Or the restart of the First World War after a 21 years, postponed from October, 1938, by a false sense of "peace in our time" thanks to the myopic PM Chamberlain. (Below: from the 1970s documentary "The World at War", narrated by Laurence Olivier.)
Peace in our western lands perhaps while aggression is sidelined to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and so on. A case of if it isn't happening on my land then I don't need to care about it, perhaps even pretend it doesn't exist.
I think it feels that way for many in America, Iri Ani. If you don't have a son or daughter in these places when the war is happening, or don't belong to some activist group...
My mother was on pins and needles while my brother was over in South Vietnam back in the Sixties--kept waiting to hear from him because he was in some danger serving in an air-sea rescue unit. Finally, she got someone in the Air Force to have my brother contact her via phone to let her know he was okay. Bob was a bit bad about staying in touch it seems.
So many sons are. (bad at staying in touch even) When my brother was in the UK for his OE my parents only ever heard from him when he wanted them to transfer some of his money to Britain. Or so it seemed from my mother's complaints at the time.
I so feel for your mother though. Recently I was shocked when one of my own sons said he was thinking about joining the army. You have to allow people to travel their own path in life so i tried to be supportive but I am relieved that he seems to have changed his mind now. I didn't bring up my sons to become cannon fodder.
Oh we were so slow back then. Chamberlain must have been blind. Germany were producing uniforms on mass and had been stock piling weapons for a few years. There was our man, in whom people put their trust, sent to see what was going on, but he had the wool pulled over his eyes so easily. We should have sent Churchill, maybe we would of had a bit of time to get those munitions factories up and running!
Hitler was out to gain land and he was almost unstoppable. When I read about that time, I'm amazed we ever won the war. Thank god Hitler made a few mistakes and changed direction.
Thank you Doug, we own so much to all those people fighting so that we could be free. Ghastly though it was, the use of the Atom bomb gave us many years of relative peace. Let's hope it is never used again.
I would feel the same way were I in your position. The United States hasn't fought a war to defend the homeland since 1945 and that's the only reason to ask young people to fight.
Funny how kids in school get in touch with mom and dad they need money, though. That appears to be universal :-)
I feel the same way about America's involvement in WWII, Cassandra. Especially against the Japanese. If the US Navy had lost the Battle of Midway, the Hawaiian islands might have been lost and a base set up to attack the West Coast. A joint US-Soviet-British Commonwealth invasion of Japan would have taken more lives than the A-bomb and that was Truman's reason for using it.
Yes, Hitler did make mistakes and the Spitfire was a better plane than the Messerschmidt. The Battle of Britain bought the future allies--then neutrals--a lot of needed time. America was woefully unprepared because of the Great Depression and Anti-British and later Anti-Soviet Isolationism only was finally overcome by the attack at Pearl Harbor.
Canadian entered the Second World War united with Great Britain by way of the Commonwealth association. We look back at these times and how often we tend to forget. It's a time in history that brought us to where we are now and how many lost there lives during this time. America supplied the capital for three years and then did enter into the war after the attack on Pearl Harbour...many died but for a good purpose which was freedom.
Yes, I should have mentioned Canada and the Commonwealth nations right off here---that's what made it a World War of course.
You're right, Jack, this was a moment in history when ordinary men and women turned back the tide of racial imperialism. Whatever mess the globe can get in would only be worse if Nazism and Nipponese militarism gained a foothold in England, the USA, Australia, etc.
and all this gave us STALIN and COMMUNISUM weren't we lucky and eastern Europe took a turn towards the Middle Ages what a wonderful world we live in- great video dnoaks
Appeasement was a complex calculation I think. The Soviet Union did the same thing of course with the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, but in reality the war had begun in 1936 with the Spanish Civil War. At that time the International Brigades were way ahead of either Chamberlain or Churchill. The working class volunteers of Britain, America and many other places were the first to confront fascism while the governments pussy footed around Hitler, buying time maybe?
