Two famous sea-tragedies, the first of which happened nearly a hundred years ago and the second of which occurred at the start of the Second World War, have been so painstakingly examined by generations of historical enthusiasts that the vast and sustained public interest has become a saga in itself. Hundreds of technical experts and millions of dollars have been spent ostensibly to answer questions which can have no possible earthly relevance: how precisely did the Titanic sink and what caused the catastrophic destruction of the HMS Hood during its fateful encounter with the Bismarck in the Denmark Strait in May, 1941? It’s hard to avoid thinking the excitement of the search, rather than the answers themselves are the object of this vast popular effort.
The curious desire to mentally travel to other times and places, whether past or future, terrestrial or aquatic, sublunar or intergalactic, historical or fantastic is exemplified by efforts which range from re-enacting historical armies to Star Trek conventions. A surprising number of people live for the weekend opportunity to dress up like a Union infantryman or anxiously await the arrival of some arcane British Admiralty archival transcript, sometimes ordered at the cost of hundreds of dollars for the chance to vicariously experience, however briefly, a moment that may never have been.
Never been? Ironically, one of the byproducts of popular interest in history has been to show how tenative much of “real” history is. Only after Robert Ballard found the wreck of the Titanic was it realized that the established story of its sinking had actually been wrong; that the ship broke in half as it sank (whether on the surface as shown in the James Cameron movie or on the way down I leave to the experts); that the Night to Remember had been misremembered. Similarly, what “really happened” in the Battle of the Denmark Strait is probably unrecoverable, however we try to grasp it and no one is more responsible for that state of affairs than the legions of enthusiasts who have tried to puzzle out what caused the HMS Hood to blow up, and who by way of seeking an answer, have made themselves experts in interwar British ship design, propellant stability, gun drill, armor design, explosive physics and 1930s electronics. It is no exaggeration to say that the level of expert debate on the sinking of HMS Hood today is far higher than at the official Admiralty inquest which examined why the ship was lost. In 1941 there was little time but to seek answers to the most pressing questions. Today there are people who specialize in examining the menus of the RMS Titanic and the Christmas dinners of the HMS Hood. And yet more data brought us no certainty; only more questions.
All this is to the good; but another consequence of our frequent vicarious sojourns to the past and the future is that there are so many versions of both that we are now uncertain about where we stand in relationship to our own part in the drama. Where you are today depends in part on the answers you give to the just some of these questions: who was on the grassy knoll that day in 1963? Did the Twin Towers collapse from the effect of burning jet fuel or a controlled detonation? Was Winston Churchill, rather than Adolph Hitler, really the villain of the Second World War? Shouldn’t Columbus Day be an occasion of mourning rather than national celebration? Did Christ exist? Will we ever return to the moon?
Once upon a time the responses to all these questions would have been clear in the popular mind. Today along with a hundred different answers come a hundred different histories. Maybe the price of abandoning myth in order to travel where No Man Has Gone Before, via our home entertainment centers or Internet terminals , is that we have lost our place in our own story.
History is often complex and hard to grasp. Over the last few days I’ve been able to observe one news event, the Pope’s visit to Sydney for World Youth Day, at first hand. The arrival of tens of thousands of young people from all over the world forced ethnic communities to find lodgings, provide food, transportation and even entertainment for those who, apart from religious and national connections, were total strangers. A single “event” is a really the sum of a million individual stories held together by a date and a convenient narrative. Most of those stories will be lost to history yet they were arguably the event itself, collectively speaking. Even eyewitness accounts will produce conflicting results. I was invited down to Sydney Harbor bridge to witness the scheduled Papal fluvial procession and was surprised to find, overhearing the conversations of the crowd, that many never had a clue which boat the Pontiff was on. Armed with a diagram of the scheduled route, a pair of Nikon 8x binoculars and a general knowledge of how these things are done, I had no trouble seeing Benedict sail by on that gloriously pleasant afternoon. But for many observers, Benedict XVI was seen to be in this or that barge, standing beneath this or that banner when no such thing had taken place. Or had it? In the coming years the memory of events that afternoon will be formed not so much by what happened, which no one in the future can reconstruct, but by what is remembered. What really happened? And who wants to know?
Tip Jar.
I’m back inside the beltway. I spent last month on the north shore of oahu.
I’ve grown to hate the the data entry accounting chore that comes with daily plugging in revenues & costs to my spreadsheet program. My nephew hates the job too. We each have our own spreadsheet programs.
At first the spreadsheet program was a great way to organize information. You could data entry lots of information and the program would do all the work for you. It organized all the info and did all the math. I created the program myself. I was so proud. My nephew created his program. He was proud too.
Pretty soon we were both plugging in lots of information. Then still more information.
So now we’re working on a way to pull data in from various databases and plugging them in automatically into our spreadsheet programs.
As I explained to my nephew, “the more data you can assemble conveniently — the more data you can assemble”.
Was General George Custer a Good Hero or a corrupt incompetent? I recently made a friend who’s mission in life is to prove the hero. I did some reading, and came away confused by all that has been written in the last 130 years.
And why in the world would I want to travel back to the battleground in time to get a clearer picture?
And why in the world would I want to travel back to the battleground in time to get a clearer picture?
Patton always thought he remembered living and dying on other older battlefields. I’ve always thought I went down with the Titanic in a previous incarnation. Some things just reach out and speak to you and you need to research everything you can find to get the details of that time and place.
I believe that historical revisionism is divided into two parts – speculative, even masturbatory history that serves mainly to pleasure the speculator or sleuth with no relevance to today…..and revisionism that is directly applicable to today in not repeating histories mistakes or mistakes made because past academics and nations got the causation of significant events All Wrong.
A classic of the 1st might be The Hood. Whatever “fresh insights” are uncovered on the tactics, construction, and fate of the Hood have no relevance to todays naval tactics, warship design, or what to do on the impossible scenario of being on a ship being hit with plummeting fire of 16 inch AP naval shells.
An example of important historical revisionism might be uncovery that government was far more involved in the “free trade” of the Hanseatic League and regulating it than economists ever suspected – and free trade and capitalist theory may have to be altered based on that new information.
Or Pat Buchanan and other revisionists that have said that WWII was not caused by “appeasement” of the wildly popular German effort to bring back to the Reich German majority territories ripped from it at Versailles – but by interlocking alliances that trapped nations into going to war in a manner similar to how WWI dragged parties into all-out assault on each other’s throats about shit as trivial to their interests down in the Balkans as the German city of Danzig was to the Brits, Poles, and French.
The US is committed by treaty to go to war if any of 50 nations is attacked, even if war is not in our vital interests. So we could get dragged in, like happened in WWI and WWII. And many nations that occupy land of others have drawn false analogies and dug their heels in in the decolonizing era, or questions about their conquered territories (West Bank, etc.) as “appeasement”. Or reactionaries in the US calling any acceptance of any loss of “US got & owned” property to natives as “appeasement”. (Granting the Philippines independence, talking at all to China, Iran over the years, “giving away” the Canal to Panamanians, “standing for the appeasement” of “letting” nations gain control of their natural resources).
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Wretchard’s other point about loss of clarity and ability to teach is quite important. Once upon a time the responses to all these questions would have been clear in the popular mind. Today along with a hundred different answers come a hundred different histories
Treating all opinions of history as having equal value in a postmodern world that has the cancers of deconstructionism, non-judgementalism, and moral relativism flourishing – means you essentially quit teaching it. What is the point of learning the Civil War from 16 different
schools of thought” at odds with one another and where the half-baked is given equal weight as what Lincoln and Congress and the Confederate Assembly said in primary sources??
It seems that mainstream theory of history should be separated from, be covered more, and be what people are tested on mostly – rather than give all revisionist, crackpot, or pure playtime or celebrity opinions of history or historical events equal weight.
Where there are true schools of thought – economic, Marxist, demography & education determinant – they should have a coherent academic basis that 9/11 Truthers, “blacks invented it all 1st” factions lack.
