Left Wings Over Europe, or How to Start a War About Nothing

The British and the French killed millions of young Germans; shot them with machine guns, peppered with shrapnel, horribly burned to death with flamethrowers, drenched in poison gas but you are offended they lied about them.

It's really quite strange.
War isn't about a fair fight, your job as a military commander is to make sure it's as unfair as possible.

 

Hmmm, the power of propaganda to turn reality upside down...
The German "White Book" of 1915, justifying German atrocities in Belgium.
The German army in Belgium, the white book of May 1915 : Germany. Auswärtiges Amt : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Buchanan would not know real history if it bit him in the butt and chomped down hard.

 

Full text of "Left Wings Over Europe or, How to Make a War About Nothing"

And his book, 'Hitler' who he describes as "A Man of Peace".
Hitler : Wyndham Lewis : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Couldn't quickly find a copy of his later correction of his previous views; 'The Hitler Cult'.
Shame, as it sounds like by far the more interesting title.

Apparently a hugely complex character, though I only vaguely know the name.
There's a society devoted to him & his work, website run by an academic from Brum Uni:
The Wyndham Lewis Society - the world's leading resource for Wyndham Lewis information
He sounds like academic gold dust, with territory ranging from 30s/40s politics to art & culture.
Lovely quote on there under 'publications', which immediately puts one of the above (with it's references to "the aggressiveness of the Eastern slum-jew" etc.) into a better context.:

The linked article is good:
PN Review Print and Online Poetry Magazine - The Politics of Wyndham - Alan Munton - PN Review 1

(Hadn't heard of The British Union Quarterly. Shall be looking at some of that.)


But...
You don't really give a toss about all that, do you. Not one tinker's cuss. Not a sausage. Fuck all.
You want to have conversations about how hard done by Adolf was, and how 'unjust' the war was, masked beneath a kind of faux intellectualism. Saying nothing, while implying so much. Planting seeds.
It's a popular approach in certain quarters. If you get the implication there.

Are you Allan Gurfinkle?
Know anything about those twats at CODOH?

 

Since the German army was involved in the Boxer rebellion Buchanan's facts aren't.

Buchanan and those like you try anyway. Because of forums like this you aren't often successful though.

So the caption properly states the context and a real historical poster is used. I would like to know what text and for what country though. In any case you are obviously not aware of just how misbehaved the German army was in Belgium during WW 1. Indeed I've read that the occupation during WW II was much less destructive. In this case it looks like propaganda based on the truth all be it with a very evocative portrayal.

 

Now I'm getting interested in WW I. I read the text, Traditions and Encounters, I think the most popular high school text in the US, and their treatment of the lead up isn't too bad. No demonization of Wilhelm or the Germans beyond the propaganda posters. The WW II coverage, however, is unbelievably bad.

I'm disinclined to read the 'White Book', I did scan the first few pages, perhaps you could write a bit about it and give a few documented excerpts, but I doubt it. I did try to google up some info and came up with this ....

First World War Propaganda: Wellington House and the Parliamentary War Aims Committee

This is off topic but interesting, I'm not sure if this timeline is right and I'd like to find out if it is ....

While Russia had been mobilizing, the Russian War Minister gave his word of honor it was not. The Kaiser, meanwhile, begged his cousin the Czar to halt mobilization and Wilhelm reminded him of his pledge to his dying grandfather to keep peace with Russia. He also reminded his cousin “Nicky” that Germany had consistently helped Russia, and of their personal friendship. It was in vain.

France, who was historically hostile to Germany, claimed she was “bound by treaty” to Russia and responded by announcing war against Germany and, by extension, on Austria-Hungary on August 3. After Belgium refused to allow Germany’s free and safe passage, Germany responded by invading “neutral” Belgium on August 4th so as to reach Paris by the shortest possible route should her defence require it.

Now we come to the propaganda aspect ..... this is good ....

In September, 1914, Masterman invited twenty-five leading British authors to discuss ways of best promoting Britain’s interests during the war. Those who attended included Arthur Conan Doyle, Arnold Bennett, John Masefield, Ford Madox Ford, William Archer, G. K. Chesterton, Sir Henry Newbolt, John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, Gilbert Parker, G. M. Trevelyan, H. G. Wells and of course, Rudyard Kipling, inveterate Hun-hater and infamous apologist of the (British) colonial enterprise. All of the writers present at the conference were sworn to secrecy, and it was not until 1935 that their full activities became known to the public. Most had already been working for war.

They published over 1,160 inflammatory pamphlets and books between 1914 and 1918 including: ‘To Arms!’ (Doyle), ‘The Barbarism in Berlin’ (Chesterton), ‘The New Army’ (Kipling), ‘The Two Maps of Europe’ (Belloc), ‘Liberty, A Statement of the British Case’ and ‘War Scenes on the Western Front’ (Bennett), ‘Is England Apathetic?’ (Parker), ‘Gallipoli and the Old Front Line’ (Masefield), ‘The Battle of Jutland’ and ‘The Battle of the Somme’ (Buchan), ‘A Sheaf and Another Sheaf’ (Galsworthy), ‘England’s Effort and Towards the Goal’ (Ward) and ‘When Blood is Their Argument’ (Ford). One of the first pamphlets to be published was the ‘Report on Alleged German Outrages’ at the beginning of 1915 about the German Army allegedly systematically torturing Belgian civilians.

