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.

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?

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!

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.

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.

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).

Integration - why national attitudes change over time.

Yet another commentator recently boasted about the superiority of the American integration experience for new immigrants. The point they made is that, theoretically at least, immigrants come to a better life, and are therefore delighted to be integrated. Strangely I remember reading similar comments by European commentators writing 60 years ago, and we can all see where that led. So is it a genuine claim?

One of the presentations my company does for school groups is called 'Three Medieval Cultures', and compares the Medieval experiences of the Latin’s (Western Europe), the Muslims, and the Japanese. Theoretically this is pretty easy, because they all have easily defined Classical, Medieval, and Modern periods in their cultures. In practice direct comparison is almost impossible, because the Medieval periods are at such different times that they hardly overlap at all.

For the Latin’s, the Medieval period of their history goes approximately from the fall of Rome in 476 AD, to the rise of the printing press that turbocharged the Renaissance in the 1440’s – about a thousand years. For the Japanese, it is probably from the rise of the Shogunate in 1192 to the Meiji restoration in 1867 – about 700 years. For the Muslims it is possibly from end of the Sultanate in 998 to the ‘retirement’ of the feudal Sipahi class of cavalrymen in 1828 – though it would be fair to argue that large parts of the Muslim world may well still be feudal.

The affect of these disparate dates is a serious of lovely quotes that reveal very little. In the mid C9th for instance, Arab geographer Ibn Khordadbeh referred to Europe as a source of: “eunuchs, slave girls and boys, brocade, beaver skins, glue, sables and swords” and not much more. He was a classical Muslim scholar - at the peak of their cultural attainments - looking at the Dark Ages in the West. Nine hundred years later Western traders – well into their Modern period - were making similar comments about the Medieval Muslim cultures they were passing on their way to Medieval Japan.

Which just goes to show that comparisons between national outlooks should probably pay a little attention to where they are in their national, and nationalistic, cycles.

I am a proponent of the idea that modern Empires have not so much ‘collapsed’ as been abandoned by voters unwilling to pay their costs. For all that the British Empire was weakened by the Great War, careful modern assessments reveal that it was making major economic comebacks in the interwar period. In which case the argument of the economic historians that it was too weakened by the Second World War to hold on to Empire seems a bit hindsight driven. (I will do a more detailed post on this later.)

In fact the postwar British Labour government was intent on abandoning Empire ASAP, and was heartily supported by the majority of the voters. (Which led to the indecent haste of abandoning not only cultures more or less ready for independence in the ongoing pattern of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, India, Ceylon, Malaya, Singapore, Malta, etc; but also cultures not nearly ready for it like Burma, Zimbabwe, Aden, Palestine, and many other violent and repressive states that have spent their time since as nasty dictatorships indulging in ethnic cleansing.) Despite what bad economic historians might think, this was at least as much political preference as it was economic necessity.

The comparison is easy to see. The United States left Korea half occupied largely because the cost of a full liberation was too high - economically and politically. A few years later the United States walked out on a war it probably could have won in Vietnam, because the voters would no longer stand for it. More recently it has taken lies about ‘weapons of mass destruction’ to get the voters to allow the removal of some of the nastier dictators and repressive regimes of human history in Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact the voter apathy is so great that there is virtually no chance of an intervention even to stop the bloodbaths of ethnic cleansing throughout Africa. (The Balkans may have been a last gasp of American willingness to do something just because it was ‘right’.)

Western Imperialism certainly had it’s faults, but it did stomp pretty firmly on Thuggee and Slavery and Headhunting asd Sati. Pity that the moral superiority that allowed the average voter to support such measures has evolved into a squeamish-ness that argues that people should be allowed to repress women and indulge in genital mutilation, child rape and ethnic cleansing if that is a traditional part of their - obviously equally valuable - culture.

So I can see very clear parallels between the attitudes towards ‘imperial adventures’ amongst modern Americans as there were amongst postwar (or even interwar) Briton’s. Which makes me suspect that the United States might be due for a rude awakening on it’s approach to ‘integration’ as well.

Europe has spent the last sixty years decrying its traditions. Nationalism is out. Patriotism is out. Duty to help the less fortunate is way out… if they are foreign at least. Instead there is a namby-pamby pastiche of feel-good phrases about multicultural futures and all-inclusive societies. The end effect of which appears to be that new Immigrant children can’t find anything of their new host society to be proud of, or even interested in. Instead they turn back to their cultures of origin for inspiration, with the effect that second and third generation Muslims in Europe are far more radical, and far less integrated, than their parents who have actually experienced the systems they were escaping. The results do not look good for social cohesion in the future.

