Re: Thoughts on "Tirpitz - Hunting the Beast"

Rich Rostrom <rrostrom.21stcentury@xxxxxxx> wrote:

"E.F.Schelby" <schelby@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rich Rostrom <rrostrom.21stcentury@xxxxxxx> wrote:

But Germany differed seriously from other
major powers in several respects, which made
these views stronger and more dangerous there.

First, Germany had a tradition of military
nationalism, with a long-established mass
army and an entire social hereditary class
of officers.

Prussia's officer class was made from hardships,
invasions, and occupations. Napoleon? He overran
Prussia. That gets a people's attentiom.

This class was far more prominent
and influential than anything similar in
Britain, (a "nation of shopkeepers"), or in
France, and there was nothing at all of this
sort in the U.S.

Well, Britain was an island nation and a naval power. No
land army was needed any longer to subdue Wales, Ireland,
and Scotland. France was belligerent for generations. As for
the US, it expanded enormously.It had no standing big
army, but there were always immigrants one could enlist.
Around 50 percent of the troops in the Mexican War
were Irish and German. Some of the soldiers were
veterans of the Napoleonic wars.

Second, Germany's recent history of lopsided
victory over its "greatest enemy", which
generated a national overconfidence not
dispelled till the end of WW I, and revived
in 1940. This followed ultimate Prussian
and Austrian triumph over Napoleon, and
Frederick's victories in the 1700s.

Well, those Germans had the stuffing beaten out of
them during the Thirty Years' War. After that they
were a patchwork quilt of little entities and lived
through a long dormant period of slow healing, quiet
work, and recovery.They finally pulled themselves up by
their bootstraps. And no, their 'greatest enemy' wasn't
very friendly to them for nearly three centuries. That
country didn't have to make nice. It was a superpower,
so to speak. Europe talked French, remember? Even that
arch-Prussian, Frederick the Great, did so almost
exclusively. He was useful to England, however.

France had had its moments of glory, but
after the defeats of 1871 and 1815, it was
very hard for Frenchmen to presume that
France was naturally dominant in a military
sense.

Oh please. If you show sympathy for France, be fair and do
the same to other countries who deserve it just as much.

Britain might claim a winning streak, but
for Britain land war has always been second
to naval war - which does not fit the Darwinist
narrative.

This is an interesting argument. Of course the sea was
merely the means to reach & harvest land - in China,
in Africa, Australia, India etc. The Spanish did it
centuries earlier. Arriving in ships, a few hundred men
conquered Mexico, Central America, and South America.
And wasn't this a demonstration of 'survival of the
fittest' long before Darwin's work, and long before
his theory of evolution was corrupted by politics?

One could argue that Manifest Destiny and
the Westward Expansion of the U.S. (at the
expense of the Indians and Mexico) fit the
Darwinist pattern - but it happened mostly
before Darwin published a word.

This is true, see above. But (Social) Darwinism is only a
term borrowed from science and applied to political strife.
Conquest has existed for ages.

With the >very limited exception of 1898, Americans
had no further interest in expansion,

Well, it was a rich dessert:the Philippines, Hawaii, parts of
Samoa, Guam, a Pacific island here and there, the Panama Canal Zone,
and the Virgin Islands (purchased from Denmark in 1917 - I suppose
inhabitants and all).

nor any expectation of life-or-death struggles
with other nations.

Here I have respectfully to disagree. A few quotes follow.
The influential Mahan first....


"All around us now is strife; "the struggle of life,"
"the race of life," are phrases so familiar that we
do not feel their significance till we stop to
think about them. Everywhere nation is arrayed
against nation; our own no less than others."

Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, _The Interest of America
in Sea Power (1897).
***

"Military vigor constitutes the strength of nations;
ideals, laws, and constitutions are but temporary
effulgences, and are existent only as long as this
strength remains vital." Homer Lea,_The Valor of
Ignorance_,(1909).

***

"Moreover, Americans must recognize that this is
war to the death. -- a struggle no longer against
single nations but against a continent. There is
no room in the world for two centers of wealth
and empire. One organism, in the end, will destroy
the other. The weaker one must succumb. Under
commercial competition, that society will survive
which works cheapest; but to be undersold is
often more fatal to a population than to be
conquered." Brooks Adams, "The New Industrial
Revolution", 1901.

Germans, situated very differently, took a
very different view.

Germany has as many facets as any other society
on the globe.

It should be noted that "Prussianism", as
foreigners dubbed, was largely burned out
in WW I. Militaristic overconfidence
persisted mainly in the thinking of cranks
like Hitler.

This "Prussianism" was a sort of Frankenstein creation
of George Creel's WW I propaganda apparatus.

The Ueber-Crank was not a Prussian.

Regards,
ES

.

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