That's true, AA. There's usually an official beginning to great events, and there's a beginning that defies mainstream motivations, where often the wolf must be in force on the front door before the issue is dealt with.
Confronting fascism in 1936 was not popular in America--support of which might have been 10 percent of the population according to some polls the the time.
I suppose that isn't surprising when we consider that WWII would never have been possible without John D Rockefeller's Standard Oil, it simple could never have happened in the way it did.
It was Mr Rockefeller and his associates that are responsible for the Blitz, to Hitler it was just an idea on his wish list.
Antony Cyril Sutton has written widely on this and similar subjects, he has noted for example that:-
"The Standard Oil group of companies, in which the Rockefeller family owned a one-quarter (and controlling) interest,1 was of critical assistance in helping Nazi Germany prepare for World War II. This assistance in military preparation came about because Germany's relatively insignificant supplies of crude petroleum were quite insufficient for modern mechanized warfare; in 1934 for instance about 85 percent of German finished petroleum products were imported. The solution adopted by Nazi Germany was to manufacture synthetic gasoline from its plentiful domestic coal supplies. It was the hydrogenation process of producing synthetic gasoline and iso-octane properties in gasoline that enabled Germany to go to war in 1940 — and this hydrogenation process was developed and financed by the Standard Oil laboratories in the United States in partnership with I.G. Farben.
Another prominent example of Standard Oil assistance to Nazi Germany — in cooperation with General Motors — was in supplying ethyl lead. Ethyl fluid is an anti-knock compound used in both aviation and automobile fuels to eliminate knocking, and so improve engine efficiency; without such anti-knocking compounds modern mobile warfare would be impractical.
In 1924 the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation was formed in New York City, jointly owned by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and General Motors Corporation, to control and utilize U.S. patents for the manufacture and distribution of tetraethyl lead and ethyl fluid in the U.S. and abroad. Up to 1935 manufacture of these products was undertaken only in the United States. In 1935 Ethyl Gasoline Corporation transferred its know-how to Germany for use in the Nazi rearmament program. This transfer was undertaken over the protests of the U.S. Government.
Ethyl's intention to transfer its anti-knock technology to Nazi Germany came to the attention of the Army Air Corps in Washington, D.C. On December 15, 1934 E. W. Webb, president of Ethyl Gasoline, was advised that Washington had learned of the intention of "forming a German company with the I.G. to manufacture ethyl lead in that country."
The War Department indicated that there was considerable criticism of this technological transfer, which might "have the gravest repercussions" for the U.S.; that the commercial demand for ethyl lead in Germany was too small to be of interest; and,... it has been claimed that Germany is secretly arming [and] ethyl lead would doubtless be a valuable aid to military aeroplanes."
This aspect of Standard Oil's assistance to Nazi Germany, over the objections of the War Department no less, is something new to me!
Thanks also for the link on the rise of Hitler--my looking it over may come in handy the next time somebody over here pipes up in my presence that the National Socialist Party in Germany was a left-based organization. (Henry Ford and J D Rockefeller being some of the least socialist-friendly figures in American History.)
Another bit of early WWII background I didn't know, Jack. Here's a list by the way of foreign pilots who served in the RAF during the crucial Battle of Britain in 1940-41.
Poland 145 New Zealand 127 Canada 112 Czechoslovakia 88 Australia 32 Belgium 28 South Africa 25 France 13 Ireland 10 United States 7 Jamaica 1 Palestine Mandate 1 Southern Rhodesia 1 Unknown 8
I was surprised by the numbers of New Zealanders. The Canadians were of course well-represented. i don't know if the Canadian numbers include Americans who might have joined up in Canada to fly or not.
