05-08-2020, 07:46 PM
Just a reminder -- today is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the formal surrender of the demonic Third Reich, and it would be a day of gigantic festivals of celebration except that a tiny virus has prevented those. Technically the celebration was on the Ninth in the USSR because the Soviets had their own ceremony in Berlin due to logistical difficulties of getting their top generals to France...
It may be ironic that the two German generals who signed the surrenders (Alfred Jodl in Reims and Wihelm Keitel in Berlin) would be tried as major war criminals, be convicted, and be hanged for those crimes. The war was over in Europe, and there has since been no war between the major powers in Europe since them. Fear, yes, due to ideological differences and a missionary desire to establish dominion in the name of the ideology of the main winners. Free-wheeling capitalism and barracks socialism are diametric opposites in economics and politics.
The sort of war that had been commonplace in Europe as one despotic leader got angry and started a war to punish an affront was over. Democracy would become the norm... if abortively behind the Iron Curtain. Fascism died everywhere in Europe except in Spain and Portugal, whose leaders managed to stay out of the war. (It turns out that Churchill bribed Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal, which was a good deal for all concerned).
It may be ironic that the two German generals who signed the surrenders (Alfred Jodl in Reims and Wihelm Keitel in Berlin) would be tried as major war criminals, be convicted, and be hanged for those crimes. The war was over in Europe, and there has since been no war between the major powers in Europe since them. Fear, yes, due to ideological differences and a missionary desire to establish dominion in the name of the ideology of the main winners. Free-wheeling capitalism and barracks socialism are diametric opposites in economics and politics.
The sort of war that had been commonplace in Europe as one despotic leader got angry and started a war to punish an affront was over. Democracy would become the norm... if abortively behind the Iron Curtain. Fascism died everywhere in Europe except in Spain and Portugal, whose leaders managed to stay out of the war. (It turns out that Churchill bribed Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal, which was a good deal for all concerned).
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.