The Bully from Humiliation

 

Arguments about the wisdom, morality and folly of dropping atomic bombs on Japan have been ongoing for 80 years.

It is now widely understood that the fire bombings of Japanese cities had already killed and destroyed in greater magnitude than the two bombs, but the detailed reporting on the destruction and the destructive potential of these weapons changed things.

Before these weapons, there were still  pervasive notions of national and personal glory and humiliation connected to war. The "German people" felt humiliated and cheated after World War I, and people in nations world wide thrilled to the sight of marching columns of glorious soldiers and waving flags, even as they saw disfigured soldiers return home, evidence that modern warfare nearly eliminated the possibility of personal glory--you no longer had men with swords or lances charging at each other--artillery, guns and bombs made small, weak men the equal of big strong men. But there were still stories of Private York, the Red Baron and other heroes who braved the steel curtain to undying glory. 

But the atomic bombs, for all the horror they wrought, at least convinced people around the world that armed conflict had reached a point where there could be no glory on an atomic battlefield only annihilation and mutually assured destruction. Where could the glory be in that?

Hitler, of course, used the notion of humiliation to great effect--the strong, brave, suffering German soldier, never beaten on the battlefield, was betrayed and stabbed in the back by the cunning, stealthy villains--bankers, international businessmen, and most of all, "the Jews," who forced a humiliating treaty on an unbeaten army and nation at Versailles. 

Hitler himself was forged in the experience of humiliation. Seething with resentment, he knew he was a talented, likely great artist, unjustly rejected by the academic faculties of Viennese art schools, and he lived essentially a homeless life for years in Vienna, the sort of prototype of today's "guy who lives in his parents' basement." The first World War gave him employment and a group to belong to, and most important, audiences, more or less captive audiences, on whom he could try out his material.

For the Nazis, as for the current MAGA crowd, the undercurrent of humiliation is palpable. The Nazis appealed to the resentment of people who felt rejected, who thought themselves failures by emphasizing their willingness to bring rich (Jews) to their knees, scrubbing sidewalks with toothbrushes. 

Humiliation 1

Humiliation 2

Humiliation 3

Reading William Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" there is an intriguing interlude, leading up to Hitler's invasion of Poland which reveals Hitler's cunning and adroit use of history to convince his own countrymen of the rightness of his reign.

Shirer sets up the two hour speech which became the culmination of Hitler's persuasive powers and his last big gambit before he invaded Poland, started World War II and all the talk ceased to really matter.  

I'm Really Good At This Stuff

In the run up to the speech before Poland, Hitler had seized Czechoslovakia, Austria and a few select smaller countries, all justified by the suffering of German speaking people who lived in these places at the hands of despicable thugs who terrorized their ethnic German populations--much the same thing as those darked skinned invaders across our Southern borders have victimized their white American prey--someone had to act on behalf of the Aryans!

He also pointed to the western democracies (which is how he referred to them, "democracies" as if that were a bad word) as trying to encircle Germany.  

England had tacitly said it wasn't worth another world war to defend the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia (the Ukraine of its day) and that meant that Britain, France and Russia might feel the same way about Poland.

So everyone knew Poland was probably next. 

Franklin Roosevelt, facing his own very strong America First movement, was constrained from acting.  The number of Americans of German origin actually exceeded those from Ireland and Scandinavia and Nazi Bund rallies in American cities and, most memorably, at Madison Square Garden, meant Germany was not an automatic target, even after World War One. 

So Roosevelt sent Hitler a telegram asking that Hitler definitively assure that he had no intention of invading a list of countries, including Poland, Latvia, Hungary, Denmark, the Netherlands, Romania--basically all of Germany's neighbors (which he later invaded). 

Goering laughed this off, saying Roosevelt must be demented. Mussolini said Roosevelt's mind had been rotted by infantile paralysis--the strutting Italian rooster who bragged about his virility and his female conquests taunting the half paralyzed Roosevelt. It was, as it so often is with autocrats, all about their own personal hang ups.

Hitler replied with his longest ever speech, two hours, at the Reichstag, eerily echoing Trump's recent speech at the United Nations. Like Trump, he claimed to be the greatest leader in the world.  "I'm really good at this stuff." He claimed he had eliminated unemployment in Germany, had saved it from humiliation and restored it to affluence, saved his countrymen from the abyss of globalism. 

And he had sent his ambassadors to each of the nations mentioned by Roosevelt to ask if they felt threatened and then he listed each of them (save one) with the "Answer: No!" with Goering seated above and behind him roaring with laughter at each answer, slapping his desktop. 

