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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Hawkmoon who wrote (36853)8/10/2002 1:44:36 PM
From: Spytrdr  Respond to of 281500
 
calvin.edu

<<The Year 2000
by Joseph Goebbels

The three enemy war leaders, American sources report, have agreed at the Yalta Conference to Roosevelt's proposal for an occupation program that will destroy and exterminate the German people up until the year 2000. One must grant the somewhat grandiose nature of the proposal. It reminds one of the skyscrapers in New York that soar high into the sky, and whose upper stories sway in the wind. What will the world look like in the year 2000? Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt have determined it, at least insofar as the German people are concerned. One may however doubt if they and we will act in the predicted manner.

No one can predict the distant future, but there are some facts and possibilities that are clear over the coming fifty years. For example, none of the three enemy statesmen who developed this brilliant plan will still be alive, England will have at most 20 million inhabitants, our children's children will have had children, and that the events of this war will have sunk into myth. One can also predict with a high degree of certainty that Europe will be a united continent in the year 2000. One will fly from Berlin to Paris for breakfast in fifteen minutes, and our most modern weapons will be seen as antiques, and much more. Germany, however, will still be under military occupation according to the plans of the Yalta Conference, and the English and Americans will be training its people in democracy. How empty the brains of these three charlatans must be—at least in the case of two of them!

The third, Stalin, follows much more far-reaching goals than his two comrades. He certainly does not plan to announce them publicly, but he and his 200 million slaves will fight bitterly and toughly for them. He sees the world differently than do those plutocratic brains. He sees a future in which the entire world is subjected to the dictatorship of the Moscow Internationale, which means the Kremlin. His dream may seem fantastic and absurd, but if we Germans do not stop him, it will undoubtedly become reality. That will happen as follows: If the German people lay down their weapons, the Soviets, according to the agreement between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, would occupy all of East and Southeast Europe along with the greater part of the Reich. An iron curtain would fall over this enormous territory controlled by the Soviet Union, behind which nations would be slaughtered. The Jewish press in London and New York would probably still be applauding. All that would be left is human raw material, a stupid, fermenting mass of millions of desperate proletarianized working animals who would only know what the Kremlin wanted them to know about the rest of the world. Without leadership, they would fall helplessly into the hands of the Soviet blood dictatorship. The remainder of Europe would fall into chaotic political and social confusion that would prepare the way for the Bolshevization that will follow. Life and existence in these nations would become hell, which was after all the point of the exercise.

Aside from domestic problems of economic, social and political nature, England would suffer a declining population that would leave it even less able to defend its interests in Europe and the rest of the world than it is today. In 1948, Roosevelt's campaign for reelection would fail, just as Wilson's did after the First World War, and a Republican isolationist would become president of the USA. His first official act would likely be to withdraw American troops from the European witch's kettle. The entire population of the USA would doubtless approve. Since there would be no other military power on the continent, in the best case 60 British divisions would face 600 Soviet divisions. Bolshevism certainly would not have been idle during the period. A Labor government, perhaps even a radical half-Bolshevist one, would be in power in England. Under the pressure of public opinion whipped up by the Jewish press and a people weary of war, it would soon announce its lack of interest in Europe. How fast such things can happen is clear from the example of Poland today.

The so-called Third World War would likely be short, and our continent would be at the feet of the mechanized robots from the steppes. That would be an unfortunate situation for Bolshevism. It would without doubt leap over to England and set the land of classic democracy ablaze. The iron curtain would fall once more over this vast tragedy of nations. Over the next five years, hundreds of millions of slaves would build tanks, fighters and bombers; then the general assault on the USA would begin. The Western Hemisphere, which despite lying accusations we have never threatened, would then be in the gravest danger. One day those in the USA will curse the day in which a long-forgotten American president released a communiqué at a conference at Yalta, which will long since have sunk into legend.

The democracies are not up to dealing with the Bolshevist system, since they use entirely different methods. They are as helpless against it as were the bourgeois parties in Germany over against the communists before we took power. In contrast to the USA, the Soviet system needs to take no regard for public opinion or its people's living standard. It therefore has no need to fear American economic competition, not to mention its military. Even were the war to end as Roosevelt and Churchill imagine, the plutocratic countries would be defenseless before the competition from the Soviet Union on the world market, unless they decided to greatly reduce wages and living standards. But if they were to do that, they would not be able to resist Bolshevist agitation. However things turn out, Stalin would always be the winner and Roosevelt and Churchill the losers. The Anglo-American war policy has reached a dead end. They have called up the spirits, and can no longer get rid of them. Our predictions, beginning with Poland, are beginning to be confirmed by a remarkable series of current events. One can only smile when the English and Americans forge plans for the year 2000. They will be happy if they survive until 1950.

