Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Ghosts of 1939

Seventy years ago today, German armies crossed into Poland, introducing the world to "Blitzkrieg." The British and French declarations of war turned a local conflict into a continental one. Soon another war was on in the Pacific, and by 1941 both the USSR and the U.S. had become involved as well.

The physical consequences of the war were horrific: up to seventy million dead; Europe, China and Japan in ruins; many Jewish communities completely extinct as a result of Nazi genocide (a word coined after the war to describe the systematic murder of an entire people); atomic weapons unleashed.

I would argue the ideological consequences were just as bad. On one hand, there is no denying that national-socialism was evil; it was oppressive at home and aggressive abroad. On the other hand, the war against Nazism was a shot in the arm for both Communism and "progressivism."

By 1939, Lenin and Stalin's revolutionary executioners had already killed far more people than Hitler, with a song in their hearts. Stalin ignored the warnings of the impending Nazi invasion, and when it finally came bungled the war so badly that millions of people died as a result. Faced with a life-and-death struggle, a "holy war" against an enemy bent on their annihilation, the Soviet people (Russians as well as others, it needs be said) put in a superhuman effort to win the war. And what thanks did they get? None. Stalin took all the credit for victory, and none of the blame for the mistakes. Victorious generals were sacked or purged. POWs liberated from German camps were sent to the Gulag, to cover up the embarrassing fact that they got captured thanks to Stalin's own orders. And the people in what was once Russia got to "enjoy" another 45 years of Workers' Paradise. Only this time they "shared" their "joy" with the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, the Baltic nations, and even some Germans.

Something similar happened in the West. For all the talk of "democracy" triumphing over "fascism", the war cemented FDR's social revolution that created an American brand of fascism in all but name. Big government, business cartels, a military-industrial complex, income tax withholding - all these are legacies of the war. The British fought to save their Empire, and ended up losing it. They also turned to "war socialism" that became socialism in peacetime as well. Politicians who brought about these changes have resisted criticism because hey, they "defeated Hitler and freed the world," right? Britain today is a surveillance state to a degree worse than anything Orwell imagined in 1984, while Americans shout that they are "free" but have no idea what freedom means anymore.

My own country was occupied by the Nazis and their allies, partitioned, and subjected to terror and genocide. Resistance drew brutal reprisals (100 civilians shot for every German soldier killed, 50 for every injured). The royalist resistance trusted the Western Allies, only to be betrayed and sold out to the Communists. The Yugoslavia established in 1945 was free of Nazi occupation (and ethnically cleansed of Germans, I might add), but all it had in common with its predecessor was the name. And for the next 45 years, we all had to share the "joy" of Communism as well.

None of this is to dispute the evil of national-socialism, or excuse anything the Nazis and their servants have done. But I'm sick of the whole "We defeated Hitler, therefore everything we do, everything we've done, and everything we intend to do still is right and beyond reproach" nonsense. This kind of "logic" is at the root of modern morality: when we do it, that's heroic, but when they do it, it's reprehensible. Let me point out the inconvenient fact that this is precisely the way the Nazis used to "reason"!

Since 1945, both the American and the Soviet empires used this "mythic authority" of war victors to do as they pleased around the globe. In the 1990s, when Communism collapsed and Yugoslavia imploded in a series of ethnic wars, the Western interventionists invoked the imagery of WW2 and imagined new Hitlers that had to be defeated at all costs. Hitler was invoked both times the Americans invaded Iraq. The disingenuous "war on terror" was helped along by the invocation of "Islamofascism."

Yet the map of Europe today looks suspiciously like the one from 1942, and it is Hitler's former allies that are the staunchest supporters of the American Empire. German troops are back in the Balkans (to show that they've gotten over the original Hitler, right?) and the Luftwaffe has bombed civilians again. The world whose foundations were laid down in the Atlantic Charter, and at the conferences in Bretton Woods, Tehran and Yalta, is no more. That order was ultimately dismantled by its own creators and guardians, who found it too inconvenient and restrictive. So, continuing to invoke Hitler as a justification is cynical at best.

It is time to give up the myth of the Great Good War and let it become proper history, in which defeating the Nazis did not give the victors the right to act like them, or be exempt from rules of civilization. Only then will Hitler truly be defeated.

4 comments:

Dejo said...

People value power over life. That is why tyranny is present. And democracy isn't the answer. Democracy might be the dangerous of all governments because it gives tyrants a sense of legitimacy when they have none. Have you heard about the new law which DOS has implemented in Serbia? Truly, democracy in Serbia is in spite of itself.
http://serbianna.com/news/?p=2937
By the way, are you going to give another radio interview soon? The last one seemed a little bit short and rushed. It would be nice if you could give an assessment of the problems Serbs face and possible solutions. My biggest concern at the moment is allowing Serbs back to their lands in Krajina, Bosnia and Kosovo/Metohija. And kicking out the squatters, of course. (I doubt the former can take place without the latter being implemented first.) Also, you failed to explain to Horton during the last interview that individual Serbs own the vast majority of Kosovo and practically all the Shqiptars in Kosovo/Metohija are squatters. I thought it was a considerable mistake because, well, you are a libertarian.

Anonymous said...

this is revisionist nonsense and you know it - your banter means to provoke and dissuade while calmly claiming to convince once again: a technique neocons and other protofascists love to use; fascism would be nothing without the technology to disseminate-which your blog plays with like a police guard plays with his dog; you obviously speak from a position of privelege provided by the very powers that destroyed Yugoslavia in the name of "values" you find a little too ..."democratic" ... crackpots and jew haters are at the Town Hall near you- why don't you go join them in the name of some village pillaged and torched ... by which power again?

CubuCoko said...

Can you, dear readers, find anything beyond an ad hominem rant in this comment by "christopher"? Neither can I.

Dejo, you are correct in pointing out that I neglected to mention the property issue in Kosovo during my last Horton interview. And it was rushed; hard to cover so much ground in such a short time frame. I'll try to do better next time.

I'm well aware of the repressive media law, but since this blog is hosted on an American server, they can shove it. At least while the USA still pays lip service to even the pretense of liberty.

Unknown said...

My father told me that since the media law came into force, there has been practically no investigative journalism ;(

We're talking about a guy who reads Vesti here. It's even printed in Germany. I guess I wish for an uncensored international edition!