This week has at least two significant anniversaries:
400th of the Reinheitsgebot, the German purity law that requires that the ingredients for making beer can only be barley, hops, yeast, and water. “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” — Benjamin Franklin
500th of William Shakespeare’s death. Wonder which of a person’s dates is more significant. Birth or death?
There is a scene in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged where one of the main characters , the owner of a large and successful steel manufacturer, is criticized by his fellow business owners for standing up to overbearing government regulation. Some of the comments these “businessmen” made were “we can’t afford to arouse resentment,” “the public won’t take it, there’s bound to be a lot of indignation,” “we’ve been trying hard not to give any grounds for all those accusations about selfish greed—and you’ve given ammunition to the enemy.”
The following colloquy began with the steel company owner replying rhetorically:
“‘Would you rather agree with the enemy that you have no right to your profits and your property?’
‘Oh, no, no, certainly not—but why go to extremes?
‘There’s always a middle ground.’
‘A middle ground between you and your murderers?
‘Now why use such words?’”
Why indeed?
Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957, when government regulation, while relatively light by our present experience, was steadily increasing.
Rand, as prescient as she was, really had seen nothing–or probably could imagine–what it was to become.
In response, our business leaders have become what’s known as crony capitalists. They have taken a “if you can’t lick ‘em, join em” attitude, and gone over to the dark side. As a result, they are no better than the looting and mooching politicians Rand decried. It is no accident that the Obamacare legislation is such a tome. The 2000 plus page length was necessary to accommodate each of the lobbyists on K Street—henchmen of the crony capitalists and everyone else who seeks what they believe is their share of the boodle from Washington.
Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel last Thursday praised a latter-day Rand hero in the person of Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam. McAdam criticized Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders view on corporate America as “‘uninformed,’ ‘contemptible,’ and ‘wrong’—among other things.” But, as Strassel pointed out, it would have been more praiseworthy if McAdam would have applied the same characterization to “the ‘Not I’ business community that helped create this moment.” That is, the present descendants of Rand’s craven businessmen. Strassel continues:
“American businesses aren’t immoral. They create jobs, prosperity, investment and tax revenue. They are the essence and the requirement of a democracy. Far from an immoral system, U.S. capitalism is the wonder and envy of the world. The greater wonder is that it remains so, despite the pusillanimous behavior of its most prominent representatives.
“It has been many a year since corporate America could claim to have an intact spinal system, though its retreat into nervelessness has accelerated over the past decade. We’ve reached a moment at which Mr. Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren can daily tar companies as the villains of the world, and receive applause from voters both left and right. Blame it on the great recession; blame it on a litigious environment; blame it on President Obama. But mostly blame it on the companies themselves. When asked time and again who among them would stand up for the American way, they mumbled ‘Not I.’”
Another colloquy from Atlas Shrugged is apropos and worth quoting:
“‘If one single businessman had had the courage, then to say that he worked for nothing but his own profit—and to say it proudly—he would have saved the world.’
‘I haven’t given up the world as lost.’
‘It isn’t. It can never be. But oh God!—what he would have spared us.’”
We might have been spared Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—or even Donald Trump.
Strassel concludes that “Businesses have long justified [kowtowing to the regulatory crowd] by noting that capitalism is rooted in self-interest, and that corporations are simply pursuing that interest when they dodge fights or engage in crony capitalism. But there’s short-term self-interest and long-term self-interest. The long-term is now here, in the form of Bernie Sanders.”
Citation to and quotes from:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/bernies-spinal-surgery-on-ceos-1460676156#livefyre-comment
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Part Three, Chapter IV “The Sanction of the Victim”.
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This past week, nearly fifty-six years after her To Kill a Mockingbird was published, Harper Lee died. The popularity and impact of the novel, and the extraordinary faithful film based upon it, will remain for some time. Many words have been written about Mockingbird and its themes, most laudatory, but some critical. More will doubtless follow.
The themes of the story are law, lawyers, coming of age, and justice.
Today we look upon our legal system and courts as a font of justice. The iconic figure of Justitia, the blindfolded goddess holding the scales sits atop and in many a courthouse in the world of Anglo-American law. But after nearly a half-century of careers in law enforcement, business, and the practice of law, I have come to realize that law is not about justice at all.
The term “law and order” is a redundancy; law is about order, stability, and a modicum of certainty. In the American system, a legacy of the 18th Century Enlightenment, it is ideally about order established for the protection of life, liberty, and property. Occasionally, what might be called justice is obtained, but it is a byproduct of the order maintained.
