An Open Letter to Gunter Grass
Herr Günter Grass:
By now you must be tired of hearing how shameful it is for a former SS man to denounce Israel as a threat to world peace at a time when the government of Iran (among others) publicly threatens to annihilate the Jewish state. It is obscene to suggest, as you did in your diatribe “What Must Be Said,” that Israel might “annihilate the Iranian people.” Now that we have that out of the way, I would to set you straight about your own country’s tragedy. It’s all your fault. Well, perhaps not exactly your fault, but the fault of your way of thinking and of people who thought like you. I am not talking about your enthusiastic service to the Nazis. I am going to surprise you.
People tend to forget that you hate Germany and the Germans almost as much as you hate Israel and the Jews. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the disgusting German Democratic Republic collapsed, you will recall, you pleaded with your government to give this monster another lease on life — not to reunify Germany, but to keep the GDR intact. As I used to tell my German friends before Wiedervereinigung, if you Germans had been as smart as us Jews, you would have gotten your own national homeland right after the war, like we did. But you hate the Germans so much that you did not want them together in a single state. That doesn’t make us Jews feel any better, but your consistency is duly noted.
You did in fact offer an original solution to the postwar problem of being German in The Tin Drum, and that is never to grow past the age of three. Your protagonist Oskar Matzerath is a freak whose “mental development is complete at birth,” and who decides to remain two-and-a-half feet tall for the rest of his life. In this absurd condition, Oskar encounters the horrors of the Second World War like an undersized Simplicissimus, leaving death and madness around him. I never finished your book; I think I stopped after Oskar’s mother killed herself by eating the most disgusting fish in the world.
Refusing to grow up is one possible response to the horrors of Nazism for which you enthused as a teenager. I grant that this became a popular solution in the postwar Federal Republic of Germany, where morbid self-obsession replaced a tarnished patriotism, and hedonism replaced family responsibilities. Nonetheless there are many grown-up things about today’s Germany, including its skill at building silent and deadly electro-diesel submarines, of which Israel has three, with three more on order. They can be equipped with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. The German “complicity” of which you complained consists of providing Israel with a second strike capability. Chancellor Angela Merkel is one of the real grown-ups among world leaders, and her concern for Israel’s security is a matter of record.
“set your straight” s/b “set you straight”
In my eyes Waffen SS is in a differenet league than even SS and deserves a mention. Hope the missive will find its target, Herr Goldman.
Buddy you know crap about the SS. It was beyond redemption. The Totenkampf, death’s heads, were the concentration camp guards, there were divisions named after Hilter (Liebstadart Adolf hitler or living standard of Hitler, there were also Das Rheich, a special Islamic division raised by the mufti of Jerusalem). and then there were all the special war crimes they did: burn churches filled with congreganats and they finished off the Warsaw ghetto. As for their crimes in the eastern front during the war, it was little wonder the USSR had a policy of putting SS men right against the wall and shooting them. This was the only policy of Stalin’s that I 100 % support and regret Herr Grass was not given a proper send off. Grass lies about his war record, the tank gunner who never fired his cannon in anger. Right.
The SS were the elite of Hitler’s Germany but that was the problem, there were the secret police and Hitler’s most loyal fanatic troops rolled into one. They swore an oath to hitler. You need to read more about the nature of the SS as an instrument of war and terror in hitler’s Germany.
Spengler has a couple of typos in the opening paragraph but his article is spot on.
…and let’s not forget the Nord division of the Waffen SS, well stocked with willing Norwegians. BTW, not sure that GGrass, a busted hypocrite and fraud, is worthy of all this attention. If he died tomorrow, who would miss him?
You hit the nail on the head. Who would miss him – besides the leftist! GraSS is a very good example for the fact, that the Socialists of both color, red and brown (Hitler was a SOCIALIST, his party was the NSDAP = National Socialist Deutsche/German Arbeiter/worker Party) hate the Jews. There is not so a big difference between the red and the brown socialists and you can see, that in Germany, people very often change their party affiliation from “the Left” (that’s the party of the former East Germany, same idiots, other name – they renamed themselves from SED to PDS and then to “Die Linke/the left”) to the NPD (the Neo Nazis) or the other way around or even sometimes back and forth. Very often you see demonstrations of Palestinians in Germany, shouting “Jews in the gas” and the politicians of the left parties (SPD, Die Linke) as well as the Unions (also Leftists) arm in arm with the Palestinians. It’s not criticizing Israel, but Antisemitism of the “left Intelligenzia” labeled as “Israel critics”. The left isn’t better than the Nazis, I would say they are worse and more dangerous, because they “market” their Antisemitism better.
Some errors in your comment, Ghilmeini. your thrust is largely correct, the Waffen-SS was intermingled with the death camps and was involved in atrocities on both Eastern and Western fronts. SS Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler [LAH] means Adolf’s bodyguards; it was expanded from the personal troops guarding Hitler. SS Division Das Reich means the Reich, or the Realm. It was primarily an Ethnic German unit. the Muslim SS troops were raised by the Mufti of Jerusalem among Bosnian Muslims. from 1943 on, the Waffen-SS sought recruits from all the occupied countries, usually in small numbers.
That the Waffen SS was somehow separate to the rest of the SS is a fallacy. I would suggest you read the book SS- Alibi of a Nation by Gerald Reitlinger. The ‘Death’s Head’ (Totenkopf) Division grew out of the Concentration Camp Guards and its members regularly cycled the Concentration Camps on Light Duties. The SS were responsible POW massacres during the Fall of France during 1940 as well as the Malmedy massacre during the Battle of the Bulge. Another fallacy is to blame the SS for all that was wrong with Germany during World War 2. The SS was the Army of the Party and like all Armies (including the US Army) it was a microcosm of the society that it comes from. The SS, including the Waffen SS was corrupt, evil and rotten to the core, but then so was the rest of Nazi Germany. Herr Grass was an active participant in the misery
Feldmarchall von Manstein’s big complaint about the SS was when they were operating in his Army area and murdered prisoners, they didn’t share the loot.
The SS were indeed something special. The Wehrmacht was not much to write home about.
A man named Christian Naziere, a French Nazi sympathizer, wrote an interesting memoir called Ashes of Honor, in which he discussed his time in the Charlemagne division of the Waffen SS, deployed to the Eastern front as Germany’s position was collapsing. Obviously must be read with a skeptical eye–especially about possible omissions of all he said, thought, and did–but he gives some interesting detail about the training and combat experience of his unit.
LAH translates Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler as “bodyguard”, not life standard. The Totenkopf (not “Totenkampf”) division of the Waffen SS was different from the Totenkopfverbande brigades responsible for the camps. The Croatian (Muslim) SS division was Handschar.
You’re overemotional and poorly informed
He is correct…
It is you that is wrong.
The 3SS Division cadre came exclusively from the Death Kamp system.
They DID rotate to and fro Eastern Front to Death Kamps.
That linkage is peculiar to just the 3rd SS.
You are a little confused too Ghilmeini. Das Reich was not a Muslim Division and if you think that the Supreme left wing RACISTS Hitler and Himmler would allow Croatian Muslims to call their SS division Das Reich (The Empire) you are deluded. When criticising others do the smart thing and get your own facts straight.
The Muslim Units of the Waffen SS
The new division was assigned the number “13″, and originally named the “13 SS Frei.Gebirgs Division (kroatien). The full name “13 Waffen-Gebirgs-Division der SS ‘Handschar’ (kroatische Nr. 1)” was not given until May, 1944. A “Handschar” (or Handzar in Croatian) is curved Turkish sword – the Scimitar. This sword has historically been the symbol of Bosnia. The Division was to have 2 Infantry Regiments (Waffen-Gebirgs-Jager Regiments der SS 27 & 28 – kroatisches Nrs. 1 & 2), an Artillery Regiment (SS-Gebirgs-Artillerie Regiment 13), a Reconnaissance Company, a Panzerjager Company, a Flak Company, a Pioneer Battalion, and other support units; and was designated an SS “mountain” division. The first commander (from March 9, 1943 till August 1, 1943) was SS Standartenfuhrer Herbert von Obwurzer. Oberfuhrer (later Brigadefuhrer) Karl-Gustav Sauberzweig took over till June 1st 1944, when Desiderius Hampel (Oberfuhrer, later Brigadefuhrer) replaced him. Hampel commanded the remnants of the division until its surrender on May 8th 1945.
During the Second World War in Yugoslavia many Muslim clerics in Bosnia and Kosovo were willing accomplices in the genocide of the nations Serbian, Jewish and Roma population. From 1941 until 1945, the Nazi-installed regime of Ante Pavelic in Croatia carried out some of the most horrific crimes of the Holocaust (known as the Porajmos by the Roma), killing over 800,000 Yugoslav citizens – 750,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and 26,000 Roma. In these crimes, they were helped by Muslim fundamentalists in Bosnia and Kosovo who were openly supported by the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. A notorious anti-Semite, he openly encouraged Muslims to join Nazi units that would be later implicated in genocide and crimes against humanity – the infamous Hanjar (or Handschar) 13th Waffen SS division. One of these crimes was The Massacre at Koritska Jama Gorge, in Bosnia during 1941 .
Wow! Thank you David for taking things back not to 1933 but pre-1914 where the poisonous roots of the most noxious -isms of the 20th century started. In fact, Griff Nach Der Weltmacht (the Grasp for World Power) by Fritz Fischer is one of my favorite texts by a German historian, in that it shows common WWI war aims (at least by 1917) with Barbarossa i.e. domination of the Baltic states, the Ukrainian black earth bread basket, and even Baku oil oil fields. All that was missing was the racialist ideology that made it preferable for most Slavs to resist their conquerors and die on their knees rather than welcome the Germans, as some Ukrainians did in the summer of 41′. That continuity in terms of geopolitical goals and the same soup in which Albrecht Haushofer swam suggests that while the Nazis were an extreme aberration in German history, there was a technocratic elite (aka IG Farben, Krupp, Duesenberg, et al) who thought they were running the show quite well with the hostile takeover of Czechoslovakia before Hitler got too big for his britches.
Bringing it back to the present, it disturbs me is the extent to which we have constantly heard for years about how Russia is or planned to dominate the EU through a natural gas monopoly, as if such a thing were possible, while the pursuit of old aims by different means with Germany (or at least her banks) as the vehicle has gone unnoticed, unremarked. True some British euroskeptics did notice that in the Balkan wars of the 1990s Helmut Kohl backed Germany’s old allies the Croats against her old enemies the Serbs, but by and large until the most recent case of Greece being put on the euro rack to save Deutsche Bank/BNP Paribas the German question remained suppressed in the background. Only the hardcore Euroskeptic press in the UK dares quote old Brits grumbling about how derivatives have replaced panzer divisions as instruments for annhilating a country’s sovereignty and squeezing the resources out of it.
