Much less of a Fight between Good and Evil
I really enjoy Dan Carlin’s Podcasts (1). He produces two podcasts; there is Common Sense which is mainly about the American political system and Hard Core History which is like nothing else on the web. Sure there are other history podcasts but Carlin is so obviously passionate about his subject and that really comes through on his podcasts. The result is the listener almost can’t help but become engaged about the topic.
Whilst Carlin has a degree in history, he takes great pains to explain that he is not a historian, rather he considers himself a fan of history. This, he says, allows him to relate historical events with passion rather than the dispassionate explanation that is favoured by many modern historians.
Like most people, I rarely if ever agree with everything somebody says. Yet with Carlin I find myself agreeing with the majority of what he says. This is true whether it is about politics, or his view on historical events. I’m a huge fan of his work and I’ve recommended him repeatedly to almost everyone I know. Sure every now and then he’ll say something that I will disagree with but this is not the norm.
In my experience Carlin is very, very good at telling both sides of the story. He endeavours to put the listener in the shoes of the people on both sides who are making the decisions. To help the listener see why historical figures might have made the decisions they are famous for.
Carlin’s latest hard Core History work is entitled ‘Blueprint for Armageddon’. It’s about the First World War. A number of times across the different episodes ‘Blueprint for Armageddon’ Carlin expressed a view that I strongly disagree with. He said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that the First World War was much less of a fight between good and evil than the Second World War was.
I was stunned when he said this. Utterly stunned – speechless. Now I’m not sure why Carlin holds this view. Perhaps it was just a throwaway line that doesn’t adequately reflect the sum of his views on the matter. In any case let me explain why I find that comment so utterly untrue.
For many people, both world wars were caused by Germany. It’s an opinion which is my view is flawed. Carlin goes to great lengths in the earlier episodes of Blueprint for Armageddon to show that whist German foreign policy was aggressive, and the Kaiser must share much of the blame for the conflict, the First World War itself was not caused by Germany and that if we were in the same position as Germany was, perhaps we would have acted as they did.
With regards to the Second World War it’s fairly widely believed that the treaty of Versailles was a major if not the major underlying cause of the Second World War. I’d suggest that if for some reason our country was forced into the kind of reparations which Germany was in 1919, we’d be pretty angry in twenty years’ time.
Would we be angry enough to elect a Jew hating corporal and then let him install himself as a dictator? You’d hope not, but until you’ve walked in those shoes who can say. In any case World War Two was clearly kicked off by Germany in 1939 with the invasion of Poland. As unfair as the Versailles treaty was, I’m not sure it justifies the invasion of a sovereign state.
Again though, perspective blurs the lines here. Is the invasion justified when part of the nation you are invading used to belong to your nation? What if some of the areas you are invading speak your language? Why should your nation share all the blame when another nation, led by a murderous dictator also invaded the same nation state just after you did?
These questions lead nicely to the reason why the Secord World War was not more of a struggle between good and evil than World War One. As ‘evilly’ as history views the Nazi’s they were not the only ‘evil’ regime struggling for world domination in the 1930’s. I’d argue that the Soviets were just as bad as the Nazi’s.
So how bad were the Soviets under Stalin? Surely they were not as bad as the Nazi’s? Let’s start with Stalin’s record regarding the Jewish. Between the years of 1932-33, five to seven million Jews were starved or murdered in the Ukraine. Another two million or so were sent to Siberia to be worked to death. It was almost a quarter of the population of the Ukraine at the time.
This was well before the Second World War started. The United States, British, and Canadian governments were aware of this genocide but did nothing. Perversely, the only European governments to speak out about the Soviets actions in the Ukraine were the Germans and the Italians, although this was for purely self-serving reasons.
Of course Stalin didn’t just mistreat the Jews. He massacred half a million Don Cossacks. The Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians of the Baltic States were sent to Siberia in their millions. Two million Muslim people living in the Soviet Union were also exterminated. Countless others were imprisoned in the Gulags for a range of ‘crimes’ despite rarely if ever facing formal charges.
Whilst I’m sure you could do a detailed comparison of the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany in terms of the exact numbers killed and when they were killed it’s all a little past the point. They were both terrible, cruel regimes which murdered large numbers of their own citizens.
As much as they have tried to I don’t think The Western Allies can completely distance themselves from the atrocities committed by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was one of the big winners at the end of the Second World War. I’m not sure how you could argue that the Western Allies didn’t assist them to achieve this and the Soviet’s success was a disaster for Eastern Europe.
The Soviets controlled all of Eastern Europe and parts of Central Europe through the satellite states they set up when they ‘liberated’ Eastern Europe from the Germans. Whilst it’s outside the scope of this piece to detail these abuses, between the end of the Second World War and the fall of communism countless people were killed or mistreated by the Soviets.
As unpalatable as it might seem the Western Allies were in part responsible for what the Soviets did, particularly in Eastern Europe. Now you could argue that in allying with the Soviets the Western Allies chose the lesser of two evils. Perhaps this is true, it’s a fascinating debate. However the very fact that the Western Allies chose to ally themselves with a regime such as the Soviets is evidence that the Second World War was not more of a fight between good and evil than the First World War.
It’s always risky to try and distil any historical conflict down to simple absolutes such as good and evil. But if you were to attempt such an exercise here then surely the Second World War was evil (the Nazi’s) versus evil (the Soviets) with the Western Allies desperately trying to survive.
It is my hope that this piece triggers further debate on the subject. As I stated earlier perhaps Carlin’s remarks were just a series of throw-away lines that I’ve blown out of all proportion. I’d encourage anyone reading this piece to give Hard Core History a listen as its wonderful work. It’s so emotive that maybe, just maybe, those listeners who have never lived through war will know the horror of it and like our forebears will promise their children ‘never again’.