George Orwell must be dancing in his grave.
Glenn Greenwald today compared the Nazi invasion of Austria, the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia, with the American invasion of Iraq. By the end of the same post he hedges his bets, and adds that he's not really making the comparison, unless he is but he isn't. Having seen the firestorm of protest he ignited, he than adds three times that he didn't make the comparison.
Joe Klein tears into him here,and the whole thing started with an argument with Jeffrey Goldberg.
Here's my input, on a point no-one else seems to be noticing: There was no Nazi invasion of the Sudetenland, no invasion of Slovakia, hardly one of Austria and even less of Bohemia. Nazi Germany brutally invaded many countries, but those weren't among them. Go check the history books and see if I know what I'm talking about. Glenn Greenwald surely doesn't.
Update: somewhere down in the comments I've responded with additional facts.
I think you mean "German" invasion of Austria etc. not American, even though as you point out there was no such invasion.
ReplyDeleteOops.Thanks. I fixed it.
ReplyDeleteYaacov
ReplyDeleteis there a pithy tranlation for "Heim ins Reich"?
probably not and so one can't expect Greenwald to know better ;-),
especially since the Austrians like to insinuate that an "Anschluss" not being the same as a "Heim ins Reich" may qualify as something well you know something like they were forced to be enthusiastic about.
Silke
I forgot to ask in the above:
ReplyDeletehow does a "Heim ins Reich" (going home into the empire) figure in International Law?
and how does an "Anschluss" (connect) figure?
i.e. what would Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch or any of the Councils pontificate on it?
of especial interest would be to me what they'd have to say about the land the "Heim ins Reich"-ers stole, oops appropriated from their hitherto sovereigns.
does any of the "acivists" including the mudslinging ones showing up here once in a while have any opinion on it to share? possibly including the ongoing tsk,tsk,tsk-ing at the Czechs for having put things right following their own judgment
Silke
Correct, the Nazis did not "invade" Czechoslovakia, it was ceded to them at Munich. However, in the context of the Greenwald-Goldberg spat, this is a distinction without a difference. As Greenwald wrote in his post, "It should go without saying, but doesn't: the point here is not that the attack on Iraq is comparable to these above-referenced invasions. It may or may not be, but that's irrelevant. The point is that every nation which launches even the most brutal, destructive and unprovoked wars of aggression employs moralizing propaganda to claim that their aggression engenders magnanimous and noble ends, and specifically often points to segments of the invaded population which welcome the violence and invaders. Pointing to the happy and rewarded Kurdish minority no more justifies or legalizes the attack on Iraq than similar claims do for any of those other cases." His point is that any invasion (or occupation, take your pick) will be supported by some group of people in the occupied country. That does not justify the particular act of aggression. Why do Goldberg, Klein, et al refuse to engage with the substance of Greenwald's point and instead accuse him a making a false equivalency between Nazi expansionism and the US invasion of Iraq?
ReplyDeleteOf all the invasions one could have picked, why select the German invasion of Czechoslovakia unless you are willing to stand by that as a moral example? Surely Greenwald has heard of Godwin's Law?
ReplyDeleteWhether the situation of the Kurds justifies a US invasion that failed to find WMD's, and has left the non-Kurdish population freer than it was 2002, but at considerable cost in lives, is something on which debate is appropriate. Making the comparison to the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, which was followed by the annexation of the Sudetenland (has the US annexed Kurdistan?) the imposition of a racist dictatorship on the rest of Czecho, the deliberate extermination of parts of the Czech population (including a couple of hundred thousand Czech Jews and Roma sent to the gas chambers) is not particularly illuminating.
I mean does Greenwald think the main problem with Nazi Germany is that it failed to respect Westphalian sovereignty?
