More about War, the USA and God. Replies to contributors

‘HM’ writes :  ‘I’m not sure that I understand what Peter Hitchens is saying here: “Had we similarly failed to fulfil our obligations to Plucky Little Belgium, and made it plain in the pre-1914 years that we would fail to do so, we would still be a major economic, naval and diplomatic power…” Does “still” mean now, in 2013? “The main threat to us came not from that, but from naval, economic and diplomatic competition, and the biggest rival we had in those spheres was the USA.” How the USA was a “threat” to Britain in 1914. What were they going to do to us? “We gained nothing substantial or lasting from either war, but lost a great deal. A poor, militarily weak Britain is much more vulnerable to continental domination than a rich, imperial Britain would have been.” This suggests that Britain would have remained “imperial” if it had avoided war. Does he mean to the present day?

 

**My reply. Yes, I do mean that now, in 2013, we would be better off had we stayed out. So would a lot of other people. Had we kept out of the 1914 war, I believe Germany would have defeated France by November 1914, and imposed upon her a settlement which would have ruled her out as a major Continental power for the foreseeable future, if not forever. She was already in grave decline, and would prove in 1940 that she did not really have the wealth the capacity or the strength to maintain the position she claimed. In any case, as a Francophile, I must add that a swift defeat in 1914 would not have been anything like as bad as either Verdun or Vichy -  both consequences of the victory of the Marne.

 

Germany would then have gone on to attack Russia in full strength, probably in the Spring of 1915, a war which I believe would have ended with the cession of the territories which Germany eventually took over in the 1917 Peace of Brest-Litovsk.  The Romanov dynasty might well have ended as a result, but Russia would not have been anything like so devastated as she was after three years of war in 1917, and I doubt very much whether the Bolsheviks would have come to power. Austria-Hungary would have survived as a pensioner of Germany, though I suspect she would eventually have been absorbed, in all but name, into the ‘European Union’ contemplated by Kaiser Wilhelm and Bethmann-Hollweg. The strain of absorbing all this new territory, and of defending herself against the possibility of revenge from the East, would have preoccupied the German military for decades to come. I suspect that the naval programme ( see below) would have been quietly scaled down as an expensive toy. Germany’s need for a European empire (now satisfied through the EU, the Euro, the Single Market and Schengen) was always her chief driving force. Britain was only important to this plan insofar as she threatened to prevent it.

 

The ‘threat’ from the USA was commercial rivalry, the growing importance of the dollar, the gradual pushing of Britain out of the Western hemisphere by American power (as referred to by ‘Brian’ in an earlier thread) . This process was hugely accelerated and turned into a rapid cataclysm by the 1914-18 war, which caused us to liquidate our immense holdings In South America, until 1914 in many ways an unacknowledged part of the British Empire. Without 1914-18, it might not have happened yet.

 

The USA had also begun (Theodore Roosevelt having read Admiral Mahan on sea power, just as Tirpitz and Wilhelm II had) to create an ocean-going global navy, with Roosevelt’s ‘Great White Fleet’ touring the hemispheres to demonstrate Uncle Sam’s new-found sea power, a far more significant development than the Kaiser’s delusional ‘Luxury Fleet’. The Washington Naval Conference and the accompanying pressure from the USA to end our naval alliance with Japan could not, I believe, have taken place had Britain not bankrupted herself in the Great War. The USA achieved her objective, after all, by simply threatening to use her superior wealth to outbuild us if we didn’t sign.  These events clearly show that the USA *was* a threat to this country’s global standing (though of course not through naked violence, nor directly to our domestic liberty and independence, but in the end these amount to the same thing. If you become too weak and poor, you can’t stay free).

 

As soon as the opportunity arose, the USA seized the chance to curb our freedom of the seas (which she had long resented) , and to place restrictions upon our foreign policy through new international conventions. The 14 points and the League of Nations were early attempts by the USA to weaken the freedom of other states to act independently, consummated in the United Nations and the Nuremberg Tribunals, which (contrary to popular opinion) prosecuted Germany principally for ‘waging aggressive war’.  Work it out.  The USA, being an almost entirely contiguous land empire, and established top nation, benefits from such rules (as did the USSR from 1945-89 and as does China for the present) whereas the old-fashioned European empires scattered around the world – especially ours -  did not.  The general direction of US policy, as we have grown weaker, at Versailles, at Washington in 1920, at Placentia Bay, at Teheran and Yalta,  at Bretton Woods, and after Suez, has necessarily been damaging to Britain. It’s not usually personal, though one cannot help thinking that a resentment of the former colonial power may run deep in some American minds. But the USA could only rise at the expense of Britain, and so she did.

 

 

 

 

 

And  Patrick Harris said: ‘I'm legitimately curious what threat Mr. Hitchens believes the USA posed (or still does) to the UK in terms of diplomatic and naval competition.’