Law is also a product of public policy—the “felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories…even the prejudices which judges [and juries] share with their fellow-men” not the other way around. Leftists, progressives, or whatever you want to call them, seek to impose change in prevailing public attitudes through the coercive power of the state. It does not work, and when it does appears to work for awhile, the downstream results are usually perverse. Two examples come to mind. The so-called war on drugs has ben an abject failure. It has probably caused as much drug abuse as it has curtailed, if not more. The “war” has spawned criminal organizations and, through the over-regulation of the legitimate medical use of certain pharmaceuticals, has increased the cost of health care. The “Great Society” and “War on Poverty” schemes of the late 1960s exacerbated poverty and economic distress rather than ameliorated them and produced a toxic urban subculture.
Malcolm Gladwell, a good writer with whom I generally disagree, and frequent contributor to the New Yorker wrote an article “The Courthouse Ring” criticizing the “change hearts and minds” approach of Lee’s fictional Atticus Finch. Gladwell’s premise is the legal coercive model espoused by the left, is the correct one. He is dismayed by Atticus’s defense of Tom Robinson where he challenges the credibility of his accusers. “Finch wants his white, male jurors to do the right thing. But as a good Jim Crow liberal he dare (sic) not challenge the foundations of their privilege.” Gladwell criticizes Atticus’ cross-examination of both Ewell and the alleged victim Mayella, suggesting the possibility of parental abuse by a ne’er-do-well alcoholic father.
Lawyers, as well as criminal investigators, are supposed to challenge the credibility of accusers and witnesses. Gladwell is also offended that Atticus does not erupt in righteous rage, but rather, outwardly, accepts an unjust verdict. He misunderstands Atticus’ role and his milieu. Nowhere is Teddy Roosevelt’s maxim to “speak softly but carry a big stick” more applicable than in a courtroom. An eruption of righteous indignation there is invariably counter-productive.
More to the point of this essay, Gladwell intimates that Atticus fails his final moral test in the last scene of the novel where he “and the Sheriff have decided to obstruct justice in the name of saving” Boo Radley, the reclusive neighbor, from the public exposure of an inquest into whether killing Bob Ewell was legally justified. The irony is palpable. This was one scene in Mockingbird where justice was obtained, not obstructed.
Perfect, or perhaps even substantial, justice is probably unattainable in this world. It may exist, as Isaac Newton mused, where in the remote regions of the fixed stars or perhaps far beyond them, there may be some body absolutely at rest. Here, when we obtain justice, it often, if not usually, it is through informal or even extra legal means.
Harper Lee learned this growing up in a family of lawyers— her father and older sister Alice. She illustrated it through Atticus and the story of Tom Robinson and his Ewell accusers. Atticus failed in his defense of Tom because the order and stability provided by the law prevailed over justice for one individual. When Boo Radley, the perhaps emotionally challenged recluse, killed the villain Ewell defending Scout and Jem, some balance was restored to a small corner of the universe. Atticus was conflicted by the manner of Ewell’s demise, first believing that his son Jem managed to kill the attacker, and then realized that Boo Radley was responsible. To Atticus, it seems a clear cut case of self-defense or defense of others, but, to his lawyer’s mind, that was up to the legal system to affirm the justification of the homicide. For Boo, however, who valued his reclusiveness and anonymity above all, that would not be justice. Exposing him to the public eye would, like Scout observed, be like killing a mockingbird—a useless, intrinsically cruel act.
Sheriff Tate, the lawman who deals with the dilemmas and ambiguities of human life daily and first-hand, rather than in a sterile courtroom, comes forward to serve justice. The sheriff humbly but firmly declares to Atticus, “Let the dead bury the dead… I may not be much, Mr. Finch, but I’m still sheriff of Maycomb County, and Bob Ewell fell on his knife. Good night, sir.” This denouement of the novel makes it clear that, while Atticus is no less a hero for his principled defense of Tom Robinson, the heroes who ultimately served justice were Boo Radley and Sheriff Tate.
“the felt necessities of the time…” from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law (Boston, 1881). Holmes was Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and later an Associate Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court.
Malcolm Gladwell’s article in The New Yorker, August 10, 2009.
“You get justice…” William T. Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own (Poseidon Press 1994).
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In a city where there is no shortage of imposing monuments, the Place Vendome in Paris is often overlooked. It is an immense square, not far from the Louvre, surrounded by imposing buildings that were once part of a royal palace. Its centerpiece is a 60 foot high column with a statue of Napoleon Bonaparte at its apex.
