Americans Are Losing The Victory

Discussion in 'Politics & Current Events' started by Ian McCracken, Oct 18, 2003.

  1. Ian McCracken

    Ian McCracken Member

    May 28, 1999
    USA
    Club:
    SS Lazio Roma
    Nat'l Team:
    Italy
    Life Magazine (1946): Americans Are Losing The Victory in Europe

    Destitute Nations Feel That The U.S. Has Failed Them

    by John Dos Passos

    We are in a cabin deep down below decks on a Navy ship jam-packed with troops that’s pitching and creaking its way across the Atlantic in a winter gale. There is a man in every bunk. There’s a man wedged into every corner. There’s a man in every chair. The air is dense with cigarette smoke and with the staleness of packed troops and sour wool.

    “Don’t think I’m sticking up for the Germans,” puts in the lanky young captain in the upper berth, “but…”

    “To hell with the Germans,” says the broad-shouldered dark lieutenant. “It’s what our boys have been doing that worries me.”

    The lieutenant has been talking about the traffic in Army property, the leaking of gasoline into the black market in France and Belgium even while the fighting was going on, the way the Army kicks the civilians around, the looting.

    “Lust, liquor and loot are the soldier’s pay,” interrupts a red-faced major.

    The lieutenant comes out with his conclusion: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” You hear these two phrases again and again in about every bull session on the shop. “Two wrongs don’t make a right” and “Don’t think I’m sticking up for the Germans, but….”

    The troops returning home are worried. “We’ve lost the peace,” men tell you. “We can’t make it stick.”

    A tour of the beaten-up cities of Europe six months after victory is a mighty sobering experience for anyone. Europeans. Friend and foe alike, look you accusingly in the face and tell you how bitterly they are disappointed in you as an American. They cite the evolution of the word “liberation.” Before the Normandy landings it meant to be freed from the tyranny of the Nazis. Now it stands in the minds of the civilians for one thing, looting.

    You try to explain to these Europeans that they expected too much. They answer that they had a right to, that after the last was America was the hope of the world. They talk about the Hoover relief, the work of the Quakers, the speeches of Woodrow Wilson. They don’t blame us for the fading of that hope. But they blame us now.

    Never has American prestige in Europe been lower. People never tire of telling you of the ignorance and rowdy-ism of American troops, of out misunderstanding of European conditions. They say that the theft and sale of Army supplies by our troops is the basis of their black market. They blame us for the corruption and disorganization of UNRRA. They blame us for the fumbling timidity of our negotiations with the Soviet Union. They tell us that our mechanical de-nazification policy in Germany is producing results opposite to those we planned. “Have you no statesmen in America?” they ask.


    Link to the rest of this fascinating article
     
  2. obie

    obie New Member

    Nov 18, 1998
    NY, NY
    Club:
    New York Red Bulls
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Multiple thoughts:

    1. No American was killed by a German, Italian, or any other insurgent following World War II. (Except, of course, the ones who died from venereal diseases -- but that's another story.)

    2. There's a passage that she highlights herself: "The time has come, for our own future security, to give the best we have to the world instead of the worst." The article was written in January 1946. The Marshall Plan was initiated in 1947 and it likely kept virtually all of Western Europe as allies to the US. Where's the Powell Plan? Where's the Wolfowitz Plan?

    3. The idea that John Dos Passos was the "Robert Fisk" of his day shows the ignorance of the blogger to her subject. By 1946 Dos Passos had covered the war in Asia extensively, and was shifting further right throughout the 1940s and 50s. He was virulently anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.

    But with all that said, the most interesting parallel between post-WWII and now is that there was a major power vacuum throughout the region that was partially filled by Western European countries, and partially filled by the Soviets. We ended up fighting that war at a very high cost for over 40 years.
     
  3. Ian McCracken

    Ian McCracken Member

    May 28, 1999
    USA
    Club:
    SS Lazio Roma
    Nat'l Team:
    Italy
  4. Dan Loney

    Dan Loney BigSoccer Supporter

    Mar 10, 2000
    Cincilluminati
    Club:
    Los Angeles Sol
    Nat'l Team:
    Philippines
    "Bump"? Obie flattened this silly re-post. You don't see Mitch Williams playing that pitch to Joe Carter over and over on his Betamax, do ya?
     
