I have just finished reviewing a book by Augustine Meaher IV, called The Road to Singapore: the Myth of British Betrayal. It is an excellent analysis of how Australian political, social, industrial, and military elites, spend the entire interwar period failing to prepare Australia for what was to come in the Second World War. Its fundamental premise is that nobody should get away with shortchanging their own defences for 20 years, and then claiming that a resulting crisis is somebody else’s fault.
Imperial defence, from as early as 1863, was founded on the idea that Britain would coordinate a central response to any threat, but that each Dominion and associated territory was responsible for their own local defences. Throughout the interwar period Australia, like all other Dominions, had been repeatedly told that Imperial defence required adequate local defences to hold off raids until relief could arrive. The defence strategy of the British Empire and Commonwealth was to hold the mobile military forces, such as the main fleets and expeditionary armies (both of which had been voluntarily reduced due to League of Nations and Washington Naval Treaty commitments), at central nodes from which there dispatched to any area under threat. This could take several months. At a minimum this would be six weeks, and as worldwide threats rose when the Second World War commenced, it was raised to six months. Australia never prepared adequate defences to withstand raids for even six weeks.
The screams of betrayal from the Australian Labor Party in 1942 were an extremely good cover for their own resistance to all military expenditure for the preceding 20 years. Disarmament, pacifism, and appeasement had been the catch cries of all ALP policy right through the 1930s. Realistically the Curtin government had the choice of coming clean on their betrayal of their own people, or of pretending it was possible to blame somebody else.
Ever since poor historians have used selective readings of the source materials to pretend that the idea that the British Empire could defend itself in the Far East was always a fantasy. (Morris, J. Farewell the Trumpets; Bell, Roger. Unequal Allies; Thornton, AP. Imperialism in the 20th Century; Neidpath, J. The Singapore Naval Base in the Defence of Britain’s East Empire; Robertson, J. Australia at War 1939-1945; Johnston, W. Great Britain Great Empire.) In fact some historians went so far as to argue that Britain did not possess the power to hold her colonial territories even if she had not been involved in fighting a major war in Europe. (Beloff M. Wars and Welfare; Bell, Coral. Dependent Ally: Day, David. The Great Betrayal; Kennedy, P. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers; Ansprenger, F. The Dissolution of the Colonial Empires; Barnett, Corelli. Engage the Enemy More Closely.) It is necessary to play quite fast and loose with the source materials to achieve such results.
At the time of the Japanese attack on Malaya, the Philippines and Pearl Harbor, Britain and her Empire and Commonwealth were engaged in an unparalleled feat of worldwide power projection. Already facing the combined efforts of the entire German and Italian Navy’s, most of the German and Italian air forces, and all of the Italian army - with substantial part of the most modern and powerful elements of the Wehrmacht including crack paratrooper and armoured forces: Britain also had to prepare a large army to defend Turkey and the northern 'Persian' frontiers against a potential German attack if the Soviet Union failed. A further cost was in fighting through a vast quantity of supplies to keep the Soviet Union in the war. (A single months worth of the aircraft and tanks sent to Russia would have saved the entire eastern position.) Aside from those minor details, Britain had to deploy large enough naval, army, and air forces to deter a Japanese attempt to take advantage of such an opportunity. Nonetheless, the forces being lined up for the Far East was staggeringly impressive, if only they could arrive in time.
By April 1942 Britain would have deployed six divisions to Malay, supported by 16 squadrons of aircraft, nine battleships and three aircraft carriers. This was in response to the early 1941 analysis that what was needed was three divisions, 22 squadrons of aircraft, seven battleships and two aircraft carriers (more aircraft equals less troops). Unfortunately the Japanese struck too soon, and there were only 3 ½ divisions, 16 half strength squadrons, four battleships and one aircraft carrier in the eastern forces. (Most textbooks do not even mention that the main British Eastern Fleet was to assemble at Ceylon, and that capital units were already there when the ill-fated Force Z took the gamble of trying to interfere with Japanese invasion fleet’s while the main Japanese fleet was clearly occupied at Pearl Harbor.)
In fact by the time Singapore fell in late January 1942, the reinforcements that had arrived - the British 18th division, another Indian and Australian Brigade, and hundreds of more modern aircraft - would almost certainly have been enough to have made the position secure if they had been there at the start. (Japanese descriptions of the campaign repeatedly emphasise their shoestring logistics and how close they came to failure.)
The British were still conscious that they were fighting a world war. Even as Singapore surrendered, and the Japanese launched an attack into Burma, the Indian Army was sending twice as many troops to face a far more dangerous prospect of a German attack into Persia. Frankly, from the perspective of a world war, the loss of a minor peninsula and naval base was a small price to pay. (Again unnoticed by most history books, is that despite fighting one of the greatest combinations of power in the history of the world until that time, total British territorial losses in World War II amounted to the tiny Channel Isles, and Malaysia and Burma - Australia also lost New Guinea. Territorially, this amounted to a few percent of the territory and population of the Empire.)
The records of the Combined Chiefs of Staff outline what was actually happening. By June 30, 1942, Britain would have 15 divisions in India, Burma, Ceylon, rising to 22 by December; and 17 divisions in the Middle East, rising to 26 by December. This is of course apart from the dozen divisions in Australia, 45 in Britain itself, and eight in the other parts of Africa. Adding in the divisions in Canada and New Zealand, this means that the British Empire was deploying more than 100 divisions in 1942. (Note that the United States reached its maximum of only 88 divisions in 1945.)
The next most ignored the fact by most of these revisionist historians, is that despite everything else that was going on, Britain kept her promise to deploy the main fleet to the Far East within six months of conflict commencing. (Even though this meant temporarily shutting down most operations in the Mediterranean to several months. The side effect of this was Rommel’s last successful attack as far as el-Alamein.) When the Japanese launched another spoiling attack in April 1942, the British Eastern Fleet had already assembled 5 battleships, 3 aircraft carriers, 7 cruises, 16 destroyers, and 7 submarines. Additional forces already en route included another 2 battleships and another aircraft carrier plus additional lighter units. In response to the Japanese raid, a further 2 battleships and an aircraft carrier were ordered to the area, with another 2 battleships being suggested as further reinforcements. It is necessary to note here that the original force was already the largest Allied fleet anywhere in the world in 1942. Lifting it to 9 battleships and 5 aircraft carriers would have made it a bigger capital ship force than the entire surviving United States Navy, despite the requirements of the Home fleet, the Atlantic (particularly the dangerous convoys to northern Russia) and the Mediterranean. This is how weak the British Empire was.
The Japanese raid was an attempt to defeat part of this fleet before it could assemble, and simultaneously to affect public opinion, particularly pro-independence agitation in India (which was hosting the Stafford Cripps Mission to discuss postwar settlement). Frankly the Japanese had only one chance to solve the problem of a two-ocean war. The Americans were temporarily in chaos, with their remaining battleships withdrawn to the US west coast, and only three aircraft carriers available to mount minor raids in the Pacific. The situation would not last, and the Japanese needed to break British naval power before American pressures would prevent them from responding to British counter attacks.
There is a suprising agreement amongst many historians, that the British Eastern Fleet was very lucky not to meet the Japanese raiders. The general consensus, is that the superior air power of the five aircraft carrier and four battlecruiser Japanese fleet would give it an immeasurable advantage over the British, who only had two modern aircraft carriers (the third little anti-submarine carrier Hermes hardly counting), and five slower battleships. There is particular concern about the four old Revenge class battleships, which were slow and had a relatively light anti-aircraft armament. Again, this is possibly an oversimplification of the source material.
The Japanese, and Americans, at this stage in the war needed to launch large numbers of aircraft to even find their targets, let alone to get successful attacks. Anybody who studies the Coral Sea or Midway battles, cannot help but be struck by how many aircraft on both sides got lost, attacked the wrong target, or ran out of fuel and crashed. On several occasions, Japanese and American fleets patrolled within a few hundred miles of each other, but failed to connect. By contrast, the British had three years of combat experience with radar, and radar equipped aircraft. The Albacore torpedo bombers on their carriers - which were still biplane models - were strong sturdy reliable aircraft, but not ones suitable to use against enemy fighter opposition in daytime. But they were perfect night strike aircraft, particularly when directed by radar. (Their Swordfish predecessors had achieved spectacular results when only a couple of dozen of them attacked the main Italian fleet base at Taranto night and during wartime. Contrast this with the relatively unsophisticated total effects achieved by a much larger numbers of Japanese planes operating at Pearl Harbor in the day time, when attacking a nation still at peace! The Japs may have sunk twice as many battleships, but the British took out the vital oil tanks and the seaplane base as well.)
Admiral Somerville, whose command of the Ark Royal and other carriers in Force H for the preceding two years made him by far the most experienced fast carrier task force commander at this stage of the war, planned to manoeuvre his fleet to strike the Japanese at night, and to be out of range during the day. His successful experiences using his radar equipped forces in the narrow Mediterranean made him fairly confident that this tactic could be used even more successfully in the vast spaces of the Indian Ocean. Excellent intelligence - as at Midway – meant that his incomplete fleet was waiting in ambush for the Japanese on April 1, 1942. Unfortunately, after a few days manoeuvring, they returned to base, assuming their intelligence had been incorrect. The Japanese arrived on April 5.
The two fleets manoeuvred over the next several days, both trying to achieve their preferred advantage. Neither got within range. Again, the implication by many historians is that even if Somerville had managed a night airstrike that damaged or destroyed some Japanese ships, he would then have been within range for a Japanese airstrike the next day. This assumes of course that Japanese damage control would be considerably better than at Midway. Or that the Japanese would be able to direct their attacks more efficiently than at Coral Sea or Midway. That they would be more efficient at taking on a concentrated fleet’s massed anti-aircraft firepower, than the Luftwaffe was in the Mediterranean. It assumes that the limited numbers of British fighters available would not have been able to be just as effective at breaking up attacks as they had been in the Mediterranean. (Note that the British carriers were using Sea Hurricane and Martlett – the US called them Wildcat - fighters, instead of the appalling Buffalo fighters that had been used at Pearl Harbour and Singapore and would still be used in numbers at Midway.) It assumes that the British practice of radar vectoring fighters out of the sun to attack from the best possible angle would be no more efficient than the American and Japanese approach of attacking the head on. (In 1945 off Japan the British would still need far smaller numbers of combat air patrol to achieve the same results as the Americans.) It assumed that the heavily armoured British carriers that survived every hit by both Luftwaffe and Kamikaze during the entire war, would sink as easily as Japanese or American carriers did in the Pacific. For some writers, it is even suggested that be lightly armoured Japanese Kongo class battle cruisers would have an advantage in attack over the slower British battle line on the defence (though there is no recorded example anywhere at anytime of a battlecruiser surviving a stand-up fight against a battleship).
In effect, it is assumed that everything the far more experienced and battle hardened British had done right in the Mediterranean previously would go wrong here, and everything that went wrong for the still learning Japanese in the Pacific over the next two years would go right here. Dubious.
The raid was a tactical success, and a strategic failure. Much like the battle of Jutland, the attackers went home crowing about how much damage they have done, but failed in their main operational goal. In both cases the British lost more ships, but in both cases they failed to suffer the strategic losses that the attackers needed to achieve to allow themselves a future freedom of action. The British lost two cruisers, and the ancient anti-submarine aircraft carrier Hermes (which did not even have any aircraft on board). The Japanese lost more of their aircraft and skilled pilots - a steadily wasting resource - then they cared to admit. The British fleet retired to await the rest of its reinforcements. (The faster aircraft carrier squadron to Bombay, and the slower defensive battleship squadron to the east coast of Africa, where it could cover the vital Middle East and Indian transport routes.) The Japanese fleet rushed back to try and maintain some momentum in the Pacific. Within months the cumulative effects of tiredness and steady attrition amongst their pilots and carriers would contribute to significant losses at Coral Sea and Midway. No major Japanese force would ever again attempt to push into the Indian Ocean.
The collapse of the Japanese offensive potential over these few months was vital. Their early successes against peace-time fleets, or small squadrons scattered around vast areas, were not repeated when they finally started to come up against larger or better prepared Allied forces. The Indian Ocean raid got good headlines, but failed its strategic goals. They may have claimed Coral Sea as a tactical victory, but the ongoing wastage of planes and pilots and ships at Ceylon and Coral Sea left them greatly weakened at Midway. They had rampaged for four months on a shoestring, and even the raids on the Ceylon ports themselves saw them taking significantly greater casualties, for significantly less effect, that had been achieved in the early months of the war. (RAF counter-attacks at Ceylon were the first time Japanese sailors saw bombs falling towards their carriers. None hit, but it was a sign of things to come.)
None of these exercises demonstrate British weakness. The British Eastern Fleet was quickly diverted to the amphibious invasion of Madagascar to secure lines of communication, and soon after that large elements were sent back to the Mediterranean to knock Italy out of the war. There would be no great need for a large fleet in the Indian Ocean until the time came for major offensives in 1945. Churchill had guaranteed to come to Australia’s defence if it was ever seriously invaded. British troop convoys sailing around the Cape of Good Hope to the Middle East, always had contingency plans to head towards Australia if necessary. One of the armoured divisions that later served in Eighth Army, was listed for diversion to Australia until the events at Coral Sea and Midway made it clear that the threat of invasion was passed. As it turns out, despite the best efforts of the ALP and other Australian politicians, Australia was too strong for Japan to ever seriously consider invading.
The key thing that most of these historians seem to fail to recognize, is that Britain’s issue was not so much military power as shipping and transport. Britain had planes and tanks (many Canadian or American made), but lacked the ships to supply them to Russia, the Middle East and the Far East simultaneously. Britain did not need 40+ divisions at home, but lacked the troop-lift to be able to toss half a dozen to Singapore or Australia at whim. (Interestingly, the American entry to the war initially made this position far worse. Not only was Britain, for the third year running, trying to prop up a blitzkrieged ally - France, then Russia, then the United States - but the incapacity of the U.S. Navy to provide any convoy protection on its east coast almost lost the allies the Battle of the Atlantic. Even after the British hastily deployed 60 escort vessels to cover the US coast, shipping losses climbed to a level that undermined British ability to feed themselves, keep the Russians in the war, keep the reinforcements flowing to the Middle East and Asia, and pander to a panicked Australian government.)
For most of 1942 the British Empire and Commonwealth held the line, kept back the combined efforts of Germany and Italy and Japan (with fairly minimal imput from the United States compared to her potential power), and kept the Atlantic and Indian oceans open and suppliers flowing to the vital armies in the Middle East and Asia, and to the Soviets. No other empire in the history of the world has been capable of such a sustained multi-continent and multi-ocean operation. (There were financial costs to all this that I will discuss in another post.) Given that the British and Commonwealth taxpayers spent most of the interwar period trying to avoid just such an obligation, and greatly weakened their militaries in the process, this situation is less reflective of weakness than of the vast untapped inherent strength of the organization.
It would be nice if some historians could let their political preconceptions about how they think the world should work at least be susceptible to analyzing the actual evidence.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
Science fiction, history and government.
I have just finished rereading H. Beam Piper’s Space Viking, which, apart from being a good space opera romp, is certainly one of the best historical analysis books I have ever read.
Like all good fiction writers, H. Beam Piper was a student of the human condition. Like other very good historians, H. Beam Piper had a simple but profound understanding of the various streams of cause and effect in human culture. Like a very select group of exceptional science-fiction writers, H. Beam Piper told stories that reveal an enormous amount about how and why human civilisation and government develops.
This has been a consistent theme of the very best of science-fiction writers, who are to the 20th century, what novel writers were to the 19th century: a disreputable breakthrough group that eventually achieved cult status and finally even universal respect as important part of the canon of human literature. The early luminaries in the field like HG Wells and JRR Tolkien are already treated with respect by good university courses. Many others will inevitably follow.
As a historian myself - with a side interest in philosophy and politics - I’m always more interested by those writers whose stories reflect a clear understanding of how and why things change in human society’s. John Wyndham may be famous for The Day of the Triifids, or the Kraken Wakes or the Midwich Cuckoos stories, but if you really want a creepy insight into fragility of human society you should read his far less well-known but very clever The Trouble with Lichen. (Which I know for a fact has been used as a university text, because I set it for one of the Deakin University courses I taught in the early 90s, in contrast with the more famous - but I believe less astute - Brave New World.)
A less incisive, but far more recognized contemporary of Wyndham, was Robert Heinlein. His understanding of history was less impressive, but his fundamental concept of human nature has made very telling points. Unfortunately Hollywood, when attempting to convert his books to films, has failed miserably on every occasion. In particular, the Hollywood mindset - even though draped around the action hero - clearly fails to understand that Heinlein’s version of the great man is moderated by Heinlein’s version of the interaction of all men. So you get the horrible film versions of good books such as the much underrated Starship Troopers. The appalling Hollywood remix of this suggested that Heinlein’s society was simply a fascist government. Nothing could be further from the truth. Heinlein’s critique of how incompetent bureaucrats and governments drag peoples into war for little purpose, was to suggest that after the failure in one of the great world wars the returning veterans replaced the government with a government by the only people who they felt could be trusted: those who had demonstrated a willingness to risk their lives for their fellow citizens… fellow veterans. The fundamental idea was that unless you are willing to put your life on the line for your fellow citizen, you should not get a say in the running of the State. This combines Heinlein’s great man concept, with the democratic principle that participation is a responsibility rather than a right.