Yup. The Austrians welcomed the Nazis and so did the Sudeten Germans. I don't see where those countries were invaded. Nor was Memel, today known as Klapeida in Lithuania.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that this is the takeaway from Greenwald's post just goes to show the bad faith with which his opponents are arguing. He cited Germany to show that even the most brutal war machine will be greeted as a liberator by some in the remaindered country. Either you know you can't argue against the real point or you do not understand how analogies work. Either way: this post was an attempt to change the subject, Goldberg's initial point was irrelevant, and his journalism was and is guided by a noxious moralism that continues to fuel arguments for discredited-by-actual-events neoconservative foreign policy.
ReplyDeleteI think Greenwald's point is idiotic. Or more to the point, i fhe means it to be persuasive, he is assuming his readers are idiots.
ReplyDeleteThe issue is not whether there are people, meaning one person or more, who welcome the invading army. If that were Goldberg's point, Greenwald would be right. But the point that Goldberg made, and which Greenwald tries to trivialize, is that evil of the government in power pre-invasion, as manifested by the oppression and abuse of segments of its population, can be moral grounds for invasion. The fact that the oppressed people welcome the invader is not what justifies the invasion - it is simply evidence that they were oppressed. The Kurds and Saddam were simply an example showing how the evil of the government led to the welcoming reception from an oppressed group when invaders rid them of their oppressors.
Reminds me of the Bill Bennett fiasco.
ReplyDeleteThe stronger argument is that the invasion, occupation and nation-building of Iraq hasn't served American interests. That is my view. It has cost the Americans many lives, three trillion dollars, empowered Iran, unleashed additional sources of religious fanaticism in Iraq, destroyed the Chaldean-Assyrian Christian communities there, demoralized U.S. forces required to fulfill an impossible mission (a unified functioning Iraqi nation-state that is an American ally), divided Americans at home, decreased American will to militarily confront a more dangerous threat in Iran's nuclear project and took American attention away from the increasing Islamization of Europe and stealth jihad at home.
ReplyDeleteImmoral it wasn't.
But analyzing American foreign policy within the overall realm of American interests is in itself an unthinkable and immoral exercise.
Immoral was forcing Czechoslovakia to give up land necessary for its defense and survival. Just as forcing Israel to do the same with the Golan and West Bank would also be a highly immoral act.
It seems as if Greenwald thinks that any invasion or regime change is always and everywhere an immoral and illegal act that must be condemned. There should be more of an effort to make distinctions based on the individual circumstances.
As for the local liberated populations, there can be no comparison between the injustices against the Kurds with the situation of the Sudenten Germans in Czechoslovakia, who like the Palestinians, were promoted late-in-the-game as an separate and unique people being denied their rights of self-determination, even though they were ethnic Germans just as the Palestinians are ethnic Arabs, and the Nazis saw no need to give them an independent state once the Sudentenland was detached from Czechoslovakia.
It is true that the Kurds were already had some breathing space from Saddam prior to the 2003 invasion. Still, anyone with a shred of human decency or who cares about stemming the threat from radical Islam should be happy about developments in Iraqi Kurdistan over the past 7 years, regardless of whether they were for or against the American invasion of Iraq. And both American interest and my moral compass (protecting the Kurds from their Turkish and Arab neighbors) lead me to believe that Kurdistan would be a fine place for American troops to be based in the Middle East, long after they leave the rest of Iraq.
you need to do some wikipedia editing
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Czechoslovakia
By the way, you've got a response from Brad DeLong. Oy, semantics.
ReplyDeleteHey Yaacov!
ReplyDeleteI checked Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler, and guess what! Sudetenland and Austria and Bohemia are all described as invasions. I'm pretty sure he isn't the only one. Looks like it's you who is unfamiliar with the history books. Looks like your little taunt backfired.
Laters,
A historian.
Lol, looks like I was late with my reply. Funny, you accuse Glenn of doing a false comparison while whitewashing Nazi aggression yourself! I wonder what is worse? Hmm....
ReplyDeleteYou lose all credibility with the first sentence of your post. You owe Greenwald an apology.
ReplyDeleteReread _his_ post (which hasn't been edited). He is very specific to the point he's making. You, on the other hand, are simply politicking, and lying to do so. Bad form.