No thinking Englishman fails to see this today. The British Prime Minister wore a Russian fur coat at the Yalta Conference. This aroused unhappy comment in the English public. When the London news agencies later reported that it was a Canadian fur coat, no one believed them. People saw in the matter a symbol of England's subordination to the Kremlin's will. What happened to the days when England had an important, even decisive say in world affairs! An influential American Senator recently remarked: "England is only a small appendix of Europe!" His comrades treat it that way already. Has it deserved any better? At a dramatic moment in European history, it declared war against the Reich, unleashing a world conflagration that not only went out of control but threatens to leave England itself in ruins. A tiny extension of Germany into purely German territories to the East was sufficient ground to see a threat to the European balance of power. In the resulting war, England found it necessary to throw out its 200-year-old policy of the balance of power. Now a world power has entered Europe that begins to the East in Vladivostok and will not rest in the West until it has incorporated Great Britain itself into its dictatorship.

It is more than naive for the British Prime Minister to plan for the political and social status of the Reich in the year 2000. In the coming years and decades, England will probably have other concerns. It will have to fight desperately to maintain a small portion of its former power in the world. It received the first blows in the First World War, and now during the Second World War faces the final coup de grace.

One can imagine things turning out differently, but it is now too late. The Führer made numerous proposals to London, the last time four weeks before the war began. He proposed that German and British foreign policy work together, that the Reich would respect England's sea power as England would respect the Reich's land power, and that parity would exist in the air. Both powers would join in guaranteeing world peace, and the British Empire would be a critical component of that peace. Germany would even be ready to defend that Empire with military means if it were necessary. Under such conditions, Bolshevism would have been confined to its original breeding grounds. It would have been sealed off from the rest of the world. Now Bolshevism is at the Oder River. Everything depends on the steadfastness of German soldiers. Will Bolshevism to pushed back to the East, or will its fury flood over Western Europe? That is the war situation. The Yalta Communiqué does not change things in the least. Things depend only on this crisis of human culture. It will be solved by us, or it will not be solved at all. Those are the alternatives.

We Germans are not the only ones who say this. Every thinking person knows that today, as so often in the past, the German people have a European mission. We may not lose our courage, even though the mission brings with it enormous pain and suffering. The foolish know-it-alls have brought the world more than once to the edge of the abyss. At the last moment, the sight of the terrifying misery alarmed humanity enough for it to take the decisive step backwards at the critical moment. That will be the case this time as well. We have lost a great deal in this war. About all we have left are our military forces and our ideals. We may not give these up. They are the foundation of our existence and of the fulfillment of our historical obligations. It is hard and terrible, but also honorable. We were given our duty because we alone have the necessary character and steadfastness. Any other people would have collapsed. We, however, like Atlas carry the weight of the world on our shoulders and do not doubt.

Germany will not be occupied by its enemies in the year 2000. The German nation will be the intellectual leader of civilized humanity. We are earning that right in this war. This world struggle with our enemies will live on as a bad dream in people's memories. Our children and their children will erect monuments to their fathers and mothers for the pain they suffered, for the stoic steadfastness with which the bore all, for the bravery they showed, for the heroism with which they fought, for the loyalty with which they held to their Führer and his ideals in difficult times. Our hopes will come true in their world and our ideals will be reality. We must never forget that when we see the storms of this wild age reflected in the eyes of our children. Let us act so that we will earn their eternal blessings, not their curses.>>



To: Hawkmoon who wrote (36853)8/10/2002 1:53:15 PM
From: Nadine Carroll  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 281500
 
Good column by Ann Applebaum

Iraqniphobia
If he wants European support for attacking Saddam, Bush must present his case.
By Anne Applebaum
Posted Thursday, August 8, 2002, at 2:32 PM PT

Why talk about Iraq? Why talk about it now? I don't have a full explanation myself, but there it is: Suddenly, simultaneously, everyone around the world seems to be arguing about whether their country should or should not support the imminent American invasion of Iraq. As of Wednesday, President Bush was still talking mildly about exploring "all options and all tools at my disposal," including diplomacy and international pressure. No one paid him the slightest bit of attention. Possibly sparked by the leaked "invasion plans" that appeared in the New York Times (the subtleties of the New York Times' opposition to the war being lost on foreigners) and possibly sparked by Saddam Hussein's apparent jitters, the rest of the world is preparing for war, even if we aren't.

