Eyre Lines

A friend, commenting on the D day anniversary, wrote “As we remember D-Day, let us not forget that World War 2 was the product of nation-first, white supremacy, uncritical populist, and racist ideologies and that the war was one through global cooperation, the globalism that has keep the peace for over 70 years, our Alliances with Europe (NATO), the Marshall Plan of recovery after the war, helping our enemies recover (Germany and Japan), and the belief that America’s leadership is moral, involves sacrifices on our part, and a willingness to support other nations.”

I really like the sentiment, and completely endorse the observation about Hitler’s Germany. I am, indeed, seriously worried that similar forces seem to be at work in the Europe of today, as witness (among many others) the success of Marine LePen’s National Rally party (formerly the National Front) in France and the election of significant numbers of Alternative für Deutschland MEPs (AfD is essentially a neo-Nazi party) in recent European elections, and the complexion of Victor Orban’s Hungary. Also, of course, our newly formed Brexit party, which won an alarming number of seats. Athough it claims to be a single issue party (at least, so far), all the same tendencies seem to be operative in very many of its supporters, and its forebear, UKIP, is now clearly a party of the far right.

However, my sceptical and cycnial side forbids me from regarding the US intervention in World War II as pure gift, and expressing the degree of gratitude which many Americans seem to think is appropriate. In point of fact, the US managed to keep out of the war until in December 1941 Pearl Harbour left it with no real alternative (though there had been an effective war at sea going on with Germany in the Atlantic for some months prior to that – again, prompted by the Germans sinking American ships). By that time, the UK and its then empire and dominions (such as Canada and Australia) had been at war since 1st September 1939, and the USA had been selling weapons to us (and also to Russia and China) throughout, offering credit terms when we basically ran out of money. We finally managed to pay off that debt in the 1980s. The USA managed to keep out of WWI even longer…

This article gives a view of the US involvement in both world wars which rather differs from the “America saves the day!” message which Americans often wish to claim as truth. Extracting figures from this source seems to indicate that pre-WWI, the US had around 18.9% of world GDP while the UK (including British India but excluding other colonies and dominions) had 19.7% (of which the UK proper was around 9%). By 1950 (India having become independent, in part due to the effective bankruptcy of the UK, in part because promises had been made in order to avoid India siding with the Japanese in WWII), the US had 27.3% and the UK had 6.5%.

It seems rather evident that, at least in terms of GDP, the two world wars seriously damaged the UK economy (leaving the country massively in debt to the US into the bargain) but seriously advantaged the US economy.

As the article points out in relation to WWI, “The trouble was that by 1916, the U.S. commitment to Britain and France had grown—to borrow a phrase from the future—too big to fail.” The same might well be said of World War II (and, indeed, there is an argument that both World Wars were fundamentally one conflict, divided by 20 years of truce – certainly, it is very arguable that the draconian terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles which were imposed on Germany made something like the rise of Hitler and his foreign policy inevitable).

The cynic in me says that America looked at the European situation together with the fairly dominant trading position of the British Empire and the rapid rise of industry and technology in Germany, realised that its most valuable markets were in Europe, so it needed to avoid the rise of a Germany which would dominate that market, but that by delaying it could bleed dry it’s main worldwide competitor, Britain, and still see Germany defeated – and so acted entirely in the best interests of the US (some evidence indicates that US interests were also supplying Germany…). Seen as an effective trade war against Britain, this was a master-stroke – and wildly successful. My view is strengthened by the US sabotage of Britain and France over Suez in 1956, which inclined Britain to ask how good an ally the US actually was…

Much the same consideration on the part of the British government also punctures the British myth that we entered into the war in 1939 out of the goodness of our hearts and a desire to curb tyrrany. Neville Chamberlain has said of the annexation of Czechoslovakia that it was a ‘quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing’, and in conscience, Poland was in much the same position. However, with Poland, the writing was on the wall, and it was clear that Hitler was going to go on expanding in Europe until stopped. Britain did have significant trade with Western Europe, but was divided from Europe by the English Channel, had the bulk of its foreign trade with the world outside Europe and could conceivably have sat there and left Europe to its own devices. A substantial proportion of the population would have been entirely happy with that. In Britain’s case, however, the danger was not only of losing Western Europe as a market, but also of Germany breaking out of being a merely European power and challenging Britain’s world trade…

Where nation states are involved, I tend not to believe legends that their actions are altruistic – there are almost always clear advantages for their own narrow interests which are quite sufficient to explain their actions.

Thinking even further about D-day, hindsight tells me that, in all probability, it was not necessary in order to defeat Hitler. He was already losing the war badly due to the Eastern Front, and in particular the disaster of Stalingrad. The Italian front should have been enough… the Allies (by this time including the USA) could have afforded to wait it out.

There, too, the actual reason was probably not the reason which was presented. In that case, the danger was the potential rolling of Russian forces all the way to the North Sea, taking all of Germany, Austria and possibly even the Low Countries, France and Scandinavia into the Russian sphere of influence. D-day was a proxy action, in effect, against Russia, the first battle of the Cold War. I may not go quite so far as this article, but it is clear that by mid-1944, the end was in sight – but without the landings in France, it would have probably produced a largely Soviet Europe, thus demolishing the market for both the USA and Britain. The Western powers’ effort stopped at the dividing line between East and West Germany which obtained until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany – but it seems that Churchill, at least, was willing to go further than that. Clearly, for him, the defeat of Hitler was by no means the whole story.

Do I thus undermine the immense sacrifices made by US, British and Canadian troops (in particular) on D-day? Not at all. They were emphatically in the best interests of our respective countries at the time. But we should maybe restrain ourselves from expecting unqualified gratitude from those who were liberated from German rule as a result…