WWII and previous wars' all seem to have something as "the good, honest guys" won afterall.
- Cold war is less clear.... (the only good thing probably is it DID NOT really come to an all out military conflict) - appricating all those "little Wars' Korea, Vietnam -sorry- as these already start to fall into the next question....
all other more resent wars seems to indicate "military suppremacy" does not really guarantee a win.
Ref. Africa (one might argue if these are really WARS - anyway they kill a lot of inocent people,
Checenia - as an example for the Russians'
Palestina - Isarel conflict (going on since....48? some might say earlier )
Middle East now.
It seems : "Ecomonics- Globalisation" is a more efficient means then "Military Might"
04-26-2007, 12:15 AM, (This post was last modified: 05-14-2007, 10:07 AM by Turbala.)
I think that "winners write the history"-saying goes well in this thing too. Leaders from both sides are always saying that they are fighting for the good of humankind.
In WW2 germans had "Gott mit Uns"(=God with us) in their belt buckles, Japan was fighting for its survival and for the emperor, US was defending freedom and democracy from its enemies, Soviets were defending mother russia. Germans had concenration camps, human experiments, and so on. Japan treated its prisoners unhamanly, forced to thousand of women in korea and other places to become their sex slaves. In America thousands of american japanese were put on camps. Soviets handled their also poorly , crushed the polish underground movement and so on...
Im a finn and we also have our skeletons in the closet, we sended some of our jews to germany, we shot our deserters (it has been a very hot topic in here finland).
In the end, I think that the side which has the most powerful media is always the good guys (at least to its own population). After the generation which fought in that war dies our only living witness is the history, and it too takes sides. We normally only hear the horrors that the other sides does, the cruelty of our enemies is well documented and known, unlike our cruelty.
It has a word. It's call being hypocritical, but sometimes the whole truth just too damn ugly. No one is really only god or bad, it's battle shades actually, some better some worse. You will never have a full packet of goodness in your hand, there always some rotten apples inside there....
Libertee, Egalitee, Fraternitee. Truth, Justice, and the American way. God save the Queen! These Must be good guys.
I'm half Finn, half Hungarian and growing up always wondered why those nations allied with Hitler. I asked an ex Hungarian WWII general and he replied, "We hated the Russians more than we hated the Germans."
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend." After WWII, for Americans, Russians immediately switched from good guys to bad guys. It seems good guys need bad guys; if so, we'd be better off without either. We need no new subjects for wargames.
As I'm currently reading J.F.C. Fuller's "Decisive Battles of the Western World and Their Influence Upon History" here is something to mull over. To Fuller's way of thinking, wars should be fought to obtain peace not just victory and as such the Allies lost both the First and Second World Wars. In both wars the Allies had committed themselves to total victory, which precluded the possibility of a negotiated peace.
In the previous century Britain had been the arbiter of peace in Europe by the application of her policy of Pax Britannica. The basis of Pax Britannica was that England stood back and influenced events to maintain the status quo on the continent, without having to spend all its wealth and manpower in costly European wars. This policy had helped defeat Napoleon and had kept the peace in Europe for the next century.
But by becoming embroiled in a continental war of such ferocious intensity which totally consumed all of Britain's economy and manpower Pax Britannic became one of first casualties of the Great War.
When the U.S. entered the war in 1917 the chance for a negotiated peace disappered as America was the last major power that could act as an arbiter in the conflict. The result was the punishment and humiliation that the Treaty of Versailles imposed upon Germany and which created the conditions necessary for the rise of Nazism.
In the Second World War, Fuller argues that Churchill committed a major blunder at the beginning of the war by declaring that the total defeat of Germany was England's sole aim and that England would ally herself with any nation that fought against Hitler's Germany. If Churchill was to have declared the removal of Hitler and his Nazi regime as his prime war objective Britain could have worked at establishing contact and collaborating with groups of Germans disaffected with Hitler. But by making the country itself the focus of victory Churchill ended up strengthening the resolve of the German people. Roosevelt's "Unconditional Surrender" declartion at the Casablanca Conference was an endorsement of this policy and a further nail in the coffin for any hope for a revolt in the German High Command.
Also, by adopting "the friend of my enemy is my friend" approach to Stalin, Churchill helped pave the way for one form of dictatorship in eastern Europe to replaced by another. Churchill realized his mistake as the war went on and this explains his interest in a major Balkan campaign which would rescue these states from eventual Soviet domination and help form a buffer with Stalin's Russia after the war. However the American approach, as expressed by Roosevelt, was to get to Berlin by the fastest possible method and with the least amount of American casualties. This is the strategy that the Allies ended up following and it did lead to the utter destruction of Germany. However, because of these diplomatic and strategic blunders, total victory just ended up setting the table for the Cold War.
Quote:In the Second World War, Fuller argues that Churchill committed a major blunder at the beginning of the war by declaring that the total defeat of Germany was England's sole aim and that England would ally herself with any nation that fought against Hitler's Germany. If Churchill was to have declared the removal of Hitler and his Nazi regime as his prime war objective Britain could have worked at establishing contact and collaborating with groups of Germans disaffected with Hitler. But by making the country itself the focus of victory Churchill ended up strengthening the resolve of the German people.
Fuller makes some good points, but given recent (and even not so recent when I think about it), history I have to disagree with this line of reasoning.
History doesn't show "regime change" being viable in the short or medium term without direct intervention, either covert or overt. Covert only works against unsophisticated foes, and would never have worked against Germany. The notion of a "revolt of the high command," with or without outside help, is revisionist, driven by apologists for empowerment of the NAZI regime by the military.
The idea that US & British demands for "unconditional surrender" is what hardened the high command is false, shown by the many contacts by Germans late in the war to offer local & regional surrenders. The vast majority of the military establishment simply believed in victory or at least stalemate (depending on how late the war we're talking about), or were duty bound unto death to follow orders, or a combination of the two. That's what kept the war going as long as it did. Not the demand for unconditional surrender.
The resolve of the people themselves was also only mildly or not at all affected by unconditional surrender. We seem to think that the populace had access to complete, unbaised and truthful information; nothing could be further from the truth. If there had been no call for unconditional surrender the German government would have created it, or something like it, to help motivate the people in a do-or-die cause. At any rate that do-or-die motivation - not just you, your family, the government, whatever, but your RACE was at stake - had been a part of the culture for close to a decade. They were fighting animals, inferiors, genetic poison. That's motivation enough to explain the fanaticism and longevity of the war. Claiming that the proclamation of heads of state about unconditional surrender was what hardened them flies in the face of reason when compared.
In short the thesis that the allies, specifically the western allies, caused the suffering of Germany by calling for unconditional surrender doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Neither the command nor populace was driven by it to do anything they weren't already doing (continue fighting) by other, deeper, convictions and motivations.
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