In 1934, Will Durant published the first volume, Our Oriental Heritage, of his excellent The Story of Civilization. He ends by bringing his book up to the current day, concentrating on great-power jockeying and the economic calculations of the various imperialistic systems fighting over the various pieces of Asia. For anyone willing to read five or six pages, I think you will come away with a more lively feeling of what was actually afoot at the time. He concludes with the following:
Usually in history, when two nations have contested for the same markets, the nation that has lost in the economic competition, if it is stronger in resources and armament, has made war upon its enemy.
Over at the Internet Archive, you can read pages 927-933:
Firstly I would question the WWII rank in terms of violent conflict. It is certainly outsized in terms of casualties by the Marxist - Communist regimes of violence against their own people, with death toll well in excess of 100 million. This is rarely highlighted because too many historians are aligned with Hobsbawm view that another 10 mio deaths would be acceptable to reach the communist utopia. Secondly the real point, very relevant for our days, is about the power of propaganda and ideology in manipulating and brain washing people: create the right emotional trigger and the line of useful idiots will have no end. Thirdly, the Hegelian role of the State is one of the worst calamity in history but funnily or tragically enough it attracts so many people, even reasonable ones, that don’t realize the danger of the ethical state.
There are so many things wrong with this article that one is tempted to just do a Feynman on it and say "it isn't even wrong".
How about this one? "Before you join me in blaming World War II on nationalism and socialism, though, there’s an obvious objection: These ideas have been ubiquitous for ages". Really? Ages? Some kind of proto-socialism (the kind we can look at and say that was socialist from our perspective ) maybe, but like nationalism, it really didn't get started until after the French Revolution. If you call that ages, then that's part of the problem of not understanding that history actually goes back a long way.
80 years ago today was August 16, 1943. Unless I have my history all wrong, WWII was at it's peak around then, and would end about two years later. I'm not sure what is generally considered the start of WWII. The date in the European theater and in the Asian theater are quite different.
This article was originally posted in 2019 on Bryan’s older blog, so 60 years before that was 1959. (I was also a bit confused when I saw that, until I realized.)
> What ideas led the leaders of Japan, Germany, and the Soviet Union to war? The obvious answer is extreme nationalism
The SU was communist, not nationalist. Both are collectivist. Even moderate nationalism is destructive of the individual. Collectivism, ie, anti-individualism, is the politics of the "morality" of sacrifice. Sacrifice is the "morality" of the unfocused mind. Your concern w/politics is superficial. You evade Locke, the American Revolution and Ayn Rand.
I think you're putting too much emphasis on fleeting political movements, and not enough on long term trends and ideologies. The triumphant success of the nation state, starting in the UK in about 1700, and spreading across Europe; the industrial and agricultural revolutions that accompanied it; the vast increase in population that accompanied those revolutions; developments in organisational ability and military killing power; the relative decline of the UK, with its natural interest in peace both in continental Europe and in the areas surrounding its lightly defended empire; the ethnic mix of Central and Eastern Europe; all of this made catastrophic bloodshed in the first half of the twentieth century, focused on Central and Eastern Europe, overwhelmingly likely.
The exact shape it took was contingent. But ethnic cleansing and genocide was baked in. The new ideas of the twenties and thirties didn't make much difference - the nightmare of the first world war was continued in the second.
So, considering how it appears Himmler seems to have written Trump's playbook/mantra the question would be if Trump & his NeoCons would've gotten us all closer to WW3, all the while promising he could have ended the war in Ukraine by perhaps, snapping his fingers.....
The world will breath a sigh of relief if/when he's barred from office or thrown in jail.....
In 1934, Will Durant published the first volume, Our Oriental Heritage, of his excellent The Story of Civilization. He ends by bringing his book up to the current day, concentrating on great-power jockeying and the economic calculations of the various imperialistic systems fighting over the various pieces of Asia. For anyone willing to read five or six pages, I think you will come away with a more lively feeling of what was actually afoot at the time. He concludes with the following:
Usually in history, when two nations have contested for the same markets, the nation that has lost in the economic competition, if it is stronger in resources and armament, has made war upon its enemy.
Over at the Internet Archive, you can read pages 927-933:
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.507286
Firstly I would question the WWII rank in terms of violent conflict. It is certainly outsized in terms of casualties by the Marxist - Communist regimes of violence against their own people, with death toll well in excess of 100 million. This is rarely highlighted because too many historians are aligned with Hobsbawm view that another 10 mio deaths would be acceptable to reach the communist utopia. Secondly the real point, very relevant for our days, is about the power of propaganda and ideology in manipulating and brain washing people: create the right emotional trigger and the line of useful idiots will have no end. Thirdly, the Hegelian role of the State is one of the worst calamity in history but funnily or tragically enough it attracts so many people, even reasonable ones, that don’t realize the danger of the ethical state.
There are so many things wrong with this article that one is tempted to just do a Feynman on it and say "it isn't even wrong".
How about this one? "Before you join me in blaming World War II on nationalism and socialism, though, there’s an obvious objection: These ideas have been ubiquitous for ages". Really? Ages? Some kind of proto-socialism (the kind we can look at and say that was socialist from our perspective ) maybe, but like nationalism, it really didn't get started until after the French Revolution. If you call that ages, then that's part of the problem of not understanding that history actually goes back a long way.
80 years ago today was August 16, 1943. Unless I have my history all wrong, WWII was at it's peak around then, and would end about two years later. I'm not sure what is generally considered the start of WWII. The date in the European theater and in the Asian theater are quite different.
This article was originally posted in 2019 on Bryan’s older blog, so 60 years before that was 1959. (I was also a bit confused when I saw that, until I realized.)
> What ideas led the leaders of Japan, Germany, and the Soviet Union to war? The obvious answer is extreme nationalism
The SU was communist, not nationalist. Both are collectivist. Even moderate nationalism is destructive of the individual. Collectivism, ie, anti-individualism, is the politics of the "morality" of sacrifice. Sacrifice is the "morality" of the unfocused mind. Your concern w/politics is superficial. You evade Locke, the American Revolution and Ayn Rand.
I think you're putting too much emphasis on fleeting political movements, and not enough on long term trends and ideologies. The triumphant success of the nation state, starting in the UK in about 1700, and spreading across Europe; the industrial and agricultural revolutions that accompanied it; the vast increase in population that accompanied those revolutions; developments in organisational ability and military killing power; the relative decline of the UK, with its natural interest in peace both in continental Europe and in the areas surrounding its lightly defended empire; the ethnic mix of Central and Eastern Europe; all of this made catastrophic bloodshed in the first half of the twentieth century, focused on Central and Eastern Europe, overwhelmingly likely.
The exact shape it took was contingent. But ethnic cleansing and genocide was baked in. The new ideas of the twenties and thirties didn't make much difference - the nightmare of the first world war was continued in the second.
So, considering how it appears Himmler seems to have written Trump's playbook/mantra the question would be if Trump & his NeoCons would've gotten us all closer to WW3, all the while promising he could have ended the war in Ukraine by perhaps, snapping his fingers.....
The world will breath a sigh of relief if/when he's barred from office or thrown in jail.....
How about house arrest for life at Mar-a-Lago and no politics?