Arthur Conan Doyle, when he wasn’t trying to convince people of the reality of fairies, borrowed much of the same material he’d used with success when writing sensational accounts of the atrocities in the Belgium Congo a few short years before, such as the nasty Belgians cutting hands off of the Congolese. Doyle simply revamped the stories into Germans cutting off the hands of Belgian babies.

By 1917, Wellington House, had 54 staffers. Its governing body met daily and included advisors such as Arnold Toynbee and Lewis Namier. Namier (1888-1960) was born in Poland and wrote such notable books as “Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III” and “England in the Age of the American Revolution.” Toynbee (1889-1975) was a prolific author and pamphleteer during the War regarding “alleged German atrocities.” Toynbee drew heavily on The Bryce Report for his own “The German Terror in Belgium: An Historical Record.” He wrote a similar book on the massacre of the Armenians. He would work for the Foreign Office during both World Wars. Among Americans who took up the English cause was Dr. Charles W. Eliot (1834-1926), former President of Harvard.

Finally, to see the depth of depravity of the Allied propaganda, google babies on bayonets ....

 

And answer came there none...

It's funny how many of your larger chunks of text are lifted near verbatim from the unpleasant 'revisionist dot net', particularly their rambling 'anti-German hysteria' pages.

Well, I say funny.
Dull & depressing really.



Anyway. Far more interestingly; Nice basic but very lemony uncooked cheesecake recipe here. Had good success with it.
Anyone have a preference for the cooked sort? Never got on with it. Would like to try again.
Lemon Cheesecake

 

There wasn't any "thou should not lie" in the Laws of War.
Actually, you should have lied as much as you could and then some more.

After all, it was war, and better them than you and your people.

 

Well then, I am positively dumbfounded to learn that revisionist, historical deniers have turned their attention to re-writing the history of the Great War.

I know Hitler and his minions were masters at this sort of thing, but it takes a special sort of mind to buy into his fantasies at this late date. Depraved malevolence comes to mind although it doesn't quite do justice to the situation. I wonder what a functional MRI would reveal about the thought processes involved? The results might be as simple as Curly's description: "I'm trying to think, but nothing's happening.!"

 

First, I don't think that this type of propaganda lies characterized wars before the 20th century. I could be wrong, I think it would make a good master's thesis for a history major to trace the development of propaganda from ancient Greece to the present.

The propaganda lies and demonization of Germany in WW I led directly to WW II, they were an essential part of the buildup to war in the west. Without the propaganda lies in WW I there would have been no wildly punitive Versailles Treaty, no rationale for the war-fever documented in Lewis's book, no guarantee to Poland, and no WW II. The consequences of the propaganda lies have been catastrophic.

But that was then. However, it set a precedent. The propaganda lies during and after WW II are I'm pretty sure a verboten topic on this forum. And their consequences could be infinitely worse than WW II.

Right now we are living in 'the matrix', an upside down world in which the US is the embodiment of righteousness, to the extent that our government can drop 40,000 bombs in 2017, on persons half way around the world, Donald Trump says he wants a safer world, yet has dropped more bombs than anyone on the Middle East and no one knows or cares. Truly, it is weird !

But even that is not the worst of it. The US is putting military bases on Russia's borders .. just last week .. Russia warns British plans for military bases in South China Sea and Caribbean could lead to retaliation.

 

So what they lied as never before. You didn't post even the worst cases of that lying.
Lots of things in ww1 was as never before; gas warfare, artillery, planes, concentration camps, slave labor.
It brought results so they lied, and it harmed them later.

The Versailles Treaty had nothing to do with the lying, it was bankrupted France trying to recover thanks to German reparations.

And ww2 had nothing with the lying either. It was psychopathic Hitler trying to become another Bismarck.
The Weimar Republic renounced the use of force in diplomatic relations, signed relevant treaties, guaranteed its neighbors borders.
It's known the Germans themselves didn't want or at least were afraid, war with Czechoslovakia, Poland, or France.
This is why Hitler had to force them by Operation Himmler false flag operations including the Gleiwitz incident.
No Hitler - no ww2, as simple as that.

 

btw South China Sea is over 2000 mi from Russia, the Caribbean over 5500 mi, so you are using a strange definition of "on Russia's borders".

 

Also, Britain is not the US...

But the again, this is alternate history.

 

That rather depends on what you mean by "this type" doesn't it? Are you talking content or presentation for instance. The media available can have considerable impact as well as the resources available to both the originator and the target audience. For instance the garbage you are spewing is easily checked on the internet and it's lack of veracity verified. Propaganda by certain US citizens was a major causative factor in the Spanish American war and Abraham Lincoln was reported to have said something to the effect that the author of [u}Uncle Tom's Cabin[/u] caused the ACW.