The statue and column have had a turbulent history. It was first erected 1806-1810, when Napoleon styled himself as “Emperor of the French.” Upon the Bourbon restoration after Waterloo, the statue was removed. It was later removed and restored several times. Subsequent to Napoleon III’s defeat in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War and the fall of his Second Empire, the Paris Commune—a terrorist group that took over the city for several months— not only removed the statue, but tore down the entire column. After the newly formed Third Republic took back the city from the Commune, the column was rebuilt and Napoleon restored to the place of honor. The cost of restoration was assessed against a Commune leader, but, as he had fled to Switzerland, little was collected.
Like France during the 19th Century, there is a now a movement here to tear down monuments commemorating events and their participants that happened generations ago, but are now politically out of fashion. The current cause celebre locally is the campaign by some who wish to erase the names of four Confederate generals, Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Albert Sidney Johnston, and John Bell Hood from Dallas Independent School District Schools.
The propensity to name public facilities after certain individuals—there are even street intersections and highway interchanges named after individuals for various reasons —has reached the point of absurdity. Naming a public school, or any public building or facility, for anyone, no matter how revered (by some) or prominent they may be, is pretentious. Numbering schools, for example, “P.S. 1” or naming for neighborhoods where they are located such as “Lakewood” or “Pleasant Grove” would be more appropriate, neutral, and uncontroversial. Some are already so named. But should any of their names be changed?
What about the four Confederate military leaders in question? Were they villains who deserve to be expunged from public view?
The Southern politicians who brought about secession ill-served their constituencies. They wished to maintain slavery because it was the bulwark of the economic system they knew, and, while becoming increasingly morally suspect, was not the abomination we, with the benefit of hindsight, regard it today. They sought to preserve an archaic system, and, coupled with the clumsy manner in which they reacted to Abraham Lincoln’s election, precipitated a disastrous war. (For more on this topic, see another recent work: Nelson Lankford’s Cry Havoc: The Crooked Road to Civil War).
Those who actually did the fighting for the Confederacy — the poor men who fought the rich men’s war—were less cognizant of the economic reasons, but they understood the invasion of their homeland by outsiders – foreigners, really. Today, with our instant communications and speedy transportation methods we forget what some historians have called the “tyranny of distance.” That distance made one much more likely to identify with their locality, state, and region more than with the huge nation America was becoming. The Confederate soldiers, and even those who led the secessionist movement, did not fight to establish slavery—they were defending their homeland against a perceived invasion—which included defending the status quo they inherited, and which only a small minority wanted to abolish when the War began.
It is unjust to vilify those who fought, or their military leaders, in the Civil War—on either side. When it comes down to combat, soldiers do not fight for their country, for ideals, even for money, they fight to stay alive, and, if they can do that, to help alive keep their buddy next to them in the trenches or foxholes.
At the time of the Civil War, there were few so-called “armchair generals.“ The leaders were exposed to danger to the same extent of the front line infantrymen. Lee was lucky that he escaped death or serious injury, but he was constantly exposed. Surviving the war, he urged reconciliation and acceptance of the freed slaves as equal citizens, and admirably served as president of Washington College (re-named Washington and Lee University after his death). Jackson was accidently killed by “friendly fire.” Johnston was killed in battle. Hood lost an arm and a leg. All of these men fought honorably, even if the cause for which they served was flawed. No one has suggested that any of them committed war crimes. They were not villains.
Moreover, because they have had their names for a long time, and have alumni going back many decades who still identify with them, the schools named for Robert E. Lee, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, John Bell Hood, and Albert Sidney Johnston should not be changed. The students who now attend will graduate, or otherwise leave, after a few short years.
As the French learned with Napoleon’s statue in the Vendome, political fashions and attitudes change. But even if few French citizens would want to live under either Napoleon’s empire, no one today is clamoring to tear down his likeness.
Also see earlier post Blood and Money
For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you— Matthew 7:2. Also see W. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1604).
Many of us have heard the expression that “turnabout is fair play.” Every now and then it happens in the good guys’ favor.
On December 26, 2015, at approximately 4:25 a.m., Chicago Police Officer Robert Rialmo responded to a call of a “domestic disturbance – son with baseball bat” at an apartment building in the city. Upon arriving the officer was confronted by one Quintonio LeGrier, who was armed with a baseball bat. LeGrier failed to obey Rialmo’s lawful order to drop the bat, but instead swung the bat in the direction of the officer’s head several times. Rialmo reasonably feared LeGrier would kill him with the bat, drew his handgun, and fired it multiple times, killing LeGrier. Unfortunately, one Bettie Jones, a resident of the apartments, who was behind LeGrier and out of Rialmo’s line of sight, was struck and also killed by one of the bullets meant for LeGrier.
Per Chicago Police Department policy, Rialmo was placed on administrative duty pending the investigation. It appears that investigation is still pending, but it appears to Rialmo’s acts were entirely justified by the known facts.
