You’ve probably heard of historical revisionism pertaining to the World War II-era, but the kind you’ve probably heard of is the anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying revisionism.
That’s not the only kind, though.
Military historian Victor Hansen explains another kind.
EXCERPTS:
As the world commemorated the 60th anniversary of the end of the European Theater of World War II, revisionism was the norm. In the last few years, new books and articles have argued for a complete rethinking of the war. The only consistent theme in this various second-guessing was a diminution of the American contribution and suspicion of our very motives.
(NOTE: I can’t tell from what he wrote how Hansen regards the immorality of the nuking of Hiroshima or the firebombing of Dresden. The deliberate targeting of civilians, of course, is inconsistent with Catholic moral theology, but whatever Hansen’s views on this point may be, his survey of how WWII is being handled in modern politically correct treatments is informative.)
I enjoy Dr. Hanson’s writings. His classical education and expertise in military history not only gives a fair assessment of war today, but also a broad and shrewd understanding of human nature.
“One cannot dismiss Iwo Jima as an unnecessary sideshow or allege that Dresden was simple blood rage until one understands the tactical and strategic dilemmas of the age — the hope that wounded and lost B-29s might be saved by emergency fields on Iwo, or that the Russians wanted immediate help from the Allied air command to take the pressure off the eastern front in February 1945.”
I think he judges the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima as the lesser of two evils.
” Of course, we bombed German civilian centers. But in a total war when 10,000 a day were being gassed in the death camps, and Nazi armies in the Balkans, Russia, and Western Europe were routinely murdering thousands a week and engaged in breakneck efforts to create ballistic missiles, sophisticated jets, and worse weapons, there were very few options in stopping such a monstrous regime. This was an age, remember, before computer guidance, GPS targeting systems, and laser-guided bombs.”
He also points out that it is easy to condemn those actions from an armchair POV, but taking the entire context of the situation, would we have been able to do any differently?
I grew up in a military family. My father served in WWII and Korea. He once talked about ethical dilemmas that the soldier faces in wartime. One hypothetical situation is:
You are driving a convoy truck full of soldiers to a rendezvous point. You are crossing a narrow bridge. Suddenly, you see that a child is on the bridge, and it is too late to stop. If you swerve, you will drive off the bridge to the certain death of all those soldiers. If you continue, you will kill the child. In wartime, what is the right action?
Unfortunately, you must save the soldiers. If they die in that accident, the battle to which they are going could be lost and may affect the outcome of the war. So the child must be sacrificed.
It is those things that make war hell.
Speaking of WWII revisionism:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44210
Re: the above link.
I suppose one can be cynical about the victory over Nazi Germany, but the loss of Eastern Europe.
In Churchill’s Memoirs of the Second World War, the irony was not lost to him. However he said that the world was too exhausted to fight Russia over it.
There is an interesting article on Reason magazine kinda of about this:
http://www.reason.com/links/links040405.shtml
“Offstage, godless fascism has been knocked out, but front and center, godless leftism is rising. It’s a rare view of the Second World War as a gigantic exercise in futility.”
Not revisionism… But you get the picture.
Mr. Aikin, I check your blog about everyday. I always find something informative and entertaining. But I’m not sure that I would put much weight on Victor Hansen. Much of what he considers ‘Revisionism’ is merely criticising some of the more blatant wrongs that the Allies did commit. To say that firebombing cities resulting in the death of hundred’s of thousands of civilians, often without strategic purpose, is a great crime should not be controversial. To simply point that out is not to diminish in any way the atrocities of the Axis powers. But it is not a just standard to acquit Allied crimes, by the greater Axis crimes. After all it not the sins of others that we will have to answer for, but our own.
Part of Hansen’s outlook is marked by Americanism. That train of thought that claims the US is exempt from the failings that has claimed other great powers. Additionally part of it, is that criticism of past American action implicitly calls into question current American actions. Remember what many Saints have taught. God works through the meek and humble, not the proud.
Harold Crews
Walkertown, NC
Atheling2 wrote:
“I grew up in a military family. My father served in WWII and Korea. He once talked about ethical dilemmas that the soldier faces in wartime. One hypothetical situation is:
“You are driving a convoy truck full of soldiers to a rendezvous point. You are crossing a narrow bridge. Suddenly, you see that a child is on the bridge, and it is too late to stop. If you swerve, you will drive off the bridge to the certain death of all those soldiers. If you continue, you will kill the child. In wartime, what is the right action?
“Unfortunately, you must save the soldiers. If they die in that accident, the battle to which they are going could be lost and may affect the outcome of the war. So the child must be sacrificed.”
