Kontextmaschine

13th February 2021

Post with 7 notes

With the Americans closing on the Home Islands one of the big hopes the Japanese were trying to hold them off to buy time for was magnetically guided bombs, which, it was theorized, would radically increase the effectiveness of air-to-sea attacks

Tagged: wwiihistory

30th August 2014

Post with 283 notes

tl;dr: Germany and their ally America won WWII in 1991

Pretty much every country that fought in WWII used it as a crucible in which to reforge their respective nations, and so it’s understandable that what we know now of the war is basically mythological. Not in terms of like, dates and names and locations, the who/what/when/where is mostly accurate, but in terms of meaning - the why.

In the last decade it’s becoming more and more of a mainstream understanding that America didn’t beat Germany in WWII, the fighting on the Western Front wasn’t nearly as important as the Soviet effort on the Eastern Front. Yes, yes, correct. More than that though, America barely even fought on the Western Front. Our contribution wasn’t in frontline combat but in logistics. Logistics is the least sexy (but most important) part of any war, and America was to the British Empire what the Urals were to the Soviet Union - an industrial base located beyond German bombing range.

Without American food, and the ability to build cargo ships with which to deliver food (including from the rest of the Empire - the British homeland hadn’t fed itself since the 18th century) faster than U-Boats could sink them, the British population would have starved, revolted, and deposed any government that refused to sue for peace. The idea that American wartime food rationing was necessary to feed “our boys fighting overseas” was a polite fiction, better for morale than the truth that it was to free up food for export to essentially bribe allied civilians to stay on-side.

Remember that one of the sore points of interwar Germany was that the German surrender came with the field armies in decent and even advancing strategic position, under pressure from hunger-stoked socialist rebellion on the homefront - the “stab-in-the-back” or Dolchstoß. Of course today you see that often dismissed as a myth, the “Dolchstoßlegende”. Dismissed, of course, by the mainstream historiographers aligned with the regimes which legitimized themselves against the regime that legitimized itself on it. (Let’s call it the “Dolchstoßlegendelegende”, and then call it a day.)

To the extent the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s was deliberately induced and targeted by Stalin, I think it would have to have been a prophylactic against a Soviet equivalent - preemptively liquidating potential fifth columnists, cutting the numbers of mouths to be fed, and denying any German occupation a source of recruits or agricultural workers.

(Of course, the notion that Ukrainians might turn against Russia and in favor of Western Europe, under the influence of fascist sentiment stoked by local elites for personal gain is properly considered just another of those legenden, no less ridiculous than the notion that Japanese-Americans might hold loyalty to the former portion of their hyphenation over the latter.)

I’m wandering a bit afield but I also want to say, when you hear said that Stalin’s purges of the military were so stupid, didn’t he know he was purging some of the best soldiers Soviet Russia had? Well, soldiers Russia had maybe, the question is in that counterfactual where they stuck around would, would Russia stay Soviet? The Russian Revolution was deliberately incited by Germany to knock Russia out of a World War.

Career army types - a lot of times, their loyalty is to the army. Maybe to the nation, but the government? Eh. A lot of the higher-ups purged had started off in the Imperial Army and had made one transition already. And lower ranks, well, their loyalty is to their superiors, as it should be, right? (The Russian Navy, by contrast, spent the early 1900s occasionally rebelling against everyone because their institutional continuity had been shattered by the near-total wipeout of the Russo-Japanese war.) Governments change, but any state needs an Army, after all. Vladimir Putin started off serving the Soviets.

Okay enough digression. Without American food, and Britain thus pressured to make peace, Germany not only could have shifted the resources, ground and air forces defending the Atlantic coast to the Eastern front but would have freedom of the seas, and thus access to supplies from the overseas colonies of Axis powers (including France and the Netherlands), and from the neutral countries of South America (which had considerable economic ties with Germany). It also would have been able to open fronts and supply troops from the Black and Levantine Seas, Persian Gulf, and Pacific coast of Russia.

Without American industrial production, the other Allies wouldn’t have enjoyed nearly as much functional range from their resource bases. This would suck in general, most particularly it would limit the British ability to sustain their Northern African forces, and of the Soviets to operate in Azerbaijan, Iran, and the ’stans. With these forces weakened, it was concievable that Axis forces could gain control of the Suez Canal (greatly degrading Britain’s connections with its colonies in India, Africa, and Oceania) and middle eastern oil fields (a huge coup, hydrocarbon shortages were the major limitation on German capabilities, resolving them would have allowed for significant gains in production and much improved ability to advance and supply forces eastward into Russia.)

