Let's all go to No Lookin' Back, Texas

I see where Incurious George says he's comfortable with his decisions about the war in Iraq.

Of course he's comfortable. He still has all his feet.

Book Review 275: Endgame, 1945

ENDGAME, 1945: The Missing Final Chapter of World War II, by David Stafford. 581 pages, illustrated. Little, Brown $26.99

Canadian historian David Stafford fingered a gap in the enormous historiography of World War II – most authors (unless perhaps writing monographs) – stop when the fighting stopped. I don't know a good general history of the transition to peace and the enormous, world-shaking events that occurred in the “peacetime.”

“Endgame, 1945” isn't it, either, though not a bad job of retelling a story told many times before.

Stafford gets no further into the postwar than the Potsdam conference.

The most momentous event of the postwar period was not the consolidation of Soviet political power in a buffer zone of satellites that had been conquered by the Red Army. This was important.

More important, in the long run, was the expulsion of the Germans from the east. Stafford covers this, without remarking on its consequences.

When I say he covers it, he reports the beginnings. As the Russians advanced into East Prussia and Poland, raping and plundering and murdering, the Germans who could packed up and ran west.

Not much is said about what replaced them. In fact, in this book, the western allies get all the attention. Europe east of the Elbe is mentioned briefly and seldom.

Yet we now know that the occupation of the Russian army was a passing event. The unmixing of the national groups that had been the source of so much conflict for a thousand years was the permanent change.

In particular, the driving out of the Germans set the stage for the final act of national creation that had began in the revolutions of 1848.

A smaller example was the struggle over the presence of a minority of Italians among the Slavs of Yugoslavia. Stafford has a bit about this, but only because one of the individuals he follows along to personalize his history ended up in the Trieste area, where the struggle was sharp and deadly.

In each case, a more modern linguistic group had lorded it over a mass of politically unsophisticated peasants.

This clearing of the peoples – Stafford calls the expulsion of about 12 million Germans the biggest movement of peoples in so short a period in all history, which is about right – set up a world order in which some 200 states would be created, mostly on linguistic/cultural bases.

This was the big result of the war, although not many people seem to have understood the consequences when the United Nations Organization adopted its charter in San Francisco during this period. Astonishingly, Stafford does not mention this event.

More about the DPs, (displaced persons), who were the human expression of this momentous political rearrangement, would have been welcome. Stafford does a bit along this line, since one of the individuals he follows is Francesca Wilson, an experienced relief worker who joined UNRRA (the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency). Stafford mentions, just briefly, that this was another new thing in the world, an attempt by a conquering army to take care of the people in its path.

Wilson was frustrated by the confusion and mixed directions of the effort, which would have been a profitable path for Stafford to have traced in more detail.

“Endgame, 1945” is not a bad book, but it has been written before as well or better by others. It promises to tell the story of how “victors do not suddenly turn their swords into plowshares.” Stafford says, correctly, that peace requires “more than the absence of conflict, and is harder to build than battering cities to rubble.”

He does not do such a good job of telling that story.

Would North Korea start a war?

All the opinionators I have seen are agreed that North Korea is not likely to start a war. Most cite the apparently obvious fact that they could not win it, although that never deterred George W. Bush.

RtO has no way of assessing what the Norkoms want to do or might do. It does, however, know how similarly situated states behaved in the past 100 years. They often went to war.

Most of the war deaths of the 20th century came in fights initiated by states that had no reasonable prospect of winning. Although, as it happened, often enough they won anyway. It depends largely upon whether you have big, firm friends.

World War I began because Conrad, the chief of the Austro-Hungarian general staff, believed his army could handle Serbia (true) and its big friend Russia (false). For reasons that are hard to justify, German generals are highly thought of by most military historians.

Conrad's polyglot and disaffected conscript army did not much want to fight anyone, and some of the ones who did want to fight wanted to fight the Austrian Germans. Others were opposed to fighting fellow Slavs. Similar problems faced Saddam Hussein, but they did not prevent him from starting two wars either.

Conrad's officers, promoted on the basis of birth, religion or nationality, were, as one would expect, unimpressive. Again, like Hussein's.