 

**See above.

 

 

Then ‘Andrew’ wrote :  ‘It is not often I disagree with Mr Hitchens but I do on this occasion. His argument is intellectually coherent and all he says is basically true. But it misses the central point and I suspect he is being deliberately provocative. To give up Europe to the Germans twice in a century would have been morally wrong - regardless of Britain's national interest. Ill-prepared, incompetently-led and all the rest of it - we did the right thing precisely because we were a Christian, Anglo-Saxon country with an often pig-headed commitment to a morality (allied to a sense of Imperial destiny) not shared by other countries in Europe.’

 

**I thought I had disposed of the case that either war was a ‘Good War’ fought for a moral purpose. Doesn’t ‘Andrew’ realise who our principal ally was in the 1941-45 conflict, which followed our defeat in the 1939-40 war. Doesn’t he realise we were committed to that hideous alliance precisely because of that defeat? And that that defeat was brought about by our (for the second time in 50 years) idiotically threatening war without an army to back our threats?

Stalin, that’s who it was, with his concentration camps and his secret police and his torture cellars, a form of rule we helped him extend almost as far west as Hanover, and most especially into Poland, the country for which we claimed to be going to war  to save in 1939. What moral purpose we served in 1914-18 I’m also not sure, as once again we were allied (from the start)with an earlier and less totalitarian Russian despotism.  In both wars we used terrible methods – the deliberate starvation of German civilians by blockade in 1914-18, and the deliberate bombing of civilians in their homes in 1942-45. Had we ‘given up Europe to the Germans in 1914’, we would not have had to ‘give Europe up to the Soviets ‘ in 1945. Nor, in my view, would there ever have been any Nazis, or any concentration camps. It was the long continuation of World War One which made these things possible.

 

I might also add  a note on the Jews of Europe. I do not believe the mad mass murder of European Jews would have taken place had Germany won a swift victory in 1914. The historical trail which leads to Hitler and the Nazis begins in the insane, demoralising horrors of the trenches. We have discussed elsewhere the fact that the ‘moral’ Allies did nothing to save the Jews from Hitler, and that the war was not fought for that reason. The effect of the 1914-18 war upon the Turkish empire and the Middle East needs a whole separate article. What if the Ottoman empire had survived?

 

 

David Anderson  writes : ‘With regard to the entry into the Great War: is it worth bringing the question of the naval arms race into the discussion here? The British government might have (rightly) been a good deal more hesitant to commit itself had German not been building an enormous blue water navy of something like 50 capital ships by 1914. With no (serious) overseas empire to protect, such a force could only serve one purpose and everyone knew what it was. German control of the low countries might have meant far less to HM's government had the Kaiserliche Marine not made Germany a serious naval power. That is not to deny that the entry in the war was a disaster for Britain and the empire, or that remain aloof with our enormous navy in reserve would not have meant that the outcome of the war wouldn't have left us in a very strong position, with regard to both Germany and America. Anyhow, I think the issue is an important one which makes the decision to declare war at least comprehensible. On the German side, one has to wonder how much more formidable her armies would have been, had men and money not been directed to the navy. Apologies if Mr. Hitchens has already commented on this elsewhere.’

 

***Certainly it influenced British thinking. But why be provoked into war, when you are strong enough to get your way without it? Our Navy was still , in 1914, quite strong enough to ensure that the Kaiser’s Fleet stayed largely in port. Had we not been distracted by a land war in 1914, we could have ensured a far greater superiority in the event of any future conflict. If Germany had won a swift land victory over France, and then a second one over Russia, in 1914 or 1915, what use would the German fleet have been beyond the Baltic and perhaps some raids on Vladivostok? Hitler pretty quickly realised that a German surface Fleet was a waste of time in pursuit of German foreign aims, and threated to have his own Navy melted down. Submariens are a different matter, but that didn’t arise until well after the war began. The German fleet was a good reason to maintain and strengthen our own, but a poor one for joining up with France and Russia in a continental war in which we had nothing at stake.

 

 

 

Finally, a word of thanks to John Vernau, whose posting is a model of clear understanding. I do urge some of my New Atheist critics to read it, as they will then be able to see what their prejudice prevents them from understand.  Perhaps if they at last understand what it is they don’t understand, and that they don’t understand it because they don’t want to understand it,  they will at least go away to their bunkers and leave me alone.  As to those atheists who say they are not moved by any hostility towards God and religion, good for them. But the New Atheists most certainly are, and often say so, and that is why they wish to assert that belief is an illegitimate choice (whereas by contrast I am quite happy to acknowledge that they may be right) . All such assertions lead inexorably to totalitarianism and censorship, as I have demonstrated elsewhere.

 

Mr Vernau wrote:

 

 ‘I notice that some contributors have referred to the "God hypothesis". The point of Hitchens' Choice (and the similar Pascal's Wager) is that they proceed from the assumption that it is impossible to know anything about the existence or not of God. Once this is agreed, the logic is impeccable. I don't think either gentleman would allow the possibility of a God hypothesis, as hypotheses by definition must be falsifiable or provable. Mr Hitchens has stated his position which I think is unassailable. His only vulnerability (in the assumption) is to solid proof of the existence or otherwise of God or some encompassing proof such as that all things are knowable. In the absence of such proof, mention of Bible quotes, flying teapots or dairy products of whatever colour are irrelevant.’