I think this is the proper way to handle dissenting views. It appears JD Vance is going on Tucker Carlson. Push back against bad ideas.

I would agree were it not for the extremely fawning and uncritical approach Tucker took, as well as what seems like him being just out of his depth. I can understand the value of not ambushing your guests or trying to “win” over them, and also that an interview is not an endorsement. But coming to the table ignorant and credulous is not the right way to handle dissenting views, or I’d argue any views.

Tucker has good guests with valuable information. He has had some guests pushing narratives/false history. Challenge Tucker to have guests to counter these alt history “historians”. That would do much to determine where Tucker is in his worldview.

We are awash in alt history/revisionism of all kinds. Tucker’s megaphone is bigger than most.

Agreed, but I do think that Tucker should challenge any guest substantially, even those I agree with. And his praise of Cooper was both unwarranted and an implicit slap in the face of everyone better deserving of it, including VDH and others.

Turtler, I disagree with much of what you wrote but that is a topic for another day. I am very disappointed with Tucker right now and see little value to following him more.

Fair enough, and perhaps we will talk that other day. I think Tucker has some benefit in cases such as helping expose the Left in domestic politics, but this greatly destroyed his credibility for me. And not just on international affairs. Cooper is a shameless liar and has admitted to lying on social media (on top of not being that competent a researcher). Tucker handled him very badly and credulously, and I think that undermines whatever value bringing him on might have had.

But on the subject of Ed VII, the collapse in Anglo-German relations, and so on, I think an analysis of proto-totalitarian and profoundly anti-British ideology and theory (and their influence on policy) help torpedo the idea that it was Britain that alienated Germany, and specifically after Ed’s ascension to the throne.

https://francis-press.com/uploads/papers/PTy3zhamYr0XpBfv1QMmLX8ks7C1C2Hl7cFVbFuN.pdf

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24402404

==
A. They’re all dead, Turtler,

So you do understand blunt, intentionally unironic answers. Good, so do I.

so you and I are not telling them anything.

I might disagree on spiritual and religious grounds, but that is another subject.

==
B. I tend to doubt if you tally up the suffering during the 1st World War that the balance works out quite the way you suppose, but it’s not a subject with which I am familiar.
==

Well kudos for acknowledging the limitations, as I try to. But suffice it to say many people are not familiar with the balance of WWI in general, and particularly the horror show that happened behind the lines (of much of the language I have seen written on the Somme or portrayed about the bloodshed of the 1916 campaign, I’ve seen the First Day and its horrors portrayed – and for good reason – but not the last days, when the ravaged but triumphant Allied troops crossed over their trenches and saw a hellscape of poisoned wells, burnt villages, and the rotting carcasses of civilians who would not agree to be deported to Germany as Ludendorff directed the army to kill and destroy everything on the way out; the movie 1917 is pretty much the only thing that portrays Operation Alberich and while admirable it doesn’t do it justice. And that wasn’t even the worst).

But the magnitude of the suffering and it is fairly well documented if you know where to look.

https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/forced-labour/

https://www.americanheritage.com/belgians-deported-slave-labor-camps

And the sad thing is that it is most readily observable among those who were outright deported from their homes to work in Central and Eastern Europe for the Central Powers; reliable records for the number of those forced to work in place are hard to find and analysis of them even harder.

C. You want revenge for peculiar sorts of violence by German and Hapsburg troops, insist they disgorge the flag rank officers responsible and the ministers to whom they reported.

I agree, and I believe that should have been done more vigorously and that it was not is one of the great shames of world history. What passed for pursuit is even worse, given how the trials were often given over to the civilian governments and judiciaries of the former Central Powers, who unsurprisingly had incentive to be generous with sentencing and charges (indeed, the “Only Following Orders” defense was so widely used in part because it was viewed as an almost absolute defense, with acknowledged war crimes being pardoned so long as the defendants could prove – and in the case of some like Stenner even allege – that they had been issued by “legitimate” authority).

But while the leadership for these regimes deserved to pay most of all, as in many if not most cases they not only were party to the crimes but acted with mens rea (as we now know from things such as the systematic burning of transport records and mortality rates in places like the Rhineland), it was frankly nowhere near enough.