Clearly it is inconceivable to modern Hollywood figures that democracy is anything but a right. Which just goes to reveal how far from reality of their understanding of the world is. Heinlein was in fact reflecting on the ancient Greek and Roman version of democracy, where to be a citizen required that you be willing to don armour, practice fighting in your spare time, and go out and risk your life with your fellow citizens to get a vote. In fact, only the people who spent the most money on armour, and took the greatest risks in the front line, could ever be expected to deserve election to high office. This is certainly not fascism. This is the ideal of democracy based on a balance of rights with responsibility.
Modern democracies started the same way. To be an active citizen in the French system, was based pretty much on the property franchise. Of the 350 people in the average French village, maybe 50 or 60 were active citizens, of whom the adult male half would be allowed to vote. The American system was even less inclusive, with your tax or property franchise being further limited by your race. Other versions of the franchise in other states, have always limited the voting class by social rank, race, religion, tax status, property, or finally that most stupid of definitions, age. (Modern students it seems fundamentally struck that some magic number makes you a good voter. But they seem to like the idea that an intelligent 14 year old who can pass a simple test, should get a bigger say in the society than a stupid 18-year-old who can’t. And they are often more impressed with the idea that of some service to the community, either a year of military service or a year of helping the Salvation Army to feed the homeless, should be a pre-requisite for voting by demonstration that you put other people above your own interest.)
In fact a close and sensible reading of Starship Troopers, would reveal an incisive attack on the concept put together 30 years later by arrogant and foolish ivory tower academics, who made facile comments about the End of History. Would that such people had had the capacity to understand the science-fiction of their childhoods. The world might have been saved a lot of heartache since.
Not that Robert Heinlein delved into the nature of politics. A product of the American imperialistic nationalism of his generation, he only toyed with the flaws in democracy. (See Revolt in 2010.) Most of his characters only flirted with the nature of government, though the discussion of the process of setting up a government is quite well covered by The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
More recent American science-fiction writers have done better. Lois McMaster Bujold has looked at a wide variety of cultural imperatives, and consistently brings down a logical government structures based on the peculiar circumstances of the society she is dealing with. These range from her amusing purely male homosexual culture in Ethan of Athos, to the diverse governments of semi-feudal Barrayar, semi Chinese imperial Ceteganda, semi-piratical confederacy of Jackson’s Whole, and the semi-utopian Beta Colony: all in the Miles Vorkosigan series.
Bujold leads a pack of modern American writers to have become increasingly suspicious of the vagaries of democracy. They seem to be well aware that all political systems have weaknesses, but they certainly do not have the uncritical smugness associated with their American science-fiction forebears. Eric Flint for instance, in his amusing 1632 series, throws very democratically oriented Americans backing to post-feudal Europe where they have to contend with the rise of absolute monarchies. The series seems to be heading into accepting the necessity - and indeed superior flexibility - of constitutional monarchy with a universal franchise parliamentary democratic component.
Even more interesting are David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, where the benefits of the Constitutional Monarchy are clearly outlined. Though Weber has an equally impressive and incisive analysis of the weaknesses associated with hierarchical structures, and upper houses of Parliament based on hereditary privilege. (I have posted here on the flaws of completely replacing such his system with a weakened solution, but his points are well made.) Apparently these modern American writers are less than impressed with the idea that democracy is always the bet thing for all people, or indeed that it will ever work without very specific conditions and safeguards.
This comprehensive analysis of developing political theory, through the unusual testing of fictional scenarios, is probably better political analysis than that coming out of most university history, politics, or even philosophy departments. Compare it to a populist modern philosophy from Marxism’s fantastic and appalling theories, to Rawls’ horrible neo-Platonic (and therefore genuinely neo-fascistic - though many appear not to notice that) Theory of Justice. The modern university student would get a much better education on civics and citizenship from a few select science-fiction works than from the vast majority of supposedly serious texts from the post war period to recent ‘scholarship’.
Interestingly, the franchise in Weber’s Star Kingdom of Manticore is extended on the simple basis of positive contribution. The principal is that anybody who can fill out a simple one-page tax return (possibly of the most optimistically fantastic concept in his books), will get a vote, as long as they have contributed one more dollar per year to the tax system than they have taken from the government in benefits, for at least five consecutive years. This is a vastly simplified variation of the original French concept of active citizenship.
What this does avoid of course, is the issue of people who do not deserve to have a vote. The bread and circuses crowd, who are not contributing to society, and who unfortunately are not happy to be simply leeches on the system, but to vote on every occasion to damage a system that they think owes them an endless bounty. Webber appears to be referencing an idea most clearly stated in H Beamer Piper's Space Viking when he compares a far future demagogue (Makann) to Adolf Hitler:
The barbarians are rising; they have a leader, and they are uniting. Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don’t understand civilisation, and would like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing, and don’t appreciate what others have created for them, and think civilisation is something that just exists and that all they need is to enjoy what they understand of it - luxuries, a higher living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have the government for? And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they’re going to grab the controls…. Makann says they can, and he is the leader.
It wasn’t the [Great] war that put Hitler into power. It was a fact that the ruling class of his nation, the people who kept things running, were discredited. The masses, the home-made barbarians, didn’t have anybody to take their responsibilities for them… What they have on Marduk is a ruling class that has been discrediting itself. A ruling class ashamed of its privileges and shirking its duties. A ruling class that has begun to believe that the masses are just as good as they, which they manifestly are not. And a ruling class that won’t use force to maintain its position. And they have democracy, and they are letting the enemies of democracy shelter themselves behind democratic safeguards.
A later character follows the tale:
There’s something wrong with democracy. If it worked, it couldn’t be overthrown by people like Makann, attacking it from within by democratic processes. I don’t think it’s fundamentally unworkable. I think it is as if you are what engineers call bugs. It’s not safe to run a defective machine till you learn the defects and remedy them.
It may just be that there is something fundamentally unworkable aboutt government itself. As long as Homo Sapiens is a wild animal, which is always been and always will be until involves into something different in 1 million or so years, maybe a workable system of government is a political science impossibility, Just as transmutation of elements was a physical science impossibility as long as they tried to do it by chemical means. We’ll just have to make it work the best way we can, and when it breaks down, hope the next try will work a little better, for a little longer.
Personally I believe it is a great hope for the future that Democratic Triumphalism appears to finally be headed into the waste bin of history along with Marxism, Communism, Fascism, or many of the other fantastically utopian experiments on government that have been attempted in the last quarter millennium. Clearly some modern American writers have seen through the infantilism of their early educations, and are grappling seriously with how you make a stable system of government that would work for the sort of society that you might actually desire to live in.
I have said it before, and I will say it again: democracy is an important component of the system as long as there are plenty of other safeguards. Democracy within a government actually performs the function of a whistle on a steam engine, as a brilliant high-pressure release valve. But no one should ever believe that the part of the machinery that makes the most noise is the most important part. Democracy has to be balanced against both the interest groups that are vital to the economy (usually represented by an upper house), and the long-term perspective which in practical terms can only be properly represented by some sort of hereditary component within the system.
It is fascinating to watch some of the most creative and forward thinking people in our culture feeling their way towards a solution which undermines the facile twitterings of an obsolete and overly smug western education system. If only such ideas had broken through before the latest attempts to impose overly democratic republics on patently unsuitable environments… Like Iraq and Afghanistan…
We can only hope that future western political leaders are better read in Sci-Fi.
Like all good fiction writers, H. Beam Piper was a student of the human condition. Like other very good historians, H. Beam Piper had a simple but profound understanding of the various streams of cause and effect in human culture. Like a very select group of exceptional science-fiction writers, H. Beam Piper told stories that reveal an enormous amount about how and why human civilisation and government develops.
This has been a consistent theme of the very best of science-fiction writers, who are to the 20th century, what novel writers were to the 19th century: a disreputable breakthrough group that eventually achieved cult status and finally even universal respect as important part of the canon of human literature. The early luminaries in the field like HG Wells and JRR Tolkien are already treated with respect by good university courses. Many others will inevitably follow.
As a historian myself - with a side interest in philosophy and politics - I’m always more interested by those writers whose stories reflect a clear understanding of how and why things change in human society’s. John Wyndham may be famous for The Day of the Triifids, or the Kraken Wakes or the Midwich Cuckoos stories, but if you really want a creepy insight into fragility of human society you should read his far less well-known but very clever The Trouble with Lichen. (Which I know for a fact has been used as a university text, because I set it for one of the Deakin University courses I taught in the early 90s, in contrast with the more famous - but I believe less astute - Brave New World.)
A less incisive, but far more recognized contemporary of Wyndham, was Robert Heinlein. His understanding of history was less impressive, but his fundamental concept of human nature has made very telling points. Unfortunately Hollywood, when attempting to convert his books to films, has failed miserably on every occasion. In particular, the Hollywood mindset - even though draped around the action hero - clearly fails to understand that Heinlein’s version of the great man is moderated by Heinlein’s version of the interaction of all men. So you get the horrible film versions of good books such as the much underrated Starship Troopers. The appalling Hollywood remix of this suggested that Heinlein’s society was simply a fascist government. Nothing could be further from the truth. Heinlein’s critique of how incompetent bureaucrats and governments drag peoples into war for little purpose, was to suggest that after the failure in one of the great world wars the returning veterans replaced the government with a government by the only people who they felt could be trusted: those who had demonstrated a willingness to risk their lives for their fellow citizens… fellow veterans. The fundamental idea was that unless you are willing to put your life on the line for your fellow citizen, you should not get a say in the running of the State. This combines Heinlein’s great man concept, with the democratic principle that participation is a responsibility rather than a right.
Clearly it is inconceivable to modern Hollywood figures that democracy is anything but a right. Which just goes to reveal how far from reality of their understanding of the world is. Heinlein was in fact reflecting on the ancient Greek and Roman version of democracy, where to be a citizen required that you be willing to don armour, practice fighting in your spare time, and go out and risk your life with your fellow citizens to get a vote. In fact, only the people who spent the most money on armour, and took the greatest risks in the front line, could ever be expected to deserve election to high office. This is certainly not fascism. This is the ideal of democracy based on a balance of rights with responsibility.
Modern democracies started the same way. To be an active citizen in the French system, was based pretty much on the property franchise. Of the 350 people in the average French village, maybe 50 or 60 were active citizens, of whom the adult male half would be allowed to vote. The American system was even less inclusive, with your tax or property franchise being further limited by your race. Other versions of the franchise in other states, have always limited the voting class by social rank, race, religion, tax status, property, or finally that most stupid of definitions, age. (Modern students it seems fundamentally struck that some magic number makes you a good voter. But they seem to like the idea that an intelligent 14 year old who can pass a simple test, should get a bigger say in the society than a stupid 18-year-old who can’t. And they are often more impressed with the idea that of some service to the community, either a year of military service or a year of helping the Salvation Army to feed the homeless, should be a pre-requisite for voting by demonstration that you put other people above your own interest.)
In fact a close and sensible reading of Starship Troopers, would reveal an incisive attack on the concept put together 30 years later by arrogant and foolish ivory tower academics, who made facile comments about the End of History. Would that such people had had the capacity to understand the science-fiction of their childhoods. The world might have been saved a lot of heartache since.
Not that Robert Heinlein delved into the nature of politics. A product of the American imperialistic nationalism of his generation, he only toyed with the flaws in democracy. (See Revolt in 2010.) Most of his characters only flirted with the nature of government, though the discussion of the process of setting up a government is quite well covered by The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
More recent American science-fiction writers have done better. Lois McMaster Bujold has looked at a wide variety of cultural imperatives, and consistently brings down a logical government structures based on the peculiar circumstances of the society she is dealing with. These range from her amusing purely male homosexual culture in Ethan of Athos, to the diverse governments of semi-feudal Barrayar, semi Chinese imperial Ceteganda, semi-piratical confederacy of Jackson’s Whole, and the semi-utopian Beta Colony: all in the Miles Vorkosigan series.
Bujold leads a pack of modern American writers to have become increasingly suspicious of the vagaries of democracy. They seem to be well aware that all political systems have weaknesses, but they certainly do not have the uncritical smugness associated with their American science-fiction forebears. Eric Flint for instance, in his amusing 1632 series, throws very democratically oriented Americans backing to post-feudal Europe where they have to contend with the rise of absolute monarchies. The series seems to be heading into accepting the necessity - and indeed superior flexibility - of constitutional monarchy with a universal franchise parliamentary democratic component.
Even more interesting are David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, where the benefits of the Constitutional Monarchy are clearly outlined. Though Weber has an equally impressive and incisive analysis of the weaknesses associated with hierarchical structures, and upper houses of Parliament based on hereditary privilege. (I have posted here on the flaws of completely replacing such his system with a weakened solution, but his points are well made.) Apparently these modern American writers are less than impressed with the idea that democracy is always the bet thing for all people, or indeed that it will ever work without very specific conditions and safeguards.
This comprehensive analysis of developing political theory, through the unusual testing of fictional scenarios, is probably better political analysis than that coming out of most university history, politics, or even philosophy departments. Compare it to a populist modern philosophy from Marxism’s fantastic and appalling theories, to Rawls’ horrible neo-Platonic (and therefore genuinely neo-fascistic - though many appear not to notice that) Theory of Justice. The modern university student would get a much better education on civics and citizenship from a few select science-fiction works than from the vast majority of supposedly serious texts from the post war period to recent ‘scholarship’.
Interestingly, the franchise in Weber’s Star Kingdom of Manticore is extended on the simple basis of positive contribution. The principal is that anybody who can fill out a simple one-page tax return (possibly of the most optimistically fantastic concept in his books), will get a vote, as long as they have contributed one more dollar per year to the tax system than they have taken from the government in benefits, for at least five consecutive years. This is a vastly simplified variation of the original French concept of active citizenship.
What this does avoid of course, is the issue of people who do not deserve to have a vote. The bread and circuses crowd, who are not contributing to society, and who unfortunately are not happy to be simply leeches on the system, but to vote on every occasion to damage a system that they think owes them an endless bounty. Webber appears to be referencing an idea most clearly stated in H Beamer Piper's Space Viking when he compares a far future demagogue (Makann) to Adolf Hitler:
The barbarians are rising; they have a leader, and they are uniting. Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don’t understand civilisation, and would like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing, and don’t appreciate what others have created for them, and think civilisation is something that just exists and that all they need is to enjoy what they understand of it - luxuries, a higher living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have the government for? And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they’re going to grab the controls…. Makann says they can, and he is the leader.
It wasn’t the [Great] war that put Hitler into power. It was a fact that the ruling class of his nation, the people who kept things running, were discredited. The masses, the home-made barbarians, didn’t have anybody to take their responsibilities for them… What they have on Marduk is a ruling class that has been discrediting itself. A ruling class ashamed of its privileges and shirking its duties. A ruling class that has begun to believe that the masses are just as good as they, which they manifestly are not. And a ruling class that won’t use force to maintain its position. And they have democracy, and they are letting the enemies of democracy shelter themselves behind democratic safeguards.
A later character follows the tale:
There’s something wrong with democracy. If it worked, it couldn’t be overthrown by people like Makann, attacking it from within by democratic processes. I don’t think it’s fundamentally unworkable. I think it is as if you are what engineers call bugs. It’s not safe to run a defective machine till you learn the defects and remedy them.
It may just be that there is something fundamentally unworkable aboutt government itself. As long as Homo Sapiens is a wild animal, which is always been and always will be until involves into something different in 1 million or so years, maybe a workable system of government is a political science impossibility, Just as transmutation of elements was a physical science impossibility as long as they tried to do it by chemical means. We’ll just have to make it work the best way we can, and when it breaks down, hope the next try will work a little better, for a little longer.
Personally I believe it is a great hope for the future that Democratic Triumphalism appears to finally be headed into the waste bin of history along with Marxism, Communism, Fascism, or many of the other fantastically utopian experiments on government that have been attempted in the last quarter millennium. Clearly some modern American writers have seen through the infantilism of their early educations, and are grappling seriously with how you make a stable system of government that would work for the sort of society that you might actually desire to live in.
I have said it before, and I will say it again: democracy is an important component of the system as long as there are plenty of other safeguards. Democracy within a government actually performs the function of a whistle on a steam engine, as a brilliant high-pressure release valve. But no one should ever believe that the part of the machinery that makes the most noise is the most important part. Democracy has to be balanced against both the interest groups that are vital to the economy (usually represented by an upper house), and the long-term perspective which in practical terms can only be properly represented by some sort of hereditary component within the system.
It is fascinating to watch some of the most creative and forward thinking people in our culture feeling their way towards a solution which undermines the facile twitterings of an obsolete and overly smug western education system. If only such ideas had broken through before the latest attempts to impose overly democratic republics on patently unsuitable environments… Like Iraq and Afghanistan…
We can only hope that future western political leaders are better read in Sci-Fi.
Friday, August 6, 2010
The Historical roots of Western Sexism
I was presenting heraldry at a girls school recently, and they asked me why it was so sexist? Why the Cadency (symbol for which son you are in the family), was only for sons? I jokingly responded, “Well it is mainly a French system, so perhaps we should blame the French?”
This immediately brought up the question, “So do other places do it less sexist-ly (sic)?”
The interesting thing is that other places do. The further north you go in Europe, the more liberal the heraldry laws, and indeed the inheritance laws become. In fact not only did England and Sweden and the Netherlands have Queens in their own right –something unimaginable in southern Europe – but Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Sweden have even changed their monarchy’s to have the oldest child inherit regardless of sex!
