Re: Occupation Zones in Germany (was Re: UK treatment of China in WW2)

On Jun 23, 11:02 pm, "Andrew Clark"
<acl...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<narrled...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote

I am not familiar with the genre of "self-history."

Clearly, it's national history written by historians of the nation
concerned.

You mean, "historians who are citizens of the nation concerned" I
think.

Nor am I
particularly bothered by your opinion of "the majority of American
self-history," not least because I doubt you have read enough of it to
form an opinion as to the quality of the majority of it.

Your doubts are in fact unsubstantiated. Are you not aware of the on-going
debate among American historians themselves about their recent record of
objectivity? Novak?

I am well aware of the on-going debate; I am not aware that it has
been concluded that the
majority of American "self-histories" lack objectivity.

Histories, whether written by Americans, Britons, or Zimbabweans, can
all be judged by the standards developed over the centuries as to
quality of sources, quality of writing, quality of argumentation,
etc. Blanket statements about nationalities don't really get us
anywhere, in my opinion.

That's a fine sentiment, but in actual practice, there are certainly
tendencies or trends among academic historians which exhibit themselves on a
national basis, not universally, of course, but nevertheless perceptibly.
Specifically, it would cause no waves at any European gathering to say that
a distressingly large percentage of academic American historians are rather
less than objective about their own national history.

Which merely sets up unnamed Europeans at a hypothetical gathering as
the arbiters of
objectivity. Can you cite any actual cross-national studies that
single out academic American
historians as worse than others?

Indeed. Counterfactuals are, in my opinion, implicit in historical
writings and I don't mind them being made explicit when they can aid
in our understanding and analysis of people and events. In this case
though, I rate the likelihood of a much-changed postwar territorial
settlement to be remote.

You are doubtless aware that a long series of participants in WW2, from
Churchill downward, and many subsequent reputable historians, have reached
an opposite conclusion to you. I tend to agree with them: I'm hardly
claiming a unique contribution to the subject.

Please give citations to these many reputable historians who have
concluded that the postwar
settlement could have been much different than it was.

That the Americans criminally bodged the end of WW2 is a very unpopular
opinion in the US, of course, and historians there, guided by a strenuous
Cold War propaganda effort, have put up a very creditable smokescreen on the
subject. The same happened in Germany between the wars and in Germany after
WW2 (at least until the 1980s) in relation to the holocaust.

In the U.S., 'the giveaway at Yalta' became a cliche and a stick with
which the extreme right wing
could beat successive presidents and other politicians who were not of
the extreme right.

Thanks for the lessons about German historiography, though.

I chose those two issues because they seemed to me to be the main
foundations of your castle of counterfactuals.

I can only assume you came in at the end of the debate when debate was
revolving only around specifics. I said at the beginning that both Britain
and the US would have had to have adopted a very different foreign and
military policy to have changed the political result of the war. Lend lease
and negotiating with German generals were very small aspects of that grand
change of policy.

No, I've attended to the argument from the beginning, or at least as
much of it as I find by way
of Google groups. Your argument boils down to, "If things had been
different, they'd be different."
If the Allies had adopted a very different foreign and military
policy--that is, if they had been
different people with different goals, then the outcome could have
been different. Do tell.

Among your snippages are my request for a better citation to Erickson
"Zoning . . ."

Because at the time of writing, I had already posted a full citation. I am
not responsible for the vagaries of Usenet postings. If it has not appeared
on the group by now, e-mail me privately.

No, all I saw until your recent correction of the title for Stephen
Graham was the original mistitled
reference.

Narr

.

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