Enola Gay restored and back together...

[Iain]

Thumper - 'new' history is surprisingly common. A book I am presently reading about Chamberlain was written twenty years before the release of official papers from the 1930's. The interpretation of Chamberlains actions has changed considerable since the papers from 1938-9 were released in 1982.

Revisionism - a term like ''appeasement''. Everybody thinks they know what it means.

The Enola Gay and Hiroshima - irretrievably linked.

 

[FPrice]

St John...

"The Enola Gay and Hiroshima - irretrievably linked."

Hiroshima and Japanese agression and a legacy of millions who died at the hands of the Japanese - irretrievably linked.

Just how big do you want this to be? If it had not been for Japanese agression in WWII, Hiroshima would have never happened.

 

[Iain]

FPrice -

I don't actually disagree with you there. In a way Hiroshima avoided the potential use of more powerful nuclear weapons attached to ICBM's at some later point.

It all still happened, I am sure the Enola Gay and the Manhatten Project are very much in evidence at any Hiroshima memorials that might exist in Japan.

These are clearly very raw wounds.

Glover (Humanity. 1999) says:

'For the Japanese to have accepted the public ultimatum issued at Potsdam would have involved a loss of face. They were not prepared to accept unconditional surrender or the loss of the Emperor. A quiet invitation to negotiate, coupled with abandonment of the demand for unconditional surrender and an assurance about the Emperor, might have ended the war without dropping the bomb.

In fairness to Truman, it should be remembered that he did not have the advantages of hindsight...And there is obviously no certainty that the kind of approach suggested would have ended the war. But in the light of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the thought is unavoidable that such an approach should have been tried.'

 

[Mike Irwin]

OK, some thoughts on what constitutes revisionist history as opposed to reassessment.

Revisionist hisotry is most appropriately defined as taking an already known set of facts, but no real new ones that haven't been previously known, and deriving a significantly different conclusion. This is most normally done in a political context. A good example is Arthur Schlessinger's "The Age of Jackson." Schlessinger took a know set of facts and reassessed their historical context in a framework of Rooseveltian New Deal ideologies.

Another prime example of revisionst history is the relatively recent attempt to cast the United States as the agressor in the chain of events that ultimately led to the war between Japan and the United States.

This is, however, fundamentally different from a re-evaluation of history. A re-evaluation is based on new data and new facts coming to light that were previously unavailable.

A good example of this is what led to the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis. For many years it had been assessed as a triumph for the United States in that the United States forced the removal of missiles from Cuba, but gave up virtually nothing in return. Recently released data, however, shows that the resolution was achieved through more diplomatic means, including the withdrawl of some US medium range nuclear missiles in Turkey (which at the time was made to seem as if it was a long-planned move), and US promises regarding the soverignty of Cuba.

Unfortunately, in the case of Chamberlain and Britain, not much new has surfaced in the past 40 years to redact the historical record as it now stands, and certainly, to my way of thinking, nothing new has surfaced that would support the theory that Chamberlain was using appeasement as a way of readying Britain for war or even, as Clement Liebovitz claims in his book "In Our Time," that Chamberlain and the French and Hitler colluded to give Germany a free hand in Central Europe out of British and French desire to see Germany and the Soviet Union go to war.

 

[Iain]

Mike, have started another thread about appeasement as it appears to be such a huge issue. Would appreciate your thoughts.

 

[benewton]

Two thoughts, none with respect to the Brits.

They were warned to surrender, unconditionally, and they didn't.

We then forced them to do so, and, sans nukes, we would have forced them to
do so, regardless of our casuality rate. And, it would have been much worse for them than us, and civilians would have made up the major portion. Public opinion wouldn't have allowed any other approach.

I think that, in the end, the bombs saved lives,.


Existential crap aside, my now deceased, and once very much hated, daddy was on Okinowa, and, most probably, scheduled to go to the "home islands".

I'm here, which I think to be a good thing, some of them aren't, and I'm supposed to be concerned about???

 

[hops]

Mike ; I know all about unit 731. But the Japanese had no delivery mechanisim to threaten the US with. Germany, just by close proximity to its European enemies had such delivery weapons.

Anyone here ever read a book titled in English: France 1940: Sixty days that shook the West. ? It's French, I have the english translation, published in 1956. Very interesting read to say the least. Covers more the political aspects than the military aspects. It does a lot to clear up why France and England were in no position to go to war, even though they did. Even Germany was no ready for a total war and did not move in to total war footing from a economic point until 1942.

 

[Iain]

I'd recommend Keith Robbins' very short 'Appeasement'.

 

[hops]

Appeasement:

By the mid 1930's England and France realized that they were overly harsh against Germany with regard to the treat of versailles.

Also, we all tend to forget that from late 1918 and through the 1930's, communism was the greatest threat to Europe. France and England felt that it was better to have Germany on their side against the communist menace. Even Winston Churchill, felt that Germany was useful and expected the battle to be between Germany and Soviet Russia to be on ideology alone. He sorta missed that Hitler really wanted to restore Germany in land to 1918.

edit: Mike beat me to the part above. Glad to see that some people see this sort of stuff, which is not common knowledge. Also Poland got a small piece of the CZ dismemberment too.

Perhaps in 100 years more things will surface.

Oh, the allies also violated aspects of the treaty. Several peblecites in eastern germany, under Poland, were ignored, when the majority voted to be reunited with Germany.

 

[hops]

Mike - On Japan - The US being the agressor. Remember when Mathew Perry and a small US fleet sailed to Japan and said: 'Hi. We Americans and we are for free trade. So you will now trade with us, now, and give us rights to a coaling station." Sort of the stuff others did to china a few years before. Then other did it to Japan. Japan, unlike China got smart and modernized real quick, because they learned one deals from strenght.

Perry's / the US's actions with Japan are a mere footnote in American history books. I suspect this 140 year old event is a bit more than just a footnote in Japaneese history books.

Until the UN gives out history classes, our interpetations of history will differ. I for one does not want UN history lessons. It's too much fun, for the most part, to debate our views of histroy here.

 

[fallingblock]

hops.....

"Until the UN gives out history classes, our interpetations of history will differ."
************************************************************

When the U.N. starts revising history...that's when the interpretations will SERIOUSLY differ from the reality

 

[Byron Quick]

hops,

Think you better look into the background of Perry's trip. It's not quite what you make. There was a little matter of Americans washed up on Japanese shores after shipwrecks and, shall we say, treated quite unkindly by the Japanese.

 

[JShirley]

Mike, I respect what you've said, even anything I don't agree with, but I do think Chamberlain was a coward. Selling your neighbor out to protect yourself seems pretty damn craven to me.

The "blitzkrieg" war could never have been fought without Germany's use of armor...made in Czechoslovakia.

 

[Iain]

There is another thread - all about Chamberlain and appeasement. Call this a plug.

 

[Orthonym]

Japanese Attempt to Make a Fission Bomb

See point #1 in one of my posts above. Had they been able to do so, I'm quite sure the Nipponese govt. would have built as many as they could and used them indiscriminately on anyone who so much as looked at them cross-eyed.


Don't forget the amount of racial hatred worked up by the propagandists on both sides, either, no matter how embarrassed we all are to admit it these days. I think Herman Wouk had one of his characters say in "The Caine Mutiny" something about the many massacres of the Pacific War having to do with each side's refusing to admit that the enemy were human beings.