Time and space precluded a somewhat exhaustive discussion of the topic tackled in this column last time out: Analogy discloses US evil hand. And although a reader lauded the article as “quite an enlightening piece,” saying “America can never be trusted,” I nonetheless feel obliged to elaborate further on matters either completely left unsaid or half-considered.
The Yen analogy (“Duterte’s meetings with Xi: Like Neville Chamberlain’s visits to Munich in 1938,” The Manila Times Sept. 12, 2019) must assume the following syllogism: Hitler was the determined attacker in World War 2. Chamberlain wanted a peace pact with Hitler. Ergo it was wrong for Chamberlain to hope to gain peace from Hitler. Applying it in Yen’s analogy of the South China Sea conflict, corresponding Hitler to President Xi Jinping and Chamberlain to President Duterte, the syllogism should go: Xi is the determined attacker. Duterte wants a peace pact with Xi. Ergo it is wrong for Duterte to hope to gain peace from Xi.
As we gleaned from the discussion by author Paul Craig Roberts of two books by David Irving, Hitler’s War and Churchill’s War: The Struggle for Power, Hitler never wanted to war with Britain; all it wanted was to gain back possession of certain colonies dismembered from Germany by Britain and its allies in World War 1.
So, on the first premise alone, the Yen analogy falls flat on its face. It was never in Hitler’s agenda to attack Britain. As pointed out in yesterday’s piece, “…Hitler didn’t want any war with Britain or with France, and never intended to invade Britain. The invasion threat was a chimera conjured up by Churchill to unite England behind him.
Hitler expressed his view that the British Empire was essential for order in the world, and that in its absence Europeans would lose their world supremacy. After Germany’s rout of the French and British armies, Hitler offered an extraordinarily generous peace to Britain. He said he wanted nothing from Britain but the return of Germany’s colonies. He committed the German military to the defense of the British Empire, and said he would reconstitute both Polish and Czech states and leave them to their own discretion. He told his associates that defeat of the British Empire would do nothing for Germany and everything for Bolshevik Russia and Japan.”
I feel obliged to stress this point over and over again because there has been sustained propaganda by the Second World War victors that Hitler’s blitzkrieg attacks of France and the Benelux countries started the war.
What has the Roberts discussion got to say on this?
Here’s what: “World War 2 was initiated by the British and French declaration of war on Germany, not by a surprise blitzkrieg from Germany. The utter rout and collapse of the British and French armies was the result of Britain declaring a war, for which Britain was unprepared to fight and of the foolish French trapped by a treaty with the British, who quickly deserted their French ally, leaving France at Germany’s mercy.”
How merciful was Germany under Hitler at the time? Roberts answers: “Germany’s mercy was substantial. Hitler left a large part of France and the French colonies unoccupied and secure from war under a semi-independent government under Petain. For his service in protecting a semblance of French independence, Petain was sentenced to death by Charles de Gaulle after the war for collaboration with Germany, an unjust charge.”
At any rate, since the entry point of this whole discussion was Yen’s analogy of Duterte’s visits with Xi to Chamberlain’s own with Hitler, it would do us well to examine why in the course of our elaborations in the past column, Chamberlain suddenly faded out of scene and Churchill stole the show.
Roberts explains this development: “In Britain, Churchill was out of power. He figured a war would put him back in power. No Britisher could match Churchill’s rhetoric and orations. Or determination. Churchill desired power, and he wanted to reproduce the amazing military feats of his distinguished ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough, whose biography Churchill was writing and who defeated after years of military struggle France’s powerful Sun King, Louis 14th, the ruler of Europe.
“In contrast to the British aristocrat, Hitler was a man of the people. He acted for the German people. The Versailles Treaty had dismembered Germany. Parts of Germany were confiscated and given to France, Belgium, Denmark, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. As Germany had not actually lost the war, being the occupiers of foreign territory when Germany agreed to a deceptive armistice, the loss of approximately 7 million German people to Poland and Czechoslovakia, where Germans were abused, was not considered a fair outcome.
“Hitler’s program was to put Germany back together again. He succeeded without war until it came to Poland. Hitler’s demands were fair and realistic, but Churchill, financed by the Focus Group with Jewish money, put such pressure on British prime minister Chamberlain that Chamberlain intervened in the Polish-German negotiations and issued a British guarantee to the Polish military dictatorship should Poland refuse to release German territory and populations.”
Chamberlain’s intervention in the Polish-German negotiations led to Hitler’s military attack on Poland in September 1939, thereby giving reason for Britain to declare war against Germany.
“Thus Britain was responsible for World War 2, first by stupidly interfering in German/Polish negotiations, and second by declaring war on Germany,” says Roberts.
It was under such circumstances that Chamberlain lost a vote of confidence at the House of Commons — ultimately setting the stage for Churchill’s rise back to power. He was summoned to fill in the void left by Chamberlain, and as the new British Prime Minister declared, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
Going now by Yen’s original premises, we ask: In the Philippine scenario in regard to the South China Sea conflict, who is the present-day Churchill being programmed by the present day-Franklin Delano Roosevelt to replace the present-day Chamberlain through a present-day vote of confidence — impeachment, military coup, what have you?
As the break-up of the German-Polish negotiations immediately precipitated the outbreak of WW2, the intransigent call by Amboys like former Foreign Affairs secretary Albert del Rosario and Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio to push The Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling, which they deem a victory for the Philippines, is certainly being crafted to bring about a similar conflagration.
But, on this note, I hasten to point out one pitfall of analogy. We tend to ascribe to one element characteristics intrinsic in the other element. Meaning, in this case, British historical subservience to America cannot be ascribed to President Duterte, who over the years has not minced words in condemning US continuing aggression in the Philippines.
Ultimately, then, granting that there is such a US machination to replace President Duterte with its present-day Churchill who will serve its strategic America’s Pacific Century agenda, first word is, will Duterte buckle down, as Chamberlain did in his “peace of our time”?
https://www.manilatimes.net/2019/09/15/opinion/columnists/upping-the-ante-in-the-yen-analogy/616510/