- Someone who actually knows how to read
Funny. You know, Yaacov, it's a good thing you're not arguing with Jeffrey Goldberg, or else he'd be accusing you of calling America worse than Hitler.
ReplyDeleteGlenn Greenwald goes out of his way to prove that Churchill was absolutely wrong when he called WWII "the unnecessary war," the war that should never have been, the war that was eminently preventable.
ReplyDeleteIf the western powers only showed some resolve.....
No, Greenwald demonstrates precisely why WWII had to happen.
Precisely why the western powers could never have shown any resolve.
"The issue is not whether there are people, meaning one person or more, who welcome the invading army."
ReplyDeleteThat might be your argument, but it wasn't Goldberg's.
"But the point that Goldberg made, and which Greenwald tries to trivialize, is that evil of the government in power pre-invasion, as manifested by the oppression and abuse of segments of its population, can be moral grounds for invasion."
That is not the point Goldberg made at all. Let's begin by examining who was doing the trivializing. Goldberg began by inviting Greenwald to Kurdistan to meet his new best friends who would them proceed to tell him how much they loved the war.
"The Kurds and Saddam were simply an example showing how the evil of the government led to the welcoming reception from an oppressed group when invaders rid them of their oppressors."
False again. Far from being merely an example, it's the one remaining justification that Goldberg can cite in order to justify the fact that he peddled the false propaganda in the lead up to the war. Goldberg had no interest in the plight of the Kurds until it became useful, but was obsessing about links to Al Qaeda (he still is), WMD and blaming Saddam for 9/11. Goldberg readily admits that he only seized on the Kurdish talking point as a matter of necessity.
"It seems as if Greenwald thinks that any invasion or regime change is always and everywhere an immoral and illegal act that must be condemned. There should be more of an effort to make distinctions based on the individual circumstances."
ReplyDeleteThat's dishonest in the extreme.
Had the Bush Administration stated clearly that is was going into Iraq to implement regime change, without the fear mongering about WMD, repeated innuendo about 9/11 and links to Al Qaeda, they would not have won popular support. As it turns out, they didn't win it anyway.
The government had to frighten the public into backing the invasion and convince them it was necessary because of 9/11.
RK at 3:35
ReplyDelete"einzurücken" is invasion - I am not familiar enough with the habits of translators working in "International Law" but my German gut feeling protests - there is probably no good translation for the verb though we have Invasion as a noun but there my gut would translate it as closer to "Eroberung" (conquest)
to enter a debate based on translated quotes is always a doubtful endeavour - so I'd advise Brad DeLong to brush up his German before he next pontificates.
I haven't checked but shouldn't there be a division between the "Heim ins Reich" part and the later making Chekoslovakia a protectorate - Heydrich anybody?
Silke
oops I forgot the link
ReplyDeletehttp://www.vorkriegsgeschichte.de/content/view/22/39/
and mark you anybody who can read should note that this is about the rest of Czechoslowakia which is a wholly different story
read it and Kershaw or not, invasion is at least for a German more than slightly off - I wonder what the German translator of Kershaw did with it
- if I go on I am beginning to sound like one of Ahmadinejad's defenders ;-)
Silke
1)
ReplyDeleteWhy do all you Anons leave out the AlQaeda-link theme? - a bit uncomfortable with that one????
2)
all this always referencing the 3rd Reich happens because that's all the people who want to pose as history buffs have ever heard about.
3)
Yaacov is perfectly right in insisting that the taking over of the areas he listed doesn't qualify as invasion in the same way that our invasion/attack on Poland (seit 3? Uhr wird zurückgeschossen) does qualify (but Yaacov knows German which qualifies him for knowing nothing n'est-ce pas?)