The United States might like to think it is different, but the reality is that although it was a century behind the rest of the trends in the West at the start of last century, it is catching up rapidly. The US was one of the last Western states to abandon slavery. The US was the last (non-Nazi) Western State to try and claim a right to conquor land from its neighbours – both ‘natives’, and European imports like Canada and Mexico. (I will discount those states fighting over historical border disputes like France and Germany over Alsace-Lorraine in the Great War). The US was also a late starter in overseas imperialism, only getting seriously into it with the occupation of Hawaii, the forced treaties on Japan and China, and the conquest of Spanish possessions Central America’s and Asia. The US was one of the very last to give all citizens the vote (as long as you don’t count Puerto-Ricans as citizens in which case it still hasn’t).

All these things came well behind the patterns of Western states in Europe, or even of other planted Western colonies like Canada and Australia. But each time gap has been shorter. And the psychological component of the ‘Imperial Overstretch’ gap has been shortest of all. It lasted only a few decades between the triumphalism of America making the world safe for democracy in 1945, and it’s first failure at the fall of Saigon. By Gulf-War 1 in 1991, the Americans wanted other people to pay for them to fight. A decade later they were unwilling to go at all without a ‘coalition of the willing’. By now, the names Zimbabwe, Somalia and Darfur are carefully avoided in Congress.

How far behind these developments can a social integration problem be? All the European nations were excellent social integrators when they were in their colonial frontier periods. Look at the lovely fusion of Norman nobles with Anglo-Saxon and then Welsh and Scottish peoples in Britain. (It would be fair to say the Irish never integrated into Britain properly… Signs don’t look too promising for Irish integration in Europe just at the moment either…) Look at the disparate tribes and settlers who now make up the French, German, Spanish and even Polish states. Lots of land and lots of opportunity leads to lots of integration. But the stresses of population density and lack of opportunity have the same affect on modern Europe as they did in the time of overpopulation before the Great Famine and Black Death that halved the European population in the fourteenth century. (Allowing another round of ‘integration’ to be achieved.) Then look at the nationalism and violence and ethnic cleansing that follows many a financial crisis brought on by overpopulation and lack of opportunity. (Consider the timing of the various Pogroms against the Jews in parts of Europe.)

The United States still has a few frontiers in places like Alaska, but pretty much only in the way that Britain could export the restless younger sons to the Empire in the 1800’s. Places like California are not far behind New York in their path to European density and lack of opportunity for unskilled newcomers. The days of the average illiterate refugee making their fortunes, are a long way behind the US in states like New Hampshire or Pennsylvania. Lack of opportunity alone will cramp the integration dream.

More importantly though, the US has been advancing along the path to an ideal small ‘s’ socialist state quite quickly. (See Obama’s Healthcare plan.) With that has come the whole baggage of an intellectual and educational class more disparaging of American culture than supportive of it. They have not yet achieved the dominance they have in more ‘advanced’ cultures like Europe and the other Dominions, but they are not far off it. Inevitably the new immigrants are going to start getting the same educational experience of ‘what is there to be proud of’ as those in Europe. It may not be common in the US yet, but it is already the dominant position in certain Democrat voting states.

Fortunately the vast majority of new immigrants are apparently arriving in non-Democrat voting states. (Or perhaps there is a cause and effect here… consider voting patterns over time and look which states have moved from Democrat to Republican… hmm…) Places like Texas are moving forward precisely because they still consider themselves to be frontier economies, and are acting as though such ‘integrate by opportunity’ rules are still applicable. By contrast to the states who are trying to legislate an ‘equality’ based on fanciful ideas (and in a way that emphasises the advantages of NOT integrating), there is a chance that states like Texas can hold the dysfunctional integration tide back a bit longer.

On the other hand I heard just today a very good and entertaining talk by a Marxist (yes there are still people who call themselves that!) called Terry Eagleton (a Professor, naturally... of English Literature, unsuprisingly...) on radio. He made the delightful comment that listening to Americans go on about ‘God and Country’ (in their best impersonation of a pompous Victorian middle class English twat) just makes jaded Europeans stare at their shoes and hope it will stop soon.

If historical patterns are anything to go by, it probably will.