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> They don't know who Perry was or what we did to Japan before this happened. This was taught in history when I was a boy; regardless Japan was a western ally

> They don't know who Perry was or what we did to Japan before this happened. This was taught in history when I was a boy; regardless Japan was a western ally up to and including WW1. It was Japan's aggressive expansionism that led to conflict with the USA (The greater east Asia co-prosperity sphere, an ironic name if ever there was one). The direct action leading to war was the US oil embargo against Japan. At the time the US was the primary oil producer so cutting off supply essentially guaranteed the Japanese war machine would be unable to continue conquest. The underlying premise of the strike was not to defeat the USA; Japanese leaders knew that was impossible. The goal was to consolidate their position before the USA could respond then sue for peace. > I have also heard people say, time and time again, that they believe the atomic bomb "saved lives," ... They don't know American generals were begging to not use the bomb, or to at least not use on a civilian target. That was some of the scientists involved in the project, not the military. > They have no idea of the history, of Japan's confusion, of our unwillingness to compromise despite they were saying they would surrender. When the Emperor broke the stalemate in favor of surrender he recorded his famous address to the Japanese people to be broadcast later. A faction of nationalist soldiers broke into the Royal Household and attempted to seize the recording to prevent it from being broadcast. When that failed they attempted to seize the radio station before the coup was put down. I would be very careful about arm-chair general-ing 80 years after the fact. As the recent election as proven: sometimes events take strange and unexpected turns. No one knows what would have happened absent the bombs. Maybe the Emperor votes the other way. Maybe a lot more of the military joins the coup. Or maybe Japan surrenders regardless. No one has any clue, not even the people involved. > I think most Americans know that Germany committed horrible mass murder against races of people, but not that their economy was destroyed by through financial schemes (even Keynes, mainstream macroecon's hero, told of this). This was also addressed as part of history class here in the USA. In fact we discussed it as a class and came to the conclusion that you only had two options: kill everyone or remove some of the leadership help your enemy rebuild. Trying to punish Germany with crippling reparations was known to be a bad idea at the time, but was pursued because leaders in the UK and France couldn't face up to their own part in causing the war and wanted to be able to say they got <i>something</i> for all the dead. The same attitude nearly derailed West Germany after WW2. Some idiots in the US Treasury department came over and started tearing down factories with an aim toward converting Germany into an "agrarian society". Smarter people relatively quickly realized how stupid that was and rolled out the Marshall plan instead. > It takes very strong character to be able to stand up and say that you made a mistake, and make good on it and make sure it doesn't happen again. I think one of the best ways this will never happen is just erase those mistakes from history, and declaring history written by the losers would be a good way to argue for that. If you want to talk about something in US history that is actually hand-waved away talk about post Civil War reconstruction. The Confederate leaders should have been hanged. The war was about slavery, period. The Articles of Secession explicitly call out that the confederate states are seceding because of slavery... so why does the myth of "state's rights" persist? Because we never punished the leaders and they white-washed history. In fact you could say that one element of Germany launching WW2 was the same thing: Ludendorff spent his time claiming Germany wasn't really defeated, they were all stabbed in the back and it was all the new democratically-elected government's fault. Emperor Wilhelm ceded power to Reichstag right before the shit hit the fan. It was nonsense - they were in an unwinnable position and knew it. Ludendorff tried to play the Europeans by appealing to US President Woodrow Wilson. He knew the US was on the rise and controlled the purse strings and thought he could brow-beat Wilson into accepting a more favorable peace. When Wilson told him to get stuffed he knew he was fucked. So if anything there are two cases where letting the losers write a history has proven to have disastrous consequences. That also sets the stage for the Allies attitude in WW2: There was zero chance for the Axis powers to set any terms. The Allies intended to make absolutely certain that no one could ever claim the Axis weren't really defeated, or they were stabbed in the back, or other such nonsense.

