Pearl Harbor Day is tomorrow
[NOTE: This is a revised and expanded edition of a post first published in 2006.]
Eighty-four years ago tomorrow, Pearl Harbor was attacked.
That’s long enough ago that only a vanishing few remember the day and its aftermath with any clarity. Many generations – including my own tiresome one, the baby boomers – have come up since then, and the world has indeed changed.
Prior to 9/11, the Pearl Harbor attack of December 7, 1941 was the closest thing America had to 9/11. The differences between the two are profound, however: at Pearl Harbor we knew the culprit. It was clearly and unequivocally an act of war by the nation of Japan, which was already at war in the Pacific.
But it was, like 9/11, a sneak attack that killed roughly the same number of Americans – in the case of Pearl Harbor mostly (although not exclusively) those in the armed forces. And the Pearl Harbor attack, in the reported (but disputed) words of Japanese Admiral Yamamoto, awakened the “sleeping giant” of the US and filled it with a “terrible resolve.”
In the case of Pearl Harbor, that resolve lasted the duration of the war, an all-out conflagration that required far more sacrifice of the US (and the world) in money, comfort, and the all-important cost of human lives. The scale of such a loss is not even remotely comparable to that of our present conflicts. In addition, the first years of World War II featured some losses and much peril. It was a different world, however, and failure was not considered an option.
Yes, mistakes were made in World War II. Mistakes always will be made in war. The tactics and even the strategies of World War II don’t fit today’s wars. But tactics and strategies aren’t the issue – although they are extremely important. The overarching issue is will. Without that, a war cannot be won. And, in that respect as in many others, current generations don’t compare to the one known as “The Greatest Generation.”
For some contrast, go back to FDR’s “Day of Infamy” speech (a misquote, it turns out: he actually said “date which will live in infamy”). Following are some of the less famous quotes from the speech; I have selected them because they speak to the question of will. FDR was assisted in mustering that will by the relative clarity of the enemy and its intent in World War II. But it still seems to me, on reading these words, that such unequivocal determination could not be summoned today in the US, even if given the exact circumstances of the infamous attack of December 7, 1941. It may, however, be present in Israel at the moment, but I’m not completely sure:
…No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces – with the unbounding determination of our people – we will gain the inevitable triumph – so help us God.
Neither Woodrow Wilson nor FDR wanted us in the world wars. But I believe the contrast between our involvement and success in the two wars is stark. We were very late and haphazard in entering WWI. FDR understood the huge downside of that time, and was preparing even before he made the resolute decision to join the Allies. The book Freedom’s Forge is a “must read” for anyone interested in WWII.
FDR had William Knudsen on board and in the White House to lead the US war industries. But top aids like Harry Hopkins wouldn’t tolerate any dirty capitalists like Knudsen in the White House. Rather than give up on Knudsen, FDR wisely got him installed in the Pentagon as a general instead.
The German navy and U-boats had great early successes sinking US merchant vessels, but later it was said that when Hitler was advised of the rate at which the US was building new Liberty ships, he responded, “We have lost the war.” (I hope that’s not just a fictionalized bit of drama, although it could be.)
I had watched most or all of a multi-part documentary entitled something like, “The Mega Weapons of Nazi Germany” which was fascinating. But one of the interesting things was that while the manufacturing quality was generally very high, the rate of production and efficiency wasn’t all that great. The great Tiger tank was a huge and heavy thing that was difficult to make, so not that many were made. Even other less stupendous items weren’t being made that quickly. The Nazis apparently made much use of starving Jewish slave labor too.
Having once been the tip of the spear..those of us out front and in support find the authenticity of those who would commit us in question..the will to complete the mission is much diluted with the shifting opinion polls..which do little service on the side of some crap hole of a weak composition. Now I wish I could vent the un filtered version.
Tiger’s broken down a lot, and were very high maintenance.
Next week I am going to New Orleans to visit the WWII museum. Even though it will be just after Dec 7, I will wear my Dad’s Pearl Harbor Survivors “Piss Cutter”.
I had the notion for a short story, for one of the Luna City books – about how Pearl Harbor impacted one family. I drew on some memories of having visited Pearl Harbor, and a brief summer vacation in the Hawaiian Islands – and something my mother said one – about the aftermath of her older brother’s death late in 1943. He had already sent home money for family Christmas presents. And that wartime Christmas was a miserable one – from which I don’t believe her family ever quite recovered.
https://celiahayes.com/archives/3542
““The Japanese have dropped bombs on the harbor, and our bases in Hawaii,” Papi said. “The war has begun, whether we wish it or no.”
