Memorial Day 2012

This one is for “Uncle Dick”

It is the end of May, late spring, and in the U.S. we look forward to Summer and the unofficial beginning of the hot, hazy, crazy, lazy days. It is the end of May, and we also pause to remember those who payed the ultimate sacrifice for the nation.

It is Memorial Day, a day started in remembrance. It was started to remember the worst war that the US ever fought; the war we fought amongst ourselves. The very day was picked because no important battle of the Civil War was fought on May 30th.

Since its start in 1868 in the North (a little earlier in the South) we have held ceremonies to honor the men who lost lives in conflicts near and far.

Our men and women have fought, bled, and often died in many conflicts since 1868. There were conflicts with the first peoples, followed by the Spanish-American War.

The War with Spain no sooner ended then the US found itself embroiled in a war with one of the former Spanish possessions: The Philippines. Depending on whose history you follow this was either the Philippine Insurrection or Philippine-American War.

With the not-so-jolly little war in the PI barely completed with the crushing of the Moros in Mindanao, the US via Woodrow Wilson attempted to sit out the Great War.  But Imperial Germany was never one to keep neutrals neutral, and managed to drag Wilson into the fray. While US participation in World War I was minimal, it also was critical.

Wilson won the “War To End All Wars”; but in Paris, he and his contemporaries, lost the peace at the victor’s conference. The Paris Peace Conference was an oxymoron. It helped set the table for the next conflagration.

That war, Second World War, was just a continuation of the Great War; but on a much larger scale. For the US, WWII was the great trans-formative war. The US entered the conflict a great, if detached, power. It left the war as a Superpower; one of two. Through the sacrifice of hundred of thousands of US men and women the US became the military power without equal.

During the long cold peace after WWII, the US fought both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. These were deadly proxy wars between the US and the Soviet Union. The cost to the US in lives and treasure was significant. The cost to the Koreans and Vietnamese was catastrophic.

Besides Korea and Vietnam; there were numerous peripheral actions in flash points all over the world. The US acquitted itself well in Granada, but did not in Desert One (Iran) or at the Beirut Marine Barracks (Lebanon).

The disaster in Beirut, the use of asymmetrical tactics against the US Hegemon, was a taste of things to come. But before the US could truly understand how non-state actors had changed warfare, the US military got to do a victory lap in Iraq.

The Cold War had ended via political suicide of the Soviet Union, an act performed by the then Soviet leader Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. A former Soviet client, Saddam Hussein, was causing problems for the world’s only hyperpower. The fall out, The First Gulf War, was last clear victory for US power in the 20th Century.

The turn of the millennium put an end to George Bush’s “New World Order,” as an even newer order founded on asymmetrical conflict took over. Both conflicts born in this era were murky, poorly thought-out affairs that appeared more to harm US interests than advance them.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq was more dubious of the two affairs. But even Afghanistan, the launch pad of the 9/11/01 attacks, was a conflict with little reason and even less rhyme.

The less said about Iraq, the better; the old meme of lions lead by jackasses does seem to be painfully appropriate though. In Iraq, our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coastgardmen, covered themselves in glory; whilst our leaders, both military and political, covered themselves in something much less fragrant.

Memorial Day 2012 finds our military frayed and over-extended. Iraq has been left mostly to its own devices and Afghanistan is being spun down as quickly as domestic politics will allow. Still, Osama Bin Laden, the architect of 9/11/01, is fish food, and Al Qaeda has been torn limb-from-limb (sometimes quite literally) by US drone strikes and other actions.

The price for these tactical victories has been steep. It is more than the flag-draped coffins, much more. It is the thousands of veterans returning without legs and or arms. It is the tens of thousands of veterans with traumatic brain injuries. It is the hundreds of thousands who have suffered the psychic injuries of war; many who will remain gravely wounded for the rest of their lives. I personally shudder at the thought of how many men and women have been permanently marked by PTSD in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is a casualty count that we have only begun to enumerate.

