ZGram - 3/30/2002 - "Taki: 'What If?'"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

March 30, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Your weekend reading:

[START]

"What If?" by Taki, New York Press

   Michael Howard, or Sir Michael Howard to give him his due, is one 
of Britain's best living military historians. He is also a strategic 
thinker who writes wittily and in a concise manner. His latest work, 
The First World War, due in July, is an introduction to the Great War 
- as World War I is known in Europe - designed for those with no 
previous knowledge of the subject. At 176 pages it is an easy and 
pleasurable read, if one agrees with the premise. Which I certainly 
don't.

Keeping in mind that history is written by the victors, I was 
nevertheless shocked to see that a double standard where the British 
Empire is concerned is doing very well, thank you.

   About five years ago I had the idea to write a "What If" history 
about that great disaster, and contacted my friend George Szamuely. I 
needed a collaborator, as the high life does at times intrude where 
hard work is concerned. I also rang another friend, Lewis Lapham of 
Harper's, and asked whether he was interested in running a segment or 
two.  He told me to go ahead. Well, you know how these things are. 
George and I are not known for burning the midnight oil, and while we 
kicked the idea around, still another friend, Niall Ferguson, beat us 
to it. (Ferguson knocked it off while in the middle of writing a 
two-volume history of the Rothschilds; talk about industry.) With the 
publication of Michael Howard's opus, however, I can finally have my 
say.

   According to Howard, the first great catastrophe of the 20th 
century was Germany's international ambition.  "German unification 
had created a nation that combined the most dynamic economy in Europe 
with a regime that in many respects had hardly emerged from 
feudalism." Shock, horror! The Kaiser sought for his nation the 
status  "not only of a Great Power, but of a World Power." Now I ask 
you:
Isn't it the most natural of things that a nation with the most 
dynamic economy in Europe would seek an equivalent status 
internationally? England enjoyed such a status, lording it over half 
the world through its empire, but what was good enough for the 
English bulldog was apparently not good for the German shepherd.

   Ten million lives later, the Franco-British had prevailed, but only 
once the American Expeditionary Force had come to the rescue. The 
fact that the Germans threw in the towel with their army intact and 
in France is still argued by historians. Some insist that the British 
blockade on the German people
was the turning point. Others attribute the collapse to military 
prowess. I am of both minds. The internal moral collapse of the 
Kaiser's society had a lot to do with it. The British, as always, 
were propagandists par excellence. The Kaiser's soldiers did no more 
barbecue Belgian babies - as contemporary propaganda claimed - than 
the Brits, but it was the German army that got the credit for 
barbarism.

Which brings me to the point I wish to make.

   What would have happened, had Germany won the war? For starters, 
the most philo-Semitic nation in Europe, Germany, would have remained 
so. Six million Jews would not have disappeared, as Hitler would have 
remained a failed artist and nothing more. The dynasties would have 
survived, which means there would have been no communism with its 20 
to possibly 100 million victims. Hungary would not have been chopped 
up by Romania and Slovakia and Yugoslavia would not have become the 
unnatural federation
it became. The Ottoman Empire would  have lumbered along, Iraq would 
not have been created, nor would've Israel, Lebanon or Jordan. Russia 
would have joined the modern world - eventually. The world would have 
been led by England, Germany, France and the United States, and 
Africa would have never become the slaughterhouse it is today.

   Despite all its horrors, the Brits insist there was a moral case 
for fighting WWI, but they would say that, wouldn't they? Britannia 
did not wish Germany to spread her wings. But that was manifest 
destiny, pure and simple. So  Hitler came to power because of the 
Versailles Treaty, and I guess you
know the rest. Woodrow Wilson, a well-meaning man but criminally 
responsible for Jimmy Carter-like
naivete, has a lot to answer for. Oh yes, I almost forgot, there 
would never have been a man called Mussolini lording it over the most 
pleasant land of Europe.

Finally, socialism, the great cancer that has befallen us, would have 
remained a dream among hirsute intellectuals on the Left Bank of 
Paris. The struggle between good and evil that was WWII would never 
have taken place.

   Even in the far Orient, things would have been for the better. 
Japan was the only combatant nation that achieved its aims by joining 
the Entente. It gave her a free hand to pursue her ambitions in Asia. 
Hundreds of thousands of Chinese would not have been slaughtered, and 
Mao would have remained a
chainsmoking peasant, unknown outside his village. There never would 
have been a Vietnam War. Sure,
Churchill said the Germans are either at your throat or at your feet, 
but that was just war rhetoric. The Kaiser was a civilized man, as 
were the Germans, and had the Allies humored him and allowed Germany 
to pursue her destiny, we would today be living in a far, far better 
place.

   Volume 15, Issue 13

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Thought for the Day:

"I thank the goodness and the grace
Which on my birth have smiled,
and made me, in these Christian days,
A happy English child."

(Ann Taylor in "Hymns for Infant Minds")