Cheers Doug, I think this story demonstrates several interesting points. The first is obviously that the Nazi war machine was created and sustained by a collaboration between US corporations and their German partners, most principally IG Farben and without this sponsorship, no Nazi tanks would have ever entered Poland and no aircraft would have bombed Britain (nor anywhere else). A second equally important point is that the anatomy of corporate power is uncovered in this hidden history which clearly demonstrates that the US government were incapable of restraining the ambitions of Standard Oil, the Ford Corporation, Westrick, Texaco and ITT to name but a few US companies that made WWII possible. To me this demystifies the notion of the US as a corporatocracy, in which the political establishment is no more than a supporting act. It doesn't matter how much integrity a US president has... policy is made and implemented by the corporate owners and not the US governments who rubber stamp them.
Nowadays of course, Standard OIl has morphed into ExxonMobil the world's second largest publicly traded company when measured by market capitalization after PetroChina.
Today's wars are brought to us courtesy of ExxonMobil and the corporate military industrial complex of the United States who generously sponsor all of them.
In my view there was nothing particularly noble about the Second World War, it was very good business as usual for the US corporatocracy and various sycophantic heads of state who'd been taking lessons from Edward Bernays. The official story of the freedom loving good guys defeating the Nazi eugenic monster is all contrived nonsense, however on the subject of eugenics and death camps enter Prescott Bush, founder of a crime family and a presidential dynasty.
As suggested above there would have been no terrified Polish school children, no dead British secretaries and no great movies to perpetuate the myths surrounding the events lumped together collectively as WWII.
I'm not sure it actually started 70 years ago but I am sure it hasn't ended yet.
That could be, Jim. It appears, also, there may be a difference between "official" flyers--- and those who may have volunteered from the United States, for instance, but did so under assumed names. There may have hundreds of more "Yanks in the RAF" then officially listed. Here's a short article on the matter:
I think wars are multi-dimensional: they are reported like giant board-games in the headlines, AA. We are invited to see them usually as simple conflicts between nation-states, which on a strategic level they are.
But,as you have pointed out, nothing that moves tens of millions in opposing directions is so simple as to fit a chessboard narrative.
No at that time Canada represented it's own or I should say in concert with England at the time. But many did die during this time...those numbers would be or Canada's own men during that time. Very interesting to say the least.
Yes, I believe you're right on the official number, Jack. A number of Americans served in the RAF via entry through Canada, but the numbers seem to be hard to discern because they knew they were violating the American Neutrality Act and could lose their citizenship and face a prison term. Odd situation, to say the least.
I doubt anyone was ever prosecuted for such a "crime" , either for helping out in the RAF or for "The Flying Tigers", the American flyers who defended Nationalist China's Air Force against the Japanese at about the same time.
The even more amazing thing is that the RAF held out and controlled the air when so many "experts" in the media and foreign observers wrote the UK off.
The Ameirican Ambassador, Joseph Kennedy, father of the future President, confidentially wrote to his wife after The Evacuation of Dunkirk in June 1940 *paraphrasing here*, "England's finished. I'll be home before the end of Summer."
The whole thing from September 1939 till it's end was a mess of what if's. Most we know about and it's almost certain that if any one of those early what if's had gone differently then the whole thing would not have ended as it did. We'd be pledging allegiance to a different master now probably.
I agree Jim--the "what ifs", added together, can't help but give me pause when anniversaries of momentous events roll around. Nothing begins or ends from square one---unforeseen developments and snap judgements at given times might have a greater effect on the future than any careful planning ever did.
Res ipsa loquitor -- if you seek his monument; look around....
ReplyDeleteGood analysis; Doug!
Thanks Astra. I imagine many people were still in a state of shock from the last war to believe this could happen again in thir lifetimes.
ReplyDeletePeace in our western lands perhaps while aggression is sidelined to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and so on. A case of if it isn't happening on my land then I don't need to care about it, perhaps even pretend it doesn't exist.
ReplyDeleteI think it feels that way for many in America, Iri Ani. If you don't have a son or daughter in these places when the war is happening, or don't belong to some activist group...