So when you raise beer or other drink in praise of the dawning Summer, give pause, give thought to those who will not be able to join you in that cooling drink. Remember them all, the men and women, who sacrificed for the nation. May their example inspire us all.

The Less Know December Event Of World War Two, 70 Years On.

The Seventieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor just passed us on December 7, 2011 and there were many remembrances of that date in the press, plus the blogosphere. But almost no one in the U.S. Remembered a much more significant anniversary that happened just a few days earlier, on the 5th of December.

We citizens of the US don’t do history well. We barely do our own history. Other’s history, we don’t do at all. So it no surprise that no one in the US marked December 5, 2011; but I guarantee many Russians did.

While the attack on Pearl Harbor was critical, it brought the US into World War Two and most likely sealed the fate of Nazi Germany and the Axis Powers, the real action was on the Eastern Front. December 5th marks the end of Operation Barbarossa and the beginning of the Soviet counter attack that saved Moscow.

Operation Barbarossa began, in the balmy days of June. Hitler had just put a hurting on Yugoslavia and was now ready to invade Russia. He was aided in the aim by Joseph Stalin, who insisted on doing absolutely nothing to prepare for the assault.

Stalin ignored every last indication of Hitler’s malign intent. He ignored the intelligence. He ignored the warnings printed in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. He insisted on following every jot and tittle of the Nazi-Soviet pact lest he anger the Nazi regime. He literally helped to supply the invasion that crashed through Soviet Russia on June 22, 1941.

When the invasion did come, Stalin went into a three day funk. He locked himself into his room and took no callers. Most people would have done the same. The first days of the invasion were utter disaster. The Nazis chewed up Soviet men, material, and land at a frightening pace. Most of the front line Soviet assets were gone by day three. The Red Army barely had a pot to cook in. Air power was vaporized on the ground, tanks, artillery, and men quickly followed when they lost air support. The Wehrmacht was turning Russia into their own personal playground, and there was not much the Red Army could do about it-- other than retreat.

Captured Soviet Artillery

And retreat the Russians did, further and further into the homeland. By November Nazi units were at the suburbs of Moscow. But then the greatest and longest serving of Russian Generals intervened: General Winter. The Nazi had no response to this greatest of Russian strategists and tacticians, no invading army since the Mongols did. Nazi soldiers were dying in alarming numbers, felled not by bullets, but by the god-awful cold. The Nazis were lightly clad in summer issue, worthless protection against the fierce Russian winter.

The lack of preparation for the Russian winter, plus the long logistical supply line to the front slowed the Nazis to a crawl. To add to the Nazi misery, the Russians had thrown up a fearsome defensive ring around Moscow that further impeded the Wehrmacht’s progress. Their vaunted Blitzkrieg literally frozen in place, the Nazis were forced to slog out the battles with rife fire and artillery support. It was then that Stalin plus the generals Zhukov and Vasilevsky unleashed a very unpleasant surprise: Red Army forces from the frozen lands of Siberia.

Thanks to the vast Soviet spy network those forces were released Asia to Europe. The Soviets learned that the Japanese were of no concern, so off to Moscow those men went. The Nazis were rather put off when the white-clad, and expert winter fighters, of Siberia came crashing through there lines.

Unfortunately Stalin waisted much of those troops by dispersing them in a general offense all along the front line. Moscow was saved, but the Wehrmacht lived to fight another day. It would be three, long bloody years before the Soviets would finally break the back of Nazi offensive capabilities at Kursk. It would be four years until the Soviets were able to mount an offense of their own. That offensive would see Berlin fall to the Red Army, but only after much pain, destruction and death.

On December 5th, 1941 crushing Hitler was hazy and distant wish of the Soviet people. By the slimmest of margins, Russia was able to save its capitol city from Nazi occupation. By January of 1942, the sacrifice of millions of Russian citizens had bought the Soviet Union a reprieve.  The Germans had been pushed back seventy miles and Moscow had been turned into an armed fortress.