I do not like beating on the “Good German” or “Average German” or their counterparts elsewhere too much. Especially since they were regularly lied to, exploited, and pushed to struggle in a great hardship by their own leaders. However, the fact remains that the citizenry of the Central Powers benefitted greatly and materially from the criminal activities of their own government, including large scale looting and redistribution of goods (sometimes confiscated legally as per the rules of war, increasingly not). As bad as the Turnip Winter was (and it WAS very bad) it was paltry compared to what would have happened had the OHL not been able to feed its people using resources taken at bayonet point and often without compensation from places like Picardy, Serbia, and especially Romania, as well as what those regions actually suffered. Those who vilify any concept of trickle down economics (beyond clearly not studying it enough in general) have nothing to say about the major inflows that came from wartime bonuses paid by companies like Fokker to their people, or by the government itself in compensation for gold confiscations. And sadly Germany was not even the most egregious offender of it, given our friends and allies Turkey and how Western Anatolia is largely the result of a massive, genocidal land grab and redistribution.

I am not egotistical enough to think any indemnity could bring the dead back to life, or that it would “make whole” those that survived. Nor do I favor reparations without end long past the judgement of the last perpetrator alongside the last victim before the gates of heaven. But neither did the Allies. They did, however, believe that Austrian, Hungarian, German, Bulgarian, and Turkish society had lived high off of ill-gotten gains on a magnitude that not even confiscating everyone with a form of address more laudatory than Freiherr and a rank above that of Major could do.

They also believed that those societies and their governments can and should pay back damages for what had been done to their victims, especially since this was not 200 years after the abolition of slavery but in the immediate aftermath, when many former slaves were heading back home and trying to rebuild their lives (and often dependent on government aid, much as we may dislike it, such as the French government’s funds for the dispossessed citoyens).

I find it hard to disagree with them.

Notably, they also did not expect miracles. They based the broad contours of the reparations (both the “On Paper/For Public Consumption” ones in the Treaty and the actual ones they planned to reduce to) off of successful repayment plans, such as those by France in response to the defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. And while it was expected and hoped it would take longer for Germany to get out of that hole than it did France, it did not expect it to take nearly as long as it did. It did not reckon on the newly constituted German government deciding to shaft both their people and their victims by continuing to run the money printers in the Imperial fashion without imperial resources to support the bills, did not expect them to pause repayments at times, did not count on economic lunacy from our fellow Americans to plunge the world into a Depression that would upset the borderline house of cards contingency payment plans made by renegotiating the indemnities, and did not count on Hitler to declare them null.

And I think that the public in the Central Powers’ countries by and large supported these policies says a great deal about public responsibility. As much as I may disdain the Republican governments in Germany between the wars, they were the only democratic government to emerge from the defeated powers and they had broad public participation, and while the government did not always bend to the will of the public (and the “Deep State” in the bureaucracy and military even less) on reparations they largely did.

The other former Central Powers almost uniformly adopted one dictatorship or another, but not all shafted their creditors, and even there you had significant anti-treaty leeway (where in Turkey they basically took over the country and purged it).

==
D. There is no such thing as international law and nothing is ever illegal in politics among nations.

Sophist word games. I have a dim opinion of international law in general and an even dimmer opinion of its enforceability and worth in a world where Israel is demonized for allegedly using hunger as a weapon but the PA can applaud the murder of Israeli children, but the fact is that nations can and do create or refine it as much as they can break it. You may wish to argue that is not “International Law” and acts condemned by it such as the use of asphyxiating gas are not “Illegal” but the fact remains is that – cynically or not, sincerely or not – the signatory powers agree that it is (even if you wish to argue it is just pretending).

And that has importance. Especially when Wilhelm II issues orders using his office as Kaiser and Supreme Warlord that Germany shall not even bother withdrawing from the Hague Conventions, it will simply violate their agreed upon strictures.

International Law and perhaps laws made by humans in general may be a Calvinball, but there are those that play it more horribly and in bad faith than others.

There is international convention. There are things that are imprudent or nefarious.

And there is vast overlap between those, and much though not all of that which is agreed to among nations as “International Law”, whether or not you wish to believe it is real.

==
E. The name of the game should have been to establish a satisfactory post-war equilibrium and contain the efflorescence of revanchist sentiment in the former Central Powers.

Agreed, as well as deal with the spread of Communism and Islamist lunacy (largely in the form of the Wahhabis), preferably by snuffing them out. That more or less worked in the latter case, not so much for the former. And to their credit the Allies tried to get a satisfactory equilibrium, but life and reality get in the way of well laid plans.

==
F. Counter-factual speculation is generally idle.

This is a blog post, so a lot is “generally idle.”

But the ability to examine counter-factual and consider them is a very valuable and applicable skill, even if not all are equally useful.