I do not of course expect Germany ever again to rise as a military threat. That’s not the point. Rather, if American power were to suddenly and precipitously decline, a prospect no one in D.C. takes seriously but which the Chinese (and dare I say, a handful of Israeli elites?) seem to expect over the next 15 years, we would very likely see a new Rapallo between Berlin and Moscow. How that would look in practice I do not know. Germany remains tied to the trans-Atlantic Anglo-American banking elite, regardless of the fact that it COULD have enough gold to create a Euromark/New Hansa (to use Joel Kotkin’s term) currency of Germany plus Scandinavia, Netherlands and the Baltics with $100 billion in bulleon leveraged out 30 or 40 to 1.
The long and short of what I’m trying to say is this: it’s perfectly acceptable in D.C. to complain about the German elites’ tortured views with respect to the state of Israel. It seems less popular or acceptable to discuss German dominance of the ECB and Franco-German banks putting Greece on the torture rack rather than let Athens simply default/devalue by going back to the drachma.
The German people if asked would probably vote 70% to have their Deutsche Mark back and simply let it go. But their banks/elites won’t let that happen, and thus we have the spectacle of suicides in front of the Greek parliament.
The EU and the Euro Zone are exactly the concept the NAZI’s had for a post war Europe. In joining with and enabling he Germans to expand the initial ‘Coal’ Treaty to this huge financial and Judicial monolith the FRENCH especially have displayed their ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ inferiority complex concerning Germany. The British were initially duped too but have since quite rightly refused to join the ‘Shengen Free Travel’ agreement and the soon to fail and inherently unworkable German Bank dominated EURO Zone.
A literature major in college, and already a fiction writer, I was assigned The Tin Drum for a course. And I actually read it, all of it, because it was assigned reading. Never did I suffer so much from the reading of a book. Abject and disgusting. Thank you David P. Goldman for describing Grass’s fiction accurately.
I saw the Tin Drum, or rather, just a few salacious bits, when I was a teenager.
Did not leave an impression.
Lots of self important hypocrytical old fools in the world today. Grass is the poster child.
He also seems to a be a textbook example of how Europe assuages its guilt about the open murder of millions upon millions of innocents by blaming the survivors of being just as evil as they were. Disgusting.
The sad part is how seriously he is taken.
The ‘more in sorrow than in anger’ camouflage of the ‘what must be said’ makes me want to smash his stupid, hateful old head against the pavement. Metaphorically, of course.
..but I digress
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I had a similar experience with Mr. Grass’ “literature”. I read “The Rat” because he was presented to me as an important writer. I found the book incredibly vile and degrading resolving never to read a word by him ever again. I never have.
Mr Goldman you give too much ” historical ” importance to a morally feckless simpleton named Grass.His only salient features are a ridiculous, clownesque utterance.He burps against Israel from his belly, like many others europeans so-called ” intellectuals ” ( Gianni Vattimo, Alain Badiou, Edgar Morin ).The Grass’s ilk desserves only despise.
I know. You’re right. It’s just that Grass is like the kid you just couldn’t stop yourself from tormenting in junior high school. It’s a little creepy to kick a moral cripple like Grass, but even serious columnists are entitled to a bit of fun now and again.
“It’s a little creepy to kick a moral cripple like Grass”
But if he’s widely respected then perhaps it is necessary–as a way to point out the moral degradation of certain cultural elites.
You’re right, too! Our moral standards should be higher than those of the cultural elites, but no-one will blame us if we push the occasional metaphorical wheelchair down the hill.
Some wheelchairs virtually cry out to be pushed down the hill:
We need accurate sources of information and yet cannot depend on these elites because they so often prove to be liars.
Mr. Goldman,
If you have not already sent your open letter to the Suddeutsche Zeitung, I urge you to do so.
As for me, in a perverse way, I would like to thank Herr Grass for reminding me that when my father and his siblings (the ones who survived the concentration camps fled Europe for America with little more than the shirts on their backs, they fled Europe for America with little more than the shirts on their backs, for a reason.
GraSS was a brown Socialist and then covered the brown with the red color of the red Socialists – but it was just a new paint for the old mind-set. Now, having got older, the red paint begins to peel off and the brown basic color shines through….
Israel announced he was banning him from the country. Good first move, but they should do more – like pull an Eichmann on him. Put him in the glass booth.
And Israel should reverse its death penalty ban before it does so.
And I can think of at least a hundred despicable other Jew-hating leftwing scum that Israel should ban from the country, including Desmond Tutu, Bill Moyers, Jeremiah Wright, and Emma Thomson. She could probably legitimately ban half of Europe.
Wow, kill Grass because he has offended Israel? And Bill Moyers? Interesting, if perverse, world you live in.
Brutus,
You’re either an illiterate idiot or an immoral leftist (redundant, I know) trying to distort what I said. Re-read the post. Honestly, this time, if you are capable of it.
Don’t be stupid Brutus. Clearly Israel should kidnap him, put him on trial, and then kill him for offending Israel. Eric was quite clear enough.
Why not? It works for Muslims, doesn’t it?
Grass was Waffen SS; that’s not just ‘offending’ Israel, that’s War Criminal territory! As for Moyers, et.al., he just said to ban them from entering the country.
Reading comprehension is a wonderful thing. Deliberate misreading is a tool of extremists.
I’m shocked. Gunter Grass is still alive?
Ich bin überrascht. Günter Grass ist noch am Leben?
Gunther vas a gut nazi. Ya. Gunther iz a gut kraut. Ya. Gunther is a senile, babbling azhole. Ya.
Correction, carla, it´s Oberalzheimerführer Gunther Grassholen.
In my eyes Grass is an old idle man, who was only liked by my german language female teacher colleagues some years ago, now they wait how is the final judgment about him; life is not easy: you always have to adjust,
the kaschubien born Grass only once again tries to be a very good german: develop and being part of a german main stream,
Grass will be dead not very long from now, his books booring for me, will be forgotten,
good luck for America and Israel
As the saying goes:
Once a Nazi…always a Nazi.
A Nobel Laureate Nazi !!! Ban The Norwegians !!!
this former brown Socialist covered the brown color with red and became a red Socialist, but with getting older the red color peeled off and the brown shines through again. There is not a big difference between the red and the brown Socialists – it’s just the color
David – I’m with Philippe here. You waste too much ‘ink’ on this know-nothing Nazi who is living proof of Jonah Goldberg’s hypothesis that Nazism is a form of Leftism.
BTW Chag Sameach and hope you had interesting Sedarim.
My compliments Mr. Goldman. This is the best writing to Herr GraSS I’ve read so far; and I don’t expect to read any better.
First of all, this is a humor column.
Second, Angela Merkel is an American ally and a friend of Israel, and overall a good chief executive. Grass’ diatribe was directed in large part against her. This isn’t about Germans vs. Jews; it’s also about Germans vs. Germans.
Third, Russian-backed Slavophile expansionism was the proximate cause of World War I. Germany’s war aims in the East were in part a response to Russian aggression. The stupid Kaiser wasted German resources on an expensive and ultimately useless shipbuilding program, when he should have spent the money to mechanize infantry.
See
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HE02Ak03.html
Glad it’s a humor column, because I don’t think letting the Germans win in the 1900s would have been much better than letting them win in the 1940s. The Dolchstoßlegende was going to impel them to do something horrible eventually. Pray that a cultural meme like that never takes hold in the US.
Remember that Jews had a prominent role in Wilhelmine Germany, despite Wilhelm II’s personal anti-Semitism (he liked Houston Stewart Chamberlain): Rathenau directed the war economy. Jews served in the German army and were decorated disproportionately. I simply do not believe that a dominant Germany in 1905 would have been anything like a dominant Germany in 1940 — obnoxious, without doubt (but compared to whom?), but murderous — why?
It seems to me that Germany’s fear/hate of France played a huge role in causing WWI. ie, Alsace and Lorraine?? Bismarck? Envy of Britain’s world straddling Empire?
Also, the whole of western Europe was raring to go to war: all those young men signed up for militias, and then the shiny new trains all ready to carry them – in bunches – to the battlefields. I think John Keegan has mentioned this.
I myself have avoided the whole WWI thing, it is so depressing, a very muddy prelude to the rest of the 20th century’s ’30 years’ war’.. Canada is celebrating the Battle of Vimy Ridge, a battle of which Canadians did extremely well. In Whitehorse, Yukon, we have a school named after one of our teachers, Jack Hulland. He joined up when he was 16 years old.
I have a copy of Huxley’s book on that really nasty fellow, Father Joseph, he of Europe’s first 30 years war. Haven’t started it yet. There is something so hopeful about the Plague years, in the 1340s and then in 1665: that despite terrible horrors, there were people who maintained civilization, ie, records, wills, burials, etc. Amazing and splendid. One can’t get carried away with misanthropy after all.
heathermc
Germany didn’t fear France, but was expecting for a opportunity to make war on France, that Austria brought her on a tray
Dave;
In some respects WWI was ActII of the Franco-Prussia War as well as a very nasty family spat betwixt the family members of the House of Hannover (the “real” name of the House of Windsor).
Subsequent to the Franco Prussian War the Prussians/Germans were convinced that France would seek revenge for their embarrasing defeat by launching a “pre-emptive” strike against Germany. The ruling Prussian Junker/military elites were also convinced that the only way to prevent this was for Germany to strike first, a view they held since about 1870.
The Germans thus were seeking a way, any way, to find an excuse to attack France BEFORE – in their view – France did the same. Germany’s entire foreign policy subsequent to 1870 was geared to this outcome.
Of course, Kaiser Whilhelm (Queen Victoria’s grandson)played into this strategy via his hubris (he viewed himself as a real macho Prussian military leader), his personal jealousy of Britain’s Navy and overseas possessions, and the repeated (or so he thought) personal affronts he received from his cousins in Buckingham Palace as well as from the UK Govt. In fact, the PERSONAL dislike the Kaiser had for his cousins was well known within the German (Prussian dominated) govt and they used this to excite his emotions to the point where he oft times stated that Germany should once and for all go to war with England and just “get it over with.”
Of course, all the other reasons you cite as the cause of WWI also are true, but Germany would have gone to war with France sooner or later; they, the Prussians “knew” it was inevitable..
The real lesson of “the war to end all wars” was the totally unpredictable nature of its outcome; the rise of Bolshevik Russia and it’s German equivalent, the National Socialist German Workers Party (NAZI); basically socialist first cousins. The mass terror and exterminations conducted by the Bolsheviks, their secret police (the Cheka) , and their Gulags were all admired and emulated by Hitler.
As for the establishment of the DDR (East Germany; the Deutsche Demokratische Republik),in 1945, well, it was simply an extension of Nazi Germany, but with a new name. They even re-established the Gestapo, but also with a new name, THE STASI.
The other tragedy here was the entry into the war of the USA; basically a conflict in which the USA had no business entering nor one in which Germany presented an existential threat to the USA. But, that is another topic for another day.
