Some thoughts from Mark Steyn:
It was, in a certain sense (and putting Russia and Japan to one side), a “western civil war” between the Anglophone democracies and Continental Fascists – but for some reason that’s far less congenial an interpretation to EU myth-makers.
Indeed.
Only because the non-Anglophone democracies were overrun.
So, they’re teaching that the European civil war was between the West (German-controlled Europe) and the East (the USSR), and that the East won and that as a result Europe became communist-socialist rather than nationalist-socialist?
In the West it was mainly a war between Germany and Italy vs France and the UK, a war that ended in a quick German victory over France. That was only reversed by intervention of the British, the Americans and the Russians. The Russians were little better than the Germans, and as a result Eastern Europe suffered many decades of occupation. The US / UK / Canada managed to free western Europe from the Germans before the Russians could overrun them too.
So, no, nothing like your preposterous suggestion.
So which preposterous suggestion are they teaching? That after the first year it was a five year struggle between the rest of Europe and England? It doesn’t seem like they would give England that much credit.
The theory that WWII in the European theater was a “European Civil War” is not one I was previously aware of and I don’t think it is generally taught. I’ve read that the French tend to disregard the role of the US and UK and exaggerate the role of the Resistance beyond all proportion. But I was taught that the war was between the Axis and Allies and that Europe was liberated by the US, the UK and Canada. With enormous help from the Russians, who unfortunately were little better than the Germans. The conquest of Eastern Europe by the Russians was the price that was paid for the liberation of Western Europe, rightly or wrongly.
That’s the story I was taught as well, although I expect the history I was taught severely downplayed the role of the USSR. I wonder how much less nasty the Germans would have had to have been to have been perceived as liberators rather than invaders on their Eastern front.
Hey if they can change the history, we can all get along from here on out, because all the old hurt feelings will disappear too.
I have to say that Steyn might be the only person from the UK, I’ve ever heard say, that the liberators of WWII Europe were NOT the Europeans themselves.
I was at a party once when I was in the Navy. One of the guys there was married to a woman from Scotland. One of the younger guys was telling some young, cute, babe that our ship had been in the harbor when the Peace Treaty with Japan was signed.
The by then half drunk woman from Scotland piped in with,
.
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“…to hear you bloody Yanks talk, you’d think you’d stopped the Nazis and the Nips all by yourself!”
.
.
I was of the opinion then that it was the liquor talking. But since then I’ve heard two other Brits and a German say about the same thing. I guess I get the Brit attitude, but the German woman who was old enough to remember the beginning of the war, needless to say, I never did understand her thinking.
Steyn isn’t from the UK. He’s Canadian, of Belgian parents.
Color me wrong. I was under the impression his folks had moved to Canada from the UK. It was something I heard him say years ago about going to school in the U.K.
That would remove him from the my mental list of thankful Brits then.
Is this a joke?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Civil_War
The contention that “The European Civil War” ended the position of the larger European states as global leaders is nonsense, if we include both world wars as part of “The European Civil War” why not include previous European conflicts? How about the Napoleonic wars, the Viking conquests, or even the expansion of the Roman Empire? If we take that perspective, it would be truer to say that the conflict and competition between the European powers of this longer “European Civil War” was what lead to European global domination that ended mid Twentieth Century.
Yes, the term is meaningless because Europe has always been at war with itself. Such wars are how the people got where they are, speaking the languages they do with the borders they have. I think “World War II” is vastly more descriptive than “European Civil War DCCLXXVII.”
We were better at naming massive conflicts in the past. The War of Jenkins Ear could be a candidate for WW-Zero in terms of global locations of combat. The same people probably would’ve called WW-II the Global Mustache vs. Cigar War.
The conceit of calling WW2 a “civil war” is that Europe was somehow united before and/or after the event, that Europeans are actually one people. To buy that notion, you have to forget all the different cultures, languages, and histories of the factions in Europe that insist on calling themselves nations. Of course that’s the whole “logic” behind the idea of the EU, reality be damned.
They do however think of themselves as Europeans (and westerners), and generally support the idea of having an EU, the UK being a notable exception.
The EU exists right now, but I wonder how much longer it can continue.
