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I have just watched part of a left wing John Wayne film (I did not see it all – I got so irritated I turned it off)… In Harm’s Way (1965) blames American problems in the Pacific war against the Japanese, on stuffed shirt Conservative officers – people who call the war ‘Mr Roosevelt’s war’ as people from their evil wealthy families called WWI ‘Mr Wilson’s war’.
Of course there is no mention of the film that President Roosevelt deprived the Pacific front of resources so that he could prop up Soviet Russia. Nor was this policy confined to the United States. Why did Singapore have no Spitfire fighters for air defence? Because the Spitfires earmarked for Singapore were diverted to Soviet Russia. 100, 000 troops of the British Empire were captured at Singapore – and they were left to rot and die. About 80, 000 Americans were captured in the Philippines – and they were left rot for years as well (many thousands died).
This was not because American commanders (Navy or Army) were poor in the Pacific (although some of the British ones were poor indeed). It was because the New Dealers in Washington D.C. did not care – all they cared about was their sacred Soviet Union.
Before anyone says that the Soviet Union saved Britain from German invasion think about the following: Thousands of allied sailors died taking supplies to the Soviet Union (not Soviet sailors dying taking supplies to Britain). Whether operation ‘Sea Lion’ (the German invasion of Britain) was practical or not (and the Germans certainly lacked the resources vital to operation ‘Overlord’ the allied invasion of France in 1944), the choice by Hitler to switch German air attacks from British airfields to British cities made operation Sea Lion a dead letter.
This choice was made before the Germany invasion of the Soviet Union. The ‘Battle of Britain’ was won before the invasion of the Soviet Union (not after it).
Of course there would have been no WWII anyway if Hitler and Stalin had not allied in 1939 – but the New Dealers (and their friends in Britain) blanked that out.
Prodded by a recent conversation with my eldest brother who is a UKIP (UK Independence Party) member, on the subject of British nationalism, I recently put the pieces of a puzzle together concerning the dramatic events of 1940 that I want to try out on the readers of samizdata. (Apologies in advance to all those who see the only puzzle as being how long it took me to puzzle out the obvious.)
At the risk of publicising my own slow-wittedness, it has always puzzled me that British nationalists these days almost to a man now worship the ground that Winston Churchill walked on, because he saved Britain in 1940, despite the fact that Churchill himself wasn’t a British nationalist.
Preliminary digression. Did Churchill actually save Britain in 1940? I tend to accept the orthodox view that Churchill did indeed save my country, and that it really was one of our finer hours.
The case against how Churchill behaved in 1940 is that an accommodation with Hitler was there for the taking, which would have been less harmful to British interests than even the events that subsequently unfolded, and certainly than any events that looked at all likely in 1940 if we did fight on.
As to that, I’ve always been fond of the words spoken by Ralph Richardson in the early stages of the film The Battle of Britain. Richardson plays a British diplomat who is squaring up to his German equivalent, played by Curt Jurgens. The Jurgens character speaks of how the Fuhrer is willing to offer “guarantees” to Britain. Replies Richardson: “Experience shows that Herr Hitler’s guarantees guarantee nothing.” Exactly so. The case for not trying to accommodate Hitler in 1940 in one pithy sentence.
(I’ve heard it said that this is also the basic case against Saddam Hussein. The man simply can’t be relied upon to refrain from what he has promised to refrain from. He is therefore not, and never can be, a member of the club of Heads of State who, no matter what they may do to their subjects, can at least be relied upon to tell the truth to fellow club members.)
Well I’m not entirely sure about that. Maybe there was a good deal going which Churchill spurned. But this I do know. Churchill was, as I say, not a British nationalist. He was an Anglospherist.
Chruchill’s mother was an American. In his youth Churchill roamed the earth in the service of the British Empire and of his own fame and glory. When the time came for him to write his historical magnum opus, he called it The History of the English Speaking Peoples.
It was Churchill’s political adversaries, like Chamberlain and like Halifax (his rival in 1940 for the British Prime Ministership), who were the real British nationalists. It was they who spoke to each other in 1940 of the beauties of the English countryside and of how it was now threatened with being turned into scorched earth. Churchill was willing to fight, and they were not. And as soon as Churchill got into power, he orated about blood on the beaches and set about organising an anti-German resistance-to-the-death scorched-British-earth policy, for the “defence” of Britain. Some defence.
