Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged hitler

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Javier E

Interview with World War II Historian Andrew Roberts - 0 views

  • You write that Hitler's war aims were impossible—how so? The Germans were trying to win a straightforward conventional war and, at the same time, trying to fight an ideological war: a specifically Nazi war as opposed to a German war. I believe that a true German nationalist—Otto von Bismarck, say, or Helmuth von Moltke—could have won the Second World War, because he wouldn't have made the kind of demands of the German military that Hitler did, which was to win a two-front conventional war while at the same time imposing the policies of the "Aryan master race." Those aims were directly in opposition.
  • Could the Nazis have won, had they done something differently? Absolutely. If they had not invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, and if they had instead thrown at the Allies even a fraction of the 3 million men they eventually unleashed against Russia, they would have chased us out of the Middle East and cut off access to 80 percent of the Allies' oil. We simply would not have been able to continue the struggle.
  • Was Hitler solely responsible for Germany's military blunders? No, there were plenty of people to blame. Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring is a perfect example: He promised Hitler that no Allied bombs would fall on Germany; he promised to destroy the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk solely through airpower; he promised to completely supply the German forces at Stalingrad by air. Yet he could not deliver on any of these promises.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In the end, all of these poor military leaders were appointed or promoted by Hitler, many solely because they were Nazis, and that's no way to fight—or win—a war.
  • Who were the most effective combat generals of the war? The Russian Georgy Zhukov, because he was given every impossible task and succeeded at all of them. For Germany, Erich von Manstein, who came up with the "sickle cut" maneuver that in May 1940 defeated France and was the most effective German general on the Eastern Front.
  • The Germans saw the Japanese as adjuncts to the greater effort they were putting in. The Japanese never trusted the Germans; they didn't even tell Berlin they were going to attack Pearl Harbor. Neither country put in the diplomatic work required to really coordinate their efforts. Essentially, the Second World War was two separate conflicts fought simultaneously.
  • The major problem with the historiography of World War II is the Cold War—it was not in the West's postwar interest to acknowledge that it was the Russians who destroyed the Wehrmacht, at an unbelievable cost to themselves. We are just now beginning to acknowledge the Soviet Union's contribution.
  • Statistically, the Eastern Front was where the war was won—out of every five Germans killed in battlefield combat, four died on the Eastern Front
Javier E