By the way, Germany and England were literally best pals for hundreds of years; after all King George I of England was from Hannover, Germany, and Queen Victoria was fluent in english and german; after all, growing up she spoke german at home. In fact, German soldiers were stationed in southern England up to about 1850 or so – at the request of the British Govt – in response to the Napoleonic Wars. If in 1850, or as late as 1880 or so, if anyone said that England and France would one day unite in war against Germany (Prussia) they would be considered crazy.
The British and Germans come from the same ethnic roots i.e. the Angles and the Saxons (Anglo Saxons) which is why they are very similar peoples. Unlike the untrustworthy backstabbing hated Gallic French who nobody likes, not even the French themselves, and without whom of course there would have been no USA.
Uh, no, the ‘real’ name of the House of Windsor is the House of Windsor. The last British sovereign of the House of Hanover (one ‘n’, not two) was Victoria. The British throne passed to the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (from the Ernestine branch of House Wettin) at Victoria’s death; the House name was changed to Windsor in 1917.
Also, ‘Germany’ is a 20th century political construct. Through most of history, the area we call ‘Germany’ was a congeries of different sovereignties, with differing goals and aims. Parts of ‘Germany’ (Hanover, for example) were friendly towards England, others were not.
JA
hmm franco prussian war was Germany’s need for french iron mines, as Germany had coal mines, and the new german Economy was based on steel
http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/saar.htm
You seem to forget that Napoleon III started the Franco-Prussian War.
the franco prussian war was ingeneered by Germany through a manipulated Ems Message, knowing that France would be irritated, like Germany and austria, replicated such tricks to go on war in 1914, Serbia ultimatum was not bearable, and the Zimmermann message to the US for provocating a war with Mexico?
If Napoleon III hadn’t decleared war, Germany would have found another motive to make war to France, as Germany’s goal was to annex alsace Loraine because of the iron mines that Germany needed badly for its new Industry
The notorious “Zimmermann telegram” offered German support to Mexico “to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona,” in an effort to tie up American forces on the U.S. southern border. However, British naval intelligence intercepted the telegram and turned it over to the U.S. embassy in London, and the text of the note was published by the American press on 1 March 1917. From the American perspective, Zimmermann’s proposal appeared to be a direct German threat to the United States.
http://cges.georgetown.edu/files/Working_Paper_Boghardt_6-04.pdf
What a BS*tter you are !
“Mechanize the infantry”? You are way off there. There was no way you could mechanize the infantry in 1914. It was difficult enough in 1940.
The Germans would have been much better off spending money on trucks and tanks than on battleships.
One good thing about World War 1 German warship building is they built on their experiences to evolve into the best provider of nuclear submarines for Israel !
Curiously the future Israeli navy got it’s key inception people from Mussolini regime training of 1920s Italian Jews done before Nazi inspired race bias was adopted by 1938 Fascist Italy. (“The Italians and the Holocaust” pg. 32; “Farewell Espana” pg. 239/240)
Slavophile expansionism? Bzzzzzt, wrooooong! The Russians were not empire-building, but merely lending well-deserved support to the Slavic peoples of the Balkans who quite justifiably wanted their independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and from the Ottoman Turks.
The only good thing about the Austro-Hungarian Empire is that it was not the Ottoman Empire. The only good thing about the Ottoman Empire is that it is gone. May it never return!
your analyse, but not shared by normal people
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/origins_01.shtml
Grass and other euros like him still see Jews as they did before the holocaust. Israel was never supposed to succeed. It was a death trap for a people who were supposed to finally end in the dustbin of history.
The Jews as Grass knows them cannot build roads and cities. They cannot learn to grow food in the desert, create a vibrant culture and economy, defend themselves against the odds, or in any way become independant. At best Israel was to have been a ghetto community under new overlords thus eliminating the “problem” for Europe.
It just galls these folks to see these uppity Jews not just surviving but triumphing over the obstacles in their way. People like Grass are pleased that Iran is finally making an effort to put the Jews in their place. I have spoken with Germans who feel this way.
“…in that it shows common WWI war aims (at least by 1917) with Barbarossa i.e. domination of the Baltic states…”
During negotiations with the Russians in 1917, Hindenburg was nodding off during the meeting, until he heard mention of the disposition of the Baltic States. He woke and changed the treaty stipulations, such that they were under German control.
“Why do you have such an interest in these three small nations,” he was asked by a suspicious Russian Diplomat.
“For the basing of my left wing during the *next* war,” Hindenburg replied.
Wonderfully, Mr Grass accuses Israel of hypocrisy. Leaving aside the issue of a left wing activist who concealed his own membership of the Waffen SS, it’s noteworthy that at the end of the Second World War, Grass fled his home city, Gdansk in soviet occupied Poland, for the much more comfortable life available to him in West Germany.
The hypocrisy shown here echoes that of other Eurolefties like Bertolt Brecht who when fleeing Nazi Germany in the thirties inexplicably chose to go to America rather than the USSR, and Jean Paul Sartre who loudly regretted that Paris was liberated by the Allies in 1944, and not by the Russians. Spookily, though I don’t think most of the French deserved that fate, with respect to Sartre himself, I sometimes find myself thinking exactly the same thing…
The difference between Brecht and Grass is that Brecht is truly funny (here he is singing Das Lied der Unzulaenglichkeit menschlichen Strebens):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSk3TG5czcg
Grass is merely disgusting. Brecht was a nasty piece of work, but a huge talent. Grass is just a nasty piece of work.
That’s true. I still remember what fun I had reading Brecht in German class in college. Guenther Grass, though, zzzzzzz.
Mr. Goldman, you stated “It’s a little creepy to kick a moral cripple like Grass, but even serious columnists are entitled to a bit of fun now and again.”
I might add that it was fun for us to read as well. Damn well said sir, damn well said!
“Moral cripple” would have been a fair description of 1920s-era Hitler. The world eventually learned the folly of not taking his rantings seriously.
People like Grass need to be responded to, not because he’s necessarily a material threat (I don’t think he is), but because of the potential threat of those who might listen.
The Germans do not have to rise up against the Jews these days. All the have to do is to sit idly by while Muslim thugs and killers in Europe do the dirty work for them, as they did in France a few weeks ago. But as the old saying goes, “Silence implies consent,” and from what I’m seeing these days in Europe, they don’t really seem to mind all of the new anti-semitism that’s taking over the continent. And when it comes to choosing between a violent minority like the Muslims and a passive minority like the Jews, the Europeans will always choose the Muslims to save their own skins. What they always forget, though, is that when you make a pact with the devil, you are eventually consumed by him as well. It’s starting to look like the 1930s again in Europe and nobody seems to care.
I would say that it’s not that no-one cares but rather too many are too afraid to show it. For many reasons, even.
Meant to read, “I would say that it’s not that no-one cares but rather too many are too afraid to show it. For many reasons, even.”
I’ve never seen “Inglorious Bastards”, but from everything I’ve read it’s an awful movie with an anti-Semitic and lefty sub-text.
As I understand it, one of the primary characters in the movie is an American Jewish solider played by Hollywood actor and director Eli Roth (he co-directed Bastards with Quentin Tarentino). Roth is somewhat famous as a director of the “Hostel” series of really horrible slasher movies and a spouter of typical “pansy left” Hollywood opinions: http://vocalminority.typepad.com/blog/2009/08/liberal-stupidass-comment-basterds-actor-eli-roth-equates-sarah-palin-to-hitler.html and “(w)ith Hostel, what’s happened now is, I’m getting sent research papers from all over the world. Professors are teaching it, and people are writing theses based on those films, talking about the Iraq War, and Americans going into foreign countries and taking over, and capitalism gone awry, and the worst parts of human nature coming out. All these different things that people read into the films that are all there, very strong anti-Bush sentiments that went into making those films. It’s great. I like it when people get it the second or third time, when someone else points it out to them. They don’t realize it’s been there all along (http://www.avclub.com/articles/eli-roth,31811/)”.
The interviews suggest that both Tarentino and Roth fit the description Spengler used for the Kaiser, “a bully and a braggart rather than a man of action”. The only difference is that Tarentino and Roth live it out on film and actually seem to think this picture is some sort of anti-fascist credential.
I hate to quote at length but I’m on the run. Here’s the German –Jewish analyst John Rosenthal on the film (http://pjmedia.com/blog/inglourious-basterds-a-german-fantasy-not-a-jewish-one/):
“ Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is, in short, a very German film. But, it will be asked, what could possibly be German about a film that has been described as a “Jewish revenge fantasy … (W)ho could possibly think such a thing? The answer is not hard to find. The “avenging Jew” is indeed a kind of stock character of the German political imagination. It has been at least ever since a certain Dr. Joseph Goebbels announced to the German public in 1944 that “the Jew Morgenthau” — otherwise known as the American Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau — was planning to turn Germany into “one big potato farm” in the event of an Allied victory over the German Reich. The allusion was to the so-called Morgenthau Plan for restricting German industry following occupation. The Völkischer Beobachter (September 26, 1944) had a different name for the plan: “The Jew’s Murder Plan” [Judas Mordplan]. According to the Nazi party paper, it would cost the lives of some 40 million Germans …
… Allusions to the “Old Testament” character of Israeli behavior and knowing citations of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” are likewise entirely commonplace. See, for instance, this article from the German weekly Der Spiegel, which is titled “Israel Declares War on Terror Groups” and which appears under the heading “Auge für Auge”: “An Eye for an Eye.” The same “lust for revenge” is, incidentally, commonly attributed by German media commentators and intellectuals to America and Americans: notably in connection with the American response to the 9/11 attacks. (For an example from only two days after the attacks, see here.) …
Moreover, the depiction of the German characters in the film does nothing to render such savagery any more understandable. On the contrary, far from being classical villains, most of the German characters are presented in a sympathetic light. The only unambiguous exceptions are Hitler and the ever smarmy Goebbels. By contrast to the caricatures of the Nazi leaders, the purely fictive German characters seem human and are as a rule even more-or-less likeable. They include not only the jovial enlisted men in the barroom scene, but also, for instance, a celebrated and lovelorn sharpshooter who openly regrets his military exploits…”.
Oh, it’s a dreadful film, all right. But it would give Herrn Grass a sour stomach.
“Inglorious Basterds” is indeed a shallow piece of junk, but worth watching for two reasons:
a. Seeing German soldiers being killed galore by Jews, even if in fiction. I am a son of holocaust survivors, and hence my attitude.
b. Enjoying the acting of Christoph Walz as SS colonel Hans Landa.
“but worth watching for two reasons: a. Seeing German soldiers being killed galore by Jews, even if in fiction. I am a son of holocaust survivors, and hence my attitude” – you may be the son of Holocaust survivors but I find your attitude appalling for at least two reasons:
1. As indicated above, the movie apparently depicts a moral equivalence between Americans and Jews on the one hand and Nazis and Al Qaeda types on the other. This is an insult to the many Americans and Jews who have and do serve in the IDF, US military, other Western militaries and fought/fight fascism in the real world rather than in trashy movies. You may wish to familiarize yourself with the IDF ethic of “Purity of Arms” (http://dover.idf.il/IDF/English/about/doctrine/ethics.htm).