And historical events interpretation others are expected to learn should be left to those that those who were there in a substantial role, or came to understand the event from broad, in-depth study not the “opinion” of Sojourner Truth, a “university expert on movies of the Red Guard”, or someone claiming ties between Queen Elizabeth II and the “grassy knoll”.
While as a trained economic historian I am a firm believer that eventually the data will enlighten those to the “truth”, ultimately, history and economics is a somewhat rhetorical debate and a matter of persuasion to what the “truth” is.
With vastly more people having access to greater amounts of data, the irony of having more data available is that instead of having a more focused spotlight on the most probable explanation of what was or what is, we have a case of a search light scanning the night sky, wherein the many perceptions maniuplate the data for their own rhetorical ends.
To paraphrase one of my favourite history professors motto, “In history, as in present time assessment, it ain’t so much what is true as what people think is true.”
I have found that what people “feel” about an event drives what they take from it much more than do a set of facts.
At the time of 50th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor an American reporter in Japan observed that the people there did not seem to see a connection between the 7 Dec 41 attack and the bombing of Hiroshima. Hiroshima was regarded as a terrible tragedy in much the same manner as an earthquake, while the Pearl Harbor attack was just one bombing raid out of many. Feelings have overcome facts.
In my own historical writing I have found a niche, that of explaining how one thing led to another and what the underlying “mythologies” were. So many historians merely chronicle what happened and lack the technical expertise to explain what it means. More than a few people try to distort what occurred for their own reasons; this even occurs in the hard sciences. Stir in some “feelings” into the mix and you find that a great many people know all sorts of things that they never learned.
And I would like to recommend a very thought provoking book that quiet deliberately tackles all sorts of things that we “know” today: Kicking the Sacred Cow, by James P. Hogan.
Cedarford: Where there are true schools of thought – economic, Marxist, demography & education determinant – they should have a coherent academic basis that 9/11 Truthers, “blacks invented it all 1st” factions lack.
Cedarford, to be frank, I have never found your own talk about the Jewish Lobby to be very coherent or academic.
RWE: Hiroshima was regarded as a terrible tragedy in much the same manner as an earthquake, while the Pearl Harbor attack was just one bombing raid out of many. Feelings have overcome facts.
But the generation who experienced those things is winking out like so many candles. Soon, like in the case of the US Civil War there will be no more war feelings, only facts in a book…and hatreds which have been passed down to the next generation.
I used to live for the weekend opportunity to dress up like a Confederate artilleryman.
Living history and the recreation of the material cultural of pivotal eras is an enjoyable hobby for the history minded. Some people really get into it, and get hooked on “magic moments” when, for a few seconds, all the inauthentic anachronisms disappear in the smoke and the imagination connects the dots between what the reenactor has studied and what might really have happened. Closest thing yet invented to time travel.
pinoyhistory and http://www.lighthorse.org.au/re.htm may be of interest to you, Wretchard.
From the American perspective, didn’t the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor “cause” WW II? Certainly there had been much concern on this side of the Atlantic about Hitler’s intentions prior to the event, but until then isolationism ruled the day and may well have kept us out of the war until it was too late. Does anyone know or care to enter into the mind of Hitler to posit an answer as to why he declared war against us when he didn’t have to, and thereby virtually guaranteed his defeat? And please don’t tell me he felt bound by honor to stand by the Japanese.
teresita:
When I hear talk about “the Jewish Lobby”, I ask, “Which one?”
ALH MANUAL FOR DRESS, EQUIPMENT AND CONDUCT
Fort MacArthur Days 2008
In the “Confessions,” Augustine warns of curiosity for the sake of curiosity. A cautionary note against inquisitiveness seems odd coming from one of the greatest minds of antiquity.
But perhaps one could argue that it was a strong sense of curiosity that started the scientific revolution (such as Bacon’s “Instauration”), produced great inventions, and has run itself to exhaustion, forgetting where it started.
Richard’s point about myth is very well taken.
Buhay na Kasaysayan
Teresita – Cedarford, to be frank, I have never found your own talk about the Jewish Lobby to be very coherent or academic.
Teresita – In the sane sense as the saying “The greatest feat of the devil was convincing ordinary people He didn’t exist”
….
So too “The greatest feat of the Israel Lobby was convincing ordinary Americans it didn’t exist.”
Sirius_Sir: Does anyone know or care to enter into the mind of Hitler to posit an answer as to why he declared war against us when he didn’t have to, and thereby virtually guaranteed his defeat?
By declaring War on America in concert with Japan, Hitler expected Japan to declare war on the USSR and open a second front in Siberia that would draw Soviet resources away from Hitler’s eastern front. It was not to be. Japan and the USSR did not become belligerents until the last few days of the Pacific war.
There certainly is an Israel Lobby (AIPAC, etc.) The size and scope and influence and power and most of all, money being DWARFED by that of the Gulf Arabs and the tidal wave of money they throw around. I suspect Buchanon is bankrolled fully by them — he’s too much a crackpot to make money honestly.
Machiavelli, the other Renaissance historians, and indeed the Romans and before them, the Greeks felt history was important because it taught important lessons. While studying the exact cause of the Hood to blow up is probably not useful, the example of the British trading armament for speed in building a ship engaged in combat with powerful forces is useful. That was a bad choice when you only have a few ships. By contrast, the Sherman Tanks were called “Ronsons” by the Germans (after a popular, pre-war cigarette lighter’s slogan — one flick and they’re lit) and could not stand up to direct combat with Leopard or Tiger tanks. BUT … they were far more robust and faster and more fuel-friendly. Meaning a commander (like Patton) who understood the strengths and weaknesses of the two tanks could maximize his strengths, minimize his weakness, and maximize the weakness of the enemy, minimize HIS strengths. So Patton’s method of out-maneuvering the Tigers and Leopards, which did not move in rough terrain very well, often requiring gas, or tread maintenance, helped neutralize the German advantage. And of course, he had a LOT more tanks than his German enemies.
In the same way that Buchanon (pure idiot) got the obvious lesson wrong: Allied appeasement and most importantly NEGLECT of their military to appease their domestic constituents got conquered. Hitler would not have DARED to launch an attack on Poland if he feared LOSING to England and France combined. Being weak, as Putin said, gets one beaten. As Machiavelli reminded, it is unwise to neglect military affairs. Weak states INVITE attack by more powerful neighbors.
The trouble with Buchanan type Hitler revisionism is it disregards the plain words of Mein Kampf. A nation is a fighting organism, etc….
sirius,
” thereby virtually guaranteed his defeat?”
Not at all – we came within a whisker of losing the Battle of the Atlantic as it was. Had the Germans put a little more effort into the submarine fleet earlier, they win that front, and the British Isles are, at a minimum, neutralized as bases, and possibly captured. Then no supplies get through to the Soviets.
Some above have been close to my view on Hitler and the Japanese.
IMO the best guess is that he knew the Japanese would never attack the USSR if he didn’t declare war on the US.
Second guess: He figured the US would get in the war against him by one means or another anyway, so why wait. If he thought that he was right, it was only a matter of time.
Third best guess: He wanted to show his few allies that he would keep faith with them. And perhaps it would sway Franco too. It probably did sway Franco, to conclude that Hitler was doomed.
Personal guess: Hitler craved constant excitement and was convinced boldness brought luck. What is more exciting than declaring war on a major power. It had been a few days……
Might as well cover all topics.
Custer? It is not a choice between competence and heroism. He was superbly suited for field officer as combat was then conducted. Not well suited for staff and planning activities and above.
The perfect war for him was the Mexican War, but he missed it. By 1861 he would have been a General. In the East he would have screwed up a few battles and been eased out. In the West he might have done better in the more chaotic warfare of Missouri and Arkansas.
Lying at the bottom of the problem of history is the question of whether we have any use for the literal truth at all; or whether the literal truth can only ever be meaningful to use in terms of Myth: the great simplifying device, one that allows us to grasp things which in the form of mere detail simply slips through our fingers.
Some of my friends in the broad profession which saves me from the curse of having to write for a living, specializes in business intelligence. And his job in a manner of speaking, is to turn detail into myth; to create insight from terabytes of data. Managers give him a bunch a data and ask him “what does it mean”. The fact that he uses “R” or that I may sometimes have to write code to create this or that visualization is incidental. He wants a Myth, which is not quite the same as data.