The Greek Finances thing is stripping them away from each other. And who knows what the larger countries will do if the smaller ones seem helpless. If Germany is left with most of the Greek debt, will they ‘take over’ Greece?
I have heard all sorts of stupid comments from people older than me (who should know best) e.g. saying that US tanks were clearly superior to Soviet tanks back at WWII. This is laughable to anyone who knows anything about military hardware from the era. The Soviet army was seen as utterly obsolete in war material in every way by them. They probably think the Soviets won the war on the Eastern Front, where the bulk of veteran German forces were concentrated, using penal battalions alone. Idiotic.
War is ultimately won by putting boots on the ground and the Soviet Union took the brunt of the effort. However it did have decent (sometimes superior) weaponry. The Tiger tank was produced in response to the Soviet KV-1 and the Panther as a response to the T-34. So much for total German superiority. As usual the Soviet Union had fairly good basic materials science and mining resources even if the machine tools and quality control were subpar. Their main issues regarding tanks were in the optical targeting systems which meant they often had to fight close to the enemy which they tried to counter with their superior armor and engines. e.g. some people do not know but the Germans had night vision equipment in their tanks during the final years of WWII.
IMO the war could not have been easily won any other way. Had the war took another half decade the Axis could have intercontinental missile and probably even nuclear weapons technology (Zippe was on the Axis payroll and he solved one of the hardest issues which was doing isotope separation on the cheap) the Germans had two or three teams working on the nuclear weapon problem. People always mention Heisenberg’s team which was the most high profile team with the most amount of funding devoted to it, but there were parallel efforts with minor funding elsewhere which were advancing at a faster rate. Had one of the major Allies members caved in (US, UK or Soviet Union) I doubt the war would have been won. Or at least it would have took much longer.
It is moronic to call it the European Civil War. Hitler came to power by election and there was no unified european government for it to be a civil war. If they want to make a museum for the European Theater of WWII just call it that.
As for the loss of the colonial empires it was bound to happen regardless. First it happened in the Americas, South Africa and Australia. Eventually it would happen elsewhere as colonies got the means to be self reliant.
The current EU economic debacle could be solved quite easily with a couple of swift measures or conservative slower measures. The problem with the measures being applied now is that they lack whole system analysis. As I guessed a couple of years ago they are going for deflation and wage cuts as conservative economists would do. The problem is this is not working and will not work because they are applying even stronger forces in the opposite way (e.g. selling or dismantling production and power generation in economically weak nations) which will cause this situation to escalate to the typical IMF Banana Republic scenario. The aim seems to be to turn the peripheral nations of the EU into some sort of plantation or tourist resort area for central europeans. The funny thing is the Chinese seem to have caught this as an opportunity to take over the fumbling economies of the peripheral countries by the throat while the central european countries are still patting each other on the back. They will then use these as bases to further their intrusion in the EU economy much like the Japanese buyout of US companies and assets back in the 1980s. The EU puppet masters probably think this will cause an over exertion of the Chinese economy and their stagnation in the long term, but this will not happen to the degree they think because of the strong growth of the internal Chinese market. You probably remember the protests in China early this year when there were not enough iPhone 4Ss for sale there in the launch day. The fact is Apple never though there would be much demand in China because traditionally, well, there are next to none. The Japanese economy, on the contrary, had reached its domestic economy peak somewhere in the 1970s.
The US has the same economic problems with its own states and people do not talk about secession there because in the US there is a Federal army which would suppress any civil revolt while in the EU we still are a confederation of states with decentralized armies. So of course the economic vulture are much more pleased to feed in Europe where there is the potential for higher economic volatility and hence higher profit margins even if they cause the misery of tens of millions of people.
What the EU puppet masters probably fear the most if the peripheral economies start doing what Iceland did and just let the morally and economically bankrupt banking sector alone to its own devices instead of bailing it out perpetually.
Had they let the bad banks fail, or stopped the construction binge with their construction interest rate stimulus packages, the situation today would be much less grim. The US and the EU were turned into a herd of hapless consumers for Asian goods and the local corporations colluded with the effort because they knew it would bring them profits in the short term. Most of these people are not interested in a long term scenario or simply think they can skip bail by moving to a BRIC country when the shit hits the fan back home.