Posted on 08/25/2014 4:20:53 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Is there evidence that Eisenhower was clueless about the treachery of Soviet communism?
I wondered about that, but have nothing to support that. What do you have?
That explains why Patton was not officially revealed as the guy behind the blitz on Le Mans until sometime in the middle of August.
Yep.
What's the term in the intelligence community for feeding the enemy believable myths it believes to be reliable "intelligence"? Whatever it's called, we did a brilliant job. Be interesting to know the details of who was behind that.
The politicization of military tactics and maneuvers. Not unlike what you see in America's Leftist regime. Hitler, Germany's "strength", was also its greatest weakness. Not unlike certain brilliant but overbearing pro sport team owners who self destruct their team (ex. Charlie Finley of the 1970's Oakland A's).
It didn’t work for Hitler, LBJ or Jimmuh Cahtah. Or as Rocky the Flying Squirrel would say: “Bullwinkle, that trick never works.”
Good stuff. Thanks for the informative post.
The Soviets were our allies at this time. Ike, like FDR, was only concerned about placating Stalin.
Yes, but as I said on an earlier post, it seems to me there was no need for such acquiescence. Russia was fighting for it's own survival. They weren't going to turn tail and run.
Seems more like what we've got today: the Left was more determined to get what it wanted than the Right.
Excellent post.
It was very possible that Stalin would make a separate peace with Hitler and/or would refuse postwar cooperation with the US/Britain. Most elites in the West hoped that the “United Nations” alliance would continue after the war.
To my knowledge, Hitler had no connections to, or even knowledge of, British Fabian Socialists.
The only real similarity is the word "socialist" in their names -- National Socialists / Fabian Socialists.
I've never seen a simple, compelling explanation of how Hitler's latent anti-Semitism became first public, then violent, then brutal, murderous and finally systematic exterminations.
Some of it is already in Mein Kampf (1925), but the full expression came step-by-step over the following 20 years.
How & why did he keep pushing, always to the next step...?
I've said here before, when it comes to mass murder, Hitler was the young precocious pupil of the day's old master murderer: Joseph Stalin.
While Hitler was still warming up in the bull pen (1930s), Stalin was already murdering hundreds of thousands, even millions -- i.e., the 1933 Ukrainian "holomodor" killed up to 10 million.
And this at a time while Hitler was still putting Jews & other enemies into the gentle confines of brand new concentration camps.
But Hitler was a quick learner, so when the opportunities presented themselves to "show his stuff", he went to work surpassing old Stalin's previous "achievements".
Let me put it this way:
At least that's the best I can do in terms of explanations.
The fact is Hitler and Stalin greatly admired each other despite being mortal enemies.
Maybe another way of looking at it is the Fabian Socialists sprung in the late 1800’s from ideas Marx expressed in the “Communist Manifesto” published in the mid 1800’s.
Hitler may not have consciously been a Fabian, but he admired Marxism which got him to the same result. Anyway, Hitler did not spring out of a vacuum by any means.
From interlog.com:
“Hitler was also arguably a socialist: in his own words, and according to those who knew him. Hitler’s socialism was only a variant of the genre. Hitler’s close confidant in the 1930s, Hermann Rauschning, published conversations with Hitler in “Hitler Speaks” (1939). The following are some remarks by Hitler on communism:
‘I have learnt a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit,’ Hitler went on.
http://www.interlog.com/~girbe/roots.html
Normally I can distill issues down to simple solutions, and it is difficult to do so in the context of the Holocaust, but I will offer one up anyway. Because I can.
Stalin was the gold standard of mass extermination and mass cruelty. He has one of the coldest quotes of the 20th Century, but one that may sum up the darkest aspects of that century better than any other:
“One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic.”
Stalin got a head start on mass murder compared to Hitler, but Hitler was not his pupil in all things. Stalin admired Hitler’s “Night of the Long Knives” in 1934, and he later said that was the inspiration for his own Purges.
I do see differences between the two men and their systems, however. I will argue that the excessive brutality of the Stalinist Soviet Union was the product of one evil man; Joseph Stalin. Keep in mind as I write this I do not intend an apologia for the Bolsheviks who preceded him in power, nor the Apparatchiks who followed. But the fact is that there was no Holomodor before Stalin, and none after. Stalin concentrated ALL power in his own hands, and worked long hours to make sure it stayed that way. And unlike Hitler, the lists of those marked for death were found in Stalin’s papers with his marks of approval written on them. When Stalin died, there was only one player purged in the old Stalinist manner; Lavrenti Beria. And he was purged exactly because the rest of the Politburo feared that he was the one guy who would continue the murderous brutality, and direct it at them personally.
