Isegoria

Wedemeyer’s comparison of World War II to the Peloponnesian War is instructive:

Sparta fought Athens but Persia was the real beneficiary, or a few years later Macedonia, or a little later Rome. To see this as a failure of Sparta is to misunderstand its motives. Sparta wanted to get rid of Athens, and they did. Sparta itself wanted to maintain unquestioned control of the Peloponnese, the southern part of Greece, but their failure to do so is mostly unrelated.

Paleoconservatives gripe endlessly about the neoconservative, and now Obama, policy of promoting democracy in the Moslem world, as if this was a new and idiotic idea. But reformers in Britain were promoting democracy various places in the 19th century, Greece and Italy among them I believe. Not in India, mind you, or any of their colonies. But if demanding democracy, or national or ethnic self-determination undermines potential adversaries, the sting of being accused of hypocrisy will harm you little.

Britain, or the Anglospheric elite, controlled a lot of the globe — all the oceans, North America, India, much of Africa, and had strong influence in Western Europe. It had commercial presence in China and South America, but little to no control. It could not hope to control Russia, which if it was able to extend its power south would make it a fearsome competitor.

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Communism never seriously threatened any English-speaking country, any Protestant country if you exclude East Germany, or any British colony. Like a plague or a forest fire, it wiped out cultures uncontrollable, unamenable or uncooperative to the English and the classes and castes that supported them. The hellish industrialism of 19th century Manchester has been established in China. Russia is a broken shell of a nation being looted by “Russian” billionaires and their KGB friends. Catholic and Orthodox Western Europe is being destroyed under a financial system established just after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Taking the long view, World War II and its aftermath worked out great for the people running Britain and America.

In his memoir, Albert C. Wedemeyer wonders “how and why the United States became involved in a war which was to result in the extension of totalitarian tyranny over vaster regions of the world than Hitler ever dreamed of conquering.”

Our friend Foseti considers this a good question, too:

Wedemeyer views the European war as analogous to the Peloponnesian War. In both wars, a sea power (Athens/Britain) fought a land power (Sparta/Germany) with the ultimate result being the victory of an outsider (Macedon/Russia). The outsider ended up as “the sole beneficiary of the suicidal internecine quarrel of the West.” This, of course, doesn’t explain why the US jumped into the war that only Russia won.

Joseph McCarthy concluded that America’s leaders were influenced by Communist agents. Wedemeyer concluded that “we were just that naive.”

At any rate, the American strategy in Europe was exactly wrong:

In Europe, Wedemeyer’s preferred approach was a all out assault on Northern France as soon as possible. He believed this would strike a decisive blow against the Germans and allow the Allies to gain as much territory as possible in Europe (even in ’41 his plans involved minimizing Russian gains in Europe). This plan was premised on the (widely held) belief in 1942 that Russia would not be able to hold out against the Germans much long. According to Wedemeyer, it was also Marshall’s plan.

Wedemeyer was very frustrated by Churchill’s desire to attack the Germans around the periphery. Ultimately he viewed the invasion of North Africa, Sicily and Italy as unnecessary. It was not (logistically) possible to invade Germany from those point. The effect of the Churchill strategy was to delay victory for several years.

Wedemeyer blames the British for some American strategy screw-ups. On this point, I think Wedemeyer is wrong. He devotes many words to condemning Churchill’s strategy in Germany — specifically he thought Churchill should have let the German’s and the Russian’s fight each other until they were exhausted. At that point, the British should have intervened to essentially restore the pre-war status quo.

Unless I’m missing something, Churchill’s plan to attack Germany on the periphery would have the result Wedemeyer outlined. He seems to simultaneously want to condemn the Allied strategy for being overly aggressive and not aggressive enough.

Churchill’s plan was not too tentative — as Wedemeyer says, a tentative plan would have been fine (let the Germans and the Russians fight until one is about to collapse). The strategic error was seeking a middle ground between the Wedemeyer/Marshall-invade-France-now plan the the Churchill plan. The worse error would come later though.

