When is war justified?

[Ned]

From Molly's post:

"On the 3rd of February last, I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German government that on and after the 1st day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean.

That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meager and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed.

The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle."

Note that I said that the transition from warn and sink to no warn and sink was a result of the Brits (and the Americans too) of arming their cargo vessels with heavy weapons. Wilson is careful not to mention this so that the change in German policy seems entirely mallicious.

Then there is the matter of US ships being in quarantined waters. The US was plaining violating the quarantine (running the blockade.) When you choose to do so, you do so at one's own risk.

Also check the bit about Belgium.

Poor, poor Belgium. They CHOSE to go to war against Germany in the first instance, and CHOSE to continue the war after the forts at the Liege fell and their military position was hopeless.

When someone choses war and not peace, they somewhat take the risk that they will lose.

Poor, poor Belgium.

[Ned]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: When is war justified?

Originally posted by Heresson


again: Prussia was conquered (originally as a polish fief) 1226+ by Teutonic Knights already as a german exclave, separated from other German states by polish eastern Pomerania, still polish by ruling family and population but german-vassalised western Pomerania, and still majorly lechite Meklemburg. It remained completely exclaved until beginning of XIV century, when TK occupied eastern Pomerania (its legal status was disputed) and got temporary boarder with Brandenburg, and a longer-lasting one with polish, but vassalised by Empire Western Pomerania; since 1466 it was an exclave again, and remained so until 1773; it's not like the "corridor" was something new. Germans complaining they have no land route to it would be like if they were complaining that they have no land route to Volga German Autonomous Socialistic Republic or whatever.

Land occupied by Germans? If You mean "occupied" in military or administrative sense, what's wrong in it? If You mean by that "lands inhabited by Germans", please name a region in interwar Poland that was majorly german or at least had a big (over 20%) german minority... Germany, on the other hand, retained lands with large polish minority, or even majority.

Europe is full of history and long memories. Revenge is the norm, at least it was the norm. This is one of the reasons Washington warned us to stay out of European politics. It could only such the US into endless wars where the US has no real interest in the outcome.

The point I make about Versailles is that its border adjustments were as adverse to Germany as were the border adjustments to France in 1870. If the French would not forget and would look for the first opportunity to reverse the situation, it was easily predictable that Germany would do so as well.

The main reason Germany has acknowledged the border adjustments following WWI is the long occuppation of Germany by the US, USSR and Britain, and by the separation of Germany into two stub states. When they finally got the separation fixed and the occuppation ended, they made peace with their neighbors voluntarily. Moreover, Germany was part of NATO and the EU and was part of Europe's future, not its warring past. You have to give the US and the USSR a large part of the "credit" for this outcome, although the USSR's credit is more in the negative sense because it forced the other countries to the West into a collective security arrangement that eventually blossomed into the EU.

[Ned]

Originally posted by ElTigre
Meh. Looks like molly bloom and notyoueither already took care of Ms. Oertel's paper and the Fleming book Ned mentioned in the WW1 thread.

Anyway, I repeat what I wrote in the other thread here:

--------
Ned, this story about an Anglo-French-Belgian Alliance is bull****. In Guns of August, p. 62 (German version), Barbara Tuchman mentions that the future commander of the BEF, Sir John French, visited Belgium in 1912 in order to obtain the permission to land British troops in Belgium immediately after a German violation of Belgium's borders. The Belgian reply was that even if German troops would violate her borders, the British government would have to wait until asked by the Belgian government to send troops. If British troops would land earlier, they would be shot at.

The Belgian government vehemently insisted on its neutrality, and made it perfectly clear that its army would fight against anyone violating its territory - including France and Great Britain. For another reference, see THE LONG FUSE: An Interpretation of the Origin of World War I by Laurence Lafore, second edition, p. 198.
--------

Furthermore, I would like to ask Ned why the German government didn't mention this 'secret Belgian-British-French Alliance' in their note to the Belgian government? Why did they miss this perfect opportunity to justify their invasion? I guess your reply will be that it was a secret Alliance. But then your argument becomes entirely irrelevant as it fails to explain why Germany was justified invading Belgium, and does nothing to alleviate the fact that the German invasion was a war of aggression.