Myth gave us a common purpose; a common origin; a sense of brotherhood. I am not sure that we or any other race of sentient creatures can live without a binding story. CS Lewis, who thought about this subject quite a lot truly understood that sometimes it was necessary not to let detail get in the way of the narrative. Lewis saw the need to locate oneself within the Tale, or know one’s place on the Road that goes ever on. There were truths that only came down like fire and were as necessary as bread and wine. He wrote:
Maybe the only the thing that matters in all the stories of history, whether of the Titanic or the Hood is whether we see in them the “hints” of larger Myth; in the empty boot by the Titanic’s hulk; or in the ship’s bell lying at the bottom of the Denmark Strait find that in every age and clime men still hoped and strove.
C4,
Well, according to the history, we’re all Zionists, or members of the Jewish Lobby.
John Adams could not have been more explicit. “I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation,” he said, after his presidency.
It’s not new.
exhelodrvr, most of the supplies we sent to the Soviets went though Alaska, if the Germans had taken the British Isles it would not have slowed that down.
I’m a member of the Swedish/American Jewish lobby.
Japanese and Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima?
MacArthur did not disrupt the Japanese concept of nation in the manner that Germany was overhauled after WW2. The civilians knew mostly that the US had bombed them brutally, they surrendered, food was very scarce for a while, and then the economy revived.
Japan had been at war one place or another since about 1930. At home the people got no uncensored world news. So hostilities with the US was just another fight somewhere.
Returning soldiers and sailors had little to tell, they had spent the war cut off from any news. They fought, things started well and went bad, they were told to surrender, they were just following orders.
Pearl Harbor was a distant battle. But Hiroshima was right there, visible, unique, and symbolic.
The bombings of Tokyo killed more but each blast was comprehensible. An atomic explosion defied the mind.
Myself, I am rather fond of the Jewish Lobby. They are on my side. See no reason to shaft folks on my side, shafting is for the other side.
It is pretty obvious that World War One was the seminal event for everything that has happened since. So why did the US get involved? Answer: logistics.
In 1914, the USA had 35% of the World’s Industrial output. The Europeans get their fracas going and are running through industrial output like it was going out of style. So are they going to leave that 35% unmolested? No way, Jose. Each and every one of the warring parties was trying to get their cut and deny access to all others.
England of course had the inside track. Reason: Canada. Normal trade and commerce with a next door neighbor that was at war by virtue of being a British Dominion meant that the USA had just taken sides and was no longer neutral. Unfortunately, nobody recognized this and the USA dawdled for three long years pretending that it did not need
massive Armed Forces and could avoid direct participation by employing body english.
A more realistic approach would have moderated the effects of WWI and that would have benefited all. Ain’t 20-20 Hindsight wonderful.
K: Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost did not work. Die-hards were numerous and came very close to preventing the Emperor’s surrender message from being broadcast. Idea was to stage a coup and broadcast orders for “ketsu-go” (fanatical last-ditch, suicidal defense of Japanese Homeland.)
Only reason coup failed was a diverted flight of B-29s caused a blackout in Tokyo during a critical 20 minute period. Story related in “The Last Mission”.
48 bombers were scheduled. All managed to take off, all managed to make it to target, all made it back to base and all 192 R3350 engines quit for lack of fuel as they taxied in. And they caused that essential blackout.
One of the most fascinating tales I have ever read. History Channel has film version. It is true to the book.
How did this come about? Divine Navigation.
Speaking of Sea Stories: Did you ever hear that the Queen Mary once sank a warship?
The bad news: It was a Royal Navy ship. The Curacao. Killed almost 400 English sailors.
The event was (illegally) recorded by a P38 pilot. His mates took turns concealing the existence of his camera and film from any prying eyes. Photos were finally published in “Life” around 1951.
I shall probably be visiting with the photographer and his surviving friends in October in Cincinatti. Anybody on this thread live nearby? Consider yourself invited to drop in and meet the boys.
The great madness/mystery at the center of Christianity is that Jesus is both fully Man and fully God. My experience has been that the tension of this madness/mystery is so great that no person or congregation individually or collectively in practice can hold both concepts in their head/heads at the same time for long. rather what happens is that in practice individually and as a group christians lurch back and forth first on one track–Jesus is fully God– for a time and then on another track –Jesus is fully Man–for a time. the job of a wise christian leader is to recognize which track the group is going and let it go until it loses its power to reveal the group and individuals to themselves and then shift to the other track.
a good measure of the speed of change is how frequently you have to shift back and forth.
why is this important?
Jesus is the God of History.
It matters not whether whether you count your years as AD or CE.
Henry Adams, the grandson and great grandson of two Presidents, wrote an “autobiography” on his education. The book more properly functions as a history of man, and the world.
A strong theme of the book is a feeling of almost hopelessness as modern man is cut off from permanancy and cast adrift in modernity. His only solace was found in the cult of the Virgin of Chartres. Whether or not he became a Christian is open for speculation, but the idea of the Virgin seemed to be his only comfort against the forces of modernity, as it gave him something to “cling” to.
Henry Adams was also the first professor of history at Harvard.
The 19th century is theologically discredited.
There are exceptions like Charles Spurgeon.
To understand what I just said consider that 5 united states presidents were unitarians. two of those were adams.
do you know the theology of the unitarians?
Do you think that a unitarian could be elected president today?
Spurgeon must have something going for him as he preached against the efficacy of infant baptism.
If Obama can get elected today, practically anybody can get elected today, the sky, or the cellar, is the limit.
I’ve always had the opinion that what caused the German portion of WW2 wasn’t so much the treaty, but the fact that its army was allowed to quit the field intact at the end of WW1.
This allowed a myth to build up in the popular mindest that if they’d only held out a little longer, fought just a little bit harder, they could have won that war.
Also, a good part of why Hitler was so quick to join the Japanese in war against the US was because the concept of Americans as weak, stupid, feckless, grossly incompetent, etc etc was very well established as “fact” in nearly all of Europe at that time. America was seen as no real threat. Just an over ripe land of resources squatted on by degenerate mongrels. The American contribution to the defeat of the Germans in WW1 had been so thoroughly devalued and revised into nil that our efforts were seen as only cosmetic by the time of the ’30s. Heck, from 1919 onward, American diplomats in Europe were routinely referred to as “those dirty little people”, even to their faces during official functions.
Dave: I saw the B-29 version of the coup failure on the History Channel too. It didn’t convince me. But such is the nature of history.
I’ll outline, from memory, what I read long ago. I might even come close:
Hirohito had recorded his surrender message. It had not yet been broadcast. Word reached a few officers who put guards around the Palace. And at the radio station.
It was night.
Officers entered the Palace to seize the recording disc (there was more than one but they didn’t know that.) And they literally couldn’t find it. They were afraid to bother the Emperor himself and the household told them nothing helpful.
While that muddle continued the General in charge of the Military District decided to crush the coup. And did. (I believe he had been asked to participate, temporized for a short time, and then didn’t.)
Where did I read that account? Probably in “The Rising Sun” by John Toland. I was working with some engineers over from Japan in 1983 and asked them a few questions as I went though the book.
Last line of “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”
There are important lessons to be learned from these cases. First it reinforces that we have a common set of references. To some extent, like the Western canon in literature, these are arbitrary but it is very important that we can build trust by sharing a common historical vocabulary. Second the real important topics that are learned from these events are human issues. Communications, prioritizing, command and control and caring about human beings making choices under stress. We care about the characters in Greek drama, even though there world long gone, for the same reason.
Cannoneer No 4:
A bit over 20 years ago I was TDY to Ft Macarthur, supporting a special team. I came back to the motel one Saturday afternoon, turned on the TV, and the first thing that came on was a show depicting the facility I had just been working in being strafed and bombed by the Japanese. “Gen Macarthur” was out front, shooting back at them with a pair of 1911’s. The fort was being used to depict the Philippines in 1941.
In that case I was cheering for the Japanese. The place had no air conditioning and almost no furniture for us to use.