On the other hand, in 1915, when it was apparent how bad the Austro-Hungarian army was, the Italians switched sides to fight the Germans. Although the Italians had been bested by even the Ethiopians at Adowa, and had had indifferent success against even the Arabs in Tripoli, they thought themselves superior. In about 20 murderous "battles of the Isonzo," neither side had any success.

Memories of Italian fecklessness failed to deter Italy from starting wars with France, Greece and Britain, against all of whom it failed in 1939-40.

Remarkably, in 1939 the German army was nervous about taking on the Poles despite an advantage of around 10 to 1. The easy victory then went to their heads, and they went off to war against the USSR not expecting even to have to fight.

They had the advantage of watching the Red Army struggle weakly against the Finns, but they should have paid more attention to the Red Army's annihilation of the Japanese Kwantung army at Nomonhan. The Germans were so confident the Russians would collapse without a fight they didn't bother to order clothing for a winter campaign. Evidently they, like George Bush, imagined an occupation would take care of itself.

Skipping over a variety of conflicts, the Vietnamese rose against the French despite few resources. This is not exactly an example of a lesser power going to war against a greater; it is more like one of history's many examples of desperate risings against an oppressor. Later, however, once they had a state, the North Vietnamese dared to take on the Americans. And they beat them, one example of an underdog winning through.

Going back to the Norkoms, in 1950 they had every rason to think they could conquer the South Koreans, who didn't even have an army. They apparently thought they could occupy the peninsula before the Americans could react, and they were almost right. But not quite.

It is hard to figure what lesson he Norkoms carried away from the 1950-53 war. My sense is that whatever hardheaded lessons were learned have been lost with the deaths of the men who learned them. As far as I can tell, 60 years of indoctrination about the victory of 1950 probably has produced a military high command that believes it to be a fact that the Koreans defeated the Americans.

Spook watch

I do not believe in any kinds of spooks. No guardian angels, no demons, no poltergeists. None of those silly superstitions.

Generally, though, I consider other people's belief in spooks to be relatively harmless, or, at least, harmful only to them and perhaps their family and friends, so who cares? However, people in positions of power and influence who believe in spooks can be very dangerous.

That's why Rev. Pat Robertson is such a threat.

Even though I'm retired from the news business, I still get press releases. Here is a scary one:

As Israel and Iran escalate their mutual threats and provocations, nuclear war is a realistic outcome, according to the newly released book by Japan's most prolific author, Ryuho Okawa.
In "The Iran-Israel Crisis: Looking For A Way to Prevent a Nuclear War" (IRH Press) Master Okawa exposes the bitter animosity between these two adversaries, but also provides hope. This book offers telling evidence "to people of all religious persuasions, cultures, and nationalities" that the world needs deeper spiritual truths to obtain answers to long-standing clashes between religions. I would be happy to provide you with a copy of Ryuho Okawa's, The Iran-Israel Crisis: Looking For a Way to Prevent a Nuclear War for review.

This most recent release from Okawa features interviews Master Okawa conducted with the guardian spirits of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, and Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel. These spiritual messages warn of more war in the Middle East and beyond, the sharp differences in their views of the United States and Japan, and the millennia-old roots of this dangerous animosity.
As the most published author in Japan with over 1000 books, Okawa has also produced over 150 spiritual messages from historians and the guardian spirits of today's living figures. He founded Happy Science in Japan in 1986, a spiritual movement with more than 12 million followers in 75 countries (10 centers in US).

Mysteries of the mail

I am waiting for a computer I bought, which was shipped from Downey, Calif. Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, I can see where it's been since. It was a surprise:

	Depart USPS Sort Facility	April 08, 2013	HONOLULU, HI 96820	Insured Signature Confirmation™ Proof of Delivery
			Processed through USPS Sort Facility	April 07, 2013, 10:20 pm	HONOLULU, HI 96820
			Depart USPS Sort Facility	April 06, 2013	WEST PALM BEACH, FL 33416
			Processed through USPS Sort Facility	April 06, 2013, 4:48 am	WEST PALM BEACH, FL 33416
			Depart USPS Sort Facility	April 05, 2013	LOS ANGELES, CA 90052
			Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility	April 04, 2013, 5:47 pm	LOS ANGELES, CA 90052
			Accepted at USPS Origin Sort Facility	April 04, 2013, 4:32 pm	DOWNEY, CA 90241