ReplyDeleteMy mother was on pins and needles while my brother was over in South Vietnam back in the Sixties--kept waiting to hear from him because he was in some danger serving in an air-sea rescue unit. Finally, she got someone in the Air Force to have my brother contact her via phone to let her know he was okay. Bob was a bit bad about staying in touch it seems.
Thanks for the reminder...
ReplyDeleteSo many sons are. (bad at staying in touch even) When my brother was in the UK for his OE my parents only ever heard from him when he wanted them to transfer some of his money to Britain. Or so it seemed from my mother's complaints at the time.
ReplyDeleteI so feel for your mother though. Recently I was shocked when one of my own sons said he was thinking about joining the army. You have to allow people to travel their own path in life so i tried to be supportive but I am relieved that he seems to have changed his mind now. I didn't bring up my sons to become cannon fodder.
Oh we were so slow back then. Chamberlain must have been blind. Germany were producing uniforms on mass and had been stock piling weapons for a few years. There was our man, in whom people put their trust, sent to see what was going on, but he had the wool pulled over his eyes so easily. We should have sent Churchill, maybe we would of had a bit of time to get those munitions factories up and running!
ReplyDeleteHitler was out to gain land and he was almost unstoppable. When I read about that time, I'm amazed we ever won the war. Thank god Hitler made a few mistakes and changed direction.
Thank you Doug, we own so much to all those people fighting so that we could be free. Ghastly though it was, the use of the Atom bomb gave us many years of relative peace. Let's hope it is never used again.
I wud second that. Thanks for sharing this. ..
ReplyDeleteThanks to you Mike.
ReplyDeleteI would feel the same way were I in your position. The United States hasn't fought a war to defend the homeland since 1945 and that's the only reason to ask young people to fight.
ReplyDeleteFunny how kids in school get in touch with mom and dad they need money, though. That appears to be universal :-)
I feel the same way about America's involvement in WWII, Cassandra. Especially against the Japanese. If the US Navy had lost the Battle of Midway, the Hawaiian islands might have been lost and a base set up to attack the West Coast. A joint US-Soviet-British Commonwealth invasion of Japan would have taken more lives than the A-bomb and that was Truman's reason for using it.
ReplyDeleteYes, Hitler did make mistakes and the Spitfire was a better plane than the Messerschmidt. The Battle of Britain bought the future allies--then neutrals--a lot of needed time. America was woefully unprepared because of the Great Depression and Anti-British and later Anti-Soviet Isolationism only was finally overcome by the attack at Pearl Harbor.
You're welcome Frank.
ReplyDeleteCanadian entered the Second World War united with Great Britain by way of the Commonwealth association. We look back at these times and how often we tend to forget.
ReplyDeleteIt's a time in history that brought us to where we are now and how many lost there lives during this time.
America supplied the capital for three years and then did enter into the war after the attack on Pearl Harbour...many died but for a good purpose which was freedom.
This is a very good reminder Doug...
Yes, I should have mentioned Canada and the Commonwealth nations right off here---that's what made it a World War of course.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, Jack, this was a moment in history when ordinary men and women turned back the tide of racial imperialism. Whatever mess the globe can get in would only be worse if Nazism and Nipponese militarism gained a foothold in England, the USA, Australia, etc.
Within the Air Force Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta were the main training grounds for all of the Commonwealth for WW2 if I may add Doug.
ReplyDeleteand all this gave us STALIN and COMMUNISUM weren't we lucky and eastern Europe took a turn towards the Middle Ages what a wonderful world we live in-
ReplyDeletegreat video dnoaks
Appeasement was a complex calculation I think. The Soviet Union did the same thing of course with the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, but in reality the war had begun in 1936 with the Spanish Civil War. At that time the International Brigades were way ahead of either Chamberlain or Churchill. The working class volunteers of Britain, America and many other places were the first to confront fascism while the governments pussy footed around Hitler, buying time maybe?
ReplyDeleteThat's true, AA. There's usually an official beginning to great events, and there's a beginning that defies mainstream motivations, where often the wolf must be in force on the front door before the issue is dealt with.
