Stardate 20040618.1206

(On Screen): Murdoc responded to my post about the Cold War (among other things, you know me).

In A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Howard Zinn, he explains how it was really the USSR that defeated Nazi Germany, since the American, British, and Canadian forces that invaded the Continent were so small compared to the masses on the Eastern Front. The Soviets, through the superiority of their system and motivation of their people, beat the Nazis. The USSR was the true military power on the planet. I'm actually not arguing with that, though I believe he overstates the case pretty badly and leaves out a lot of pertinent details. My problem is that only a couple of pages later he argues that the US had no business waging a Cold War against the USSR because it was an agrarian society that presented no threat.

It is true that the USSR did much more to defeat Germany in WWII than anyone else, by quite a long margin. But that wasn't in any way an indication that the USSR was any sort of superb military superpower at the time, and I don't know of any evidence we can derive from study of the Eastern Front which would prove that the Soviet system was superior (to the Nazi system, or to ours either) or that their people were any more motivated.

The real reason the USSR was able to defeat Germany was because Stalin was willing to sacrifice huge numbers of men to win, and finally found a top commander (Zhukov) to do it. Zhukov was ruthless enough to make those kinds of sacrifices, but also competent enough so that those sacrifices were not pointless wastes. He was able to push the Germans back and retake all the ground which had been lost, but to do so, it sometimes seems as if he paved all the territory he recaptured with the graves of Red Army soldiers.

There was a striking contrast between how the USSR and USA fought in WWII. The Red Army fought a poor man's war: men were cheap and plentiful, but equipment and supplies were dear, so men were sacrificed as needed in order to optimize the use of equipment and supplies. The US fought a rich man's war: men were considered valuable, and equipment and supplies were plentiful and cheap, so the US was willing to use up large amounts of supplies in order to reduce casualties.

For instance, if there was a stand of trees or a group of buildings which might contain enemies, the Soviets would send a platoon of men into it, and would gauge the strength of enemy forces there by how many of those men managed to come back alive. The Americans were more likely to use what is known as reconnaissance by fire, which means you order a lot of men to start shooting into the woods or buildings from cover at a distance, in hopes that if there are enemies hiding there they will assume they've been discovered and will return fire. The strength of the enemy is then gauged by the quantity of return fire. That uses up a lot of ammunition, since you shoot up a lot of empty woods and empty buildings, but if there are actually enemies then you won't usually suffer significant casualties in order to find out. But you can only fight that way if you have plenty of ammunition and don't mind using it up. The US did, because US industrial might was unmatched in the world at the time (and was rightly feared by the German top command as representing a profound military threat should America ultimately enter the war).

Nonetheless, any honest student of the European theater in WWII must conclude that Germany was primarily defeated by the USSR, with help from the US and UK. However, it is not true that the US and UK made only negligible contributions, or that the USSR could have defeated Germany without any help from the British, and in particular from the Americans.

I have not read Zinn's history and have little interest in doing so, but from what I've heard I've come to the conclusion that it bears only a slight resemblance to history as it actually happened. Most of what Zinn describes did happen at least in gross, but didn't really happen quite as he says it did. He seems to have been very selective about what he included, and he left out a hell of a lot that most historians used to think was relevant. His explanations of what led to certain events are virtually total moonshine.

I'm also not particularly surprised to learn that Zinn's book contains the kind of profound contradictions Murdoc mentions. In the "new" "enlightened" approach to history, you don't study historical events in order to learn the consequences and results of certain kinds of decisions and policies. History is a source of lessons, but you don't study history and derive lessons from past events. The lesson comes first. The conclusion is already known. You study history to find justifications for that lesson, but you already know the lesson is right before you begin that study.

If history doesn't actually give you the justification you require, then you modify it as needed so that it does. That may mean you ignore some of it and emphasize other parts, or it may require you to rewrite it so that it happens the way it should have happened. This is a fund