“What of Manolo?” Mama demanded, her hands to her mouth in shock and horror. “Where is he? Is he safe?”
“I have no idea,” Papi replied, his eyes shadowed with fear. Adi said nothing. She was sixteen now, almost grown. She met Papi’s gaze with a silent nod of understanding.
Two days later a card came in the mail, from Manolo – on which Mama fell on with tears of joy. “You see!” she exclaimed. “He is safe – this letter is from him! All will be well, you will see!”
“Mama, the letter is postmarked the week before last,” Adi said, to Mama’s unheeding ears. A week later, a parcel bound in brown paper arrived, addressed in Manolo’s handwriting.
“Christmas presents!” Mama exclaimed, “From Manolo, of course. You see, he is safe – it is only rumors that he is missing, that telegram was mistaken.”
That Christmas and many Christmases afterwards were not happy occasions for Adi’s family – they were not happy until Adi married and had children of her own, to bury the memory of that first wartime Christmas.”
Any civilians killed on Dec 7 were just incidental. They weren’t the targets. Not that Japan was above doing that (as they showed many times); it just didn’t apply in that raid. What was more important was the fact our carriers were missing.
Incidentally, my father absolutely hated the term “The Greatest Generation”. And he was one of them. But it got him swearing when he heard it.
I asked one of my wife’s uncles, who was at Pearl (in the Army) what happened during the attack. He said “We set up a little .30 caliber machine gun, and shot back at them.”
My Dad told me he was out guarding aircraft early the next morning.
Mistakes were made before the war, and got the United States into it.
No discussion of the Pacific theater is complete without admitting that.
> We were very late and haphazard in entering WWI. FDR understood the huge downside of that time,
Sorry, downside of WHAT?
Of being late for the party? Of not losing enough men at Verdun? Of wasting the chance to loot the Central Powers of a few truckloads of Siemens machinery and (absent a known von Braun by then) one Hermann Oberth? Of not turning the US into a wartime police state early enough?
What would have been the downside of not joining at all? That the Prussian monarchy could accidentally defeat the Saxon? That another incarnation of the Congress of Vienna would not materialize as the League of Nations, as helpless as its prototype? That neither the Red Front nor the brownshirts would replace the Kaiser?
Don’t tell me anything about Lusitania until you get serious about a revenge for MH-17.
One depressing difference is that a substantial number of Americans hate the current system and don’t mind seeing it damaged. The Good Idea might arise.
So a bunch of Little Eichmanns got killed.
Cloward-Piven existed prior to its being organized and given a proper name.
In addition to which, WW II’s victory is rare in recent wars. Been a long time before and since that a whole nation has been conquered. occupied, its big shots hanged, and the culture remade from dog catcher on up.
On you tube, see “Your Job In Germany”, the twelve minute version, and “Our Job in Japan”. Those are orientation films for the occupation troops. They give you an idea of what people were thinking.
Saying we didn’t win if we didn’t do a WW II completion isn’t useful. Iraq is a parliamentary government, more or less on our side, with better human rights than before.
Putting annoying folks back in their box and convincing them to stay there is generally sufficient.
Then there’s the problem of the non-state actor; who do we attack in going after, say, Hamas which isn’t a sovereign nation? Are we at war with them? Sort of. But if Hamas is out of action, can we leave the locals to their own business and still call it a win?
Oh, yeah. The SDS folks got older but they didn’t change.
The DiploMad, who sadly seems to have retired from blogging, wrote an entertaining story about attending a reception at the Japanese embassy — on December 7.
https://thediplomad.blogspot.com/2013/12/was-it-7-or-8-little-miscommunication.html
Harpoon, that is a great story from DiploMad. Yes he was very good.
Years ago I vacationed in Hawaii and went to the USS Arizona memorial. Most of the other visitors were Japanese tourists.
“a date which will live in infamy”
Interesting. I did not know that is commonly misquoted! I’ve known that quote since I was a child. I remember being struck by the wording.
Unfortunately, the significance of the Dec. 7 is fading into just history. This is true for Millennials and especially Gen Z. It’s not really their fault. Think about it…Pearl Harbor is approaching the 100 year mark. When I was in my late 20s, 100 years prior was the 1870s, and the Civil War was just 10 years earlier. While I knew of Ft. Sumter, or Gettysburg, they were just a historical facts, not something I had direct connection to. Same for many of these younger people. We Boomers have a direct connection through our parents, and also some of the GenX with grandparents. When we were in Hawaii a few years ago the whole family visited Pearl and the Arizona. It did impress my Millennial daughters, but I bet their kids will not be so impressed.