I shot a slightly apologetic glance at the teacher, and suggested they could have, “the polite version, or the politically incorrect version?” The teacher said, “What’s the polite version?” To which I could point out that the Northern European states had a greater tendency towards traditional Germanic legal practices, which prized women’s roles more highly, whereas the Southern European states reverted to Roman law which was far more sexist. The teacher then glanced at the clearly fascinated class, and amusedly asked for the politically incorrect version. To which the obvious answer is that the North is Protestant, and the South is Catholic.
Guess what sort of private girl’s school I was at?
The point is interesting. It could be suggested that the South is more sexist because it is more Roman Catholic. It could be suggested the South is more sexist because it is more Roman in Law. It could be suggested that the South is more Roman Catholic because it is more Roman Law. It could be suggested that the Roman Catholic Church is more sexist because of Roman Law. Or it cold be suggested that both Roman Law and Roman Catholisism are more prevalent in the South because of other issues, such as a warmer climate?
This last is fascinating. Climate clearly has an impressive effect on human civilization. All the great Ancient civilisations developed in nice warm river valleys in the Middle East or China, spreading along the nice warm coast of the Mediterannean. This is of course, because living in a nice climate that does not require much in the way of clothing or other resources to survive, leaving a lot of spare time for developing a culture, compared to those poor bastards who are stuck in snow four months of the year and spend most of the rest of the year trying to accumulate enough food, clothing, firewood and shelter to make it through.
We know this from the Australian Aboriginal experience. Tribes in the nice warm Northern Territories needed perhaps four hours of labour per day to gather enough food and other resources to be happy and healthy. That leaves a lot of time for culture, painting, corroberees, walkabouts, and dreamtimes. As a result we have extensive records of Aboriginal culture in the North. However Australian Aborigines in Tasmania, where it is cold and miserable most of the year, needed to spend up to fourteen hours per day collecting the necessities for survival. That doesn’t leave much time for culture, and unsurprisingly there are very few records of their having much culture. This is subsistence living at the edges, and it is not suprising that the Tasmanian tribes died out very quickly when hit by Eurasian diseases. (Willingness by Aboriginal males to swap a fertile female for a hunting dog probably didn’t help long term either. Jared Diamond talks in Collapse about the vanishing of certain Arctic tribes probably being more related to the women swapping to a new camp to be with better providers too, an early version of feminism voting with it’s feet perhaps?)
So perhaps it could be argued that nice warm climates where life is easy encourage sexism, and colder climates where life is harder can’t afford such silly luxuries? Certainly the least sexist Western societies were Germanic tribes like the Vikings, where a woman could demand a divorce, and a property split, at her convenience. Perhaps there is a relationship between working hard to survive, and lack of sexism? (Or perhaps it is baised towards societies where the men are away lots, and the women run things… Like Dark Ages Vikings, or early Medieval Crusaders.)
This also flags the point of laziness. The early civilisations to get off the ground did not keep their technological edge for long. The cold Northern European or Chinese areas may have taken a lot longer to get off the ground, but then they shot well ahead in technology, leaving the Southern areas far, far behind. The Northerners knew the value of labour saving devices to survive, and so became mass investors in Windmills and Water Wheels while the warm Mediterranean states stuck to the old methods. No surprise that the Ancient (China), Medieval and Modern (Europe only), industrial revolutions were a thing of the North. There could be a very good reason why the Germanic system is far less sexist than the Roman or Greek ones?
Mind you, that brings up the issue of the Orthodox Christians. They are more sexist than the Protestants, but have a wider range of perspectives than the Roman Catholics. Is it that some are Mediterranean, and some from the colder areas of the Balkans and Russia? Is it that some are from traditional farming communities, and some from Nomadic tribes - which have always treated women as lesser people? Do the northern and western farming communities of the Balkans and Russia have a more or less sexist approach than the southern and eastern mountain peoples and Cossacks? (There is no question that the Muslim areas are more sexist. I often comment to students that the Roman period had such good army surgeons that the Roman period is the only time in Western history that men have lived longer than women. I have to say Western history, because women have never lived as long as men in any Muslim society.) Certainly both the Byzantine (Medieval) and Russian (Early Modern) empires had female rulers in their own rights, which was not possible in contemporary Greece or Poland.
What other impacts can have an effect on sexism?
What legal affects for instance?
Australia has a much boasted ‘Harvester Judgement’ from the 1920’s which the Australian Union movement claims improved the standards of the working class immeasurably. What it did was to make a ‘one wage family’ a legislated possibility. Hurray! Who do you suppose got the one wage? Who do you suppose got to be barefoot and pregnant? Whose education standards were reduced because they would never need to work? Whose access to higher study was undermined because they would never need to study serious stuff, just go to University to fill in time until they were married? (No don’t laugh, I was accidentally awarded a pass BA instead of an Honours for my first degree. Of 140 graduates there were only 22 pass degrees… me and 21 Greek girls!)
What cultural effects for instance?
One of the side effects of the Russian Revolution was the legalisation of abortion. (This was a very short term ‘reform’ because within three years it was so clear that the effect on the birthrate was astonishingly disastrous, that it was re-criminalised.) Or we could take an example from the French Revolution where ‘no-fault’ divorce allowed women to leave just by claiming what we would call ‘un-reconcilable differences’. (Again short lived, because Napoleon threw it out.) Both these cultural impacts had drastic short term effects on sexism that seem promising from the modern perspective. (Though both might have led quickly to a counter-swing that actually left women worse off in the long term).
What about cultural affects that actually lasted?
Napoleon didn’t renounce the other Revolutionary social reform of ‘equal inheritance’ of all children. This replaced Primogeniture (eldest son inherits), which admittedly looks old fashioned to modern eyes until one realizes that before primogeniture even healthy kingdoms like Charlemagne’s vast empire had to be split between various sons, who then split it between their sons, etc. Various scholars have pointed out that the effects of equal inheritance on monarchical states (the vast majority of states in all human history), is devolution, insecurity, violence, chaos, poverty, disease and death. In economic terms – whether Kings or other landholders – primogeniture is the only proven way to improve the health and wealth of the culture.
So when Prof McPhee mentioned in a recent lecture that ‘equal inheritance’ was a positive result of the French Revolution, I immediately queried whether that had entrenched rural poverty and steadily reduced the size and viability of farms. He explained that the French had very quickly adapted to agreements whereby although one child would ‘own’ the farm, all the children were entitled to a share of it’s produce. (Which apparently means that farms never fall below subsistence, but that families can rarely increase their holdings or improve their lot. It certainly explains to me why British Tommies marching through France in World War One were astonished at how backwards and poverty stricken French farms appeared. I suspect that only a combination of urbanization and falling population have really improved that since.)
Which brings us neatly to Prof McPhee’s point about the real French coping strategy. Birthrates dropped, immediately.
Now the interesting thing about that is that clearly a dropping birthrate is usually an indication of improving education and opportunities for women. So perhaps it was just a result of the Revolution anyway. On the other hand the birthrate has remained lower than most of Europe even after other nations got into mass education, so maybe it is to do with this unique approach to inheritance. However the long-term implications of a reduced birthrate have led to a steady decrease in France’s influence in European affairs (starting with unprecedented defeats by just one other European nation – rather than a coalition as in previous wars - in 1870, 1914, 1940, etc.); and a comparative fall in standards of living compared to some other European countries – particularly Scandinavia, the Low Countries and Germany.
So what are the possible effects on the status of French women, and on sexism towards them? France is a partly northern European, partly Mediterranean culture. It is now largely Catholic not Protestant. It is certainly more Roman in law than Germanic – despite the ‘Franks’ being originally a Germanic tribe. It has legislated rights for women going back to the 1790’s (though noticeably it was considered shocking when De Gaulle autocratically decided French women would be allowed to vote after the Second World War). It is wealthy and well educated, and has a low birth-rate. On the other hand it has made up for its low birthrate by importing many North-African’s, who are mainly Muslim. So we see a debate on whether women should be allowed to wear the Hijab for cultural or religious reasons, when it is clearly a sexist statement culturally, and a political statement in a decidedly separated church/state environment.
The answer appears to be that well educated white French women have lots of rights, but poorly educated dark-skinned French women have far less. Is this a political, legal, religious, historical, cultural, ethnic, or climate based division? Or is it a combination of all of the above?
The correct answer in any circumstance is of course: select which apply for any time or place.
Sexism can be affected by technology, famine and food supply, as easily as by culture, war and persecution. Legislation plays an unpredictable part, and often has unexpected consequences. The interesting thing about western sexism, is that there is enough cultural variety, technological development, and economic change, to see what variables can be brought into play.
Now it will be interesting to see how pushing some of those variables into other cultures affects their attitude to sexism. Watching some northern Afghan women in business suits in parliament while some southern ones still face public stoning for being seen without adequate covering, is decidedly interesting. Did Suttee die out because of British enforcement, or as a result of European example, or just because of improving economic conditions? Or is it still desired by large elements and likely to raise its ugly head again if the more extreme end of Hindu nationalism gains more ground?
What does the varied reasons for sexism tell us about the human condition?
Can we get better?
This immediately brought up the question, “So do other places do it less sexist-ly (sic)?”
The interesting thing is that other places do. The further north you go in Europe, the more liberal the heraldry laws, and indeed the inheritance laws become. In fact not only did England and Sweden and the Netherlands have Queens in their own right –something unimaginable in southern Europe – but Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Sweden have even changed their monarchy’s to have the oldest child inherit regardless of sex!
I shot a slightly apologetic glance at the teacher, and suggested they could have, “the polite version, or the politically incorrect version?” The teacher said, “What’s the polite version?” To which I could point out that the Northern European states had a greater tendency towards traditional Germanic legal practices, which prized women’s roles more highly, whereas the Southern European states reverted to Roman law which was far more sexist. The teacher then glanced at the clearly fascinated class, and amusedly asked for the politically incorrect version. To which the obvious answer is that the North is Protestant, and the South is Catholic.
Guess what sort of private girl’s school I was at?
The point is interesting. It could be suggested that the South is more sexist because it is more Roman Catholic. It could be suggested the South is more sexist because it is more Roman in Law. It could be suggested that the South is more Roman Catholic because it is more Roman Law. It could be suggested that the Roman Catholic Church is more sexist because of Roman Law. Or it cold be suggested that both Roman Law and Roman Catholisism are more prevalent in the South because of other issues, such as a warmer climate?
This last is fascinating. Climate clearly has an impressive effect on human civilization. All the great Ancient civilisations developed in nice warm river valleys in the Middle East or China, spreading along the nice warm coast of the Mediterannean. This is of course, because living in a nice climate that does not require much in the way of clothing or other resources to survive, leaving a lot of spare time for developing a culture, compared to those poor bastards who are stuck in snow four months of the year and spend most of the rest of the year trying to accumulate enough food, clothing, firewood and shelter to make it through.
We know this from the Australian Aboriginal experience. Tribes in the nice warm Northern Territories needed perhaps four hours of labour per day to gather enough food and other resources to be happy and healthy. That leaves a lot of time for culture, painting, corroberees, walkabouts, and dreamtimes. As a result we have extensive records of Aboriginal culture in the North. However Australian Aborigines in Tasmania, where it is cold and miserable most of the year, needed to spend up to fourteen hours per day collecting the necessities for survival. That doesn’t leave much time for culture, and unsurprisingly there are very few records of their having much culture. This is subsistence living at the edges, and it is not suprising that the Tasmanian tribes died out very quickly when hit by Eurasian diseases. (Willingness by Aboriginal males to swap a fertile female for a hunting dog probably didn’t help long term either. Jared Diamond talks in Collapse about the vanishing of certain Arctic tribes probably being more related to the women swapping to a new camp to be with better providers too, an early version of feminism voting with it’s feet perhaps?)
So perhaps it could be argued that nice warm climates where life is easy encourage sexism, and colder climates where life is harder can’t afford such silly luxuries? Certainly the least sexist Western societies were Germanic tribes like the Vikings, where a woman could demand a divorce, and a property split, at her convenience. Perhaps there is a relationship between working hard to survive, and lack of sexism? (Or perhaps it is baised towards societies where the men are away lots, and the women run things… Like Dark Ages Vikings, or early Medieval Crusaders.)
This also flags the point of laziness. The early civilisations to get off the ground did not keep their technological edge for long. The cold Northern European or Chinese areas may have taken a lot longer to get off the ground, but then they shot well ahead in technology, leaving the Southern areas far, far behind. The Northerners knew the value of labour saving devices to survive, and so became mass investors in Windmills and Water Wheels while the warm Mediterranean states stuck to the old methods. No surprise that the Ancient (China), Medieval and Modern (Europe only), industrial revolutions were a thing of the North. There could be a very good reason why the Germanic system is far less sexist than the Roman or Greek ones?
Mind you, that brings up the issue of the Orthodox Christians. They are more sexist than the Protestants, but have a wider range of perspectives than the Roman Catholics. Is it that some are Mediterranean, and some from the colder areas of the Balkans and Russia? Is it that some are from traditional farming communities, and some from Nomadic tribes - which have always treated women as lesser people? Do the northern and western farming communities of the Balkans and Russia have a more or less sexist approach than the southern and eastern mountain peoples and Cossacks? (There is no question that the Muslim areas are more sexist. I often comment to students that the Roman period had such good army surgeons that the Roman period is the only time in Western history that men have lived longer than women. I have to say Western history, because women have never lived as long as men in any Muslim society.) Certainly both the Byzantine (Medieval) and Russian (Early Modern) empires had female rulers in their own rights, which was not possible in contemporary Greece or Poland.
What other impacts can have an effect on sexism?
What legal affects for instance?
Australia has a much boasted ‘Harvester Judgement’ from the 1920’s which the Australian Union movement claims improved the standards of the working class immeasurably. What it did was to make a ‘one wage family’ a legislated possibility. Hurray! Who do you suppose got the one wage? Who do you suppose got to be barefoot and pregnant? Whose education standards were reduced because they would never need to work? Whose access to higher study was undermined because they would never need to study serious stuff, just go to University to fill in time until they were married? (No don’t laugh, I was accidentally awarded a pass BA instead of an Honours for my first degree. Of 140 graduates there were only 22 pass degrees… me and 21 Greek girls!)
What cultural effects for instance?
One of the side effects of the Russian Revolution was the legalisation of abortion. (This was a very short term ‘reform’ because within three years it was so clear that the effect on the birthrate was astonishingly disastrous, that it was re-criminalised.) Or we could take an example from the French Revolution where ‘no-fault’ divorce allowed women to leave just by claiming what we would call ‘un-reconcilable differences’. (Again short lived, because Napoleon threw it out.) Both these cultural impacts had drastic short term effects on sexism that seem promising from the modern perspective. (Though both might have led quickly to a counter-swing that actually left women worse off in the long term).
What about cultural affects that actually lasted?
Napoleon didn’t renounce the other Revolutionary social reform of ‘equal inheritance’ of all children. This replaced Primogeniture (eldest son inherits), which admittedly looks old fashioned to modern eyes until one realizes that before primogeniture even healthy kingdoms like Charlemagne’s vast empire had to be split between various sons, who then split it between their sons, etc. Various scholars have pointed out that the effects of equal inheritance on monarchical states (the vast majority of states in all human history), is devolution, insecurity, violence, chaos, poverty, disease and death. In economic terms – whether Kings or other landholders – primogeniture is the only proven way to improve the health and wealth of the culture.
So when Prof McPhee mentioned in a recent lecture that ‘equal inheritance’ was a positive result of the French Revolution, I immediately queried whether that had entrenched rural poverty and steadily reduced the size and viability of farms. He explained that the French had very quickly adapted to agreements whereby although one child would ‘own’ the farm, all the children were entitled to a share of it’s produce. (Which apparently means that farms never fall below subsistence, but that families can rarely increase their holdings or improve their lot. It certainly explains to me why British Tommies marching through France in World War One were astonished at how backwards and poverty stricken French farms appeared. I suspect that only a combination of urbanization and falling population have really improved that since.)
Which brings us neatly to Prof McPhee’s point about the real French coping strategy. Birthrates dropped, immediately.
Now the interesting thing about that is that clearly a dropping birthrate is usually an indication of improving education and opportunities for women. So perhaps it was just a result of the Revolution anyway. On the other hand the birthrate has remained lower than most of Europe even after other nations got into mass education, so maybe it is to do with this unique approach to inheritance. However the long-term implications of a reduced birthrate have led to a steady decrease in France’s influence in European affairs (starting with unprecedented defeats by just one other European nation – rather than a coalition as in previous wars - in 1870, 1914, 1940, etc.); and a comparative fall in standards of living compared to some other European countries – particularly Scandinavia, the Low Countries and Germany.
So what are the possible effects on the status of French women, and on sexism towards them? France is a partly northern European, partly Mediterranean culture. It is now largely Catholic not Protestant. It is certainly more Roman in law than Germanic – despite the ‘Franks’ being originally a Germanic tribe. It has legislated rights for women going back to the 1790’s (though noticeably it was considered shocking when De Gaulle autocratically decided French women would be allowed to vote after the Second World War). It is wealthy and well educated, and has a low birth-rate. On the other hand it has made up for its low birthrate by importing many North-African’s, who are mainly Muslim. So we see a debate on whether women should be allowed to wear the Hijab for cultural or religious reasons, when it is clearly a sexist statement culturally, and a political statement in a decidedly separated church/state environment.
The answer appears to be that well educated white French women have lots of rights, but poorly educated dark-skinned French women have far less. Is this a political, legal, religious, historical, cultural, ethnic, or climate based division? Or is it a combination of all of the above?
The correct answer in any circumstance is of course: select which apply for any time or place.
Sexism can be affected by technology, famine and food supply, as easily as by culture, war and persecution. Legislation plays an unpredictable part, and often has unexpected consequences. The interesting thing about western sexism, is that there is enough cultural variety, technological development, and economic change, to see what variables can be brought into play.