Wretchard: Yes! I have come to the same conclusion. There is an underlying Mythology in everything that people do. And it does not have to be true. “… all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…” is demonstrably false. Not even identical twins are equal and there is no such thing an inalienable right – try robbing a bank or jumping off a ship in the middle of the ocean at night and see if how inalienable your rights are. But if you build a country based on that Myth, it can be a pretty fine place.
Several years back I delivered a paper presenting the various Mythologies that drove our space program over the years, and how each one ultimately led to failure. I was somewhat concerned about the reaction to that point of view from the audience, all of whom were employed in the industry. But the reaction universally consisted of “Wow! No one ever explained it to me that way before!”
Sirius sir: Yes, one bombing ultimately led to the other, but to me it is remarkable that the Japanese do not see it that way. As the comedian Larry Miller puts it “When I see a bumper sticker that says ‘No More Hiroshimas” I want one that says “You First, No More Pearl Harbors.”
An excellent place to start is “The Folktale” by Stith Thompson.
When I’ve applied it to Mr. Obama; his reconstructed biography,aspects of his campaign, and the timing of their introduction and withdrawal, much insight has been gained.
“The Irish Heroe Tales” also have some application to American politics as a consequence of the work of John Ford. Most relevant to this post would be a line or two from “Who Shot Liberty Valence”
Myth and fact. Faith and science. Yin and Yang.
Strive for transcendance, but keep your powder dry.
Practice no-mind, but be aware.
Be complete.
God is.
Literal truth of a historic event is a hard thing to grasp, even if participants are still alive. So much of what we know is handed down to us through fallible human testimony. For example, I’m struck by the difference between Michael Shaara’s portrayal of General James Longstreet in The Killer Angels and Steven Sears picture of the man in Gettysburg. In Angels, he’s an unselfish, far seeing prescient hero who was able to predict and plan for the then new nature of defensive combat. In the other, he’s a vacillating, self-serving liar who’s exaggerated the magnitude of his differences with other generals, and who’s actions showed that he fully bought into the tactical paradigm of his time, not only not objecting to the offensive nature of Lee’s campaign, but completely supporting it to the point of defending it in detail prior to its execution.
What’s the truth? Two people researched the Battle of Gettysburg to the nth degree and have come up with differing opinions of a participant. Is one more correct than the other? Or is it that the reality encompasses both, as well as other elements hidden from us over the long years, and the seeming contradiction is merely a necessary artifact of composing a complex narrative?
Literal truth and myth most often are mistaken for one another. Too often, what is asserted most ends up being the dominant belief regardless of any real grounding or lack thereof in factual truth. I’ve seen too much of that in 9/11 fact finding; too many “truthers” still believe canards and outright misrepresentations such as “the 9/11 hijackers are still alive”, “a scientist found evidence of explosives at Ground Zero”, and “witnesses heard bombs”, not realizing that the repetative nature of the echo chamber compromising this field of misknowledge isn’t a sign of accuracy, but of obsession, and obsession does not encourage high accuracy. Or even low. Electric transformers and enterprise-sized uninterruptible power supplies exploding because of a huge fire can sound like bombs; so can ceilings and walls falling. Disgraced “scientists” speaking outside their field of expertise know enough to bamboozle crowds into thinking aluminum and iron oxide (rust) are signs of incendiaries being used. And the obsessed too often discount simple errors, such as confusion between two people with similar or same names in a foreign language, and find more comfort in believing a conspiracy narrative spun by unscrupulous fools unconcerned about taking credulous idiots for a ride. To them, the lie is the truth, verified by lies and distortions spun in order to make the whole narrative seem self-confirming. But what is really the truth? Observers themselves do not always remember accurately; contradictions in the description of the planes that crashed into the Pentagon and Pennsylvania demonstrate that. So do inconsistencies in the testimony of various first responders and other rescuers. Do these seeming inconsistencies indicate a problem with the dominant narrative? Or do they simply show that complex events are not easily reducible to the form necessary to translate history into something digestible by observers? A complex event has little care for how it’s portrayed in future retellings; ignoring the fact that they are not conscious beings, events unfold on their own terms, with the full complexity of reality and the full demonstration of every little bit of human experience that goes into an individual participants actions during the event. We can no more unreel the full narrative behind Joe Montanna’s pass to John Taylor in Super Bowl XXIII (“The” Catch, as it’s called) than we can the full narrative behind any of the experts who concluded that the Titanic did not break in half, contrary to some witnesses testimony. There’s too much that goes into the individual’s actions to fully understand. And these cases are highly individualized ones; how do we untangle the multitudes of interacting narratives, motivations, and experiences for more complex events?
The answer is that we can’t, but we can try to understand the thurst, and see if our understandings make predictions that are verified by other strictly factual aspects of the event. As incomplete as such understanding is, it would at least be factually based. For General Longstreet and the question of the self-serving nature of his memoirs, we can see that his letters prior to the Battle of Gettysburg do not show the sorts of doubts he retailed later in his own memoirs (although I’ve yet to read far enough to see whether he had doubts during the battle itself). We can predict that, if “controlled demolitions” were truly used in the Twin Towers, cleanup workers, the New York Police and Fire Departments, and others would have noticed the various signs, from the remains of devices used in explosives demolitions (“det” cord, remains of electronics, things like that) to explicit signs on the recovered structural supports (neither has ever been found). For other events, we can follow similar processes, applying Occams Razor when unable to decide between multiple compelling explanations. In short, we can attempt to divorce opinion and proceed from fact. That itself is not proof against error, but it is an attempt at unbiased understanding. That humans cannot reach perfect understanding is simply a limitation we all have to live with, but 50, 60, 90 percent understanding based on factual analysis always beats 10% understanding based on emotional or selective acceptance of history: It provides a more solid, more reality-based foundation for conclusions. Selective acceptance of history, or outright distortions of such – like what Holocaust revisionists, Apollo Moon “hoaxers”, and 9/11 Conspiracy peddlers practice – is a bed of quicksand unable to support true interrogation.
So, how do we discover “what really happened” in history? We try our best to proceed from facts. And who wants to know? Mostly people who have a care for accuracy, thank goodness. But unfortunately, some people who only have a care for rewriting history to suit a viewpoint also “care”. But only one of those pays any real tribute or care to those who were participants in prior events.
Nahncee:
The parents of a lady I know wanted to emigrate to the U.S. early in the 20th Century.
They boarded one ship but were forced to get off and wait for another. It was a very nice ship, you see, and they did not have the money to pay for the fare on such a fine and well appointed vessel.
The ship was the Titanic.
vivictius,
Overall, about half the Lend-Lease supplies went via the Pacific. But at the time in question (i.e. the first 12 months or so following Pearl Harbor), the majority of the supplies were being sent via the Northern Route.
K,
“he knew the Japanese would never attack the USSR if he didn’t declare war on the US”
Japan never did attack the Soviets – Stalin was the one who broke the USSR-Japan neutrality pact, conveniently for him not until August 1945.
Bobal: If Obama can get elected today, practically anybody can get elected today, the sky, or the cellar, is the limit.
And that’s a good thing. For generations, black mothers told outright lies to their little children…Santa Claus is watching you…the Tooth Fairy will trade your molars for a quarter…you can grow up to be President someday. Now they don’t have to lie anymore.
“Europe first” meant “the Pacific second”, but it didn’t mean spend everything on Europe.
It was “just enough to make sure, the balance, if any, to the Pacific.
Had the Battle of The Atlantic gone worse–we won–less could have been sent to the Pacific and more resources–DDs and corvetters, PBYs, etc–to Europe.
It was our choice to make it a close-run thing.
ElMondoHummus,
The two views of Longstreet are not necessarily diametrically opposed. As a subordinate officer, you can offer your opinion, advice, best counsel until the commander makes his decision. Then you had best work darn hard to make the plan work. In time, should you survive to write memoirs, you can indeed point out how you remember the events and most writers cannot, even with the best of intentions, avoid overlooking their own blemishes and highlighting the blemishes of those poor benighted souls who did not heed their counsel. However, in history, as at Gettysburg, the center often holds.