As Slate's June Thomas pointed out last week, some of the editorializing and arguing has taken forms that one might expect at this stage. Predictably, Britain's Independent newspaper declared that "However brutal the regime, Britain must not support an invasion of Iraq." As one might expect, the archbishop of Canterbury has joined other church leaders in signing a petition denouncing military action in Iraq as "immoral and illegal." That petition was, in turn, condemned by the Daily Telegraph ("there is precious little Christian doctrine to be found in the petition"). The issue has even begun to play a part in the German election campaign. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has told Germans that a vote for him is a "vote against war with Iraq," since he (and over 80 percent of Germans, according to one poll) oppose the war—whereas his Christian Democrat rival, Edmund Stoiber, does not, or at least not in principle.

And yet—before we all start harrumphing about "Munich" and "appeasement" and the growing gaps between European and American philosophies of power, I think it is important to point out that the argument isn't over. More to the point, this is an argument we can win, if we want to win it—if, of course, we want to invade Iraq.

True, there are some real differences of opinion: In London and Paris and Berlin, for example, many feel that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be the Bush administration's priority, not Iraq. Still, most of the real frustration in Europe comes not from the prospect of war with Iraq but from the silence about Iraq. The left-leaning British Guardian, which might be expected to dislike the idea of a war, has this morning attacked it not on practical or theoretical grounds, but because "no coherent military or political strategy to oust Saddam Hussein has been presented to Downing Street, even though Britain is supposedly the closest ally of George Bush." The equally left-leaning Le Monde—another obvious opponent—last week held back from actual condemnation of the attack, arguing instead that President Bush has not yet "presented evidence of Iraqi wrongdoing sufficient to justify something so serious as a war against an Arab state."

Not everybody opposes the invasion in principle, in other words: What they don't like is not being told if or why it might happen. And what they really don't like is the Bush administration's distance from the entire debate. In his press conference Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld waved away a question about the opposition of "our friends and allies," noting that the "international dialogue and discussion and debate on this issue" is at a "relatively early stage"—as if he had nothing to do with it, and it was only of marginal concern.

But Donald Rumsfeld shouldn't be commenting on this international debate: He should be leading this debate, and not just the debate on Iraq. He himself spoke of the need for a "discussion of the reality that the democratic countries of the world today, in the 21st century, are living in a world where weapons of mass destruction exist and are proliferating," and he was right to do so. So why doesn't the defense secretary—along with the American president, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and everybody else—take the argument out of the corridors of the White House, and throw it open to the world? Almost every time Rumsfeld speaks, he appears on the BBC, on Rai Uno, on news programs in Europe and Asia and Africa. If he took the trouble to describe the smoking gun, bit of paper, satellite photograph, or intelligence report that has convinced him and the rest of the administration of the need for "regime change" in Iraq, I am convinced that support would follow, not just in the United States but the rest of the world.

In fact, when senior American politicians do—rarely—address the world, it usually works. Way back in September, a few days after the terrorist attacks, President Bush made a speech in which he addressed himself directly to people from South America and South Korea who had expressed sympathy for the United States around the world. That speech, quoted and re-quoted around the world, was an immense success. It wouldn't be hard to repeat. And this matters—since most of our real "friends and allies," when you get right down to it, are democracies. In democracies, politicians respond to their constituents. If their constituents support an invasion of Iraq—on the reasonable grounds that George Bush has proved to them that Iraq has weapons that might destroy them—then the politicians will follow.

It's hard, I know, for American politicians to cease thinking of themselves as national leaders and start recognizing their wider role. Nevertheless, most mornings, when I turn on my TV set—whether I am in Warsaw or London or Paris—I see George Bush, as do millions (billions) of other people. If he spoke about Iraq, they would hear him.

slate.msn.com



To: Hawkmoon who wrote (36853)8/10/2002 8:38:51 PM
From: Bilow  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 281500
 
Hi Hawkmoon; Re the army begging Truman to fight Stalin...

I doubt that very many people who were aware of how many divisions Stalin had at the end of WW2 were keen on fighting him. Do you have the figures?

What's worse, it's doubtful that we could have convinced our allies to go along.

-- Carl