One might of course argue that since Hitler claimed to go into all these areas for completely humanitarian reasons ...
oh jemine - now I am going to comment myself into a corner in a more and more gaga sounding debate ...
it has happened, the only interesting thing now, is how to make the best of it. As I was told in school:
one cannot step into the same river twice
to all of Greenwald's yelping defenders I say:
I enjoy a bit of trolling here and there myself also, but please guys be a bit more knowledgeable. Just throwing bullet points around is boring and boredom is hazardous to a lot of brain functions.
Silke
surprise surprise
ReplyDeletenow Goldberg defends Sullivan on using "Final Solution" and I am against this facile throwing all things in one big pot.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/06/the-final-solution/58996/
Certainly the Nazis did lots of incredibly brutal stuff including so-called "euthanasia" that is terribly similar to what Sullivan describes scientists want to inflict on homosexuals but it does not qualify as the "Final Solution".
If one wants to broaden the applicability of something that to the best of my knowledge came into being with the Wannsee-conference only then one must start to include the callous cruelties of the eugenicists also i.e. one should stop watering down terms that are apt only in one context.
Silke
PS: ever since media seem to have laid off their back-up staff first I imagine I see a proliferation of facile Nazi-analogies which signals to me that they must be all the rage in American media circle parlance.
The only things that you need to remember about Greenwald is that
ReplyDeleteA) he's never actually had an idea in his life
B) he's a LaRouche right wing libertarian fanatic, not a liberal, by his own admission
C) he supports the right of corporations to have unlimited contributions to American candidates
D) he's written for and worked for Pat Buchanan
E) he made his legal bones on defending Nazis
F) his blog is not about arguing anything at all, it's merely a vehicle to attack other bloggers who disagree with him.
G) he is a fanatical anti 'zionist' (whatever that means) who's never seen anything on the planet that wasn't the fault of the 'Lobby'.
H) he regularly cites Raimondo, Mondoweiss, Alex Jones and Antiwar as sources for his 'ideas'
I) he will never delete an openly antisemitic comment to his blog, only those condemning said comment under the false rubric that 'free speech trumps all'.
J) he has a long history of sockpuppetry on the web.
http://opiniojuris.org/2010/07/01/the-nazis-didnt-invade-austria-and-czechoslovakia/
ReplyDeleteEnough Said!
Well, I'm sure Hitler's spirit is pleased to see Lozowick rising to his defense.
ReplyDelete"invade: Enter or make an incursion into (a place, a country, etc.) esp. in a hostile manner, in large numbers, or with armed force; attack."
The fact that the Czechs, browbeaten by Hitler and abandoned by their allies, did not resist with armed force, does not make it any less an invasion.
Nor does the fact that only the Sudetenland was taken make it not an invasion, any more than if Mexico invaded "only" Arizona.
I suppose we will next learn that it's not really rape if the victim doesn't fight back? There's a *reason* that "rape" is a common metaphor for what befell Austria and Czechoslovakia.
I posted a link to this article on Greenwald's blog. It was of course immediately deleted w/o comment like the unpersons no longer in Stalinist era photographs.
ReplyDeleteAnon at 4:49
ReplyDeletenice try with the link but from a short look at it your "enough said" doesn't even seem to know that there were more than one "invasion" of Czechoslowakia.
And to all the language buffs around here a little reminder:
There is a word "Invasion" in German but it doesn't cover the same ground as the English. It is more like German English speakers find out at their peril whenever they use "actually" assuming it means "aktuell" and nothing else.
So stop the nonsense and use the terms in use at the time in German for these more than peculiar and somewhat reminiscent of byzantine habits events and Greenwald's acclaimed by you knowledge of history just as much as Brad DeLong's of German evaporates into cyberspace.
Silke
Anderson
ReplyDeleteyou can come up with definitions any number of times it only shows that you are ignorant of the pitfalls of translation.
Silke
Hi All,
ReplyDeleteI was quite careful with my words yesterday, but here are some additional comments.
1. There was no German invasion of the Sudeten. The region was handed over to Germany according to the shameful Munich agreements.
2. There was no invasion of Slovakia, either: the Slovakians split off from rump Czechosovakia in March 1939 and its new regime requested German protection. Poland and Hungary snatched parts of the country at the same time.