 

Yes, this one.

 

By trying to unify the German people. OK. Bismarck was not psychopathic, neither was Hitler.

And yet the only 'evidence' you can produce that Hitler had ambitions beyond Danzig (Hitler did not even want to conquer Poland) is an anonymous protocol with no provenance of a speech on Aug. 23 that is contradicted by documented protocols and sworn evidence.

The facts are perfectly clear, Britain was itching for WW II from at least 1936 as evidenced by Lewis's book (or Hoggan's, Taylor blames British public opinion) , and started WW II to prevent the historically German city of Danzig, stolen from Germany by the Versailles treaty, from returning to German control. But, obviously Britain didn't give a damn about Danzig or Poland, and did nothing as Germany overran 1/2 of the country. So, why did Britain really start WW II?

 

I can't believe I'm responding to this dog-whistle twaddle.

That Hitler's ambitions went beyond Danzig are evidenced by the simple fact that to obtain that end, he conquered Poland, splitting it with the Soviet Union and when France and Britain refused to acquiesce he invaded Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, and France, before invading Yugoslavia, Greece, the USSR, and so on. All this, even though poor widdle Dolfie didn't even wannna conquer Poland.

Go cry in your fuc**** beer.

Yes, the facts are crystalline. Britain was woefully unprepared for war and in an effort to prevent war had appeased Hitler's demands on Czechoslovakia, just a few months earlier. "Lewis's book" is revisionist twaddle, as is this entire thread. Germany "started" World War II, initiating the Gleiwitz incident as pretext. No, Britain didn't give a damn about Poland, but they did give a damn about their undertaking with Poland, which they stood by, even though they had no "itch" for war.

 

Bismarck unified Germany...Hitler utterly destroyed it. Difference.

Bismarck did not send millions to the gas chambers...Hitler did. Difference.

Britain was "itching for World War II"? Then why were they so totally unprepared for a war they were just "itching to have?" You make no sense....This Lewis person must have been quite the loon.

Umm...Let me clue you in...World War II was started by Germany. Well, if you want to get technical, it was started by Japan, as it was not a true World War yet.

Danzig wasn't "stolen" from Germany...They lost the Great War, and suffered the consequences of such failure. Just as Germany "stole" Alsace-Lorraine from the French in 1871.

Odd then that he invaded it...You don't want to conquer something, you don't invade it. Let me quess, the German armies forgot to take the left turn at Albuquerque, and accidentally wound up rampaging through Poland?

Really? Germany spent how many months preparing to invade tiny Poland. Yet, you expect the British to undertake a massive invasion of Germany in a matter of weeks? I know this is "Alternate History," but get serious.

Because Britain took pity on those poor delusional souls who were out there starving and sniviling...It gave them a new "job", and called them "Revisionist Historians."

 

Perhaps you should read the Chamberlain thread in the Prelude to war forum, where you would discover -

#1 Hitler tried to negotiate the return of Danzig continuously for one year before the war. He went so far as to publish his program in the London press...
The Poles and the Brits were contemptuous and refused to negotiate anything.

#2 - after the German-Polish war had begun he again tried to negotiate a solution, agreeing to leave Poland to the Poles ..

John Toland's 'Adolf Hitler' describes negotiations occurring at this time:

“There is only one chance,” Fritz Hesse in London phoned Hewel of the Wilhelmstrasse, “namely that we immediately move out of Poland and offer reparation payment for damages. If Hitler does that there is probably one chance in a million of avoiding the catastrophe.” Within two hours Hewel called back. A deep voice broke in, Ribbentrop’s. “You know who is speaking,” he said but asked not to be mentioned by name. “Please go immediately to your confidant—you know who I mean [he was referring to Sir Horace Wilson]—and tell him this: the Führer is prepared to move out of Poland and to offer reparation damages provided that we receive Danzig and a road through the Corridor, if England will act as mediator in the German-Polish conflict. You are empowered by the Führer to submit this proposal to the British cabinet and initiate negotiations immediately.” ..... Hesse asked Ribbentrop to repeat the offer. He did, adding, “So there will be no misunderstanding, point out again that you are acting on the express instructions of Hitler and that this is no private action of mine.”

#3 - after Poland was conquered Hitler again tried to negotiate an end to the war -


The British had wanted the war from the beginning, they refused to negotiate a settlement before the start, they refused to negotiate in early Sept. after the war had started, they refused to negotiate in Oct. after Poland had fallen, and they would refuse again in May 1940 after France had fallen.


The peace offer in 1940 precipitated a crisis ! See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1940_War_Cabinet_Crisis

Churchill outmaneuvered Halifax by calling a meeting of his 25-member Outer Cabinet two days later, to whom he delivered a passionate speech, saying "If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground", convincing all present that Britain must fight on against Hitler whatever the cost.

Hitler went so far as to take his Last Appeal for Reason to the British public