John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO THE GUARDIAN ON AN ARTICLE SUGGESTING WHAT GALLIPOLI TEACHES US ABOUT THE IRAQ WAR

Gallipoli was a terrible blunder, a pet project of the same Winston Churchill who gave the world more than his fair share of arrogant ideas and barbarities, including, later, the first mass bombings of German cities, well before Hitler’s bombings.

Churchill was always an advocate of imperialism and plenty of “backbone in war” stuff, and he was fond of referring to Germans as “Huns.”

Yet his is a seemingly benign and heroic figure in history. You can’t help emotionally responding to some of his eloquent speeches and old news photos even now.

Chamberlain, a genuinely decent man in many respects who wanted to avoid a repeat of the Western Front’s unbelievable horror just 20 years later, comes down to us as a somewhat disreputable figure, in no small measure because of the contempt heaped upon him by Churchill.

The word appeasement was used and has since become a favorite insult from the ignorant Right Wing which virtually always wants war and more war.

Of course the entire set of horrors and issues around the Second World War wouldn’t exist had not Britain entered the completely pointless First World War, one its chief cheerleaders for doing so being Churchill. The only outcome of a German victory in 1914 would have been a European Continent dominated by Germany, which is exactly what we have anyway today. But Churchill’s love of British imperialism could not stand the thought of that.

I shouldn’t say “the only outcome” because the other result, an even larger one, of Germany’s success in 1914 would have been no Hitler, no World War II, no invasion of Russia with 27 million killed, and no Holocaust.

People are so easily swayed by emotional words and appealing faces, and they lose the rational aspect of their minds to the rhetoric and backstage lever-pulling of men like Churchill. Democratic politics frequently yields to the superficial charm and secret deadliness of psychopathic personalities. Witness the recent examples of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Tony Blair – all with their smiles and murders and plots possessing varying degrees of psychopathy, to a certainty.

The smarmy Tony Blair years later dedicated all his talents to making an illegal and unnecessary invasion, which we now know killed a million people, seem reasonable and morally right.

He was rewarded afterwards by immense wealth, having served the interests of immensely wealthy people, while the poor people of Iraq were left a disgusting mess of broken infrastructure, no reliable water and power, poisons and explosives everywhere, millions of refugees, no jobs, no hopes, and constant ripples of violence.

Large parts of our people still respond like murderous chimps thumping their chests at the right words put in their ears by the establishment through figures like Churchill and Blair.

I don’t see the author’s suggestions as helpful, and I don’t see any corrective for the foreseeable future. The ugly system we have works for those with power and influence, and it will keep right on working. Only the most fundamental changes in our political institutions offer any hope, and that only far into the future, if ever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

This is an important discovery for students of the period.

But I take exception to the Globe’s characterizing Rosenberg as a powerful figure.

He was not, indeed he was a quack, even by NAZI standards.

He held a position resembling that of some cardinal in the Vatican whose job it is to codify official doctrine.

He wrote stuff no one actually read and was regarded as a bit of a joke by the real players in NAZI Germany.

The real players all were men who lusted after power and influence, and many of them had little use for a good deal of NAZI doctrine.

Still, he heard a good deal of insider information, and he undoubtedly made some important observations.
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“I, for one, look forward to reading more about this discovery.
“Possibly the most shocking book I have read to date (actually I had to stop reading it, so graphic was it!) was a book I got at the Public Library and which is also available from booksellers:
The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders [Hardcover] Ernst Klee (Editor), Willi Dressen (Editor), Volker Reiss (Editor)
“Having also visited Dachau and the beaches of Normandy (twice), I believe we must never forget such atrocity and each of us has a responsibility to condemn racism in its many repugnant forms. Having lived as a stranger in a strange land, I cherish our rights and freedoms.”

Yes, but there was not just one atrocity.

Hitler was largely responsible for a war that killed more than 50 million people and destroyed the lives of countless millions of others.

The invasion of Russia was the most terrifying event in all of recorded human history with 27 million Russians being killed as well as millions of Germans.

The totality of destruction was like nothing seen before, or indeed since.