3. There was a large-scale movement of German troops into Bohenia and Moravia on March 14th 1940, at the same time the Czech president, Hacha, was forced to accept German domination. It was all bloodless and completed within the day. This is not commonly called an invasion in German, but in my original post I left it vague.
4. The German invasion of Austria in March 1938 was not an invasion, though German troops did enter the country, at the request of the (Nazi) Austrian prime minister, Arthur Seyss-Inquart. While the machinations which brought about this result were anything but democratic, the German takeover was greeted with great enthusiasm by most Austrians of the day, as if fulfilled a political goal they'd been striving for since the end of the First World War.
None of this is meant to defend the Nazis in any remote way. Historical accuracy, however, is important, especially when historical events are pulled by ignoramusi into a totally different context.
If all of the defenders of Greenwald who have rushed here to defend his style of argumentation think they can handle a patient analysis of it, it is available at
ReplyDeletehttp://sadredearth.com/greenwald-goldberg-i-the-thrilla-in-vanilla/
and
http://sadredearth.com/greenwald-goldberg-ii-this-time-its-personal/
"according to the shameful Munich agreements"
ReplyDeleteThe Czechs were, notoriously, not a party at Munich.
Unlike DeLong, I am not relying on Hitler's use of "invasion," just the English sense used by Lozowick in his post.
Saying that the Czechs did anything other than give way under the threat of force in 1938 is, quite simply, despicable. They did not cede the Sudetenland -- it was taken from them by force, as the Nuremberg trials held.
Or does Lozowick's revisionism now extend to disparaging the Nuremberg proceedings? Where does this stop, exactly?
Yaacov
ReplyDeletethe accusation tht historical accuracy excuses the Nazis is ridiculous - for me it is important because Poles object very much to being lumped into the same category as Sudetendeutsche and even as the rest of Czechoslovakia, not to mention Austria and they do so for very good reasons.
The same applies in my book when the punditry lumps forced sterilisation, "euthanasia" and the "Endlösung" all in one pot called final solution
and the reason I object is that the most important persons in the debate i.e. the victims don't dig it at all. Never mind that lots are dead by now they still deserve respect and accuracy and all I have met were sticklers for accuracy.
Silke
Anderson
ReplyDeletetrying to create something out of nothing, are you?
reading something into a sentence which isn't even remotely in it is called by serious people some pretty bad names
Silke
"A) he's never actually had an idea in his life"
ReplyDeleteHe's correcting lies by the like of Goldberg, not arguing phylosophy.
"B) he's a LaRouche right wing libertarian fanatic, not a liberal, by his own admission"
False. He's a contitutionalist, who atacks the lweft and the right. He has never claimed to be liberal.
"C) he supports the right of corporations to have unlimited contributions to American candidates"
False again. He criticized the Supreme Court desision pertaining to this.
"D) he's written for and worked for Pat Buchanan"
False. He's never worked for Pat Buchanan.
"E) he made his legal bones on defending Nazis"
False. He's never defended any Nazis.
"F) his blog is not about arguing anything at all, it's merely a vehicle to attack other bloggers who disagree with him."
His blog, his rules.
"G) he is a fanatical anti 'zionist' (whatever that means) who's never seen anything on the planet that wasn't the fault of the 'Lobby'."
Zionists will argue that all anti zionists are fanatics.
"H) he regularly cites Raimondo, Mondoweiss, Alex Jones and Antiwar as sources for his 'ideas'"
False. His posts are cited by aimondo, Mondoweiss, Alex Jones and Antiwar, not the other way around.
"I) he will never delete an openly antisemitic comment to his blog, only those condemning said comment under the false rubric that 'free speech trumps all'."
False. He has deleted a number of antisemitic comments, and tends to leave racist Zionist comments alone as they tend to be self incriminating.
"J) he has a long history of sockpuppetry on the web."
According to whom?
"Enough Said!"