Little did Stalin know that all these preparations were for naught. Little did he know that Moscow would never again be under such a direct threat. Stalin had survived, the Soviet Union had survived; by the narrowest of margins. The next test would come in the south, not in Moscow. It would come in a city that bore the dictators name: Stalingrad.

Operation Barbarossa

One June 22, 2011 an important anniversary passed us by. It passed us by without any hoopla whatsoever. We in the US don’t do our own history, were not about to observe someone else’s history. But that history is critical, it is the turning point of one of the greatest conflicts of the 20^th century; World War Two. On this date seventy years ago, on the 22^nd of June, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. In a single stroke one of the greatest land battles of history began. This was the Ostfront of WWII, this was killing fields of the “Good War.”

As Dan Carlin points out in his “Ghost Of The Ostfront” series, this was a war between two utterly evil political systems; Communism and Nazism. It was a battle of annihilation, a battle to the death. No quarter was asked or given. 

Once you actually look or listen to the facts of this war, it becomes an amazing story. The entire US effort in Europe becomes a sidebar, a diversion, something barely worth mentioning. Our greatest general, Ike, would be a third tier or at best a second tier general in the Soviet Armies.  

The four years of war on the Ostfront cost the Soviet Union almost thirty million lives. That is the population of the Greater New York City and Los Angeles County together. Losses among the Germans and their allies was also gargantuan.

Even when you limit the narrative to the year of 1941, the history of the Russian front still defies imagination. Until they were halted by the very greatest Russian general of them all, General Winter, the Germans had swallowed up a huge chunk of real estate. It was an area roughly 1200 km by 800km. Only the triple whammy of winter, unpreparedness, and a brilliant counter offensive by fresh Siberian troops saved Moscow. 

It is no exaggeration to say that it was the Soviet Union that broke the back of Nazism. It is no exaggeration that the men and women who fought for Russia were a breed apart. If our US WWII Veterans are the “Greatest Generation,” then what do we call those Soviets who fought, and defeated the Nazis, in the greatest land war of all time? What of their suffering, what of their sacrifice, what of their bravery? It is true that they fought for one of the worst dictators in history; but what of it? They fought for the Motherland, and against a Nazi terror that was even worse than Stalin’s depredations. 

Many historians are wont to claim that with the invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler had inevitably lost the war. That view, in my opinion, is anachronistic. It has the benefit of hindsight. The results of Operation Barbarossa balanced on a knifes’ edge, especially in 1941. A few winter coats here, a better plan there, better management of resources over here, and the results could have been far different. What would of happened to the Soviet war effort if Stalin had stayed in his funk for longer? What if Stalin had decided to abandon Moscow to “safer” ground? What if the Japanese had not concentrated their efforts in Asia, and had decided to kick Russia when it was down? The only reason those Siberian troops arrived to surprise the Nazis was because Japan had signed an Armistice with the Soviet Union. No Armistice, no Siberian troops, no counter offensive, and who knows what happens in the spring of 1942? 

History is a lot more dynamic than most US citizens supposed, many times it rests on the most random of events. It is not quite the fluttering of butterflies wings in Peru, but it is very close.The what-ifs that surround the war in the east are numerous. You could spend numerous lifetimes working out the counterfactuals surrounding the “Great Patriotic War.” Granted most people do not have much enthusiasm for such pallor games, but at the very least we should honor the efforts of Soviets. They deserve our gratitude for their sacrifice, they took the brunt, and somehow survived. Without their suffering our world would be much different today.


Also posted at http://historyisnotwhatitusedtobe.blogspot.com/2011/06/operation-barbarossa.html

David Broder --Blithering Idiot. (Word War Two Edition)

Every once in a while a member of the chattering class comes out and says something epically stupid. David Broder did such a thing on October 31, 2010. In a barley cogent, crayon-scrawled missive dumped on the pages of the Washington Post he reveled his total ignorance of the history of World War Two. ( http://goo.gl/QiVN ) Fellow blogger and epic genus Cujo 359 waded in on the subject here http://goo.gl/4npT and we could let that be the final repost. We could, but we won’t. We absolutely have to use our BA in history to some effect or at least an affect.