2. The movie apparently gives the typical Taurintino/Roth/Pulp Fiction warped view of masculinity where brutality and vulgarity is for some reason to be admired and the mumbling of a Samuel L. Jackson or the smirking of a John Travolta is supposed to be a realistic view of a tough guy. One only has to compare the sets, Taurintino/Jackson/Travolta with John Ford/Jimmy Stewart/Clark Gable to see how far we’ve slipped.
“But it would give Herrn Grass a sour stomach”
If Rosenthal’s report is accurate then the movie depicts a moral equivalence between Jews/Americans and Nazi/Al Queda types as well as the torture of average Germans (not Nazis, not SS) who happened to be in the regular army. This sounds like a Gunther Grass wet dream.
Though I have not seen “Inglorious Bastards” either, I was told that the movie was extremely anti-German. Maybe a good argument for you to watch it. According to German sources, Germany paid approx. 8 Million Euros, because the movie was partly produced in Germany. I am not interested in war movies, I saw too many of them in England(English heroes and German idiots.) Those movies and the behaviour of the heroes helped me to gain a deep insight into the English soul. A very nasty experience. Though I have to admit that one of the happiest time of my life I spent in ugly Glasgow. However, Scots are different and cannot compared to the average English. Morgenthau was very evil or very good(again it depends on your point of view). A German source: Der Spiegel, December 1967:Diese Deutschen sind ja solche Teufel. Die Geschichte des Morgenthau Plans.
“Though I have not seen “Inglorious Bastards” either, I was told that the movie was extremely anti-German. Maybe a good argument for you to watch it”.
Why would that be a good argument? In any case, Grass is apparently extremely anti-German (but pro-lefty and covertly pro-Nazi) so perhaps I should just read him.
I have no intention of seeing the movie. I can’t stand stylized, intellectualized violence by amoral and decadent directors with no idea of the real world.
“Those movies and the behaviour of the heroes helped me to gain a deep insight into the English soul. A very nasty experience”.
Meh. Do you get all your insights into the soul from movies?
Or just the nasty English soul?
I seem to have used the wrong words. My focus was on the people watching the movie. That means, for me the reactions of the real people in the cinema have been far more interesting and disturbing than the actions of the actors in the movie. Forget Europe. It is an illusion. Oh yes, English people are a specific p
I wanted to write that attidude of English people are a specific problem for us Germans. Nobody seems to hate us more than they do.
why? Sorry, I did not press the button but my reply was submitted without my help. For the second time recently.
I seem to have used the wrong words. My focus was on the people watching the movie. That means, for me the reactions of the real people in the cinema have been far more interesting and disturbing than the actions of the actors in the movie. Forget Europe. It is an illusion. And we Germans reject a Europe we only have part as a paymaster. The world moved on. You have not noticed it.
Poor Kaiser Wilhelm! The wrong man at the wrong time, but one who also accomplished much good. Under his leadership Germany completed its evolution from an agrarian nation to a first-class industrial economy. Under Wilhelm, German Jews fared very well. The parvenu Nazis feared and despised the Hohenzollerns, who had a legitimacy and prestige conferred by hundreds of years of rule and service. Wilhelm is easy to mock now, but he was not much different from the other dynastic rulers of his era, and better than many.
WWI was a tragedy, the moment when Europe attempted collective suicide. Grass is a child of that time, as are we all.
Today, many of the descendants of the Kaiser and his courtiers are involved in charities that support understanding between Germans and Israelis.
The basis of all classic tragedy is the inadequate hero. Kaiser Wilhelm may have “accomplished much good”, but for the leader of a major nation it’s not enough to be good; he must be good enough.
The accomplishments you talk about were almost entirely engineered by Otto von Bismark during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm’s father and grandfather.
Kaiser Wilhelm II fired Bismark.
During an exhibition with the Buffalo Bil Wild West tour of Europe, Annie Oakley shot a cigarette out of young Wilhelm’s mouth. It is nice to speculate that if she had had a bad night, she might have sent her bullet a few inches to the right through three inches of solid bone and into the Kaiser’s walnus sized brain. On the other hand, considering how little use he made of that brain, it is not certain he would have missed it.
All together now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIYbdyZqTN4
Mr. Goldman,
Your line:
– “If only Benyamin Netanyahu had been Kaiser in 1905, none of these terrible things would have happened!”
is the most creative inductive leaps of counterfactual history I’ve ever read. Congratulations on that insightful, eye-opening truth and my thanks.
BTW, I understand that “Inglorious Bastards” was financed, in part, by an agency of the German government. Anyone have a confirming source?
It’s “Inglorious Basterds” with an ‘e’.
Anti-Zionism is the be-all and end-all of the left. What on earth would Herr Grass care about if not opposing Israel?
In the essay linked below, which was written in 2007 and is partly outdated, I mention the strange alliance between Chavez and Ahmadinejad. North Korea too is part of that alliance. After all, every day Israel crosses its borders with Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea and seizes more territory.
What’s that you say? Israel doesn’t share any borders with those countries? That may be true on earth, but not on the planet inhabited by Chavez, Ahmadinejad, the Kim Dynasty, or Guenther Grass.
http://www.jochnowitz.net/Essays/ChavezIran.html
Middle East zones would’ve been different if Germany had avoided World War 1.
Turks (1911) bought naval vessels for recommissioning, but Britain in 1914 requisitioned them as HMS Agrincourt & Erin for their war with Germany.
German Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon on the run with SMS Goeben & Breslau in 1914 got Turkish passage to Constantinople. At arrival the ships & their German crew were recommissioned as part of the Turkish navy.
Oct 29, 1914 “Commander” Souchon of the “Turkish” fleet (with the complicity of Turkish vessels) having moved on to Odessa sinks 14 ships, including a British vessel; 2 days later British navy ordered to war with Turkey.
Ottoman Empire gets carved up into stupid states like Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, etc. & Israel ends up being only one that works.
There’s vast ranges of historical what-ifs; if Bonaparte had not started believing his own PR there never would have been a German nation.
Bismarck had France absolutely prostrate in 1870, the resulting peace kept France irritated but only partially defanged.
The British were one competent major-general away from success at Gallipoli. If they’d had one, or the Turks hadn’t, the Ottoman Empire would have collapsed then and there.
And so on…
Arguably. But how many what-ifs are there that are guaranteed to make Guenter Grass miserable?
JEM
hmm, had not the coalised monarchies not wanted to invade France and restaured Monarchy, the Convention wouldn’t have raised a conscripted army where Banaparte could make his prowesses, ever heard of Valmy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Valmy
Gunther Grass artilleryman can look to his German “Freikorps” (free corps), the anti-Napoleon 1813-1814 volunteers.
When German troops came home in 1918 under terms of World War 1 armistice only the Freikorps were permitted arms.
Come 1919 there’s a revolution in Berlin with the Freikorps against the socialist Reds; likewise artillery used against the Munich Reds.
The Freikorps Ehrardt Brigade helmets then start to display the swastika. The Freikorpsmen writings about fighting the Reds were main indoctination for the future SS wanna-be. It is Ernst Junger’s 1920′s writing that postulates there is a “…New Man, the storm soldier …. a whole new race, smart, strong…with will….”
Brutal, artful. I doff my cap.
Simply marvelous. Could you call the Israeli ambassador and ask him to try calling off the posturing.
Well said. Mr. Goldman. Now, someone who knows German better than I ought to write a literary criticism of his poem.
His so-called poem is not worth being mentioned. Grass knows better. However, the way he conceptualized his work and his private and political experiences used to be very anti-German and merciless against dead German soldiers(Reagan and the Bitburg affair). I never liked Grass and now I have to defend him, yes I have. I simply do not tolerate hate.
Yes, you are missing something. It is called “irony.”
Meh, Russia backing their Slavic little brothers in Serbia seems small potatoes compared to the ambitions of the predecessors of IG Farben and the House of Krupp. But what do I know?
The poor Tsar. If he’d had better advisors he might’ve listened to them. Lots of white Russians even in California wonder what might have been had Stolypin not been assassinated.
Beautiful job, Spengler. I understand completely. You know he’ll never read it and is a foul creep, not worth the expenditure of your time and talent, but you just need to give vent to your contempt. Thanks for sharing.
May he stew for ten thousand years in the soup of Gehenna.
Thanks. I’ve got an even better curse. Yemach shmo.
David – Yemach shmo (v’zichro) doesn’t work too well – We keep saying that about Amalek and Haman, and we’re the only ones keeping their memories alive.
Dreadful fiction, indeed. I also couldn’t finish The Tin Drum.
WORLD WARS I-II CAUSED BY FAILURE OF VIENNA TREATY OF 1825-30
The 5 great powers declared the Low Countries neutral. The great invasion freeway was declared off limits. Fine. Adventurism was deterred by the defense budgets of the Low Countries. That is the failure. Low Countries should have had to pay 1/6 of their defense budgets, with the other 5/6 paid for by the Great Powers. After the US Civil War period, Belgium was pestered by one side or another about allowing free passage for one neighbor to attack another. The treaty was in failure mode then and it was only a matter of time.
Oh come on, a Treaty that led to a 100 years of peace between France, Germany and England was extremely successful! (Aside from a couple of local wars, of course, but then, who’s counting? And Bismarck. And etc.)
http://www.youtube.com/user/russiatoday?ob=4
Looks like RT has been reading Senor Equis’ warnings to Israel’s supporters regarding the Muslim Brotherhood taking over Syria and threatening the Golan Heights, which has been Israel’s quietest border for twenty years.
And a quote from the Russian Orthodox nationalist Stanislav Mishin:
tell your orthodox priests to pay taxes first
Thanks for saying “What needed to be said”!
Can u please cc Gideon Levy at Haaretz when u get a chance
Thanks for saying “What needs to be said”
Can u cc Gideon Levy at Haaretz as well?
Obama blames Israel. Grass blames Israel. I wonder if there is a link between the two or mere coincidence in the timing of these writings. Let’s all meet in Morocco at the end of May for the Women’s Conference and contemplate whom to blame. It is unlikely that much of anything will happen out of the sphere of influence of Morocco.
These hard core germans would still follow hitler if he was alive. They remind me of the taliban.
excuse me Art but Grass is a kind off egghead and his dangerousness is much overestimated as well as that of Germany,
i wonder how most of you can have such great respect for my old fahioned country
Well, another wooden duck is dead: for what good reason?
Actually Grass is using common left images to manipulate Israeli opinion, along existing Marxist lines.
The goal is to make an Israeli counterstrike impossible, because is there would be innocent suffering which could not be tolerated under the current Zeitgeist. The technique is to show Israel to Israeli minds as the aggressor when exercising necessary self-defense.
