In retrospect, Hitler’s worst strategic debacle that ultimately cost the Nazi Germany the Second World War was invading Russia before crushing the British peril following the precipitous rout of the French military in June 1940. The only reason the megalomaniac Fuhrer didn’t initially commit enough military resources into crossing the English Channel and dismantling the Anglo-American Empire once and for all was that ruling elites of the two nations were tied together by blood relations.
Kaiser Wilhelm, the last deposed emperor of the House of
Hohenzollern that ruled Germany until the end of the First World War, was the
eldest grandchild of British Queen Victoria. Wilhelm's first cousins included
King George V of the United Kingdom and many princesses who, along with
Wilhelm's sister Sophia, became European consorts. Similarly, the German social
elites of the Second and Third Reich regarded the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy of
the United Kingdoms as kinsmen not to be harmed.
In the Second World War, the Nazi air force did mount Luftwaffe
attacks on a limited scale targeting Britain’s industrial infrastructure, but
the tiny island boasting imperial legacy was simply not a match for the Third
Reich’s military strength without the assistance of its trans-Atlantic ally,
the United States, with vast natural resources, territorial possessions
spanning the whole of the North American continent besides Canada,
technologically innovative manpower and logistical difficulty of mounting an
invasion. Thankfully, Britain was spared the pulverizing force of the Nazi Blitzkrieg
experienced by France and Eastern Europe.
According to a 1978 essay by German historian Andreas
Hillgruber, the Russia invasion plans drawn up by the German military elite
were colored by hubris stemming from the rapid defeat of France at the hands of
the invincible Wehrmacht and by traditional German stereotypes of Russia as a
primitive, backward Asiatic country, having Turco-Mongol ancestry, a fallacious
superiority complex predicated on the Nazi social Darwinism and the cherished
myth of the German and Anglo-Saxon racial superiority.
Had Hitler skimmed through the European history as a major
in high school and been aware of the Napoleonic army’s harrowing fate in its
botched Russia campaign in 1812, he would never have committed the blunder of
invading Russia to create so-called Lebensraum or “living space” for the German
race.
Russia defeated the forces of Napoleon and Hitler through
“strategic depth” of its vast territorial possessions spanning almost the
entire northern landmass of Eurasia, by letting them advance into Russian
territory, extending their supply lines, burdening logistics and mounting
ferocious guerrilla warfare campaign that decimated the morale and military
capabilities of the most invincible armies of their eras.
Russian fatalities during the Second World War ranged from
20 to 27 million, according to various estimates, including over 8 million
military fatalities. In comparison, the United States lost 400,000 soldiers
during the war. Clearly, Russia paid the most sacrifices and defeated Nazism
while the United States misappropriated the credit for salvaging the world from
the menace of fascism in the imagination of the subjects of the Anglo-American
Empire.
Before the end of the Second World War, when Japan was about
to fall in the hands of geographically adjacent Soviet Union, the Truman
administration authorized the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
to subjugate Japan and send a clear message to the leaders of the former Soviet
Union, which had not developed its nuclear program at the time, to desist from
encroaching upon Japan in the east and West Germany in Europe.
The Pentagon publicly confessed to over 30
Broken Arrows [1], serious nuclear accidents, including accidentally
dropping atom bombs on populated areas in the US and Europe that thankfully
didn’t explode, though the real number of such nuclear accidents is calculated
to be in thousands, particularly at the height of the Cold War during the
sixties when such apocalyptic “accidents” were everyday occurrence.
Thus, the United States came close to making the planet
uninhabitable for the rest of humanity due to its unfettered nuclear arms race
and the global domination agenda that subtly continues to this day, as is
obvious from the escalation of hostilities against Russia and China and the
current stand-off in Ukraine.
As for Ukraine’s aspirations for joining NATO and the
alliance’s eastward expansion along Russia’s western borders, the ostensible
cause of the escalation, it’s pertinent to mention that the trans-Atlantic
military alliance NATO and its auxiliary economic alliance European Union were
conceived during the Cold War to offset the influence of the former Soviet
Union which was geographically adjacent to Europe.
Historically, the NATO military alliance, at least
ostensibly, was conceived as a defensive alliance in 1949 during the Cold War
in order to offset conventional warfare superiority of the former Soviet Union.
The US forged collective defense pact with the Western European nations after
the Soviet Union reached the threshold to build its first atomic bomb in 1949
and achieved nuclear parity with the US.
But the trans-Atlantic military alliance has outlived its
purpose following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and is now being
used as an aggressive and expansionist military alliance meant to browbeat and
coerce the former Soviet allies, the Central and Eastern European states, to
join NATO and its corollary economic alliance, the European Union, or risk
international economic isolation.
Regarding the mainstream media’s contention that Russia has
amassed 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders, thus portending imminent
invasion, the United States, too, has permanently deployed over 100,000 forces,
not to mention strategic armaments, nuclear-capable missiles and air force
squadrons, in Europe since the end of the Second World War, including 50,000
troops at sprawling Ramstein
Air Base [2] and several other military bases in Germany.
Does that mean the United States has invaded and occupied
Europe? Of course, it has in the garb of establishing Pax Americana across the
world. If the United States has purported “strategic interests” across the
Atlantic Ocean in Europe, then is it too hard to imagine that Russia could also
have vital security interests along its western borders in Ukraine?
In Europe, 400,000 US forces were deployed during the height
of the Cold War in the sixties, though the number has since been brought down
after European powers developed their own military capacity following the
devastation of the Second World War. The number of American troops deployed in
Europe now stands at 50,000 in Germany, 15,000 in Italy and 10,000 in the
United Kingdom.