The Battle of the Atlantic was not that close a win.
At their best, the U-boats only managed to sink 5% of the Allied shipping.
As Clay Blair, author of the definitive work on the U-boat war pointed out, you don’t win by stopping a mere 5% of your adversaries’ supplies.
RWE,
It was that close in 1942.
Richard,
“Had the Battle of The Atlantic gone worse”
Had it gone worse, it would have been too late to change. And we were also very lucky/blessed in the war in the Pacific in several instances. Guadalcanal was a near disaster, at several points. Midway could easily have gone the other way, despite the code being broken.
The story of HMS Hood is still fascinating: one of the most interesting things I ever read was the account of one of the three Hood survivors (I think a Midshipman, but not sure) who escaped out a bridge window. He had enough time to hear somebody report steering failure, (rear part of the vessel where the explosion was) to hear Captain Kerr order a switch to emergency steering…then everything came apart. He got out a bridge window behind somebody else — but he made it, and the other guy didn’t.
Right on Teresita – As per Morrissey in ” America Is Not the World”- “But when the President is never black, female or gay/And until that day/You’ve got nothing to say to me/To help me believe.” – Course that song is a LOVE song by an expat to his new country – it’s all about ambiv response to an open but troubled society…- Your comment reminded me of my own familial situation – spoke before here re raising a little Brother who will LOVE his country. Re those myths Wretch – it do get complicated. – My boy likes “Dixie” – Not sure I’ll encourage him to sing that Out as we walk down 125th St. in Harlem! But if it happens…ANd I’ll encourage him to sing “Big River” with me anywhere along with Alan Jackson’s latest – “Small Town Southern Man.” – If you get a chance – try Hans Koning’s 70′s book debunking Columbus – It might win you over even though you’d begin in resistance. – I actually think the truth about Colum – now THERE was a hustler – beats Sam Eliot Morrison mythos. What the hey – No point in celebrating Conquistadors OR human sacrificers – but that great Catholic priest who resisted the killing back then? He was for the Ages and he should be one of your faves!!
Exhelo: During the Happy Time of 1942, was when the U-Boats managed to sink only 5% of Allied shipping.
That goes back to the theme of this whole discussion. There is what is recalled, what the mythology was, and what the actual data shows.
By 1944 the Allies were sinking something like 10 U-boats for every Allied ship sunk. Which is incredible when you think about it.
El Jefe: In a televised interview, one of the Bismark survivors said that when the word came down that they were going to engage the Hood, his first thought was “Not again! I mean we are at war! Don’t they ever get tired of that drill?”
“Engage the Hood” was the favorite wargames exercise for the Bismark. He first assumed that it was yet another stupid exercise.
Thanks to all who offered answers and insights regarding my questions. But of course answers and insights beget other questions.
Did Hitler have any tangible reason to believe that Japan would declare war on Russia should he do the same vis a vis the United States? In other words was there a memorandum of understanding or somesuch? Or was Hitler merely being hopeful in thinking bold action by him would lead the way?
It seems strange in any case that he would have put such trust in members of a race he must have thought inferior. The better course–and maybe it is easy seeing only in hindsight–would have been for him to simply breathe a sigh of relief that Japan had diverted our attention and in that not insignificant way furthered his designs regardless of any consequence relative to the Soviet Union. (And after all, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact proved an already sufficient answer for dealing with that front, leading to another question: Why not let sleeping dogs lie? Why attack the Soviets? Or was Hitler constitutionally incapable of trusting in such alliances, especially if he felt he’d already been double-crossed by the Japanese?)
Of course Hitler believed without reservation and managed to convince a whole nation the myth of Aryan supremacy. Even against the countervaling evidence of a Joe Louis or Jesse Owens, that mythology survived. Goes to the power of personality and will to be deceived. But one didn’t have to be especially observant to see Hitler didn’t possess the physical features he touted as supreme. How much self-loathing propelled the man and the myth? It’s interesting to consider even if there isn’t a definitive answer.
John Lukacs is a conservative historian who shares the opinion with some other fine minds that we are at the end of an era, a very important era(and not for the reason that it is our own.) They consider Greek, Roman, and now the last five hundred years to be the three great eras of civilization and progress. They do not wish to wave goodby to this one, but do not see how not too. However.
Lukacs believes that although Western Civilization is simply a reinvention of the Classical civilizations, there is one major difference, and that is a desire, and perhaps obsession, to understand history. That did not exist at all in previous eras, and may, for all it’s manifest peculiarities, save us yet.
So thinks Lukacs.
Oh well, never mind about Hitler’s feeling double-crossed. I see I’ve gotten the chronology wrong, as he had already double-crossed the Soviets six months prior to Pearl Harbor. Oy vey.
Still the question persists. If the pact was holding why initiate an attack, unless of course he assumed Stalin to be as devious as he was?
A Naval aviator I once served with visited the museum at Hiroshima, and signed their guest book. Most of the signatures were accompanied by commentary such as “Such a tragedy!” and “We must all ensure this never happens again!” He left a comment:
“This bomb was actually dropped on December 7, 1941.”
A view of christmas’s past present & future.
I blogged about the The MSSC Desalination Summit in Las Vegas back in January. One of the points made there was that the future is changing.
The nose is wagging the tale. What does the nose know?
Water officials have some of the longest government planning cycles.
To have a successful 21st century you need not just cheap plentiful energy but also cheap plentiful water. The 20th century solution to cheap water was to dam up water,keep it from flowing to the ocean–and distribute it. I believe the 21st century solution to water will be just the reverse. Move cheap desalinized water 1000 miles inland from the ocean. Cheap energy efficient pipes will need to be invented first. I blog about it here.
Unlike Magellan, Cortez, Pizarro, Ponce de Leon whose fabled stories of the new world returned to europe as faint echos–myths really– of the new reality they experienced–today we have pictures of Mars right on our computers. This is not science fiction. This is not fable. This is not myth.
Having trouble believing men landed on the moon in 1969–try this.
There is water in the form of ice on Mars.
Images Suggest Water Once Covered Mars
Examining Mars
Stereo pictures of Mars looks like parts of the US Southwest–or many other desert parts of the world–from above.
I am trying to think about the pictures from Mars that show water as ice in the desert and how this should be relevant to water officials today. This is very hard to do. I keep flashing on the 1970′s dune trilogy for no good reason. One thing it shows is that government space planning cycles are starting to move further into the future than government water planning cycles. I think that this has profound meaning. As I have mentioned before. We are at the very early stages of the divergence of space history and earth history. Slowly the world is coming to and end in a human historical sense. That is the edge of human history will move to the stars.
Its nice to look at the stars but what if the stars looked back at you.
This happens, in fact– all the time.
There are limitations to the use of the word myth to describe ultimate reality because it is a man centered term.
The sinking of the Hood lead directly to the sinking of the Bismarck. One has to wonder if the British would have expended the effort had it not been for their catastrophic loss. But in the face of disaster they threw all caution to the wind and attacked with a vengeance. And got very lucky when an out-of-date airplane (a Swordfish biplane flying too slow to be effectively tracked by the Bismarck’s modern anti-aircraft fire control) managed against all odds to disable the great ship’s rudder with a single fortuitously-placed torpedo.
What other series of events could have led to a similar outcome?
Ah, I’ve still got a chance with the
Tooth Fairy then.
If you get a chance – try Hans Koning’s 70’s book debunking Columbus – It might win you over even though you’d begin in resistance. – I actually think the truth about Colum – now THERE was a hustler – beats Sam Eliot Morrison mythos.
You cannot “debunk” Columbus. Yes, he was a nasty, greedy SOB who cut a blood red path through the New World…. and so what? That does absolutely nothing to diminish what he achieved. He was a man of his time, and a man like most men of nearly all times.
What Konig and many others do is a very modern thing of looking at the past and applying the sensibilities of the late 20th century Liberal/Left culture upon the actions of men. Oh my goodness, they didn’t respect women! Oh my goodness, look what they said about gays! Oh my goodness, look what they did to the lovely brown people! Yadda yadda yadda. And the lovely brown people weren’t respecting women either, or gays, and would have gladly killed the evil whites in their turn if they were able. (This is the same impulse, incidentally, that turns nearly every Hollywood historical movie into a sad joke.)
