Political Crossfire Forums

[DumbTeen]

Was there a big role for ideology in WW1, WW2 and the Cold War? If so, was that an intrinsic and inevitable part of those wars, or could this aspect have been avoided by skillful statesmen? (essentially, did politicians make it ideological or was it intrinsically so?)

A few things to bear in mind:
- Nazi-Soviet Pact
- Mussolini did not join in Hitler's war until it was completely clear that he could beat the French
- France, Britain and the USA, all democracies, had had rather tense and unclear relations through the interwar years
- Democratic Finland found itself in the same camp as the fascists
- During the Cold War, the two camps neatly correspond with ideology before 1960
- With time this breaks down, the (domestically) anti-Communist Nasser becomes the greatest Arab ally of the Soviets
- The Communist Chinese break off from the Russian alliance
- The Chinese find conflict with the Vietnamese who in turn have conflict with Communist Kampuchea
- Communist Yugoslavia accepted Marshall Aid and withdrew from the comintern
- Democratic America allied with plenty of dictatorships, not all of which were free-market either (though usually more-or-less capitalist)
- Gaullist France systematically attempted to break free from the US-Soviet bipolar order
- Democratic India had a fairly consistent pro-Soviet bent

[Rizla]

Quote: Democratic Finland found itself in the same camp as the fascists

Eh? I wouldn't have put it quite like that!

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I think we have over demonized the Nazis into jew hating maniacs bent on world domination, and that as the memory of this conflict fade we will see a lot more theories about what motivated Hitler to do what he did and when. I am talking about historical revision, but not in the holocaust denial sense. I'm talking about the political expediency, the pact with the Soviets... and in turn, more about the Soviets... and more about Anglo-American intentions etc.
So I think it's hard to discuss this based on what we thnk we know. Remember, history that we have now is pretty much based on the stuff they told the 'great unwashed' at the time, not what was actually going on in the corridoors of power.
The great unwashed are fed all the idiology, but none of the political expediency. Besides... we know that Hitler didn't exacly makes his real intentions plain to the Soviets in the begining, even though they guessed what was comming. War is about deception, and politics is full of liars.

Bottom line - once you are in power, idiology plays second fiddle to (1) staying in power. (2) reality.

Take Churchill for example. Here is a man who hates communists. He hates them more than he hates Nazis, but he realized the immediate threat of Nazism (over run of the mill facism).
Britian goes to war with Germany over poland. But by the wars end, we have handed Poland over to the Soviets! This wouldn't have happened if Churchill had had his way. If he had had his way we would have hit Berlin and kept going until we reached Moscow.
Churchill, being half American, had great hopes in our US allies, but it was the US that twisted his arm over Poland and put the brakes on an imediate attack on the Soviet Union. I bet he felt stabbed in the back. In fact, about the only thing over which he got his way was France, as the US had tried to stop De Gaul taking power.

So... the reality is, we went to war against our traditional ally, Germany. A country which actually admired us and didn't want war.

The country we went to war over got handed to our new greatest enemy - Russia.

Our new ally - America stabbed us in the back.

And all we got out of it was to put De Gaul in charge of our traditional enemy.

Yet it was smiles all round, we pretended we got what we wished for... yadda, yadda, yadda. So begins the cold war.

btw, all the way through WWII, we smiled nicely and called Starlin our friend.

I know this doesn't exactly answer what you were asking, but it shows that ideals and idioliogy go out the window in favour of reality. At no point was Churchill going to step down because things didn't go his way, or was he going to admit openly to the world that things didn't turn out right. It's no different to poker, you play the cards you are dealt, meanwhile the face you put on doesn't change... the moment it does, you are finished.