A People's War?

25 million people died in it. As opposed to anteaters, I suppose.

Few, if any wars, have been "people's wars." In modern times, specifically, beginning with the Wars of the French Revolution, the general population has been gulled into believing that they fought for a personal cause. I know of no examples, however, of wars in which that delusion survived the grueling reality of war.

Few, if any wars, have been "people's wars." In modern times, specifically, beginning with the Wars of the French Revolution, the general population has been gulled into believing that they fought for a personal cause. I know of no examples, however, of wars in which that delusion survived the grueling reality of war.

"People's War" is Commy speak for armed guerilla warfare against a national government they want to replace. Its that simple.

In the UK, WW2 People's War is a huge archive of stories and photographs contributed by those who lived and fought during World War Two, maintained/created by the BBC and others. (Several film series/documentaries run with this headline, translated in all major European languages.)

The Open University History Department (UK) as well as the Distant University Historic Institute (Germany) run courses about it.

Well obviously, the English and the Germans must be communists! What more proof do you need?

When the Austrians and Prussians were poised to invade France during the Revolution, the Legislative Assembly declared war on those two monarchies. Ironically, the King supported declarations of war on Austria and Prussia, believing it would increase his popularity with the people, and give him a strong hand to deal with the Assembly, and that defeat would give him the opportunity to escape to his Austrian in-laws; while on the other hand, some of the more radical of the Jacobins were opposed to war, believing the revolution needed to be consolidated and implemented at home.

Before the Revolution, Louis XVI's Minister of War, St. Germaine, had worked with Marshall de Broglie to revolutionize military doctrine in France. Although not entirely consistent in the application of the new tactical systems, French officers were able to exploit large numbers of raw troops, and combined with the effective fire of their artillery (most artillery officers were the "lowest of the low" among the nobility--such as Napoleon--and had not left the country with the revolution, but had remained to give the French army its most effective tool in the beginning), they were more than a match for the traditional standing (and often mercenary) armies of the autocratic monarchies.

It has often been incorrectly stated that the armies of France relied upon raw troops who moved and attacked in massive, dense columns. St. Germaine and Broglie's new tactical doctrines were already being implemented before the Revolution, and much of the "dead wood" of the officer corps were those who fled the country--for an officer to serve in the Royal Army's infantry, he had to be of the "fifth degree" of nobility, which meant able to show descent in a noble family in an unbroken line for five generations. The flight of the nobility meant that the army necessarily had to rely upon the abilities of the junior officers who were left (most in the artillery--once again, to use Napoleon as an example, his father was recognized as descended from a Genoese noble family, but that meant that he was only "noble" in the first degree, and could not have served in the infantry or cavalry) and of the non-commissioned officers, all of whom had been trained in the new systems, and many of whom who had known nothing else--they had no traditions to "unlearn."

Two of the generals upon whom Napoleon heavily relied in his first campaign in Italy--Augereau and Massena--had been sergeants before the Revolution, but had risen through the ranks based on their ability. In the French army at the time of the wars of the revolution, there was a solid core of young NCOs and officers who were rising quickly in the officer corps, and who were coming more and more to realize the superiority of their military system. At Valmy in 1792, the French artillery shattered the line of the Brunswickers (Germans who comprised a part of the Prussian army) when they threatened to break through the French line. As these new armies went from one victory to the next, and suffered few defeats and no conclusive defeats, the government (by 1793 firmly in the hands of the Convention and then the Committee for Public Safety lead by Robespierre) were able to arouse the enthusiasm of the public to fight not only for the Revolution, but to export the Revolution to their "brothers" elsewhere in Europe.

In 1793, the turmoil which arose in the country because of the execution first of the King, and then of the Queen, lead to internal revolts. The army began to falter, and in that crisis, the radical Jacobins lead by Robespierre created the Committee for Public Safety, and began what is now known as the Terror. In Paris, the mob slaughtered thousands, and had begun to do so with the horrible slaughter of September, 1792. In the provinces, the rebellions were ruthlessly suppressed, and many thousands more executed. Although the army had stumbled early in the year, they were saved by mass levies of literally hundreds of thousands of citizens. The execution of the King had lead to the "First Coalition" with nearly every nation of western Europe arrayed against France. But the Committe for Public Safety declared la patrie en danger--the fatherland in danger--and raised armies to fight the counter-revolutionary insurrections, and all of the enemies arrayed against France--Spain was invaded, the portion of the low countries (what we would call Belgium) which had been lost was retaken and French armies pushed on to the Dutch border, while other armies occupied the Rhineland, the Eiffel and pushed the Imperialists (Austrians) back into the Black Forest. The invasion of Italy failed, but by the end of 1793, French armies has retaken all the gains which had been lost earlier in the year, and had pushed beyond all the borders of France--and had done so against an alliance of the Austrians and almost all of the Germans, the Spanish, the Belgians, the Dutch and the English.