Related? — Michael Flynn is back!
“General Flynn: Strategic Assessment Of Marxist-Style Color Revolution Targeting America”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/general-flynn-strategic-assessment-marxist-style-color-revolution-targeting-america
+ Bonus…wherein the following “targeted” analysis seems—somehow(!)—to AVOID mentioning that the same “voices” targeting Israel are also targeting the US…
From the “Curious Omission” File:
“Pro-Israel Forces Intensify Effort To Control American Discourse”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/pro-israel-forces-intensify-effort-control-american-discourse
I’ve been holding out the hope that Slate will succeed, and foster a rebirth of U.S. car manufacturers giving some attention to the market segment that likes to tinker, customize and do their own repairs.
This reviewer does not think it will happen: https://insideevs.com/news/773876/slate-truck-live-impressions-china/
His review is interesting in that he comments on how much the “customization” philosophy is a part of Chinese car culture and Chinese manufacturers lean into that. That was always a big part of U.S. automotive culture through the 1970s. Boys (it’s mostly a male thing) want to repair their own vehicles and add personal touches.
Ships transiting Pearl render Honors when passing the Arizona.
The irony is when the USA declared war on Japan, Hitler declared war on the US because of an ill-considered alliance with Japan. Ally with a nation thousands of miles away, the two separated by continents and oceans? Nutty.
In response, America entered the war against Nazi Germany. Has there not been that treaty, Hitler would almost surely have conquered all of Europe, England notwithstanding.
My take is if Germany didn’t declare war it would have been just a bit later but certainly would have happened. Only question could Germany conquered England before that occurred.
Whups! Meant my Slate truck comment for the prior post.
German had minimal ability to conquer the UK and that was largely gone by 1941. Germany vastly overextended themselves during 1941 and declaring war on the US was just another stupid decision in a series of stupid decisions. 1941 is the year of gross strategic stupidity for Hitler.
Remember the Rueben James.
Wiki
At dawn on 31 October 1941, she was torpedoed near Iceland[3] by German submarine U-552 commanded by Kapitänleutnant Erich Topp. Reuben James had positioned herself between an ammunition ship in the convoy and the known position of a German “wolfpack,” a group of submarines poised to attack the convoy. The destroyer was not flying the ensign of the United States and was in the process of dropping depth charges on another U-boat when she was engaged.[4] Reuben James was hit forward by a torpedo meant for a merchant ship and her entire bow was blown off when a magazine exploded. The bow sank immediately. The aft section floated for five minutes before going down. Of a crew of seven officers and 136 enlisted men, plus one enlisted passenger, 100 were killed. Only 44 enlisted men and no officers survived
Chases Eagles. The Kingston Trio had a rendition of the song, “The Reuben James”. Among other artists.
Skip;
The Nazis lost the Battle of Britain by October 1940, so they weren’t going to invade or bomb the British into surrender. They never had enough submarines to starve out the British. They invaded the USSR in June 1941; from then they were dead men walking, especially after Japan’s great gamble brought the US officially into the war and That Corporal said ‘watch this, and hold my beer, Joseph (Goebels)’ and declared war on the US.
Well he might not have said that, but with AI content on YouTube nowadays you never know. (sarc)
IIRC the Ruben James was written and sung originally by Woody Guthrie.
@LXE
And of having a military that – while still among the most capable in the world (especially the Navy) – was late to the game and better prepared to do bush war in Hispanic America and parades than large scale conventional war. As was shown by how badly the US struggled in places like Nicaragua and Mexico (where again, Mexican anti-government raiders with at best indirect German financing crossed the border, pillaged US towns and massacred people, and the US launched a large scale boondoggle usually titled the “Pancho Villa Expedition” that failed to get Pancho Villa – even if it did help cripple him – and nearly caused a war with the people Pancho Villa was fighting).
