{"id":7998,"date":"2014-11-10T10:32:43","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T18:32:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7998"},"modified":"2014-11-10T10:32:43","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T18:32:43","slug":"comparing-the-war-on-terror-with-wwii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/comparing-the-war-on-terror-with-wwii\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparing the ‘war on terror’ with WWII"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ World Net Daily<\/a><\/p>\n

\"(Pearl
(Pearl Harbor via WND)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over the years I\u2019ve debated scholars and pundits on issues ranging from illegal immigration (no to open borders), George Bush\u2019s troop levels in Iraq (don\u2019t add and don\u2019t subtract, but change tactics and force the Iraqis to step up), and World War II (the Red Army, for all the savagery and ordeal on the Eastern front, was not mostly responsible for winning the war, and its soldiers were no more courageous than Americans at Bastogne, Normandy Beach, Iwo Jima or Okinawa).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I remember a few years ago when British journalist and historian Sir Max Hastings and I gave differing views at the D-Day Museum in New Orleans on the role of the Soviets in World War II in connection with the efficacy of totalitarian armies versus democratic forces. In passing, I made the point that much of the Red Army\u2019s zeal came not from the superior motivation (provided by the fear of being shot), but by the fact it was for nearly four years fighting on the soil of Mother Russia. And when it was not \u2013 Poland 1939, Finland 1939-40, or even Afghanistan in the 1980s \u2013 it fought far worse as an expeditionary force than did the Americans in WWI or WWII, whether at Bastogne or Iwo Jima and Okinawa.<\/p>\n

Yes, it is true that three out of four Wehrmacht soldiers were killed by the Red Army, but the vast majority of Italian and Japanese soldiers were killed by Anglo-Americans; and strategic bombing, Lend-lease, fighting in three simultaneous theaters on three continents, supplying allies, and running a submarine and surface naval campaign across the globe were all beyond the Soviets. In general, I found Hastings astute, deeply learned, and polite, and our differences in emphasis were discussed cordially and in a context of gentility.<\/p>\n

World War II redux<\/b><\/p>\n

On the topic of WWII: After Sept. 11, suddenly the war was in the news as never before, as since then it became the reference point, rightly or wrongly, for much of our current struggle with the jihadists. The 1930s appeasement was seen again in terms of preemption, whether against Saddam or Iran. With the end of the Cold War, and with the nuclear plans of North Korea and Iran, we recalled Hiroshima as never before \u2013 especially with the specter that the once bombed Japan might well be forced itself to go nuclear.<\/p>\n

How do wars end? We seem now always to seek to explain a reformed Japan and Germany in contrast to the up-in-the-air end of the Korean War or Gulf War I, seeing again the wisdom of our fathers who were intent not to repeat the indecisive armistice of World War I.<\/p>\n

Intelligence failures? After the WMD fiasco, we can now understand the failures to anticipate Pearl Harbor or know the magnitude of exactly what was going on in the death camps. Poorly armored humvees brought us back to thin-skinned Shermans and the disastrous daylight, unescorted B-17 raids of 1942-3.<\/p>\n

And the U.N. \u2013 that postwar liberal, Western notion of collective security and governance \u2013 now seems hopelessly na\u00efve, given the illiberal nature of the non-Western states in the General Assembly and Security Council. Then there was the constant looking back to Pearl Harbor immediately after 9\/11 \u2013 and wondering what would it take to truly anger the American people when we lost more on Sept. 11, 2001, than on Dec. 7, 1941, and on the home soil of the continental United States, right in the heart of our two greatest cities.<\/p>\n

Finally, we all evoked the generational differences. To me it was summed up when Democrats spent much of the past decade alleging that \u201cwe took our eye off Afghanistan by going into Iraq.\u201d My Lord! This is a country that fought Italy, Japan and Germany all at once, and was in an inferno on Okinawa while racing eastward past the Rhine, while bombing Berlin, while slogging up through Italy, while igniting the Japanese mainland. Our ancestors apparently had quite a lot more eyeballs than did their lesser sons and daughters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ World Net Daily Over the years I\u2019ve debated scholars and pundits on issues ranging from illegal immigration (no to open borders), George Bush\u2019s troop levels in Iraq (don\u2019t add and don\u2019t subtract, but change tactics and force the Iraqis to step up), and World War II (the Red Army, for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[59,102,171,524,307],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-250","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1828,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bidenism\/","url_meta":{"origin":7998,"position":0},"title":"Bidenism","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media \u201cI am very optimistic about \u2014 about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration.\u201d\u00a0\u2014 Joe Biden, February 12, 2010. Just Politics? All politicians hedge and backtrack, as the daily news proves their previous assertions and boasts wrong.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2010"","block_context":{"text":"February 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/february-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8716,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dont-trust-putin-in-the-mideast\/","url_meta":{"origin":7998,"position":1},"title":"Don\u2019t Trust Putin in the Mideast","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 8, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Contrary to the principles of American foreign policy of the last 70 years, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry tacitly invited Russia to \u201chelp\u201d monitor things in the Middle East. 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