred Milner, a big player in British foreign affairs, had been born in Germany, as had his father, and for some reason he hated or distrusted the country with a passion.

    Clark points out some uncomfortable things. Germany’s building a railway to Baghdad was thought to be a threat to peace. Britain’s building a railway from Cairo to the Cape was thought to be legitimate and praiseworthy and not likely to provoke anyone. Britain’s interventions around the world were peacekeeping. Germany’s were saber rattling. The famous naval arms race that’s been blamed for increasing tension was already over some years before war broke out, and the resolution could have been used as the opening for détente.

    Clark has an interesting perspective, but he doesn’t look closely enough at the German side of things. Other historians believe Germany wouldn’t have been receptive to overtures even if Britain had made them.

  44. Eidolon…”The soviets killed off their intellectual class leaving serfs and criminals to run the country after their wars. The Germans didn’t do that.”

    They killed or drove off their country’s Jews, a population that included a lot of scientists and industrialists…in the WWI era and earlier, huge contributions were made by for example Walter Rathenau, founder of the German equivalent of GE, who had been responsible for Germany’s industrial mobilization during WWI….Albert Ballin, creator of a major shipping line (and a friend of the Kaiser)…Fritz Haber, co-creator of the Haber-Bosch process for fixation of nitrogen from the atmosphere.

    Not to mention a lot of other independent-thinking people.

  45. Whatever Canada’s or Australia’s “brisk and cheerful readiness” to provide goods and services in 1913 their production was only a drop in the bucket compared to Germany’s. Industrial production was the measure then, not standard of living. A variety of factors that can’t be reduced to a single statistic contributed to the feeling that a country was leading the way into the future.

    Perhaps I should have used the word “advanced,” rather than “developed” which has come to have a specialized meaning for many people. I don’t see how this affects my contention that Germany had more of a civil society left after Nazism collapsed than Russia did, even though the physical destruction of Germany was much greater. Nazism did take root in Germany, but when it was gone there was more to build on.

  46. niall ferguson, showed the interconnectedness of germany and france,

    looking at the long run, germany won on the economic and political front through the EU, what they could not achieve in two wars.

    I’ve often referenced burleighs sacred places, as a compendium of all the pandora’s box unleashed by the war, with the victor the UK still suffering considerably. but nowhere what Russia and Germany did,

  47. Seems to me that if the Kaiser hadn’t been so, um, enthusiastic about Germany being accorded its just desserts, IOW EMPIRE, by its fellow European states, and felt obligated to right the perceived wrong, the perceived insult (or maybe that should be, if he hadn’t had such an inferiority complex…or maybe…hadn’t been born with a slightly withered arm)…it seems quite clear that Germany would have become the pre-eminent power in Europe—and the world (for the reasons M. Smith alludes to above)—rivaling, perhaps even surpassing the US.

    Hold on, Germany, having lost two world wars DID become a world power in the second half of the 20th C….thanks in large part to the Soviet Union(!), whose expansionist rhetoric (and designs) made it imperative that the Marshall plan be implemented post-haste—but also thanks—in larger part—to the industriousness, and competitiveness, of the German people along with the superior class of politicians with which it was blessed post-WWII.

    Short version: Remove the (causes of) feelings of paranoia from Germany and you have the makings of a world power. Though that might be true of several—or more than several—other countries, as well.

    (Perhaps it’s “merely” a matter of that “old” superiority-contempt/obsequious-servile continuum….)

  48. Very interesting discussion! Thanks everyone. I lived in the Soviets until the age of 30, and I fully agree with much of what is written here. The USSR was an empire of evil and stupidity. Just like Nazi Germany. Two boots are a pair.

  49. perhaps, now the mcguffin in meyers seven percent solution (the book, not the film, is kaiser wilhelm is a jason voorhees type presence, about 20 years before the war trying to provoke the conflagration,

    maybe if bismarck had not pursued dirigiste policies, like those pushed by wagner and moller,* schlieffen gave form to the kaiser’s ambitions, the triple entente, and the mirroring of the alliance set the tripwires

    *they were von mises and hayeks original bete noires, before they ever heard of keynes,
    https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2022/10/calling-north-korea-ally-is-deft.html

  50. it seems quite clear that Germany would have become the pre-eminent power in Europe—and the world (for the reasons M. Smith alludes to above)—rivaling, perhaps even surpassing the US.