Such thinking is simply ignorance writ large, cosmically large, and at bottom is nothing more than massive egotism. “I am so much better than [fill in name of dead white male] because he [fill in behavior now considered offensive].”
It’s the same idiotic impulse that says “Well George Washington was ok, I guess, but HE OWNED SLAVES!”
Do tell Ethel, do tell. Yeah, and I bet one time he hurt someone’s feelings, too.
Of course, it goes without saying (almost) that none of this thinking applies to non-white males, women, gays, or Leftist tyrants. They are above reproach.
sirius_sir,
“Did Hitler have any tangible reason to believe that Japan would declare war on Russia should he do the same vis a vis the United States?”
Considering how the United States was viewed by both Japan and most of Europe, it would be natural for Hitler to assume that Japan would have available military resources attack the Soviets.
Ah, I’ve still got a chance with the
Tooth Fairy then.
////
yeah you’re right. the stars don’t stare back at you.
That would be to have you’re own image reflected back at you–which is pretty lonely deflating and hopeless.
Whatever ultimate reality it is that makes the stars–outside of nature itself –looks at you.
Teresta said: “And that’s a good thing. For generations, black mothers told outright lies to their little children…Santa Claus is watching you…the Tooth Fairy will trade your molars for a quarter…you can grow up to be President someday. Now they don’t have to lie anymore.”
99.9999999999% of all white males US citizens never became president either. Also I don’t think any mother would want their child to be a product of the Chicago Democrat machine, not even if it meant the presidency, not even if it meant the world.
My paternal grandfather (WWI Navy veteran) until his dying day (at the ripe age of 94) never ever forgave the Japanese for Pearl Harbor and had as much bigotry/paranoia toward them as Cedarford has toward the Jews. As far as Pappy was concerned Nagasaki and Hiroshima should have been the opening salvos because, as he said, the Japanese never surrender and he believed that in their eyes the war was merely on ‘pause’ and would be resumed by another ‘stab-in-the-back’. “Never trust a Jap” is something he would repeat to my brother and I frequently, as well as other things about the Japanese that I don’t need to repeat here. He was careful not to make such statements in front of our father (WWII Naval Aviator) who didn’t, and still doesn’t, tolerate such talk. But one time he had a ‘unguarded moment’ and I remember distinctly one Thanksgiving where my father dressed down his father in front of the rest of the family for his attitudes toward the Japanese. The amazing thing, to me at least, was that my grandfather’s attitude didn’t extend to other peoples of the Orient. He had a particular fondness for the Chinese. I dated a Chinese-American girl in high school and he was always badgering me about the fact that I should have stuck with her and married her (problem was her parents DID NOT approve of their daughter dating a ‘wide-eye’ and because she was raised to honor one’s parents….). I guess in his eyes the Chinese were our allies in the fight against the hated Japanese, and thus were worthy of his esteem and affection. To me Pappy was a reflection of that old adage: “Some wounds never heal”.
Peter – I went to google the name of that great Catholic witness La Casas – came up with this pretty standard account of the events – not nearly as felt as Koning’s -I’d urge you to read/savor how Koning does in Sam Morison’s hagiographic lines on Columbus – MUCH more devastating than the analysis below – still – what this conventional left historian alludes to is probably worth taking in – not simply dismissing – Time IS tough – but after Jesus appears – history really offers no excusess to Herods…You might consider the passage below re Harvard historian/celebrant of Columbus S.E. Morison which says baldly what Koning says beautifully – {“to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm: yes, mass murder took place, but it’s not that important-it should weigh very little in our final judgments; it should affect very little what we do in the world.” Here’s some excerpts re Casas… –
The chief source-and, on many matters the only source-of information about what happened on the islands after Columbus came is Bartolome de las Casas, who, as a young priest, participated in the conquest of Cuba…
In Book Two of his History of the Indies, Las Casas (who at first urged replacing Indians by black slaves, thinking they were stronger and would survive, but later relented when he saw the effects on blacks) tells about the treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards. It is a unique account and deserves to be quoted at length:
Endless testimonies . .. prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives…. But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then…. The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians….
Las Casas tells how the Spaniards “grew more conceited every day” and after a while refused to walk any distance. They “rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry” or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays. “In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings.”
Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.” Las Casas tells how “two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys.”
The Indians’ attempts to defend themselves failed. And when they ran off into the hills they were found and killed. So, Las Casas reports, “they suffered and died in the mines and other labors in desperate silence, knowing not a soul in the world to whom they could turn for help.” He describes their work in the mines:
… mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times; they dig, split rocks, move stones, and carry dirt on then: backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash gold stay in the water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it breaks them; and when water invades the mines, the most arduous task of all is to dry the mines by scooping up pansful of water and throwing it up outside….
After each six or eight months’ work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides … they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation…. in this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk . .. and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile … was depopulated. … My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write. …
When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, “there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it….”
Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas. That beginning, when you read Las Casas-even if his figures are exaggerations (were there 3 million Indians to begin with, as he says, or less than a million, as some historians have calculated, or 8 million as others now believe?)-is conquest, slavery, death. When we read the history books given to children in the United States, it all starts with heroic adventure-there is no bloodshed-and Columbus Day is a celebration.
Past the elementary and high schools, there are only occasional hints of something else. Samuel Eliot Morison, the Harvard historian, was the most distinguished writer on Columbus, the author of a multivolume biography, and was himself a sailor who retraced Columbus’s route across the Atlantic. In his popular book Christopher Columbus, Mariner, written in 1954, he tells about the enslavement and the killing: “The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide.”
That is on one page, buried halfway into the telling of a grand romance. In the book’s last paragraph, Morison sums up his view of Columbus:
He had his faults and his defects, but they were largely the defects of the qualities that made him great-his indomitable will, his superb faith in God and in his own mission as the Christ-bearer to lands beyond the seas, his stubborn persistence despite neglect, poverty and discouragement. But there was no flaw, no dark side to the most outstanding and essential of all his qualities-his seamanship.
One can lie outright about the past. Or one can omit facts which might lead to unacceptable conclusions. Morison does neither. He refuses to lie about Columbus. He does not omit the story of mass murder; indeed he describes it with the harshest word one can use: genocide.
But he does something else-he mentions the truth quickly and goes on to other things more important to him. Outright lying or quiet omission takes the risk of discovery which, when made, might arouse the reader to rebel against the writer. To state the facts, however, and then to bury them in a mass of other information is to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm: yes, mass murder took place, but it’s not that important-it should weigh very little in our final judgments; it should affect very little what we do in the world.
It is not that the historian can avoid emphasis of some facts and not of others. This is as natural to him as to the mapmaker, who, in order to produce a usable drawing for practical purposes, must first flatten and distort the shape of the earth, then choose out of the bewildering mass of geographic information those things needed for the purpose of this or that particular map.
My argument cannot be against selection, simplification, emphasis, which are inevitable for both cartographers and historians. But the map-maker’s distortion is a technical necessity for a common purpose shared by all people who need maps. The historian’s distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual.
Furthermore, this ideological interest is not openly expressed in the way a mapmaker’s technical interest is obvious (“This is a Mercator projection for long-range navigation-for short-range, you’d better use a different projection”). No, it is presented as if all readers of history had a common interest which historians serve to the best of their ability. This is not intentional deception; the historian has been trained in a society in which education and knowledge are put forward as technical problems of excellence and not as tools for contending social classes, races, nations.
To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to de-emphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves- unwittingly-to justify what was done. My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all)-that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned to give them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly.
The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks)-the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress-is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they-the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court-represent the nation as a whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as “the United States,” subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with common interests. It is as if there really is a “national interest” represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media.
“History is the memory of states,” wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen’s policies. From his standpoint, the “peace” that Europe had before the French Revolution was “restored” by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation-a world not restored but disintegrated.
