A 20th
CENTURY REDUX
SY
SCHECHTMAN
We
are now one decade into the next century and so
we can look back at that last calendar hundred year segment with some
dispassionate judgement. While a general
pattern of growth seemed in place, as
indicated by the general population increase,
it is also lamentably true that that humans were not necessarily “their
brothers’ keeper”. In World War II over 60 million people were killed
and in the last century over 160 million died in military combat. Indeed, in the period between September l939 and August l945 (World War II)
the most consequential act in human history was committed. This was the declaration of war by Nazi Germany against
the United States. The greatest military miscalculation in human history. The most classic awakening of a the most sleeping,
reluctant giant ever—the United
States.
This
historic act occurred just two days after the devastating Japanese
surprise attack in the Pacific Ocean
American bastion of Pearl Harbor,
where many of our prime battle ships, on this peaceful Sunday
morning on December 7th l941 were most inadequately anchored or
protected. By the end of that
horrendously eventful day eight American
warships lay on the floor of the ocean at Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii; 2400 were
killed and 188 airplanes destroyed.
Most probably Hitler, whose war
plans had been fiendishly successful up till then, assumed that decadent
capitalist America would now
cease and desist and remain meekly quiescent. The Germans by then had conquered all of Europe and only England, across the English channel, was left to endure nightly Nazi rocket
attacks—“buzz bombs”. And Hitler turned his attention eastward toward his erstwhile but temporary treaty partner Soviet Russia. They
were in a relatively new alliance, dividing up hapless in between Poland, and on June 22, l941 on some specious pretext the German army attacked, thus renewing the Drang nach Osten,
a mythic German obsession of eastward expansion
for more lebensraum-- living space.
Which Hitler studiously conflated now against his brand new enemy, Bolshevic Red Russia. It was no problem now for Hitler to combine
in his spellbinding lengthy harangues
against the twin enemies of his Thousand Year Reich, the swine of the filthy rich capitalist money
bags Jew and the scheming world wide communist
dictatorship of the proletariat,
of which at that time Leon Trotzky,-a notable Jew, was a prominent very liberal leader. Two evil contra devils incarnate, a most
delightful irrational contretemps to foster and fester in the willing soil of
the thirsting anti-semite!
Meanwhile, thanks to that devious American
president, known affectionately as
FDR, we gradually overcame Hitler’s little dance of triumph at the Arc de Triumph as Nazi troops
marched through Paris, and
the dismal spectacle of the British evacuation of Europe at Dunkirk.
This was one battle the Allied troops did not lose. With the great airplane cover of the British Air Force (RAF) and literally an armada of small craft, both
military and civilian, the great bulk of the troops managed an
escape almost intact across the English channel. And as Churchill succinctly and eloquently
put it, referring to the RAF, “ …never have so few done so much for so
many.”
And Winston Churchill, beleaguered
but still valiant British Prime minister is said to have done his own little
dance, or prayerful thanks to God, for Hitler’s declaration of war against the
United States about a year later. The U.S. entry was the Allies last best hope, as Churchill
well knew. And almost from at
best a somewhat dubious standing start Roosevelt
skillfully managed the greatest
mobilization in history of all the resources
of a peacetime economy to lead a total world wide war---World War II.
Just thirty years after the first World War, which was won but had a somewhat
less than the idealistic peace
treaty that the Americans had hoped for. Woodrow Wilson, our president had then averred
that our goal was “to make the world safe for democracy”. Indeed,
somewhat disenchanted with the results, which seemed more like old fashioned imperialism than liberating
democratic vigor, most people in this country
became isolationist, or “America
first”. In
the decade of the thirties, while a general indifference to foreign affairs was
common the number of neo Nazis in this
country was relatively large. It is
estimated that the largest pro Nazi gathering outside of Germany was held outside of Madison Square
Garden, where over 20,000 people gathered to support Hitler Germany and it’s aims.
Against this largely neutral or
indifferent mass of American citizens Roosevelt labored carefully as the Nazi fascist tide gradually
infested Europe. His weekly Fireside Chats on radio at times
highlighted his concern for our long term allies, France and Britain, and
finally in l940 congress passed the first peace time conscription (draft) law. But,
be it noted, by only a few slim
votes, and for awhile some of the newly recruited soldiers
trained with broomsticks while waiting
for still scarce rifles to arrive Our family bemoaned the fact, too, that my older
brother Dave, was one of the first to
go, but this really was a blessing in disguise for the first to
arrive on the scene became “permanent
party” at these suddenly enlarging military bases, and the first to arrive---as my brother---soon became
necessary “veterans” in the face
of the raw novice civilian that started to be drafted as the country became more directly involved. An instance of “the first shall be last”, not
necessarily fervent patriotism but fortuitous luck as the country started down
the soon tumultuous path of World War II mobilization. My brother stayed back in the states as
“permanent party” for over three years
before being shipped to the Pacific war zone not long before the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic
bombs forced the Japanese surrender.
In
the Atlantic war zone, early in the war,
just before the “fortuitous” Hitler declaration of war on the United States President Roosevelt authorized the
secret use of United States submarine convoys to protect the merchant
marine ships sending supplies and
war material across the Atlantic to the British.
The submarine escort was not legal at the beginning because we were
still definitely a neutral power but the merchant marine
ships and supplies were authorized by the “lend lease” act passed by Congress. This
act allowed American use of British bases along the Atlantic Ocean in return for much needed weaponry
and sup- plies for the Bititish.