Now it will be interesting to see how pushing some of those variables into other cultures affects their attitude to sexism. Watching some northern Afghan women in business suits in parliament while some southern ones still face public stoning for being seen without adequate covering, is decidedly interesting. Did Suttee die out because of British enforcement, or as a result of European example, or just because of improving economic conditions? Or is it still desired by large elements and likely to raise its ugly head again if the more extreme end of Hindu nationalism gains more ground?
What does the varied reasons for sexism tell us about the human condition?
Can we get better?
Saturday, July 24, 2010
World War Two Naval statistics - Comparing Apples with Oranges
I have posted before about the difficulties of people writing about a six-year war as though they can make definitive statements on technology based on a dispersed snapshot viewpoints from different years. Such comparisons are extremely misleading. Technology simply moves too fast in wartime to allow such sloppiness.
For instance I commented (here) that the Sherman tank was quite a reasonable combat vehicle when it first appeared on the North African battlefields in mid 1942, but that it was already outclassed by the time it came up against the early Tiger tanks in Tunisia six months later. The idea that it was even remotely good enough to fight competitively in the invasion of Germany two to three years later is just laughable. Even the British Firefly versions - which actually carried a functional gun into Normandy - were still called ‘Ronson Lighters’ by the Allies and ‘Tommy Cookers’ by the Germans for very good reasons. In other words the Americans finished the war with their first generation wartime tank still the main combatant (and it was to remain so in Korea). Meanwhile the British, whose first wartime generation Matilda tank had been probably the best tank in the world in 1940, but whose second wartime generation Crusader was decidedly average in 1942, was rolling out third generation Comet and Centurion tanks in the last days of the war. (The Centurion was certainly the best design of its day. In fact it is still in service as a front line combat tank with regional powers like South Africa today!)
Another example that I have commented on before is the use of Anti-Tank artillery. The British 2-pounder (40mm) was the best anti-tank gun of 1939 and 1940, but was not really up to the mark by 1942 when the Germans had already replaced their 37mm guns with 50mm guns and were starting to use 75 or 88mm, and the Russians were starting to use the 76.2mm. But the reason it had fallen behind the pace was that the much better 6-pounder (57mm) - which had been supposed to go into production in 1940 - had been put off for 18 months because the British were facing imminent threat of invasion. In fact the 6-pounder was more than adequate for 1942 and 1943 (and even for the remainder of the war with special ammunition). Which did not alter the fact that the British already planned to replace it with the much more powerful 17-pounder even before they came across the Tiger in late 1942. In fact the Royal Artillery was using the 17-pounder as standard from early 1943, leaving 6-pounders to the infantry.
This becomes informative when contrasted to the Americans, who arrived in combat in late 1942 with an obsolete 37mm gun, and continued to use it for their infantry formations for the rest of the war. They had of course worked out that they would need to upgrade to a 57mm copy of the British-6 pounder fairly quickly, but these new weapons did not actually predominate in combat units in France until late 1944! (American troops in the Mediterranean fought all through North Africa, Sicily, and most of the way up the Italian peninsula, with an obsolete and useless weapon, which was not replaced until the end of 1944! Resulting casualty rates must have been much higher than they needed to be.) Only in the last few months was there serious interest in upgrading to a 90mm, the sort of firepower that the British had been using for more than two years. But it is hard to find any discussion of the problems of this behaviour in the literature, which simply comments that each upgrade was important… rarely noting that it was even more desperately (and inexplicably) overdue than had been the British upgrade from using the obsolete 2 pounder.
This sort of comparing apples with oranges becomes more visible when comparing naval strengths, because the comparison points given are usually totally different years. I carefully checked more than a dozen versions of naval strength tables in different textbooks produced over more than forty years, and came up with numbers in most of them that made no sense, until you work out what the authors have compared. British, French and German naval strengths ‘at the start of the war’ are always figures for 1939. But Italian numbers are usually listed for 1940, and American and Japanese numbers are for 1941. (Actually I have found a few books that list American numbers as of the morning of 7 December 1941, but seem to include in Japanese numbers battleships that were not commissioned for months afterwards!)
Astonishingly, the commentaries then seem to become biased by the incorrect comparisons. British ‘rebuilds’ of World War One vintage battleships are often criticised for not going far enough in 1939, while Italian rebuilds are congratulated for what was not commissioned until late 1940. Some commentaries even make comments about how good American rebuilds were, by sampling ships sunk at Pearl-Harbor and not re-commissioned until 1943!
Again the comparisons are unfortunate. Certainly Britain would have liked to get more rebuilds done before getting into a war, and would have, had her war waited until 1941. But the rebuilds she did get done in 1939-40 were considerably better than most other nations produced in time for Pearl-Harbor, or even after Pearl-Harbor. The rebuilt Queen Elizabeth, Valiant and Renown had, in 1940, more advanced and efficient anti aircraft batteries than any similar vintage French, Italian, Japanese or US ship (until some of those were rebuilt after Pearl-Harbor, in a few cases after being sunk and refloated.) Certainly British ‘tower-bridge’ rebuilds were considerably better developments for fighting a ship than brand new German, Italian, Japanese or American construction coming on line years later.
Consider also the effects on building programs. It takes two or three years of combat before a nation develops enough new ideas and experience to start a new generation of warships. So Britain and the US both had ‘design holidays’ for their aircraft carriers, where they just worked over existing designs – British Illustrious and US’s later design Essex’s – for three years. Fortunately for the Allies a couple of years into the war the Royal Navy started a very useful experiment with Escort Carriers, and had begun the process of ordering large numbers from US yards in time for America to adapt the program to war purposes. (The equivalent very useful American improvisation was the converted cruisers of the Independence class that Roosevelt had suggested be looked at as stop gaps before Pearl-Harbor. These arrived in 1943.) The first new design allied carriers were the British ‘light fleet’ carriers of the Colossus and Majestic classes that went into production in 1943 (which were so successful that many were still in service in the 1980’s and 1990’s). By the time the Americans developed their first new class – the Midways (also, thanks to Reagan’s 600 ship navy, in service into the 1980’s and 1990’s) – in 1945, the British were on their second wave – the Centaur, Audacious, and Malta classes. Note that this sort of lag reflects, almost exactly, what happened with the development of tanks and anti-tank guns for the two nations!
So what if Britain had enjoyed the luxury of not entering the war until December 1941? What would her navy have looked like? How would the modernisations and numbers have stacked up against the Japanese and American figured that everyone is quoting?
First conversions. In battleships only Queen Elizabeth and Valiant were modernised (along with Warspite to a lesser extent), whereas Barham, Malaya, and probably Warspite again would have been rebuilt in the intervening years. Here they would have been joined by Battlecruisers Repulse and Hood, both of which were scheduled to go through the refits that made Renown such an effective ship. In addition they would have been joined by a couple of the four new Lion class battleships (contemporaries of the American Iowa’s), with the last two almost ready. That is before any further construction had been authorized (at a probably rate of another 2 – 4).
This is important to remember, because every nation that joined the war halted new construction when it joined. The King George V class were finished, but the Lion’s (ordered before the war) cancelled. Just as the Bismarck, Yamato and Iowa classes were at least partly finished, but any follow up classes (like the American Montana’s - ordered before Pearl-Harbor), were cancelled.
Run the other way, if Japan and the US had joined the war in 1939, it is likely that the Iowa classes would have been cancelled, leaving the Americans with the South Dakota class as their only modern class. The Japanese might have finished at least one Yamato class simply because they had no modern battleships at all (the most modern being the two ships of the 1920 vintage Nagato class), but there it would have stopped.
Look at aircraft carriers too. Britain entered the war with 7 aircraft carriers (Argus, Hermes, Eagle, Furious, Courageous, Glorious, Ark Royal), of which the last four were big, fast, powerful, well equipped models with significant antiaircraft firepower. (Eagle was a proper fleet carrier, but only as fast as the old battleships, whereas Argus and Hermes were little better than escort carriers.) The only reason these carriers carried less planes than the equivalent Lexington or Akagi/Kaga classes was that the British considered permanent Pacific style deck-parks unsuitable for Atlantic conditions or continental waters close to enemy airbases. (Noticeably, British carriers deployed to the Indian or Pacific oceans quickly adopted air wings on average 50% larger than their ‘designed capacity’, coming much closer to Japanese and American ‘designed capacity’. But also note that most carriers lost to air attack in the Pacific suffered explosions amongst such deck-parks, while British carriers in the Mediterranean regularly survived bombings because their aircraft were hidden away under armour.) These 7 carriers were only inadequte for British needs because the first three named were outdated experimental models (rather like the USS Ranger, or the Japanese Hosho), so they should not really count as proper fleet carriers.
Had Britain entered the war in December 1941 they would have also had the rest of the Illustrious class - Victorious, Formidable and Indomitable - already in action, with Indefatigable and Implacable about to commission. As a result they certainly would have had another four or six modern carriers in the pipelines. That amounts to 10 large, fast, well armed and well armoured aircraft carriers, with several more in the pipeline, against the six that Japan had by that date, with only conversions planned (or indeed the five that the US had by that date with another half dozen planned).
People overlook the fact that the Royal Navy experimented with 3 carrier (Furious, Courageous, Glorious) fast strike task groups in the mid 1930’s. The Fleet Air Arm was re-established in 1939, too late to be ready for a war in 1939, but excellently timed to be ready for a war in late 1941. People also compare the British 1939 biplanes with 1942 American aircraft, somehow failing to note that the British were using the Hurricane and Wildcat fighters as their main carrier fighter by the time of Pearl-Harbor, whereas the Americans were still using many of the dreadful Buffalo fighters as well as the newer Wildcat at Midway. The British Gladiator biplane fighters, Fulmar monoplane fighter/bombers, and Swordfish biplane or Skua monoplane bombers of 1939: were in no way inferior to the equivalent Japanese Claude monoplane fighter and Susie biplane bomber, or the American F3F biplane fighter, Buffalo monoplane fighter, or Devestator bomber of the same period. In fact these British fighters were still effective in defence of Malta against the Italians and the Luftwaffe in 1941 (as, interestingly, was the Buffalo when used by the Finns against the Soviets), whereas the Devestator was a death-trap when used as the main American torpedo bomber at Midway. (In fairness to the Devestator - and the Fulmar - Wikipedia notes that even the vaunted TBF Avenger that replaced it was a death-trap in daylight hours until adequate fighter support was available.)
(Note: The British continued using biplane strike aircraft throughout the war, even after good monoplanes were easily available, but they had found a way to take advantage of their strengths - ruggedness, manouevrability, stability, excellent take off and landing abilities on small carriers, load capacity, and flexibility; and obviate their main weakness – speed – which made all attack aircraft - and biplanes in particular - so vulnerable to day fighters. By 1941 they were radar equipped night strike aircraft with proven track records against the Germans and Italians. Not only were the Japanese and Americans incapable of night ops in 1941 - let alone 1939 - they were still regularly crashing dozens of aircraft that got lost in the dusk in 1942 and 1943!)
So again, lets look at 1939 for the Americans and Japanese. In 1939 America had two big old Lexington carriers and the newly commissioned Yorktown and Enterprise, plus the failed experiment Ranger that never saw combat, while Japan had two big old Akagi/Kaga carriers, two smaller modern ones (Hiryu and Soryu), a their own little experimental one (Hoshu). So four and a bit carriers each compared to the British four and three bits. All were still using biplanes in 1939.
Had Britain entered the war in December 1941 her ten modern carriers (plus three old spares) – all with more modern aircraft – and half a dozen more carriers nearing completion; plus her seventeen new or effectively modernised battleships (plus five old spares), with two to six more in production: would have given her a much easier war. Particularly considering that the extra years of peacetime construction of steadily increasing numbers of cruisers, destroyers, escort vessels and submarines would have substantially improved her greatly reduced interwar shipbuilding capacity. The same goes for aircraft. (Note that Britain started mass producing anti submarine escorts before war in 1939, whereas the US and Japan did not start similar programs until well after Pearl-Harbor.)
In practical terms a good historian must be very careful in using references that compare information from different periods, and therefore make highly contentious assumptions as a result. The problem is that there are many examples that slip past even quite dedicated historians unless they have the time and knowledge to assess each statement to see if its assumptions are justifiable. If they do, they regularly find that the commentator is, often unknowingly, comparing apples and oranges.
But the really amusing thing that comes out of such an analysis is to note that had Britain not been sucked into war in 1939, Japan probably could not have attacked the United States in 1941. Pearl-Harbor was Japan’s only chance to take advantage of the brief window offered by Britain being busy elsewhere to get what she wanted. An uncommitted Britain, particularly with the sort of naval buildup not going to war in 1939 would have allowed, would have deterred Japan from even considering such an attack in 1941!
For instance I commented (here) that the Sherman tank was quite a reasonable combat vehicle when it first appeared on the North African battlefields in mid 1942, but that it was already outclassed by the time it came up against the early Tiger tanks in Tunisia six months later. The idea that it was even remotely good enough to fight competitively in the invasion of Germany two to three years later is just laughable. Even the British Firefly versions - which actually carried a functional gun into Normandy - were still called ‘Ronson Lighters’ by the Allies and ‘Tommy Cookers’ by the Germans for very good reasons. In other words the Americans finished the war with their first generation wartime tank still the main combatant (and it was to remain so in Korea). Meanwhile the British, whose first wartime generation Matilda tank had been probably the best tank in the world in 1940, but whose second wartime generation Crusader was decidedly average in 1942, was rolling out third generation Comet and Centurion tanks in the last days of the war. (The Centurion was certainly the best design of its day. In fact it is still in service as a front line combat tank with regional powers like South Africa today!)
Another example that I have commented on before is the use of Anti-Tank artillery. The British 2-pounder (40mm) was the best anti-tank gun of 1939 and 1940, but was not really up to the mark by 1942 when the Germans had already replaced their 37mm guns with 50mm guns and were starting to use 75 or 88mm, and the Russians were starting to use the 76.2mm. But the reason it had fallen behind the pace was that the much better 6-pounder (57mm) - which had been supposed to go into production in 1940 - had been put off for 18 months because the British were facing imminent threat of invasion. In fact the 6-pounder was more than adequate for 1942 and 1943 (and even for the remainder of the war with special ammunition). Which did not alter the fact that the British already planned to replace it with the much more powerful 17-pounder even before they came across the Tiger in late 1942. In fact the Royal Artillery was using the 17-pounder as standard from early 1943, leaving 6-pounders to the infantry.
This becomes informative when contrasted to the Americans, who arrived in combat in late 1942 with an obsolete 37mm gun, and continued to use it for their infantry formations for the rest of the war. They had of course worked out that they would need to upgrade to a 57mm copy of the British-6 pounder fairly quickly, but these new weapons did not actually predominate in combat units in France until late 1944! (American troops in the Mediterranean fought all through North Africa, Sicily, and most of the way up the Italian peninsula, with an obsolete and useless weapon, which was not replaced until the end of 1944! Resulting casualty rates must have been much higher than they needed to be.) Only in the last few months was there serious interest in upgrading to a 90mm, the sort of firepower that the British had been using for more than two years. But it is hard to find any discussion of the problems of this behaviour in the literature, which simply comments that each upgrade was important… rarely noting that it was even more desperately (and inexplicably) overdue than had been the British upgrade from using the obsolete 2 pounder.
This sort of comparing apples with oranges becomes more visible when comparing naval strengths, because the comparison points given are usually totally different years. I carefully checked more than a dozen versions of naval strength tables in different textbooks produced over more than forty years, and came up with numbers in most of them that made no sense, until you work out what the authors have compared. British, French and German naval strengths ‘at the start of the war’ are always figures for 1939. But Italian numbers are usually listed for 1940, and American and Japanese numbers are for 1941. (Actually I have found a few books that list American numbers as of the morning of 7 December 1941, but seem to include in Japanese numbers battleships that were not commissioned for months afterwards!)
Astonishingly, the commentaries then seem to become biased by the incorrect comparisons. British ‘rebuilds’ of World War One vintage battleships are often criticised for not going far enough in 1939, while Italian rebuilds are congratulated for what was not commissioned until late 1940. Some commentaries even make comments about how good American rebuilds were, by sampling ships sunk at Pearl-Harbor and not re-commissioned until 1943!
Again the comparisons are unfortunate. Certainly Britain would have liked to get more rebuilds done before getting into a war, and would have, had her war waited until 1941. But the rebuilds she did get done in 1939-40 were considerably better than most other nations produced in time for Pearl-Harbor, or even after Pearl-Harbor. The rebuilt Queen Elizabeth, Valiant and Renown had, in 1940, more advanced and efficient anti aircraft batteries than any similar vintage French, Italian, Japanese or US ship (until some of those were rebuilt after Pearl-Harbor, in a few cases after being sunk and refloated.) Certainly British ‘tower-bridge’ rebuilds were considerably better developments for fighting a ship than brand new German, Italian, Japanese or American construction coming on line years later.