Book Review - Bismarck - By Jonathan Steinberg - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • with a few brusque strokes, the novice minister solved the riddle that had stymied European diplomacy for two generations: how to unify Germany and reorganize Central Europe. He had to overcome the obstacle that Germany comprised 39 sovereign states grouped in the so-called German Confederation. All the while, Central European trends were warily observed by the two “flanking” powers, France and Russia, ever uneasy about — and tempted to prevent — the emergence of a state capable of altering the existing European balance of power.
  • “the greatest diplomatic and political achievement by any leader in the last two centuries.”
  • a highly complex person who incarnated the duality that later tempted Germany into efforts beyond its capacity
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Bismarck is often cited as the quintessential realist, relying on power at the expense of ideals. He was, in fact, far more complicated. Power, to be useful, must be understood in its components, including its limits. By the same token, ideals must be brought, at some point, into relationship with the circumstances the leader is seeking to affect. Ignoring that balance threatens policy with either veering toward belligerence from the advocates of power or toward crusades by the idealists.
  • Bismarck dominated because he understood a wider range of factors relevant to international affairs — some normally identified with power, others generally classified as ideals — than any of his contemporaries.
  • Bismarck’s originality consisted of being neither in the camp of power nor in that of ideology.
  • Like a physicist, Bismarck analyzed the principal elements of each situation and then used them in an overall design.
  • Any serious policy requires a fixed point from which to alter the world. Bismarck’s Archimedean point was the belief in the uniqueness of Prussian institutions.
  • Bismarck foreshadowed an age whose equilibrium was an ever-changing interaction of forces, themselves in constant flux,
  • Like Disraeli, he believed that a broadly based suffrage would be nationalistic and could be mobilized for conservative causes.
  • The result, however, sowed the seeds of Germany’s 20th-century tragedies. Dominated as it was by what Steinberg calls “the sovereignty of an extraordinary, gigantic self,” the new Germany lacked institutional balance.
  • for the 28 years that he served as chancellor of Germany, Bismarck preserved what he had built by a restrained and wise diplomacy, which was the single most important element in maintaining the peace of Europe.
  • When he acted as a revolutionary as minister-president of Prussia, Bismarck could control the timing of policy. In his years as chancellor of Germany and as protector of what existed, others posed the challenges. Bismarck had to await events. In a sense, he became the prisoner of his own design and of its domestic necessities (to which, for example, he had to sacrifice his reluctance to enter the colonial race).
  • Bismarck’s successor, Caprivi, pointed out the essential weakness of the Bismarckian system by saying that while Bismarck had been able to keep five balls in the air simultaneously, he (Caprivi) had difficulty controlling two.
  • The second caveat concerns the direct line Steinberg draws from Bismarck to Hitler. Bismarck was a rationalist, Hitler a romantic nihilist. Bismarck’s essence was his sense of limits and equilibrium; Hitler’s was the absence of measure and rejection of restraint. The idea of conquering Europe would never have come to Bismarck; it was always part of Hitler’s vision. Hitler could never have pronounced Bismarck’s famous dictum that statesmanship consisted of listening carefully to the footsteps of God through history and walking with him a few steps of the way. Hitler left a vacuum. Bismarck left a state strong enough to overcome two catastrophic defeats as well as a legacy of unassimilable greatness.
Grace Gannon

Republican Congressman Randy Weber Compares Obama To Hitler - 0 views

  •  
    The ultra-conservative congressman from Texas criticized the president for not traveling to Paris on Sunday to attend a massive unity rally against terrorism, which was attended by dozens of world leaders. Randy Weber said, "Even Adolph Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn't do it for right reasons."
Grace Gannon

Swiss Company Apologizes for Hitler Coffee Cream Containers - 0 views

  •  
    A Swiss Company recently withdrew over 2,000 coffee cream containers, their labels possessing images of dictators Hitler and Mussolini. This error in production and distribution occurred when an external company asked to feature vintage cigar labels on the coffee cream containers, two of which were portraits of the dictators. Migros, a Swiss retail store, has apologized for this "unforgivable incident," horrified that such coffee cream containers found their way into the homes of thousands of people.
aqconces

Rare Interviews With Hitler's Inner Circle Reveal What Truly Happened on "The Day Hitle... - 0 views

  • a 1948 film never before shown to the American public, former Nuremberg trials judge and Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice Michael Musmanno proclaimed: "I have brought a number of eye witnesses on the subject of Hitler's disappearance. In their own words, they will tell you what happened to the Führer of Germany."
  • For two years following World War II, Musmanno tracked down members of Hitler's staff, including his secretary and the leader of the Nazi Youth, among others, in an effort to prove the Führer’s death.
  • The interviewees describe Hitler in his last moments as the Soviet Army invaded Germany in 1945, detailing everything from the claustrophobic quarters of the Führer's underground bunker, to his marriage to Eva Braun, to his final meal and eventual suicide.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • While the Musmanno collection, comprising 1,000 linear feet of photographs, papers and artifacts, came to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh several years after the judge's death, the recordings remained inaccessible until the mid-2000s, around the time that Thomas White, Duquesne's archivist and curator of special collections, began working at the school. We spoke with White about the interviews.
  • The collection was given by the Musmanno family to Duquesne in 1980. Literally, they had everything that was his. We were aware that the films existed, but the canisters were unlabeled, and of course they’re on old reel film, so we had no way to play them.
proudsa