1) It is clear Germany did not know about any alliance.

2) It offered a fair deal to avoid war that was rejected.

3) I do not contend that Germany's invasion was not aggression on Belgium.

4) I contend that Belgium's resistance was insane unless she could count on immediate French and British support; and that she, in fact, received that support from both.

[ElTigre]

Originally posted by Ned


Try reading that link I posted from the diary of the American diplomate in Belgium at the time.

But, of course, anyone who disagrees with your theory of the world is a NAZI it seems. Even this diplomat from 1914.

Here's the link again.

http://www.greatwardifferent.com/Gre...m/Diary_01.htm

Quote, Ned. Nowhere in his diary describes the author pre-war hatred against the Germans. Not once. Again I ask the question: are you deliberately lying, or didn't you read the first part of his diary either, contrary to what you said in the other thread?

Oh, and just FYI, there is also this sentence in this diary:

England is trying hard to localise the conflict, and has valuable help. If she does not succeed-----

[ElTigre]

1) It is clear Germany did not know about any alliance.

OK.

2) It offered a fair deal to avoid war that was rejected.

No. See below.

3) I do not contend that Germany's invasion was not aggression on Belgium.

Great. So don't you think this might have influenced the public opinion in the United States, and played a part in the declaration of war in 1917? You keep insisting that this was all caused by vile British propaganda, but now you acknowledge that Germany fought a war of aggression and committed several war crimes in Belgium (in the other thread), so maybe this was a major reason for the entry of the US in the war?

4) I contend that Belgium's resistance was insane unless she could count on immediate French and British support; and that she, in fact, received that support from both.

Of course she could count on French and British support after a German invasion!!! DUH!!!! This was spelled out in the treaty that CREATED BELGIUM! All major European powers guaranteed Belgium's neutrality, and after the German attack France and Britain were OBLIGED to defend Belgium!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_London%2C_1839

The Treaty of London, also called the Convention of 1839, was signed on April 19, 1839. In this treaty, the European powers recognised the independence and neutrality of Belgium. Its main historical significance was Article VII, which required Belgium to remain perpetually neutral, and by implication committed the signatory powers to guard that neutrality in the event of invasion.

[..]

The signatories of the treaty (the United Kingdom, Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, and the Netherlands) now officially recognised the independent Kingdom of Belgium, and (at the United Kingdom's insistence) agreed to its neutrality.

The treaty was an important document, especially in its role in bringing about World War I. When the German Empire invaded Belgium in August 1914 in violation of the treaty, the British declared war on August 4.

Neutrality was Belgium's life principle! It was the reason why the major powers decided the country should be established and the Belgian revolution supported. This is the reason why it was unthinkable for Belgians and the Belgian king to carve to the German demands!

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Ned


Try reading that link I posted from the diary of the American diplomate in Belgium at the time.

But, of course, anyone who disagrees with your theory of the world is a NAZI it seems. Even this diplomat from 1914.

Here's the link again.

http://www.greatwardifferent.com/Gre...m/Diary_01.htm

Have you read your own source?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned


We were among the first countries to recognize Stalin's USSR in 1936, I believe, and we refused to join the anti-comintern pact.

How is this an alliance between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. pre-WWII ?

It's nothing of the sort of course.

I put this down to long-range thinking by FDR who wanted Stalin as his ally in the Far East against Japan and perhaps in Europe against Hitler.

I put that thinking down to a morning sugar rush and too much caffeine.

Do you have anything of substance to support this line of thinking ?

Factual, that is, not supernatural, or gut feeling.

Even this were not the only reason for FDR's moves, they make sense in that context.

No they don't; Japan and Russia fought a small war in northern Manchuria- F.D.R. could have taken sides then, but didn't. You don't even bother referring to American domestic politics of the time- I wonder why ?

As to the death toll BEFORE the war started, clearly Stalin was WAY, WAY ahead. He had killed tens of millions before Hitler had killed ten.

You keep saying this. I keep asking for the figures, how they break down, where the deaths occurred.

We get silence.