After Stalin’s death, the guys who carried out his brutal exterminations had power. The guys like Khruschev, Kaganovich, Molotov, Malenkov and Bulganin. They had the blood of millions on their hands, but stopped the killing. The exiles were returned home. The German POWs were released. The political purges and executions stopped. They just didn’t have the stomach for it. Or maybe after 20 years of it they were just burned out. Again, it’s not an apologia. The Soviet Union was an evil, soul-stealing political and social system. But its worst aspects were tempered when Stalin drew his last breath.
Now take a look at Hitler. Unlike Stalin, there is no official state document that says “Kill the Jews. Signed, A. Hitler.” The Holocaust deniers and Hitler apologists have harped on this for years. I for one believe that Hitler knew full well what was taking place, and fully approved of the same. But he did not directly “order” it. Instead, I would say he “inspired” it. There were enough orders that did directly come from him, regarding the extermination of the Polish Intelligentsia, and the Commissar Order, to establish his “guilt” for the mass murders of his regime. And they certainly helped set the tone for what happened. Hitler was absent from the Wansee Conference (although again, he at least had knowledge of its being convened, who was present, what its purpose was, and fully approved of its result). He was too busy losing the war on the Eastern Front. Stalin would never have operated this loosely. He would have had his hands all over that Conference, which would have only been convened to rubber-stamp what he had already decided anyway.
My argument is that in the case of Nazi Germany, it was not a case of a brutal regime being brutal by the will of one man. Instead, I see an aglomeration of very like-minded evil men who naturally gravitated to the person of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party. Hitler only gave men like Goring, Himmler, Eichmann, Heydrich and Kaltenbrunner the opportunity to take their inner desires and convert them to reality. These were evil men. It is my opinion that even had Hitler died, and the regime somehow continued, they would have whole-heartedly continued the murderous and barbaric policies of the Holocaust.
When such a concentration of twisted souls came together, they fed on each other’s passions, and created a cycle of increasing brutality. Each repressive measure, whether directed against Jew or Slave, begat a further repressive measure. Thus, I see the Holocaust as the end result of a group-think psychology, rather than the evil product of one man, which predominated in the USSR. The extermination of the Jews was not an intended end game of either Adolph Hitler and the Nazi State in 1933. But it was certainly a natural and logical consequence of the policies promoted and the men who promoted them.
That’s my take anyway.
Stalin’s reaction to Zhukov’s phone call, telling him Hitler was dead:
“So, that’s the end of the bastard.”
A little pithier than “Jefferson still lives.”
I'll buy that, up to a point.
For certain, Hitler not only permitted but encouraged his people's savagery.
It was, after all, Hitler who termed his war with Russia a "war of extermination", and who refused to discipline excessively brutal soldiers.
So there's no sense here that Hitler's people were doing something other that what he wanted.
The fact that so many others shared Hitler's brutal vision is further evidence that the vision itself was not just Hitler's, but was instead in basic form inherited from the old First World War imperial regime.
Of course, that old Kaiser-Reich could not imagine sending untermenschen to gas chambers, but surely it's because they lacked imagination, not a lack of desire for vast lebensraum in Poland, Ukraine, Russia & elsewhere.
As it was, First World War civilian deaths in Russia totaled over a million -- from military action, crimes against humanity, malnutrition & disease.
Point is: mass civilian destruction did not begin with the Second World War, just increased exponentially.
His party was, after all, National Socialists, with all that implies, which also tells us that when Hitler invaded Stalin's International Socialist paradise, it was a civil war amongst socialists.
I merely suggest that Hitler's ideas of just what, exactly, is meant by the term "socialist" had little or nothing to do with British Fabian Socialism -- especially since Fabians believed in gradualism, and legal reformist methods.
By stark contrast, Hitler's methods were "legal" only where necessary, and then primarily mere propaganda claims.
In fact, Hitler was entirely revolutionary, not Fabian.
>”Hitler was entirely revolutionary, not Fabian”<
Even though Hitler may not have been a member of the Fabian Society, it seems that both were (Fabian Socialists still are) after the same result. Hitler was influenced by Marxism and supported by Fabian Socialists and so didn’t emerge from a vacuum like I used to think which was my point.
Marx, Hitler, Fabians - they seem like peas in the same pod. Here is Fabian Socialist George Bernard Shaw commending and supporting Hitler and his mass murders.
http://www.infowars.com/george-bernard-shaw-defends-hitler-mass-murder/
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