Hitler Is a Rock Star in South Asia | VICE | United States - 0 views

  • Hitler Is a Rock Star in South Asia
  • In Asia, though, Mein Kampf is treated like an old classic. It's long been a popular read for businessmen in India, sold alongside titles like Rich Dad Poor Dad, Who Moved My Cheese?, and the various motivational books by Donald Trump.
  • "we [in Nepal] need a leader like Hitler."
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • When Nepal hasn't been under the blanket of armed insurgencies, it's been in the grip of corrupt political leaders. People in Nepal seem to be looking for a leader that can carry them out of developmental paralysis, no matter the cost.
fischerry

Anne Frank Centre warns of 'alarming parallels' between Trump's America and Hitler's Ge... - 0 views

  • A human rights group inspired by Anne Frank has drawn comparisons between Donald Trump's America and Adolf Hitler's Germany.
  • The list included "the President creates his own media", "he exploits youth at a rally," and "he demonises people who believe, look or love differently". It was headed: "Alarming parallels of history escalate." In an apparent warning about America's future under Mr Trump, the post concluded: "Never again to any people."
  •  
    This is a very good article which compares Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump.
bluekoenig

The secret student resistance to Hitler - Iseult Gillespie - YouTube - 0 views

  •  
    This is a video about The White Rose movement in the 1940's, a secret college group that dispersed leaflets to encourage Germans not to support Hitler. The two siblings who lead it had been part of the Hitler youth and questioned Nazism later in life. In college, they found a group of students who shared their ideas and printed leaflets that they spread across Munich. The students were later reported to the Gestapo by a janitor who witnessed their crimes and were put to death by the government.
Javier E

The Decision That Cost Hitler the War - The New York Times - 0 views

  • He was also sure that the United States would enter the war against him sooner or later. He thought the only solution was pre-emptive: to get control of enough oil and food from the Soviet Union to enable Germany to hold its own against Anglo-America in a long war.
  • the only alternative he saw to immediate war on the United States was slow but certain strangulation at Anglo-American hands. With a nod to an epigram from A. J. P. Taylor, Simms and Laderman offer this summation: “Hitler committed suicide for fear of dying.”
  • Early December 1941 is the moment of the war in which plausible alternate scenarios seemed to loom the largest
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • What if Vichy France and Fascist Italy had drawn closer together in a “Latin front,” as they were discussing at the time?
  • What if the Japanese had attacked the British in Malaya and Singapore but not attacked the United States?
  • What if the German who spied for the Soviet Union in Tokyo, Richard Sorge, had not supplied his masters with accurate information on Japanese plans, allowing Stalin to move 20 divisions from the east and redeploy them to Moscow for the shattering counterattack of Dec. 5?
  • The other thing the book does effectively is to pay careful attention to how the timing of events played out around the world, especially in the pattern of reactions to Pearl Harbor.
  • One of the last surprises in this book is how many world leaders saw accurately from that moment how the future would unfold.
Javier E

Britain entering first world war was 'biggest error in modern history' | World news | T... - 0 views

