The more time I spend on this site, the more striking I find the contrast between reality and what I learned in school. From my education, I basically came out with the idea that history has been one great march of forward progress, with every war absolutely necessary and as chance would have it the “good guys” won every time.

Now I look back on the history of America’s wars often with deep and profound regret. If only Lincoln had remembered the Declaration’s assertion of a right to secession, if only Wilson hadn’t been obsessed with having a place at the perverted European round table of nations, if only Roosevelt etc. etc.

The Red Pill is depressing. I need some Zoloft.

I have often wondered what might have happened had the US not provoked Germany and Japan into war. Alternative histories are futile, but I think the history of the USSR provides a guide. The Soviets collapsed as a result of the inherent contradictions of socialism. So it seems reasonable that NAZI Germany and Fascist Japan would have eventually collapsed, also. Yes, they would have murdered a lot of people along the way, but would they have killed more people than the war did? I doubt it. Without war, they could kill only their own people and some of those they conquered. But they couldn’t have conquered much more than they had at the start of the war. Their logistics simply weren’t good enough. And the shear economics of NAZI and Japanese socialism would prevent it.

How did the US provoke Germany into war? Japan I can maybe see, but Germany? Are you referring to war reparations? That was more Britain and France’s fault, if memory serves. And Hitler wanted to go to war, no matter what. It was all in Mein Kampf.

I think that if the British would have remained neutral, instead of coming to poor little Belgium’s “rescue”, the Nazis and the Soviets would have gone a long way to killing each other off, and there might have been no Cold War. Instead, we traded one dictatorship in Eastern Europe for another.

I don’t think that the author’s defense of conscription is as minor as Mr. Gordon would have it seem. I can understand the author’s arguments for the defense of the country, but if it comes at the price of militarization, interventionism becomes an inevitability (Especially within the context of the American political system where military solutions are the easiest to enact), and conscription is the most effective means of militarizing a country (Mind you, America today has no conscription, but it isn’t a militarized country, it is a neo-militarized country, which are very different things).

Our country is fortunate in that it can adequately be defended by only a strong navy, which requires less manpower and does not require militarization to run. Had we taken this route, our country wouldn’t be the frightening monster on the international scene that it is today.

Anyways, when you speak of anti-war, you must also address anti-militarist points, because you can’t be anti-war and pro-militarism (And especially not pro-neo-militarism); the two go hand in hand, and the author’s failure to recognize this is a critical flaw in his work, and really, a modern flaw in many right libertarians.

@fundamentalist:

You mean that the US provoked Germany into war by breaking neutrality and supplying the British and Russians after the war had already started?!

One of us is confused. *grin* I’m just not sure which one, yet.

Dang it, Russ beat me to it! How exactly does did the U.S. start a war with Germany and Japan? Does this make the U.S. the aggressor in both cases and therefore means the U.S. should be making reparations to both nations?

It’s akin to me beating up a local thief and wife beater. Suppose the judge says “he’s free to sue you for everything you’re worth because of that beating.” Suppose I counter “but he’s a thief and a wife beater!” The judge would then reply “it doesn’t matter if he was a good Christian gentleman or a thief and a wife beater, he had no beef against you, you initiated force against for no real reason hence it was a blatant act of violence and you’re now opened to be sued for everything.”

gil says:
“How exactly does did the U.S. start a war with Germany and Japan?”

http://mises.org/daily/216
http://blog.mises.org/archives/009064.asp

The one article linked to above conveniently forgets that the embargo on Japan was started because Japan had already started war against China. The other forgets that it was Hitler who declared war against the US, in order to try to draw Japan into war with the Soviets, even though the Axis treaty did not oblige him to declare war on the US, since Japan had started the hostilities with Pearl Harbor.

Sure, Roosevelt did some things to antagonize the Axis, and helped drag the US into WWII. But that in no way means that the US provoked either Germany or Japan into war. They started the war, because they were imperialist regimes that wanted to take over other countries’ land. Mein Kampf made clear years before Hitler even became chancellor in 1933 that he had his eye on Slavic land for lebensraum for Germans, and Japan had been militaristic for years.

I have no problem with people pointing out unpopular truths about the US’s role in WWII. But saying that the US government provoked Germany and Japan into war is nonsense; it’s no better than the typical leftie “Blame America First” nonsense, in my opinion. This is more of the stuff that makes libertarians look like nutburgers.

Let’s look at some of Garrett’s (and Gordon’s arguments) in hindsight.

The claim is that the US faced no threat from Germany because of we were on another continent separated by oceans.

Germany had almost perfected the atomic bomb and the intercontinental missile. The US was not working on either before the war. Had the US not entered the war England would have fallen and all of the German might would have overwhelmed Russia.

Germany’s Asian partner, Japan, was quickly pushing through all of Asia and moving towar Asia minor.