[End quote]
That makes war hell, and the fact that innocents of ALL AGES die makes war hell, and the fact that soldiers die makes war hell. Interesting example of an ethical dilemma you give, no doubt. I didn’t miss the point. However…
The emphasis on children above anyone else is what bothers me when it is taken too far or used in too many examples; by default it assumes that certain lives hold more importance than others based on age. It’s like overhearing someone say that the worst part of 9/11 was the plane that went down in Pennsylvania. Why? Because there was a baby on the plane. I know, I know, people say “They’re more innocent”, “They haven’t really lived” and things like that. But to take it so far as to base life worth on such a thing as age is to go too far. That’s another matter. It’s exactly what pro-abortionists and those who are pro-euthanasia (for the elderly in this case) do–determine whose life means anything, or whose means more.
It implies that innocent adults deserve death more–you can’t get around this following this train of thought–just as punishing the rapist of a girl to a lesser extent than if he had raped a boy, necessarily implies that the crime was just as hard on the girl. By default the judgment is that the crime was more deserved by the girl, no ifs ands or buts about it–you can’t get around the extra implication.
It also tends to go along with the assumption that that every child will grow up to do extraordinary things, when any particular child can in fact grow up to be a monster or just an average person (and these two outcomes are much, much more likely).
Many headlines read things like “Several children killed in bombing of X place”, and then you open up the story, and somewhere it sneaks in “Oh, and by the way, dozens of adults were killed too.”
War is terrible for just about everyone, and everyone’s suffering is special and particular and terrible for themselves and their loved ones in a unique and unmeasurably painful way. Innocents don’t deserve what they get, period. No innocent deserves something more than another innocent, because they don’t deserve what they get in the first place. So let us stop diminishing other children of God–those who have passed into adulthood.
necessarily implies that the crime was just as hard on the girl
Should have read:
…necessarily implies that the crime was NOT just as hard on the girl.
Anonymous, you dismiss the reason “they are innocent” as if that doesn’t matter. It does.
The word “adult” comes from “adulterare” which means “pollute”. An adult person is less innocent than a child. And more responsible for his actions.
Our Lord himself gave children a special status among other members of society:
“Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, he is the greater in the kingdom of heaven.” (18 Matt. 1-4)
We see that Jesus sees humility as a province of childhood. They own nothing. They do nothing.
He further says that there is a particular evil in harming children and even proscribes death for that person:
“But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.” (18 Matt. 2-6)
Our Lord’s point is that there is a particular egregiousness in harming children, and He is severe in its punishment.
Yes, all life is precious. All human beings are precious. However, as human beings we have a faculty of discrimination, and we can deem (as our Lord has done so) that some crimes against particular people are worse than others. It is worse to rape and murder a child than an adult. The child’s innocence and weakness (after all, he is among “THE LEAST OF OUR BRETHREN”) make him an easier target. It is worse to beat an elderly lady than a strong young male. She hasn’t a chance, plus might not recover as quickly.
If our society cannot see the difference in the wrongs committed against its weakest members then we are no better than animals in the wild.
“Part of Hansen’s outlook is marked by Americanism.”
What other POV is there from a (normal) American?
I wouldn’t dismiss Mr. Hanson’s defense of America as mere Americanism. There is so much America-bashing in the world, so much demonizing of America, so many lies about America, that perhaps someone with some knowledge of history and human nature can make a defense? Is that wrong?
In apologetics, don’t we come from a point of view of “Catholicism”? Is that a crime too?
Americanism, or America’s particular brand of nationalism, generally rejects any criticism of America. From what I recall what Mr. Hansen rejects as revisionism concerning WWII, he did not challenge the criticisms of Allied actions as unfactual but as not placed within what he considers the proper context.
Frankly our POV should be whether something is Right or Wrong, not whether it is American or anti-Americanism. God is not going to judge us by whether or not were good Americans.
“. . . and the fact that soldiers die makes war hell.”
I must disagree. The fact that soldiers die in war is not an instrinsic evil. The only wars that don’t involve soldiers dying are the wars that don’t happen — and sometimes war is not only just, but a moral obligation and an act of charity.
“There is a pattern here. Western elites — the beneficiaries of 60 years of peace and prosperity achieved by the sacrifices to defeat fascism and Communism — are unhappy in their late middle age, and show little gratitude for, or any idea about, what gave them such latitude. If they cannot find perfection in history, they see no good at all. So leisured American academics tell us that Iwo Jima was unnecessary, if not a racist campaign, that Hiroshima had little military value but instead was a strategic ploy to impress Stalin, and that the GI was racist, undisciplined, and reliant only on money and material largess.
There are two disturbing things about the current revisionism that transcend the human need to question orthodoxy. The first is the sheer hypocrisy of it all. Whatever mistakes and lapses committed by the Allies, they pale in comparison to the savagery of the Axis or the Communists. Post-facto critics never tell us what they would have done instead — lay off the German cities and send more ground troops into a pristine Third Reich; don’t bomb, but invade, an untouched Japan in 1946; keep out of WWII entirely; or in its aftermath invade the Soviet Union?”