So yes, to say that America’s role in the European theater of WWII was really about making and shipping, not fighting isn’t to short its contribution - it truly did provide the margin of victory. The Normandy landings and opening of a Western front of ground combat were dramatic, made for great stories, but they didn’t change the outcome of the war. At least not in the sense of “will Germany win” - that had already been decided in the negative. It just changed the details of who they lost to. And what difference did that make? Well…


People say WWII should be considered as a continuation of WWI. There’s something to that, there’s something to that.

Here’s another idea, though - WWII was continuous with the Cold War, and before even V-E Day, America had switched sides to fight with the Germans, and specifically the German right, against the Russians, and to a lesser extent France and the UK. It was a brilliant betrayal, the maneuver by which America came to rule the world.

I mean, we didn’t side with the Nazis, per se, except to the extent that under Gleichschaltung everything in Germany not specifically anti-Nazi was officially Nazi. Rather, their coalition partners - the Christian democrats, the Junkers, the Heer, the industrial capitalists who had allied with the volkisch streetfighters to fight socialism and were perfectly willing to switch allegiance to the American strong horse for the same purpose.

That explains why long after it was obvious the war was a loss the German forces kept fighting on the eastern front - to hold off the Russians long enough for the Americans to reinforce Germany, or to fight westward to link up with (“surrender to”) American armies.

That explains why America never really pulled the trigger on “denazification”, the attempt to purge German government and society of fascists and fellow travelers, and instead turned around and purged its own government and society of communists and fellow travelers in the Second Red Scare.

That explains the Marshall Plan - America rebuilt western Europe, because America had conquered it.

That explains Bretton Woods, pegging European currencies to the dollar, and thus subordinating their economies to the American economy. (and the “Eurozone” as successor, subordinating European economies to Germany). How do you know Germany lost WWI? Because the Treaty of Versailles imposed punishing reparations on Germany, redirecting its economic output to Britain and France. The result of WWII was the redirection of Britain and France’s economic output to America and Germany.

That explains American support for decolonization in Africa and Asia, most glaringly in the Suez Canal Crisis, where America used the whip hand on Britain and France to support Nasser’s move to pry the canal - and Egypt generally - from their hands. By choking off their colonial empires, America blocked their ability to return to parity through primitive accumulation.

This explains de Gaulle - pulling out from NATO, fighting to hold on to Algeria and Vietnam, pursuing French nuclearization for energy independence and military sovereignty - he was pushing back, and since the Soviet collapse France has been subtly reassembling its African empire - in any potential American/Chinese/Islamic struggle for Africa, they’re the wild card.

That explains the postwar American development of a conceptual vocabulary - “totalitarianism”, “authoritarianism”, “statism”, “central planning”, horseshoe theory, “human rights” - by which communism and fascism were positioned as varieties of a broader unitary category and America assured itself that it had always been at war with Eurasia.

(The “Cultural Marxist” meme, that the Frankfurt School and their ideas represented a communist attempt to subvert America, is particularly ironic. The Frankfurt School and their ideas were embraced and actively promoted by the core of mainstream America - the government, businesses, universities, the Protestant churches - because at core their ideology was - liberal, yes - anti-communism.)

This doesn’t, as far as I know, explain the (at the time, surprise) death of Franklin Roosevelt, and replacement by Harry Truman, a man whom power brokers had installed for the express purpose of lining up an anti-leftist succession. But wouldn’t it be wild if it did?

This doesn’t explain much about the Pacific theater - that was America and Japan competing over who would inherit the European imperial holdings in Asia. Japan did fight to the last, America did conquer it outright, and did purge it in the aftermath.

It does explain the later takeback of that purge in the name of anti-communism, and Truman’s decision to use nuclear weapons. Not only as a demonstration and warning to Russia, but to hasten its surrender. You hear it said it was to pre-empt the need for a costly and painful invasion, that’s not really true. America had total naval and air superiority and could have just starved Japan into submission - its infrastructure shattered, even with peace it was essentially in a state of famine until the late 1950s. America wanted Japan to surrender while they were still the only ones around to surrender to, rather than face a division with the Soviets like Korea and Vietnam.


So. All those teenagers from around the world who follow me for god only knows what, next time in History class you’re asked how WWII ended, now you know. Falling back in the face of Soviet advances, Germany peeled off America from the Allies, decisively sewing up the Western Front. After negotiating a tense decades-long armistice, they eventually starved (and subverted) Russia into submission in the early 1990s. This completed, they realized their long-held dream of eastward expansion and hegemony over continental Europe.