Where there were not actually counter-revolutionary revolts, the enthusiasm of the citizens held up remarkably well for several years. Many good patriots felt they had a mission to export their revolution, and many influential men in government and the army shared this view. In many parts of western Europe, the French armies were looked upon as liberators who were overthrowing monarchical and aristocratic oppression. French armies fought on, unpaid, often clothed in rags and with many men marching without shoes, and with little to no medical care (which is ironic, as the French under Louis XIV had virtually created the notion of military medicine and army medical departments with regularly assigned surgeons).

The monarchies of Europe were completely unable to cope with a nation which could in the course of a few months deploy more than a million men, and which could organize the people and the economy to equip them and supply the "sinews of war," even if they came to rely upon plunder to eat and clothe themselves. But the dream could not last. In the occupied nations, the "common" people were pretty rapidly disillusioned, in about the same degree as they were being robbed. Many in France, and in the French armies, continued to believe they were fighting a "People's War" to liberate Europe--the Germans and Italians and Belgians who were being liberated were increasingly less impressed with the means by which their new "freedom" was being effected.

When Napoleon began his first campaign in Italy, it was a side show. Not much was expected of him, other than that he would keep the Austrians in northern Italy busy while the main effort was made on the Rhine. The army over which he took command hadn't been paid in more than a year, and were in rags and largely unshod. They were still enthusiastic, though, and Napoleon began to show the signs of one of the more sordid aspects of what one might term his brilliance. While on the one hand telling the middle class of Italy that he had come to liberate them, to give them their freedom from Austrian hegemony, on the other hand he told his army that he was opening all of the north of Italy to them with all of its wealth. By now the "Revolution" was in the hands of the Directory, which was reactionary and no longer interested in revolutionary principles. However, the Directory had perfected the systems of Robspierre, and proved more effective at delivering warm bodies, guns and black powder to the front. They felt rather as Napoleon did that the troops could be fed and paid to the extent that they successfully won more land at the front. Napoleon sent literally tens of millions of francs worth of gold and silver specie, works of art and valuable goods back from Italy, and his "stock" rose with the government, and with the men of his army. Soldiers love a winner, no matter what they have to put up with in the process, and here was a winner who was filling their bellies and their pockets.

The Wars of the French Revolution were the first great example of a "People's War," in that huge levies of troops, such as Europe had never known before, were effected by a government which could, despite its relative incompetence, rely upon the fervor of its people for a cause. Under Napoleon, the system was regularized, and even if the revolutionary fervor was gone, the massive levies continued, and allowed France to defy all of Europe in arms from 1792 to 1815. But, as i remarked earlier, the idealism and the fervor for the "cause" in that example of a "People's War," as has been the case in all such wars since that time, has not outlasted the long, hard, bloody slog of continual warfare on a large scale.

In regard to which, the following quote by Hermann Goering proves interesting:

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. . . Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

There have been many "People's Wars," and every one has been a horrible swindle perpetrated on the "people" in question.

What???
WWII was an elite-sponsored war aimed at destroying Germany because WWI hadn't done the job thoroughly enough.

The plotting went on mainly at Versailles, where numerous problems were deliberately built into the postwar map so that one of them would provide a flashpoint sooner or later, so that the job could finished. After that, not a lot had to be done other than wait. In the meantime, elites ran around like headless chickens pretending to be doing everything possible to bring about peace. In the end they 'failed' (ha ha!).

There was virtually no input from ordinary people into this process whatsoever. During the 1930s, the only thing that concerned most of them was recovery from the Great Depression.

Getting the masses behind the war was a massive propaganda effort that took years - and, in the US, still hadn't got there until the country was 'attacked' (ha ha!).

Giordan Smith
http://holocaust-lies.blogspot.com/

What a maroon . . .


Hey, that rhymes . . . loon, maroon . . .


Oh, never mind . . .