wallace_f 10y ago
I appreciate your responses. >It was Japan's aggressive expansionism that led to conflict with the USA (The greater east Asia co-prosperity sphere, an ironic name if ever there was one). The direct action leading to war was the US oil embargo against Japan. This is more than I have found most people know. However, I don't agree with your conclusions -- this is overly simplistic interpretation. You don't mention any of our awful history with Japan, for one, but I think the bigger picture is missing. One Japanese official famously said, "The West taught the East the game of poker, and after winning all the chips declared the game immoral thereafter." That's a truly elegant quote in it's explanatory power of what happened. >Trying to punish Germany with crippling reparations was known to be a bad idea at the time In my experience we were not taught this in any class in any of my history classes (in the US). Anyways Germany's economy was such that the country was suffering a humanitarian crisis, and it wasn't exactly fair or right that this was happening. So what could they do about it - They couldn't exactly just write a strongly worded letter to better the situation, either. This is why Keynes predicted WWII. Whether this lesson was remembered in the Marshall Plan like you say, at least it was never taught to me in school, and in my experience with talking to other people, it has not been taught to them, either. >something in US history that is actually hand-waved away talk about post Civil War reconstruction. The Confederate leaders should have been hanged. The war was about slavery, period. Actually, don't take this the wrong way, but this particular comment is opinionated. The fact is at the very least there is a debate about the origins of the war, whether about State's rights, slavery, or a combination of both and a need to preserve the union. What I don't appreciate is the (ironic) hand-waving my example away when talking about what really should be discussed as an example of hand waving history history away. Anyways, debating the origins of the civil war would derail the thread--and I think any reasonable person can agree that many people did not need to die, whether it be to preserve the union or defend the civil rights of African Americans (England freed their slaves with no war) -- another tragedy of American history that should be learned from to never happen again, not upheld as an example of excellence.
- rat87 10y ago
  > The fact is at the very least there is a debate about the origins of the war, whether about State's rights, slavery, or a combination of both and a need to preserve the union. The civil war was about slavery. That the south succeeded due to slavery is fact, you could argue that the north could have left the south go but the south shot first. The only state which would have succeeded over tarrifs is South Carolina. The confederate constitution banned their states from banning slavery. Also one of the main complaints that led to the succession was that the was that the north was not complying with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was extremely anti-states rights, it forced state officials to help slave catchers and removed jury rights from the suspected slave leading to kidnapping of free born black citizens of the north by slavecatchers. > Anyways, debating the origins of the civil war would derail the thread--and I think any reasonable person can agree that many people did not need to die, whether it be to preserve the union or defend the civil rights of African Americans (England freed their slaves with no war) -- another tragedy of American history that should be learned from to never happen again, not upheld as an example of excellence. I'd like to point out that Britain had fewer slaves and much less money tied up in slavery and that Haiti also needed a bloody war to end slavery. Also that Lincoln and other northern anti-slavery politicians tried to end slavery peacefully and slowly but the south refused to go along. --- Ta-Nehisi Coates is a pretty reasonable person. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/04/the-civil-war-isnt-tragic/237888/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/04/the-civi... > I think that ground is generally accepted by almost everyone, and for good reasons. Six hundred thousand people died in the Civil War, a shocking figure which doesn't really capture the toll that this sort of violence took on the country at large. And yet when I think about the Civil War I don't feel sad at all. To be honest, I feel positively fucking giddy. > And I don't think I'm abnormal because of this. Twenty-two thousand people died in the Revolutionary War, and we celebrate that with hot dogs and hamburgers every year. I'm sure that while Jews feel fairly horrible that the Holocaust happened, very few of them consider the fighting it took in order to liberate the death camps, "tragic." The Holocaust is tragic. Ending the Holocaust is not. ... > It's really simple for me. One group of Americans attempted to raise a country on property in Negroes. Another group of Americans, many of them Negroes themselves, stopped them. As surely as we lack the ability to see tragedy in violently throwing off the yoke of the English, I lack the ability to see tragedy in violently throwing off the yoke of slaveholders. > For most Americans, the Civil War is a sudden outbreak of a existential violence. But for 250 years, African-Americans lived in slavery--which is to say perpetual existential violence. I don't know what else to call a system that involves the constant threat of your children, your parents, your grandparents, being sold off, never for you to see them again. That is death. > Malcolm X was fond of saying that that there was no such thing as a "bloodless revolution." I don't know if that's true, but it surely was true of black people. The Civil War is our revolution. It ended slavery, and birthed both modern America, and modern black America. > That can never be tragic to me.