    Germany’s domestic product in 1913 did not exceed that of the British Isles and was about 40% that of the United States. Their principal ally in 1913 was the Hapsburg monarchy, less affluent and suffering wretched internal fissures.

    Hold on, Germany, having lost two world wars DID become a world power in the second half of the 20th C…

    It did not. It is an important country. It has not since 1917 projected power outside the European continent.

    Whatever Canada’s or Australia’s “brisk and cheerful readiness” to provide goods and services in 1913 their production was only a drop in the bucket compared to Germany’s. Industrial production was the measure then, not standard of living. A variety of factors that can’t be reduced to a single statistic contributed to the feeling that a country was leading the way into the future.

    Thanks for the issue of your imagination. I’ve no clue how you concluded that Australia and Canada were bereft of industry in 1913, much less that industry is the only consequential component of a country’s economy.

    Perhaps I should have used the word “advanced,”

    It wouldn’t help your argument. They’re not advanced if they’re not producing as much.

  51. I was reading vasily grossman’s life and fate, his attempt at a tolstoyan bildungsroman, it’s about events in the Great war, in the steppes, and those dragged into it, Grossman give’s the devil his due, in the voice or Commandant Liss, a German philosophe of Hegel and Kant, who coldly describes both Stalin and Hitler’s contributions to each other, who one character finds very annoying

  52. Yes, the dismissal of von Bismarck was the beginning of the countdown toward the inevitable…which even so, perhaps might have been avoided—perhaps…since no one wanted that war except Wilhelm II—who would not be held back (especially not by an old man whose time had come and gone)—and his advisors.

    (Curiously, no one wanted WWII either, except Hitler et al…. ; though Speer insisted that H. had not planned on the war starting as early as it did—but rather three or so years down the road, giving him even more time to prepare—which does make sense, given how the the West European powers essentially folded at the Rhine and the Saarland, and watched helplessly WRT to German rearmament, WRT Danzig and Austria, finally folding once again in Munich; OTOH Speer is, well, Speer….)

  53. Yes, the dismissal of von Bismarck was the beginning of the countdown toward the inevitable

    It was not inevitable. It was a product of political choice. You shouldn’t take IR theorists seriously.

  54. past was prologue, all of the past, germany held grudges back to 1870, the French back to Dreyfus, for different reasons, this is what kept them from more robustly responding to the German threat,

    the novels of Alan Furst, give form to the shadow war, in Poland France even the Balkans,

  55. Curiously, no one wanted WWII either, except Hitler et al…. ; though Speer insisted that H. had not planned on the war starting as early as it did—but rather three or so years down the road,

    If he’d wanted it three years down the road, he’d have held his cards in 1939. He was quite reckless.

  56. “…It has not since 1917 projected power outside the European continent…”

    !!

  57. really the bedu in north africa would be surprised at that, but there was certainly no clashes on the Indian sub continent, like turtledove had posited in that tale about ghandi and model,
    the plain words of mein kampf prefigured a great confrontation, as much to the east as the west, had he not been as provocative after pearl harbor, he might have been spared the us wrath,

  58. crossing the streams, indeed, of course in the former course, the vichy authorities in north africa, were not as lenient as major renault, they were more diligent in deferring to the colonel strassers of the world,

  59. “He was quite reckless.”

    Indeed. But his “recklessness” had ALWAYS paid off. (So why not WRT Poland?)

    Ergo, his “recklessness” was not perceived as “recklessness” but as MASTERY.

    Ultimately, it was to the allies’ advantage that this megalomaniac was firmly convinced of his own “mastery”…(the mastery of a gambler who finally, unexpectedly, inconceivably loses his fortune, his car, his house, his wife, his shirt…)

    But in the interim, as well as in the aftermath, there was a lot of misery and destruction….

    To be sure, Barbarossa was supposed to commence three to four weeks before it actually did, giving the Nazis an additional month of decent weather in Russia…which could well have resulted in…a different conclusion.

    We owe this conclusion to Mussolini/

  60. Yes, just another “Biden” F@#% You! to the American people, to the GOP—Rand Paul in particular—and the world. Oh, and of course, to Trump.

    (That oh-so-special Obama sense of humor kicking in once again… We are dealing with power-hungry maniacs possessed with the temperament, cruelty and vindictiveness of a twisted adolescent.)

    File under: “Someone’s gotta get those grants and steal—I mean, make—that money; might as well be me….”