The Western Hemisphere would have been alone.

So what of self defense? How effective have the Latin American countries been on the international stage? They have always tended toward Fascism (until Ronald Reagan). There is a good chance they would have sided with the winner in Europe.

So now we have the Northern Hemisphere going it alone.

The US and Canada vs the rest of the world including nukes, intercontinental missiles, and massive armies on every border.

I agree that after WWI the Allies created conditions that led to WWII, but that does not change the reality. The world would have been a totally different place if we had failed to enter the war preemptively.

Also wanted to point out two characteristic conservative traits from two of them here:

Outrageous fear-mongering:

Dick Fox:

“Germany had almost perfected the atomic bomb and the intercontinental missile.”

Hysterical.

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And, the notion that terrible villains just appear out of hell or perhaps the void and must be put down (and required in this theology is that the conservative’s government *must* be the white hats:

Russ:

“the…article…linked above conveniently forgets that the embargo on Japan was started because Japan had already started war against China”

And Russ conveniently acts as if Britain and America had never had any designs or extensive actions regarding China. How dare Japan and Germany (or Iran in the never ending game) try to defend themselves by imitating Britain and America!

Bring on the “hate America” ploy. Russ’s “defend DC first” is just as “nutburger”. I usually blame Britain first. DC has not been “worse”, just bigger. They did have a pretty good Constitution that they have ripped to shreds though. That’s pretty bad.

Russ: “The one article linked to above conveniently forgets that the embargo on Japan was started because Japan had already started war against China.”

Yes, Japan had started a war with China, but we could have remained neutral about it. The Chinese government was backward and corrupt. There was no reason for us to prefer China to Japan. And yes, Japan committed a lot of atrocities, especiall at Nanking. But if you care about life, the numbers alone ought to mean something. Would the Japanese have killed as many people as rulers of China as were killed by the war? Not even close.

Defenders of the US entry into the war are forgetting economics. Germany and Japan could not have kept up their war machine for very long. They didn’t have the economy to support it. Take the USSR and China for example. Had the US not fed those nations in the 1970′s and 1980′s, their people would have starved to death and their governments would have fallen sooner. Had Germany and Japan accomplished what they wanted, the results would have been disastrous for their empires because the military expenditures would have impoverished the people. And local resistance groups would have made life miserable for them.

As in economics, short-term thinking about war dominates. But if you take the long view, say a century, then the short-term hysteria seems much less rational.

As for Germany or Japan invading the US, even through Mexico, I don’t think proponents of that idea are considering the economics of such an attempt. The supply lines would be horrendously long, expensive, and easily attacked by our navy and air force.

“Garrett did not ignore the moral dimension. For him, the preservation of America as an independent civilization was a categorical imperative. A worldwide crusade against evil could not succeed and would put in peril our unique contribution to the world.”

I agree with Mr. Garrett, and history has bared him out IMO, America lost a bit of her innocents and has not been the same since. However, had America not accepted the reality of the situation, and geared up for it, and been prepared to enter the war when she did, there was no guaranty that we would have been spared for long. There was a real possibility that choosing to ignore the world and build a fortress America could have just as well backfired and become an act of national suicide.

I certainly never agreed with Roosevelt’s politics and I think the man was a self righteous statist thug with much more in common with Stalin than Jefferson but regardless of that, and whatever his real intensions and ambitions at the time, I think there was little choice but for America to enter the war when we did.

Had the Axis powers not been contained and severely weakened when they were there is a very strong possibility that they could have developed nuclear weapons before America. Had that happened America would have faced the same stark choice that the Japanese were confronted with after Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Some have postulated that Germany might have fallen apart economically too but history tends to show that even a inefficient conquering slave state can continue so long as it can rob its neighbors of their resources. Had the Axis advances not been stopped and had their industrial capacity not been heavily reduced by bombing there is certainly every possibility that their territorial gains would have continued to more than pay for their warmongering.

Some have also argued that America could have survived by playing neutral as the Swiss did but does anyone truly believe that an aggressor state like Germany would have ignored their or our wealth forever… Switzerland was simply allowed a temporary reprieve because they were seen as a weak nation that could be bypassed and dealt with at a later time.

Had America chosen to turn her back on the world at that time, there is a very real possibility that this nation might not even be flying the red, white and blue today nor enjoying what limited freedoms and wealth that it still processes… There is also every reason to believe that people such as Mises, Rand, Rothbard, Garrett, and others could have ended up as forgotten piles of ash in a gas oven too and that organizations such as LVMI might not even exist for us to learn and carry on such debates.

Mike: “Had the Axis powers not been contained and severely weakened when they were there is a very strong possibility that they could have developed nuclear weapons before America.”