Of dealing with the German government conducting the largest terrorist bombing campaign in US history until that point – which would remain unchallenged until the Soviets and PRC in the mad 1960s and 1970s, and MIGHT still hold the cake in terms of absolute size by a single coordinator – while openly trying to gin up Fifth Columns in the US in a manner that would be familiar to those of us looking at Little Somalia and Mamdami, or the CCP. At the time he was kicked out, Ribbentrop was coordinating a large scale of full spectrum legal and illegal influence ops (helped in no part by Wilson’s Prussophillia) that had – among other things – been responsible for something like a thousand failed or succeeded bombings, the deaths of a few hundred people on American soil (whether from those, mob violence or assassinations), and a massive amount of conflict while ACTIVELY RECRUITING AMERICAN CITIZENS on a fairly large scale (with at least a hundred thousand answering the “Call of the Fatherland” and returning to Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria to fight and die for nations and regimes that were declared enemies of the US – at least on their end – and which would ultimately wind up in a declared state of war with it in 1917. This is something that almost completely gets ignored in popular memory in contrast to the (justifiable) disgust at Wilson’s egomania and authoritarianism, especially on the Right, sort of similar to how the Japanese internments so overwhelm the Nihau includent and Shindo Reimei, but it pops out at you if you start looking through casualty tallies, especially by Western Allied troops (the British are the most convenient for obvious reasons, but the French, Belgians, Italians, and Greeks all provided useful info) of the enemy combatants they had inflicted casualties on and tried to identify for sending home. You don’t see an “American” by birthplace every day or every list, but they pop up with distressing frequency and if anything is an undercount due to not counting “Reverse Immigration” by German born people who came to the US, then left to serve the Vaterland. But it’s basically never addressed, with one of the few that actually does it being Andrew Krivak’s (Fictional) The Sojourn, which isn’t the best guide to it since it covers the Austro-Hungarian side of it and is ultimately a family war story, but it is fairly well researched and should still be eye opening. Though not as much as the actual war.
So the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Bulgarian governments had sought to and HAD SIGNIFICANT SUCCESS in cultivating actual, to-the-death support for their cause among the American public, with dozens of thousands of Americans – whether born here or immigrated- shilling and even shooting for regimes who mostly had their ancestors (or sometimes themselves) Flee from, in a kind of historical vertigo I rarely get, comparable only to studying overwhelming Scots – and especially JACOBITE/FORMER JACOBITE – support for the British Government in the American Revolution (in the exact inverse of the sort of romantic “Outlander” narrative), seemingly just out of shared interest for as oppressive a monarchical government as possible, even if it was just a constitutional monarchy imposing martial law on the colonies rather than whatever the Stuart Pretenders wanted. And even beyond those that literally died fighting for “the other side” or the German, Bulgarian, and Habsburg Empire diasporas, you had significant apologia and whitewashing by large scales of the wider US public, with WEB Dubois’s species of Black American Volkish statism and open Kaiserophillia (something that I’ve seen rarely discussed on either the man’s natural successors with the grievance industry, but also his natural critics here on the Right, with James Lindsay- who is more of a center-left anti-woke advocate – being one of the few to even try the task with his own issues), or the “Respectable” Prog Left Wing Mr. and Mrs. Beard, who remained influential throughout the era well after 1919, and only really disqualified themselves by extending it to whitewashing Japan and Nazi Germany after Pearl Harbor.
Focus tends to center (and understandably so) on the Zimmerman Telegraph, where you know, the German Government -including diplomats in the US – TRIED TO GET MEXICO TO DECLARE WAR AND INVADE THE US – to the point where I’ve seen some people falsely claim it was a fraud even this year. And that’s important. But I think too much focus on it risks overlooking the many, many other threats, crimes, and so on and the long effects there. The focus on the Lusitania (and how curious it is that is just about the only ship of HUNDREDS sunk that gets much name recognition, in spite of how not only is it not exculpatory even with what we know – but in fact often worse, due to things like the grotesque “Lusitania Medal” minted – but was not as important at the time, with things like the Sussex being far more important at the time) and mostly German atrocities against the laws of the sea and the rights of neutral nations during WWI tends to get downplayed nowerdays enough as is, but it’s still far more prominent when we analyze this stuff than things like Black Tom.
And all of this, it is worth noting – was on behalf of an alliance headed up by a Government that wanted to destroy the US as far back as 1898 and had been drawing up increasingly-less-fancible plans to invade as far back as then, and which had been fighting a onesided Cold War with the US.
An often repeated video online is of a Ukrainian soldier around 2022 saying about the Russian Military “We are very lucky they are so fucking stupid.” That’s the sentiment I get when I study these things, since the Germans and Austro-Hungarians were able to have a similar influence, propaganda, espionage, and terrorism presence in the Western Hemisphere as – say – Russia, Iran, and Qatar have, about a century ago, well in excess of what the Nazis, Mussolini, and Tojo would have. And had they had a similar ground game to say the Soviets or PRC, we’d have been in even deeper trouble than we were. And a close scrutiny of things shows I think we were in plenty trouble already.