  61. m smith. If you don’t lay out your definition, don’t give somebody a hard time about not getting it.
    The ag sector, in earlier days anyway, may be romanticized. But if any commenters ever–off-off chance, I know–visit Michigan’s Keewenaw Peninsula, be sure and take a tour of the Quincy Mine and how things were in those days. If you’re not in town, see “The Women of Copper Country” about the strike in 1913 and associated goings-on. Compared to that job–scary thing is it was the best anybody could get up there–farming was, at least in the daylight.
    This is part of “advanced” or “developed”.
    Farming profitably depends on soil and predictable climate, plus technique. See the Volga Germans.
    During the Depression, the government put out short films about one thing or another of import. One was why you should do contour plowing and not up and down hill. Our fourth grade teacher, when short of lesson plans, apparently figured the A/V lab was a fall back. Still, learned some things. Later learned that, after the contour plowing push, turbidity going past Chattanooga was greatly reduced. Which means….
    So dismissing the ag sector as not “developed” may be premature. Other things can be done well or poorly and that they’re done outdoors is not particularly relevant.

    As to Hitler being reckless, see his militarization of the Rhineland. He and his generals knew there was no chance should “a single French platoon” (probably need a battalion) resist. Their combat power was pitiful. The generals would have gone to Berlin and canned Hitler had there been resistance. But Hitler gambled–later mentioned how scared he’d been–and he won. Are you “reckless” if you take a long shot and win? He’d read the potential enemies. People developed faith in his vision and got a view of their potential enemies.

    See Sowell in Intellectuals and War covering this episode.

  62. Germany’s domestic product in 1913 did not exceed that of the British Isles

    Actually, it did and by a considerable amount. You are probably thinking of per capita GDP. Germany had a larger population than Britain so it might have been considered a poorer country, but its industrial output exceeded Britain’s and it was growing faster. Hence it was more likely to be regarded as a more advanced or more quickly advancing country than Britain.

    I’ve no clue how you concluded that Australia and Canada were bereft of industry in 1913, much less that industry is the only consequential component of a country’s economy.

    I did not say that they were bereft of industry. I do suspect they would have acknowledged themselves that they weren’t major players in the world economy. Industry was an important factor in why we won the two world wars. Left to themselves, Australia and Canada would have had a lot more trouble. And most Canadians, Australians, Argentines, and New Zealanders probably didn’t see their countries as leading powers at that time. They are probably lucky that they weren’t.

  63. This is a copy/paste from the above mentioned Wiki:

    The Soviet Story has been screened in the following film festivals:

    2008 Boston Film Festival – Boston, Massachusetts; received the “Mass Impact Award”
    2008 KinoLev Film Festival – Lviv, Ukraine
    2008 Black Nights Film Festival – Tallinn, Estonia
    2008 Arsenals Film Festival – Riga, Latvia
    2008 Promitey Film Festival – Tbilisi, Georgia
    2008 Baltic Film Festival – Berlin, Germany
    2009 Sedona International Film Festival – Sedona, Arizona
    2009 Mene Tekel festival – Prague, Czech Republic
    2009 Politicsonfilm Film Festival – Washington, D.C.
    2011 Free Minds Film Festival – Colorado Springs, Colorado
    2012 Free Minds Film Festival – Colorado Springs, Colorado
    In 2008, the president of Latvia, Valdis Zatlers awarded the director Edv?ns Šnore with the Order of the Three Stars. In 2009, the film was nominated for the biannual Latvian National Film Award Lielais Kristaps in the “Best Documentary” category.[36] In the same year, Šnore received the Estonian Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana for creating The Soviet Story.[37]

  64. Richard Aubrey, I’ve been there! It was one of a couple of mines that I visited. You’re right that it’s quite something. My tour guide for the above-ground part was a bit of a comedian, and not such a bad one, either, considering the circumstances.

    Quincy Mine is worth a visit indeed, but in addition to that, I would also recommend the Michigan Iron Industry Museum in Negaunee. (I know Quincy Mine was for copper, but the old iron mines are also intriguing. Between those two, one can get a good lay education about mining in general – at least I feel that I did.) There are also several other old mines – and it would also be fascinating to take the tour of the Eagle Mine nickel operation before it reaches the end of its lifecycle, which I think may not be very far off. (The Tilden mine doesn’t seem to give public tours, unfortunately.)

  65. Mkent, thank you for the thoughtful response to my comment! Great point about the communists’ use of race instead of class in the US. Your co-worker shows the great effectiveness of propaganda.

