The Great Victor Davis Hanson Takes On World War II

American Thinker.com ^ | Marech 20, 2018 | John Dale Dunn

[Kaslin]

He was on Fox News yesterday or the day before

[Kaslin]

I have a ping list for Victor Davis Hanson. I’ll be glad to add you if you want to be on it.

[JewishRighter]

Yes, I’d like that, thank you.

[Kaslin]

You have been added. :)

[Flag_This]

"The roots of WWII do back directly to the draconian punishment France insisted on dealing out to Germany at Versailles, the end of WWI."

Which was in retaliation for Prussia imposing a 5 billion franc war indemnity and taking Alsace and Lorraine from France at the end of the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. And Prussia justified that because of the indemnity Napoleon imposed on Prussia in 1807. So, it could be said that the roots of WWII go back to Napoleon.

[sparklite2]

It’s like the “Troubles” between England and Ireland.
Finding a villain is about as defining as finding a Yankee.

[Oatka]

the major Allied powers pretended not to see the threat or, in some cases, refused to do anything to stop the aggression.

Deja Vu all over again - Europe and the Muslim invasion.

[Oatka]

Brilliant effort, solid analysis backed up by extensive citation. A lot of analysis. A LOT.

Agreed. Started reading it and am just into "From Poland to the Pacific".

The only quibble I have with him is that if Japan hadn't attacked Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, the U.S. would have stayed out. Everything I have read about that time was that Japan worried that if they didn't take out the American fleet, their flank would be open to attack when they went into the Dutch East Indies. They felt they HAD to attack, counting on quick victories and then a negotiated peace giving them hegemony over the area.

Then they screwed up their timing of the Declaration of War.

[laplata]

the major Allied powers pretended not to see the threat or, in some cases, refused to do anything to stop the aggression.

“Deja Vu all over again - Europe and the Muslim invasion”.

Very good point. This time we won’t bail them out and they’ll probably never free themselves.

[Billthedrill]

An excellent point. I wondered that myself and checked the chronology - the Japanese had enjoyed as unexpectedly swift a success in Indonesia - the Dutch East Indies - as the Germans had in France. That was their oil supply, already in their hands before Pearl Harbor, and inasmuch as the Netherlands had been under Nazi occupation for more than a year, the Dutch weren't in a position to do anything about it.

At that point the Japanese were as committed to their overall plan of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere as the Nazis had been to lebensraum - the commitment that had, despite all good sense, impelled Hitler to attack Russia when Stalin was already happily selling him all the oil he needed. You might say - this is my conclusion, not Hanson's - that it was too much of a commitment to ideology that trapped them both into continuing the plans that eventually doomed them.

You suggest that the U.S. might have accepted the new status quo if the Japanese hadn't gone ahead with Pearl Harbor, and I agree (so does Hanson). Hanson further states that if they had stopped short of Singapore, the British might have done the same. Call it hubris. The Japanese plan was to engage the U.S. Navy in a giant surface action as they had the Russians in 1905, and we simply wouldn't give that to them.

[Natty Bumppo@frontier.net]

...their 'end game' was a negotiated peace that provided critical resources they needed to survive...

Everybody thinks Americans are like everybody else on the planet. We are not...

The rest of the world consistently fails to understand HOW the United States is different. Even the Confederate States failed to grasp the impossible reality of forcing a negotiated peace to end the Civl War that would allow them to secede.

Others forget or never knew what it took for people to come here, create a nation out of wilderness, survive, and prosper. They do not understand what most of them were leaving from.

They cannot comprehend how much the patriots who founded this country detested and feared large, powerful, centralized governments. Therefore, they cannot understand the true basis and reason for the Second Amendment.

The United States may to slow to anger, but once we go to war, the "diplomats" and "politicians" get to Shut the Front Door and Color.

We may be magnanimous in our treatment of a defeated foe, but imposing Unconditional Surrender on our enemies is hard-wired into our DNA.

Clausewitz (and most of the rest of the world) is flat out wrong in thinking that War is the continuation of politics by other means. It is much more important than that, it is about national survival. If it comes to war, the United States wins, and our enemies lose, completely, totally, and unconditionally.

[Psalm 73]

"The rest of the world consistently fails to understand HOW the United States is different."

And by "rest of the world", I think maybe we could include the hard left - it's not that they just don't seem like Americans, it's more like they hate Americans.

[Lurker]

“People were tired after WWI.”

And rightly so. Europe lost an entire generation to a meat grinder. One could argue they still haven’t fully recovered. Wilson dragged America into that carnage kicking and screaming.

Less than a generation later we were again embroiled in two horrific wars because we fell asleep at the switch.

L

[miss marmelstein]

Yes, France in particular was played out; after all, it happened on their turf. I enjoy reading Gertrude Stein who wrote marvelous memoirs of living in Paris and the countryside during the war. Somehow, she managed to have fun while living quietly as a Jew in Occupied France.

[Phlyer]

If it comes to war, the United States wins, and our enemies lose, completely, totally, and unconditionally.

Well, once upon a time, anyway . . .

I have said (here and elsewhere) that the US should have declared war on North Korea and on North Viet Nam. Without a formal, national declaration of war we didn't fight it like a war. We thought it was a 'police action' or 'nation building' and, as a result . . . we lost (or perhaps tied, in Korea, though not crushing a two-bit country like that might as well have been a defeat).

You are absolutely right about the way the US used to fight. I think the Spanish-American war was 'limited' and ended up in a negotiated peace, but it was an exception. Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent book called, "Carnage and Culture" in which he makes the case that - like the Greeks under Epimonandas (sp?) our armies are (were) comprised of citizens who wanted to get the job done and get back to their real lives. So we fought ruthlessly and efficiently - and we made sure the job truly was done so that we wouldn't have to go back to the same fight again.

I still think my comments on what the Germans and the Japanese thought are correct, but you are also correct that they had actually little reason to believe they would succeed in obtaining at desirable peace when they fought us.

At least, that's the way it was then. Now, all an enemy has to do is hold out for a few years against a less-than-half-hearted attempt on our part to make them 'see the light' and give up. After that we give up the effort.

To use the president's twitter succinctness: "Sad"