However, you can see what the Allies did after the war did not work out for them. That’s not the only vector operating. Another was poor economic policy-making by most of the world’s more affluent countries, Germany in particular.

Agreed, though in large part to try and help feed the beast that was a war machine.

Indubitably a vector, but so many other actors and so much else going on in the countries involved.

Agreed.

The Communist Party was a minor force in Italy in 1922.

Minor electorally, not so minor in the streets or propaganda. And moreover it could and did recruit or consider alliances with other groups, such as various camps of proto-Fascists (Lenin’s was one of the few governments to recognize the “Regency” of D’Annunzio in Fiume/Rijeka) and more “mainstream” and powerful Italian Socialist Parties. And they had a violent effect far beyond their electoral numbers, but the bigger problem was the violence among the more mainstream socialists and nationalists.

It was much more consequential in Germany (encompassing about 12% of the electorate), but the Nazi Party did not begin to prosper until the economic crisis in 1929, a decade after the Communist Party emerged.

Agreed, though this is partially because of how the Communists got pounded so hard in the immediate aftermath of WWI and continued engaging in incompetent terrorism and attempted coups to an even greater and more egregious degree than the old Imperial Absolutists, but did not get off as easily as they did.

The reaction to Bolshevism in Spain was a reaction to a whole mess of cultural, social, and political tendencies and those reacting were a broad spectrum of which the Falange may have been the least important.

Agreed. And it is worth noting that “Conventional” Fascism and Bolshevism were among the least important ideologies in Spain before 1936, that the cycles of extreme anti-clerical and anti-religious “Republican Leftism”, the violent and creepily statist terrorism of the Anarcho-Syndicalists, and the oppression and anti-democratic tendencies of the various right wing parties helped feed into each other and made themselves far more important than their totalitarian sponsors were.

It was largely the outbreak of civil war and the need to curry support (which Italy and Germany could give in Spades, the Soviets and a radical anti-Clerical Mexico provided less spectacularly but still in earnest, and nobody else was as enthusiastic about) that helped catalyze the Republican Government’s descent into a crypto-Soviet dictatorship and helped turn the Falange into the only mass movement that could govern a Nationalist Spain, even if Franco had to defang and purge it of much of its actual identity.

Also the lines of affinity and relations aren’t always what we’d expect looking back. Jose Antonio spent much of his ill-begotten political life trying to form an alliance with Azana, as he believed Azana was the only leader that could bring a revolutionary Fascism to Spain.

Hungary’s interwar regime was a reaction to Bolshevism. The Hungarian right had unappealing features, but it was not until around 1935 that a specifically fascist party emerged.

Agreed, and it is worth noting that Horthy- while one of Nazi Germany’s longest standing allies – generally repressed the domestic Fascists and Nazis as threats to his power and going further than even he would. Ultimately that backfired because he failed to destroy them and they were there when Hitler decided to remove the Kingdom without a King in favor of something more pliant.

The preference cascade in favor of fascism in the Bohemia-Moravia borderlands seems to have owed more to German chauvinism than a reaction to Bolshevism. Ditto Nazi sentiment in Austria ca. 1938.

Agreed, though I’d also note that Austria had its own homegrown Fascist regime that was staunchly against integration with Germany (and indeed had the odd case of Hitler’s Nazis supporting Austrian Social Democrats in their conspiracies against the Fatherland Front dictatorship backed by Fascist Italy due to a greater Pan-German sentiment).

Oh, I forgot, lifetime appointments with academic freedom. Darn. Universities, hosting nonsense about “mein Klassenkampf” and by not speaking out against Marxist professors, endorse Marxism.

Somehow the status quo always protects the hard left.

(…And then there’s John—“Imagine”?…or should that be “Mind Games”?—Brennan…)

After that experience you may not know who to trust so best read Beyond Enkription, the first novel in The Burlington Files series. It’s a noir fact based spy thriller that may shock you. What is interesting is that this book is apparently mandatory reading in some countries’ intelligence agencies’ induction programs. Why? Maybe because the book is not only realistic but has been heralded by those who should know as “being up there with My Silent War by Kim Philby and No Other Choice by George Blake”. It is an enthralling read as long as you don’t expect fictional agents like Ian Fleming’s incredible 007 to save the world or John le Carré’s couch potato yet illustrious Smiley to send you to sleep with his delicate diction, sophisticated syntax and placid plots!

See https://theburlingtonfiles.org/news_2023_06.07.php and https://theburlingtonfiles.org/news_2022.10.31.php and
https://theburlingtonfiles.org/news_2024.08.31.php.