  • google_ad_client = 'ca-guardian_js'; google_ad_channel = 'worldnews'; google_max_num_ads = '3'; // Comments Click here to join the discussion. We can't load the discussion on theguardian.com because you don't have JavaScript enabled. if (!!window.postMessage) { jQuery.getScript('http://discussion.theguardian.com/embed.js') } else { jQuery('#d2-root').removeClass('hd').html( '' + 'Comments' + 'Click here to join the discussion.We can\'t load the ' + 'discussion on theguardian.com ' + 'because your web browser does not support all the features that we ' + 'need. If you cannot upgrade your browser to a newer version, you can ' + 'access the discussion ' + 'here.' ); } comp
  • Britain could have lived with a German victory in the first world war, and should have stayed out of the conflict in 1914, according to the historian Niall Ferguson, who described the intervention as "the biggest error in modern history".
  • Britain could indeed have lived with a German victory. What's more, it would have been in Britain's interests to stay out in 1914,
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • "Even if Germany had defeated France and Russia, it would have had a pretty massive challenge on its hands trying to run the new German-dominated Europe and would have remained significantly weaker than the British empire in naval and financial terms. Given the resources that Britain had available in 1914, a better strategy would have been to wait and deal with the German challenge later when Britain could respond on its own terms, taking advantage of its much greater naval and financial capability."
  • "Creating an army more or less from scratch and then sending it into combat against the Germans was a recipe for disastrous losses. And if one asks whether this was the best way for Britain to deal with the challenge posed by imperial Germany, my answer is no.
  • He continued: "The cost, let me emphasise, of the first world war to Britain was catastrophic, and it left the British empire at the end of it all in a much weakened state … It had accumulated a vast debt, the cost of which really limited Britain's military capability throughout the interwar period. Then there was the manpower loss – not just all those aristocratic officers, but the many, many, many skilled workers who died or were permanently incapacitated in the war.
  • He concedes that if Britain had stood back in 1914, it would have reneged on commitments to uphold Belgian neutrality. "But guess what? Realism in foreign policy has a long and distinguished tradition, not least in Britain – otherwise the French would never complain about 'perfidious Albion'. For Britain it would ultimately have been far better to have thought in terms of the national interest rather than in terms of a dated treaty."
Javier E

Hitler Exhibit Explores German Society That Empowered Nazis - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • “This exhibition is about Hitler and the Germans — meaning the social and political and individual processes by which much of the German people became enablers, colluders, co-criminals in the Holocaust,”
  • “That this was so is now a mainstream view, rejected only by a small minority of very elderly and deluded people, or the German extreme right-wing fringe. But it took us a while to get there.”
qkirkpatrick

The EU is fuelling 'Hitler worshippers', Michael Gove claims amid Brexit battle | Daily... - 0 views

  • The EU has fuelled the far right so it is stronger than at any time Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s, Michael Gove warned today.
  • 'Germans wanted to bind Germany into Europe so the rest of Europe would never again be frightened of Germany.
  • 'It's had exactly the opposite effect, and if you look at the attitudes towards Germany today in Greece or even Italy you see there's more tension and concern about Germany than ever before.'
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Mr Gove said: 'I think overall our national security is strengthened if we are able to make the decisions that we need and the alliances that we believe in outside the current structures of the European Union
  • 'Everybody is suddenly wrangling about the terrors of the world outside - actually... it would be a huge weight lifted from British business.'
sarahbalick

Mein Kampf hits stores in tense Germany - BBC News - 0 views

  • It's one of the most talked about publications of the year. It's not a new book. And it's not even a well-written book. But Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler, which hits German bookshops for the first time in 70 years on Friday, is certainly attracting attention.
  • Surprisingly, some Jewish groups have also supported this edition. This is an annotated, critical version, with thousands of academic notes.
  • And without this republication, the only hard copies available in Germany would be the pre-1945 Nazi editions, still found in second-hand bookshops or online. Those are certainly not critical.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Until now, the copyright has been in the hands of the Bavarian government. But because 70 years have now passed since the the death of the author - in this case, Adolf Hitler - that copyright has expired
  • But the problem with banning Mein Kampf is that this could simply increase its power. It would fuel the neo-Nazi propaganda that claims that modern Germany stamps out dissent from far-right groups.
qkirkpatrick

Why some conservatives say Donald Trump's talk is fascist - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

