re: The True History of the Jonestown Cult, WWII, and How Winston Churchill Ruined Europe

quote:

---

without Churchill and his warmongering.

---

You asked early in the thread "Why did Churchill himself write about the war and refer to it as “the unnecessary war” after the fact?" You then refer to his warmongering. I guess the fact that those positions, in reality, are diametrically opposed, slips through your grasp?

If you believe Churchill's post-war comments were self-critiques of his pre-war positions, or somehow contrasted with them, you know pitifully little of the man or his history. Self-depreciation was not in Churchill's conceptual repertoire. Warmongering in WWII's run-up, with reference to its causation of “unnecessary war” in the aftermath would constitute a near pathological self-deprecation. So it is very safe to assume Churchill's assertions pointed to something quite different. He opined that better demonstrable battle-ready strength (referred by you as "warmongering") would have been a remedy for, not the cause of, “unnecessary war”.

Sun Tzu held that battles are won before they are fought. The same is often true of war. A precipitate interrogatory being, if prescience reveals inevitability of a ruinous outcome, does the potential combattant still walk the path to war? Probably not. Therein lies Churchill's insistence of WWII's unnecessity.

Churchill understood the seeds of WWII rested in the Versailles Treaty. Its stipulations were too harsh for too long. He understood Versailles would lead to German resentment, animus, and conflict. He said it at the time of the treaty. He stated it repeatedly afterwards. He was right, without question. What you refer to as "warmongering" though, has to do with the dangers Churchill also correctly perceived in the rise of respondent German autocracy.

Sans the Versailles ineptitude, there would have been no 'Hitler.' But the reality Churchill addressed in the 1930's was one inclusive of both. By then, the world could walk neither Versailles nor Hitler's ascendency back. The balance Churchill sought was unwinding Versailles while demonstrating enough strength to enlighten German prescience regarding outcome of war. Chamberlain did neither. WWII was the avoidable result.

THAT is the answer to your question: "Why did Churchill himself write about the war and refer to it as “the unnecessary war” after the fact?"

“The unnecessary war” is allusion to allied lassitude and antebellum weakness leaving Germany imagining a positive result to resumption of war. In contrast, Churchill's "warmongering" was a contemporary effort to organize allies so as to convince Germany that no matter how unfair the terms of Versailles, the outcome of a second world war would be worse.

Your posts don't convey that understanding.

quote:

---

What would the world look like today with Russia as a 25-yr NATO member? Assuredly it would look better for Ukraine and Taiwan.
-------
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'

---

quote:

---

...you think Stalin was worse than hitler?

---

It's six of one and one-half dozen the other. Estimates are Hitler was responsible for around 11 million civilian deaths, while Stalin was responsible for 10-20 million. They were both atrocious animals.

Moral of the story .....

Do not get in line to drink the flavor aide.

You make some good points and I appreciate the discussion.


Let me boil something down for you to better get a point across as it pertains to my actual opinions.

The main reason I do not revere Winston Churchill is because he is as responsible as anyone for goading us into the war.

**Side bar: I understand there are tiggers associated with this statement: “but Japan attacked us”, “but Germany declared war after Pearl Harbor”. Those statements are too simple and require an entirely different argument, but the gist is we were at war with Germany in all but troops already with material support, and we had policies against the Japanese begging them to attack. And there’s speculation we knew about Pearl Harbor ahead of time and allowed it to happen. Again, all of this is a whole other discussion and we can have that if necessary, but I’m going to the football game today and don’t have the time. I’m getting this out of the way to address likely replies not addressing the larger point I’m making. **

So I hold Churchill primarily responsible for dragging us into the war. And I blame him because the UK had no logical claim to continue fighting, because they had no means to do so on their own. Their entire strategy was to stall until they could get us and the Russians on their side.

I reject emotional pleas invoking the Holocaust as the evidence of our righteous fighting of a just war, because that was not the reason we joined the war. You can’t claim after the fact we were fighting to save people from atrocities when that was not the reason we got involved. Furthermore I personally don’t believe the full extent of the Holocaust would have happened had the war not been raging.

In addition to this, the British were also not fighting the war to save the Jews. Their reason was entirely for the self interest of their broader empire. Imperialism was, at least at the time, the stated antithesis of the United States. So much so that the British and French frequently had to dress up their language to hide these aspects of their interests from being heard by the American people and souring support. So I fundamentally reject the notion we owed our pals the British our full support so that they didn’t lose some of their colonies, and I reject the notion they faced an imminent threat to their homeland.