Exactly right.
Jewish and Israeli self defense is illegitimate, as innocents will be harmed.
Jews have no right to harm others, even is self defense.
They must wear conical hats and step off the pavement when a Christian or Muslim walk past.
“They swore an oath to hitler.”
I believe all the military swore an oath to Hitler.
Am I missing something here? David Goldman (a writer for whom I generally have plenty of time) thinks Germany should have started WWI nine years early? That is “Whinfrey’s Last Case” on steroids. David Goldman seems to think that naked German aggression would have been somehow acceptable in 1905. Sorry; I don’t get it. I do agree with Mr Goldman on one thing, though: Grass is an out and out t*sser.
Hmmph.
So much excuse-making — although, I’ll give it Herr Grass, it was eloquent. Still, it was making excuses.
There were, nor ever will be, any excuses for the clinical, methodical, wholesale murder of innocents. All the candy coating in the world — however eloquent — can make it so.
Frankly? I have made mistakes in my life, but NEVER on that scale. I’m glad I don’t have to live with what he must live with, till time ends.
Mr. Goldman, have you ever read Niall Ferguson’s book “The Pity of War”?
Don’t insult Mr. Goldman with Niall Ferguson’s smelly pipe dreams.
Ferguson said if Britain “gave” Belgium to Germany, the Russian Revolution never would have happened.
Um …
Also, it was BRITISH SOLDIERS and their BLOOD LUST that prolonged the combat. (!!)
and it wasn’t how HARD the terms of the Versailles Treaty were, but they weren’t HARD ENOUGH.
WTF?!?!?
You, and “Mr.” Ferguson, are epic FAIL.
Hey, cool the jets. I was just asking Mr. Goldman what his opinion was on the book. For all I know, he might even agree with you. I never said one way or another.
Old Nazis like Grass resent the fact that they did not succeed in wiping out the Jews.
His views are only important to the other leftwing and Nazi crackpots that have not yet died off.
He is totally irrelevant and should be treated as such.
Haven’t read Ferguson’s book.
Mr. Goldman, you must read “The Pity of War”, as recommended above. Ferguson is a bomb-thrower, but in contrast to many of that ilk, he has the skill and knowledge to make a plausible case. I am a J.D. with 15 years in the investment business, and I am currently finishing my Ph.D. in military history (on US Army doctrine prior to and during World War One). What makes Ferguson so good is that he understands financial markets, making him almost unique in his profession. That’s why you would particularly enjoy him. However, fanatical Anglophiles are often offended by Ferguson’s suggestion that England bears considerable blame for the war and its aftermath. Germany is a poor scapegoat for Europe’s sins (indeed, in reference to a topic discussed earlier in this thread, 60% of the Waffen-SS was recruited from non-Germans – ask any Dutchman where most of his uniformed countrymen died in World war Two!).
I’ve read a lot of Ferguson over the years and I like him, but I see the world differently. I read few historians — I prefer to work directly from documentary sources. In the case of WWI, virtually the whole diplomatic archives are available on online at Brigham Young University.
with regard to herr grass, while it’s nice to know that he is rotting from old age and will have dirt in his mouth soon enough, still he should be hanged by the neck until dead. he is a murderer, a criminal and a liar hiding his waffen ss background until he noticed as how it has become acceptable once again to be a filthy anti-semite.
there is no reason to allow this no-talent dirtbag with blood on his hands to live peacefully.
when sadam was hanged by his neck, his head seperated from the rest of his body. that is how i envision the end of herr gunter grass. with his head ripped off.
it’s amazing how far a picture of that goes to cure anti-semitism.
One has to wonder if a third Rome would hurt or help Israel.
There are serious errors in this piece, to do with that fanciful 1905 scenario:-
- The very fact that the naval arms race had barely started meant that the Royal Navy could easily have undertaken direct measures against Germany, such as bombarding Hamburg and the other German North Sea ports, and maybe even operating in the Baltic. (And don’t call Britain “England”, please! It’s not only disrespectful to the rest of us, but also much of the infrastructure was based in Scotland.) By 1914 it was in practice only able to apply indirect pressure through blockade, which took years to be effective.
- It wasn’t just a question of direct naval power. The Kiel Canal was inadequate for modern purposes until about 1914, so in 1905 Britain could have attacked German naval forces in detail, concentrating where they could not go to defend the coasts.
- In 1905 the German military-industrial complex could not have sustained a war, even against France alone, for more than a few months. It was still dependent on imports for crucial raw materials for explosives etc., and had only small stocks (by 1914 the situation had changed, with enough plant in place to make these using the Haber-Bosch process). So it would have needed a quick and certain victory of the order of the Franco-Prussian War – but the French could probably have stretched things out for too many months, since they had learned from that earlier war.
I’ve heard a number of objections to this scenario; another correspondent claims that the French 75′s gave France a decisive advantage in field artillery. But 1905 has been war-gamed extensively. The right question to ask is: what would German war aims have been, and what would the peace have looked like? The British in 1905 had no interest in going to war with Germany, certainly not on the German coast; Germany had a couple of dozen battleships by 1905, many of them quite new. And the Russians couldn’t. The French would have been on their own. If v. Schlieffen had the green light, a German army would have been at the Marne in weeks; whether the Germans actually could have taken Paris is not clear, but the peace negotiations would have begun with a great deal of northern France under German occupation. There would have been no BEF, no distractions on the Russian Front, just a concentration of the German army in northern France. The conflict probably would have been settled by a German withdrawal that left Germany in de facto control of the frontiers.
No, “what would German war aims have been, and what would the peace have looked like?” isn’t the right question. For one thing, it’s two questions, and for another the second question begs the question by supposing that a war in 1905 would have got that far.
The right question, from a German point of view as at 1905, is “what can go wrong?”, since “what are the prospective gains?” had been answered; there could well have been all sorts of things going wrong, and this question of yours merely changes the calculus for the questions other powers might ask.
As to those other powers’ questions – “The British in 1905 had no interest in going to war with Germany, certainly not on the German coast” is one of those things which is accurate as far as it goes but so incomplete as to be false. Britain also had no interest in any continental hegemony developing, i.e. an interest in one not developing, no matter whose; Britain had done its best to further a Grand Strategy maintaining a balance of power out of this very self interest – that was why it was already one of the guarantors of Belgian neutrality. Britain’s “no interest” meant that it didn’t want things to get to that point, not that it wouldn’t have acted. By way of comparison, recall how Britain under Disraeli sent a fleet to the Golden Horn to head off a Russo-Turkish War proceeding as far as the fall of Constantinople, and almost intervened in the Prusso-Danish War in 1864 because of the risk of a merely German hegemony (but Bismarck had prepared his diplomatic ground, and with Austria on side it looked as though it wasn’t a step to Prussian hegemony). People often forget that the song that gave rise to the term “Jingoism” begins “We don’t want to fight, but…”.
So I expect launching the Schlieffen Plan or a variant would have led to some combination of the following British responses:-
- Rush amphibious forces to Antwerp and secure the mouths of the Scheldt with Belgian co-operation, much like the 1940 Norwegian campaign only without air power; Zeebrugge writ large. (Recall that, in 1914, the Germans could only reduce Antwerp’s defences as fast as they did because by then they had prepared heavy siege artillery that was mobile on caterpillar tracks.)
- Move naval units to where they could bombard Hamburg, Emden, etc. if peace negotiations didn’t start before the German coup de main got through Belgium.
- Move much of the Home Fleet to the north of Denmark, from where it could reach the German Baltic coast and (in particular) seize islands if the war continued, much as it had done on the French coast in previous wars. This would have taken either Danish acquiescence (quite likely, after the events of 1864) or very little force, basically enough to secure strong points against German use. That would have opened a gateway to an ad hoc Russian alliance (motivated by balance of power reasons and promises about the Balkans) and a northern rather than eastern front, with Britain providing Russia with logistical support and (probably) Austria staying out while Russia pursued a scorched earth strategy in Poland (where the transport infrastructure had been deliberately neglected for just this reason).
Progressing through those would have led to a mediated effort for peace well before Germany could have changed any facts on the ground in France. Even if matters reached the point of “a German army would have been at the Marne in weeks; whether the Germans actually could have taken Paris is not clear, but the peace negotiations would have begun with a great deal of northern France under German occupation”, there would also have been a great deal of the North Sea and Baltic coast either occupied or threatened – and the western end of that would have threatened operations in France, if French or Russian troops reached there (granted, there weren’t yet enough British troops available in the short term). The strategic situation would have been much more like that between Egypt and Israel in 1973, when either side could still have inflicted much damage but neither could do much directly to stop the other side doing that – almost tailor made for a peace that went a long way back towards the facts on the ground before. So, no “Germany in de facto control of the frontiers”, minimal reparations, and probably enough of a Franco-Belgian alliance to have defences in depth sufficient to prevent a renewed Schlieffen Plan while respecting Belgian neutrality in the absence of trigger events. But I suspect that there would have been a mediated peace with a cessation of hostilities well before German forces even got through Belgium – if the outside diplomacy had failed to stop overt hostilities in the first place. The most likely outcome was what actually happened: don’t act until much more is in place. I have even heard it suggested that in 1914 Germany thought Irish issues might distract Britain from prompt action…
I think you vastly overestimate what either the British or Russians could, or would have done. The Russians couldn’t use scorched earth in Poland or any of their Western provinces, as these provided virtually all the tax revenue for the Russian Empire. Russia was a continuously-failing project of costly and unproductive expansion to the East, funded by subsidies from captive Western provinces. In 1905 the Russians had everything to lose from a conflict with Germany. They would have done nothing while they licked their wounds from the Japanese war. Britain was in no mood in 1905 to send an expeditionary force. Britain’s calculation in 1914 included the Russians, and it made sense to throw in with the French against an encircled Germany in a two-front war; without the Russians, Britain would have (quite rightly) rejected the odds. Britain almost certainly would have attempted to cut a deal with Germany which traded German land superiority on the Continent for a tacit agreement to let Britain continue as the dominant sea power.
Actually, the Russians could have used a scorched earth approach in Poland; they had planned for that. I was not suggesting that they would have destroyed their own resource base in anticipation of losing it, but rather that, as, when and if they found strategic withdrawals necessary, they would have destroyed it rather than let it fall into enemy hands. That would have cost them nothing they would not have lost anyway at the time, and as for the future they would have reckoned on reparations and a quick recovery. That is, they would only have been destroying that year’s crops, etc. And see below for why the issue would have been perceived as so important by Britain.
As for “In 1905 the Russians had everything to lose from a conflict with Germany. They would have done nothing while they licked their wounds from the Japanese war.” – it’s yes to the first and no to the second. But the first omits what they had to gain (a much freer hand to the south), and as for the second, for initial purposes what would have counted was the diplomatic pressure from the threat of their involvement rather than any actuality, and also those wounds were of a financial, naval and morale nature rather than military; and British support, if it got that far, would have largely offset those.