My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been, The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.
RWE,
The below figures are from a variety of sites. Keep in mind that the U.S. had a total of about 6000 merchant vessels (including those existing in 1939 and those builtduringthee war); assume that that Great Britain and Canada together had the same amount (I have not been able to find figures for them). That would have 20-25% of the shipping being sunk. you reference the “happy days”, which is generally considered to be prior to the U.S. entry (different sources define that period differently). That period was not the “Allied low point” in the Battle of the Atlantic – that point was in mid-late 1942. So yes, the Germans came uncomfortably close to winning the war with their submarines.
*******************************************
“Nazi Germany estimated that they needed to sink 150 merchant ships each month to starve us out.”
The below figures are for Allied ships sunk in the Atlantic.
1939 : 222 ships sunk (114 by submarine)
1940 : 1059 ships sunk (471 by submarine)
1941 : 1328 ships sunk (432 by submarine)
1942 : 1661 ships sunk (1159 by submarine)
1943 : 597 ships sunk (463 by submarine)
1944 : 247 ships sunk (132 by submarine)
1945 : 105 ships sunk (56 by submarine)
“Allied Merchant Navy shipping losses reached a peak in 1942, exceeding those recorded for any other year during the Second World War. That year total losses in all spheres of the war amounted to 1,664 merchant ships, totalling 7,790,697 gross registered tons. The majority of these losses were in the Atlantic Ocean, where U-boats sank 5,471,222 tons (1,006 ships) of allied shipping, with the British Merchant Navy bearing the brunt of these losses.”
Various:
I have never heard that Japan agreed to attack the USSR. But it seems plausible that Hitler would have wanted them to. So he declared war on the US in hopes the Japanese would attack the USSR.
If those were his thoughts he erred by not insisting Japan give him a clear yes or no.
To me Hitler, by 1941, was driven more by passion than calculation. He craved excitement, the thrill of bold decisions and big stakes. And who knows what effects medications and astrology were having.
Often overlooked: The Japanese had actually tested Russia about 1937 in the Manchurian border area. It was a real war, but undeclared and short.
The USSR did poorly at first but Joe changed generals and sent in Zukov. Soon the Japanese were getting clobbered and withdrew. They showed no further interest in USSR territory.
So, Benj, if you choose not to be on the side of the executioners, what do you do? Fight back or lie down and die? If you choose to fight back, you are yourself becoming an executioner. If you lie down and die you are executing the generations that could come from your offspring. Your admirable thinking genetics are lost to the world. If you choose to do nothing, what are you? In a world of conflict, and I will grant you that this seems to be the nature of a world driven by competition for scarce resources, will you be permitted to do nothing?
Deep Impact Films Earth as an Alien World
PhysOrg.com) — NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft has created a video of the moon transiting (passing in front of) Earth as seen from the spacecraft’s point of view 31 million miles away. Scientists are using the video to develop techniques to study alien worlds.
Here is a better link. the videos of the moons transit as seen from beyond the earth & moon are on the right side of the page in watch video 1
Programer – glad you got to the end – take your point re Camus – when it comes to the executioners – my line is taht should be reserved for the Saddams (et als) of the world – Don’t believe in the Death Penalty for “ordinary” murderers – it should be reserved for those who commit crimes against humanity…AS for your larger (?) point – I’d invoke Jesu…in full awareness that the Genealogy of Morals scores points against the Golden Rule….
…the stars don’t stare back at you.
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total darkness sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
–W.H. Auden, “The More Loving One”
I have it on the authority of no less than COL David Hackworth that the US built about 61,000 ships during WWII. Sixty-one thousand! We haven’t got 61,000 howitzers anymore, probably! No one in Germany expected the might of the US industrial machine. I mocked him myself, said he couldn’t be serious, but he was. Actually I don’t know if he meant warships only or what.
So if 1600 ships out of say 15K/year that were built in 1942 (neglecting ships already built and neglecting the cumulative output), that’s only 10% of that year’s new shipping, not 20%. With existing ships it would be well under 5% at any time.
If the sun and moon began to doubt
They’s immediately go out.
W.Blake
They’d immediately go out.
“God is an intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.”
The Book Of The 24 Philosophers
Everybody a center.
nichevo,
61k is far to high for the number of freighters; we only built a little over 2,700 of the Liberty Ships, and they were more numerous than anything else.
Exhelo: Interesting figures but here is what Clay Blair – a WWII American submariner himself and author of the definitive works on both the German U-boat and American Pacific submarine campaigns (they are each two volumes, and each volume is about 900 pages long) says.
Referring to the period after September 1942 – “Contrary to the accepted wisdom or mythology:
U-boats never even came close at any time to cutting the vital North Atlantic lifeline to the British Isles.”
As for the period between the start of the war and the entry of the U.S., he points out that, despite the numerous sinkings, the British actually were able to increase their tonnage of cargo ships and tankers afloat. During this time the British sailed over 900 convoys and only 19 of them suffered losses of 6 or more ships due to U-boats. The convoys over this time period consisted of a total of 12,057 ships and 98% of them arrived in the British Isles safely. And of course, this is before Kaiser began turning out Liberty ships like popcorn.
And he further states “At the close of 1941 German U-boats were nowhere close to isolating and strangling Great Britain.”
nichevo,
There have been a total of about 9000 ships in the Navy since approx the start of WWII; that includes relatively small amphibs, mine warfare, tugs, etc. That 61,000 figure you mention might include the smallest landing craft.
RWE,
The period “after Sept 1942″ is when the tide started to turn (the figures for 1943 I provided indicate that); that quote doesn’t apply to this discussion.
I have not read his book, but every other book/history of the conflict that I have read/seen, and my military history profs in college, all indicated that the Battle of the Atlantic was very close to a German victory. Sorry, but I’m going with them on this.
Nichevo,
There were maybe 12000 total Allied merchant ships, probably not that many, including those existing at the start of the war and those built during the war. (I have not been able to find figures on the British.)
In the midst of this wide ranging discussion, this 49er fan must correct ElMondoHummus (6:33 am comment). In 49er lore “The Catch” refers to Dwight Clark’s impossible leaping grab of Joe Montana’s pass in the waning moments of the NFC Championship Game against the Dallas Cowboys. San Francisico went on to collect the first of their SuperBowl victories under the late Bill Walsh. Perhaps not on the order with the Battle of the Atlantic or Hitler’s questionable strategy…
twgin,
Thanks for pointing that out – I didn’t read that comment initially or I would have been up in arms. That wasn’t even “The Catch II”!! One of those perfectly clear moments in my memory – I (San Francisco native, and thus victim of previous NFC championship losses to the Cowboys and Vikings) remember sitting in my apartment in Florida watching that game, and instantly calling my dad up when the game ended, celebrating with him over the phone.
Well, Exhelo, that brings us right back to Wretchard’s theme once again, doesn’t it?
Winston Churchill says that the only thing that ever really worried him was the U-Boats and legions of professional historians write it down as the Gospel that the Germans almost won. Then Clay Blair comes along and torpedoes the whole idea with 1800 plus pages of facts, figures, and analysis.
Gen. Adolf Galland writes that if not for Hitler trying to make the Me-262 into a bomber his fighter force could have won the air war. And the legions of Professionals dutifully put that down as absolute fact. Then Dr. Alfred Price comes along and points out that was all nonsense.
Anyway, thanks for the good discussion. If you want to see some other myths exploded go over to http://www.thespacereview.com and look up my articles on “Space Myths.”
Hitler may well have hoped that, by declaring war on the US, he might prompt the Japanese into attacking the USSR in Siberia, but if that was his intention he ignorantly miscalculated. The Japanese had already fought their war with the USSR and lost badly, something Hitler should have known, probably did know but disregarded.
The Japanese military in the 1930s was divided between those who believed Japan’s best strategy for material acquisition was to attack the sparsely populated Soviet far east–Siberia was a treasure trove of raw materials. The “Strike North” faction was made up primarily of Army officers. A large number of naval officers looked toward southeast Asia as Japan’s source of raw materials. But that part of the Pacific was guarded by the Americans, British and French, and the latter were regarded as strong world powers in the 1930s. The Russians were seen as weaker, so initially the “Strike North” faction prevailed. In 1938 and 1939 the Japanese fought increasingly large border battles with the Red Army, culminating in the August 1939 battle at Nomonhan/Khalkin Gol.