Consider also the effects on building programs. It takes two or three years of combat before a nation develops enough new ideas and experience to start a new generation of warships. So Britain and the US both had ‘design holidays’ for their aircraft carriers, where they just worked over existing designs – British Illustrious and US’s later design Essex’s – for three years. Fortunately for the Allies a couple of years into the war the Royal Navy started a very useful experiment with Escort Carriers, and had begun the process of ordering large numbers from US yards in time for America to adapt the program to war purposes. (The equivalent very useful American improvisation was the converted cruisers of the Independence class that Roosevelt had suggested be looked at as stop gaps before Pearl-Harbor. These arrived in 1943.) The first new design allied carriers were the British ‘light fleet’ carriers of the Colossus and Majestic classes that went into production in 1943 (which were so successful that many were still in service in the 1980’s and 1990’s). By the time the Americans developed their first new class – the Midways (also, thanks to Reagan’s 600 ship navy, in service into the 1980’s and 1990’s) – in 1945, the British were on their second wave – the Centaur, Audacious, and Malta classes. Note that this sort of lag reflects, almost exactly, what happened with the development of tanks and anti-tank guns for the two nations!
So what if Britain had enjoyed the luxury of not entering the war until December 1941? What would her navy have looked like? How would the modernisations and numbers have stacked up against the Japanese and American figured that everyone is quoting?
First conversions. In battleships only Queen Elizabeth and Valiant were modernised (along with Warspite to a lesser extent), whereas Barham, Malaya, and probably Warspite again would have been rebuilt in the intervening years. Here they would have been joined by Battlecruisers Repulse and Hood, both of which were scheduled to go through the refits that made Renown such an effective ship. In addition they would have been joined by a couple of the four new Lion class battleships (contemporaries of the American Iowa’s), with the last two almost ready. That is before any further construction had been authorized (at a probably rate of another 2 – 4).
This is important to remember, because every nation that joined the war halted new construction when it joined. The King George V class were finished, but the Lion’s (ordered before the war) cancelled. Just as the Bismarck, Yamato and Iowa classes were at least partly finished, but any follow up classes (like the American Montana’s - ordered before Pearl-Harbor), were cancelled.
Run the other way, if Japan and the US had joined the war in 1939, it is likely that the Iowa classes would have been cancelled, leaving the Americans with the South Dakota class as their only modern class. The Japanese might have finished at least one Yamato class simply because they had no modern battleships at all (the most modern being the two ships of the 1920 vintage Nagato class), but there it would have stopped.
Look at aircraft carriers too. Britain entered the war with 7 aircraft carriers (Argus, Hermes, Eagle, Furious, Courageous, Glorious, Ark Royal), of which the last four were big, fast, powerful, well equipped models with significant antiaircraft firepower. (Eagle was a proper fleet carrier, but only as fast as the old battleships, whereas Argus and Hermes were little better than escort carriers.) The only reason these carriers carried less planes than the equivalent Lexington or Akagi/Kaga classes was that the British considered permanent Pacific style deck-parks unsuitable for Atlantic conditions or continental waters close to enemy airbases. (Noticeably, British carriers deployed to the Indian or Pacific oceans quickly adopted air wings on average 50% larger than their ‘designed capacity’, coming much closer to Japanese and American ‘designed capacity’. But also note that most carriers lost to air attack in the Pacific suffered explosions amongst such deck-parks, while British carriers in the Mediterranean regularly survived bombings because their aircraft were hidden away under armour.) These 7 carriers were only inadequte for British needs because the first three named were outdated experimental models (rather like the USS Ranger, or the Japanese Hosho), so they should not really count as proper fleet carriers.
Had Britain entered the war in December 1941 they would have also had the rest of the Illustrious class - Victorious, Formidable and Indomitable - already in action, with Indefatigable and Implacable about to commission. As a result they certainly would have had another four or six modern carriers in the pipelines. That amounts to 10 large, fast, well armed and well armoured aircraft carriers, with several more in the pipeline, against the six that Japan had by that date, with only conversions planned (or indeed the five that the US had by that date with another half dozen planned).
People overlook the fact that the Royal Navy experimented with 3 carrier (Furious, Courageous, Glorious) fast strike task groups in the mid 1930’s. The Fleet Air Arm was re-established in 1939, too late to be ready for a war in 1939, but excellently timed to be ready for a war in late 1941. People also compare the British 1939 biplanes with 1942 American aircraft, somehow failing to note that the British were using the Hurricane and Wildcat fighters as their main carrier fighter by the time of Pearl-Harbor, whereas the Americans were still using many of the dreadful Buffalo fighters as well as the newer Wildcat at Midway. The British Gladiator biplane fighters, Fulmar monoplane fighter/bombers, and Swordfish biplane or Skua monoplane bombers of 1939: were in no way inferior to the equivalent Japanese Claude monoplane fighter and Susie biplane bomber, or the American F3F biplane fighter, Buffalo monoplane fighter, or Devestator bomber of the same period. In fact these British fighters were still effective in defence of Malta against the Italians and the Luftwaffe in 1941 (as, interestingly, was the Buffalo when used by the Finns against the Soviets), whereas the Devestator was a death-trap when used as the main American torpedo bomber at Midway. (In fairness to the Devestator - and the Fulmar - Wikipedia notes that even the vaunted TBF Avenger that replaced it was a death-trap in daylight hours until adequate fighter support was available.)
(Note: The British continued using biplane strike aircraft throughout the war, even after good monoplanes were easily available, but they had found a way to take advantage of their strengths - ruggedness, manouevrability, stability, excellent take off and landing abilities on small carriers, load capacity, and flexibility; and obviate their main weakness – speed – which made all attack aircraft - and biplanes in particular - so vulnerable to day fighters. By 1941 they were radar equipped night strike aircraft with proven track records against the Germans and Italians. Not only were the Japanese and Americans incapable of night ops in 1941 - let alone 1939 - they were still regularly crashing dozens of aircraft that got lost in the dusk in 1942 and 1943!)
So again, lets look at 1939 for the Americans and Japanese. In 1939 America had two big old Lexington carriers and the newly commissioned Yorktown and Enterprise, plus the failed experiment Ranger that never saw combat, while Japan had two big old Akagi/Kaga carriers, two smaller modern ones (Hiryu and Soryu), a their own little experimental one (Hoshu). So four and a bit carriers each compared to the British four and three bits. All were still using biplanes in 1939.
Had Britain entered the war in December 1941 her ten modern carriers (plus three old spares) – all with more modern aircraft – and half a dozen more carriers nearing completion; plus her seventeen new or effectively modernised battleships (plus five old spares), with two to six more in production: would have given her a much easier war. Particularly considering that the extra years of peacetime construction of steadily increasing numbers of cruisers, destroyers, escort vessels and submarines would have substantially improved her greatly reduced interwar shipbuilding capacity. The same goes for aircraft. (Note that Britain started mass producing anti submarine escorts before war in 1939, whereas the US and Japan did not start similar programs until well after Pearl-Harbor.)
In practical terms a good historian must be very careful in using references that compare information from different periods, and therefore make highly contentious assumptions as a result. The problem is that there are many examples that slip past even quite dedicated historians unless they have the time and knowledge to assess each statement to see if its assumptions are justifiable. If they do, they regularly find that the commentator is, often unknowingly, comparing apples and oranges.
But the really amusing thing that comes out of such an analysis is to note that had Britain not been sucked into war in 1939, Japan probably could not have attacked the United States in 1941. Pearl-Harbor was Japan’s only chance to take advantage of the brief window offered by Britain being busy elsewhere to get what she wanted. An uncommitted Britain, particularly with the sort of naval buildup not going to war in 1939 would have allowed, would have deterred Japan from even considering such an attack in 1941!
Friday, June 25, 2010
Democracy can be evil
Unlimited democracy, like unlimited anything, is bad.
I recently had some students insist that democracy is superior to other forms of government. I actually agreed with them - at least on the Churchill-ian perspective of it being “the worst system of government except for any other system” – but I wanted them to give me actual reasons. Unfortunately the idea that they would need to justify the trite statements they have rote learned had obviously never been presented to them at school before. They struggled to find a reason beyond “everyone knows…”
Let’s get this straight. The line ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ applies to all versions of government. Including absolute democracy.
Absolute Monarchy is never a good thing over the long term. (The exception is in the most dire circumstances where many quite sensible groups like the Athenian democrats or Roman Republicans ‘elected’ short term ‘dictators’ to deal with a crisis. Unfortunately some – like Julius Caesar tried to stay beyond a short term, with the appropriate solution of a knife in the back… but that is another story.)
Theocracy is not a good system either, as both the Papacy - in the grip of yet more storms about a worldwide cover up of Priests shagging children - and North Korea, can vouch. (North Korea has a ‘perpetual’ President – who is dead – which classifies it as a theocracy, even without the fact that anyone who continues to be a Marxist in the modern world is clearly operating on prayer alone.)
Oligarchies sometimes have increased flexibility in the long term. (Certainly the Serene Republic of Venice ran a good oligarchy based on about 130 families for a long time.) But most Oligarchies – whatever their theoretical basis - have inevitable problems when technological change undermines the power base of the hereditary class structure. The United States found this when their original ‘democratic’ oligarchy of well-off white slave owners caused a civil war. But Oligarchies by their nature are about negotiated solutions, so they do not really count as absolutes.
Democracy by contrast is often absolutist, and often suffers from the weaknesses of absolutism. In fact I have posted several times about the incredibly high percentage of supposedly ‘democratic’ Republics set up in the last century that dissolved into painful dictatorships, with all the trappings of repression, civil war, and ethnic cleansing: within about twenty years. (Amusingly the only form of ‘Republic’ that lifts the average survival rates of republics any where near 40 years is the ‘People’s Republics’… otherwise known as Communist dictatorships.)
Democracy is a funny thing anyway. It is attempted in so many ways, and fails to be actually democratic in just about all of them.
Consider the ‘First Past the Post’ version which has seen the British Labour Party hold government for decades on about 20% of the total number of voters? (If only 60% vote, and the seats are biased to city centres so you only need half or a third the number of voters in cities, and those seats are safe Labour so only a fraction of the voters in those seats turn out, you quickly get to the situation where a Labour pollie needs only about 24,000 votes compared to 46,000 for a Conservative and 92,000 for a Lib-Dem.) In fact it is hard to see that First Past the Post is any more democratic than the older Rotten Boroughs they replace.
New Zealand’s half assed system where some pollies are elected directly and some come proportionally from a pool are even more suspect, because parties can ‘appoint’ - through the pool - people who no voter would ever elect.
Proportional representation may be a bit better, except that it means that the minor parties that do deals to swing their preferences to get the major parties elected can demand a disproportionate influence on policy in exchange for those preferences. So in Australia for instance, the Green Party – on an average of 8% of the vote or less, can use the threat of preference swaps to ensure that the ALP will not consider nuclear power, even though the majority of voters (and many in the ALP) are now clearly in favour of it.
There is also the problem with party based democracy, which leads to what Robrt Michels calls the Iron Law of Oligarchy. The current idea of replacing the appointed House of Lords with an elected one seems an ideal way to reduce representative democracy. Instead of appointments from all the best and most noble of proven performers in all areas of human culture – arts, sciences, religion, charity, business, unions, etc - the idea is to have another group of faceless nobodies selected in back rooms by the party machines. How appealing?
Yet the British, American, Australian and New Zealand systems at least have some safeguards built in to prevent absolute democracy from running wild. Pity those poor ‘republics’ set up since the world wars which have been abandoned to absolute democracy without safeguards. You know the ones, they are all those states in the world now suffering dictatorship, civil war, repression, genocide and ethnic cleansing. They were based on the Utilitarian ideal that 50.001% of the population should be allowed to legislate away the rights of the rest, and some smart-ass politician (Mussolini, Hitler, Mugabe, Chavez) quickly convinced the dumber voters to fall for this concept.
Democracy of course is not supposed to be a stable system. It is a safety valve component to good government, not a replacement for good government. (The most important part of the machine is rarely the bit that makes the most noise!) The Ancients knew this, and never even considered anything as stupid as absolute democracy. They only ever used democracy as a component of a more complex system. (The possible exception is when the ancient Athenians went through their most ‘democratic’ phase… the period of imperial expansion, massacres of city populations who refused to sign up, and the popularly approved murder of figures like Socrates who dared to say the mob was wrong.)
The first absolute democracy in modern history was France in the 1790’s, where race and sex didn’t matter to your vote. Of course this was a bloody dictatorship within mere months, collapsing into one of the most aggressive imperial dictatorships ever seen within a few years, but surely that was an aberration. Unless you compare it to what happened in Russia/Soviet Union, or Wiemar Republic/Nazi Germany, or China/Red China, or any Middle Eastern state called a Republic (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria – not that votes for women have ever been taken seriously through most of the Middle East), or almost all African and South American states called republics…
The United States likes to pretend that it was a democracy where “all men are created equal”, but even if we leave women out, there were still the issues of Yellow, Red or Black skinned ‘citizens’, or indeed indentured new immigrants, property franchises, etc. The United States was an extended franchise oligarchy for most of its history, and one with incredible complex safeguards against absolute democracy destroying the system or the rights of the people (or of the oligarchs at least).
The United States seems to have chosen a lot of its structure from the Serene Republic of Venice, which had lasted so incredibly long. Of course the reason it had lasted incredibly long was that the voting franchise was restricted to the small number of oligarchical families who had a vested interest in continuing the power structure. Of course there were also plentiful inputs from the Roman system, after all the United States needed a constitution that specifically justified the principles of slavery.
Unfortunately the founding father’s failed to note that the Roman Republic was based more on the Spartan system that lasted several hundred years, than on the Athenian ‘Republic’ that lasted - in bits and starts - for less than a century.
Sparta had a system of ‘democracy’ based on a free adult population of voters, including both male and female property holders. You can see why the American oligarchs were against that. The Athenian and Roman systems that treated women with contempt were clearly more attractive to Americans. Sparta also had ‘helots’ (closer to ‘serfs’) rather than slaves, so again American’s would clearly prefer Athenian slavery.
Sparta balanced the democratic component, already restricted to an oligarchy with a joint vested interest, with a pair of hereditary kings. This produced one of the most balanced and stable constitutions ever devised. (Pity that Spartan eugenics were a fatal cultural dead end.) Unfortunately, when copying the Spartan system, the Romans replaced the pair of hereditary kings with a pair of elected consuls with terms of only a year. The whole idea of a long-term perspective through a hereditary component was replaced with short-term infighting for power. Frankly, it is astonishing that the Roman Republic lasted for even a couple of hundred years before collapsing and becoming and Empire instead. (American’s take note – one little civil war should be considered an astonishingly light price to pay for such an unstable system… And that was way before anything resembling an almost universal franchise. The chance of remaining a democratic republic for more than a century or so seems slight. How many residents are already ‘illegals’ and a non-voting caste?)
American racism is particularly astonishing. I am always amused by the supposed liberality of the film ‘Guess who’s coming to dinner’. The black hero was supposed to be big in the UN, so why wouldn’t he and his white partner go and live in a civilized country like Belgium or Switzerland instead of a politically backward racist hellhole like the United States? It is STILL not allowed for blacks to be partnered with whites on American TV – whites or blacks with Asians or Hispanics yes, but with each other? (Actually I would be interested if anyone can give feedback samples of black and white pairing in main characters in any American show? British TV has no problem with it, and Europe is not far behind, but US?)
The fantasy that either the French universal franchise, or the American oligarchic one, achieved stability or desirable government respectively, is disastrous. Certainly the effect of trying to impose such systems on the illiterate peasant castes of the ‘freed’ European or American colonies and dependencies (whether African, Asian or Middle Eastern) is appalling, and simply invites a speedy and bloody dictatorship.
Absolute democracy simply means bread and circuses. In fact absolute democracy usually means eventual dictatorship, repression, ethnic cleansing or civil war. Only with appropriate safeguards can democracy be included in a stable government system. Otherwise democracy is simply one of the most dangerous and evil of all human inventions.
I recently had some students insist that democracy is superior to other forms of government. I actually agreed with them - at least on the Churchill-ian perspective of it being “the worst system of government except for any other system” – but I wanted them to give me actual reasons. Unfortunately the idea that they would need to justify the trite statements they have rote learned had obviously never been presented to them at school before. They struggled to find a reason beyond “everyone knows…”
Let’s get this straight. The line ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ applies to all versions of government. Including absolute democracy.
Absolute Monarchy is never a good thing over the long term. (The exception is in the most dire circumstances where many quite sensible groups like the Athenian democrats or Roman Republicans ‘elected’ short term ‘dictators’ to deal with a crisis. Unfortunately some – like Julius Caesar tried to stay beyond a short term, with the appropriate solution of a knife in the back… but that is another story.)
Theocracy is not a good system either, as both the Papacy - in the grip of yet more storms about a worldwide cover up of Priests shagging children - and North Korea, can vouch. (North Korea has a ‘perpetual’ President – who is dead – which classifies it as a theocracy, even without the fact that anyone who continues to be a Marxist in the modern world is clearly operating on prayer alone.)
Oligarchies sometimes have increased flexibility in the long term. (Certainly the Serene Republic of Venice ran a good oligarchy based on about 130 families for a long time.) But most Oligarchies – whatever their theoretical basis - have inevitable problems when technological change undermines the power base of the hereditary class structure. The United States found this when their original ‘democratic’ oligarchy of well-off white slave owners caused a civil war. But Oligarchies by their nature are about negotiated solutions, so they do not really count as absolutes.
Democracy by contrast is often absolutist, and often suffers from the weaknesses of absolutism. In fact I have posted several times about the incredibly high percentage of supposedly ‘democratic’ Republics set up in the last century that dissolved into painful dictatorships, with all the trappings of repression, civil war, and ethnic cleansing: within about twenty years. (Amusingly the only form of ‘Republic’ that lifts the average survival rates of republics any where near 40 years is the ‘People’s Republics’… otherwise known as Communist dictatorships.)
Democracy is a funny thing anyway. It is attempted in so many ways, and fails to be actually democratic in just about all of them.
