Ecos da História

1. Hating the Krauts, by Paul Gottfried

The German Resistance, which failed in July 1944, consisted of predominantly conservative, Catholic anti-Nazis who in many cases, e.g., General Ludwig Beck, the diplomat Adam von Trott zu Solz, and former Leipzig mayor Carl-Friedrich Goerdeler, had opposed the Nazis since the 1930s. The first resistance of the old guard had developed in the thirties but failed to obtain the support of the Western Allies, which viewed any collaboration with these German anti-Nazis as a waste of time. By the time the old Widerstaendler, together with anti-Nazi aristocrats such as Klaus von Stauffenberg, Ewald von Kleist, Ulrich von Hassell, and Helmut James von Moltke, attempted to overthrow the Nazis and assassinate Hitler, they knew that they were working alone.

As the German Jewish refugee historian Hans Rothfels shows in his work on the German Resistance, unlike the other anti-Nazi (including und perhaps especially the Communist) undergrounds, his subjects encountered the contempt and suspicion of the Allies. In any case the Western Allies would do nothing that might compromise their alliance with the Soviets, e.g., by making a separate peace with the successful leaders of the Resistance. Thus the conspirators went to work with the sense that they were probably doomed.

Nota: Interessante a revelação vinda do estudo dos arquivos do Vaticano, que Mussolini terá pedido a excomunhão de Hitler. A juntar ao facto de que quando este anexou a Aústria, Mussolini terá sugerido a oposição e ajuda militar, recusada pelos seus aliados da Grande Guerra, por causa de questões de princípio contra a Itália vindas da Liga das Nações - a causa: a sua guerra da Etiópia. (Estão a ver: a França e Inglaterra podiam ser um Império, "protegidos" pela Liga das Nações, mais mais ninguém poderia ter a veleidade de o querer ser - esta já terá sido talvez a razão última da Grande Guerra).

De uma forma ou outra, ou antes de inúmeras formas, constantamos os diversos pormenores que possibilitaram que quem tenha saido vencedor da Grande Guerra e Segunda Grande Guerra foi mesmo o comunismo soviético.

2. O mito da democracia imposta ao Japão
Speaking of cultural condescension: Japan had "democracy" long before World War II, with an elected Diet, a figurehead monarch, and a relatively free expression of Western liberal and even radical ideas. The assertion that U.S. troops brought these alien concepts with them for the first time and imposed them by force on reluctant Japanese is laughable.

And the idea that postwar Japanese democracy is an unqualified success is certainly arguable, as Tokyo proves unable to reform its entrenched bureaucracy and put its economic house in order. Even the determined revolutionist Junichiro Koizumi has only just managed to lurch from one crisis to another: the land of the rising sun may yet fall beneath a tsunami of bank debt. So much for the virtues of Japanese democracy: Japan is still a society run by consensus, where Western-style individualism is considered a form of mental illness.

Em: GEORGE W. BUSH, TROTSKYITE, Is the U.S. really launching a 'global democratic revolution'?