  • But it was after Trump started calling for stronger surveillance of Muslim-Americans in the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks that a handful of conservatives ventured to call Trump's rhetoric something much more dangerous: fascism.
  • Since launching his campaign this summer, the billionaire real estate magnate has regularly deployed inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants -- particularly regarding Latinos -- and repeatedly raised the alarm about foreigners entering the country. That has escalated following the series of shooting rampages and explosions in Paris this month allegedly perpetrated by ISIS and amid a national debate over accepting Syrian refugees.
  • "Trump is a fascist. And that's not a term I use loosely or often. But he's earned it," tweeted Max Boot, a conservative fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who is advising Marco Rubio.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • "Fascism sometimes becomes an attribute to describe someone that is intolerant or totalitarian or even racist," said Federico Finchelstein, an expert on fascism at the New School who said Trump is better described a populist. "When dealing with an important part of the nation such as Hispanics, I think he definitely fits those categories."
  • At a Trump campaign rally in Birmingham, Alabama, a black protester was physically attacked by a handful of Trump fans in the crowd. Video captured by CNN shows the man being shoved to the ground, punched and at one point even kicked. The next day, Trump drew fierce backlash when he said that perhaps "he should have been roughed up."
  • "We had the same thing happening in Germany in the 1920s with people being roughed up by the Brownshirts and they deserved it because they were Jews and Marxists and radicals and dissidents and gypsies — that was what Hitler was saying," Ross said. "I'm not saying Trump is Hitler, but the logic of condoning violence against those who oppose you -- you can imagine, a man who would condone it as a candidate -- what would he do as an official president?"
  • "He's good at making astonishing speeches that make people sit up and take notice. So there's some of that manipulation of public emotions that is visible with Trump," Paxton said. "Hitler and Mussolini -- no one had ever seen public rallies like the meetings they'd have. People were absolutely mesmerized."
qkirkpatrick

Donald Trump May Not Be a Fascist, But He Is Leading Us Merrily Down That Pat... - 0 views

  • People who have studied the extremist right as a historical and sociopolitical phenomenon in depth are acutely aware of a simple truth: America has been very, very lucky so far when it comes to fascistic political movements.
  • Fascistic elements and tendencies have always been part of America's DNA. Indeed, it can be said that some of the worst traits of fascism in Europe were borrowed from their American exemplars - particularly the eliminationist tendencies, manifested first in the form of racial and ethnic segregation, and ultimately in genocidal violence.
  • Hitler acknowledged at various times his admiration for the American genocide against Native Americans, as well as the segregationist policies of the Jim Crow regime in the South (on which the Nuremberg Race Laws were modeled) and the threat of the lynch mob embodied in the Ku Klux Klan. According to Ernst Hanfstaengl, Hitler was "passionately interested in the Ku Klux Klan. ... He seemed to think it was a political movement similar to his own." And indeed it was.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Those of us who study fascism not just as a historical phenomenon, but as a living and breathing phenomenon that has always previously maintained a kind of half-life on the fringes of the American right, have come to understand that it is both a complex and a simple phenomenon
  • In many ways, Trump's fascistic-seeming presidential campaign fills in many of the components of that complex constellation of traits that comprises real fascism. Perhaps the most significant of these is the one component that has been utterl
  • There is little doubt that Trump is tapping into fascistic sentiments, which is why so many observers are now beginning to finally use the word in describing Trump's campaign.
  • Eliminationist rhetoric is the backbone of Trump's appeal. His opening salvo in the campaign - the one that first skyrocketed him to the forefront in the race, poll-wise, and proved wildly popular with Republican voters - was his vow (and subsequent proposed program) to deport all 12 million of the United States' undocumented immigrants
oliviaodon