I did not suggest that Britain could or would have sent an expeditionary force in 1905, at any rate not one in the A.E.F. or B.E.F. sense. I suggested that naval operations were realistic, and also amphibious operations where the strategic factors were favourable (islands, local allies as in Belgium, etc.).
“… without the Russians, Britain would have (quite rightly) rejected the odds”; that is precisely why things would have moved through a series of steps of increasing diplomatic and military action, backed by sea power. Unless and until ad hoc alliances of that sort were put together, Britain would not have moved things past seizing coastal islands and bombardment.
“Britain almost certainly would have attempted to cut a deal with Germany which traded German land superiority on the Continent for a tacit agreement to let Britain continue as the dominant sea power”.
That was Hitler’s theory, too. Bluntly, no – because Britain knew, deep in its bones and from long experience, that anybody’s “land superiority on the Continent” was bound to erode the basis for maintaining Britain’s maritime position over time. In fact, that was the (strategic as opposed to purely financial) threat involved in Napoleon’s continental policy, or the much earlier Scythian campaign of the Persians: that cutting off resources would erode sea power. The very most Britain would have gone for was expansion in the east (yes, I know that that would have been inconsistent with an ad hoc Russian alliance; on the one hand, Russia might have been offered a southward quid pro quo, and on the other hand such an alliance would no longer have been so valuable – indeed, the possibility of such a settlement might have made Russia more pliable, if it remembered Macchiavelli’s advice never to remain neutral and the reasons he gave for that).
Read Dreadnought.
Britain and Germany/ Prussia had been tight allies for almost forever by 1900.
The flip from German ally to German opponent in 1914 was a virtually overnight flip.
Not a chance in the world that Britain in 1905 would’ve frustrated Germany.
It was FRANCE that Britain hated the most.
This reality has greatly fallen down the memory hole.
The 1877 Russo-Turk War & 1897 Turk-Greek War left Turkey with effectively no navy.
So by 1903 it was German military re-organizing Turkish military & at the same time the British tasked to modernize Turkish navy.
If Spengler’s “what if” occurred the Turks might not have had the opportunity for it’s 1+ million Armenian genocide; since with Germany fighting in Europe the czar’s Russia would’ve made a move on Turkish straits & Armenia. Then Hitler wouldn’t have had the inspiration for the Jewish genocide.
(incidently BEF = British Expeditionary Force)
I have always thought it strange that Thomas Fingar, one of the originators of the infamous NIE report that has given Iran so much breathing room, was himself a German translator for the US Army.
Mr. Goldman –
Thanks for the best thing I have read all this month (and likely will read all this month). That was absolutely superb!
There is a reason you’re on my must-read every day. You nailed Grass, he’s refused to be an adult. Much of Europe and its elites have the same problem.
I would however blame Bismarck ultimately for the wreck that was Germany. His Kulturkampf succeeded too well. Practicing “Revolutionary Conservatism” was self-defeating, all he did was lay waste to German society leaving nothing but the Kaiser and the Junkers. When both failed after WWI, there was literally nothing left. Yes the Church was reactionary, obnoxious, anti-Semitic, and its traditional Catholic society in Austria birthed Hitler, but it is notable that Hitler did not conquer Germany from Austria, rather the reverse. Franco may have been odious, but not even he wanted to sign up for Thousand Year Reich. Primo Levi’s mother and sisters rode out the war in the Roman Apartment.
A semi-healthy conservative society will crowd out the weeds of noxious utopian idealism which always ends in crematoria. That is all.
Once I observed that Niall basically gave a long winded answer once when asked about Griff Nach Der Weltmacht that amounted to explaining it away with lots of Oxbridge razzle dazzle. The real issue of whether a core of the German elites wanted to dominate and occupy Eastern Europe long before Hitler came along was conveniently sidestepped.
But then again, I was also there for Niall’s infamous defense of the resolution at AEI that ‘Resolved: That America Is, and Should Be, an Empire’. That was LESS THAN NINE YEARS ago people, now he’s writing about America’s precipitous collapse like other empires. Why, you’d almost think he’d read some Igor Panarin or something. Put that time frame in perspective. And people think I’ve gone off the Ron Paul deep end, yet smooth talking Niall can go from hard core Dubya’s gotta save the world man to Paul Kennedy in the twinkling of an eye?
“The real issue of whether a core of the German elites wanted to dominate and occupy Eastern Europe long before Hitler came along was conveniently sidestepped.” And the reason I harp on this so much is that unlike David, I’m not so sure the German elites don’t intend to dominate EUrope again, only with derivatives and debt/austerity rather than panzers as the chosen instruments. Even Robert Mundell who was the ‘father of the euro’ and oftentimes advisor to the Chinese government has admitted to Greg Palast that he knew the euro was doomed from the start and forcing austerity was always the real goal. Just Google Robert Mundell + Greg Palast and you’ll see what I mean. There are plans within plans, as Frank Herbert once wrote, and that does not make me a tin foil hat wearer for pointing out how history repeats.
What Grass wrote was not a poem, that must be said.
By the way the “British” troops fighting the treasonous American Colonists were mainly Hanoverian (German) mercenaries.
No:-
- Even at the struggle’s height, most British forces were in fact British (though many weren’t actually English).
- Those mercenaries that were involved weren’t Hanoverian, e.g. many were Brunswickers.
- Any Hanoverians would have qualified as being British forces, just as much as (say) the Irish; King George III ruled Hanover as a separate possession, just as he did Ireland in those days. (One slogan of the Seven Years’ War, in favour of British involvement in a continental conflict, was “Hanover is as English as Hampshire!”).
It is not often realised that the British only started using mercenaries when the Dutch welched on a deal to release the “Scots Hollanders”, their own mercenary force that they had been allowed to recruit in Scotland on condition that those troops be returned at need.
Oh No???????????????????????????? Well Mr Lawrence seems you were wrong and I was right. 33 – 37% of the British manpower in the US during the war was German I’d call 30,000 men a large part if not the majority wouldn’t you?
“The campaign of 1776, the year the Germans arrived, encapsulates the German experience: successful in battles around New York, but made infamous as failures for their loss at the Battle of Trenton, when Washington won a victory vital for rebel morale after the German commander had neglected to build defences. Indeed, the Germans fought in many places across the US during the war, although there was a tendency later on to sideline them as garrisons or just raiding troops. They are chiefly remembered, unfairly, for both Trenton and the assault on the fort at Redbank in 1777 which failed due to a mixture of ambition and faulty intelligence. Indeed, Atwood has identified Redwood as the point at which German enthusiasm for the war began to fade. Germans were present in the early campaigns at New York, and they were also present at the end in Yorktown.
Intriguingly, at one point Lord Barrington advised the British king to offer Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, the commander of the ANGLO-HANOVERIAN army of the Seven Years War, the post of commander in chief. This was tactfully rejected.”
http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/warsinnorthamerica/a/GermansandtheARW.htm
No, even your own figures indicate that the reverse is the case:-
- Less than 50% mercenary means that they weren’t mainly mercenary (your term, so you were wrong).
- Less than 50% mercenary means that they were mostly British (my term, so I was right).
And of course that many mercenaries was a large part; but you are switching your ground in making out that that was what I was attempting to rebut. I believe that is covered in “Straight and Crooked Thinking”, if you want to look that up.
And what is the point of emphasising “ANGLO-HANOVERIAN”? At most, all that shows is that a later writer did not share the views about self-identification that prevailed in Britain during the then recent Seven Years’ War. Even the fact that the Irish mostly did not self-identify that way doesn’t affect how Irish troops in the British service were categorised. The same point applies to Hanoverians: as King George III’s own forces, they would have been categorised with his British forces and not as mercenaries.
“the German elites [...] intend to dominate EUrope again, only with derivatives….” “Only the hardcore Euroskeptic press in the UK dares quote old Brits grumbling about how derivatives have replaced panzer divisions as instruments for annhilating a country’s sovereignty and squeezing the resources out of it.” Forget about Germans derivative skills. Try instead creeping undervaluation of their “currency” (I do not find an exact wording), in order to sustain a competitive edge. But I digress.
Regarding Grass, there is an interesting article in Die Zeit by J. Joffe (Der Antisemitismus will raus, a psycho analytic view of “what must be said”)
Colonial Rivalries
After 1870, the European nations began to acquire colonies in Asia, Africa and the Pacific. Their imperialistic activities accelerated from 1880 onwards. Between 1895 and 1905 imperialistic expansion reached its climax.
Colonial rivalry was a cause of the First World War.
First of all, colonial rivalry led to strained relations among the European powers. In Africa, all the European powers except Austria and Russia had colonies there. Thus there were many clashes among France, Britain, Germany and Italy. For example, France rivalled with Italy over Tunis and with Germany over Morocco.
Secondly, colonial rivalry led indirectly to the formation and strengthening of alliances and ententes. Italy turned to Germany and Austria when she lost Tunis to France in 1881. Russia and Britain could patch up their differences and form an entente in 1907 as a result of their mutual fear of Germany’s expansionist activities in the Balkans. Russia, Britain and France could become firm friends after 1907 partly because of aggressive attitude of Germany in both the first and the second Moroccan crises.
Thirdly, colonial rivalry led to an intensification of the arms race. As mentioned earlier, in 1896 Dr. Jameson made a raid into the Dutch Republic of Transvaal in South Africa. Germany found that, without a navy, she could not send much military help to the Dutch. Shortly after the event, Admiral von Tirpitz, the German Minister of Marine, proclaimed the need of a strong navy. From 1898 onwards, Germany built more battleships.
Fourthly, colonial rivalry led to much hostility among the powers. In the first and the second Moroccan crises, war nearly resulted. France and Britain nearly came to war over their rivalry in the Sudan in 1898.
A Minor Cause
But after 1905 colonial issues became less important as the powers turned back to Europe and Europe remained their centre of rivalry. As stated earlier, from 1904 to 1907, Britain, France and Russia were able to settle their colonial disputes by the Anglo-French Entente and the Anglo-Russian Entente. By 1914 colonial disputes had greatly diminished. Thus colonial rivalry had little to do with the outbreak of the First World War.
http://www.funfront.net/hist/wwi/colonial.htm
1. First Moroccan Crisis 1905-06
Franco-German rivalry
Morocco on the northern coast of Africa was rich in mineral and agricultural wealth. Both Germany and France coveted the place. By her entente with Britain in 1904, France was given a free hand in Morocco. Kaiser William II, angry at France’s influence and at Germany’s exclusion, decided to intervene. In March 1905, the Kaiser landed at Tangier where he made a speech greeting the Sultan of Morocco as an independent sovereign and promising him German protection if France attempted to colonize his state. The German government followed this up by demanding an international conference to clarify the status of Morocco.