ReplyDeleteConfronting fascism in 1936 was not popular in America--support of which might have been 10 percent of the population according to some polls the the time.
I suppose that isn't surprising when we consider that WWII would never have been possible without John D Rockefeller's Standard Oil, it simple could never have happened in the way it did.
ReplyDeleteIt was Mr Rockefeller and his associates that are responsible for the Blitz, to Hitler it was just an idea on his wish list.
Antony Cyril Sutton has written widely on this and similar subjects, he has noted for example that:-
"The Standard Oil group of companies, in which the Rockefeller family owned a one-quarter (and controlling) interest,1 was of critical assistance in helping Nazi Germany prepare for World War II. This assistance in military preparation came about because Germany's relatively insignificant supplies of crude petroleum were quite insufficient for modern mechanized warfare; in 1934 for instance about 85 percent of German finished petroleum products were imported.
The solution adopted by Nazi Germany was to manufacture synthetic gasoline from its plentiful domestic coal supplies. It was the hydrogenation process of producing synthetic gasoline and iso-octane properties in gasoline that enabled Germany to go to war in 1940 — and this hydrogenation process was developed and financed by the Standard Oil laboratories in the United States in partnership with I.G. Farben.
Another prominent example of Standard Oil assistance to Nazi Germany — in cooperation with General Motors — was in supplying ethyl lead. Ethyl fluid is an anti-knock compound used in both aviation and automobile fuels to eliminate knocking, and so improve engine efficiency; without such anti-knocking compounds modern mobile warfare would be impractical.
In 1924 the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation was formed in New York City, jointly owned by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and General Motors Corporation, to control and utilize U.S. patents for the manufacture and distribution of tetraethyl lead and ethyl fluid in the U.S. and abroad. Up to 1935 manufacture of these products was undertaken only in the United States. In 1935 Ethyl Gasoline Corporation transferred its know-how to Germany for use in the Nazi rearmament program. This transfer was undertaken over the protests of the U.S. Government.
Ethyl's intention to transfer its anti-knock technology to Nazi Germany came to the attention of the Army Air Corps in Washington, D.C. On December 15, 1934 E. W. Webb, president of Ethyl Gasoline, was advised that Washington had learned of the intention of "forming a German company with the I.G. to manufacture ethyl lead in that country."
The War Department indicated that there was considerable criticism of this technological transfer, which might "have the gravest repercussions" for the U.S.; that the commercial demand for ethyl lead in Germany was too small to be of interest; and,... it has been claimed that Germany is secretly arming [and] ethyl lead would doubtless be a valuable aid to military aeroplanes."
Article at this link http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/index.html
This aspect of Standard Oil's assistance to Nazi Germany, over the objections of the War Department no less, is something new to me!
ReplyDeleteThanks also for the link on the rise of Hitler--my looking it over may come in handy the next time somebody over here pipes up in my presence that the National Socialist Party in Germany was a left-based organization. (Henry Ford and J D Rockefeller being some of the least socialist-friendly figures in American History.)
Again, thanks for the additional information, AA.
Another bit of early WWII background I didn't know, Jack. Here's a list by the way of foreign pilots who served in the RAF during the crucial Battle of Britain in 1940-41.
ReplyDeletePoland 145
New Zealand 127
Canada 112
Czechoslovakia 88
Australia 32
Belgium 28
South Africa 25
France 13
Ireland 10
United States 7
Jamaica 1
Palestine Mandate 1
Southern Rhodesia 1
Unknown 8
I was surprised by the numbers of New Zealanders. The Canadians were of course well-represented. i don't know if the Canadian numbers include Americans who might have joined up in Canada to fly or not.
I think that may be a list of the numers of deaths in combat broken down by nation.