Consider the ‘First Past the Post’ version which has seen the British Labour Party hold government for decades on about 20% of the total number of voters? (If only 60% vote, and the seats are biased to city centres so you only need half or a third the number of voters in cities, and those seats are safe Labour so only a fraction of the voters in those seats turn out, you quickly get to the situation where a Labour pollie needs only about 24,000 votes compared to 46,000 for a Conservative and 92,000 for a Lib-Dem.) In fact it is hard to see that First Past the Post is any more democratic than the older Rotten Boroughs they replace.
New Zealand’s half assed system where some pollies are elected directly and some come proportionally from a pool are even more suspect, because parties can ‘appoint’ - through the pool - people who no voter would ever elect.
Proportional representation may be a bit better, except that it means that the minor parties that do deals to swing their preferences to get the major parties elected can demand a disproportionate influence on policy in exchange for those preferences. So in Australia for instance, the Green Party – on an average of 8% of the vote or less, can use the threat of preference swaps to ensure that the ALP will not consider nuclear power, even though the majority of voters (and many in the ALP) are now clearly in favour of it.
There is also the problem with party based democracy, which leads to what Robrt Michels calls the Iron Law of Oligarchy. The current idea of replacing the appointed House of Lords with an elected one seems an ideal way to reduce representative democracy. Instead of appointments from all the best and most noble of proven performers in all areas of human culture – arts, sciences, religion, charity, business, unions, etc - the idea is to have another group of faceless nobodies selected in back rooms by the party machines. How appealing?
Yet the British, American, Australian and New Zealand systems at least have some safeguards built in to prevent absolute democracy from running wild. Pity those poor ‘republics’ set up since the world wars which have been abandoned to absolute democracy without safeguards. You know the ones, they are all those states in the world now suffering dictatorship, civil war, repression, genocide and ethnic cleansing. They were based on the Utilitarian ideal that 50.001% of the population should be allowed to legislate away the rights of the rest, and some smart-ass politician (Mussolini, Hitler, Mugabe, Chavez) quickly convinced the dumber voters to fall for this concept.
Democracy of course is not supposed to be a stable system. It is a safety valve component to good government, not a replacement for good government. (The most important part of the machine is rarely the bit that makes the most noise!) The Ancients knew this, and never even considered anything as stupid as absolute democracy. They only ever used democracy as a component of a more complex system. (The possible exception is when the ancient Athenians went through their most ‘democratic’ phase… the period of imperial expansion, massacres of city populations who refused to sign up, and the popularly approved murder of figures like Socrates who dared to say the mob was wrong.)
The first absolute democracy in modern history was France in the 1790’s, where race and sex didn’t matter to your vote. Of course this was a bloody dictatorship within mere months, collapsing into one of the most aggressive imperial dictatorships ever seen within a few years, but surely that was an aberration. Unless you compare it to what happened in Russia/Soviet Union, or Wiemar Republic/Nazi Germany, or China/Red China, or any Middle Eastern state called a Republic (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria – not that votes for women have ever been taken seriously through most of the Middle East), or almost all African and South American states called republics…
The United States likes to pretend that it was a democracy where “all men are created equal”, but even if we leave women out, there were still the issues of Yellow, Red or Black skinned ‘citizens’, or indeed indentured new immigrants, property franchises, etc. The United States was an extended franchise oligarchy for most of its history, and one with incredible complex safeguards against absolute democracy destroying the system or the rights of the people (or of the oligarchs at least).
The United States seems to have chosen a lot of its structure from the Serene Republic of Venice, which had lasted so incredibly long. Of course the reason it had lasted incredibly long was that the voting franchise was restricted to the small number of oligarchical families who had a vested interest in continuing the power structure. Of course there were also plentiful inputs from the Roman system, after all the United States needed a constitution that specifically justified the principles of slavery.
Unfortunately the founding father’s failed to note that the Roman Republic was based more on the Spartan system that lasted several hundred years, than on the Athenian ‘Republic’ that lasted - in bits and starts - for less than a century.
Sparta had a system of ‘democracy’ based on a free adult population of voters, including both male and female property holders. You can see why the American oligarchs were against that. The Athenian and Roman systems that treated women with contempt were clearly more attractive to Americans. Sparta also had ‘helots’ (closer to ‘serfs’) rather than slaves, so again American’s would clearly prefer Athenian slavery.
Sparta balanced the democratic component, already restricted to an oligarchy with a joint vested interest, with a pair of hereditary kings. This produced one of the most balanced and stable constitutions ever devised. (Pity that Spartan eugenics were a fatal cultural dead end.) Unfortunately, when copying the Spartan system, the Romans replaced the pair of hereditary kings with a pair of elected consuls with terms of only a year. The whole idea of a long-term perspective through a hereditary component was replaced with short-term infighting for power. Frankly, it is astonishing that the Roman Republic lasted for even a couple of hundred years before collapsing and becoming and Empire instead. (American’s take note – one little civil war should be considered an astonishingly light price to pay for such an unstable system… And that was way before anything resembling an almost universal franchise. The chance of remaining a democratic republic for more than a century or so seems slight. How many residents are already ‘illegals’ and a non-voting caste?)
American racism is particularly astonishing. I am always amused by the supposed liberality of the film ‘Guess who’s coming to dinner’. The black hero was supposed to be big in the UN, so why wouldn’t he and his white partner go and live in a civilized country like Belgium or Switzerland instead of a politically backward racist hellhole like the United States? It is STILL not allowed for blacks to be partnered with whites on American TV – whites or blacks with Asians or Hispanics yes, but with each other? (Actually I would be interested if anyone can give feedback samples of black and white pairing in main characters in any American show? British TV has no problem with it, and Europe is not far behind, but US?)
The fantasy that either the French universal franchise, or the American oligarchic one, achieved stability or desirable government respectively, is disastrous. Certainly the effect of trying to impose such systems on the illiterate peasant castes of the ‘freed’ European or American colonies and dependencies (whether African, Asian or Middle Eastern) is appalling, and simply invites a speedy and bloody dictatorship.
Absolute democracy simply means bread and circuses. In fact absolute democracy usually means eventual dictatorship, repression, ethnic cleansing or civil war. Only with appropriate safeguards can democracy be included in a stable government system. Otherwise democracy is simply one of the most dangerous and evil of all human inventions.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Christianity and the origins of science
I attended a film society debate recently over the film “Collision - is Christianity good for the world”. It was a debate between Christopher Hitchins (failed dedicated Trotskyite now failing to make a convincing argument as a dedicated Atheist), and an American Pastor Douglas Wilson (with a background in Philosophy teaching). By the end of the film I thought of them as the fundamentalist hillbilly versus the fundamentalist rationalist: and, as usual, found any version of fundamentalism spurious, frightening, and completely unconvincing.
The film wasn’t very good, largely because it was presented as a glorified book tour rather than a rational debate. The title question was – eventually - summarized in a single throw away line by each protagonist near the end, leaving the main debate to be about religion in general rather than Christianity. The discussion of religion devolved into a simple debate about whether it was possible to have a moral code that was not based on religion.
Now all three questions could have been interesting if well handled. They weren’t. No evidence at all was presented about the effects of Christianity. No good debate was had on religion in general. (Possibly because Hitchins seemed to assume that all religion is approached with the blind fundamentalism of your average suicide bomber, and the pastor always diverted that to the issue of morality.) No good debate was held on morality, simply because Hitchins never answered any of the questions put to him.
Actually Hitchins was riding to a fall here. The Pastor could look him in the eye and say that he was arguing from faith, because faith was the premises of his position, and therefore he was being consistent. He constantly requested Hitchins give a rationalist or ‘scientific’ basis for morality consistent with Hitchens basing his approach on rationalism. He didn’t. (I would argue that he couldn’t, but I am open to being proved wrong here. Pity Hitchins didn’t even try.)
The debate after the film was lively, and several people made the point that Hitchins could have made some good arguments if he wasn’t blinded by his ‘faith’ in the obviousness of his position. Instead his responses were criticisms of Old Testament examples of cruelty and capriciousness that are perfectly justifiable criticisms: but presented in a way that sounded like a seven year old being outraged… “and besides, you’ve got a big nose”.
Possibly the best point that Hitchens made, was that the early Christian Fathers seriously debated whether they should start their new religion completely from scratch, rather than adopting all the package of Judaism and the old Testament God. Hitchens casual aside on the difficulties of making such an inconsistency acceptable, could have been the foundation for an excellent debate. Certainly the pastor he was debating seemed to have a struggle to avoid actually agreeing with him.
Yet here again, and there is an inherent inconsistency in Hitchens approach to world. He is an absolute believer in Darwinian evolution, and yet completely unwilling to accept human theological evolution.
My own presentations to school children on the development of religions for ancient cultures leans heavily on the concept of evolution of understanding. Because all religions start as an attempt to explain the natural world and its effect on human cultures, all religions tend to evolve around consistent patterns. Animism is the starting point for any culture which faces the most simple of issues, such as whether there will be enough rain and sun to allow the fertility amongst plants and animals which will allow the culture to survive and prosper. Animism automatically develops into Polytheism as the culture becomes more complex, develops new technologies, engages in trade, discovers exchange methods such as coinage, and comes into contact with other dangerous and aggressive tribes. Polytheism itself automatically develops into Monotheism when it becomes apparent that a group of capricious gods that must be negotiated with is not an adequate worldview to cope with yet more complex social interactions.
Interestingly many cultures have been very happy with Polytheism until their world faces radical upheaval. For the ancient Jews who invented the concept of Monotheism, it was disaster in Judea and slavery in Egypt which moved them forward. For the ancient Romans, it was the collapse of imperial power and the incursion of ever-increasing waves of barbarian raiders. For the myriad tribes who eventually became the Moslems, it was possibly inevitable result of centuries of repression and infighting. In each case, it was not a matter of finding a new god, but simply a reinterpretation of the old. Each tribal group began with Animism, moved on through Polytheism as their society developed more complexity, and finished with the last god standing amongst the polytheistic hierarchy becoming the new Monotheistic god. This process appears to be more of a reinterpretation of a people’s understanding of their god, rather than the adoption of a new religion. I would call it evolution of interpretation.
In practical terms though, we think of each stage in their development is being the adoption of a new form of religion. So I disagree completely with those who suggest that it is not possible that the early Christian Fathers could ignore the religion that Jesus of Nazareth came from in defining a new religion. Here I would suspect that Hitchens is correct in thinking that the adoption of Old Testament Judaism within the new Christian tradition was a short-term political mechanism that may well have proved more problematical in the long-term.
The interesting thing about the debate afterwards, was the repeated assertion by 'rationalists' that any form of religion could not have a rationalistic base. And given that they had already failed in any attempt to argue that the human species can develop a moral basis without religion, this is a highly suspect argument. In fact it is easier to argue, that rationalism could not have happened without monotheism, than it used to argue that morality could not have happened without religion.
The world of the Aniministic or Polytheistic religions, is the world of capricious and uncaring gods, who have no real reason to help the ‘monkey boys’ apart from some form of bribery or deal-making. Only with the arrival of a Monotheistic God do we achieve the concept of rational and consistent rules within the universe. In particular, the Christian God, who overthrew the fundamental flaws of Greek science, namely the principle that multiple gods means that there are no immutable laws, and that in fact “shit happens”. In fact it is clear that all the marvels of Greek observational science are in fact the main hindrance to development of modern science. For centuries reference to the mistaken perspectives of the ‘divine’ Galen and Platonic Realism concepts of astrology, held back the development of rational observation science. Contrary to popular belief, it was the scholarly establishments fixation with the Polytheistically limited worldview is of the Greek and Roman forebears, that prevented Bacon and Galileo from moving observational science forward faster. The Roman Catholic Church was always on the side of the concept that the revealed world in the Bible should be interpreted by the observed world around us. Those that argue that the Renaissance was brought on by the rediscovery of the Greek and Roman texts (which had never in fact been entirely lost), need to rethink their position on just how much of modern science is based on the overthrowing of those hidebound and limiting texts.
I came out of the debate convinced of two things. The first is that nobody has yet outlined a reasonable explanation of how the human species could have evolved a moral code with-out having gone through a process of religious conviction. Morality seems fundamentally based on a prospective which acknowledges some higher purpose, or an outside value that is greater than the individual. Humanity clearly evolved more effectively than other creatures largely on the basis of specializing in co-operative behaviour and teamwork. I would suggest that this was only possible because humanity had the capacity to envisage a greater good. I would therefore argue that the concept of religion was intrinsic to the concept of communication, co-operation, teamwork and out evolving other species. (I am currently seeking a good argument opposing this perspective. If anyone can suggest sources that can be more convincing than Kant, I would appreciate it.)
The second thing that became apparent from both the film and the discussion afterwards, is that supposedly rationalistic ‘scientists’ are operating almost entirely on faith when it comes to making arguments against things they do not like or do not understand. Personally I do not believe that it is possible to scientifically prove such concepts as a ‘good’, ‘truth’, ’just’, ‘moral’, or even ‘blue’ (though I have seen some interesting metaphysical arguments attempting to do so). I am well enough aware of the limitations of human understanding that I am happy to say that I have 'faith' that there can be such a thing as truth or justice. Metaphysical concepts are no more open to scientific proof than is the theory of the Big Bang. (Though if anybody would like to demonstrate some repeatable experiments on the Big Bang theory to me, I would be delighted to see their attempt. Then I would be greatly amused to point out that the process that they are proving is the one detailed in the book of Genesis.)
I was not actually particularly impressed with most of the points made by the pastor in the film, but I had to agree with him on the basic principle. He effectively said ‘my worldview is based on faith, which you have to disprove; but your world view is based on proof, and to suggest that you want me to take that on faith is inadequate’. The convener of the film group, a dedicated atheist, complained that Hitchens simply did not offer an alternative foundation of morality on which to base his claims. He felt that this was unacceptable, though obviously he hoped such a thing was possible. In the film Hitchens more or less conceded that he could not think of a way to do it given human history, but he actually suggested that we take it on faith that it might be possible. (An argument of despair familiar to all who have read the Marxist apologists – like Hitchins - in the last 50 years.)
As an historian, what amuses me most is the parallel with the previous times religions have gone through a renaissance. Reading the works of the Rationalists, Marxists, Dada-ists, and Deconstructionists, simply reminds me of the writings of those bemoaning the collapse of Roman civilization in their own time. I see parallels in the trials of Socrates for blasphemy. I hope that our understanding of religion is moving past the appalling mediaeval concepts of hierarchical church structures enforced by in fallible humans. In fact I look forward to the next stage of the human interaction with the great unknowable. I do not a moment believe that abandoning the idea that there is order and reason and great purpose, is anything but a dead end. Unrealistic though it seems, Hitchens and Dawkins and the other atheists may have as much effect on human history as their rationalistic Greek forebears, but their self-righteous arrogance seems unlikely to halt human evolution for long. I am not sure where the next stage of our understanding will take us, and but I am sure that this is not it.
The film wasn’t very good, largely because it was presented as a glorified book tour rather than a rational debate. The title question was – eventually - summarized in a single throw away line by each protagonist near the end, leaving the main debate to be about religion in general rather than Christianity. The discussion of religion devolved into a simple debate about whether it was possible to have a moral code that was not based on religion.
Now all three questions could have been interesting if well handled. They weren’t. No evidence at all was presented about the effects of Christianity. No good debate was had on religion in general. (Possibly because Hitchins seemed to assume that all religion is approached with the blind fundamentalism of your average suicide bomber, and the pastor always diverted that to the issue of morality.) No good debate was held on morality, simply because Hitchins never answered any of the questions put to him.
Actually Hitchins was riding to a fall here. The Pastor could look him in the eye and say that he was arguing from faith, because faith was the premises of his position, and therefore he was being consistent. He constantly requested Hitchins give a rationalist or ‘scientific’ basis for morality consistent with Hitchens basing his approach on rationalism. He didn’t. (I would argue that he couldn’t, but I am open to being proved wrong here. Pity Hitchins didn’t even try.)
The debate after the film was lively, and several people made the point that Hitchins could have made some good arguments if he wasn’t blinded by his ‘faith’ in the obviousness of his position. Instead his responses were criticisms of Old Testament examples of cruelty and capriciousness that are perfectly justifiable criticisms: but presented in a way that sounded like a seven year old being outraged… “and besides, you’ve got a big nose”.
Possibly the best point that Hitchens made, was that the early Christian Fathers seriously debated whether they should start their new religion completely from scratch, rather than adopting all the package of Judaism and the old Testament God. Hitchens casual aside on the difficulties of making such an inconsistency acceptable, could have been the foundation for an excellent debate. Certainly the pastor he was debating seemed to have a struggle to avoid actually agreeing with him.
Yet here again, and there is an inherent inconsistency in Hitchens approach to world. He is an absolute believer in Darwinian evolution, and yet completely unwilling to accept human theological evolution.
My own presentations to school children on the development of religions for ancient cultures leans heavily on the concept of evolution of understanding. Because all religions start as an attempt to explain the natural world and its effect on human cultures, all religions tend to evolve around consistent patterns. Animism is the starting point for any culture which faces the most simple of issues, such as whether there will be enough rain and sun to allow the fertility amongst plants and animals which will allow the culture to survive and prosper. Animism automatically develops into Polytheism as the culture becomes more complex, develops new technologies, engages in trade, discovers exchange methods such as coinage, and comes into contact with other dangerous and aggressive tribes. Polytheism itself automatically develops into Monotheism when it becomes apparent that a group of capricious gods that must be negotiated with is not an adequate worldview to cope with yet more complex social interactions.
