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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   30473 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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Happy 4th of July to our American friends! I've come to share a little bit of history that struck me, then and now, as one of the more compelling paeans of American greatness: the opinion of Germans of American soldiers in 1917-18.

When the USA fell into WWI mostly-unprepared, it had to rapidly acquaint itself with the realities of modern warfare and gamely struggled with it. Once the fighting ended the Army was very interested in sourcing the enemy's opinions of its performance so as to be better prepared for next time. What actually happened was the USA retreated again into isolationism and it had to relearn all the same lessons in 1941-42 again at great cost. But it did produce this great document: Candid Comment on the American Soldier of 1917-18 (and Kindred Topics) by The Germans.

While much of it is devoted to German opinions of American combat performance (the general conclusion was brave, but foolhardy), the more interesting elements to me are the German impressions of Americans as individuals. Many of the American soldiers were ethnically German themself, and the whole situation lended itself to German introspection on how their American cousins had diverged in between the great German national failures of 1848 and 1918. This was after all a great clash of the ideals of the former versus the structure of the latter (which was drawn into sharper contrast by the further civil conflict within Germany; there are repeated instances of praise for American rule versus that of the "Spartacists").

You can see some selected quotes on various topics here, but what I find particularly interesting are the various comments about American class distinctions, given the shock Germans had in comparing their Prussian norms with American freedoms. Some choice quotes:

He comments on the fact that the Americans were what might be called bad prisoners. A group of 14 were brought in one day and when asked about their units refused to talk. They refused to work and talked back to the [German] officers, much to the annoyance of the officers and the concealed delight of the men.

Braun has served in the German army as an enlisted man and keenly alive to conditions in the army. He makes an interesting comparison in the German and American systems of training officers and states that the German system was the direct downfall of the army. At the beginning of the war Germany was well supplied with experienced officers who were respected and looked up to by the men in spite of the harsh disciplinary measures. The casualties, however, among officers during the first year of the war were enormous and they at once started training new officers... The candidates were selected from among the sons of the most influential families, given a short training and then put in charge of Companies. They tried to impose the same rigid discipline that the regular officers had, but the enlisted men resented this to the extent of open rebellion and fought with their officers until there was no discipline left in the army... He said that the American training schools although modelled after the Germans turned out successful officers because the best fitted men were picked from the ranks.

He spoke of the great difference between the American and German armies and was very much surprised to learn that one could become a noncommissioned officer after spending six or eight months in the service. In peace time in the German army a soldier was given a Sergeantcy only after he had spent 10 or 12 years in service then if he continued faithful he was given a place near his home as a Postman or railroad employee.

The American army seems to me as fine a collection of individual physical specimen as I have ever seen. But from the standpoint of military discipline it is a mob, pure and simple. The men appear slouchy; the officers do not stand out from the men in appearance as they do in any European army. All seem to allow themselves to be victimized in prices by the tradespeople of this, I am most unhappy to admit, vanquished country. They seem to have no conception of the fact that we are their enemies, and deep down in our hearts we hate each and every one of them!

Hahn states that all the people in the town are admiring the clean-cut American soldiers. He states that the impression the American soldier is leaving, with the people of Germany, is the impression that Germany will have of America in years to come. He notices the contrast between the American and German armies in their forms of discipline, stating that if the German army had been as free with their men as the American Army is, they would not have had the success that was theirs at the beginning of the war.

The attitude of the American officer towards enlisted men is very different than in our army in which officers have always treated their men as cattle.

While on duty the relations between men and officers are very strict, but on the other hand, when off duty, they are without constraint. The officers sit in the same cafe rooms with their men. When one sees the supplies, the material, etc., one is obliged to laugh at the imagination of our marine heads who praised the U-boats as a victor over the Entente. Every man has his cloth coat and his waterproof coat, his leather shoes and rubber shoes, etc.

This man has been a proprietor of a cafe for eight years. He speaks very highly of the American soldier and thinks that it was luck for the people that Americans were chosen for this district. He thinks it is strange that the Americans, having spent so short a time in the army, can adapt themselves to any condition that presents itself. He remarked that on the day the soldiers came to this town all were surprised at the orderly way the Americans conducted themselves. He said that he had never known a regiment of German soldiers to come here and behave themselves in such an orderly manner. German soldiers were always brutal to servants and destroyed a great deal of property.