Churchill was able to do this because Britain, for him, was not the ultimate point. Britain was, in the end, merely a slab of territory near the front line in the fight. And it was, ultimately, expendable. → Continue reading: 1940 – How the non-nationalist saved his nation when the nationalists could not
Every so often I rearrange my books to make them take up less space in my home than they actually do take up, and during my latest rearrangement I came across a book called Catastrophe by David Keys. The central claim of this book is that in the year 535 AD there was a truly enormous volcanic eruption in South East Asia, filling the sky with dirt so dense that the sun was hardly visible for several years, unleashing plague, famine and the fall (and rise) of empires all over the world.
I remember being quite severely convinced. Now that I am a blogger I am able to ask the big wide world: Was I right to be impressed by this book? Did this really happen? And whether it did or not, what do the official, academic historians think about all this? David Keys’ book is not academic; it is midddlebrow at best. He’s a journalist, and I first heard about his notions by watching a TV show on Channel 4 a few years ago, and we all know that TV and truth don’t always go together. Did TV get it right this time?
→ Continue reading: 535 AD
Paul Marks takes an interesting look at the relevance of Britain’s bloody history
How can a civil war, in the 12th century, between rivals for the throne of England be relevant to libertarians today? Surely the war was simply as it was presented by the contemporary (pro Stephen) writers – a lot of needless bloodshed brought about by the lust for power of wicked women?
However, I think the war is of interest.
First some background. Henry I was the youngest son of William the Conqueror, he based his claim to the throne of England (after the ‘hunting accident’ death of his brother William II) on the grounds that he was the only son of William I to be born after the conquest (i.e. after William I had been accepted as King of England) and in England itself.
To some people (such as Robert of Normandy – Henry’s older brother) such a claim appeared weak. However, by a combination of diplomacy and war Henry I made good his claim.
Henry had issued a charter of liberties limiting the lawless power of the Crown (in such matters as taxation and the security of property), he appealed not just to the Norman but to the Anglo Saxon (English) population and married Matilda (formally Edith) – daughter of the King of Scotland, but also direct decedent of the Anglo Saxon Kings of England going back to Alfred the Great. → Continue reading: Stephen and Matilda
Steven Den Beste treads where 100,000 aeropundits have gone before
Ultimately, they switched to the Mustang, which was the prestige fighter of the European theater; beautiful, fast, deadly and long ranged: it was the best fighter the Allies had in Europe, and for bomber escort they needed every bit of it, especially after the Germans began to fly the Me-262.
Best fighter is truly meaningless unless it is stated what specific role it was best for. The P-51 Mustang was without doubt the most effective long range piston engined daylight escort fighter of World War II. Of the mid-to-late war piston engined fighters, it was not the best defensive fighter (Fw.190-D or Spitfire 19) or nightfighter (He.219 or Mosquito, various) or day/night intruder (perhaps Mosquito FBVI) or multi-role fighter (no clear winner).
Comparing fighters with different roles is pointless and thus there was no single ‘best fighter’, just ‘best fighter in some role’. The P-51 had good all round performance, very good cockpit visibility and most importantly had the range to carry out the strategic escort mission that other even higher performance piston engined fighters did not have. But as all combat aerocraft do, it also had its weak points and like all USAAF fighters of the time was certainly under-armed by 1943-1945 standards and had GC issues at some weights. How about “The P-51 Mustang was the most important USAAF daylight fighter of the European Theatre in mid-to-late World War II period”. A much safer contention.
It is almost inevitable that a degree of triumphalist intoxication starts to surge into commentary regarding the allegedly all-but-over war in Afghanistan. However in their eagerness to at last drive a stake through the heart of that American vampire-of-the-soul, Vietnam, people are starting to sound rather like the pundits opining on the future after every war since the industrial age started to make each war different than the one before. Television, internet and printing presses are humming with commentators who are making extravagant leaps of inductive thinking… never a good sign.
Victor Davis Hanson over on National Review is a case in point and has written an intemperate article called Glad We Are Not Fighting Us, that takes dramatic historical and sociological liberties with fact and evidence. Although I do agree with many of his points, others that he makes are very odd indeed.