Again.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned


Note that I said that the transition from warn and sink to no warn and sink was a result of the Brits (and the Americans too) of arming their cargo vessels with heavy weapons. Wilson is careful not to mention this so that the change in German policy seems entirely mallicious.

Oh yawn. Note, as I said that the Germans RESUMED unrestricted U-Boat warfare.

On 4th February 1915 the Kaiser said that the North Sea was a war zone and thus all merchant shipping including the ships of neutrals were liable to sinking without warning.

The U.S. government raised a diplomatic protest, but this did not stop the sinking of the Lusitania in May of that year. There were 128 American citizens aboard.

Woodrow Wilson's foreign envoy, Colonel House, had used the Cunard line to cross the Atlantic not long before the sinking of the Lusitania.

Because of the effect of the earlier American protest, the subsequent sinking of the Lusitania, and further American protests, the German Chancellor and the Kaiser's advisers counselled using cruiser rules.

Hindenburg and Ludendorff felt that a campaign based on the Allies' economy was a better, quicker route to success than the mass slogging battles on the Western Front.

They hoped that a resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare could begin when they had a number of troops freed up to deal with neutral Denmark and the Netherlands in case they raised strenuous objections to the sinking of their vessels.

A memorandum by Henning von Holtzendorff on 22nd December 1916 suggested that resuming unrestricted U-boat warfare could win the war by the Autumn of 1917.

The Chief of the Admiralty Staff of the Navy Berlin, 22 December 1916

B 35 840 I

To the

Royal Field-Marshal

Chief of the General Staff of the Army

His Excellency v. Beneckendorff und v. Hindenburg.

Great Headquarters

Most Secret!

I have the honour to respectfully submit to your Excellency in the attachment a memorandum on the necessity for the commencement an unrestricted campaign of submarine warfare at the earliest opportunity. The memorandum is essentially a continuation of the memorandum Ref. No. 22 247 I of 27 August 1916: The Merchant Tonnage Issue and the Supply of England in 1916, which has previously been submitted to your Excellency.

The war requires a decision before autumn 1917, lest it should end in the mutual exhaustion of all parties and thus in a disaster for us. Of our enemies, Italy and France are already so severely weakened in their economic foundations that they are kept in the fight only through England's energy and resources. If we succeed to break England's backbone, the war will immediately be decided in our favour. England's backbone is the merchant tonnage, which delivers essential imports for their survival and for the military industry of the British islands and which ensures the [kingdom's] ability to pay for its imports from abroad.

http://www.gwpda.org/naval/holtzendorffmemo.htm

I'd say that's clear enough.

Poor, poor Belgium. They CHOSE to go to war against Germany in the first instance, and CHOSE to continue the war after the forts at the Liege fell and their military position was hopeless.

No, Imperial Germany chose to invade Belgian territory based on a war plan which had been updated year by year from 1905.

Imperial Germany thus chose to violate Belgian neutrality (and the neutrality of Luxembourg) for the purpose of defeating France and then Russia.

There was no German casus belli with Belgium or Luxembourg- indeed Imperial Germany was theoretically a guarantor of the independence of both.

When someone choses war and not peace, they somewhat take the risk that they will lose.

And that's just what happened to Imperial Germany and to Nazi Germany.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned


1) It is clear Germany did not know about any alliance.

This is irrelevant, even if such a 'secret alliance' existed- as I've noted, you have no evidence of this secret alliance, other than a scant reference in a high school girl's essay.

That's hardly conclusive proof.

Germany was a signatory to an international treaty guaranteeing Belgium's independence and neutrality. That does not give Germany or any other of the signatories the right to cross into Belgian territory whenever they felt like it, or to attempt to bribe the Belgian monarch with offers of money or French territory if only he'd let the Germans use Belgian land to attack France.

2) It offered a fair deal to avoid war that was rejected.

It did nothing of the sort. What is this 'fair deal' you refer to ?

What are its details ? Who offered it and to whom ?

3) I do not contend that Germany's invasion was not aggression on Belgium.

Really ? It seems to me that's exactly what you state and not imply in your post where you say:

Poor, poor Belgium. They CHOSE to go to war against Germany in the first instance

They did nothing of the sort- they chose not to be hoodwinked or bullied into letting Germany use Belgium to attack France.