Antonio LeGrier, LeGrier’s father, and administrator of his estate, filed a lawsuit against the City of Chicago and Rialmo alleging a claim for wrongful death. Normally, that would play out in the civil courts. More often than not, because such suits are politically volatile, municipalities pay a settlement amount to get rid of them, regardless of merit.
Rialmo, apparently not one to take this lying down, this past Friday filed a countersuit against LeGrier’s estate and its administrator alleging damages of $10 million for civil assault, intentional, and negligent infliction of emotional distress. The basis of Rialmo’s allegations is the LeGrier’s acts, which could have caused or serious bodily injury, forced him to shoot and kill LeGrier to defend himself. Furthermore, in the act of self defense, Rialmo accidently shot and killed Jones.
No doubt this turn of events will cause great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Antonio LeGrier’s lawyer has already denounced Rialmo’s counterclaim. No telling what the Chicago officials, from the mayor on down, are thinking or how they will respond.
An educated guess is that Rialmo will probably not gain pecuniarily from the suit. LeGrier’s “estate” probably has nothing, and his father, as administrator, probably would not be personally liable to Rialmo. Not being familiar with the details and nuances of Illinois law, it is not clear to me that the proceeds from a wrongful death claim would be property of the estate. If it is, and a recovery against Chicago—by judgment or settlement—would be subject to Rialmo’s claim by net recovery or offset. In Texas, there are certain classes of persons—spouses, parents, children—who have a wrongful death claim in their own right, and any recovery would belong to them and not the estate.
The salutary effect of Rialmo’s counterclaim might be to put a damper on lawsuits against cities and police officers for justifiably using deadly force in the course of their duties. Police officers in this country are put into danger daily—in situations where the vast majority of lay-persons would never be. Police officers cannot retreat if they are to enforce the peace and protect the citizenry.
Perhaps other officers will now follow Rialmo and, countersue in similar situations. It’s time those officers and the pusillanimous bureaucrats who employ them stop rolling over in these situations.
Regardless of how this litigation plays out, Robert Rialmo has already shown that blue lives matter, and will continue to do so.
For more see: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-robert-rialmo-quintonio-legrier-20160206-story.html
This article contains an image of Robert Rialmo’s counterclaim, as filed, in its entirety.
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We were planning a visit to Paris and were to leave DFW on November 14. The “setback” in the war with Islamic terrorism that occurred there made postponing our trip for a month prudent. Being blown up was as not that much of a consideration—Dallas can be pretty dangerous, though most of the hazards to life and limb here come from nitwit drivers. The monumental hassles attendant to the immediate aftermath of the Paris terror attacks, however, would have made the trip less enjoyable.
One consolation was a visit to Fort Worth’s Kimball Art Museum this past week. The museum is featuring an exhibition of Gustave Caillebotte’s works through mid- January 2016. Caillebotte, an impressionist, though somewhat more realistic than the others of the school, produced nearly all of his works in the two decades following the Franco-Prussian War and the fall of Napoleon III. He may be is best known for his paintings of urban Paris, such as The Europe Bridge (1876), and Paris Street; Rainy Day (1877). The latter is huge—more than life-size.
A number of his works were scenes observed from windows in upstairs Paris apartments such as Young Man at His Window.
The Paris Caillebotte painted, and indeed to a large extent, the central city we know today, was a creation of a massive project that began in the 1850s under the direction of Baron Haussmann. Prior to that time Paris was mostly a medieval rabbit-warren of dilapidated building and narrow streets—terribly polluted by the exhaust from horses and other draft animals. Haussmann was commissioned by the Emperor Napoleon III renovate the city and eliminate the blight and squalor that characterized it. Napoleon’s stated reasons were aesthetics. It has been charged, however, that the Emperor’s objective for creating wide boulevards was to make it easier for his army to maneuver and suppress armed uprisings; Paris had experienced six such uprisings between 1830 and 1848, all in the narrow, crowded streets in the center and east of Paris. Whether that purpose was preconceived or not, the boulevards played a substantial role in the army’s suppression of the Paris Commune, which some have characterized as earlier day terrorists, in 1871.
The project was pursued with a vengeance that would make a modern day Dallas developer jealous. Whole blocks of housing and commercial buildings were demolished to make way for the wide, tree-lined boulevards so familiar today. Many pubic buildings were planned and built, as well as the famous bridges crossing the Seine. The huge parks Bois de Boulogne on the west and Bois de Vincennes on the east were built during the 1860s. Though briefly interrupted by the Prussian siege of Paris and the Commune in 1870 – 1871, the renovation continued after Haussmann was dismissed and Napoleon’s Second Empire collapsed the same year. It wasn’t until the 1920s that the original vision was completed. The street scenes Caillebotte painted are recognizable today.