America now enjoys a level of global military and political influence not seen since the Roman Empire in the age of Trajan.
This is a poor comparison. What of the Mongols? Theirs was a vast empire based on sheer military might into which the Roman Empire, even under Trajan, could have neatly fitted into one corner. The shadow it cast over the entire Eurasian world was every bit as profound as the US casts now and far harder to ignore.
He goes on to describe an America that will no doubt appeal to a section of his US readership but it is really nothing more than tub-thumping propaganda rather than sensible appraisal of the undoubted might of the USA.
But in the last two decades America, for better or worse, has evolved beyond the traditional Western paradigm, in reaching the theoretical limits of freedom and unbridled capitalism to create a technologically sophisticated, restlessly energetic, and ever-changing society whose like has never been seen in the history of civilization.
That is not just wrong, it is ridiculous… for one, I would argue that the United States was far more free in many ways, both in terms of general liberty and economically, prior to the First World War. The astonishing US forfeiture laws under which one can have property seized and then not returned even if not eventually convicted of a crime (and in some cases not even charged), make it clear that large chunks of the much hallowed Constitution are in fact a dead letter. Even more grotesquely obvious, one only has to look at the huge share of national wealth appropriated by the various tiers of American government and compare it to 100 years ago to realise the absurdity of claiming the United States is “reaching the theoretical limits of freedom”. Ethnic minorities and women are now freed from onerous restrictions compared to a century ago, yet what they may actually do with that restored liberty and economic power is drastically ‘bridled’ by the intrusive regulatory state as never before in American history.
In areas of US society where liberty is indeed in the ascendant rather than in retreat , it is due to the information technology and communications that are exerting their influence far beyond just America.
I would also contend that the Dutch in the 17th century and British in the first half of the 18th century were every bit as dynamic. And of course their pundits made much the same overarching claims about their cultures as well.
Hanson gets back on more solid ground by pointing out where the true root of America’s real comparative advantages lie by contrasting its freedom of expression with that found in other civilisations. Yet it does not take him long to stray back into questionable historical contentions
But unlike the Soviet infantry and armor doctrine of the 1960s and 1970s, which had changed little from World War II our new tactics are not static. We are just as likely to see armored divisions on the ground in Iraq, storms of cruise missiles in Lebanon, or covert assassination teams in Somalia or the return once again of the Afghani mode depending on the changing nature of our adversaries.
Here Hanson just does not know what he is talking about. Soviet infantry and armour doctrines evolved hugely after World War II and in the 1970’s, US doctrines might as well have been drawn up with the intention of maximising the Soviet advantages in combat mobility. Soviet military theories very accurately assessed US strengths and weaknesses, leading to the Operational Manoeuvre Group (OMG) doctrines. US Army reforms came belatedly in the 1980’s to address the weakness of US operational level doctrine compared to that of the Soviets (i.e. the introduction of ‘Air/Land Battle’ doctrines aimed at reducing the large Soviet advantage in combat mobility).
I cringe somewhat at Hanson using ‘covert assassination teams in Somalia’ as an example of American military superiority. What the last US adventure in Somalia proved was something rather different. As any NRA activist will tell you, never underestimate a pissed off armed civilian population. Sure, high tech and well trained US troops can probably kill a low tech bunch of Somalians at a ratio of 100:1… but at the end of the day, it was the Somali ‘warlords’ who held the field and watched the US retreat, because they, unlike the hideous Taliban in Afghanistan, commanded the genuine support of their population. It would be hard to overstress the importance of understanding the implications of this.
I came away with the impression that September 11 has supercharged rather than short-circuited this multifaceted engine of America. What were bin Laden, the mobs in Pakistan and the West Bank, the nuts in al Qaeda, and their opportunistic supporters in the Middle East drinking? We shall never know, but their attack on a country such as this was pure lunacy. Thank God we do not have to fight anyone like ourselves.
Yes, that is quite true and in fact much of Hanson’s article is spot on. However I do worry that in the wave of understandable euphoria following the destruction of the Taliban and the scattering of Al Qaeda, that an air of unrealistic expectation and ill conceived adventurism may replace the air of unrealistic pessimism so beloved of the dismal and irrational Buellers and Fisks.