That was the kind of ideology and regime on the other side of WWI. One that had gone from habitually anti-American in passing under Bismarck to being apocalyptically so by Wilhelm II’s heyday, and which had helped cause a baleful effect that would give rise to plenty of bad stuff we still feel today.
This is almost trifling in comparison to the other stuff, but no we didn’t “waste the chance to loot the Central Powers.” Which is another reason I lament why people do not actually read Versailles etc. al.’s actual texts (which are remarkably candid and fairly clear in language even today, especially given all that they went over). Indeed, the Germans had to give the US more than that – on the tune of something like 400,000 tons of coal and 500 trains – just to support the US Army on the Rhine during its relatively short occupation, and would pay out far more to us in total (indeed the Germans only got finished paying MUCH Reduced WWI Reparations in 2010). Though the US was a relatively secondary recipient of said reparations given our relatively small role in the war, the relatively limited scale of damage to us (mostly from the aforementioned terrorist bombings – whose full scope would not be divined until after the fall of the Berlin Wall when we found documents that no less than five German regimes had conspired to keep secret, overlooking their often murderous disagreements with one another) and submarine warfare, which while horrifying and resulting in dozens of thousands of deaths still PALED in comparison to the continental looting and mass murder engaged in by the Heer, Kaiserliche Marine, KuK, and their various allies during (and indeed even AFTER, see what happened in the Baltics and Poland during 1919-1921 for a real trip) WWI, as well as a culture of slave labor and abuse of POWs and even “enemy” civilians.
The truth is that the US got most of what it wanted in terms of “looting” from the Central Powers, and is one of the few Allied countries to probably come out of the war with benefits on the net, at least in the short term, particularly from our ability to finally confiscate the patents and property of German and Austro-Hungarian cartels operating abroad.
The bigger missed opportunity was the failure to dismantle the bureaucracy and institutions that had helped cause the war in the first place. In Austria-Hungary this more or less happened by itself (though with SIGNIFICANT caveats since Hungary essentially remained a militant Habsburg regency bent on conquest, just without a sitting Habsburg Monarch but a fervent Regent, and unsurprisingly it would become one of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy’s early and most stalwart allies), but in Germany the military and bureaucracy remained fundamentally unreformed, with the “war crimes trials” being shams that were directly responsible for the sequel’s rejection of Superior Orders as a defense precisely because German courts held that any crime against the peace or the laws of war could be justified so long as it was done with the “legal” oversight of the sovereign (Nazi defendants in WWII tried to claim that the idea of unifying the power of Head of State and Head of Government as Fuhrer came from the US presidency, but this got slapped down in large part by showing things like this and cases where either the Kanzler or Monarch/President could unite the powers of both). On a more direct level you’d probably have had decent financial benefit from simply barging into the Exchequer and shooting the people at the money printer, which would have helped stop the hyperinflation begun by the Imperial government in early 1914 (even before the Sarajevo Murders) in anticipation of launching a coming war, and which was kept aloft by large scale confiscation and theft of the occupied until the end of the war, when the Republic inherited chaos and Imperial spending deficits without the Empire’s ability to seize gear.
But you’d also have had the chance to trial the war criminals more directly and to try and help deal with the threat of yet more anti-democratic, anti-constitutionalist, quasi-if-not-entirely-totalitarian nutjobs that had flourished under the late Empire and which had not been cleared out. People who had helped train and partially indoctrinate the likes of Hitler and Thaelmann (more on that later) and who would play a significant- if still secondary – role in what came after. After all, it was Hindenburg who destroyed the German Republic in his role as President, and only later (when forced by Hitler’s well planned spate of assassinations and intimidation on the Night of the Long Knives) was forced to give way more and more to Hitler.
I have a lot, lot, LOT bad to say about Wilson and his misrule in the US during wartime, though others have written about it better than I have, though with the general caveat I have that they tend to show it in isolation, as purely a product of his overweening authoritarianism, egotism, anti-constitutional tendencies, and ironically admiration for German authoritarianism and bureaucratic, technocratic rule. All of which is true, but ignores the fact that he was also dealing with hostile regimes running campaigns of recruitment, propaganda, and large scale (esp by the standards of the time) sabotage on American soil, as part of a large scale campaign to undermine and destroy American neutral rights and other key interests like the laws of the sea and the Monroe Doctrine.