Enough BS you mean.
FWIW, I'm not a fan of Greenwald, whose mouth is often quicker than his brain.
ReplyDeleteBut that is no reason to degrade oneself in quarreling with him. To say an invasion isn't an invasion when it's accomplished with overwhelming force is to make excuses for power and to exalt might over right.
In case somebody is interested in reading somebody whom I know as scrupulous and as somebody who thinks while he types I recommend this
ReplyDeletehttp://sadredearth.com/greenwald-goldberg-ii-this-time-its-personal/
------
Anderson
if you are a really courageous man go and tell the Poles that what they suffered as of September 1, 1939, 3 am comes under the same heading as the "Anschluss" of Austria - oh and while you are at it tell the Russians also - there I warmly recommend your talking to the survivors of German prisoner of war camps.
Believe me your take and your argument doesn't only testify to ignorance and inaccuracy it is also extremely callous and cruel and a lot of other things which I restrain myself from listing.
Silke
Silke, your grasp of elementary logic is disingenuous, since I doubt you are genuinely clueless.
ReplyDeletePoland *resisted* invasion, which was of course more violent for the Poles, and primarily suffered from the *occupation*, which was brutal. That has nothing to do with whether Poland and Austria were "invaded." All the moreso issues of POW's, etc.
For that matter, quite a few Austrians deemed enemies (racial or otherwise) of the Reich, suffered quite as much as most Poles.
Dragging in material extraneous to the narrow issue of "invasion" demonstrates your lack of an argument.
Anderson
ReplyDeleteby the dictionary's definition it is very likely that there is no military base on foreign soil on earth that can't be argued into having happened thanks to an "invasion".
"invade: Enter or make an incursion into (a place, a country, etc.) esp. in a hostile manner, in large numbers, or with armed force; attack."
btw I remembered that, when I got me a bit of eco-education I ran into a misunderstanding about the meaning of conspiracy. Only there I had partners who were familiar with language mishaps and so we learned quickly that conspiracy can be translated as "Verschwörung" only with qualifications.
And just to make it clear, in German "Anschluss" and "Heim ins Reich" sound almost as odious as "Überfall" does, which is the word commonly used for our assault on Poland, the qualification being that they range really high on a deviousness scale while "Überfall" gets "good" marks on the brutality scale.
One more to Poland: to the best of my memory it was the declared intent of my forebears to kill off all of the Polish elite and leave only "slave" labourers as Poland was supposed to become part of "Lebensraum" but I guess I am right to assume that that is for you another negligible difference compared to the Austrian "Anschluss".
So all in all, if the English language insists on lumping the American Base on Djibuti and our atrocious and a bit less atrocious assaults on our neighbours (remember there was something to the west also) all together in one word, go ahead but I am for respecting the right of my co-Europeans to prefer a bit of qualifying differentiation.
Oh and "lack of argument" and "disingenuous" are nice tries but to me, they remind me of the signature arguments for a group of people I meet elsewhere who strike me as none too bright. If you want to claim them as "your" people be my guest.
Silke
Anderson,
ReplyDeleteNazi Germany was not alone in WW2 against the rest of the world. It had partners and allies of various sizes and levels of commitment. The Austrians - by any measure - were more committed than was the general German population itself. The Sudeten regarded themselves as Germans. The Slovaks were allies, though being small and weak their contribution to Germany's war effort was minor.
The Czechs were occupied, but without an invasion: they were betrayed by their allies.
Then there were Hungarians, Romanians, Vichy France, Croatia, and of course Italy (and, far off in a different war, Japan).
Your insistence on lumping the Austrians Sudetens and Slovaks in with Nazism's true victims is poor history, and morally objectionable. As was Glenn Greenwald's original offensive post.
I haven't gone to check how American popular historiography portrays all this; I suppose it's possible that the general feeling is that Nazi Germany invaded all of Europe - but it didn't happen that way, and if that's the way regular Americans see it these days, that says more about them than about the history itself.
