by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/p>\n This article appeared in the\u00a0<\/i>Wall Street Journal\u00a0on May\u00a09,\u00a02005.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n P<\/span>resident Bush is in Moscow’s Red Square today, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945. Less than four years earlier, Hitler had declared war on the “cowboys” of the U.S. following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. When America in response entered the world conflagration, the Nazis had already been fighting Britain for 27 months and the Soviet Union for over five \u2014 and seemed days away from knocking the Russians out of the war. The ascendant Reich and its Axis protectorates stretched from the Arctic Circle to the Sahara Desert and from the English Channel to near the suburbs of Moscow, gobbling up more territory in three years than had Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon in their entire bloody careers.<\/p>\n Just three-and-a-half years after America’s abrupt entry into the war the Nazis were not merely checked or defeated \u2014 but rather annihilated in one of the most brutal and extraordinary military achievements in history. The American ordeal was not without heartbreak and hard choices. In the present age of national furor over WMD intelligence failures and inadequately armored Humvees, we forget that World War II was largely a test of whether an America ill-prepared for war would make fewer fatal mistakes than its battle-hardened Nazi adversaries.<\/p>\n Heroic unescorted daylight bombing over Europe in 1942-43 proved an American bloodbath. If the intelligence for the Normandy invasion was impressive, the fighting during the next six weeks in the bloody hedgerows was tragically a near-disaster due to inexplicable ignorance about the landscape of the bocage, just a few thousand yards from the beaches. Well-meaning but flawed ideas about the requisite amount of armor and firepower of tanks led to permanent battlefield superiority for the Panzers, costing thousands of American lives. Pleasant mediocrities like Mark Clark were sometimes promoted; scary authentic military geniuses such as George Patton were occasionally ostracized. Repeatedly, we failed to destroy retreating and trapped German armies in Sicily, Italy and Normandy in the summers of 1943 and 1944. We had not a clue about Hitler’s buildup of 250,000 attackers on the eve of the Battle of the Bulge. Strategically, critics complained that the war had broken out to prevent Eastern Europe from being absorbed by a totalitarian power only to end up ensuring that it was.<\/p>\n For all the horror of Hitler’s culture of death, to end it we were put in the morally ambiguous position of aiding Stalin, who had killed millions more of his own Russians than the Nazis ever did. An ironic dividend of the wreckage of war was that tens of millions who had once chafed under the paternalism of the aristocratic Victorian imperialists were now for the next half-century to be enslaved under the savage socialist emissaries of the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, on V-E Day, Hitler and Mussolini were gone, Europe was liberated, the Holocaust ended, and the Americans free to finish off the waning militarists of Japan. Credit for victory was not ours alone. Our British and Soviet allies had fought longer and killed far more Germans. Hitler’s follies \u2014 the invasion of the Soviet Union, the belated mobilization of the German economy, the misapplication of his frightening new weaponry, and his sometimes lunatic intrusion into military decision-making \u2014 all helped.<\/p>\n Revisionists now tend to credit the lion’s share of the Allied victory over Hitler to the Soviets who probably killed two out of every three soldiers of the Wehrmacht. Yet the Russians waged a one-front war in comparison to the Anglo-Americans. They did not invade Italy or North Africa, and opportunistically took on an already defeated Japan only in the very last days of the war. Global submarine campaigning, surface naval warfare, long-range strategic bombing, massive logistical aid \u2014 all vital to the allied success, were beyond the scope of monolithic Russian power.<\/p>\n The Americans and British went from the windswept and hard-to-supply beaches of Normandy to the heart of Germany \u2014 on some routes about the same distance as Moscow to Berlin \u2014 in about a fourth of the time it took the beleaguered Red Army to cross into Germany. How did our forefathers pull it off, and are there any wartime lessons that we can distill from their accomplishment?<\/p>\n W<\/span>hat destroyed the Nazis was the combination of American mat\u00e9riel and the zeal of large democratic conscript armies that, despite little preparation or experience, within mere months proved as formidable as their more experienced German adversaries. By the time the Americans were through, they had built 100,000 armored vehicles, 300,000 planes, 27 aircraft carriers and mustered 12 million people into the military. Indeed, by May 9, 1945, nearly 20 million more Americans were working than in 1939.<\/p>\n What the highly individualistic GI may have lacked in discipline, he more than made up with improvisation and initiative. Rambunctious Americans were innately mechanical and at home racing through Europe on their machines of mobile war. A free press at home debated decisions, and a popular and re-elected president explained how the sacrifices of war were tied to the higher good of democracy and freedom \u2014 and hence ultimately to national security. Gone was the old notion that two oceans ensured parochial Americans a pass from the perennial mess overseas or that the advent of industrial wealth abroad brought with it reasoned foreign leaders free from primitive emotions.