I don’t like defending Wilson much, he is by far one of the worst Presidents in American history and had a baleful impact felt to this day. And indeed even with WWI specifically I credit much of the problem to the fact that his Germanophilia and hostility of American constitutionalism blinded him to just how Berlin looked at him and the US, and how he went out of his way to try and avoid conflict with them (probably neutering US military and intelligence operations in the Caribbean and Pacific for half a decade) while relying on the likes of the Sussex Pledge. I have my own issues with FDR – to put it mildly – but without his quiet revolts in naval patrols and buildup the damage would probably have been even worse, especially since by the time of Wilson’s re-election the German Navy was already deploying submarines as far afield as the Canadian and New England coasts and was considering things like the Zimmerman Telegraph (which was doomed to fail due to Obregon realizing Mexico could not defeat the US, but which less wise leadership like a Huerta regime likely would’ve heeded) and the rejection of the “Trust Me Bro no more Unrestricted Submarine Warfare’ Sussex Pledge. The former of which was detected and fell through, and the latter of which the German Admiralty ultimately did in 1917, which was the ACTUAL thing that triggered US Declaration of War as Wilson realized that if he did not answer this challenge he would likely be impeached.
Because after a long string of abuses, usurpations, and crimes the Reich and its allies had finally, FINALLY pushed the most pro-German POTUS in US history to oppose them. That’s the context of the Police State that tends to get massively overlooked (that and the first winds of communist flavored revolution blowing in part due to the fallout of this – and in several cases direct sponsorship from the autocracies in control in Germany and Austria-Hungary, most infamously with Lenin, his not-so-sealed-train, and German funding for his “October Coup”, but also manifest in several other ways).
And in many ways it was protracted lapse and refusal to get with reality when it was staring a Mauser barrel in his face that helped make the situation so dire, and ALSO made the extreme measures Wilson took seem justified.
Offhand? The significant risk that a regime with totalitarian and apocalytpic ambitions and whose leader wishes for a “Place in the Sun” and World-Politik and who has already been considering (though “considering” may be a bit generous given the fanciful and frankly poor quality of the war plans they had) and who wants to destroy the US as-is for his own reasons (hatred of the mere CONCEPT of Constitutionalism or democratic rule, anti-capitalism, racism, complaining that the US allowed Gypsies to live freely – yes, Really -, real or alleged Jewish influence) and who has ALREADY stomped on US neutral rights and tried to get our largest, most populous neighbor to INVADE US AND ETHNICALLY CLEANSE MUCH OF THE SOUTHWEST?
That guy?
Now there’s the risk he’s in control of most of Western Eurasia, with war leaders like the aforementioned Paul von Hindenburg and “The First Nazi” Erich Ludendorff, who are probably going to take another run at us, first with more proxy wars in the Caribbean and Hispanic America and then probably by some kind of remix of “Operation Plan III”.
And I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather not mortgage our hard won rights and interests to try and hope the likes of Wilhelm, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and co get distracted from the only remaining country that can contest their desire for global primacy. Because while each incarnation of their plans to attack the US in scale were laughably bad and impractical in hindsight and arguably even at the time, each one got steadily *LESS* deranged and fantastic and closer to something that could actually, just MAYBE, work.
And I don’t want to know what they’d come up with continental dominance and another decade or so to work out the remaining kinks. Especially since the existing versions of the plans came before WWI (due to obvious reasons) and before the Germans launched probably the most effective amphibious operation of the entire war with the Moon Sound Archipelago landings in the Baltics – still taught of as a model for a good plan to this day – which as far as I can tell was basically sui generis from a military with almost no amphibious history beyond assorted naval infantry and sailor landings in places like China and East Africa. If the Reich actually learns the lessons from that in any significant or institutional way, the coming attacks on the US in Florida and Virginia get vastly worse.
Or to put it in the words of the aforementioned Wilhelm II,
If that’s what he is going to do to the oldest continuous monarchy in Europe at the time, except MAYBE Japan, I’m not interested in what he’d be willing to do to us, the imprudent Republic.
I have no idea what the absolute farq this is a reference to, or even supposed to be a reference to. For what it is worth, the “Saxon” was a rather firmly loyal part of the Reich, with the Wettins and their subjects fighting fervently for Kaiser, King, and Reich only to be disposed near the very end of the war.
For what it is worth, the “Anglo-Saxon” Monarchy was overwhelmingly Hanoverian in origin at this time, with some influx from Albert and Saxe Coburg Gotha, with tensions between the “Prussian Monarchy” and the Hanoverian Welfs only being solved ironically in the very last generation with the marriage of Wilhelm II’s only daughter to the Hanoverian Heir.