It's Not That Hard To Avoid Normalizing Nazis - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Why is it that, in America in 2017, the question of how not to normalize Nazis provokes heated debate? Is there a way to discuss the everyday life of fascists without normalizing? Although there are no quick and easy rules to follow, there are lessons—plenty of them—to be gleaned from history. The most powerful lessons emerge from the press coverage of the Third Reich, especially the soft-focus profiles of Adolf Hitler published in the 1930s. These stories set the journalistic gold standard for how not to write about Nazis.
  • Above all, Alltagsgeschichte exposes the complexity of human agency. To shed light on the choices people make—why one person might condone or participate in hateful acts, while another resists—historians consider the impact of specific social ties, institutions, and living and working environments.
  • From 1935 to 1939, The New York Times ran four stories on Hitler’s homes. On August 20, 1939, the paper published a glowing account by British journalist Hedwig Mauer Simpson of Hitler’s private life on the Obersalzberg. Ignoring the German troops massing on the Polish border, Simpson described the Führer’s beautiful rooms and domestic routine as well as providing details about the ripeness of the tomatoes on his table and his love of gooseberry pie. It was all so ordinary.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • But the appeal of Hitler-at-home stories went beyond curiosity about how the other half lives. In fact, their representation of the German leader as a “good man,” whose simple tastes and joys were not that different from ordinary men’s and women’s, reassured readers at a politically unsettled time, when another global war seemed to be approaching. The gracious host depicted in these puff pieces was never interrupted with rude questions about concentration camps. Nazi propagandists insisted that Hitler’s homes existed outside the sphere of politics, and the journalists that covered them largely obliged this view.
  • When the war ended, the fascination with Hitler’s homes continued.
fischerry

Hitler and Nazi History: How He Came to Power in 1920 | Time - 0 views

  • It was exactly 95 years ago — on Feb. 24, 1920 — that Adolf Hitler delivered the Nazi Party Platform to a large crowd in Munich, an event that is often regarded as the foundation of Naziism.
  • The German Workers’ Party (later the Nazi party) already existed before that date, though it was on that day that its exact goals were laid bare: the platform, set forth in 25 points, did not shy away from the central idea of strengthening German citizenship by excluding and controlling Jewish people and others deemed non-German.
  • His record of speech-making was what brought the audience to that hall in Munich in 1920. And, as Stefan Kanfer explained in TIME’s 1989 examination of the origins of World War II, Hitler’s power was closely linked to his abilities as an orator:
  •  
    This is a short article which Highlights Hitler's skill as an orator and how it affected his role in the Nazi party.
manhefnawi

The Spanish Blue Division | History Today - 0 views

  • ‘Russia is guilty,’ declared the Spanish Foreign Minister.
  • Guilty of our Civil War... of the murder of our brothers and sisters... The destruction of Communism is a necessary condition for the survival of a free and civilized Europe
  • Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the U.S.S.R., had been launched with the hope of quick victory
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Francisco Franco Bahamonde, Caudillo and dictator of Spain, needed a general. Carefully balancing the two bulwarks of his regime - Falange and Army- he selected an old comrade from the Moroccan campaigns, General Agustin Munoz Grandes, then Commandant of the garrison opposite Gibraltar
  • He was again turning his eyes towards Gibraltar
  • Without Franco’s approval, he would find it difficult to cross their homeland in order to take Gibraltar
  • Only twelve volunteers remained. Hitler was impressed. He called the Spaniards ‘the only virile Latin race’
  • As the German front swayed and the Führer sacked generals by the score, his admiration for the iron-willed Munoz Grandes grew
  • General Emilio Esteban Infantes reported to the Reich in June 1942, but Munoz Grandes was already planning to turn his glory into political capital at home. He sought and was granted an interview with Hitler
  • employ the Spaniards in a new offensive to storm the Russian barricades
  • Field Marshal von Manstein, with the Blue Division in his van, was preparing to smash through the Leningrad perimeter when, suddenly, the Red Army pre-empted his attack. By November, General Sir Bernard Montgomery had struck at El Alamein, the Allies had landed in North Africa, Stalingrad was encircled by the Russians, and von Manstein hurried south to the rescue. The Leningrad offensive was stillborn. In December, a disappointed Munoz Grandes headed home for a triumphal reception, while Esteban Infantes took over the Blue Division
  • he urgently needed the Blue Division at full strength to achieve his diplomatic goals
  • The Blue Division was a counter in the Caudillo’s game. If Hitler had won, Spain would have been an ally. As the Third Reich collapsed, the guripas were pulled home, and the franquista state acknowledged them only as anti-Communist volunteers, who had proved to the Führer that Spaniards would fight, even should he reach through their homeland to Gibraltar
lilyrashkind