  5. Ian McCracken

    Ian McCracken Member

    May 28, 1999
    USA
    Club:
    SS Lazio Roma
    Nat'l Team:
    Italy
    Obie flattening a post...that's laughable:

    1. Minutemen of the Third Reich.(history of the Nazi Werewolf guerilla movement)

    Author: Perry Biddiscombe
    Issue: Oct, 2000

    As worries increase about neo-Nazi and skinhead violence in Germany, it is worth remembering that this type of terrorism is a nasty constant in the history of the German radical-right. A case in point is the Nazi Werewolf guerrilla movement founded by Heinrich Himmler in 1944, which fought the occupying forces of Britain, America and Russia until at least 1947.

    The Werewolves specialised in ambushes and sniping, and took the lives of many Allied and Soviet soldiers and officers -- perhaps even that of the first Soviet commandant of Berlin, General N.E. Berzarin, who was rumoured to have been waylaid in Charlottenburg during an incident in June 1945. Buildings housing Allied and Soviet staffs were favourite targets for Werewolf bombings; an explosion in the Bremen police headquarters, also in June 1945, killed five Americans and thirty-nine Germans.


    2. The Marshall Plan was implemented in 1948...THREE YEARS after the end of the war.

    3. Only obie (and a few other dozen wackos here) would trash someone for being "anti-Communist".
     
  6. fishbiproduct

    fishbiproduct New Member

    Mar 29, 2002
    Pasadena Ca.
    [​IMG]

    The beast.
    Berlin, May 1945.
     
  7. obie

    obie New Member

    Nov 18, 1998
    NY, NY
    Club:
    New York Red Bulls
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Explain to me exactly where I "trashed" Dos Passos, Hunter.
     
  8. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

    Mar 1, 1999
    San Rafael, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    This is a very selective view of the Werewolf movement which gives a very wrong impression of what happened. They had a great many differences to the current Iraq resistance which makes it a terrible comparison.
    Most of the Werewolves' actions took place while the war was going on. Even the attacks you list are just a month after the war ended. The movement very quickly fizzled out. The Iraqi resistance is getting stronger and is much more willing to engage in direct combat. The Iraqi resistance also has access to an almost infinite amount of weaponry, help from foreign nations, sympathy from a large percentage of the population, increasing level of training and increasing numbers, none of which the Werewolf movement had. The tactice used against the Werewolves are not going to work in Iraq. It is a serious and new problem, and one we have to deal with if we are going to keep our not-so-hard-fought victory.

    Here is a long review of a good book on the subject:
    http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/wer.htm
     
  9. mannyfreshstunna

    mannyfreshstunna New Member

    Feb 7, 2003
    Naperville, no less
    Spejic, everything you said is true, but Ian's point was that there WAS a resistance movement after the war.
     
  10. spejic

    spejic Cautionary example

    Mar 1, 1999
    San Rafael, CA
    Club:
    San Jose Earthquakes
    Ian doesn't care about World War II and if he did he wouldn't be posting about it here. The reason he said there was a resistance movement after the war was to make a point about our situation in Iraq. I was showing that his comparison was not at all useful.

    As a person who believes that the current occupation should continue and that a pull-out by US forces would be a catastrophe, I hope that the people in charge do not underestimate the Iraqi resistance. I don't think they are. I don't think that Condi Rice actually thinks that daily attacks are the equivalent of the Nazi werewolves, and she simply said it to try to make people worry less.
     
  11. mannyfreshstunna

    mannyfreshstunna New Member

    Feb 7, 2003
    Naperville, no less
    Whoops, you're right. Allow me to acquiesce.
     
  12. Richth76

    Richth76 New Member

    Jul 22, 1999
    Washington, D.C.
    Why is it okay to compare Iraq today to Germany Circa 1946, but not okay to compare today to Saigon circa 1966??
     
  13. oman

    oman Member

    Jan 7, 2000
    South of Frisconsin
    Saigon....

    *#*#*#*#(it-shay).
     

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