But in any case, the Kaiser and his war lords and administers and their allies had no particularly great problem with the “Saxon Monarchy” or even the “Anglo-Saxon” one. But what they did have a problem with was the concept that they did not dominate global politics and that they were forced to at least give lip service to “scrap(s) of paper” like the 1839 London Treaty or the Hague Convention of 1899 on Chemical Weapons.
If this war had been limited to the Balkans or even Eastern Europe there’s a CHANCE – however slim – it would have been limited to a conflict of dynasties and “races” between mostly authoritarian monarchies. That chance blew up very early in September 1914 when the German Empire pre-emptively declared war first on Russia (which was mobilizing to attack the Habsburgs after the latter invaded Serbia, but had not declared war) and then on France and ultimately a Belgium that refused to yield its neutrality. As soon as that happened, a global war became inevitable.
Tell me you have no clue what the Congress of Vienna was without telling me.
The Congress of Vienna was not “helpless.” Indeed, it declared war on perhaps the most powerful single man in the world – and its premier military genius – and won, before then remaking the map of Europe with fire and blood, leading to by my count no less than a dozen successful military interventions in its first decade of existence and helping to cause a resurgence of absolute monarchism in Europe. Indeed, the risk was probably that whatever happened in the aftermath of a Central Powers victory in WWI would be even worse, since at least the likes of Metternich with his “Royal Socialism” and Tsar Aleksandr I (and his minion Arakcheyev – still a man proverbial in Russian culture for arbitrary military rule and slavery, which given we’re talking about GODDAMN RUSSIA should tell you something) is that they were more focused on rebuilding from the war, domestic matters, their own complicated balances of power, and their dependency on British loans to be a threat to the US.
That probably would not be the case here.
The League was a dysfunctional, utopian mess that did some good but failed more often than it did not, but it was far better than many alternatives.
Who do you think helped train and influence the leadership between them? One of the commonalities I and a few other amateur (and in two cases not so amateur) researchers have been doing has been tracing the career and lives of the likes of Hitler and Thaelmann in WWI and their exposure to the work of Ludendorff’s “War Press Office”, which spewed out some truly murderous and toxic stuff.
Firstly, oh LXE what I would fucking GIVE if the Lusitania were the worst of problems between the German Kaiserreich and its allies on one hand and the US in general. The Lusitania wasn’t even an American flagged ship, unlike several others sunk.
Secondly: This is meritless comparison. I have made my bones here as one of the most stalwart anti-Putin “Ukraine Hawks” (a misnomer since I hated them and advocated for measures LONG before the invasions of Ukraine) or the like, and have made my thoughts on the Russian dictatorship and its conduct abundantly clear, and so my thoughts on MH-17 are similar.
But to what little credit I will give, MH-17 was shot down by Kremlin-organized proxy troops in a war zone. It was also a singular event after which the Russian government denied responsibility but went on to implement measures to avoid a similar shoot down, helped in large part due to most airlines ceasing. OPINT seems conflicted on why it happened, whether it was part of a terror campaign to try and stop all air traffic in the war zone (at a time when the Ukrainian Loyalist had air supremacy due to Russia proper officially being neutral) or was a spur of the moment action by the people on the ground.
The Lusitania was sunk directly by openly serving members of the Imperial German Navy (the Kaiserliche Marine) as part and parcel of a centrally directed campaign of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare. It was also one of Thousands, including the likes of the Gulflight, the City of Memphis, and the Sussex, the last of which prompted US response and extracted a German concession ending Unrestricted Submarine Warfare, the Sussex Pledge.
Which the German government proceeded to break in 1917 in anticipation of being able to destroy the Western Allied economies before the US could transport enough troops to retaliate, in spite of knowing how such a return would be a violation of the Kaiser and Cabinet’s pledge and would almost certainly prompt an angry US (still seething from the likes of the Zimmerman Telegraph and how the German government got caught trying to cover up and deny it until blindsided by Arthur Zimmerman himself) to enter the war.
Here is just some of the specifically American tallies.
http://www.usmm.org/ww1merchant.html
Which is why the focus on the Lusitania kind of pisses me off, in large part because it was FAR from the most unprecedented or important case, and also because I have an inkling on why it is so well known. Namely the work of Central Powers propaganda and apologists like the Beards to grasp on to one of the few thin reeds they can that might LOOK – albeit in isolation and largely ignorance of the law of the sea – justified or even as a “false flag” designed to be sunk.
Take a look at that list. Tell me: if the Russian Federation had shot down a THIRD as many passenger planes over Ukraine, would even the likes of n.n. or whatever argue that is not a hideous crime justifying revenge by way of war?