Interestingly many cultures have been very happy with Polytheism until their world faces radical upheaval. For the ancient Jews who invented the concept of Monotheism, it was disaster in Judea and slavery in Egypt which moved them forward. For the ancient Romans, it was the collapse of imperial power and the incursion of ever-increasing waves of barbarian raiders. For the myriad tribes who eventually became the Moslems, it was possibly inevitable result of centuries of repression and infighting. In each case, it was not a matter of finding a new god, but simply a reinterpretation of the old. Each tribal group began with Animism, moved on through Polytheism as their society developed more complexity, and finished with the last god standing amongst the polytheistic hierarchy becoming the new Monotheistic god. This process appears to be more of a reinterpretation of a people’s understanding of their god, rather than the adoption of a new religion. I would call it evolution of interpretation.
In practical terms though, we think of each stage in their development is being the adoption of a new form of religion. So I disagree completely with those who suggest that it is not possible that the early Christian Fathers could ignore the religion that Jesus of Nazareth came from in defining a new religion. Here I would suspect that Hitchens is correct in thinking that the adoption of Old Testament Judaism within the new Christian tradition was a short-term political mechanism that may well have proved more problematical in the long-term.
The interesting thing about the debate afterwards, was the repeated assertion by 'rationalists' that any form of religion could not have a rationalistic base. And given that they had already failed in any attempt to argue that the human species can develop a moral basis without religion, this is a highly suspect argument. In fact it is easier to argue, that rationalism could not have happened without monotheism, than it used to argue that morality could not have happened without religion.
The world of the Aniministic or Polytheistic religions, is the world of capricious and uncaring gods, who have no real reason to help the ‘monkey boys’ apart from some form of bribery or deal-making. Only with the arrival of a Monotheistic God do we achieve the concept of rational and consistent rules within the universe. In particular, the Christian God, who overthrew the fundamental flaws of Greek science, namely the principle that multiple gods means that there are no immutable laws, and that in fact “shit happens”. In fact it is clear that all the marvels of Greek observational science are in fact the main hindrance to development of modern science. For centuries reference to the mistaken perspectives of the ‘divine’ Galen and Platonic Realism concepts of astrology, held back the development of rational observation science. Contrary to popular belief, it was the scholarly establishments fixation with the Polytheistically limited worldview is of the Greek and Roman forebears, that prevented Bacon and Galileo from moving observational science forward faster. The Roman Catholic Church was always on the side of the concept that the revealed world in the Bible should be interpreted by the observed world around us. Those that argue that the Renaissance was brought on by the rediscovery of the Greek and Roman texts (which had never in fact been entirely lost), need to rethink their position on just how much of modern science is based on the overthrowing of those hidebound and limiting texts.
I came out of the debate convinced of two things. The first is that nobody has yet outlined a reasonable explanation of how the human species could have evolved a moral code with-out having gone through a process of religious conviction. Morality seems fundamentally based on a prospective which acknowledges some higher purpose, or an outside value that is greater than the individual. Humanity clearly evolved more effectively than other creatures largely on the basis of specializing in co-operative behaviour and teamwork. I would suggest that this was only possible because humanity had the capacity to envisage a greater good. I would therefore argue that the concept of religion was intrinsic to the concept of communication, co-operation, teamwork and out evolving other species. (I am currently seeking a good argument opposing this perspective. If anyone can suggest sources that can be more convincing than Kant, I would appreciate it.)
The second thing that became apparent from both the film and the discussion afterwards, is that supposedly rationalistic ‘scientists’ are operating almost entirely on faith when it comes to making arguments against things they do not like or do not understand. Personally I do not believe that it is possible to scientifically prove such concepts as a ‘good’, ‘truth’, ’just’, ‘moral’, or even ‘blue’ (though I have seen some interesting metaphysical arguments attempting to do so). I am well enough aware of the limitations of human understanding that I am happy to say that I have 'faith' that there can be such a thing as truth or justice. Metaphysical concepts are no more open to scientific proof than is the theory of the Big Bang. (Though if anybody would like to demonstrate some repeatable experiments on the Big Bang theory to me, I would be delighted to see their attempt. Then I would be greatly amused to point out that the process that they are proving is the one detailed in the book of Genesis.)
I was not actually particularly impressed with most of the points made by the pastor in the film, but I had to agree with him on the basic principle. He effectively said ‘my worldview is based on faith, which you have to disprove; but your world view is based on proof, and to suggest that you want me to take that on faith is inadequate’. The convener of the film group, a dedicated atheist, complained that Hitchens simply did not offer an alternative foundation of morality on which to base his claims. He felt that this was unacceptable, though obviously he hoped such a thing was possible. In the film Hitchens more or less conceded that he could not think of a way to do it given human history, but he actually suggested that we take it on faith that it might be possible. (An argument of despair familiar to all who have read the Marxist apologists – like Hitchins - in the last 50 years.)
As an historian, what amuses me most is the parallel with the previous times religions have gone through a renaissance. Reading the works of the Rationalists, Marxists, Dada-ists, and Deconstructionists, simply reminds me of the writings of those bemoaning the collapse of Roman civilization in their own time. I see parallels in the trials of Socrates for blasphemy. I hope that our understanding of religion is moving past the appalling mediaeval concepts of hierarchical church structures enforced by in fallible humans. In fact I look forward to the next stage of the human interaction with the great unknowable. I do not a moment believe that abandoning the idea that there is order and reason and great purpose, is anything but a dead end. Unrealistic though it seems, Hitchens and Dawkins and the other atheists may have as much effect on human history as their rationalistic Greek forebears, but their self-righteous arrogance seems unlikely to halt human evolution for long. I am not sure where the next stage of our understanding will take us, and but I am sure that this is not it.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Rating General Marshall
General George Catlett Marshall was the US Army Chief of Staff from the day Hitler invaded Poland to the end of World War Two. He followed that with stints as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defence, which gave him at least equal public recognition, and, in the case of the Marshall Plan for economic aid to postwar Europe, possibly greater acclaim. But he never commanded a single soldier in combat. So can he be a great general?
Marshall was from an old Virginian family that considered itself middle class. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1901. He had postings around the US and the Philippines until sent to France in 1917, where he was a planner for both training and operations. He moved to Pershing’s headquarters to plan operations, including the Meuse-Argonne offensive, and develop an intimate relationship with the army’s demigod that was to help propel him to a rank partly invented for him. (One of the reasons the Americans adopted the term ‘General of the Army’ instead of using the universally accepted term, was because they didn’t want their first five star army officer to be called Field-Marshall Marshall.)
He switched between staff appointments and commanding barracks – usually for training commands - for most of the interwar period, but was jumped from a one star Brigadier to a four star General between June 30 and September 1 1939 (July and August were spent as a two star Major-General), to take over as Army Chief of Staff. This sort of promotion is unheard of in most other peacetime armies, and presumably either reflected superhuman abilities, or the right connections. Various biographers have suggested either alternative, with some suggesting it needed both.
As a result he was the only Allied Chief of Staff to hold office not just for the period that the US was in the Second World War, but for its entire length. Some of his biographers have used this to claim that he was therefore a greatly superior and greatly more experienced military leader than any of the others members of the CCOS. (Forest Pogue in his magisterial book Organizer of Victory – based on the title Churchill assigned to Marshall – said: “1943… Marshall was more than ever the pre-eminent figure on the military scene both at home and abroad… fast becoming first among equals in… CCOS meetings… the only one of the CCOS to have held his position since the day war in Europe began… more experience than any other military leader in finding resources for his own forces and America’s allies, for dealing with members of Congress, the President, and the general public.
This is an interesting interpretation of what makes a great general when compared to someone like the British CIGS Alan Brooke, who successfully commanded both corps and armies in battle, and army groups in the front line facing invasion, before becoming the professional head of the wartime service, where all but his worst enemies admired his undoubted abilities. I have always wondered what qualities of generalship some biographers put above practical experience in leading troops in combat? Indeed Marshall was certainly the most experienced Bureaucrat of the CCOS (possibly explaining why he got on so well with the equally bureaucratic Field Marshal Dill), but the pre-eminent ‘General’? Not as I understand the term.
So let us analyse the parts of his generalship.
He never led troops in battle, so there is considerable difficulty assessing his abilities compared to others in many regards. But some things can be said.
Personally he was a picture of Robustness for a staff officer, though he never had the stress of field operations. He was an immensely impressive Character, though he never had the chance to demonstrate whether he would be able to inspire troops at the front. He had considerable Humanity, though many would argue that his treatment of individual soldiers as simply replacement parts of a complex machine was not something to be proud of. He had great Spirit, but again never the chance to demonstrate he could infuse it into his troops. All these things appear positive, if un-measurable in combat.
Now for the negatives.
We can judge his Common Sense by what he tried to achieve, and how he responded to failure. Many of the training systems this so-called ‘training-expert’ set up, particularly the Individual Replacement System, were quite disastrous. His refusal to change the system cannot be considered a positive. When Brooke complained in North Africa of the inadequate training of American troops, particularly replacements, Marshall’s frustrated response was “at least they learn”, which was missing the point that the untrained replacements died in vast numbers through not getting a chance to learn. By the end of the war many American units were a weakened conglomeration of tired experienced survivors who were close to breaking (if not actively deserted in their tens of thousands), mixed in with constant levies of poorly trained cannon fodder with a very short life expectancy – often only two or three days. Most of the failures of the common soldier in the American Army in the Second World War can be traced directly to this system.
His ability as a Mentor is also deeply questionable. He managed to pick at least as many failures as successes amongst the generals he appointed to high office, with particular examples like Fredendall (of whom he said “One of the best”… “I like that man, you can see determination all over his face”…); and Lucas, failing miserably in battle. Many of his other choices were highly questionable (Clark and Hodges will be other posts), and some like Lee (Eisenhower’s logistics commander in France and another post), were indefensible. He, like Auchinleck, showed a distressing willingness to stick by proven failures, and to refuse to dismiss them no matter what. At the very best he was only average in this category.
Because he never led troops, ever, his Operational abilities can only be judged on what we can gather from his suggestions and orders to others. What they reveal is a man too far removed from the realities of the front line.
Planning, like training, was supposed to be a specialty of Marshall’s, and indeed here he deserves the greatest praise. He converted an army of a few hundred thousand into a force of 8 million, and more or less made it work. Unfortunately the bureaucratic achievement is somewhat undermined by the practical results. The plan had been for over 200 divisions, not the 90 he finished with. The plan had been for a brilliant inter-operability of troops, not the frantic conversions to plug gaps that became necessary in France. The plan had been for the best equipment, not to make the barely adequate stuff available in 1942 (tanks and anti-tank guns spring to mind here) hang on in service until it was completely outclassed. The plan was to create an unsurpassed military force, not a barely average one reliant on willingness to take almost unlimited casualties to make gains. As a mastermind of expansion, Marshall was excellent: but the devil is in the detail, and the detail looks decidedly less impressive.
Logistics is an area where Americans pride themselves. Pity Marshall never understood it very well. Not in terms of producing the correct equipment, and not in terms of improving the speed and reliability of its transport. Certainly he (and Roosevelt) created vast quantities of materials, but a surprising amount of American production was obsolete even as it was being produced. The British had an excuse for continuing to produce 2 pounder anti-tank guns instead of the 6 pounder replacements they knew were needed in 1940 and 1941… they were facing imminent invasion. The Americans had no excuse for producing tens of thousands of outdated tanks and aircraft in 1943, and 1944, which just went into storage. The P39 Airocobra for instance, supposedly an air superiority fighter, had been declared obsolete by the British for European operations even before Pearl Harbour, and thereafter was used in Europe largely as ground attack aircraft by minor allies like co-belligerent Italy, Poland and even Portugal. It was nonetheless kept in production until July 1944, with a large number of the planes produced being crated and stored (though about a third went to the Russians who actually had a combat environment that suited them). Certainly GI’s watching ‘Tommy-Cooker’ British Sherman’s - at least equipped with 17 pounders that could stop any German tank - had reason to wonder why they were still using ‘Ronson-lighter’ Sherman’s, with short barreled 75mm guns that fired shells that bounced off. Marshall got a huge force into action with a lot of equipment. Pity so much of the force and the equipment was sub-standard.
More importantly Marshall never really understood the significance of opening the Mediterranean, no matter how often the shipping figures were shown to him. This theoretically could be considered a single minded, if misguided, pursuit of the most direct approach to attacking Germany from Britain: until one remembers that he was just as keen on getting supplies to China along the most lengthy and difficult supply line in the world. The lack of consistency implies that this was another area he failed to understand very well.
Topography and Movement. Again, the American military is very big on map-reading. Marshall was very big on it himself, and rightly pointed out that mountainous Italy was hardly a ‘soft underbelly’. (Though Churchill of course meant politically not geographically.) Yet his other efforts at long distance map reading from Washington are somewhat dubious. He was against British plans to invade North Africa through ports further into the Med because he preferred the ‘safer’ Atlantic Coast. (Luckily the normal swell which would have ruined the Morroccan attack was quite that particular day). Why he felt that troops who needed the ‘safety’ of distance from the Axis in North Africa, would be better suited to a head on attack on veteran German forces in France, is a mystery. Yet in both North Africa and France he then planned nice straight lines of attack in complete disregard of terrain. He argued against a campaign in mountainous northern Italy, and then supported Eisenhower’s plan to advance into the forests and mountains of Southern Germany instead of along the North Sea coastal plain. Then consider his favoured ‘hump’ route for supplies to China. There is little to demonstrate that he had above average understanding of topography or movement.
Tactics. Again, Marshall never commanded troops in battle, but he did suggest lots of ideas to his field commanders, so we can get some idea of his grasp of tactics. The best revelations are probably in the book ‘Dear General’ which runs through Eisenhower’s correspondence with his mentor. The editor himself comments that Eisenhower starts as a supplicant, but gradually grows more willing to argue with his mentor. By the end there is a feeling of exasperation from Ike when Marshall suggests clearly ridiculous things like dropping an airborne corps into France far from the chance of possible relief. Combined with his clear failure to understand the problems of invasions, we cannot rate Marshall’s tactical understanding very high.
Combined Operations are actually a particular problem for Marshall. The great proponent of an invasion in 1942 or 1943 admits in1944 that apparently a worldwide lack of Landing Ship - Tanks might be an issue (while commenting that he had hardly heard of the things a year ago).
Marshall scores somewhat better in Command abilities, but again there is always the suggestion that his Olympian perspective from Washington is far too remote from the realities at the front. He was a firm believer in good clear instructions, and his Clarity can only be admired when it comes to administrative matters. (When it comes to what he would like to happen on the battlefield however, some of his more optimistic orders to Eisenhower and Stillwell sound about as convincing as Hitler’s orders to von Paulus at Stalingrad.)
He was excellent at Delegation within the Pentagon, and no underling ever doubted that attempting to stretch or thwart his orders would bring down the wrath of God. Good people were encouraged, bad disciplined. But again there are questionable examples such as letting his administrative generals get away with unsavoury behaviour like bugging British officers they didn’t like. More worryingly, it is clear that he let distance affect his control. Again, it is unlikely General ‘Jesus-Christ-Himself’ Lee would have got away with a quarter of what he did in France if Marshall had been close enough to see what was happening. In fact this is the most concerning part of his delegation. Why didn’t any of his own people, in his own hierarchy, tell him what was going on. Or why did he ignore any who did? How much did he ignore feedback that didn’t meet his preconceptions?
There is no doubt that Marshall was excellent at relations with his political master, as long as you only include Roosevelt on that list. It is not clear that he ever understood that in the sort of coalition he was in, the political masters of the CCOS included the Prime Minister of the equal partner. (Having said that, Dill was better at relations with Roosevelt than with Churchill too: but then Roosevelt rarely actually consulted or really listened the way Churchill interacted with his generals.)
Marcshall also tried quite hard to be good at Relations with allies and other services. Certainly he was outstandingly superior to Admiral King in this regard, though the somewhat junior Chief of the Army Air Force, General Arnold, was even better. Yet he expressed constant frustration with others - British, French, Poles, even Canadians - for not seeing things his way. Eventually he let this frustration overflow into ignoring requests that he didn’t feel were important, and encouraging Eisenhower and MacArthur to do as they saw fit regardless of the opinions of his fellow CCOS, or of their host governments.
Perhaps this would have been reasonable, had Marshall demonstrated that his Strategic sense was superior to that of his Allies. But he never showed much in the way of ability in this regard. His frustration with his allies came down to the fact that he simply wanted to invade Germany by the shortest route as quickly as possible. He wanted to hit the northern French beaches in 1942, or at least 1943, and always believed that anything else was a frustrating diversion. He never agreed with clearing North Africa first. He never desired to go to the effort of knocking Italy (and her large army and navy) out of the war. He never understood the implications of clearing the Mediterranean on Allied shipping and troop movements. He never believed that there was any need to tie down dozens of good German divisions in Italy, the Balkans and Southern France. He never understood that Allies arriving over beaches in France could not possibly build up faster than Germans arriving by train (unless the German army was weakened and their communications shattered – something certainly beyond Allied ability in 1942 and probably also in 1943). He never agreed that American troops might need a little battle hardening in nice remote locations like North Africa or Sicily or Italy before facing the Germans in an attempted rampage across northern France. He never acknowledged the many failures of these troops (and some of his handpicked generals) in North Africa and Italy. He never even recognized that he simply was not sending enough troops towards Europe fast enough to make an earlier invasion anything but an assault against superior numbers. (Though he contributed to this by his constant collusion with King that if France was not going to be invaded right now, they could put off new forces so they could do more in the Pacific.) He supported Eisenhower’s ‘broad front’ strategy in France, even after the German army collapsed and a Blitzkrieg was a genuine alternative.
