lain on Nostr: Finished "Stalin's War". Absolutely fascinating book. Here are a few excerpts from ...
Finished "Stalin's War". Absolutely fascinating book. Here are a few excerpts from the epilogue:
> Still more uncomfortable questions surround matters such as Britain’s misleading promises to Poland in 1939, which encouraged Polish leaders to resist Hitler on the largely mistaken understanding that Britain and France would render them active armed assistance against Germany; the Allies’ rejection of German peace feelers in October 1939, after the fall of Poland; Churchill’s refusal to parley in June–July 1940, after the fall of Norway, France, and the Low Countries; his contemptuous treatment of the Hess mission in May 1941, however satisfying this was as a humiliation of Hitler at a time when Britain had not yet won a battle in the war; and Roosevelt’s brusque dismissal of the negotiating offers coming in from Canaris and other German resistance figures in 1943. The pretext of all of these peace feelers, whether coming from Hitler or his would-be successors, was that Germany would renounce gains in Western Europe in exchange for a free hand in Poland and the East—or, in the Canaris version, Germany would give up Poland too. If the point of the war against Hitler was to save Western Europe from foreign subjugation, this could have been done at infinitely less human and material cost at the negotiating table. If the point was to save Poland and Eastern Europe from foreign subjugation, then the war was an abysmal failure. In the greatest single injustice of the postwar settlement, to this day, Poland, the country most obviously deserving of reparations, has received none from Germany or Russia, even while Russia—the invader and conqueror—exacted reparations in cash or in kind from Poland and all the other countries Stalin occupied in 1945. As recently as 2017, Warsaw levied a reparations claim on Berlin, only to be informed by the chancellor’s office that the Polish government waived its right to German reparations in 1953, when it was an occupied Soviet satellite state.
> The notion that a great American victory was achieved in 1945 is hard to square with the strategic reality of the Cold War, which required a gargantuan expenditure over decades merely to hold the line at the Fulda Gap before the USSR finally collapsed in 1991. That Germany and Japan, supposedly mortal enemies of the United States in 1941, became crucial American partners in the Cold War, raises once more the question of what the point of the first conflict was. Two militaristic empires and would-be regional hegemons were defeated and turned into democracies (or one and a half, if we discount Sovietized East Germany). But another militaristic empire, after gorging on lend-lease aid and the war booty won with it, was transformed into a superpower with far greater global reach and influence than Germany or Japan had ever enjoyed. At home, the price Americans paid for this victory was the erosion of their own civil liberties, with an ever-expanding security state contrary to the country’s founding principles and stated ideals, which bears increasing resemblance to the Soviet version they struggled against.
Highly recommended reading.
> Still more uncomfortable questions surround matters such as Britain’s misleading promises to Poland in 1939, which encouraged Polish leaders to resist Hitler on the largely mistaken understanding that Britain and France would render them active armed assistance against Germany; the Allies’ rejection of German peace feelers in October 1939, after the fall of Poland; Churchill’s refusal to parley in June–July 1940, after the fall of Norway, France, and the Low Countries; his contemptuous treatment of the Hess mission in May 1941, however satisfying this was as a humiliation of Hitler at a time when Britain had not yet won a battle in the war; and Roosevelt’s brusque dismissal of the negotiating offers coming in from Canaris and other German resistance figures in 1943. The pretext of all of these peace feelers, whether coming from Hitler or his would-be successors, was that Germany would renounce gains in Western Europe in exchange for a free hand in Poland and the East—or, in the Canaris version, Germany would give up Poland too. If the point of the war against Hitler was to save Western Europe from foreign subjugation, this could have been done at infinitely less human and material cost at the negotiating table. If the point was to save Poland and Eastern Europe from foreign subjugation, then the war was an abysmal failure. In the greatest single injustice of the postwar settlement, to this day, Poland, the country most obviously deserving of reparations, has received none from Germany or Russia, even while Russia—the invader and conqueror—exacted reparations in cash or in kind from Poland and all the other countries Stalin occupied in 1945. As recently as 2017, Warsaw levied a reparations claim on Berlin, only to be informed by the chancellor’s office that the Polish government waived its right to German reparations in 1953, when it was an occupied Soviet satellite state.
> The notion that a great American victory was achieved in 1945 is hard to square with the strategic reality of the Cold War, which required a gargantuan expenditure over decades merely to hold the line at the Fulda Gap before the USSR finally collapsed in 1991. That Germany and Japan, supposedly mortal enemies of the United States in 1941, became crucial American partners in the Cold War, raises once more the question of what the point of the first conflict was. Two militaristic empires and would-be regional hegemons were defeated and turned into democracies (or one and a half, if we discount Sovietized East Germany). But another militaristic empire, after gorging on lend-lease aid and the war booty won with it, was transformed into a superpower with far greater global reach and influence than Germany or Japan had ever enjoyed. At home, the price Americans paid for this victory was the erosion of their own civil liberties, with an ever-expanding security state contrary to the country’s founding principles and stated ideals, which bears increasing resemblance to the Soviet version they struggled against.
Highly recommended reading.