No one denies the Nazi regime despised the Jews, and you can find plenty of documents stating they wanted to eradicate Jewry from the Reich well before the war, but I do not think that equals extermination in camps. It could mean deportation (and I believe that was their true prewar goal), and extermination only because viable and palatable for the leadership after the full reality of the broader war was apparent. So with this in mind both the UK and US also have blood on their hands for not accepting any Jewish refugees. Hell, the British even stopped allowing Jewish immigration into Palestine during this time to appease the Muslim leadership over there. That’s another can of worms many here don’t want to open.

And finally, I reject the notion that we are better off for winning this war and becoming the new global superpower. I think all of that power that has come from this has eroded our culture and institutions. The dollar as the global reserve currency brings some obvious positives to the society, but also many negatives that are rarely mentioned or understood. First and more obvious is it requires us to be permanently militaristic, and this has resulted in the awkward contradictory mess known as our foreign policy of invading countries while claiming garbage like “spreading democracy and freedom”. Because of our founding ideals, we have a hard time juggling the appearance of justice and democracy while forcefully asserting our will globally, and we have all but lost the ability to mask this charade the past couple of decades and most of the world now hates us and sees us for the liars we are. Secondly there is a thought that the “resource curse” applies to us in a different way than that theory is understood. The dollar being the reserve currency is an artificial “resource” we export globally, and the mechanisms it is done crush the lower and middle class over time. That is a long and complicated subject.

So in short, I don’t love the Nazis and don’t wish they had “won”. I just think the war was terrible and had terrible outcomes that continue to this day, and that it would arguably have been better had more been done to prevent it.

Yes, on balance, we good, he bad… no doubt.
I’m not endorsing starvation or prison camps, but that’s not what Cooper is really talking about.

quote:

---

What would the world look like today with Russia as a 25-yr NATO member? Assuredly it would look better for Ukraine and Taiwan.

---

What would Russia look like today if that fledgling democracy that Putin helped gut would have survived and Russia had become a good actor instead of battling its neighbors, instigating troubles in other parts of the world and become a capitalist country?

You act like NATO membership is a panacea. It is not. Democracy is the key.

quote:

---

Democracy is the key.

---

77% of Germans oppose their states immigration policy.

Yet the state hasn’t changed course

You see this everywhere in the West, on core issues the state does the opposite of what voters want, and they’ve done this decade after decade.

We don’t have democracies, we have oligarchies

quote:

---

The main reason I do not revere Winston Churchill is because he is as responsible as anyone for goading us into the war.

---

As history shows, we would have gotten involved anyway. Even if Pearl Harbor never happens, the end result would have likely been a declaration of war on Nazi Germany sometime in 1942. You see this with opinion polling via Gallup.

In September 1939, shortly after the German invasion of Poland and the declaration of our neutrality in the conflict, Gallup conducted a poll and found that 94% of Americans opposed declaring war on Germany and 84% of Americans opposed sending U.S. troops to Europe under ANY circumstance. Despite this, almost 60% of Americans supported sending military aid to the Allies on a "cash-and-carry" basis.

But then when France fell in 1940, you saw a dramatic shift in public opinion on the war. In June 1940, Gallup conducted a similar poll to the one they did in September 1939 and found that 79% of Americans were opposed to declaring war on Germany (as opposed to 94% in September) while 61% of Americans were in favor of helping Britain even if that meant risking becoming involved in the war. However, Americans had recovered from the shock of France's defeat within six months as a January 1941 poll conducted by Gallup found that American opposition to a declaration of war on Germany had increased to 88%. However, nearly 70% of Americans believed in giving Britain "all aid short of war."

By May 1941, however, as the war dragged on and as we began escorting British convoys to a certain point across the Atlantic, you saw a clear shift in public thinking. While a majority of Americans were still opposed to the war, Gallup found that 67% of Americans supported providing aid to Britain even if it meant war with Germany. 54% of Americans were found to support the extension of the Draft in August of that same year. And by October more than 60% of Americans believed it was more important to defeat Germany than it was to stay out of the war, though a significant portion of Americans still supported staying out of the war war unless attacked.

As you can see, there was a steady increase in popular support for the war and we would have likely found ourselves in the conflict sooner or later.

Short of sending French troops in when Hitler first acted up, before Poland or Czechoslovakia, what could they have done they did not do?

Chamberlin was a wimp BUT it has come out his military was telling him they were simply not ready for war.


Edit: This is where some of the Cooper crap comes from. Internet Archive website.