Its impact included decades of Soviet domination in Europe and the creation of Israel, which itself has been a trail of tears for millions.

The Holocaust itself was only launched using the chaos and massive brutality of the invasion of Russia as a cover.

Even Hitler didn’t dare such an undertaking without the being able to bury it, as it were, in an even greater horror.

And we should always remember that Hitler and World War War II were the result of the terrible business of World War I, a meaningless war in which 2 branches of a royal house fought for supremacy on the continent of Europe and managed to kill 20 million people.

The Treaty afterward was far too harsh on Germany, especially when the Great Depression rolled in, and the resulting set of conditions and the uncompromising acts of many statesmen gave us Hitler and another war.

Germany after WWI had a very liberal government with many enlightened views, but the West gave it no help and support in its many difficulties.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Austere lifestyle tells us very little about the character of a man as leader.

Stalin wore modest uniforms most of the time and worked about 16 hours a day.

Hitler too was a man of fairly modest tastes, wearing a modest uniform, being a vegetarian, and often having a polite tea with his secretaries.

Pope Francis’s behavior around the junta was the ethical question which immediately sprang to mind.

While not definitive, this article makes it clear enough he was not an admirable figure during those horrors.

The issue of his behavior over two arrested members of his Jesuit order seems almost a sideshow.

Many thousands were killed by being illegally arrested, drugged, and thrown out of aircraft over the ocean.

Obama has extra-judicially killed 4700 people with drones without a word of disapproval from Rome.

Any man claiming moral authority who does not speak against that is worthy of neither respect or nor admiration.

But then that has always been the behavior of the Catholic Church.

The popes blubber about peace but never speak to those starting wars or those committing great evils.

George Bush happily killed a million people with no disapproval from the pope.

Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon killed some 3 million in Vietnam without any opposition from the pope.

Hitler had a concordat with the pope.

Fascist Italy did too.

As did Napoleon.

When Catherine de’ Medici began an orgy of murder of Huguenots (protestants) in France – an event called the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre – the pope honored her “achievement” with the striking of a gold medal.

It is a long and quite shameful history, without even touching on Rome’s behavior over countless years of sexual abuse of children.

Anyone who sees the pope as a moral force in the world is just reciting meaningless words.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY JEFFREY SIMPSON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Yes, you might well have thought that.

But recall Richard Nixon’s behavior for his second election.

As anyone knew then, he pretty well (sadly) had being re-elected a certainty.

His opponent was one of the most honorable men ever to run for the presidency, but being honorable in America is little more than a sign of weakness to many: it is, after all, a country organized and administered on principles of Social Darwinism.

So despite the near-certainty of a win, Richard Nixon had a gang of thugs doing break-ins, smear-jobs, and was seeking secret contributions by the sack-full. The White House was staffed up with unpleasant men ready to do anything for their leader.

He ended, of course, by ending his own presidency.

The general frame of mind of Richard Nixon at that time is a close parallel to Harper’s today.

There are the clearest elements of paranoia, immense anger, relish for frat-boy dirty tricks, and a tendency towards monomania – all the stuff we saw with Richard Nixon and stuff we’ve seen again with the likes of a Newt Gingrich or Tom Delay.

Harper is a genuinely sick puppy.

Sometimes it happens that people who were known as narrow ideologues do rise to the office to which they are elected or appointed (in the case of judges), but not this kind of unbalanced personality.

I’m afraid so long as Harper holds his office we will continue to see Canadian political traditions of decency and ethical behavior eroded.
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“Autocracy verging on dictatorship….. Don’t agree? Just wait and watch!”

Indeed.

But the fault is also in a political system where a man of Harper’s unpleasant character, once given a technical majority 39.6% of the vote, can pretty well do anything, if he is so inclined.

We have not suffered from this serious flaw in our political structure before only because we have not been so unfortunate to have a man of Harper’s almost demonic personality in office.

Canada suffers from a democratic deficit as serious as that of many other countries one does not normally associate with the goodwill Canada has enjoyed internationally for decades.

Harper of course also realizes that his opposition is divided hopelessly, and he will take the fullest advantage of that fact.