A few American prisoners were brought here in June 1918 and were not mistreated. The Americans were the Chief complainers when the food was bad which was always. The Americans occasionally received packages containing hard tack and other luxuries but their packages were usually rifled. After the entrance of the Americans several Italians desired to return to Italy and France and demanded their pay from the German contractor. This was refused. They appealed to the Americans. Three "doughboys" with fixed bayonets accompanied the Italians and prompt payment was made. He states that miners are now being treated well and receive thirteen marks a day.

In the town of RITTERSDORF the subject of separation of Church and State was very strongly advocated at a meeting of the German Democratic Party: an opportunity to defend the position of the Church in this question was seized by two Catholic priests in the audience, who contended that the ideals of good government and the ideal of the Church were identical. In reply, the speaker of the German Democratic Party stated there could be no better example of the results of a divided Church and State than the American soldiers billeted in the German homes; he asked the audience to compare the conduct, appearance and enlightenment of the American soldiers with the aspect of the German soldiers. The reply met with the approval of the audience and the priests were "hissed" out of the meeting.

This lady says that a good many of the inhabitants of Rengsdorf and the surrounding town have made up their minds to emigrate to America if they will be permitted to do so. She explains that this is due to the good impression made by the American soldiers who are occupying this region and also the fact that most of the middle class and lower class are much afraid of the impending war debt and indemnity.

I have had soldiers in quarter all winter. At first I had Germans. Later Americans came. To become acquainted with these "our enemies" as house companions is among other things so very instructive. I have changed in a good many of my opinions, and would like to go to America for a half year or so because it is certain that these people possess a secret method which raises the most common fellows into an individual who stands up boldly and moves about freely and unconcerned. I think we can learn some things there which later could be used to advantage here. I do not mean this personally, but as a better education nationally.

I have changed in a good many of my opinions, and would like to go to America for a half year or so because it is certain that these people possess a secret method which raises the most common fellows into an individual who stands up boldly and moves about freely and unconcerned.

It is possible that the America of, say, 1870 to 1970 was an extraordinarily unique place in world history in which, for a great many reasons, three things were simultaneously true for ordinary people:

  1. The rewards for ambition, competence, and conscientousness were extraordinarily great

  2. The price for personal failure was still very high

  3. It was possible for many to rise well above their station in life due to very rapid economic growth

I struggle to think of many other societies in which all three were simultaneously true. The few examples I can think of (the four 'Asian Tiger' economies from the 1960s to 1990s, maybe) were also temporary, and true for a much shorter period than the US.

But in such a society, propriety, boldness, ambition and self-respect would likely be more common among those who had great hopes of participating in that ongoing boom.

I struggle to think of many other societies in which all three were simultaneously true.

Don' be so epoch-parochial!

E.g. during the Yamnaya expansions into Europe, rewards for ambition & competence were extremely high, price for failure was absolute and it was certainly possible to rise well above your station by conquering and putting to service enough peasants.

I haven't heard of those people before and looked them up, given that they existed around 3500 BC, what firm evidence is there that they lived the way you claim?

It's a niche subject, and I don't expect to be able to track down much on the topic itself. I did at least bother to ask GPT-4, but it had little to share on the matter.

I haven't heard of those people before and looked them up, given that they existed around 3500 BC, what firm evidence is there that they lived the way you claim?

The wikipedia article ?

This isn't any secret or obscure history, save maybe in India where the local idiots-in-charge like to pretend Brahmins and other higher castes aren't a small remnant of northern conquerors but were actually indigenous to the region. (The genetic data is always a good way of riling up Hindu nationalists on twitter)

I know that nationalism is passe, and anything resembling American exceptionalism especially so, but I do think that the US is exceptional or at least an extreme historical outlier in that it's founding was based on an adherence to a philosophy/culture rather than ties to a specific land, ancestry, language, or founding monarch. The closest historical examples that come to mind are late-republic/early-empire Rome and some of the Hellenic city-states, but even then only if you squint. Civis Romanus Sum and all that.

A common sentiment you'll encounter in more right-wing spaces is that we have allowed our culture to become infected with the disease of old-worldism and Europhilia. That is, a growing number of our professional and intellectual class seemed to be motivated by an explicit rejection of our nation's founding principles. They do not want to live in a world where...