Nevertheless — from a overall strategic standpoint — I have lots of sympathy for Wedemeyer’s position. Oddly, and perhaps coincidentally, no one seems to have planned what to do after North Africa, Sicily and Italy were taken. The result was that the Allies pursued the worst possible strategy. These Mediterranean invasions delayed decisive action in France and they didn’t lead to any decisive actions themselves. In the meantime, the Russians did not fold under German advances.

Wedemeyer wanted to see a balance of power in Europe, with a still-standing Germany able to hold off the Russians:

Nevertheless, the US and the British chose to demand unconditional surrender. Wedemeyer hints, a couple times, that such demands may be the consequences of democracies going to war (he avoids saying so explicitly, so I’m left wondering his thoughts might have been on this subject).

Toward the end of the war in both theaters, Allied officials knew that both countries were willing to give up long before the fighting actually ended, as long as the Allies didn’t demand unconditional surrender.

The Allies would stop at nothing other than unconditional surrender, even though doing so got more troops killed, made the enemies fight harder (“instead of encouraging the anti-Hitler Germans, we forced all Germans to fight to the last under a regime most of them hated”) and only could benefit the Russians.

The Soviet empire was largely the result of our own creation, Wedemeyer concluded.

Albert Wedemeyer’s 1947 Report to the President on Korea makes a point that a young Korean-American woman made to me years ago — South Korea was always the less-developed half of the country:

South Korea, basically an agricultural area, does not have the overall economic resources to sustain its economy without external assistance. The soil is depleted, and imports of food as well as fertilizer are required. The latter has normally come from North Korea, as have most of the electric power, timber, anthracite, and other basic products.

The economic dependence of South Korea upon North Korea, and of Korea as a whole, in prewar years, upon trade with Japan and Manchuria, cannot be too strongly emphasized. Division of the country at the 38° North parallel and prevention of all except smuggling trade between North and South Korea have reduced the Korean economy to its lowest level in many years. Prospects for developing sizable exports are slight. Food exports cannot be anticipated on any scale for several years, and then only with increased use of artificial fertilizer. South Korea’s few manufacturing industries, which have been operating at possibly 20 percent of prewar production, are now reducing their output or closing down. In part this is a natural result of ten years of deferred maintenance and war-time abuse, but lack of raw materials and essential repair parts, and a gross deficiency of competent management and technical personnel are the principal factors.

In 1947, Wedemeyer is more concerned with Communist-inspired riots than full-scale invasion:

The military situation in Korea, stemming from political and economic disputes which in turn are accentuated by the artificial barrier along the 38° North parallel, is potentially dangerous to United States strategic interests. Large-scale Communist inspired or abetted riots and revolutionary activities in the South are a constant threat. However, American forces supplemented by quasi-military Korean units are adequate to cope with such trouble or disorder except in the currently improbable event of an outright Soviet-controlled invasion.

Whereas American and Soviet forces engaged in occupation duties in South Korea and North Korea respectively are approximately equal, each comprising less than 50,000 troops, the Soviet-equipped and trained North Korean People’s (Communist) Army of approximately 125,000 is vastly superior to the United States-organized Constabulary of 16,000 Koreans equipped with Japanese small arms. The North Korean People’s Army constitutes a potential military threat to South Korea, since there is strong possibility that the Soviets will withdraw their occupation forces, and thus induce our own withdrawal. This probably will take place just as soon as they can be sure that the North Korean puppet government and its armed forces which they have created, are strong enough and sufficiently well indoctrinated to be relied upon to carry out Soviet objectives without the actual presence of Soviet troops.

It appears advisable that the United States organize, equip, and train a South Korean Scout Force, similar to the former Philippine Scouts. This force should be under the control of the United States military commander and, initially should be officered throughout by Americans, with a program for replacement by Korean officers. It should be of sufficient strength to cope with the threat from the North. It would counteract in large measure the North Korean People’s Army when American and Soviet forces are withdrawn from Korea, possibly preclude the forcible establishment of a Communist government, and thus contribute toward a free and independent Korea.

(Hat tip to Foseti, who has much, much more to say.)