  66. Richard, as an aside, the correct spelling is the paradoxical ‘Keweenaw’.

    I second J’s appreciation of mkent’s comment about the substitution of race for class. That was a very interesting insight.

  67. @M Smith @Richard Aubrey

    I feel obliged to weigh in, because there’s a reason why Chris Clark in particular has been revealed as a classic case of the problems of getting to close to your subject sympathetically (more on that later) and Dennis Showalter’s assessment of German occupation policy (under the thrall of one of Hitler’s mentors and the John the Baptist of modern totalitarianism, Erich Ludendorff, in his capacity as Ober-Ost) is… to put it mildly, VERY naive.

    RE: Richard Aubrey

    There was some over-the-top propaganda in WWI which turned out not to be true.

    True enough, though close examination today shows it was nowhere near as such as it has often be portrayed (in large part due to a campaign of deliberate whitewashing and deceit by the post-war German governments, mustered under the Foreign Ministry’s War Guilt Department/Kriegsschuldreferat). The fundamental factuality of the Rape of Belgium is no longer seriously disputed, nor is the fact that part of the reason for such over-the-top propaganda was the extremely draconian nature of German censorship (to the point where witnesses to the Bryce Commission had to testify anonymously for fear of being murdered by the occupying German Army, and some were anyway) and its poor conduct. Likewise the fact that in many ways reports on it often underplayed the true extent of the damage, focusing on the massacres and town burnings of 1914 and not the less overtly bloody but more cold-blooded use of Belgians (and other Allied civilians) as slave labor in the Reich and the “Flemish Policy” designed to destroy any concept of a Belgian nation.

    And this is completely setting aside atrocities elsewhere, such as German government support for the genocides of its allies (the Ottoman Turkish CUP in its territory, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria in Serbia, etc) and a truly dismal occupation policy in the East.

    So when the news of Japanese atrocities started coming out of China, they may have been discounted.

    Comes the Rape of Nanking. Bad as advertised but the difference was that there was a semi-autonomous foreign enclave. Huge numbers of western witnesses. Letters, diaries, pictures. Tried to help as they could. No longer any question.

    This factored in to some degree, though reports came in fairly heavily.

    What is really weird is that the Japanese got world wide adulation for their treatment of the Russian POW in the Russo-Japanese War. Delegations were sent to see how the medical issues were handled. What happened? Sort of an attempt, more or less, in the orientation film for occupation troops, “Our Job in Japan”. On youtube.

    Well, one part of it is that that was Japanese treatment of troops from a country that was viewed as “European” or “Western” or “White”, at least to some degree. Japanese treatment of “other Asians” such as in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5 and dissidents in Korea was- while nowhere NEARLY as bad as what would happen a generation or two later in the 1930s and 1940s- much less praiseworthy and more brutal.

    But ultimately what happened is that Japan- for lack of a better term- went crazy. Japan’s government had embraced Western-based concepts like international laws about the treatment of POWs on the basis that it could use them to get ahead and advance Japanese interests and power. After 1919 and particularly the 1920s this seemed to be failing (with Japan being forced to do a humiliating about-face from a controlling treaty with China and ultimately having to evacuate Shandong and the Russian Far East, as well as the “humiliation” of the Washington Naval Treaty that- in spite of being one of the greatest diplomatic victories in Japanese history- was viewed as a humiliation because Japan was not given open parity with the US and UK in terms of warship tonnage).

    This led to a backlash against the sort of constitutional, quasi-classical-liberal government that was emerging as well as the more traditionalist, feudal oligarchy. Which resulted in the explosive growth of communism and a nationalist, totalitarian form of socialism that slowly broke the foundations of Japanese legality and helped push the country into a war in China. It’s hard to explain and I am giving a REALLY short shrift here, but you saw a kind of unintentional “Good Cop/Bad Cop” approach, with the Shinto Socialists outside of the government (like Sakurai and Ikki) arguing for revolutionary action to overthrow the government in a coup and assorted assassinations in favor of creating an odd, theocratic socialist government under the divine Tenno (something that Hirohito himself was not so fond of).