However,
the military mobilization from an almost indolent peacetime pace in l940 has never been match-ed. It is FDR’s most signal achievement, not his much debated stop gap make work programs
which proliferated in the l930’s. Unemployment did decline but was still over
10% by our entry into the world combat; but the country was vastly energized
and almost enthusiastically cooperative under Roosevelt’s
steadfast leadership. And a well coordinated industrial miracle began to
emerge. In l939 we had
200,000 in the army, 125,000 in the Navy, and 20,000 marines. In l945, at war’s end, we had 6,000,000 in the
army, 3,4000,000 in the navy, and
2,4000,000 in the air force. In total over 11 million men and women under
military rule. We had 2,500 air planes in l939; in l945 we
had 80,000! In l939 we had 760 warships
and in l945 we had 2500 armed vessels.
Also
our industrial mobilization included quite a large number of women
workers. About 2 million strong. Remember the somewhat evocative song “Rosie
the Riveter”?
So
without question very great kudos to Roosevelt
for his sterling and steadfast leadership in the fight against the triple
fascist threat of Nazi Germany and
fascist Italy and imperial Japan. Also for that almost
two term faithful follow up Harry
Truman, who implemented many of Roosevelt’s unfinished deeds following his much lamented
sudden death at the start of his unprecedented fourth term. Also very high grade Honorable Mention for British Prime Minister Winston
Chuchill and some small bravuras for
Degaulle, for his efforts to hold up the
somewhat ludicrous sagging French effort in Hitler controlled southern France under Marshall Petain.
But
why did Hitler declare war on America?
Our country posed no legitimate
threat, far away across the wide Atlantic
Ocean. Probably over riding
overconfidence. In just a few
years all of continental Europe was under Nazi German dominance, and the
American military power seemed of
indifferent strength at most. And that
German U Boats (submarines) would
pin down the large American naval presence in the open Atlantic
ocean. And history reveals Hitler’s impatience with this little historical footnote. As detailed above, Hitler had great plans in the east----Operation Barbarosa----the attack on Soviet Russia, which happened in June 1942. Napoleon, 130 years before, in 1812, tried a similar, ill fated invasion. Surely
it was not some obsessive preoccupation with making the world judenrein.
(free of Jews!) That horrible Final
Solution would begin at Aushwitz and allied crematoriums were planned to begin under the cover of the
Russian invasion in the coming
spring. And when launched in the June of
1942 it was an incredible model of thorough sadistic perfection,
with mainly hapless Jews, but also stray Gypsies and other
“misfits”. Besides Auschwitz,
scattered through conquered Poland
and other eastern European sites in the
next few years about four million were
exterminated. In addition about two
million were killed on site, as the
Germans advanced over Polish and western Russian territory; simply rounding up masses of newly captured Jews on site,
marching them out into nearby fields,
having them build their own mass
graves, and killing them. No elaborate suffocating gas “showers” as at Auschwitz
type crematoriuims.
In
the last few months of the war, when the once mighty German army (Wehrmacht) was in overt
retreat
an almost “intramural” contest broke out with the Wehrmacht
in open competition with the Shutzstaffel, the Nazi
secret service in charge of the killing of the Jews, for the premium freight train space
of retreating back to Aushwitz Jew killing, or German troop surrender. Toward
the very end, most unfortunately, it
seemed that the pace of Jew killing
increased. Despite intense civilian
pressure for the Allied High Command to intensify
bombing the railroad tracks
around Auschwitz and other death camps
went unheeded; the highest priority
of utter, total German defeat
precluded other goals of lesser
import. And, to this day, many older Jews, who had
family in the crematoriums,
begrudge FDR his rightful due for his necessary redirection of some additional bombing to
other targets of a higher priority elsewhere.
It
is never too late, or too early to speculate, and ponder the mysterium trememdum of Adolf Hitler, his manifestation of absolute evil and the
sway he had over other people. His
actions and control of the fate of so many millions of people and their
untimely deaths seem to demand
explanation in some rational form. Or
in the failure of God. Rationally we
know that throughout history persecution
of the Jews has been quite common. In
some deliberate sense Jews set them selves apart with their exclusive eating customs—kashruth- and the credo of being the “chosen people”.
And the nascent Christian movement fed
on the “Christ Killer” credo. Also the
evident ease with profiting from anti semitic pillaging and looting during periodic pogroms in the 2500 year Jewish diaspora existence.. Non of
these come close to making emotional
sense.
Elie Wiesel, still the living legend
of the horror of the Holocaust, in one of this inimitable holocaust ponderings
tells of a pious chasidic rabbi, surrounded by his disciples in a
concentration camp telling his surprised pupils that “Hashem (the Lord) is a liar…. If He opened up his window in heaven and
looked down He would say I did not cause
this…..And He would be a liar”…
It
is easy to go just a bit beyond this to
the “death of God” movement to make
rational sense in the spiritual void of the “living entity” of a non God.
As a dubious novelty of the rational mind. But not for long—for most people.! To go
from the oblivion before birth to the everlasting oblivion beyond mortal life is
insupportable. So
despite the chaos and continued indeterminacy of mortal life most of us mere mortals still believe that
somehow we are still in some way still created in God’s image,
and that post mortal existence is
now a most acceptable concept—or
fantasy. But still, perhaps, our last
best hope!
History
never really repeats itself but is
always very worth while learning
from. But which, of course, brings up that fellow Ahmadinajab……. Our new
Hitler?