Let us deal first with the overall history of “The Good War” and then drill down into the economics. In this way it will be pointed out just how wrong Mr. Broder got his talking points.

World War Two was not some perverse jobs program gifted by Hitler and the Nazis. It was a hegemonistic attempt by Hitler and the Nazi state that was a existential threat to the United States. For Soviet Russia it was a Hobbesian struggle against an opponent bent on the genocidal destruction of the Slavic people. Only a naval-gazing, myopic, insular, detached, and ignorant denizen of the Corporate Media could get the facts of World War Two so wrong. A small but well described window into the titanic struggle between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia is provided by Dan Carlin in the “Ghosts of the Ostfront” series on Hard Core History. It was not even close to being fun and games on the Eastern Front gentle reader. ( http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive ) ( http://goo.gl/r6H1 ) ( http://goo.gl/r696 ) ( http://goo.gl/EsNW ) ( http://goo.gl/91cx )

The U.S. became “The Arsenal of Democracy” by historical accident. The U.S. joined the fray via FDR’s sub rosa efforts because that President understood what was at stake. Lend lease was no effort in charity to our good British friends. It was global policy writ large. The economic results of arming the U.K. were an after thought. This was even more so when the U.S. started supporting the war efforts of Soviet Russia. FDR was not thinking Maynard Keynes, he was channeling Clausewitz. The U.S. had idle capacity, and FDR repurposed it to resist the Nazi juggernaut.

Later on, when the U.S. was firing weapons in anger, the United States’ unique combination of geographical remoteness and industrial capacity made it the logistical nightmare that had the German High Command loosing much sleep. The Nazis were being slowly drowned in U.S. productive might. And unlike their British and Russian foes, there was no way for the Nazis to attack the source of all that material. Once the U.S. Navy and Air Force solved the tactical riddle of the U-boats, the Germans were all out of bright ideas. The U.S. was physically inviolate. Japan managed to seize a perfectly worthless ice box island off Alaska but that was the only “invasion” and “occupation” the U.S. suffered. Even the death and destruction meted out by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor was small potatoes compared to the death and destruction that the European combatants suffered. Whole areas of Europe, especially European Russia, were laid waste. (Note to Mr. Broder: having whole cities reduced to smoking ruins is generally bad for the larger national economy.)

It is only by concentrating myopically on the special circumstances of the United States that World War Two comes out as an economic plus. Pull back just a bit and look globally and the huge amounts of red ink, never mind red blood, spilled make the war a net negative.

Even if Mr. Broder is correct about the economic benefit “enjoyed” by World War Two, it does not translate to present economic realities. Case in point, look at the huge economic hole that our unpaid war of choice in Iraq has dug us. Ignoring all moral considerations and just looking at Iraq from the purely green-eyeshade perspective of a CPA, the mess on the Mesopotamia has been a bust. It is trillions of dollars poured down a rat hole with no end in sight. Oh, and it has done just wonders for our unemployment numbers and other economic fundamentals, hasn’t it? Our economy is just growing in leaps and bounds isn’t it?

But we do not need to look at the present situation in the Near East to prove Mr. Broder wrong. Post World War One, war and occupation is net loss no matter how you squint at the numbers. War stopped being a paying proposition at least as early as the Boar War if not before that. There are much better and healthier ways to jump-start an economy.

The nations that benefit from war are the ones that are peripheral to that war. That is the true lesson of both World War One and World War Two. If David Broder was not a member in good standing of the idiot elite, if he was not a divine of the hermetically sealed Oligarchy that actually runs the nation, if he was not one of the “right thinking” people who endlessly send each other mash notes and determine who the “cool” kids are, he might have a clue where empirical facts might actually lie. Instead he parrots the received wisdom of a throughly corrupt and incompetent ruling elite. He is their slobbering and devoted dog, begging for a pat on the head or a treat. Thing is, he just urinated and defecated on the carpet. What is even worse, the dog thinks he has done a marvelous thing. What an idiot.