He believed in the value of the Chinese, regardless of all evidence. He trusted the Russians, regardless of all evidence. He opposed Churchill’s first attempt to save the Greek islands, and was unhappy about the second, successful attempt, to save Greece itself from the communists. He agreed with Eisenhower’s decision not to advance to Berlin, or even into Czechoslovakia. He supported the planned invasion of Japan even though he knew that the Japanese wanted to surrender. He agreed to the decision to drop the Atomic bombs, possibly mainly because he had finally realized that the Russians were untrustworthy.
Here we overlap into the realm of Geopolitics, and this is definitely one of Marshall’s weak areas. He apparently believed wars were for military victory, not to achieve political goals. He seemed to honestly think that once the enemies were defeated, the Allies would have a nice chat and agree to things. He was dragged kicking and screaming behind British moves to save Greece and Trieste and Denmark, and managed to prevent them saving Czechoslovakia. He then went to post war China and almost single handedly (according to McCarthy and even – much to Marshall’s shock - Eisenhower), handed over China to the Communists – leading to a domino chain in North Korea, Vietnam and Burma, and a long civil war in Malaya. In fact Marshall’s contribution to the postwar strategic situation was more to provide a firm foundation for the Cold War, rather than to contribute to a new Golden Age. That is as true when he was Secretary of State or Secretary of Defence as when he was COS.
The summary of all this would suggest that Marshall was a good administrator, but not a good general. I suppose it is possible that had he remained a two star and commanded a division or corps early in the war before progressing to three star - preferably under a particularly good mentor - he might have developed into a reasonable army commander, but this seems doubtful. He simply lacked Operational skills across the board. He certainly failed to understand equipment requirements. His correct place was certainly as a staff officer, and here he was certainly one of the best of the war. The mistake (common to most armies) was in thinking that a good staff officer makes a good executive commander. (See Churchill appointing Dill, Dill appointing Percival, Canadian PM King appointing Crerar, Stalin appointing Voroshilov, or Togo appointing Mutaguchi.)
Marshall was an impressive man of great character, but probably lacked the skills to have made a good frontline leader. He was a brilliant administrator and bureaucrat, possibly the ideal person to expand an army: but not a good CIC, and certainly needed someone to over-rule his stubbornness on such disastrous decisions as the Individual Replacement System and mass production of outdated equipment. He was a very poor choice to help design global strategy, and Brooke was probably right to wish he had the vainglorious MacArthur (who he considered to be both strategically and geopolitically excellent) in Washington instead. Marshall’s limited military viewpoint missed the whole point of why nations fight wars, with dire consequences for future generations.
In summary Marshall is in the same category as Dill. A great man, a noble man, a brave man, but completely out of his depth in the wrong job. Marshall, as the strategic voice of the United States, failed completely either to shorten the war (his personal goal), or to leave the world better placed for peace afterwards (the goal of a truly professional national military commander).
Marshall was from an old Virginian family that considered itself middle class. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1901. He had postings around the US and the Philippines until sent to France in 1917, where he was a planner for both training and operations. He moved to Pershing’s headquarters to plan operations, including the Meuse-Argonne offensive, and develop an intimate relationship with the army’s demigod that was to help propel him to a rank partly invented for him. (One of the reasons the Americans adopted the term ‘General of the Army’ instead of using the universally accepted term, was because they didn’t want their first five star army officer to be called Field-Marshall Marshall.)
He switched between staff appointments and commanding barracks – usually for training commands - for most of the interwar period, but was jumped from a one star Brigadier to a four star General between June 30 and September 1 1939 (July and August were spent as a two star Major-General), to take over as Army Chief of Staff. This sort of promotion is unheard of in most other peacetime armies, and presumably either reflected superhuman abilities, or the right connections. Various biographers have suggested either alternative, with some suggesting it needed both.
As a result he was the only Allied Chief of Staff to hold office not just for the period that the US was in the Second World War, but for its entire length. Some of his biographers have used this to claim that he was therefore a greatly superior and greatly more experienced military leader than any of the others members of the CCOS. (Forest Pogue in his magisterial book Organizer of Victory – based on the title Churchill assigned to Marshall – said: “1943… Marshall was more than ever the pre-eminent figure on the military scene both at home and abroad… fast becoming first among equals in… CCOS meetings… the only one of the CCOS to have held his position since the day war in Europe began… more experience than any other military leader in finding resources for his own forces and America’s allies, for dealing with members of Congress, the President, and the general public.
This is an interesting interpretation of what makes a great general when compared to someone like the British CIGS Alan Brooke, who successfully commanded both corps and armies in battle, and army groups in the front line facing invasion, before becoming the professional head of the wartime service, where all but his worst enemies admired his undoubted abilities. I have always wondered what qualities of generalship some biographers put above practical experience in leading troops in combat? Indeed Marshall was certainly the most experienced Bureaucrat of the CCOS (possibly explaining why he got on so well with the equally bureaucratic Field Marshal Dill), but the pre-eminent ‘General’? Not as I understand the term.
So let us analyse the parts of his generalship.
He never led troops in battle, so there is considerable difficulty assessing his abilities compared to others in many regards. But some things can be said.
Personally he was a picture of Robustness for a staff officer, though he never had the stress of field operations. He was an immensely impressive Character, though he never had the chance to demonstrate whether he would be able to inspire troops at the front. He had considerable Humanity, though many would argue that his treatment of individual soldiers as simply replacement parts of a complex machine was not something to be proud of. He had great Spirit, but again never the chance to demonstrate he could infuse it into his troops. All these things appear positive, if un-measurable in combat.
Now for the negatives.
We can judge his Common Sense by what he tried to achieve, and how he responded to failure. Many of the training systems this so-called ‘training-expert’ set up, particularly the Individual Replacement System, were quite disastrous. His refusal to change the system cannot be considered a positive. When Brooke complained in North Africa of the inadequate training of American troops, particularly replacements, Marshall’s frustrated response was “at least they learn”, which was missing the point that the untrained replacements died in vast numbers through not getting a chance to learn. By the end of the war many American units were a weakened conglomeration of tired experienced survivors who were close to breaking (if not actively deserted in their tens of thousands), mixed in with constant levies of poorly trained cannon fodder with a very short life expectancy – often only two or three days. Most of the failures of the common soldier in the American Army in the Second World War can be traced directly to this system.
His ability as a Mentor is also deeply questionable. He managed to pick at least as many failures as successes amongst the generals he appointed to high office, with particular examples like Fredendall (of whom he said “One of the best”… “I like that man, you can see determination all over his face”…); and Lucas, failing miserably in battle. Many of his other choices were highly questionable (Clark and Hodges will be other posts), and some like Lee (Eisenhower’s logistics commander in France and another post), were indefensible. He, like Auchinleck, showed a distressing willingness to stick by proven failures, and to refuse to dismiss them no matter what. At the very best he was only average in this category.
Because he never led troops, ever, his Operational abilities can only be judged on what we can gather from his suggestions and orders to others. What they reveal is a man too far removed from the realities of the front line.
Planning, like training, was supposed to be a specialty of Marshall’s, and indeed here he deserves the greatest praise. He converted an army of a few hundred thousand into a force of 8 million, and more or less made it work. Unfortunately the bureaucratic achievement is somewhat undermined by the practical results. The plan had been for over 200 divisions, not the 90 he finished with. The plan had been for a brilliant inter-operability of troops, not the frantic conversions to plug gaps that became necessary in France. The plan had been for the best equipment, not to make the barely adequate stuff available in 1942 (tanks and anti-tank guns spring to mind here) hang on in service until it was completely outclassed. The plan was to create an unsurpassed military force, not a barely average one reliant on willingness to take almost unlimited casualties to make gains. As a mastermind of expansion, Marshall was excellent: but the devil is in the detail, and the detail looks decidedly less impressive.
Logistics is an area where Americans pride themselves. Pity Marshall never understood it very well. Not in terms of producing the correct equipment, and not in terms of improving the speed and reliability of its transport. Certainly he (and Roosevelt) created vast quantities of materials, but a surprising amount of American production was obsolete even as it was being produced. The British had an excuse for continuing to produce 2 pounder anti-tank guns instead of the 6 pounder replacements they knew were needed in 1940 and 1941… they were facing imminent invasion. The Americans had no excuse for producing tens of thousands of outdated tanks and aircraft in 1943, and 1944, which just went into storage. The P39 Airocobra for instance, supposedly an air superiority fighter, had been declared obsolete by the British for European operations even before Pearl Harbour, and thereafter was used in Europe largely as ground attack aircraft by minor allies like co-belligerent Italy, Poland and even Portugal. It was nonetheless kept in production until July 1944, with a large number of the planes produced being crated and stored (though about a third went to the Russians who actually had a combat environment that suited them). Certainly GI’s watching ‘Tommy-Cooker’ British Sherman’s - at least equipped with 17 pounders that could stop any German tank - had reason to wonder why they were still using ‘Ronson-lighter’ Sherman’s, with short barreled 75mm guns that fired shells that bounced off. Marshall got a huge force into action with a lot of equipment. Pity so much of the force and the equipment was sub-standard.
More importantly Marshall never really understood the significance of opening the Mediterranean, no matter how often the shipping figures were shown to him. This theoretically could be considered a single minded, if misguided, pursuit of the most direct approach to attacking Germany from Britain: until one remembers that he was just as keen on getting supplies to China along the most lengthy and difficult supply line in the world. The lack of consistency implies that this was another area he failed to understand very well.
Topography and Movement. Again, the American military is very big on map-reading. Marshall was very big on it himself, and rightly pointed out that mountainous Italy was hardly a ‘soft underbelly’. (Though Churchill of course meant politically not geographically.) Yet his other efforts at long distance map reading from Washington are somewhat dubious. He was against British plans to invade North Africa through ports further into the Med because he preferred the ‘safer’ Atlantic Coast. (Luckily the normal swell which would have ruined the Morroccan attack was quite that particular day). Why he felt that troops who needed the ‘safety’ of distance from the Axis in North Africa, would be better suited to a head on attack on veteran German forces in France, is a mystery. Yet in both North Africa and France he then planned nice straight lines of attack in complete disregard of terrain. He argued against a campaign in mountainous northern Italy, and then supported Eisenhower’s plan to advance into the forests and mountains of Southern Germany instead of along the North Sea coastal plain. Then consider his favoured ‘hump’ route for supplies to China. There is little to demonstrate that he had above average understanding of topography or movement.
Tactics. Again, Marshall never commanded troops in battle, but he did suggest lots of ideas to his field commanders, so we can get some idea of his grasp of tactics. The best revelations are probably in the book ‘Dear General’ which runs through Eisenhower’s correspondence with his mentor. The editor himself comments that Eisenhower starts as a supplicant, but gradually grows more willing to argue with his mentor. By the end there is a feeling of exasperation from Ike when Marshall suggests clearly ridiculous things like dropping an airborne corps into France far from the chance of possible relief. Combined with his clear failure to understand the problems of invasions, we cannot rate Marshall’s tactical understanding very high.
Combined Operations are actually a particular problem for Marshall. The great proponent of an invasion in 1942 or 1943 admits in1944 that apparently a worldwide lack of Landing Ship - Tanks might be an issue (while commenting that he had hardly heard of the things a year ago).
Marshall scores somewhat better in Command abilities, but again there is always the suggestion that his Olympian perspective from Washington is far too remote from the realities at the front. He was a firm believer in good clear instructions, and his Clarity can only be admired when it comes to administrative matters. (When it comes to what he would like to happen on the battlefield however, some of his more optimistic orders to Eisenhower and Stillwell sound about as convincing as Hitler’s orders to von Paulus at Stalingrad.)
He was excellent at Delegation within the Pentagon, and no underling ever doubted that attempting to stretch or thwart his orders would bring down the wrath of God. Good people were encouraged, bad disciplined. But again there are questionable examples such as letting his administrative generals get away with unsavoury behaviour like bugging British officers they didn’t like. More worryingly, it is clear that he let distance affect his control. Again, it is unlikely General ‘Jesus-Christ-Himself’ Lee would have got away with a quarter of what he did in France if Marshall had been close enough to see what was happening. In fact this is the most concerning part of his delegation. Why didn’t any of his own people, in his own hierarchy, tell him what was going on. Or why did he ignore any who did? How much did he ignore feedback that didn’t meet his preconceptions?
There is no doubt that Marshall was excellent at relations with his political master, as long as you only include Roosevelt on that list. It is not clear that he ever understood that in the sort of coalition he was in, the political masters of the CCOS included the Prime Minister of the equal partner. (Having said that, Dill was better at relations with Roosevelt than with Churchill too: but then Roosevelt rarely actually consulted or really listened the way Churchill interacted with his generals.)
Marcshall also tried quite hard to be good at Relations with allies and other services. Certainly he was outstandingly superior to Admiral King in this regard, though the somewhat junior Chief of the Army Air Force, General Arnold, was even better. Yet he expressed constant frustration with others - British, French, Poles, even Canadians - for not seeing things his way. Eventually he let this frustration overflow into ignoring requests that he didn’t feel were important, and encouraging Eisenhower and MacArthur to do as they saw fit regardless of the opinions of his fellow CCOS, or of their host governments.
Perhaps this would have been reasonable, had Marshall demonstrated that his Strategic sense was superior to that of his Allies. But he never showed much in the way of ability in this regard. His frustration with his allies came down to the fact that he simply wanted to invade Germany by the shortest route as quickly as possible. He wanted to hit the northern French beaches in 1942, or at least 1943, and always believed that anything else was a frustrating diversion. He never agreed with clearing North Africa first. He never desired to go to the effort of knocking Italy (and her large army and navy) out of the war. He never understood the implications of clearing the Mediterranean on Allied shipping and troop movements. He never believed that there was any need to tie down dozens of good German divisions in Italy, the Balkans and Southern France. He never understood that Allies arriving over beaches in France could not possibly build up faster than Germans arriving by train (unless the German army was weakened and their communications shattered – something certainly beyond Allied ability in 1942 and probably also in 1943). He never agreed that American troops might need a little battle hardening in nice remote locations like North Africa or Sicily or Italy before facing the Germans in an attempted rampage across northern France. He never acknowledged the many failures of these troops (and some of his handpicked generals) in North Africa and Italy. He never even recognized that he simply was not sending enough troops towards Europe fast enough to make an earlier invasion anything but an assault against superior numbers. (Though he contributed to this by his constant collusion with King that if France was not going to be invaded right now, they could put off new forces so they could do more in the Pacific.) He supported Eisenhower’s ‘broad front’ strategy in France, even after the German army collapsed and a Blitzkrieg was a genuine alternative.
He believed in the value of the Chinese, regardless of all evidence. He trusted the Russians, regardless of all evidence. He opposed Churchill’s first attempt to save the Greek islands, and was unhappy about the second, successful attempt, to save Greece itself from the communists. He agreed with Eisenhower’s decision not to advance to Berlin, or even into Czechoslovakia. He supported the planned invasion of Japan even though he knew that the Japanese wanted to surrender. He agreed to the decision to drop the Atomic bombs, possibly mainly because he had finally realized that the Russians were untrustworthy.
Here we overlap into the realm of Geopolitics, and this is definitely one of Marshall’s weak areas. He apparently believed wars were for military victory, not to achieve political goals. He seemed to honestly think that once the enemies were defeated, the Allies would have a nice chat and agree to things. He was dragged kicking and screaming behind British moves to save Greece and Trieste and Denmark, and managed to prevent them saving Czechoslovakia. He then went to post war China and almost single handedly (according to McCarthy and even – much to Marshall’s shock - Eisenhower), handed over China to the Communists – leading to a domino chain in North Korea, Vietnam and Burma, and a long civil war in Malaya. In fact Marshall’s contribution to the postwar strategic situation was more to provide a firm foundation for the Cold War, rather than to contribute to a new Golden Age. That is as true when he was Secretary of State or Secretary of Defence as when he was COS.
The summary of all this would suggest that Marshall was a good administrator, but not a good general. I suppose it is possible that had he remained a two star and commanded a division or corps early in the war before progressing to three star - preferably under a particularly good mentor - he might have developed into a reasonable army commander, but this seems doubtful. He simply lacked Operational skills across the board. He certainly failed to understand equipment requirements. His correct place was certainly as a staff officer, and here he was certainly one of the best of the war. The mistake (common to most armies) was in thinking that a good staff officer makes a good executive commander. (See Churchill appointing Dill, Dill appointing Percival, Canadian PM King appointing Crerar, Stalin appointing Voroshilov, or Togo appointing Mutaguchi.)
Marshall was an impressive man of great character, but probably lacked the skills to have made a good frontline leader. He was a brilliant administrator and bureaucrat, possibly the ideal person to expand an army: but not a good CIC, and certainly needed someone to over-rule his stubbornness on such disastrous decisions as the Individual Replacement System and mass production of outdated equipment. He was a very poor choice to help design global strategy, and Brooke was probably right to wish he had the vainglorious MacArthur (who he considered to be both strategically and geopolitically excellent) in Washington instead. Marshall’s limited military viewpoint missed the whole point of why nations fight wars, with dire consequences for future generations.
In summary Marshall is in the same category as Dill. A great man, a noble man, a brave man, but completely out of his depth in the wrong job. Marshall, as the strategic voice of the United States, failed completely either to shorten the war (his personal goal), or to leave the world better placed for peace afterwards (the goal of a truly professional national military commander).
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