21-05-2018, 03:18 AM
I really can't forget the following quote from a book by a famous Nazi who was flying over Stalingrad in real time:
"Kirgises, Usbeks, Tartars, Turkmenians and other Mongols. They are hanging on like grim death to every scrap of rubble, they lurk behind every remnant of a wall. For their Stalin they are a guard of fire-breathing war-beasts, and when the beasts falter, well-aimed revolver shots from their political commissars nail them, in one way or the other, to the ground they are defending. These Asiatic pupils of integral communism, and the political commissars standing at their backs, are destined to force Germany, and the whole world with her, to abandon the comfortable belief that communism is a political creed like so many others. Instead they are to prove to us first, and finally to all nations, that they are the disciples of a new gospel. And so Stalingrad is to become the Bethlehem of our century. But a Bethlehem of war and hatred, annihilation and destruction."
From Stuka Pilot, by Hans-Ulrich Rudel at page 65.
This is the most profound passage I have come across in all of my JFK research. In assessing the Ken Burns film about Vietnam, one can only usefully examine the view from 30,000 feet. Whether the directors mentioned the name of Edward Lansdale or John Foster Dulles are just questions which are basically, just so much quibbling.
I thought that the big picture regarding the Burns documentary was:
Having perused and or read the four-part critique offered by the eminent (and world traveling) Mr. Jim DiEugenio, I can only offer my somewhat different analysis of the entire 1914-1991 period. This would include the Vietnam War.
With the above in mind, it is easy to see what was happening in Vietnam. Catholicism and imperialism were trying to hold onto Vietnam. The fact that Vietnam was only 10% Catholic doesn't matter. At stake were the paychecks and livelihood of Catholic clergy in Vietnam. You could say the same thing about Cuba.
The attempt for fascists in France to hold onto Vietnam and Algeria were all about imperialism and titled nobility. And of course, there were even monarchist elements in France, despite its history.
To state things more generally, World War II and the Cold War were all one war. You could call it World War II, phase one and World War II, phase two.
The monarchies started World War I as a war of attrition to destroy a generation of their own children to wear them out and prevent Europe to becoming Republican, Liberal or worse, Democratic. In Russia, of course, the worst happenedBolshevism. Many monarchies fell, as well.
Most Europeans at the time accurately viewed Bolshevism as an effort of activist Jews in Russia, tired of pogroms, to develop an alternative to Tsarism where their own religion, Judaism, didn't offer any possibilities. This could be compared to the effort of Christ to offer Judaism to non-Jews to improve the state of mankind.
In around 1923, Father Edmund Walsh, a Jesuit professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. was sent to Russia by the Vatican to try and "cut a deal" with the Bolsheviks. This same plaintive drama was re-enacted when the same Father Walsh went to dinner with Senator Joseph McCarthy at the Colony Club in DC on January 7, 1950 to launch McCarthy's bitter anti-Communist crusade in the US.
In between, we saw the rise of fascism. Fascism was invented as the Catholic solution to Bolshevism. And this drama played out from the Spanish Civil War involving Franco starting in 1936 until fascism was laid low by FDR in 1945. (I recently read that Hitler paid his "religion tax" as a Catholic right up until he [allegedly] shot himself in April, 1945).
In Russia, the establishment religion was the Russian Orthodox Church. In England, it was the Anglican Church. For almost the rest of the entire World, it was Catholicism, except in Scandinavia where it was Lutheranism. If one excepts Communism, then the US and France were the only bastions of secularism outside Latin America (the latter being questionable).
In the U.S., because of the Establishment Clause in the Constitution, American historians (who are writing or working mostly for public schools), are required to pretend that religion simply doesn't exist for purposes of history. Similarly, to get along with our Allies and "put a face" on reality, they similarly ignore the realities of monarchism and imperialism as well. (How many American readers who are reading this passage, could write even two sentences about the Holy Roman Empire).
The Civil War in China involved mostly Protestant missionaries and Chiang Kai-shek was, in fact, a Methodist. But in the rest of the entire world, the struggle against Communism was really a death-struggle between Catholicism (or less importantly the Eastern Orthodox Religion) against an overpowering competing religionCommunism.
In 1966, I (personally) had already at age 16 gone through two three-year gift subscriptions to Time Magazine, having read most of them cover to cover. So I can remember in real time the feeling that Americans had about the "domino theory."