"all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" or "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

...they want to live in a world "where the right sort of people" are put in charge and the lesser classes know their place and do not speak out of turn. They want to live in the old world of blood and soil, and might makes right, rather than embrace the new.

One of the reasons both the woke left and dissident right are held in similarly low regard by the mainstream right kind of ties into @FarNearEverywhere's post about "the problem of Susan". They've seen Aslan's kingdom, they've been shown that there is a better way, and yet still they lie to themselves. Still, they choose not to believe.

Neo-nazi's are regarded as particularly pathetic because their espoused philosophy has been shown to be a failure even by their own low standards. If we grant for the sake of argument the axioms of "racial interest" and "might makes right" then history has already shown us who the real "master-race" is and it is not the aristocratic nor5thern Europeans, it's the coalition of miscegenated hillbillies and mongrel sons of quakers that crushed the Prussian war machine not once but twice in 50 years. The Virgin Austrian Übermensch vs the Chad Audie Murphy and Curtis LeMay.

One of the reasons both the woke left and dissident right are held in similarly low regard by the mainstream right kind of ties into @FarNearEverywhere's post about "the problem of Susan". They've seen Aslan's kingdom, they've been shown that there is a better way, and yet still they lie to themselves. Still, they choose not to believe.

The woke left will not destroy the mainstream right's habitat and prospects any slower because you aim so much of your contempt at the dissident right. "No friends to the right" works for them, it will not work for you.

Aslan's kingdom is nothing more than death. If that's all you have to offer, your claim to be the inheritors of American exceptionalism is false. Yes, it was "Give me Liberty or give me Death", but the latter was the much inferior alternative.

The woke left will not destroy the mainstream right's habitat and prospects any slower...

They won't destroy it any faster either. the dissident right has made it clear that they wish to see us dead just as much as the woke do, so we would be fools to treat them as allies. Much like Hitler vs Stalin on the eastern front the best outcome is for us to let them fight, though ideally this time we won't make the mistake we did in 1945 by stopping before job was done.

it is not the aristocratic nor5thern Europeans, it's the coalition of miscegenated hillbillies and mongrel sons of quakers that crushed the Prussian war machine not once but twice in 50 years. T

I wasn't aware there were that many Quakers in the Soviet Union, regarding the latter one.

There were a few but not as many as there were in Finland at the time.

On the topic of American exceptionalism, I found Bret Devereaux's analysis last year to be quite compelling. The linked post is also one of the most emphatic exceptions to Betteridge's Law of Headlines that I've ever seen.

We don’t mean exceptional like that. It’s not just about being stronger and richer. We mean that we are better people than the world has seen before. Our culture is better. Our constitution is better. The freedom bit in that might get to the core. The rest of the world is free because we are free and sold them on it. Our mythos is better.

On 3, it’s surely also a part of the story that a person who got rich became upper class, whereas in many societies a lower class person who gets rich is just a rich lower class person.

I’m thinking about someone I know in particular, who went from (literally)a drug addicted orphan to working as an HVAC tech to owning his own HVAC company. He is not elite today despite his very high income; in 1900 he would have been. It’s still possible he could become elite- spend his free time giving motivational speeches at private high schools, go to charity fundraisers at the opera instead of his church, etc- but in Victorian America he would already be there by virtue of his wealth, and in medieval Japan there’d be no hope of joining the elite no matter how wealthy and well mannered he became.

He is not elite today despite his very high income; in 1900 he would have been.

Perhaps not? He would have been "lower-class rich guy" but his son could get into the elite by going to the right schools and university, and his grandson would certainly have been included and now classed as a gentleman.

Hence all the historical jokes about the sons of guys who had made it responding to their fathers' attempts to discipline them with "You, the son of a farmer/peasant/merchant/whatever cannot speak so to me, the son of a gentleman/nobleman/king".

To take it a step further: I happen to know someone who is either a billionaire or quite close to it (I believe he recently complained that his net worth had fallen just under the billion mark due to some supply chain issue) and is still absolutely not elite in any way. His money is in agriculture, and he is very 'country' in his mannerisms. I do think a world where he'd get to be 'in the room where it happens' would be a better one, but he doesn't act the part of the right sort of person, so he's just wealthy and subject to the whims of the worthless social-gamers.

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