	Depart USPS Sort Facility	April 08, 2013	HONOLULU, HI 96820	Insured Signature Confirmation™ Proof of Delivery
			Processed through USPS Sort Facility	April 07, 2013, 10:20 pm	HONOLULU, HI 96820
			Depart USPS Sort Facility	April 06, 2013	WEST PALM BEACH, FL 33416
			Processed through USPS Sort Facility	April 06, 2013, 4:48 am	WEST PALM BEACH, FL 33416
			Depart USPS Sort Facility	April 05, 2013	LOS ANGELES, CA 90052
			Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility	April 04, 2013, 5:47 pm	LOS ANGELES, CA 90052
			Accepted at USPS Origin Sort Facility	April 04, 2013, 4:32 pm	DOWNEY, CA 90241

Accepted at USPS Origin Sort Facility     April 04, 2013 4:32 p.m. Downey, Calif. 90241

 

Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility    April 04, 2013  5:27 p.m. Los Angeles, Calif. 90052

 

Depart USPS Sort Facility                       April 05, 2013                  Los Angeles, Calif. 90052

 

Processed through USPS Sort Facility     April 06, 2013  4:48 a.m.  West Palm Beach, Fl. 33416

 

Depart USPS Sort Facility                      April 06,2013                    West Palm Beach, Fl. 33416

 

Processed through USPS Sort Facility    April 07, 2013  10:20 p.m. Honolulu, Hi. 96820

 

Depart USPS Sort Facility                     April 08, 2013                    Honolulu, Hi. 96820

 

 

 

 

Bad example

I am back from a week in Monterey, a place I had not visited before. It is the richest, whitest town I have been in for a long time. To be precise, since spending a few weeks in Essex, Connecticut, in 1985.

It is also very clean and neat. Even the bums are well-clothed and have salon haircuts.

Monterey is also the poster child for the wickedness and stupidity of free market capitalism. When the Americans, Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese got there, starting around 1840, they found inexhaustible riches of otters, whales, salmon, sardines, abalone, deer and elk.

In the free-for-all, they quickly exhausted them.

This orgy of destruction would be mostly forgotten had John Steinbeck not written “Cannery Row,” a book so simple and short that even a capitalist ought to be able to understand it. They didn't, though.

Ed Ricketts, the real-life Doc of the novel, and other biologists warned the sardine packers that they were going to kill the fishery. The capitalists scoffed. The proletarians, too, for the most part, although they were not in a position to have their opinions counted.

It wasn't as if Ricketts was predicting something that had never happened before. It had happened, just about 20 years earlier, not far away in the San Juan Straits and for exactly the same cause – overfishing for canning killed the salmon fishery forever.

In the last great year of the salmon fishery, the capitalists didn't bother even to pack most of the salmon. There was thought to be an insufficient market, so the fish were caught and dumped.

The canners of sardines added a new stupidity. In their greed, they concluded that if they could eliminate labor costs, they could make even bigger profits.

Let's stop a moment and consider this labor. It was not well-paid, and since the canneries worked only half the year, was either idle or thrown upon other resources half the time. No worker did well out of sardines, but since unrestrained finance capitalism had wrecked the economy, they were desperate for anything.

It is often claimed that market forces allocate resources better than any other method ever tried. Monterey proves this to be nonsense.

The greatest utility value, to humans, of the Pacific sardine was as a food fish. It was cheap protein, as little as 10 cents a case before World War I. The early canners boiled the innards, heads and trash to a slurry, which was dried, sacked and sold for fertilizer.

This was sensible.

However, technical advances made it possible to easily harvest and convert whole – good to eat for people – sardines into fertilizer. Since that avoided all that cannery labor, the profits to the packers were higher, even though the unit price they sold at was lower.

Government regulators sought to sustain the wealth of the fishery by imposing catch seasons. The capitalists responded by innovating; they designed factory fertilizer ships that operated in international waters. In one year, they destroyed the fishery.

It never came back. While on Cannery Row, I ate two sardines for lunch. They cost me nearly $10 a piece.

Always fasten your seatbelt

I've been on vacation in Monterey, an odd place about which RtO will have something to say when I get a moment.

Meanwhile, this story is just weird. Read the whole thing, it gets weirder and weirder.