You basically had one third of the world capitalist and Christian, one third Communist and one third "Neutralist", (hence the phrase "Third World"). For establishment religion, one-third of the world on their side was not nearly enough. Even though Sukarno of Indonesia wasn't a Communist or Ben Bella of Algeria wasn't a Communist; IT DIDN'T
MATTER!!!
It was all or nothing. The imperialist, monarchist, establishment religion people were not going to be happy with only one-third of the world. They had been used to owning the entire planet and THEY WANTED IT BACK!!!!
So it's not a question of whether Ken Burns could have put more of some crucial details in his film: for my taste, I think he surely could have. He didn't nearly do justice to the role of military thinkers like Eisenhower and MacArthur on the issue of land wars in Asia, etc. He didn't really do justice to the real debate going on in the U.S. about the policy behind the Vietnam War. And the worst thing of all, in my opinion, he painted the North Vietnamese (for the first time) in three dimensions, but he reduced my generation of the 1960's back to an ugly version of two dimensions.
He painted the North Vietnamese Government as WAY MORE SYMPATHETIC than, say John Kerry, Joan Baez or Peter Paul and Mary. (That kinda makes me want to puke when I think about itso I won't).
To wrap up, if you analyze the history of the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] century in terms of monarchism, titled nobility and establishment religion (and their running dog, imperialism), you can't go far wrong. Try it sometime. You'll like it.
James Lateer
"Kirgises, Usbeks, Tartars, Turkmenians and other Mongols. They are hanging on like grim death to every scrap of rubble, they lurk behind every remnant of a wall. For their Stalin they are a guard of fire-breathing war-beasts, and when the beasts falter, well-aimed revolver shots from their political commissars nail them, in one way or the other, to the ground they are defending. These Asiatic pupils of integral communism, and the political commissars standing at their backs, are destined to force Germany, and the whole world with her, to abandon the comfortable belief that communism is a political creed like so many others. Instead they are to prove to us first, and finally to all nations, that they are the disciples of a new gospel. And so Stalingrad is to become the Bethlehem of our century. But a Bethlehem of war and hatred, annihilation and destruction."
From Stuka Pilot, by Hans-Ulrich Rudel at page 65.
This is the most profound passage I have come across in all of my JFK research. In assessing the Ken Burns film about Vietnam, one can only usefully examine the view from 30,000 feet. Whether the directors mentioned the name of Edward Lansdale or John Foster Dulles are just questions which are basically, just so much quibbling.
I thought that the big picture regarding the Burns documentary was:
- It presented JFK and LBJ as good guys, and Nixon clearly as a bad guy. To me this is just arbitrary and arguably sophomoric.
- The seminal event to Vietnam itself was when Ngo Dinh Diem was living at a monastery in New England and was introduced to JFK by Catholic clergy. With the impetus from JFK and Father Edmund Walsh, Diem became the South Vietnamese leader. Everything else is just minor details.
- The directors were trying to "put a face" on Vietnam. This is not because of any Political Party motive. It's because when we want to teach our kids in later generations about a war, we NEVER want to paint a war as basically evil. (That's probably a practice that dates back to the Illiad of Homer).
- Some new information in the Burns film, to me, was that President Thieu provided stable leadership from the time he took power, forward.
- The film, for the first time I have ever seen, interviews North Vietnamese veterans and attempts to portray the North Vietnamese in three dimensions, (not just as Marvel comic-type villians). They had their struggles and their weaknesses.
- And the directors made a good case, I though, that at various times, with the US, the South Vietnamese had a pretty good shot at standing on their own and surviving. It was poor decisions on the part of the US Government, they argue, that caused the unhappy outcome.
Having perused and or read the four-part critique offered by the eminent (and world traveling) Mr. Jim DiEugenio, I can only offer my somewhat different analysis of the entire 1914-1991 period. This would include the Vietnam War.
- There have been three revolutions dating back to the middle ages: the American, the French and the Russian.
- All three have been against three things and three things only: (a) monarchism, (b) establishment religion and (3) titled nobility.
- Because the US, France and Russia are the only countries outside of the Far East with revolutions, that is the reason we have never fought wars with the other two, France and Russia.
- All of our major wars have been against monarchy, titled nobility and establishment religion. By the way, imperialism in that context has represented a feature of monarchy and establishment religion.
