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Just started a book on the American Occupation (Architects of Occupation). It's interesting realize that the US at one point was able to rebuild a society from
by mannyv 2y ago
Just started a book on the American Occupation (Architects of Occupation). It's interesting realize that the US at one point was able to rebuild a society from the ground up. They took the lessons from Versailles and made a peace (and society) that lasted for a surprisingly long time.
That success in Japan and Europe probably emboldened the B team, who went on to handle regime change in Central/South America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
That's the difference between reading the book and reading the cliff notes, presumably.
- readthenotes1 2y agoEisenhower and the Dulles Brothers weren't interested in nation building, they were intent on countering the Soviet Union's meddling and/or preserving USA business interests.
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- UIUC_06 2y ago> They took the lessons from Versailles what lessons? The Allies didn't occupy Germany at all. Germany would have resumed the war if that was what the Versailles conference came up with, and the Allies had no stomach for more war.
- FredPret 2y agoBut isn’t that the lesson? Occupy while you rebuild?
- UIUC_06 2y agoNo, the lesson was to demand unconditional surrender. That was just not in the cards for WW I. Russia had already dropped out.
- bumby 2y agoIt's of course up for debate, but one of the general assessments is that the resentment caused by the Treaty of Versailles gave fertile ground for the rise of the Nazi party. It's hard to see how unconditional surrender would have made the treaty more palatable to Germans rather than less.
- sib 2y agoI would rather say that the fact that there was a (conditional) surrender by Germany and it took place before the Allies had significantly entered German homeland territory enabled certain agitators to claim that Germany had been betrayed rather than defeated. You are correct that the punitive nature of the Treaty of Versailles made for good grist for the mill when those same agitators to point at the "unfair" consequences of the betrayal. After WWII there was no one who could possibly say that Germany had not been completely and utterly defeated (and the Allies, at least the western ones with respect to western Germany) did invest in rebuilding the country.
- otherme123 2y agoThe WWI ended with an armistice, and then a peace treaty. It was intended to save Germany from the shame of total defeat. The problem with that was that peace terms were extremely harsh, as you would impose on an inconditional surrender, and France intention was to get revenge, applying the terms of the treaty as hard as they could. Said agitators tried to take advantage of that duality: "we didn't surrender, yet we are being humiliated". The lesson for WWII was that as shameful it could be for Japan to surrender inconditionally, it was needed to shut those sectors of the society that would think they could had won the war if only... This was more a problem with Japan than Germany in the WWII: Germany never (seriously) wanted a negotiated peace, and specially the soviets didn't want any of that. It's know that Hitler and friends wanted either victory or the complete annihilation of Germany. But Japan actively tried in the last couple of months of the war to achieve a conditional surrender.
- WalterBright 2y ago
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> what lessons? The Allies didn't occupy Germany at all Of course we did [1]. The ACC was far more intrusive than the American occupation of Japan; we formally stripped Germany of its sovereignty. EDIT: the lesson from Versailles was that we had to rebuild Germany. To rebuild required occupation. Occupying Germany after WWII was one of the lessons learned from Versailles. > Germany would have resumed the war Germany was in no position to keep fighting. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied-occupied_Germany https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied-occupied_Germany
- dabluecaboose 2y agoThe Treaty of Versailles[1] was the treaty that ended World War I, not World War II [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoOh, I see what happened. OP said we learned from Versailles. That’s why we occupied Germany after WWII: to rebuild it.
- quietbritishjim 2y agoThe comment you're replying to is about the Versailles conference after WW1, but your link is about WW2.
- UIUC_06 2y agoso that's three of us who noticed that.
- UIUC_06 2y agoyour link and comments are about WW II. Versailles was the treaty that ended WW I. > Germany was in no position to keep fighting. No one was in 1918 and everyone was exhausted, but "defending the homeland" is a more powerful motivator than anything the Allies had. Germany asked for an Armistice "on the basis of the 14 Points" which did not include occupation.
- jjk166 2y agoThe allies did occupy a substantial portion of Germany after WW1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Rhineland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Rhineland
- harry8 2y agoVersaille treaty consequences were predictable, predicted and WW2 did in fact occur one generation later. https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/keynes-the-economic-consequences-of-the-peace https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/keynes-the-economic-conse...
- hnbad 2y agoIt's a bit more complicated. The reparations were a bigger concern in the early interwar period and hamstrung the Weimar government but a big problem was that although Weimar Germany was formally a democratic republic following the deposition of the Emperor, a lot of its institutions were still monarchists and saw the social democrats as traitors, hoping for a restoration of the monarchy. For example while especially in the build-up to 1933 a lot of the political violence and murders came from the political right and especially the NSDAP, German courts would repeatedly rule the attackers "not guilty" if the victims were on the political left because they did it "out of the love for their country" (i.e. the monarchy). Even the "rise to power" of the NSDAP was a de-facto legal process following the passing of the Enabling Act, co-signed by the conservative Christian "center party" which saw the NSDAP as a tool to defeat communism, believing that Adolf Hitler would use his power to restore the Emperor to the throne and transfer his power to him. It's difficult to tell how things would have played out without the crippling reparations but given Germany's actual history I don't think it's plausible that Weimar Germany would have been stable without it even if it was something that fueled the political right's narrative of betrayal. Germany simply did not have a history of democracy to build on. I think one of the most genius moves following WW2 was to fully dismantle Prussia by restructuring Germany. This was more than a cession of territories, even the parts of Prussia that remained part of Germany were dissolved and integrated into new subdivisions without a clear one-to-one mapping. In modern Germany the strongest remaining notion of Prussia is a general idea of "everything north of Bavaria" mostly present in Bavaria (notably one of the states that remained unchanged after the restructuring - a mistake in my opinion). Prussian identity was inseparable from militarism and a sense of supremacy, even without the formal monarchy. Another possible move would have been to strip German royalty and nobility of its titles and claims like in France but this would have never been supported by the European monarchies like Britain, which often had strong dynastic ties to these families.
- csomar 2y agoJapan and Germany success post-war were not due to US occupation but in spite of it. Both were pretty industrialized nations before the war and had highly skilled population. Their success afterward was a continuation of their previous trend but under a different regime.
- bell-cot 2y agoThis, pretty much. Both the Germans and Japanese knew, in exhaustive detail, how to build and run a modern industrial country. And given the obvious alternative (sheltering in bombed-out smoking ruins, more-or-less) they very quickly decided to Do Whatever It Took to regain their former standards of living.
- WalterBright 2y agoGermany also lost 5,533,000 men while France lost 217,600 and Britain 383,600.
- bell-cot 2y agoI believe you're only looking at military deaths. For purposes of rebuilding, civilian deaths (from all causes, including Germany's national suicide cult insanity shit) are at least as damaging. Similar for all the millions who lived, but were badly damaged themselves - mentally and/or physically.
- WalterBright 2y ago> you're only looking at military deaths Yes, and those are the younger, fit men. The people who work in industry.
- Yeul 2y agoThis is what happened in the Netherlands. After the war the entire population genuinely believed that they were engaged in rebuilding the nation into something better. Turns out humans can do a lot if they work together- ofcourse it usually takes a near apocalyptic event. And it never lasts.