4) I contend that Belgium's resistance was insane unless she could count on immediate French and British support; and that she, in fact, received that support from both.

Why the delay in the Belgian monarch's appeal to the other signatories of the treaty ?

If the foreigner, in defiance of that neutrality whose demands we have always scrupulously observed, violates our territory, he will find all the Belgians gathered about their sovereign, who will never betray his constitutional oath, and their Government, invested with the absolute confidence of the entire nation.

I have faith in our destinies; a country which is defending itself conquers the respect of all; such a country does not perish!

Address by King Albert to the Belgian Parliament, 4th August 1914

The call to the other guarantors was not made until the Belgian border had been crossed by German forces. A secret treaty is not much use if one of the signatories doesn't bother inviting the forces of his 'secret friends' to defend his territory before it has been invaded in strength.

Or hadn't that occurred to you ?

As to the Belgian army's resistance, it helped prevent the success of the Schlieffen Plan, and Belgium was never wholly occupied by Germany's forces.

Plucky little Belgium...

[Ned]

Originally posted by molly bloom

You keep saying this. I keep asking for the figures, how they break down, where the deaths occurred.

We get silence.

Again.

Why don't you change your moniker to Walter Duranty? You make Holocaust deniers look like angles.

"Pulitzer-Winning Lies
After 70 years a Pulitzer committee is reexamining Walter Duranty's Stalin whitewashes in the New York Times. How bad were they? See for yourself.
by Arnold Beichman
06/12/2003 1:40:00 PM

AT LONG LAST a Pulitzer Prize committee is looking into the possibility that the Pulitzer awarded to Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow correspondent whose dispatches covered up Stalin's infamies, might be revoked.

In order to assist in their researches, I am downloading here some of the lies contained in those dispatches, lies which the New York Times has never repudiated with the same splash as it accorded Jayson Blair's comparatively trivial lies:


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be."
--New York Times, Nov. 15, 1931, page 1

"Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."
--New York Times, August 23, 1933

"Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please. Weaklings and despondents at home may groan under the burden, but the youth and strength of the Russian people is essentially at one with the Kremlin's program, believes it worthwhile and supports it, however hard be the sledding."
--New York Times, December 9, 1932, page 6

"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."
--New York Times, May 14, 1933, page 18

"There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."
--New York Times, March 31, 1933, page 13


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I would like to add another Duranty quote, not in his dispatches, which is reported in a memoir by Zara Witkin, a Los Angeles architect, who lived in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. ("An American Engineer in Stalin's Russia: The Memoirs of Zara Witkin, 1932-1934," University of California Press ). The memoirist describes an evening during which the Moscow correspondents were discussing how to get out the story about the Stalin-made Russian famine. To get around the censorship, the UP's Eugene Lyons was telephoning the dire news of the famine to his New York office but the was ordered to stop because it was antagonizing the Kremlin. Ralph Barnes, the New York Herald Tribune reporter, turned to Duranty and asked him what he was going to write. Duranty replied:

Nothing. What are a few million dead Russians in a situation like this? Quite unimportant. This is just an incident in the sweeping historical changes here. I think the entire matter is exaggerated.

And this was at a time when peasants in Ukraine were dying of starvation at the rate of 25,000 a day.

In his masterwork about Stalin's imposed famine on Ukraine, "Harvest of Sorrow," Robert Conquest has written:

As one of the best known correspondents in the world for one of the best known newspapers in the world, Mr. Duranty's denial that there was a famine was accepted as gospel. Thus Mr. Duranty gulled not only the readers of the New York Times but because of the newspaper's prestige, he influenced the thinking of countless thousands of other readers about the character of Josef Stalin and the Soviet regime. And he certainly influenced the newly-elected President Roosevelt to recognize the Soviet Union.

What is so awful about Duranty is that Times top brass suspected that Duranty was writing Stalinist propaganda, but did nothing. In her exposé "Stalin's Apologist: Walter Duranty, the New York Times's man in Moscow," S.J. Taylor makes it clear that Carr Van Anda, the managing editor, Frederick T. Birchall, an assistant managing editor, and Edwin L. James, the later managing editor, were troubled with Duranty's Moscow reporting but did nothing about it. Birchall recommended that Duranty be replaced but, says Taylor, "the recommendation fell by the wayside."