During the last year, the United States has substantially
ramped up US military footprint in the Eastern Europe, deploying strategic
armaments aimed at Russia and provocatively exercising so-called “freedom of
navigation” right in the Black Sea and the South China Sea, veritable
“territorial waters” of Russia and China, respectively.
Wouldn’t it be a cause of immense consternation for the US
military strategists and policy-makers if Russia or China deployed intercontinental
ballistic missiles, nuclear-capable strategic bombers and provocatively
exercised “freedom of navigation” right by deploying nuclear submarines in the
Gulf of Mexico straddling the US borders?
Ukraine is Russia’s backyard whereas the distance between
New York and Kiev is over 7,500 kilometers. What’s the purpose of deploying
thousands of US troops equipped with strategic armaments in the Eastern Europe
if not to intimidate and insult Russia? Despite the obvious contradiction
between tangible reality on the ground and parallel universe of media
narratives, the corporate media would project Russia as an aggressor and the
United States as a peace-maker.
Not only the disenfranchised masses of Ukraine but
underprivileged proletariats of all the former Soviet constituent republics in
Eastern Europe share historical, political and cultural bonds with Russia. The collective
security of Eurasian nations is Russia’s responsibility as a successor to the
former Soviet Union.
The imperialist stooge, Volodymyr Zelensky, elected
president through sham electoral process in bourgeois democracy called Ukraine,
represents nobody but the avaricious and exploitative entrepreneurial oligarchs
wanting to expand family businesses and attract foreign investments by
pandering to corporate interests of Western Europe and North America.
He is a figurehead beholden to the deep state, the top brass
of the military trained and educated at premier Western military academies, the
West Point and Sandhurst, and conducting joint military and naval exercises
alongside NATO forces deployed in the Eastern Europe.
Centralized governments across the world are run by behemoth
state bureaucracies. Politicians are merely show pieces meant to lend
legitimacy to supposedly “elected governments” and to cater to interests of business
elites which they really represent.
Disenfranchised masses are least bothered whether government
is being run by autocrats or by “elected representatives” of the bourgeoisie, though
the political and business elites often get restless and mobilize their support
base to demand a share in the power pie.
The national security and defense policies of modern nation
states are formulated by civil-military bureaucracy, dubbed as the deep state.
Whereas trade and economic policies are determined by corporate interests and
business cartels within the framework of neocolonial economic order imposed on
the post-colonial world by corporate America following the signing of the
Bretton Woods Accords at the end of the Second World War in 1945.
Purportedly democratic governments, elected through heavily
manipulated electoral process, are reduced to performing ceremonial gimmicks
and are meant only to serve as showpieces to legitimize militarist and
capitalist exploitation.
Excluding the self-styled global hegemon, the imperial
United States, the rest of the Western powers might have been colonial powers
before the Second World War but they are no longer “powers” in global politics.
In fact, they can more aptly be described as Western regimes
that serve no other purpose than act as Washington’s client states via the
framework of transatlantic NATO military alliance to maintain the charade of
multilateralism. With the second largest army in NATO after United States,
Turkey has more military power and political sovereignty than the servile
lackeys of Washington: the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
After the Second World War, Washington embarked on the
Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe with an economic assistance of $13
billion, equivalent to hundreds of billions of dollars in the current dollar
value. Since then, Washington has maintained military and economic dominance
over Western Europe.
The European colonial powers were so utterly devastated
following the Second World War that let alone keeping their Asian and African
colonies, they was finding it hard to keep European countries united and
economies running.
Thus, the age of colonialism didn’t end due to colonial
powers voluntarily relinquishing control over colonial possessions, as peddled
by Orientalist historians, rather they didn’t have the military and economic
capacity to forcibly suppress liberation movements kicking off all over the
colonial world.
In the medieval era, although monarchs were chosen by
hereditary title, their throne rested on unequivocal support of military
aristocracy. As kings didn’t have standing armies of their own beyond several
legions of praetorian guards. Feudal barons provided the bulk of forces from
private militias in times of wars and insurrections.
Thus, the deep state and its monopoly over politics,
specifically in the domain of national security and defense policy, was
in-built in the Western governance system since the time of the imperial rule,
and insidiously continues in the neocolonial era.
Ironically, the first military dictator to establish a
standing army of 50,000 men in Europe was none other than infamous Oliver
Cromwell, who ruled England with an iron fist for a brief period of time from
1653 to ’58, albeit with far-reaching consequences. As his model of military
autocracy was subsequently widely adopted across Europe and the United States, albeit
in a barely disguised veneer of hereditary monarchy, military aristocracy and,
at times, dubious parliamentary democracy.
In conclusion, military aristocracy held real power in the
medieval times, as it provided foot soldiers and cavalry units to monarchs in
times of war. With the advent of standing armies in 17th century,
the power transferred to generals, who were typically princes or belonged to
the nobility.
The United States of America is credited with building the
first plebian army, as it couldn’t trace a royal lineage so settler colonists,
having the blood of indigenous Red Indians on their hands, were raised to
higher ranks, who first wreaked havoc across Latin America in the 19th
century by invoking the Monroe Doctrine, and then unleashed a reign of terror
in the wider world in the 20th century by invoking the Truman
Doctrine that enunciated raison d’etre of the American-led neocolonial world
order as containment of the Soviet-led communism.
Citations:
[1] When the US Air Force accidentally dropped an atomic
bomb on Mars Bluff South Carolina:
[2] What the US Gets for Defending Its Allies and Interests
Abroad?
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