Germany’s aim of calling a conference was to humiliate France and to split the Entente because from the point of view of international law, Morocco was an independent state and the French claim to Morocco was illegal. France was prepared to fight but at last she agreed to settle her conflict with Germany at a conference
The Algeciras Conference
At the conference at Algeciras in 1906, Germany was supported by Austria while France was supported by Britain, Russia and the United States. In name Morocco was preserved as an independent state whose trade was to be open to all nations; but in fact France was given two special privileges: (i) she, in conjunction with Spain, was given control over the Moroccan police and (ii) she was to control the customs and arms supply of Morocco. Thus the Entente powers scored a diplomatic victory over the Dual Alliance of Germany and Austria.
Consequence
The Algerciras Conference could only offer a temporary solution to the Franco-German conflict. Germany was dissatisfied with the resolutions of the Conference because they would benefit France more. France also bore ill feeling towards Germany. She remembered that Germany had tried to browbeat France to give up Morocco by a threat of war. To prepare for the eventuality of a Franco-German war, France began to hold secret military conversations with Britain, which finally led to the sending of British army to fight alongside the French army during the First World War
3. Second Moroccan Crisis 1911
Continued rivalry between France and Germany
The French were not satisfied with their partial control of Morocco since 1906. France wanted to have complete control of the country. After 1906 France steadily increased her influence in the country. In 1908, the French installed a pro-French Sultan on the throne. In May 1911, the French forces occupied Fez, the capital of Morocco, in order to suppress a rising against the pro-French Sultan.
The Germans responded by sending a gunboat Panther to Agadir, a strategic port on the Atlantic coast. The British feared that Germany would make Agadir as a German naval base on the British naval route (the Cape Route). So Britain protested against Germany and backed up France to fight against Germany. War seemed to be inevitable.
Because of British support of France, Germany gave in. In a negotiated settlement, France (together with Spain) gained most of Morocco, leaving a small portion opposite Gibraltar to Spain. Germany was compensated with a strip of the French Congo. (This was a consolation price to Germany.)
Consequence
The Agadir crisis also had harmful consequences for the peace of Europe.
On the one hand, as Germany had suffered a diplomatic defeat, she was unwilling to suffer another diplomatic defeat again.
On the other hand, the British, French and Russian governments were alarmed by the aggressive attitude of the Germans. They remembered that Germany had tried to dictate the world by force for three times since 1905, firstly in the first Moroccan crisis of 19056, secondly, in the Bosnian crisis of 1909 and finally in the second Moroccan Crisis of 1911. After the crisis, the Entente powers exchanged information about the conditions of their army and navy. In 1912, Britain and France made a naval agreement that in the event of a war, the British fleet should guard the North Sea and the English channel, while the French fleet was to be deployed in the Mediterranean.
-http://www.funfront.net/hist/wwi/crises.htm
“n March of that year, Germany demanded an open door for trade with the French colony of Morocco and called for Moroccan independence. Morocco was a pretext, of course; Britain and France had just signed the Entente Cordiale, and Germany wanted to force a crisis to preempt its eventual encirclement. Russia, you will recall, was in the midst of the 1905 Revolution following its humiliation by Japan, and Britain was in no position to defend France.
If Kaiser Wilhelm II had had the nerve to declare war on France during the 1905 Morocco Crisis, Count Alfred von Schlieffen’s invasion plan would have crushed the French within weeks.”
oh yes, there’s some people who believe that if Germany had made a war on France then, nothing like Holocaust could have happened, that’s mere BS, Germany anti-semitism didn’t originate from after WW1, but from early middle-ages, Pogroms were more of Germanic behaviour (and of Russian Behaviour) than of the French’s
“German communities that murdered Jews in the Middle Ages were more likely to support the Nazis 600 years later.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2011/05/the_persistence_of_hate.html
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom
But your hate for anything French is astonishing, I wonder what you would have written if Gunter Grass had been French !
Grass has no business talking about Jews. He was in the SS, which part doesn’t matter. And he lied about it. He has not dealt with his personal guilt and responsibility. He hasn’t learned a thing. He should be shamed into silence.
“The German “complicity” of which you complained consists of providing Israel with a second strike capability. Chancellor Angela Merkel is one of the real grown-ups among world leaders, and her concern for Israel’s security is a matter of record.”
that’s funny, Germany also sells arms to Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iran… Turkey, all good friends of Israel of course, sure Germany will not put boots on ground anywhere anymore, but german made arms are sold to who ever wants to buy them on this planet !
“War in 1905 would have left Wilhelmine Germany the sole hegemon in Europe, with no prospective challenger for some time to come. Germany’s indecision left the initiative in the hands of Russia, elements of whose secret service backed the Serbian terrorists who murdered the Austrian crown prince in 1914, forcing Germany into war under far less favorable circumstances. Hohenzollern Germany, to be sure, was in many ways a disgusting place, but hardly to be compared to the Third Reich.”
Had not austria annexed Bosnia, and Germany not wanted to take over Balkans richnesses, Russia would have stayed quiet !
http://www.funfront.net/hist/wwi/crises.htm#2
-http://www.funfront.net/hist/wwi/outbreak.htm
the funny thing is that Nazis nostalgics have the same analyse as you !
Remember that the accusation against Dreyfus was all the more credible because it was assumed that a Jew would naturally favor Germany. Under the Hohenzollerns the German Jews rose to great prominence in all parts of German life.
In fact, war-gaming 1905 was a favorite exercise of German officers during the 1980s when I lived in Germany. And I don’t hate everything French–just French literature and music.
“because it was assumed that a Jew would naturally favor Germany.”
BS
Dreyfus was the collateral victim of the french army that needed to find a escuse for having lost the 187O war, not because Jews would naturally favor Germany, but because they were Jews, ever heard of antisemitism in Europe then? Theodor Herzl wouldn’t have initiated sionnism so soon as in the 186O years, while in Austria, and this before the Dreyfus affair.
Also Dreyfus had half of france on his side, ansd was rehabilited a few years later
War gamings by german officers after 1945 are a mere joke, though still some Germans would believe that wars were never of their responsability, like today, some Germans never acknowledge doing wrong in the euro crisis
oh well you can hate french litterature and music as much you want, since litterature and music are inexisting in Germany anymore, hey, they slaughtered those that could make it, and sorry most of them were Jews
“Anti-semitism” terminology coined in print by Hamburg’s Wilhelm Marr in 1879.
Herzl covered the Dreyfus trial for the Austrian newspapers, and that convinced him that Europe was hopeless. I don’t mean to whitewash Germany, but the French never have taken responsibility for the nasty bits of their own history in the way that the Germans have. And I knew some very good German officers in the 1980s. Remember, the Germans killed 2 enemy soldiers for every soldier of their own that they lost in both World War I and World War II. They knew something about soldiering.
“but the French never have taken responsibility for the nasty bits of their own history in the way that the Germans have”
Because french weren’t responsible of genocidal wars, and since Napoleon, most of the french wars were defensive wars, bizarelly the offenders were mostly Germans then !
and you don’t know the young german generation, that even hasn’t heard of the concentration camps,
“Remember, the Germans killed 2 enemy soldiers for every soldier of their own that they lost in both World War I and World War II. They knew something about soldiering.”
BS, they rather took hostages that they shot
ever seen the collateral dammages in the german ranks? how comes that they were so numerous to die, and that at the end, only elders and teens were fighting ?
“Les Allemands ont eu par jour plus de 2000 soldats mis hors de combat, dont une moitié de tués. Nos pères et grands-pères se sont aussi bien battus que les Américains quatre ans plus tard à Omaha Beach.”
http://www.amazon.fr/100-000-morts-oubli%C3%A9s-bataille/dp/2749106443
“Because french weren’t responsible of genocidal wars…”
I imagine the large number of indigenous North Africans killed by the French Army in the 1950s were just accidental then.
Master of Disaster
what a disater !
hmm are you buying into FLN propaganda?
There were never such numerous North africans killed by the French, you can devide it by half, and the left half by another half, FLN was very occupied to slaughter its population too, thase that didn’t want to join the rebellion, and the Harkis after the independance
get a clue:
http://necrometrics.com/20c300k.htm#Algeria
sympathetic those that you’re supporting:
http://mauvaisegraine.rmc.fr/r5779/Terrorisme-FLN/2/
But I didn’t see that you did better in Irak, nor in Afghanistan !
Master of Disaster
what a disater !
hmm are you buying into FLN propaganda?
There were never such numerous North africans killed by the French, you can devide it by half, and the left half by another half, FLN was very occupied to slaughter its population too, thase that didn’t want to join the rebellion, and the Harkis after the independance
get a clue:
http://necrometrics.com/20c300k.htm#Algeria
sympathetic those that you’re supporting:
-http://mauvaisegraine.rmc.fr/r5779/Terrorisme-FLN/2/
But I didn’t see that you did better in Irak, nor in Afghanistan !
Messy world … Algerian Abd el Kader revolt 1830-1847 against French got the “scorched earth” treatment.
So many hamlets and agro-pastoral property was torched that Algerian refugees ended up in what is now Syria when Ottomans let A. Kader into Damascus.
Over in Syria A. Kader righteously worked to prevent Druse from killing Christians & got honored with the Iowa town of Elkader. Of course today in Syria no one in the west knows what those with Algerian roots are dealing with.
WW1 Arab irregulars were first into Damascus & then the current Syrian-Algerian Abd el Kader, his brother Mohammed Said & Shukri Pasha el Ayubi try to form government pledged to Hussein.
At that time it was estimated up to 15,000 Algerian descendants lived around Damascus. (Since at that same time period the population of Gaza was 20,000 the extrapolation for the current population of Syrian-Algerians is likely to be in the hundreds of thousands.)
1920 Feisel loses set engagement to French army, deported & gets to London. British placate family with seperate fiefdoms of Jordan & Iraq.
Churchill visits region & doffing his hat to clamour enroute to Trans-Jordan Petra asks “What are they saying?” is told “Death to the Jews.” So Gunther Grass is just another revisionist.
gringojay
what are you trying to say?
that we mistreated the poor Abd del Kader?
“His fervent faith in the doctrines of Islam was unquestioned, and his ultimate failure was due in considerable measure to the refusal of the Kabyles, Berber mountain tribes whose Mahommedanism is somewhat loosely held, to make common cause with the Arabs against the French. On the 21st of December 1847, the amir gave himself up to General Lamoricière at Sidi Brahim. On the 23rd, his submission was formally made to the duc d’Aumale, then governor of Algeria. In violation of the promise that he would be allowed to go to Alexandria or St Jean d’Acre, on the faith of which he surrendered, Abd-el-Kader and his family were detained in France, first at Toulon, then at Pau, being in November 1848 transferred to the château of Amboise. There Abd-el-Kader remained until October 1852, when he was released by Napoleon III. on taking an oath never again to disturb Algeria. The amir then took up his residence in Brusa, removing in 1855 to Damascus. In July 1860, when the Moslems of that city, taking advantage of disturbances among the Druses of Lebanon, attacked the Christian quarter and killed over 3000 persons, Abd-el-Kader helped to repress the outbreak and saved large numbers of Christians. For this action the French government, which granted the amir a pension of £4000, bestowed on him the grand cross of the Legion of Honour. In 1865, he visited Paris and London, and was again in Paris at the exposition of 1867. In 1871, when the Algerians again rose in revolt, Abd-el-Kader wrote to them counselling submission to France. After his surrender in 1847 he devoted himself anew to theology and philosophy, and composed a philosophical treatise, of which a French translation was published in 1858 under the title of Rappel à l’intelligent. Avis à l’indifférent. He also wrote a book on the Arab horse. He died at Damascus on the 26th of May 1883.”