Because there were 15 names and answers, nobody seemed to notice that the name "Poland" had been omitted.

But then he turned to America's own history of acquiring safety and greatness for itself by attacking established nations, particularly the Sioux, who he pointed to as a subjugated nation which might look at Roosevelt much as Germany's neighbors might look at Hitler. Then he added the entire American south, the former confederacy as an example of a conquered nation which had been brought only by force of arms into a vast American nation.

He then pointed to Ireland, a nation subjugated by England and to Palestine, also occupied and subjugated by the British.

Reading his speech, Mad Dog could not help but smiling--how Hitler pointed to the glass houses in which American and British and French colonizers lived. When the ship St. Louis, carrying German Jewish refugees to the United States was denied entry to America and it's passengers sent back to die in concentration camps, Hitler pointed to that and said, "See! America does not want these Jews! Why should we?"

Faulkner, speaking of another war, once remarked that for the Southerner the past is not dead; it is not even past.

And Mad Dog had the sinking feeling, reading this history that there are problems from the 20th century which should be past, but are not even past.

The most obvious, now are Ukraine and Palestine.

Big Man, Lots of Gold

Russia, or at least Putin, never accepted the humiliation of the fall of the Soviet empire. For him, having neighbors on his western flank who are not controlled by himself constitutes "encirclement." So he has begun picking them off, one by one. He's got Byelorussia, and Georgia and now he's after Ukraine, and why should he stop there, once successful?

And America has said, quite honestly, as President Biden did say, Ukraine is not worth starting World War III.

As always, it is tough trying to get the Russian side of all this. Clearly, Russia threw the first punch and is the bad actor here. But Mad Dog would love some source, like William Shirer reporting from Germany in the run up to war, but someone in Russia reporting what Putin is saying and what Russians are thinking. So far, even in the internet age, Mad Dog has struck out.

And there is still Palestine. That is a history of which Mad Dog is not full apprised, apart from having read Leon Uris's "Exodus" when Mad Dog was twelve years old.

In that telling, the surviving, starving, barely alive Jews streamed out of the hellholes of European Holocaust, unwanted by the Europeans from the Dutch coast, to France, to Italy, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia and said, "Fine, you all hate us, we'll find our ancestral home and for once, we'll cut the cake in our own favor, even if we have to fight and die for it." And they made the desert bloom.

Mauthausen Concentration Camp

The history Mad Dog came to accept was that once enough Jews arrived in the wasteland deserts of Palestine, Jerusalem and the middle east and "reclaimed" their own land, there were enough Americans, Europeans and even Asians who sympathized, who felt guilty about their own complicity in the Holocaust,  to vote recognition for the state of Israel in 1948, three years after the end of the Second World War and everyone was supposed to live in justice, happily ever after.

Gaza

But this turns out to be yet another instance of a problem which festered at the end of a war. The Second World War is now understood as simply a continuation of whatever started the First World War, treaties and arrangements which were unjust, and which only provide for a hiatus of peace, in the case of the First World War, 20 years, but now after the Second World War, 80 years, but now we have war conflagrations flaring up again, from the unstaunched embers.

Mad Dog has a friend from middle school, who has both American and Israeli citizenship, who lives half the year in Jerusalem, who tells him that Israel has changed dramatically over the years. When he first went there, the overwhelming majority of Israelis were from Europe, but now 75% of the Israeli population were born in the Middle East. And although there are Arab members of the legislature, the Knesset, if Palestinians (non Jews) were allowed representation to reflect their percentage of the population, the Jews would be in the minority and Israel would cease to be a "Jewish state." 

He also says he believes the majority of Israelis may not be completely sympathetic with the Palestinians, but the majority of Israelis he knows abhor Netanyahu, believe this whole "Hamas thing" is simply a ploy to keep himself in power because he is headed for jail as soon as the emergency is over.

Mad Dog hears all this with interest, but he does not have confirmatory sources.

Mad Dog has no solutions.

"Defeat Hamas!" sounds unpersuasive. Doesn't matter what you call it, Hamas, Al Qaeda, the Resistance--the names may change but the etiologic agent remains the same. 

That violence, however, clearly begets violence, seems an operative truth.

And as for Vengeance: if you go out to seek revenge, first dig two graves. 

In the case of local conflicts like Palestine, the solutions may prove to be local, but in the case of Europe, Ukraine and Russia, after a nuclear war, there will be nobody around to attend the funeral.