Meet the Youngest Person Executed for Defying the Nazis - HISTORY - 0 views

  • Sixteen-year-old Helmuth Hübener couldn’t believe his ears. As he crouched in a closet in Hamburg, secretly listening to his brother’s forbidden short-wave radio, the voice of the BBC announcer painted a picture of Nazi Germany that was dramatically different from the one he had been told to believe.
  • Germans like Hübener, they spoke of impending victory and praised the greatness of their country. But the Germany the BBC described—and the progress of the war its reporters tracked—sounded like it was on the brink of disaster
  • übener’s short life was shaped by the rise of fascism in Germany. The Nazis changed nearly every facet of everyday life for Germans, and the boy was no exception. A devoted Boy Scout, he was forced to become part of the Hitler Youth, the youth arm of the Nazi Party, when the Nazis banned the organization in 1935.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • he quit the Hitler Youth when they participated in Kristallnacht, a night of terror during which Nazi sympathizers destroyed synagogues, set fire to Jewish property and attacked Jews.
  • According to German propaganda, the Pearl Harbor attack had destroyed the United States’ ability to fight a war in Europe. Hübener provided details to the contrary, assuring Germans that rumors of American military weakness were lies. He disputed official accounts of the war on the Eastern front, too, revealing that despite Germany’s insistence that battles in Russia had been won, they were still raging weeks after propaganda reports that victory had already been achieved.
  • Hübener’s actions were extremely risky. Radio had helped the Nazis rise to power by spreading their messages to a mass audience. Once the Third Reich took over Germany, they began to use the radio to control the population. They flooded the airwaves with propaganda broadcasts, spreading false reports of glorious victories and bright prospects where there were none.
  • However, many Germans disobeyed. For people like Hübener, radio from other countries was the only way to learn the truth about the war.
  • These events upset him, and the teenager began to question the Nazis’ hatred of Jews and the Third Reich’s growing control of German society.
  • “The Führer has promised you that 1942 will be decisive and this time he will stop at nothing to keep his promise,” he wrote in one pamphlet. “He will send you by the thousands into the fires in order to finish the crime he started. By the thousands your wives and children will become widows and orphans. And for nothing!”
  • The prison was notorious for its harsh treatment of prisoners and as a site of countless summary executions. For ten weeks, the boys were tortured and intimidated as they awaited trial. When the Nazi head of Hübener’s congregation found out about the arrest, he excommunicated the boy from the Mormon Church
  • “Don’t you?” His friends later told family members that they thought Hübener was purposely baiting the judges so they’d give the other boys less severe sentences.
  • That’s exactly what happened. His friends were sentenced to imprisonment in labor camps, but Helmuth Hübener was convicted of conspiracy to commit high treason and treasonous furthering of the enemy’s causes and sentenced to death by beheading. Because his crime was considered so serious, Hübener’s sentence gave the Nazis legal justification for both his execution as a minor and the torture he had already withstood.
  • On October 27, 1942, guards told Hübener that Adolf Hitler had personally refused to commute his death sentence. Hours later, he was beheaded—the youngest person ever executed by the Third Reich
Javier E

'Appeasement' of Putin Isn't So Easy to Denounce on Ukraine | Asharq AL-awsat - 0 views

