Copyright (c) 1997 - Ingrid A. Rimland
"Working counterclockwise from Gibraltar south, in 1939 the North African slaves states were controlled by Spain (across the straits), France (Morocco and Algeria), and Italy (Libya).
Bridging North Africa and Asia, we have Britain (Egypt and Palestine), France (Syria), and Turkey.
Moving into Southern Europe, we have Greece, Italy (Albania), Yugoslavia, Italy, France and back to Spain. (Parenthetical countries indicate the present name of a nation that was part of the empire of the primary name.)
Into this mixture came Italy attacking Ethiopia for a few years prior and failing badly. Germany moved in, essentially, to save Italy. However, due to the general war in Europe, Resistance France and Britain move to save THEIR empires in North and East Africa and the Middle East. To the natives, (this meant) they would only have changed masters.
To the rest of the world, it was a horrible example of "German imperialism" - without concern for existing French and British imperialism.
The first US actions in WW II were sold to the public as stopping the German conquest of North Africa. It was not phrased in terms of the truth - that Germany was challenging the North African empires of Britain and France. Empires changed hands. That (did) not indicate a need for US involvement to preserve the previously existing empires.
In all of these matters of German imperialism and conquest, what is not addressed is that Germany was only ATTEMPTING to establish an empire and, if you like the word, "enslave" nations. What is not stated is that Britain, France and Russia already HAD such empires and, since you like the word, WERE enslaving nations - and had been for a century or two.
The Russian empire consisted of Siberia, Georgia, the Ukraine, and a number of Muslim nations comprising the southern border of the empire. The French empire consisted of part of Africa, Southeast Asia and islands in the Pacific. The British empire included major parts of Africa, including South Africa and Rhodesia in addition to the above - all of what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Australia, and Canada, including Quebec, to name the major holdings.
As if the empires were not enough, these empires were brutal and barbaric. I remand those who are not familiar with the manner in which these empires were established and maintained to history texts that were not written by the nation maintaining the empire.
It is also worth following the news in other countries for details not commonly known.
For example, in Australia from 1890 to 1960, the lighter-skinned aborigine children were forcibly taken from their parents, raised in orphanages, left uneducated in anything but the Bible, and used as free labor. Anything else you might expect to go wrong with such a system, did - including after they were too old to be considered orphans (to be) turned loose on the streets of the cities.
They barely treated the French Canadians any better in that time frame.
The French were so "loved" in Indochina that they were fighting the locals almost from the first day and did not give up until 1956.
The Algerian struggle for independence was one of the bloodiest on both sides in recent memory - and not conducted by strange foreigners but the civilized French.
The Russian suppression of religion, starving millions who would not participate in Kibbutzim, political purges of millions of people - and the rest of a list quite longer than anyone's arm - (speaks volumes).
Into all of this came upstart Germany - TALKING about doing the same thing. One can even make a case that (Germany) started doing so, but if one looks at the boundaries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire prior to it being broken up by Versailles, it is rather more clear that Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were being re-established to their pre-Versailles boundaries.
Thus we have to ask a very serious question: "What made Germany the bad guys?"
The public relations reason was that the times were different. Germany was talking about doing it to Europeans. The British and French had nobly assumed the White Man's Burden. Britain for example was able to point to having modernized India and to the ingrate Ghandi.
The non-public political reason was simply that Germany was planning to, and capable of, not only upsetting the power structure in Europe but ultimately the world. It was quite that simple.
And the US interest in this?
At most, a better deal from Britain and France in the world power structure than it could get from Germany.
But then what about what Germans were doing to Jews?
There is a very simple answer to that. There is nothing reported before the war started that amounted to anything more than civil rights violations. There is nothing that happened to them that was not being done to other peoples by the existing empires - including the United States.
Were Jews disenfranchised? So was everyone in Germany after the Reichstag fire.
Were Jews thrown out of the professions and denied higher education? By the 1930s in the US, there had been a couple of colleges established for Blacks.
Were Jews sent to labor camps on small pretext? Were chain gangs Black? Were Blacks lynched?
I have no interest in singling out the US. Consider the treatment of the Irish by the British, as recent as twenty years ago when armed troops fired on unarmed civilians by the holier-than-thou SAS.
Are not the Irish Europeans? Were they treated differently from Jews in Germany in the 1930s? Yes, they were treated worse.
Was all of that small potatoes and not national policy? How about those 10 to 30 million starved-to-death Ukrainians?
But was not Kristallnacht the government-sponsored destruction of Jews? As we know, its proximate cause was a Jew killing a high ranking German diplomat in Paris.
Such rioting is today accepted behavior. It is standard operating procedure in Israel whenever an Arab kills a Jew. That the government stays away until the riot runs its course and gives no protection to the innocent Arabs is what we call plausible deniability.
And (even) after the war started, there is nothing reported that was worse than what had been done by Russia to other people before the war. And that means by religion, by numbers, by justification, by any cause that has been identified.
But perhaps it was the dictatorship that made Germany different?
The Russian Empire was ruled by a dictatorship.
You will note in this that Nazi Germany has not been elevated to any level of sainthood. Rather it has only been put in context of the times. It does not come off particularly better or worse than the nations allied against it in the war. The Allies had empires and enslaved nations at the time. German Lebensraum intentions in Eastern Europe compares favorably with British Lebensraum in Africa, Australia and Canada.
Germany wanted the Ukraine for food independence - the same reason Russia had enslaved it.
You will also note this does not set up Russia as the sole horrible example for comparison. By number of enslaved people, Russia was a piker in comparison to Britain. By diversity of enslaved people, Russia was a piker. By geographic diversity, Russia was a piker.
Other than upsetting the post WW I power balance in Europe, Germany was attempting nothing exceptional. Its methods and actions were no different from those of the established empires. Its internal affairs were not different from the internal affairs of other nations and specifically the Allies.
Yet today our perceptions of the time frame are colored by the public relations issue mentioned above. Germany was talking about doing it to Europeans. That it WAS being done to non-Europeans meant it was not within public notice. That was the White Man's Burden.
Had Britain been put on trial under the criteria of Nuremberg for its crimes in India, Nuremberg would pale in comparison. (Think of the fate of the collaborator, Gunga Din.) The same for France in Indochina and Algeria. Russians should simply have been turned over (to) Ukrainian mobs to save a lot of time and effort.
So we have here a struggle for power in the world of the 1930s - Britain, Russian, Germany, France and the United States, without a dime's worth of difference between them in today's terms - only the terms of the times."
Thought for the Day:
"Dignity does not consist in possessing honors but in deserving them."
(Aristotle)