Tyrannical-oriented personalities always have used the principle of “divide and conquer” in their governing. Hitler ran the Third Reich by creating a whole series of competing fiefdoms whose chiefs endlessly squabbled, having recourse only to Hitler himself, floating as it were above the ugly turmoil.

It is an effective method, at least for a time, if your concern is not with the people of a country but with your personal rule.

I’m certainly not suggesting any relationship between Harper and Hitler – only the parallel of the way a power-driven dark personality operates to hold power.

Well, the Liberal Party handed Harper this situation on a platter. Twice they turned down a very intelligent and effective politician, Bob Rae, on the basis that there were bad memories in Ontario of aspects of his premiership but also on the basis of a genuinely stupid effort by some back-room boys to parachute Michael Ignatieff into the leadership, a man of almost unparalleled political ineptitude.

Now they’ve given Bob Rae the job (temporarily), but it is a hopeless way to give someone a big job: the party is in pathetic shape, Rae looks without genuine support, and he is just that much older.

Jack Layton’s magnificent triumph in Quebec was in large part because the Liberals had Ignatieff hopelessly droning and sputtering. Quebec always admires genuinely eloquent men: just look at the record of leaders in the PQ or the BQ, some of the greatest firebrand speakers of our time.

So Harper’s current position is almost more an accident than a personal achievement, but here is a man whose dark animal cunning will seize every advantage he can from the luck of the draw.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A BOOK REVIEW IN THE TELEGRAPH

Hitler suffered several setbacks to his invasion, including the Greek situation. These were important, and might have made the difference, but there were other essential ingredients to the failure of Operation Barbarossa.Hitler unquestionably believed that his army would wrap up the campaign in three months, and he might have been right under ideal conditions. After all, his victories in the West had stunned the world, and he genuinely believed the Russians were untermensch, incapable of competing with Germans. And, as it proved, Stalin went into a drunken stupor after the initial success of the Germans, and no Russian general dared make a major move not approved by Stalin.

Hitler started the invasion believing in a fantasy idea of the abilities of Russians, and anyone who undertakes a great destructive task motivated by fantasy usually fails, just as the Crusaders centuries before. But it is important to keep in mind that Hitler’s racial fantasies were perhaps no sillier or less factual than the religious beliefs of many: he was not mad – several psychiatric studies have said so – but he had a foolish, superstitious, and destructive faith.

Germany’s taking over the best Russian lands – without their people or with the people reduced to slaves – was unquestionably Hitler’s great mission in life. All else was prologue. He believed he was a kind of savior for the German people in achieving their destiny.

Germany’s destiny, as he saw it, was to be able to do what America had done in building a vast empire that ultimately created the kind of economies of scale in its markets to be a great economic force in the world. Hitler understood these principles, and he knew America had had a relatively easy time of it, facing weak opponents like native people and Spanish settlers.

That is why he insisted on absolute ruthlessness in the Russian invasion: while he had contempt for Russians as people, he knew the numbers were not on his side.

He knew the invasion would be very bloody, and that is why he used it as a cover for the beginning of the Holocaust. He not only believed that the death camps would be lost in the noise and horror of the greatest battle of all time, but his strange religion caused him to believe that, with young Germans dying in the East, it was somehow right that the Jews’ numbers should be reduced.

Hitler’s underrating of the Russians included military technology, but, while Germany was in many areas more advanced, the Russians produced some very effective weapons, including perhaps most importantly the T-34 tank. Stalin also kept vast armored reserves hidden in the East, reserves of which Hitler was not fully aware. They proved decisive when the Germans had expended their first great energy.

Winter played a role in Hitler’s defeat of course, but the fierce heroism of the Russians stunned the world as well as Hitler.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DANIEL FINKELSTEIN IN THE TIMES

“Mad. But so too was Hitler”

Authoritative psychiatric studies of Hitler tell us clearly that he was not mad.

His not being mad is precisely what makes him so frightening.

Madness is tragic, not frightening.

Humans are simply capable of anything, given the right set of beliefs or obsessions.

It’s the damned human race, a gang of nasty chimpanzees with the brains to be even more destructive than their ancestors.