Yaacov
ReplyDeleteChurchill on page 289 of "the Gathering Storm":
"On September 30 Czechoslovakia bowed to the decisions of Munich."
writing about the month of March page 307:
"German troops marching into Prague, assumed absolute control of the unresisting State. ... March 14 witnessed the dissolution and subjugation of the Czechoslovk Republic."
In all the surrounding pages I couldn't find the word "invasion"
- but I (re)found on page 295 that Hitler on October 9 in Saarbrücken told England to take care of its own national affairs "for instance, with affairs in Palestine"
btw the Wikipedia page I consulted got it pretty right too, so Anderson was just after creating a bit of a ruckus
Silke
If you check the books referred to at Opinio Juris and elsewhere, you'll see that it isn't just "American popular historiography" that refers to the events of March 13-15, 1939 as an "invasion." (Note: not the annexation of the Sudeten, but the creation of the Slovak puppet state and the takeover of Bohemia and Moravia.) Shirer's history isn't exactly "popular," and Kenshaw and Yitzhak Arad are neither American nor popular.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's ignorant to refer to the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia as the "invasion of Czechoslovakia," but it seems like like a lot of well-known historians characterize it that way when writing in English. Greenwald's ignorance clearly has good company.
I should note that the March 15th thingummy (invasion, influx of German troops, whatever) had its share of supporters among the native population. There were about 250,000 ethnic Germans in what was to become the German protectorate, especially in the Böhmerwald region, who were quite enthusiastic supporters of the NSDAP, just like the Sudeten Germans who were previously incorporated into the Reich.
ReplyDeleteGreenwald’s point seems a little to close to ‘a murderer once claimed self-defense, so all claims of self-defense are illegitimate’ for my liking.
ReplyDeleteWhat books (other than Churchill’s) are on the lead up to WWII? From what I can see, most of the books being quoted are actually about other matters.
t34zakat
Churchill also writes in some detail about what the other Czech neighbours grabbed for themselves
ReplyDelete- again no use of "invasion" though
- when it comes to choice of words my bet is on (closer to contemporary English) Churchill
my Shirer is in German and there the word is throughout Einmarsch (in-march) which covers according to my native gut much more of the same ground of what Anderson's dictionary says about American or English(?) invasion (my small Oxford says invasion: invading, encroachment - and encroachment allows for gradual inroads.)
But beware!!! Shirer makes it in the paragraphs containing Einmarsch very clear what he is talking about - no Greenwaldian simplification there.
Invasion in English and Invasion in German do NOT cover the same ground but that is of course no reason for nowadays Anglos to qualify when talking about German history - on the other hand amazing with all that introduction of Weltanschauung et al.
Actually come to think of it the defenders of "invasion" as a one-fit-all do a really cute and new to me (albeit not to Austrians and Sudeten and others) kind of Nazi-apology
- if all they claim that was an invasion was an invasion then of course all "Heim ins Reich"ers and "Anschluss"ers become the completely innocent deplorable victims of German aggression up there worthy of compassion (and money?) finally with all the murdered and maimed ones
- and believe you me that suits nowadays all those with a "not everything was bad under the Nazis" and/or "after all Hitler built the Autobahns" crowds of all ages and affiliations more than just a bit.
Keep it going!
Whoever supports the lumping together is on the right track.
(and don't forget Goldberg found Endlösung OK when an equivalent to at best forced sterilisation was the subject)
Silke
This is one of the most ridiculous arguments I have ever seen.
ReplyDeleteTo say that Germany did not invade Austria or the Czech part of Czechoslovakia because they did not fight is as absurd as saying a man does not commit rape if a woman does not resist because he says he will kill her if she does.
Yes there were some in Austria who welcomed the Nazis and many more who behaved disgustingly as Nazi power spread.
But if you are going to make assertions about the use of an English word like "invasion," saying you can't find it in the original German just makes you look silly.
dear Anon 2:07
ReplyDeleteread again - if that is one of your skills, that is
Silke