When Duranty of his own volition decided to become a special correspondent on a retainer basis for the New York Times, the newspaper published an editorial reassuring its readers that his reputation as "the most outstanding correspondent of an American newspaper during all the years of his faithful and brilliant work at Moscow will remain unimpaired in the slightest degree by the change now made." This about a man whom Malcolm Muggeridge, the Manchester Guardian correspondent and Duranty's contemporary, described as "the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in fifty years of journalism."

Duranty was one of a gaggle of Stalin's intellectual admirers. Muggeridge, whose centennial we celebrate this summer, wrote about them in these lapidary words:

Wise old [Bernard]Shaw, high-minded old [Henri]Barbusse, the venerable [Sidney and Beatrice] Webbs, [Andre] Gide the pure in heart and [Pablo] Picasso the impure, down to poor little teachers, crazed clergymen and millionaires, driveling dons and very special correspondents like Duranty, all resolved, come what might, to believe anything, however preposterous, to overlook nothing, however villainous, to approve anything, however obscurantist and brutally authoritarian, in order to be able to preserve intact the confident expectation that one of the most thorough-going, ruthless and bloody tyrannies ever to exist on earth could be relied on to champion human freedom, the brotherhood of man, and all the other good liberal causes to which they had dedicated their lives. ("Chronicles of Wasted Time," pages 275- 276.)

Let's all give a great encouraging cheer to the Pulitzer committee for undertaking a task 70 years late. And perhaps the Times will now a look back at the Herbert L. Matthews coverage of Cuba and the man he so admired, Fidel Castro.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=2791&R=112AF2302F

[Ned]

Molly, you make a good point that the unrestricted sub warfare is what caused Wilson to act. Had he not acted, Britain would have collapsed, just like the Germans calculated.

Che believes this too; but he contends we went to war to save Britain because she owed us so much money and not for any purer motives.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned


Why don't you change your moniker to Walter Duranty? You make Holocaust deniers look like angles.

Not Saxons or Jutes ?

Note when I mentioned casualties and deaths, I try to give the exact figure and a source for those figures.

When you're asked, you just get rude and insulting- as above.

You still haven't supplied facts and figures as asked.

You've just told us about a literary controversy.

This is not the same thing.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned
Molly, you make a good point that the unrestricted sub warfare is what caused Wilson to act.

Really ? I said that quite some time ago. Clearly some things take a long time to sink in, but then I would have thought resuming the killing of American crews, passengers and destroying American merchant shipping would have tested the patience of the most isolationist Republican.

Had he not acted, Britain would have collapsed, just like the Germans calculated.

The one does not follow from the other; you're trying to link Wilson's declaration of war with Great Britain beating the U-boat menace.

I mentioned the introduction of the convoy system by the British before, amongst other things, as a way of combatting the U-boats.

Clearly you've chosen to ignore that too.

Che believes this too; but he contends we went to war to save Britain because she owed us so much money and not for any purer motives.

Yes, Great Britain was buying raw materials and contributing greatly to the American economy. It also helped that Lloyds of London was a centre for marine insurance and re-insurance.

Then again, only the Germans were blowing American shipping out of the water without warning.

[ElTigre]

Originally posted by Ned
Molly, you make a good point that the unrestricted sub warfare is what caused Wilson to act. Had he not acted, Britain would have collapsed, just like the Germans calculated.

Che believes this too; but he contends we went to war to save Britain because she owed us so much money and not for any purer motives.

I think it's foolish to say that the US went to war for a single reason. IMO the US DOW had many causes: unrestricted sub warfare, German war of aggression /war crimes, effective British propaganda, economic reasons, realpolitik (balance of power), and maybe even the idealistic notion to "make the world safe for democracy". But I'm not sure about the last one...

[Ned]

In that poll, I hoped you selected "all of the above." It probably is the right answer or it appears to be the right answer after a full discussion.