The Red Army inflicted a devastatingly bloody defeat on the Japanese, and the “Strike North” faction was fatally discredited. The Japanese subsequently signed a non-aggression pact with the USSR, which in turn allowed the Russians to sign a similar pact with the Germans.
Fast-forward to 1941. During Operation Barbarossa the Germans arrogantly dismissed the notion of Japanese assistance, thinking they could shatter the Red Army by themselves. By December 1941 it was plain that they couldn’t.
By that time the Japanese strategists of the “Strike South” faction had seen France defeated and Great Britain crippled. The remaining obstacle was the US. They committed themselves to a two-pronged strategy which involved knocking out the US Navy and grabbing as much southeast Asian real estate as possible, as quickly as possible. They failed to strike a mortal blow at the US Navy at Pearl Harbor and miscalculated the level of American outrage at that attack but simultaneously orchestrated a brilliant and rapid campaign of conquest in southeast Asia and the south Pacific. That effort pretty much tied their hands, and a second strike against the Russians was not considered a realistic option.
Richard Sorge reported the Japanese strategic decision to the Kremlin; freeing Stalin to pull troops from Siberia to counter-attack the Germans before Moscow. Hitler’s possible hopes to the contrary, by December 1941 a Japanese attack on Siberia was beyond rational consideration by Tokyo. But by that time Hitler himself was becoming increasingly irrational….
RWE,
Sometimes the conventional wisdom is valid.
twgin and exhelodrvr:
Tipping my hat to you as a fellow 49er fan. Probably to the general public Taylor’s catch looms larger now because it was in the Super Bowl, but anyone who rooted for the 49ers before Walsh/Montana/Lott/deBartolo knows that “the Catch” was the real defining moment.
For all those discussing the U-boat threat in the Battle of the Atlantic: This _is_ a perfect example of what I think Wretchard was talking about: to a great degree history is an illusion we carefully build for ourselves. There is only one valid source for history: the facts as recorded by the men and women who were there at the time. I never trust any hearsay source — and anyone who hasn’t read the primary sources him/herself is just repeating hearsay.
To that end, I’d like to point you to two sources which I do consider trustworthy. One is a now-rather-old book, probably hard to find, called VERY SPECIAL INTELLIGENCE by Patrick Beesly. Beesly is as primary a source as you can get: he worked in the British Admiralty’s U-boat Tracking Room during the war, and VERY SPECIAL INTELLIGENCE is basically his personal memoir of the Operational Intelligence Centre and its work. The second is BLACK MAY by Michael Gannon, a study of the critical months of the battle of the Atlantic, including but not limited to May 1943, when the Allied navies wiped out a third of the operational U-boat fleet in thirty days. Gannon went back to the primary sources for his research, including freshly-declassified material that earlier historians never had access to.
Both authors agree that the conventional picture of ravening U-boat hordes nearly cutting the North Atlantic convoy lanes is wrong. There was never any real chance of it happening. The peak of the U-boats’ success was March 1943; by that time, though , the trends being tracked in the Tracking Room showed clearly that the U-boats couldn’t win in the long term. Ships were being built faster than U-boats could sink them, escorts were gaining steadily in ASW expertise, and U-boats — and more importantly, experienced U-boat crews — were being lost faster than Doenitz could replace them. Black May was not a miracle; it was simply inevitable.
wolfwalker,
You’re confusing the peak of ships being sunk by U-boats with the peak of the relative success of the U-boats.
“by that time, though , the trends being tracked in the Tracking Room showed clearly that the U-boats couldn’t win in the long term.”
No one disputes that fact. By 1943 it was clear that the Allies were winning. What a difference a year makes.
exhelodrvr: An interesting statement — interesting because I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “relative success of the U-boats.” Ships sunk per U-boat war patrol? Ships sunk vs. U-boats sunk? Ships sunk vs. ships in commission? Or something else?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, mind you, I’m asking what you mean by that phrase. I can’t discuss an argument or point I don’t understand.
Seems to me that once America was in the war,
the only way to have stopped men and supplies from reaching England and the rest of the ETO
would have been to bomb the shipbuilding facilities.
Herr Schickelgruber needed aircraft carriers and extra long range heavy bombers. Lacking those, the increased tonnage of allied shipping sunk by U-boats was emotionally gratifying to Germans, disturbing to the Allies but largely irrelevant. More shiiping was being built unmolested and with that came counter-measures that soon made U-Boat duty much more hazardous than convoy duty.
Dave: I agree that German lost when the US came in. A purely European war might have ended with all sides exhausted. I doubt Germany could have brought Russia to military collapse. Or Russia could have finished Germany. At some point the Empire would have not sacrificed more to support the UK.
But at a less abstract level the U-boats could only hamper supplies. As someone said we supplied Russia mostly from Alaska. If the North Atlantic had been cut by U-boats and England had fallen we would have shifted South to stretch their logistics. The South Atlantic across to Africa would have been a larger theatre of war.
At some point German logistics were certain to fail. They had at best, what, four million soldiers? And occupying large territories ties down large garrisons.
I don’t think anyone mentioned how much air patrolling hurt the U-boats. At the beginning of the war there were few long range patrol planes. None had radar.
The deficiency received high priority. The B-24 was the ideal platform. It could fly low and slow for thousands of miles. Radar kept the U-boats from running on the surface at night to recharge batteries and move to new positions.
Advocates of heavy bombers resented, for a time, the priority given to patrol planes. Good judgment prevailed. The allies paid more attention to operations research than the Axis.
K:
Clay Blair points out something very interesting relative to air patrolling.
The US Navy was against it at first. Heavy bombers were the enemy to the Navy and a feared competitor in the 20’s and 30’s in terms of funding. This ultimately was a good thing, because it made the Navy develop better fighters in order to keep up with the AAF bombers. In the mid-30’s the Navy found itself in the embarrassing position of having fighters that were slower than the early B-17’s
The USAAF was for it, and had the first B-24’s equipped with air to surface radar. But they did not know how to do it, had not trained the crews in ASW, and never tried to master convoy escort techniques, where the aircraft hung around the convoys that were the targets. Aside from that, conventional bombs were all but useless against U-boats and the depth charges of that time could not be set to explode at a depth shallow enough to sink a surfaced U-boat.
The Battle of Midway changed the USN’s view on heavy bombers. The PBY’s they used for scouting spent much of their time running away from Japanese aircraft, ANY Japanese aircraft, not just Zeros but even bombers. The USAAF B-17’s not only located the Japanese fleet but overflew it with near impunity. Initially the USN even put Navy observers in USAAF bombers. Then the USN started acquiring B-24’s and eventually extensively modified it into the PB4Y-2 patrol aircraft.
RWE: Yes, there are countless facets to technostrategies in WW1/2. From August 1914 to August 1945, thirty one years of ‘if, if, if only, ‘. I regard those decades as one convulsion.
I believe it was in the UK where Bomber Command was not amused by shifting priority to submarine patrol. Bomber Harris was not a man easily amused anyway. He hardly had bombers to spare, wasn’t having much success in using them, and realized current bombers were not well suited to submarine patrol.
But imperfect patrol planes were better than none.
My usage may wrong. To me search and reconnaissance planes gather information but avoid engagement. A patrol planes task is to search and engage.
The great value of the radar patrol planes was not in directly guarding convoys but in hampering submarine movement anywhere, even far from convoys. Diesel/electric submarines were essentially static when submerged – slow and without range – and had little chance of acquiring a target.
In order to be effective far out into the Atlantic the submarines simply had to run on the surface for hours. Radar stopped them.
Churchill’s accounts contain a surprising amount of technostategic analysis about the late thirties and the earlier years of the war. Some readers know that. But others may harbor the vague idea that the old dinosaur just made inspiring speeches. Not so.
The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld
The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.
—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing