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Hysterical Fantasy

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Of the capitals that Mr. Buchanan has named, all of them were a part of Germany or its allies except for Prague, which was part of a "Reich Protectorate."

The use of the phrase "hundred million Christians" is questionable, especially when you consider the Muslim populations in what was then Yugoslavia and Albania. The total population of the newly conquered Soviet territories probably barely equaled that number (around 112 million if I've done the math correctly, using the Wikipedia article on war casualties), and that is including all of the nearly seven million people in Austria, which was split up into zones of control by the Allies, and using an estimate of ten million people for Soviet occupied Germany.

In rhetoric this constitutes an "argumentum ad populum," or playing to the audience, as does his use of Joseph Stalin as a bête noire. Mao Zedong was every bit as bad, if not worse than Stalin (37 million in Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward, Wikipedia, "History of the People's Republic of China;" versus 20 million, Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment). Hitler had only twelve years to indulge his madness, not the nearly thirty Stalin had. Do not get me wrong: Stalin was a monster. This is Buchanan's anti-Bolshevik bias showing: if it's Bolshevik, it's got to be the worst. Stalin being the "greatest terrorist of all" is highly debatable.

"Was Danzig worth a war?"

When it was Poland's primary deep water port, and--the Polish government believed--this was an obvious first step to make Poland a satellite of Germany in the same way it had Slovakia--as the Polish Foreign Minister pointed out in the Ministry's White Book (its day to day diary of diplomatic initiatives and maneuvers)--you bet. (See Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny; p.p. 493-4)

"But if Hitler was out to conquer the world" why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can't get out of the Baltic Sea?"

Why build the Siegfried Line? How about to help defend his strategic rear in case of a war with Poland, the Soviet Union, or both. This is basic military planning 101. (Shirer, op cit.)

Why did Hitler start a war with almost no surface fleet or other naval assets? First of all, building up a fleet in peacetime has a huge lead time: 5-6 years for aircraft carriers and battleships, e.g., the Bismarck was started in 1935 and was not ready for combat until 1941; 3-4 years for cruisers; 2 years for destroyers and auxiliaries; including the training of crews. Submarines, or U-boats (my turn to use the "argumentum ad populum," by using the traditional term for German submarines) requires a year or less in the era before nuclear propulsion. Within a year of the war's start, U-boats had Britain reeling, averaging over 300,000 tons sunk every month (Samuel Eliot Morrison, Two Ocean War; Messenger, op. cit.).

Secondly, Hitler never understood naval warfare, as exhibited by his failure to have a plan ready for invading England, or his failure to take Malta and secure Rommel's supply line. As such he--in my opinion--preferred the bully's and coward's methods of attacking the weak (using raiders) or from ambush (using U-boats); tactics which (as a bully and coward) he could understand.

Finally, Hitler was impatient. He had promised Grössadmiral Raeder, commander of the German Navy, that Raeder would have until 1944 to build up the navy so that it could challenge Britain's Royal Navy for supremacy in the Eastern Atlantic. The Plan Z naval buildup to four aircraft carriers, thirteen battleships and battle cruisers, and thirty-three heavy and light cruisers: all of them less than fifteen years old, against an aging Royal Navy, might well have accomplished that mission (Christopher Chant, Warfare and the Third Reich, p. 73). Not understanding naval warfare, or its essential place in a nation's modern war plans, cost Hitler more than we will ever know. (Shirer, op cit.)

"If Hitler wanted the world, why did he not build strategic bombers, instead of two-engine Dorniers and Heinkels that could not even reach Britain from Germany?"

"Why did he let the British army go at Dunkirk?"

In both cases the answer is the same: Hermann Goering.

In 1939 only two nations had operational four-engine bombers: the Soviet Union and the United States. Great Britain was still more than a year away from deploying the Halifax and Stirling four engine bombers, and two years from its Lancaster bomber. General Wener had been the primary voice for the four-engine strategic or "Ural" bomber in a Luftwaffe dominated by fighter aces Goering and Ernst Udet. When General Wener died in an airplane accident in 1936, the ideas for the development of the strategic bomber were placed on a back burner, and the emphasis was concentrated on the Luftwaffe's tactical support role by Luftwaffe chief of development Udet, with Goering's blessing (Chant, op. cit., p.317).

Hitler did not feel he had to put the emphasis on strategic bombing to attack Great Britain's war making potential, especially with what he expected would be a short war (Chant, ibid,). The Germans knew that as an island nation--with limited natural resources--a blockade using their U-boats, would stop the British from acquiring the materiel needed to continue a war (as it almost had in World War I), better than the uncertain theoretical effect of bombing Great Britain's industrial capacity.

Against Germany--since it was a continental power--Great Britain had only one sure way to successfully inhibit Germany's war making potential: by air attack against its production and transportation facilities. So Great Britain put its emphasis into the as yet unproven idea of strategic bombing.

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Richard Girard is an increasingly radical representative of the disabled and disenfranchised members of America's downtrodden, who suffers from bipolar disorder (type II or type III, the professionals do not agree). He has put together a team to (more...)
 

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