With the above in mind, it is easy to see what was happening in Vietnam. Catholicism and imperialism were trying to hold onto Vietnam. The fact that Vietnam was only 10% Catholic doesn't matter. At stake were the paychecks and livelihood of Catholic clergy in Vietnam. You could say the same thing about Cuba.
The attempt for fascists in France to hold onto Vietnam and Algeria were all about imperialism and titled nobility. And of course, there were even monarchist elements in France, despite its history.
To state things more generally, World War II and the Cold War were all one war. You could call it World War II, phase one and World War II, phase two.
The monarchies started World War I as a war of attrition to destroy a generation of their own children to wear them out and prevent Europe to becoming Republican, Liberal or worse, Democratic. In Russia, of course, the worst happenedBolshevism. Many monarchies fell, as well.
Most Europeans at the time accurately viewed Bolshevism as an effort of activist Jews in Russia, tired of pogroms, to develop an alternative to Tsarism where their own religion, Judaism, didn't offer any possibilities. This could be compared to the effort of Christ to offer Judaism to non-Jews to improve the state of mankind.
In around 1923, Father Edmund Walsh, a Jesuit professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. was sent to Russia by the Vatican to try and "cut a deal" with the Bolsheviks. This same plaintive drama was re-enacted when the same Father Walsh went to dinner with Senator Joseph McCarthy at the Colony Club in DC on January 7, 1950 to launch McCarthy's bitter anti-Communist crusade in the US.
In between, we saw the rise of fascism. Fascism was invented as the Catholic solution to Bolshevism. And this drama played out from the Spanish Civil War involving Franco starting in 1936 until fascism was laid low by FDR in 1945. (I recently read that Hitler paid his "religion tax" as a Catholic right up until he [allegedly] shot himself in April, 1945).
In Russia, the establishment religion was the Russian Orthodox Church. In England, it was the Anglican Church. For almost the rest of the entire World, it was Catholicism, except in Scandinavia where it was Lutheranism. If one excepts Communism, then the US and France were the only bastions of secularism outside Latin America (the latter being questionable).
In the U.S., because of the Establishment Clause in the Constitution, American historians (who are writing or working mostly for public schools), are required to pretend that religion simply doesn't exist for purposes of history. Similarly, to get along with our Allies and "put a face" on reality, they similarly ignore the realities of monarchism and imperialism as well. (How many American readers who are reading this passage, could write even two sentences about the Holy Roman Empire).
The Civil War in China involved mostly Protestant missionaries and Chiang Kai-shek was, in fact, a Methodist. But in the rest of the entire world, the struggle against Communism was really a death-struggle between Catholicism (or less importantly the Eastern Orthodox Religion) against an overpowering competing religionCommunism.
In 1966, I (personally) had already at age 16 gone through two three-year gift subscriptions to Time Magazine, having read most of them cover to cover. So I can remember in real time the feeling that Americans had about the "domino theory."
You basically had one third of the world capitalist and Christian, one third Communist and one third "Neutralist", (hence the phrase "Third World"). For establishment religion, one-third of the world on their side was not nearly enough. Even though Sukarno of Indonesia wasn't a Communist or Ben Bella of Algeria wasn't a Communist; IT DIDN'T
MATTER!!!
It was all or nothing. The imperialist, monarchist, establishment religion people were not going to be happy with only one-third of the world. They had been used to owning the entire planet and THEY WANTED IT BACK!!!!
So it's not a question of whether Ken Burns could have put more of some crucial details in his film: for my taste, I think he surely could have. He didn't nearly do justice to the role of military thinkers like Eisenhower and MacArthur on the issue of land wars in Asia, etc. He didn't really do justice to the real debate going on in the U.S. about the policy behind the Vietnam War. And the worst thing of all, in my opinion, he painted the North Vietnamese (for the first time) in three dimensions, but he reduced my generation of the 1960's back to an ugly version of two dimensions.
He painted the North Vietnamese Government as WAY MORE SYMPATHETIC than, say John Kerry, Joan Baez or Peter Paul and Mary. (That kinda makes me want to puke when I think about itso I won't).
To wrap up, if you analyze the history of the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] century in terms of monarchism, titled nobility and establishment religion (and their running dog, imperialism), you can't go far wrong. Try it sometime. You'll like it.
James Lateer
