For decades, people who ought to know better, such as Elie Wiesel, have been going around, and, weasel like, wondered why Auschwitz happened.
There were just some “Roosevelt” awards (Krugman got one, and I know of this thanks to him). I was shocked by how much the greatness, goodness and courage of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was evoked.
The reality is just the opposite.
Roosevelt is the president who waited until the Nazis attacked the USA to do something of consequence about those fascist, racist mass murderers. On December 11, 1941, 4 days after Pearl Harbor, Adolf Hitler declared war TO the USA. Hitler’s Panzers had just reached a Moscow subway station.
The USA, finding itself at war, acknowledged the fact. So much for courage.
Fortunately, the French Republic had declared war to the Nazi Reich on September 3, 1939.
That was 27 months before December 11, 1941, and that was also something the French did TO Hitler. Whereas Roosevelt, obsessed as he was by his political popularity, did nothing of courage, until he had to, for other reasons.
1939, 1940, 1941 are years that, truly ought to live in infamy. For the USA too. Not just Germany.
The Netherlands loom big in the Roosevelt universe. Amusingly, the Netherlands was also “neutral” in 1939-1940. That meant: helping Hitler, and the Netherlands played a huge role in the defeat of France in June 1940.
And why was France defeated? Lots of reasons. But Nazi Germany was allied to imperial Japan and fascist Italy (both attacked France directly), plus Stalin USSR (supporting Hitler directly), and, most importantly, American plutocrats (and even, for a crucial three months, at the beginning of the war, in 1939, by the president of the USA and its despicable Congress).
Don’t ask why Auschwitz happened. Ask, instead, why Roosevelt happened.
And please don’t say:”God with Us”. As the Roosevelt sycophants do all day long. Enough of the god hypocrisy. “Gott Mit Uns” was engraved on the belt buckles of the SS.
Those who refuse to know history cannot learn anything important.
***
Patrice Ayme
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
October 17, 2013 at 10:30 pm |
Dear Patrice, Your ire is marvellous and you are fully right for it . PF
Envoyé de mon iPhone
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October 18, 2013 at 6:43 pm |
Dear Paul: Thanks for the support. I listened to the first half an hour of this self congratulatory ocean of Rooseveltian hypocrisy. I guess, that’s what the Roosevelt style tradition is all about, colossal hypocrisy, come to think of it.
Ire is a wonderful thing, indeed. It helps the mind go where it would not have otherwise dared. No wonder the gods practice it so much…
PA
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October 18, 2013 at 3:43 pm |
Patrice, very well expressed. Just read your essay aloud to Jean and we both remarked about the post-war legacy of antisemitism that was rife in London in our childhood days.
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October 18, 2013 at 6:41 pm |
Dear Paul: One could have got rid of Hitler nearly without bloodshed. Or, more exactly, with only a bit of Nazi blood. As I have related in previous essay, the top German generals, led by their chief, Ludwig Beck, plotted, but got very, very unlucky (including with the British government).
You made me think that I should scramble a little essay on this. The Nazi sympathies in London and Washington went well beyond anti-Judaism. The UK operated a U turn in the period 1938-1939, and became anti-Nazi. Washington did not. Instead, Washington armed itself to the hilt, to be ready to win a world war, easily. By 1939, the USA had no less than 6 giant aircraft carriers, some carrying normally nearly 100 planes. The construction of 18 new carriers was soon ordered.
And this giant force did not lift a finger, while France and Britain were at bay.
PA
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October 20, 2013 at 1:30 am |
Patrice,
Like you and many of the other posters on your site, I too am a “student” of history…err…her-story…who’s-story…the winners story…tongue firmly planted in cheek, but also serious.
The wars of the Western World have been one focus for years, especially the concatenation that was WWI & WWII. From my reading, listening and talking so far, the British were equally responsible for the start of WWI, maybe more so. The British Empire’s hegemony precipitated the arms race that started in the late 19th century between Britain and Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany. Cables/correspondence I’ve read from British government officials from the late 19th century state that Britain would not compete with Germany economically, they would destroy Germany militarily.
Next, by the end of 1916, Germany, France and Britain were sending out feelers about a negotiated peace among equals. They had beaten each other to death and saw only stalemate and more death in the future. If the US had not been dragged into WWI (the draggers are of great debate, another time perhaps) there is good reason to think Hitler would have remained a nobody.
It was, IMHO, the Treaty of Versailles, and others post WWI, that eventually precipitated Hitler’s rise to power. The treaty destroyed the German economy, placing unbelievable hardship on the populous. As per my reading of history, any time a populous is extremely oppressed, for whatever reason, (think French Revolution) the people revolt and extremest, right or left, come to the fore. One can say that Woodrow Wilson was directly responsible of the German extremism that became Nazism. If WWI would have ended without US intervention, through a negotiated peace among equals, I believe Europe would not have gone through the extreme cataclysm that was WWII.
As to why France fell quickly to the Germans at the start of WWII, I have a bit to add to your post. Most Americans that ridicule France do not know that without France there would be no USA. And, almost all of WWI was fought in France’s industrial north, totally destroying that area. In the interregnum between WWI and WWII, French politicians squabbled while the industrial north lay in ruin. That political fighting distracted the country from more important efforts, the rebuilding of French industry. Thus, France was still very weak from WWI when the Panzers rolled into Paris.
Finally, I’d like to say that trying to understand history is not the same as condoning the actions of the actors to that history.
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October 20, 2013 at 4:36 am |
Dear Danieltheodore: Lots to say about your comment, some of your points of view are unusual, but I agree with them. I have myself adressed many of these issues.
It’s unusual to say there won’t have been Hitler without the USA, but I am sure it’s very true. That’s actually one of my main web of thought about WWII.
Britain is zero at fault for WWI. The culprit of WWI is 100% the Second German Reich. I have adressed the questions in many essays in the past, many can be found by searching the site.
To make it short, Germany was a fascist regime headed by several lunatic madmen. Those raving maniac plutocrats made the war fist to keep their plutocracy going, because the German SPD was breathing down their necks.
The British army was quasi inexistent in august 1014. Headed by Sir John French, it behaved in a way vastly inferior to an equivalent French army corps, mostly due to Sir French’s nervous breakdown. Kitchener of Karthoum had to show up in full uniform to order him to stop retreating.
That the Versailles Treaty was a casus belli is an invention of Keynes. If Britain was 100% innocent of WWI, not so for WWII. There was an important pro-Nazi plot in england, involving Edward VIII.
The Versailles Treaty was just and glorious. Several nations enslaved by the Second Reich became independent again, such as Poland.
I would not be surprised that those who bemoan the Versailles treaty would be punched in the face by any appropriately red blooded Pole. Poland was a much older nation than Prussia.
The Germans did not get the message, though, and tried to enslave them again. So, in 1945, most of Prussia was annihilated (something I deplore, but they had it coming).
I have an essay coming on a related subject, the Hitler-German army relationship, as it tied up to Roosevelt’s cowardice, perfidy and treacherousness, but it has been delayed…
PA
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