<\/p>\n Once the Axis declared war, the U.S. did not have much patience with arguments that Hitler had legitimate grievances arising out of World War I or that clumsy American diplomacy had incited the fascists in Tokyo. Naivet\u00e9 and the appearance of weakness in the face of bullies \u2014 not an accident, an old wrong, or a misplaced word \u2014 were agreed to have prompted attack.<\/p>\n The generation that was forced to ignite enemy cities, send billions in aid to a mass-murdering Stalin, bomb French rail yards, and deploy soldiers who sometimes fought with obsolete equipment, felt that they did not have to be perfect to know that they were good \u2014 and far better than the enemy. For them, war was never an easy utopian alternative between the perfect and the bad, but instead so often a horrific conundrum of bad choices versus those far worse \u2014 victory going only to those who had greater preponderance of right, made the fewer mistakes, and outlasted the enemy.<\/p>\n \u00a92005 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Wall Street Journal This article appeared in the\u00a0Wall Street Journal\u00a0on May\u00a09,\u00a02005. President Bush is in Moscow’s Red Square today, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945. Less than four years earlier, Hitler had declared war on the “cowboys” of the U.S. following Japan’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[789],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-18S","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5699,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/iraq-a-convenient-scapegoat\/","url_meta":{"origin":4394,"position":0},"title":"Iraq a Convenient Scapegoat","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Bring up Iraq \u2014 and expect to end up in an argument. Conservatives are no different from liberals in rehashing the unpopular war, which has become a sort of whipping boy for all our subsequent problems. The Wall Street Journal\u00a0columnist Peggy Noonan recently\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iraq"","block_context":{"text":"Iraq","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iraq\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4415,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/look-and-listen-talk-of-u-s-decline-is-premature\/","url_meta":{"origin":4394,"position":1},"title":"Look and Listen: Talk of U.S. Decline is Premature","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 25, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services For more than a century, European intellectuals have predicted the decline of the United States. The German philosophers Hegel, Nietzsche and Spengler saw Western democracy and capitalism as pernicious \u2014 the unfortunate wages of a classical civilization that had lavished upon natural man\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2005"","block_context":{"text":"April 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/april-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1960,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wall-streets-disgruntles-utopians\/","url_meta":{"origin":4394,"position":2},"title":"Wall Street’s Disgruntles Utopians","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The Occupy Wall Street protesters are looking more and more like the shock troops of the Democratic Party\u2019s electoral tactic of class warfare. Responding to a question about the protesters, the President gave an oblique endorsement when he said, \u201cThe American people understand that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1621,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/of-laureates-and-cowboys\/","url_meta":{"origin":4394,"position":3},"title":"Of Laureates and Cowboys","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In politics, having power and keeping it often mean fudging a little on ideology. So conservatives sometimes convince the country to do very liberal things \u2014 think of Richard Nixon going to China, Ronald Reagan granting a blanket amnesty to illegal aliens, or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2010"","block_context":{"text":"May 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/may-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4353,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hitler-hitler-everwhere\/","url_meta":{"origin":4394,"position":4},"title":"Hitler, Hitler, Everwhere","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 28, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) was not alone when he recently compared American behavior at Guantanamo Bay to that of \"Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others - that had no concern for human beings.\" Tarring Bush\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2005"","block_context":{"text":"June 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/june-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10852,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-new-history-of-the-second-world-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":4394,"position":5},"title":"A New History of the Second World War","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 26, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The New Yorker Book Review By Joshua Rothman December 23, 2017 Photograph by FPG \/ Hulton Archive \/ Getty Victor Davis Hanson\u2019s \u201cThe Second World Wars\u201d is not a chronological retelling of the conflict but a high-altitude, statistics-saturated overview of the dynamics and constraints that shaped it. \u00a0In 1936, Charles\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/5a3d8e810e399a1bd896c473\/master\/w_727,c_limit\/Rothman-A-Fascinating-New-History-of-the-Second-World-War.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4395,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394\/revisions\/4395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}