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Abd-el-Kader
hmm tell me what the Brits and or the Germans did for gaining colonies too, The Boers war was mere genocidal, where first concentration camps appeared, and Namibians genocide by Von Trotta?
In Algeria, we left a country with modern infrastructures and administrations
Algerian el Kader surrenders for safe passage in 1847 & held in contradiction within France until 1852, but once in Damascus in 1860 saves Christians so all of a sudden Legion of Honour hero to the French seems to be imply how whacky that era played out. It intrigues me how the Algerian’s around Damascus were such a determining force at that specific time to dominate the local indigenous inhabitants & I wonder what role their descendants play in the current Syrian civil war.
The World War 1 fall of Damascus shows that the Algerian-Syrians still did not want to once more enjoy French rule since the Arabs had finally got rid of the detested Turks . Yet the intended to be secret 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement ensured reasserting French power in Lebanon/Syria (“La France du Moyen-Orient”) long after French Crusaders once partnered with Maronite christians. Looks like that was a hopeless mess made of the Mid-east.
Gringojay
interesting
I found a text about the emigration of the Algerians in Syria
In fact they emegrated because they were offered lands by the local emir, and or to escape from the conscription in Algeria.
Though not all managed to get a good life and integration there, they were dispised by the local Muslims who hadn’t the same dogma, Algerians were Malikites. Though in Damas they were offered the french nationality, and or the ottoman nationality, lot of them opted for the french nationality though. (that explains why a Libyan friend of mine told me that she had french ancestors from Syria)
After that they had saved the Christians they were seen as betrayors, but also their courage was admired among the muslim world, and finally were perdonned.
http://www.poexil.umontreal.ca/events/colloquetemp/actes/haddad.pdf
It doesn’t seem that that were the Algerians that opposed to the French during the french mendate in Syria, but local tribes.
Yes, it should be interesting to know if these Algerians are part of the actual Assad elite
You might know that France had the duty from Vatican since François 1st to protect the ME christians and the pilgrins that were going to Jerusalem, it’s why France had to untertain good relations with the Ottomans in Istanbul, and that France didn’t participate to the Vienna siege with the other european nations.
I’ll look further for more infos, if you have any links, they are welcome
Gringojay
Got something
Since Assad Father took the power in Syria, the algerian community isn’t so well tolerated, and Algeria and Syria don’t entertain good relations, like they were during the Algeria war, when Syrians supported FLN, today syria doesn’t algerian interferrence into its inner affairs.
http://elwatanlafabrique.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/enquete-algerie-syrie-les-vestiges-du-reve-arabe/
Effectively the algerians were those that activated rebelions agains the French occupation, and against the Sionnists, also a significant communauty settled in Palestine before the Sykes/Picot agreement
“Plus d’un cinquième des Algériens, notamment les plus jeunes, considèrent que le départ des pieds-noirs en 1962 fut plutôt une mauvaise chose. Et dix pour cent d’entre eux sont prêts à “pardonner” aux harkis. La moitié des personnes consultées s’affirme disposée à établir des relations apaisées avec la France. Une tendance très marquée chez les plus diplômés. C’est ce que révèle un sondage publié par le (très bon) quotidien francophone Al Watan. La proportion de ceux qui émettent des jugements iconoclastes peut sembler dérisoire. Elle ne l’est nullement, si l’on tient compte du matraquage infligé depuis 50 ans par les caciques du FLN. Ceux-ci ont écrit et instrumentalisé l’histoire au profit de leurs intérêts politiques et financiers”
http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/ou-va-le-monde-pierre-beylau/france-algerie-le-bidouillage-de-l-histoire-28-03-2012-1446094_231.php
“Plus d’un cinquième des Algériens, notamment les plus jeunes, considèrent que le départ des pieds-noirs en 1962 fut plutôt une mauvaise chose. Et dix pour cent d’entre eux sont prêts à “pardonner” aux harkis. La moitié des personnes consultées s’affirme disposée à établir des relations apaisées avec la France. Une tendance très marquée chez les plus diplômés. C’est ce que révèle un sondage publié par le (très bon) quotidien francophone Al Watan. La proportion de ceux qui émettent des jugements iconoclastes peut sembler dérisoire. Elle ne l’est nullement, si l’on tient compte du matraquage infligé depuis 50 ans par les caciques du FLN. Ceux-ci ont écrit et instrumentalisé l’histoire au profit de leurs intérêts politiques et financiers”
-http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/ou-va-le-monde-pierre-beylau/france-algerie-le-bidouillage-de-l-histoire-28-03-2012-1446094_231.php
Herzl was such an assimilated German that it was in a reverie of Wagner’s “Tannhauser” the idea of a Zionist homeland came to him (ref: “Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture”, pg. 163).
Günter Grass = Dr. Strangelove
faking, faking and now, finally, near the end, the hitler salutes begin.
All right, I give up – what is the most disgusting fish in the world? I can think of several promising candidates, but no clear winner.
“but the French never have taken responsibility for the nasty bits of their own history in the way that the Germans have”
“Because french weren’t responsible of genocidal wars, and since Napoleon, most of the french wars were defensive wars, bizarelly the offenders were mostly Germans then…!”
There was this democidal war called Vietnam that the French kinda sucked the U.S. into, though there were plenty of interests in the U.S. that wanted to get involved for their own reasons.
David’s point about the Germans being the best soldiers in Europe — at least after the French lost some of their best soldiers in the futile offensives of 1914 through Verdun is well taken. Very hard to argue with that though I recall the episode from a history of the Eastern Front titled Absolute War where a tough old Russian veteran of WWI berated Gen. Konstantin Rokosovskiy for being unable to hold the Teutonic tide back wheras his more poorly equipped Tsarist army did for three years. Marie Claude is right that the Wermacht took more prisoners than it killed in the opening stages of Barbarossa and nearly none of those Soviet POWs ever made it back to the USSR alive.
Nonetheless, the killing ratio for the Germans started to reverse with them losing as many if not more soldiers than the enemy after Kursk thanks to Lend Lease radios/trucks/locomotives making the Red Army highly mobile and with more firepower than the Wermacht. The ratio went something like 9:1 German deaths to Russian per-Stalingrad (and I mean Russian b/c from late 41′ to mid-43′ the Eastern Front was almost entirely on modern Russian soil) to 1:1 if not 2:1 in the Russians’ favor in most of the post-43′ Zhukov offensives. Basically combining American trucks and inguenity (the Memorial museum in Moscow has a whole large room on Lend-Lease) with Soviet bloodlust after seeing the atrocities the Germans committed was a fatal combination for the Wehrmacht.
Operation Bagration remains the single most crushing defeat any German army has ever suffered in a fortnight, and dwarfed the Falaise slaughter in Normandy despite the Western Allied air forces doing more killing than the Soviet Air Force. It’s not for nothing that Israeli leaders in recent years have been welcoming Russian leaders by saying that without the Soviet victories in WWII the modern state of Israel would’ve never happened.
Overall I do sympathize with Marie Claude as she’s still sticking up for French honor at Belmont Club while Senor Equis appears to have been exiled for being too Russophilic and Ron Paul friendly.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-15-12/how-and-why-germany-can-leave-euro-if-it-has
Also interesting piece here from Phoenix Capital about how the Germans could ditch the euro…after crucifying the Greeks to ‘save it’.
Happy Holy Thursday and a contemplative Good Friday to my Greek Orthodox brothers.
It seems that your Zerohedge is right
Germany Franfurt Börse is going to launch derivative products from the next 16 april, to play casino on the French debt… so it’s the beginning of the end !
http://www.boursorama.com/actualites/melenchon-denonce-un-nouvel-instrument-speculatif-contre-la-dette-f66180641db7970144bd7ec75e84a7b0#.T4ZNFeQ93cg.facebook
How did this ever get onto Greece and the Euro? BTW, the Greeks have crucified themselves with their profligate spending habits; the rest of us (including Germany) have no obligation to bail them out.
To Mr. Goldman, I say, “Right on, right on!!!” It’s about time we Jews stopped marching quietly to gas chambers and letting antiSemites torture us. I admire Israel for fighting back. Let us not leave out the US and Great Britain; both countries refused to take Jewish refugees before, during and after WWII, except for GB, which took some children. However, they blockaded the nascent Israel, refusing to let European Jewish refugees emigrate there. The British were afraid of offending the Muslims.
Monsieur Goldman is correct about at least one thing in this enjoyable but otherwise bizarre set of reflections about la grande guerre and the precursor. Had the Germans focused on ‘traditional Prussian goals’ in the years 1890-1910 (i.e. resigned to being a land power, perhaps the strongest land power, but not daring question British supremacy on the seas), then things may very have been different. Unfortunately prudent Germanic statesmanship (which was, after all, more often to be found amongst the Austrians than the Prussians) gave way to the modern impulse of lashing out in all directions when you feel threatened, first in fanatical nationalism, then in the fanatical nihilistic race war. It is fair to say that Germans had ‘good reason’ to feel threatened. But a responsible Germany would have dealt with Russia (which is what monsieur l’écrivain Goldman means when he says they needed more tanks), while perhaps even building a coalition for it. Even for France a very strong Germany army without an attempt to dominate the seas would have been acceptable.
On the whole, though, it’s hard to imagine how ‘German modernity’ (and indeed all modernity, but especially German modernity) would not have found some way to light the flames which our poilus had to put out (along with much help, some of us still recognize that!)
PS – Marie Claude. Let’s lower our Gaullic colère about Iraq and Afghanistan. Monsieur Churchill said that America always did the right thing after all other options were exhausted. One hopes (and sees the possibility) that this is still true.
There was a shipful of Jews looking for a port to enter seeking freedom and escaping Nazi Germany. Permission to do so was discussed in teh Caanadian Parliament. The final word: “NO!” None is too many, meaning Jews.
None of past history justifies what Israeli Jews are now doing to the Palestinians of whom German Jews state “The victims have long since become the perpetrators” and since I have witnessed this in person in Israel I believe it.
I gathered here a number of visual materials (infographics and video animation) of Iranian nuclear weapon preparations that might interest you. I would like to know your opinion on the issue. When you use it for publication, just let me know.
http://bit.ly/Jyx5h9