Is the above a condemnation of those critics for failing to see “context” as you put it? Indeed, he condemns them for their ingratitude, their absurd expectation of perfection in history, and their hypocrisy in criticizing only the Allies, but not the Axis powers for moral lapses. This sort of thing goes on all the time within the halls of academia and within the media in this country. They lambast the military for lapses like Abu Ghraib (which was NOT policy), yet say not a word about Saddam’s torture chambers (which WAS policy). It is that type of bias which Dr. Hanson is criticizing.
There is plenty to criticize about America. Abortion, euthanasia, pornography, and all of the other elements which have been embraced by Europe are destroying what is good and decent about this country. If many Americans didn’t care about their country they wouldn’t be fighting for its ideals. We have internal war here as well as war abroad. It’s for the soul of this country.
You can hide behind your holier than thou attitude in order to distance yourself from the problems and errors committed by this country. After all, living in a cushy berth in North Carolina is a gift bought by the blood of those soldiers who died defending America from aggressors. It seems hypocritical to me to think it’s okay to allow the media and academia to promote hatred for one’s own country whilst benefitting from all of the rights and privileges that comes with being a citizen here.
I do plenty of criticizing of my country. But I’ll not allow the smug and fatuous to make unfair judgments about those who fought for their lives and the life of their nation when they do absolutely NOTHING themselves.
And if you want to call it “Americanism”, then fine. I’ll subscribe to it proudly.
RULE 1 WARNING, ATHELING2. YOU’RE BEING PROVOCATIVE IN THE THIRD GRAPH ABOVE.
Mr. Atheling2, I apologise. I was completely unaware that you knew everything about me. That you know the basis of my criticisms. That you are capable of reading the state of my mind and heart.
Obviously you are a disciple of Hansen and the neoconservatives. If you don’t agree with something they say, smear them. Attack them personally and call them every sort of thing without knowing anything about them.
[MINCED EXHORTATION TO BE THE RECIPENT OF SODOMY DELETED]. If you are the height of patriotism then you may certainly consider me as unpatriotic.
Harold Crews
Walkertown, NC
RULE 1 WARNING, HAROLD. YOU DON’T HAVE TO RESPOND IN KIND TO PROVOCATION.
That paragraph from Hanson is a good example of the rhetorical practice of “poisoning the well.” I just got accused of revisionism, in the pejorative sense, so I presently have little patience for such things.
I liked his book on the decline of classics, I don’t like most of his punditry.
Can anyone show me any documentation of what the Church’s response was to the Atomic bombings of the 1940s? It seems to me that Pius XII would have had a moral obligation to condemn the attacks.
In this instance, at least, I don’t see how silence could be justified . . .
“He also points out that it is easy to condemn those actions from an armchair POV, but taking the entire context of the situation, would we have been able to do any differently?”
This kind of reasoning sounds dangerously close to that which maintains that celibate clergymen can’t judge the morality of contraception within marriage. (Or, as Earl Butz so charmingly put it, “You no play-a the game; you no make-a the rules.” (The fake Italian accent won’t make sense to youngsters unless they are reminded that in 1975 it was customary for the bishop of Rome to be a native speaker of Italian.))
“Can anyone show me any documentation of what the Church’s response was to the Atomic bombings of the 1940s? It seems to me that Pius XII would have had a moral obligation to condemn the attacks.”
I don’t know that Pius XII spoke about the attacks specifically, but it was well known that Catholic moralists and other commentators of the time condemned terror bombing, and many of them referred to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dreden by name. It shouldn’t have taken a specific condemnation by the pope for people to know what was right and what was wrong.
“You are driving a convoy truck full of soldiers to a rendezvous point. You are crossing a narrow bridge. Suddenly, you see that a child is on the bridge, and it is too late to stop. If you swerve, you will drive off the bridge to the certain death of all those soldiers. If you continue, you will kill the child. In wartime, what is the right action?”
That moral question is not at all equivalent to the question whether to drop the bomb on Hiroshima or to firebomb Dresden. In the case of the child on the bridge, the driver does not directly intend the death of the child. (In fact, he’d be perfectly happy if the child’s guardian angel were to swoop down and save the child miraculously.) In the bombing cases, however, the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians (leading to demoralization of the civilian population and erosion of popular support for the enemy governments) is *exactly* what the bombers and their commanders intended. If a miracle had intervened and saved those civilians, then the bombers’ intention would have been thwarted.
The revisionism has a case when it comes to neglect of the USSR’s contribution to defeating Hitler. Hanson can only adress this by impugning the motives of those who disagree. Sure Stalin’s regime was horrific, but the Red Army inflicted 80% of the casualties suffered by the German Army. Had 75% of the Wehrmacht not been tied up in the USSR from 1941-1945, the Allies could never have staged a successful landing in Europe.
poker 344
poker 344