Tagged: historyamhistwwiiworld war iirevisionist history

26th June 2011

Post with 221 notes

Shit so this was supposed to be a tumblr about history and kontext, right? What’s all this happy hardcore crap?

Q: What is the Nihau Incident?

A: It’s what your American history books don’t tell you about when they get to Japanese internment in WWII and you’re all invited to have a sad.

Q: Aight, what was the Nihau Incident?

A: Aight. So Hawaii, yeah? And Pearl Harbor, yeah? Okay, so a Mitsubishi Zero coming off that all shot up. Can’t make it back, so he crashes on the tiny, westernmost Hawaiian island, called Nihau. (The official Japanese crashing island. Truefax.)

Which was entirely owned by this one sugar fortune heir, and administered as a cultural reserve for native Hawaiian ways of life, because that’s what happens when WASPs go native. (Basically all the real estate in Hawaii was owned by sugar and fruit barons or Hawaiian royal descendants until reforms in I think like the mid-90s?)

Anyway so the pilot crashes in a field, like, next to this Hawaiian dude and while he’s still dazed the Hawaiian dude takes his papers and gun. The dude doesn’t know about the attack but knows Japan and the US are tense so he’s still like “WTF is this?”

So he gets all his Hawaiian buddies together to deal with this, except the only language they have in common with the pilot is “terrible English” and they’re like “what did he say?”

So they send for one of the Japanese guys on the island. Once Captain Cook discovered Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific, basically everyone settled it.

So they track down this Japanese guy and bring him in, and the pilot and him have words and he goes white and walks out.

And the Hawaiians are like “WHAT DID HE SAY?”

So they go to get the other Japanese guy. (There are only like 150 people on this island.)

And the other Japanese guy shows up, and him and the pilot talk. And the Japanese guy turns to the Hawaiians and doesn’t mention Pearl Harbor, but he’s like “hmm, I really think you should give this guy his stuff back”. And the Hawaiians are like “pf no”.

So later the Hawaiians are listening to the radio and they hear news of the attack and they’re like “Oh, ok. Better guard this dude.” Because they’re expecting the island’s owner to show up on his regular route and they can ship him back, only the Navy has boats on lockdown while it tries to figure out how and why and where there was a war all of a sudden.

So they’re guarding him, in the house of one of the Japanese dudes from before. Except I guess they’re not guarding him very well, because the Japanese dudes (helped by the one dude’s Japanese wife) get together and get all the guns (actually both the guns, a shotgun and a pistol) and take over.

It’s kind of a comedy of errors, though, because when they come for the original Hawaiian dude with the papers he’s in the outhouse and manages to run away and secure them. He’s like “I gotta go get help!” But Nihau to Kauai, the closest island, is like 20 miles at the narrowest, and this was a Hawaiian traditional culture preserve, so there were no motorboats on the island.

The thing is, the one thing traditional Hawaiians are super especially good at is open-sea rowing. So just after midnight he gets his Hawaiian friends in a boat and they row

FOR TEN HOURS

to get help.

Meanwhile on Nihau the pilot really wants to find the Hawaiian dude, so he gets this other Hawaiian bro and is like “go find the dude”. And the bro knows the dude’s rowing for help, so he’s like “alright, whatever, pf”. And then the pilot’s like “no seriously, find this dude right now or I’ll kill you all”. And he’s there with one of the other Japanese guys, and they have both the guns.

So at one point the pilot hands the shotgun to the other Japanese guy, and the Hawaiian bro charges him. The pilot pulls out his pistol and shoots the Hawaiian bro three times, and then the Hawaiian bro picks him up

and throws him

INTO A WALL

(and then his wife bashes the pilot’s head in with a rock)

((and then he cuts the pilot’s throat))

(((overkill kinda, but the pilot had really been a dick)))

The other Japanese guy got the shotgun and killed himself with it, which wasn’t particularly useful, but the Japanese were hardcore like that back then.

This is of course entirely on the word of the survivors of that room, so.

And when the rowing dude came back with backup the next day, all that was waiting for them were two corpses, one Japanese guy, and the other guy’s widow. (The pilot torched the plane when he got free.)

And so going into World War II, that’s what was on the minds of all the American defense planners, that the very first time Japanese on American territory - two nisei and a long-term resident issei - had a chance, every single one of them acted - violently and to the death when challenged - for the Japanese empire, against the United States.

So there’s that.

Tagged: hawaiihawaiianhawaiiansjapanese internmentnihau incidentpearl harborwwiimitsubishi zerokontextmaschine classic