Actually, some recent evidence shows that the NAZI’s were a long way from the bomb. Hitler thought it was a pipe dream and so refused to put much of his very scarce resources into it. Besides, the bomb was useful for the US against Japan because we had the resources with which to invade Japan because we were a wealthy nation. Germany didn’t have those resources. Germany was poor and getting poorer. Her people were near starvation. It’s very unlikely Germany could have invaded the US even if they had the bomb.

Mike: “Some have postulated that Germany might have fallen apart economically too but history tends to show that even a inefficient conquering slave state can continue so long as it can rob its neighbors of their resources.”

That was true in the Roman Empire, but modern warfare is very capital intensive. Roman warfare was labor intensive. The capital necessary to carry out a modern war is enormous and requires a fairly wealthy nation. Modern warfare eats up savings much faster than primitive warfare.

I don’t like alternative histories, but it’s more likely that had the US remained neutral Germany would have taken the Ukraine and Western Europe and stopped. On its own, the UK would have agreed to peace and the NAZI empire would slowly rot and fall apart. Far fewer people would have died.

Was it a tactical mistake for Hitler to declare war on the United States?

fundamentalist, you could very well be right and I also agree with you, alternative histories are very speculative. As far as it goes, I would have had to agree with Mr. Garrett at the time of his post. Win or lose the war, there was certainly nothing virtuous to be gained by America’s entry into it. America today has only become more corrupted thru its meddling in world affairs and it has developed many of the same characteristic bad habits of the pushy imperialistic states that it once regarded as evil.

Between the economic madness, the prohibitions, the military/police/welfare expansion, and the lack of a properly functioning education system, I fear that this country may well be only a couple of crises short of the tyrant’s collective noose that Garrett and so many other great minds tried to warn us about.

One never knows the future with certainty but, as Leonard Peikoff might say, the parallels do indeed seem ominous.

to fundamentalist:

indulging in counterfactuals is fun. but i think you’re way too pessimistic with the thousand-year-reich. unlike the romans, often content just to cream off tribute and not screw too much with the local customs and religions, the nazis seemed far less tolerant, and much more ideological.

mao probably had it easier than hitler would have. one people, one language. hitler would have had serious hayekian knowledge problems. much harder to central-plan when there are scores of languages involved (think of brussels today).

for all their foreign adventures, the nazis got nothing that would have covered their expenses (missing out on the russian oil-fields). i’m excluding the looting, which i to say i acknowledge that the top nazis got some nice silver and artwork.

to pm lawrence:

first, “wars of conquest” don’t fit the category of civil war, which effectively was the case in china prior to the communist victory.

second, your point about mongols, la riconquista and so forth misses entirely what fundamentalist and i were saying. modern wars of conquest are unlikely to be anything but vast money drains. in the ancient world (rome was the example given by fundamentalist), booty might have made the exercise profitable.

third, i find it extremely difficult to take any wartime statistics seriously, not least those coming from nazi germany which purport to show a rising standard of living (what metric?). maybe they had “aryan” statistics, too.

What newson said!

Also, Hayek pointed out many times that the capital infrastructure built up over the past few centuries allows the planet to support many more lives than would be possible without it. War destroys capital. The Romans didn’t have to worry about it because they didn’t have any. Modern nations have to worry about it. If the German standard of living increased temporarily during the war, that was due to massive spending on the military. All of their savings were going into military hardware. They wer consuming capital at a horrendous rate. Soon, all of the savings of the Germans would be destroyed in war.

The US could crank out mind boggling amounts of hardware because we had so much capital to begin with. One German officer said that all the US did in the war was to build up a huge pile of metal and push it over on them. There’s a lot of truth in that. That’s how you win modern wars. The Germans and Japanese relied too much on the spirit of their troops. Our troups relied on our piles of metal.

I agree with PM that NAZI Germany might have lasted several generations. But as newson wrote, economic laws can’t be suspended during war. In fact, they are speeded up. As warring nations consume capital at much faster rates, their ability to conduct modern warfare (not primitive warfare) falls just as quickly, as does their ability to feed their people.

PM, the increase in living standards was still very temporary. Once you steal all that can be stolen, you’re back to your old poverty. And what about the people in the occupied territories? Are they supposed to live on nothing? Theft impoverishes them and makes them a burden rather than a producer.

Modern warfare doesn’t have to be capital intensive; it just is. As in producing goods, capital goods in war makes your soldiers far more productive at killing the enemy. The Taliban can carry on their guerilla war forever because it is labor intensive and uses almost no capital. But they can never win against the US if the US decided to really fight. The reason the US isn’t winning in Afghanistan is political, not military. We have decided not to use our capital against the enemy and instead fight man to man. But even then, our troops kill about a dozen enemy for every American killed. Still, for the Taliban to win, they will have to get some capital equipment, at least some artillery.