    The government’s powers that be were understandably alarmed when members of their ranks started getting killed, so they fell back on the “Good Cop” of the Shinto Socialists INSIDE the government; somewhat less revolutionary radicals like Tojo (who sadly enough was a MODERATE by the standards of 1940 Japan), who for various reasons- largely petty rivalries- would crush the likes of Sakurai and the Kodoha, but at the same time would use this power to implement their own vision for Japan. Which, unsurprisingly, turned out to be much more similar to their rivals than their erstwhile allies or most people would have wanted.

    Showalter, in “Tannenberg” about the first big fight in the eastern front in WW I details the extremely, and not just by contrast, civilized behavior of German forces in Russia.

    Yeah, this is at best a very optimistic and short-sighted view of the conflict. Especially when you realize that one of the masters of German policy in the East almost from the start of the war was Erich Ludendorff, who would work feverishly to construct the prototypical modern totalitarian regime in the areas of the East he occupied.

    While this might- MIGHT- have been true initially, within a few months it was outpaced by the German military machine and the desire to keep the Reich proper fed even if it meant squeezing the occupied territories- and their people- dry. In particular there was a sort of bitter dispute between “Radicals” like Ludendorff and Bethmann-Hollwig (who favored such things as ethnically cleansing all Poles from a “Polish Border Strip” that grew steadily larger as the war dragged on) and “moderates” such as Governor of occupied Poland von Beseler, who wished to try and woo the Polacks in an attempt to create a more-or-less stable Polish puppet state on the territory conquered from Russia.

    Though this was heavily undermined by, well… The Reality of German occupation policies, especially in the East (which sadly have really not received nearly the attention they deserve).

    https://networks.h-net.org/node/9669/reviews/2005647/biskupska-blobaum-minor-apocalypse-warsaw-during-first-world-war-and

    https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/occupation_during_the_war

    In particular I’d suggest David Hamlin and Isabel V. Hull for discussing WWI German and Central Powers occupation policies, which while never quite Axis-or-Soviet-in-WWII Tier Bad, were often QUITE bad and undergirded by slave labor and “requisitions” or outright looting under threat of force.

    For the savagery of the Eastern Front in WW II, see “Zhukov’s Secret Defeat”.

    Indeed, and well worth keeping in mind.

    RE: M Smith.

    Germany also had a sense that it’s moment in the sun had come and that Britain was the rival to take on and surpass. That’s something that traditional historians stress.

    And rightfully so, since it does so much to explain what happened and how, ranging from Wilhelm II’s personal Anglophobia to the sort of paranoid stew that dominated much of the German military and aristocratic leadership’s views on politics and economics.

    Christopher Clark and others point out that British diplomats had been able to smooth things over with France and Russia, but they fell into alliance mode and didn’t try for a reconciliation or a rapprochement with Germany.

    In this much, Christopher Clark is simply wrong, if not aggressively dishonest. The British Foreign Office tried regularly to reach reconciliation or rapprochement with Germany, and indeed until the late Victorian period favored an engagement with a supposedly united, Prussian-led, “Classical Liberal” Germany over one with France. Which is why we see a host of things such as British distancing from the French alliance through the 1850s to the 1880s, the “Splendid Isolation”, and regular attempts to mediate between the major continental powers.

    The difference is pretty simple, however. After 1870 public support- and even elite opinion- increasingly distrusted Prussian leadership (especially after the Ems Dispatch fiasco) and this was undercut by the actions of Germany’s own leadership, and in particular the industrial and naval conflicts.

    The Foreign Office was Francophile. French was the foreign language they learned (or failed to learn very well), and France was the country they were most familiar with.

    This is true, and also unsurprising; French influence in Britain- to one degree or another- was a favor for about a millennia and a half by the time, if not even longer. Moreover, a France that had been dedicated to avoiding direct conflict with Britain (as had been the case since AT LEAST the Fashoda Crisis’s ending and possibly since Napoleon III) and that was now embittered towards Germany looked to be a much more trustworthy partner than a bellicose, untrustworthy, and increasingly aggressive Germany that sparked a number of continental wars in the 19th century and came close to doing a number more (see: 1875).

    Alfred Milner, a big player in British foreign affairs, had been born in Germany, as had his father, and for some reason he hated or distrusted the country with a passion.

    It’s at this point that I note a few things.

    Firstly: Milner grew up in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War and in particular the 1875 “War is in sight” Crisis, which was quite obviously provoked by Bismarck in an attempt at humiliating France but ended with the French refusing to take the bait as they had at Ems and the Russians threatening to invade if Germany did so.