I’ve long thought myself reasonably knowledgeable on World War II, and in particular on the air war. I had heard Belfast was bombed by a few planes at some point. One friend told me his father sat up in the hills and watched the bombers flying in. I’d seen mentions of it in various histories of the air war, but one is left with the impression the entire Battle of Britain was in the south of England. In terms of strategic importance, it was. London, Coventry and various attacks on other English cities were the heart of the action. That is where the “The Few” fought and died in the Battle of Britain. Squadrons went north for training and reforming. Other raids happened here and there but nothing that was terribly important to the course of the war. A couple raids on Belfast? When you read that amidst the history of the war in the skies over London it hardly registered even if you were sitting in Belfast. The unbidden first thought to cross one’s mind as Belfast resident was that we were doing quite a good enough job blowing it up ourselves. Why on Earth would we have needed any help from strangers?
The first raid was what I had believed it all to have been like. A few bombs on a Harland and Wolff factory, a few deaths here and there. That is what I had always believed had happened here.
I was very, very wrong as I found out tonight from a BBC Northern Ireland commemoration taped in our new Waterfront Hall. Local artists (several of whom I know from my many wastrel nights as a working musician in Ireland) sang period songs in between the film clips and dramatic readings of the words of those who lived through the raids. It is well worth the viewing but since most of you can’t do that, the web site is the next best thing.
900 people died that night on April 15th, 1941 in a second raid on a nearly defenseless city. The first had been a revelation to the Germans. No fighters defended the city. A handful of anti-aircraft guns were the sum total of defences. That was all there was to face over 200 He111’s and Ju88’s that roved at will over the city. Even those few defending guns were silenced when the telephone exchange was destroyed and all coordination lost.
In terms of numbers killed it was the worst single raid carnage of the Battle of Britain but one. Did any of you know that? I certainly did not.
The third raid came on May 4th of 1941. Belfast was still nearly defenseless. There were a handful of defending Spitfires and Hurricanes. This time “only” about 200 people died in the rain of incendiaries that devastated the city. But the destruction was far more complete. It left Belfast as devastated as any city in England and perhaps worse than most. Vast areas of housing were levelled in the conflagration that was visible from the Glen Shane pass 45 miles away. Ships were sunk in the harbour; the city centre was half destroyed.
No matter how much one reads the history of that terrible time, it gives one pause to realize the scope of the war was so vast that raids as devastating as these are reduced to minor historical footnotes.
I’m nursing an oncoming cold and sitting back with a hot cuppa (coffee not tea) whilst I do a bit of hardcopy reading. I’m rather seriously hooked on aircraft in general and warbirds in particular so my sneezetime reading material is not surprisingly on that subject: FlyPast. It is one of two very fine UK magazines about the world wide warbird scene I read every month.
There is a particular relevance to current events in a series of articles written jointly by the crew of a WWII American B-24 Liberator. The narrative is taken from their collected diaries, scrapbooks and recollections. At one point they say their formation had a very good day and all hit their Magdeberg target with extreme accuracy:
The squadron’s bombs hit right on the MPI (Mean Point of Impact) with 95% within 1,000 feet (300 meters) and 100% within 2,000 feet. The crew could see explosions and flames shooting into the air. Smoke rose to about 8,000 feet and was visible for about 100 miles as the aircraft proceeded towards home.
A very good mission indeed. Now fast forward it to today and imagine the squeals of horror we’d be hearing if 219 bombers hit a target inside an historic city and 5% of their load hit between a thousand and two thousand feet away from the Taliban facility that was being targeted.
I’ve seen some improvement in reporting, perhaps because the news media has been getting thoroughly and justifiably battered during the last few months. They still have some learning to do. Perhaps the biggest story of the war is the wonder of the changes in military capability over the last 60 years. Changes that now allow us to specifically target and kill the SOB’s who done it without leveling an entire city around them. So what if we occasionally miss with one or two bombs? Big deal. “Dog bites man” or “Bomb misses target” is not news.
Now “Dogs don’t bite much anymore” and “Bombs don’t miss much anymore”… that’s news.
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