  • he great liberal commentator Walter Lippmann wrote at the height of the Cold War: “You can’t decide these questions of life and death for the world by epithets like appeasement. I don’t agree with the people who think we have to go out and shed a little blood to prove we’re virile men.”
  • Lippmann also wrote, in September 1961: “This being the nuclear age, it is the paramount rule of international politics that a great nuclear power should not put another great nuclear power in a position where it must choose between suicide and surrender.”
  • The West was obliged to watch in impotent horror as the Russians crushed the anticommunist Poles in 1945, then the Hungarian rebels in 1956, then the Czechs of the 1968 “Prague Spring.” There was also the 1959 Chinese seizure of Tibet. The list is a long one.
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • The message is not that we should expect to bow to every misdeed or atrocity. It is that the “good guys” — granted the impossibility that we can ever reach global consensus about who these are — cannot and should not intervene militarily whenever they see bad stuff happen.
  • I am just completing a book on the Cuban Missile Crisis. One of its most important lessons is that while Kennedy played a masterly diplomatic hand, it is most unlikely that America’s will could have prevailed — the Soviet nuclear weapons withdrawn from Cuba — without the underpinning threat of American force.
  • Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and even his most hawkish generals knew that America possessed an overwhelming superiority, both of conventional weapons in the Caribbean region and nuclear missiles capable of destroying the Soviet Union. US superiority of the latter was on the order of 17 to 1. And thanks to the intelligence officer Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, who slipped his nation’s secrets to the West, the Americans knew that the Soviets recognized their own weakness.
  • Moreover, the will and solidarity of the US and its allies to confront the Soviets remained strong in the Cold War. American presidents often found themselves having to restrain the eagerness not only of the military brass, but also of some ordinary citizens, to go head to head with “the Russkies.”
  • The bipolar Cold War planet has been replaced by a multipolar one, in which a tenuous American superiority persists, but is no longer unchallengeable.
  • If you think this represents appeasement, watch the new Netflix movie “Munich: The Edge of War,” which stars Jeremy Irons as Neville Chamberlain.
  • A well-briefed military friend of mine believes that the Chinese are not yet quite ready for a showdown over Taiwan, but he thinks they will seek one within a few years, confident of a local victory.
  • Biden deserves more sympathy than he is currently receiving for his vacillation on Ukraine. The old, moth-eaten allegation of appeasement is being levelled by his foes both at home and abroad. Yet the US cannot be expected to face down Putin alone, far less to go to war with him.
  • Most of America’s European “allies” — the quotation marks are emphatic — are too fearful that the Kremlin will cut off their gas supplies to provide Washington with meaningful backing. Europe’s attitude to serious foreign policy and security issues is frankly decadent.
  • Thus, the likelihood is that if Putin attacks Ukraine, he can secure the territory he wants without suffering serious military consequences, beyond whatever losses the courageous Ukrainians can inflict on Russian forces.
  • The real challenge for the West is to summon the will to punish Putin and his friends in the language they understand best — that of money. Economic sanctions against Russia as a country are right, but not remotely sufficient. The only meaningful weapon is an assault upon the fortunes and lifestyles of the Kremlin’s gangster clique, held and invested around the world.
  • As for the US, the only party to the confrontation that matters, it seems absolutely right to do everything possible to deter Putin, and to punish him if he goes ahead with his cold-blooded plan to kill thousands of people, to score a victory that shores up his unpopular domestic polity. But one should not resort to threats, nor offer promises to the Ukrainians, that there is no intention of fulfilling.
  • Today we live in an entirely different strategic environment
  • by cutting his 1938 deal with Hitler, he bought vital time for Britain to re-arm before the war that he recognized was coming.
  • Harris makes a good additional point, that Hitler thought himself cheated out of a military assault on Czechoslovakia that he wanted, and expected to get. In other words, appeasement was clever.
  • As a historian, I do not go all the way with Harris about this. He seems right that Britain could not realistically have fought in 1938.
  • I still think that Chamberlain was a weak, foolish old man who shrank from unwelcome realities.
  • His worst contribution to history is that Munich gave appeasement — which some of us would call a recognition of realities — a bad name. My hero among historical and strategic gurus, the Oxford professor Michael Howard, often said, “If you are dealing with foreign leaders less monstrous than was Hitler, appeasement can be a very sensible policy.”
  • We must reluctantly acknowledge that both Russia’s Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping can commit acts of aggression in their own backyards that we are unable to prevent, and which are not worth a general war.
‹ Previous 21 - 40 of 178 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page