    Secondly: Milner’s formative years in his public career were dominated by South Africa, and particularly the conflict over the Boer Republics and British imperial hunger for them, in which they faced vast German support.

    Thirdly: Milner (though hardly an “ally” or a tolerant man) also played a major role in South Africa dealing with the humanitarian fallout of the Herero and Nama Genocides that played out in German Southwest Africa, sending thousands of emaciated refugees into Union of SA territory.

    Clark points out some uncomfortable things. Germany’s building a railway to Baghdad was thought to be a threat to peace. Britain’s building a railway from Cairo to the Cape was thought to be legitimate and praiseworthy and not likely to provoke anyone.

    Which is a fair point, and points to hypocrisy among the great powers.

    Britain’s interventions around the world were peacekeeping. Germany’s were saber rattling.

    This is AT BEST misleading.

    Firstly: British and German interventions actually about peacekeeping were generally conducted in a similar light. NOT SURPRISINGLY, since they were often carried out jointly, such as the German-British-Italian coalition against Venezuela’s dictator in 1902-03 (dragging in the US) or the Boxer War in China (though even here the depths of German brutality- and particularly the justly infamous Hun Speech) were noted.

    Secondly: German “interventions” tended to be geared towards something very different than peacekeeping even by the low standards of 19th and early 20th century Imperial politics. The Samoa Crises I’d argue nearly sparked a world war due to a complicated series of civil wars in Samoa that saw an Amero-British union against Germany and assorted fillibustering. Germany went from trying to instigate a war with Spain to claim the Caroline Islands to supporting Spain in its wars to keep Cuba in the 1880s and later fight the US in 1898 (after which it purchased the remaining colonies). And this is before we talk about the “Blank Cheque” and so forth.

    The famous naval arms race that’s been blamed for increasing tension was already over some years before war broke out

    NOT really. That was “a little over a year.”

    and the resolution could have been used as the opening for détente.

    It was. It just generally wasn’t exploited, especially since soon after the Balkan Wars exploded, reopening the old wounds there and committing the Germans to support a war of aggression by the Habsburgs with the intent of dismembering Serbia in the near future.

    Clark has an interesting perspective, but he doesn’t look closely enough at the German side of things. Other historians believe Germany wouldn’t have been receptive to overtures even if Britain had made them.

    Indeed, that is putting it mildly.

    There’s a reason why Chris Clark is held to be a Central Powers apologist, and for good reason. Vojinovic’s review of “The Sleepwalkers” is a very sharp dissection of the man. In particular it boggles the mind that he cites Conrad von Hoetzendorff’s diary at various points, but “conveniently” ignores the umpteen times he argues for an offensive or “pre-emptive” war- against Serbia, against Italy, against Russia, against a whole host of countries.

    That strikes me as being mind-bogglingly incompetent, mind-bogglingly dishonest, or both. It also ignores the series of Prussian-sparked War Scares that dominated Western European politics between the 1870s and 1914, compounded by Wilhelm’s unwise withdrawal from the League of Three Emperors. He seems to act as if German policy was made in reaction to Entente actions while ignoring that the formation of the Entente was in direct response to German actions (as well as the attempts to isolate its identified strategic enemies to defeat them).

    I’m a bit leery of some of Vojinovic’s conclusions- such as the emphasis on the 1912 War Council- but it is much closer to the truth than the alternative. I do think it becomes very clear that- facing the risks of encirclement and economic and political “subversion” from the Anglo-French (supposedly backed by a perfidious, capitalistic, polygot America*) in the West and a modernizing Russia financed by the West, the Germans and Austro-Hungarians made a number of economic and political mistakes that helped undermine their long term capability, and which coupled with their mindsets and prior military victories led them to start getting more and more radical in searching for a pretext for an offensive war to cut their way out of an encirclement.

  68. Turtler.
    I can’t say enough about Showalter. Before he passed, he was kind enough to reply to some of my questions.
    But. His view of German military culture at the troop level seems to have come from the manufacturer’s brochure, prior to either world war.
    He was not a “germanophile” and thought the famed lean staffing at regiment and up led to lots of trouble under stress. Still, he seemed to have left out various items which you relate.
    In his comparison of Rommel and Patton, among other things he had some extremely positive things to say about Swabians….? And he had Rommel and his guys humping water-cooled MG up and down the Alps. Not related to Ernie Pyle’s ageless description of the doggies slogging past in North Africa. Having humped my share of dead weight, I was curious.
    “Kursk” was terrific and you had to think the German motor pool sergeants had a good supply of benzedrine.