No. Instead the Kremlin’s henchmen shot down MH-17, lied about it, and stopped doing so. While I can talk about it as part of terroristic and lawless behavior by Putin and co, it was not a pattern of wholesale murder of civilians on the skies. The Central Powers’ doctrine of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare against neutral shipping in WWI was a pattern of wholesale slaughter of civilians on the ships, one they walked back from -after acknowledging the gravity of it – before restarting.
This was not a regime that would just reform or stop gunning for US interests. Whether or not Germany kept a Crown or the Hohenzollerns itself mattered less than whether or not it was dominated by an authoritarian (if not totalitarian), expansionist leadership with an unhinged hate on for the US, Democracy, Republics, Jews, and the international laws they had signed when they got in the way.
@CICERO
This has it almost exactly the opposite way around. Hitler declared war on the US after Pearl Harbor because he had always viewed the US as an enemy (admittedly following a long and ignominious tradition in German leadership that was not exclusive to the Nazis, but which he took far further, see the Second Book and what he says about the “American Union”), was fighting an undeclared naval war in the Atlantic against the USN and American-protected merchant marines since mid 1941, and predicted open US entry into the Atlantic/Med war on Britain’s side within a year or so anyway, so he might as well capitalize on it. Ironically Pearl Harbor likely delayed US engagement in Europe.
He also predicted he could not defeat the coming Anglo-American alliance as early as mid 1940 without either full alliance with or full conquest of the Soviet Union, hence the attempts to get the Soviets in the Axis in the winter of 1940-41 and when that fell through (largely due to his own chimp out over rather mild Soviet demands) he went Barbarossa.
Hitler was more than capable of making and breaking alliances as he wished. He just understood a showdown with the US was inevitable and that FDR was gunning for him almost as much as Hitler was gunning for the US.
These are decent overviews of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6ndO6_BOK4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnfvGMAPCko
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/undeclared-war-in-the-atlantic/
https://www.cfr.org/blog/twe-remembers-fdrs-shoot-sight-fireside-chat
“Pearl Harbor Day is tomorrow”
Tomorrow and today…
https://twitter.com/RadioGenoa/status/1997500109181845591?
H/T Blazingcatfur blog.
Richard Aubrey…”Ships transiting Pearl render Honors when passing the Arizona”
Neptunus Lex wrote about entering the harbor aboard the USS Constellation:
https://thelexicans.wordpress.com/2017/12/07/pearl-harbor/
The DiploMad, who sadly seems to have retired from blogging
He still posts on X, but not as often as I would like.
The DiploMad, who sadly seems to have retired from blogging
He still posts on X, but not as often as I would like.
Corrrction—The correct link is:
https://x.com/RadioGenoa/status/1997488922491060713?s=20
Chuck, thanks for the pointer to DiploMad on X. I don’t use X much, so had missed this. I see he’s reposted the December 7 story there!
I met John Finn, who won the MOH for actions at Pearl Harbor.
He was always mentioned in the San Diego media around Dec 7. He was also a friend of my dad and my dad would visit him and that’s how I met him.
https://www.nps.gov/perl/learn/news/passing-of-john-finn.htm
He gave me a web pistol belt, white with brass fittings, but in bad condition (I still have it). He also gave me a green boonie hat. He had a pile of those sitting in a field, all faded. He picked one up and gave it to me. I remember wearing it while riding in the back of a pickup truck during summer vacation in AZ while my dad was prospecting for gold (I suspect gold prospecting was the activity that connected my dad to Finn).
As an adult, I was sent to Pearl Harbor to do repairs on a navy ship. During my down time I went to the Pearl Harbor museum and tried to visit the USS Arizona memorial. Entering they hand each visitor a card which I believe gives you your number in line but also gives some brief facts on the attack. My card ironically was about Finn. My dad had told me the story his Finn’s action that day.
The Allies adopted a “European theater first” principle which didn’t really work in practice.
The US navy was quick to take the war to Japan in the Pacific, and we were invading Guadalcanal early on. This helped prioritize the Pacific war. But it was also a practical reality that we were better able to counter the Japanese in the Pacific than we were to take the war to the Germans.
Additional factors were the technical capabilities of our equipment. Aircraft like the P-38 performed well against Japan and not so well against the Germans. The P-40 was also better suited to war against the Japanese which typically occurred at lower altitudes.
David Foster.
Thanks for the Neptunus reference. Moving. There are some examples on YouTube. Start with Stennis.