ReplyDeleteCheers Doug, I think this story demonstrates several interesting points. The first is obviously that the Nazi war machine was created and sustained by a collaboration between US corporations and their German partners, most principally IG Farben and without this sponsorship, no Nazi tanks would have ever entered Poland and no aircraft would have bombed Britain (nor anywhere else). A second equally important point is that the anatomy of corporate power is uncovered in this hidden history which clearly demonstrates that the US government were incapable of restraining the ambitions of Standard Oil, the Ford Corporation, Westrick, Texaco and ITT to name but a few US companies that made WWII possible. To me this demystifies the notion of the US as a corporatocracy, in which the political establishment is no more than a supporting act.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't matter how much integrity a US president has... policy is made and implemented by the corporate owners and not the US governments who rubber stamp them.
Nowadays of course, Standard OIl has morphed into ExxonMobil the world's second largest publicly traded company when measured by market capitalization after PetroChina.
Today's wars are brought to us courtesy of ExxonMobil and the corporate military industrial complex of the United States who generously sponsor all of them.
In my view there was nothing particularly noble about the Second World War, it was very good business as usual for the US corporatocracy and various sycophantic heads of state who'd been taking lessons from Edward Bernays.
The official story of the freedom loving good guys defeating the Nazi eugenic monster is all contrived nonsense, however on the subject of eugenics and death camps enter Prescott Bush, founder of a crime family and a presidential dynasty.
As suggested above there would have been no terrified Polish school children, no dead British secretaries and no great movies to perpetuate the myths surrounding the events lumped together collectively as WWII.
I'm not sure it actually started 70 years ago but I am sure it hasn't ended yet.
you would have mankind would have learned their lessons about war after World War II. Needless waste of young men,
ReplyDeleteThat could be, Jim. It appears, also, there may be a difference between "official" flyers--- and those who may have volunteered from the United States, for instance, but did so under assumed names. There may have hundreds of more "Yanks in the RAF" then officially listed. Here's a short article on the matter:
ReplyDeletehttp://davidalanjohnson.com/the_battle_of_britain____the_american_connection_48330.htm
That true, Fred. It continues to baffle me why the general public everywhere supports ceaseless wars--especially after this conflagration.
ReplyDeleteI think wars are multi-dimensional: they are reported like giant board-games in the headlines, AA. We are invited to see them usually as simple conflicts between nation-states, which on a strategic level they are.
ReplyDeleteBut,as you have pointed out, nothing that moves tens of millions in opposing directions is so simple as to fit a chessboard narrative.
No at that time Canada represented it's own or I should say in concert with England at the time.
ReplyDeleteBut many did die during this time...those numbers would be or Canada's own men during that time.
Very interesting to say the least.
Yes, I believe you're right on the official number, Jack.
ReplyDeleteA number of Americans served in the RAF via entry through Canada, but the numbers seem to be hard to discern because they knew they were violating the American Neutrality Act and could lose their citizenship and face a prison term.
Odd situation, to say the least.
I doubt anyone was ever prosecuted for such a "crime" , either for helping out in the RAF or for "The Flying Tigers", the American flyers who defended Nationalist China's Air Force against the Japanese at about the same time.
The even more amazing thing is that the RAF held out and controlled the air when so many "experts" in the media and foreign observers wrote the UK off.
The Ameirican Ambassador, Joseph Kennedy, father of the future President, confidentially wrote to his wife after The Evacuation of Dunkirk in June 1940 *paraphrasing here*, "England's finished. I'll be home before the end of Summer."
Uh-huh.
The whole thing from September 1939 till it's end was a mess of what if's. Most we know about and it's almost certain that if any one of those early what if's had gone differently then the whole thing would not have ended as it did. We'd be pledging allegiance to a different master now probably.
ReplyDeleteI agree Jim--the "what ifs", added together, can't help but give me pause when anniversaries of momentous events roll around. Nothing begins or ends from square one---unforeseen developments and snap judgements at given times might have a greater effect on the future than any careful planning ever did.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting Doug.
ReplyDeleteYes, Jack, I'm really pleased so many people have responded to such a short blog.
ReplyDelete