    As to debunked WW I propaganda, debunking can be false and still have the effect of skepticism next time around.

    What is interesting in all of the Germans’ enterprises is the fact that they started out behind and knew it. What would it cost them to stay home? I’ve notified Next of Kin. To think of millions and millions of those happening in the country that started it and started it from a few yards short of the start line. I guess Manchester’s view of “The Aryan” in his prefix and suffix to “The Arms of Krupp” has something to it.

    Phillip Seils: The thing about the Quincy mine is what a miserable, rotten job it was. My granddaughters did not enjoy it but it was educational nonetheless.

    Fayette, a repro of a steel smelting operation on the Garden Peninsula across from Escanaba, is really interesting.

  69. Actually, it did and by a considerable amount.

    No, it did not.

    I did not say that they were bereft of industry.

    Yes you did.

  70. “if any commenters ever–off-off chance, I know–visit Michigan’s Keewenaw Peninsula, be sure and take a tour of the Quincy Mine and how things were in those days”

    I was there this summer … wanted to take the tour but it was not open at the time I was free.
    Not intending to nit pick but for anyone who wants to look it up: Keweenaw

  71. Jimnorcal. I spelled it the way it’s pronounced in Michigan. I suspect that most people in other states who’ve never heard it could get it right.

  72. @Gordon Scott

    There is a fair amount of evidence that the Japanese A-bomb program was not limited to a few scientists and their chalkboards.

    True, though functionally it was not much better than that. Less than a million dollars of funding and marginal amounts of fissionable material spread out between something like three to six different nuclear weapon programs divided between IJA and IJN loyalties, all ensuring none of them would really have enough to make real headway.

    Rather, they had an extensive industrial program in the very north of Korea,

    This much is true, but said industrial program was very much non-nuclear in nature.

    and actually succeeded in testing a bomb offshore a day or so after Hiroshima.

    How did they hide it from the American occupiers? The plant was captured by the Russians, who didn’t want the U. S. to know they had it. The Japanese who worked on the program were told to keep their mouths shut, for the obvious reason that if Japan had a bomb, they would have used it ruthlessly. Better to act dumb and be the victim.
    Had we had some idea we could have done testing in the area of the Korean industrial area before the Chinese invasion.

    And here is where we get out from the realm of overstated reality into outright myth. Pretty much all of this is dependent on a single news article which was reliant on the anonymous testimony of a Japanese officer who was supposedly involved in security for this nuclear program but was never identified (sound familiar?).

    This paper is a pretty good overview of the issue and how it doesn’t add up, start inc. with how the supposed site for this at Hungnam doesn’t fit the characteristics we know for nuclear research at the time, and how we identified the Japanese VIPs captured on site and how they were sent to menial labor gulags.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233243478_Hungnam_and_the_Japanese_atomic_bomb_Recent_historiography_of_a_postwar_Myth

  73. “Nobody can be “against” the Just city. This is among the reasons people feel entitled to kill people who get in the way of it.”

    I find no difference between this statement and the actions of all the liberals I know since the BLM riots/pandemic. Every single last one of the lot.

  74. I have listened to a great number of audiobooks this year, including economics and history. I am surprised to see that no one has yet mentioned “The Wages of Destruction” by Adam Tooze, which is an economic history of the Third Reich. I had not realized just how agrarian Germany was in the lead-up to Naziism, nor how dependent they were on foreign imports for fuel, food, and materiel. The blitzkrieg method was intended to grasp control of foreign resources, which were extracted and sent to Germany’s population (leaving the surviving enslaved people to starvation). Hitler also viewed the U.S. as the major economic and military threat to Germany, which motivated him to attempt to seize Europe before the U.S. could get involved.

    “Defying Hitler” (Haffner), “A Woman in Berlin” (Anonymous), and “Aftermath” (Jähner) give valuable insight into German culture and mentality. It is striking to learn from three different Germans just how happy Germans are to follow orders and their pride in following them *well*. Haffner’s book could be describing events in our own country since 2020, which is not very encouraging.

  75. OKBecky, I read “Defying Hitler” (Haffner) last year. The experiences that Haffner recorded that can be seen played out in our own time was very depressing.

  76. Fantastic book, eye opening would be a remark if hadn’t already read all of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s trilogy Gulag Archipelago. But it adds to that with others work on Stalin.

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