wallace_f 10y ago

I appreciate your responses. >It was Japan's aggressive expansionism that led to conflict with the USA (The greater east Asia co-prosperity sphere, an ironic name if ever there was one). The direct action leading to war was the US oil embargo against Japan. This is more than I have found most people know. However, I don't agree with your conclusions -- this is overly simplistic interpretation. You don't mention any of our awful history with Japan, for one, but I think the bigger picture is missing. One Japanese official famously said, "The West taught the East the game of poker, and after winning all the chips declared the game immoral thereafter." That's a truly elegant quote in it's explanatory power of what happened. >Trying to punish Germany with crippling reparations was known to be a bad idea at the time In my experience we were not taught this in any class in any of my history classes (in the US). Anyways Germany's economy was such that the country was suffering a humanitarian crisis, and it wasn't exactly fair or right that this was happening. So what could they do about it - They couldn't exactly just write a strongly worded letter to better the situation, either. This is why Keynes predicted WWII. Whether this lesson was remembered in the Marshall Plan like you say, at least it was never taught to me in school, and in my experience with talking to other people, it has not been taught to them, either. >something in US history that is actually hand-waved away talk about post Civil War reconstruction. The Confederate leaders should have been hanged. The war was about slavery, period. Actually, don't take this the wrong way, but this particular comment is opinionated. The fact is at the very least there is a debate about the origins of the war, whether about State's rights, slavery, or a combination of both and a need to preserve the union. What I don't appreciate is the (ironic) hand-waving my example away when talking about what really should be discussed as an example of hand waving history history away. Anyways, debating the origins of the civil war would derail the thread--and I think any reasonable person can agree that many people did not need to die, whether it be to preserve the union or defend the civil rights of African Americans (England freed their slaves with no war) -- another tragedy of American history that should be learned from to never happen again, not upheld as an example of excellence.

rat87 10y ago
> The fact is at the very least there is a debate about the origins of the war, whether about State's rights, slavery, or a combination of both and a need to preserve the union. The civil war was about slavery. That the south succeeded due to slavery is fact, you could argue that the north could have left the south go but the south shot first. The only state which would have succeeded over tarrifs is South Carolina. The confederate constitution banned their states from banning slavery. Also one of the main complaints that led to the succession was that the was that the north was not complying with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was extremely anti-states rights, it forced state officials to help slave catchers and removed jury rights from the suspected slave leading to kidnapping of free born black citizens of the north by slavecatchers. > Anyways, debating the origins of the civil war would derail the thread--and I think any reasonable person can agree that many people did not need to die, whether it be to preserve the union or defend the civil rights of African Americans (England freed their slaves with no war) -- another tragedy of American history that should be learned from to never happen again, not upheld as an example of excellence. I'd like to point out that Britain had fewer slaves and much less money tied up in slavery and that Haiti also needed a bloody war to end slavery. Also that Lincoln and other northern anti-slavery politicians tried to end slavery peacefully and slowly but the south refused to go along. --- Ta-Nehisi Coates is a pretty reasonable person. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/04/the-civil-war-isnt-tragic/237888/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/04/the-civi... > I think that ground is generally accepted by almost everyone, and for good reasons. Six hundred thousand people died in the Civil War, a shocking figure which doesn't really capture the toll that this sort of violence took on the country at large. And yet when I think about the Civil War I don't feel sad at all. To be honest, I feel positively fucking giddy. > And I don't think I'm abnormal because of this. Twenty-two thousand people died in the Revolutionary War, and we celebrate that with hot dogs and hamburgers every year. I'm sure that while Jews feel fairly horrible that the Holocaust happened, very few of them consider the fighting it took in order to liberate the death camps, "tragic." The Holocaust is tragic. Ending the Holocaust is not. ... > It's really simple for me. One group of Americans attempted to raise a country on property in Negroes. Another group of Americans, many of them Negroes themselves, stopped them. As surely as we lack the ability to see tragedy in violently throwing off the yoke of the English, I lack the ability to see tragedy in violently throwing off the yoke of slaveholders. > For most Americans, the Civil War is a sudden outbreak of a existential violence. But for 250 years, African-Americans lived in slavery--which is to say perpetual existential violence. I don't know what else to call a system that involves the constant threat of your children, your parents, your grandparents, being sold off, never for you to see them again. That is death. > Malcolm X was fond of saying that that there was no such thing as a "bloodless revolution." I don't know if that's true, but it surely was true of black people. The Civil War is our revolution. It ended slavery, and birthed both modern America, and modern black America. > That can never be tragic to me.