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| “Boulevard Haussmann–Lafayette” Photo taken by Thierry Bézecourt |
The Caillebotte exhibition is well worth the price of admission.
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Former House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert has pleaded guilty to “structuring” cash withdrawals from his bank account to avoid reporting requirements. He is also charged with lying to the FBI when interviewed about those activities. It appears that as part of a plea bargain, the government will dismiss the latter charge.
Some have opined that this is a “political” prosecution. I put that aside, though on some level, nearly all federal prosecutions beyond those based on common law crimes are political. Many are interested in the underlying reasons that got Hastert in trouble. Those focus on the possibility that he was trying to cover-up long ago misconduct that can no longer be prosecuted because limitations have run. Maybe, but that is not my current point.
Congress enacted the currency reporting laws ostensibly to make money laundering of the cash proceeds of organized crime, particularly those concerning illegal drug transactions, more difficult. After 9/11 the purpose was expanded to keep track of cash transfers that might be financing terrorist activities. Banks, casinos, and other financial institutions are required to report the identity of persons making certain cash deposits or withdrawals. Ten thousand dollars is the amount that triggers the report requirement. The law further criminalizes the “structuring” of transactions; that is, the breaking down of cash amounts into less than $10,000 in order to avoid the reporting requirement. Hastert was accused of structuring cash withdrawal from a number of his bank accounts in violation of the law. The penalty can be up to five years in prison. Per the reported plea bargain, he will probably receive a relatively light sentence, possibly only probation. He will still be a convicted felon, with the disabilities that status entails.
Those with a libertarian inclination might question why such a law should exist. What business is it of the government what one does with his own money? There was no accusation that Hastert obtained the funds illegally. Since leaving Congress in 2007, he has worked as a lobbyist. Some may find former politicians becoming lobbyists distasteful influence peddling for special interests. But it is not illegal. Hundreds of millions, if not billions, are spent lobbying Congress every year. A former Speaker of the House of Representatives is doubtless a valuable commodity as a lobbyist. Who better knows what buttons to push among members of Congress? Anyway, Hastert was not accused of wrongdoing in this regard, nor was there any hint that his money was ill-gotten.
The background allegations in the indictment were that Hastert was paying “hush money” to an individual to prevent him from disclosing past misconduct or embarrassing personal information. Unless he was paying to cover up a crime for which he could be prosecuted, that also probably was not illegal. If it were, surely it would have been charged in the indictment. Maybe more information will come out when he is sentenced.
The point here is that Hastert acted stupidly when was questioned by the bank as to why he was making large cash withdrawals. He then began structuring by withdrawing amounts smaller than $10,000 to avoid further reports. He could have just as easily continued to make the large withdrawals, and, when questioned by the bank, government agents, or anyone else, simply told them it was none of their business what he was doing with the money. Perhaps he feared offending his questioners.
Hastert further compounded his folly by lying to the FBI agents who questioned him about the transactions. He allegedly told the agents that he kept the money when he was actually paying off the unnamed “Individual A” as stated in the indictment. Under 18 United States Code section 1001, it is a felony to lie to a federal agent who is acting in their official capacity. The breadth of that statute is breathtaking. It is an extraordinary bludgeon for federal prosecutors to get convictions—even if the poor wretch they target has done nothing else wrong. Martha Stewart is the prime example in this regard. Hastert should have known about the statute, and told the agents seeking to interview him that he would not talk to them without first discussing it with his lawyer. And then not at all. No federal agent is entitled any information from any citizen other than, under very limited circumstances, one’s name and address. The only correct response to an agent’s inquiry, is always “you’ll have to talk to my lawyer.” (It would also be OK to tell them to have a nice day.)
It is, of course, necessary to respond to a subpoena to testify before a grand jury. If one receives such a subpoena in a criminal investigation, then a lawyer is probably necessary. What if you’ve not done anything wrong? In the present climate, that is exceptionally difficult to know. Harvey Silverglate, a lawyer who practices mainly in the Northeast, wrote a book in which he estimates that the average citizen unknowingly commits three felonies a day. In view of the myriad of regulatory crimes Congress has created, Silverglate may well be right.
Will Hastert’s plight teach any lessons? One thing it will probably not do, any more than Martha Stewart’s prosecution for making misstatements to the FBI, is teaching folks to keep their mouths shut when federal agents ask questions. That also goes for anyone else who doesn’t need to know your business. If anything can be learned it is this: Everyone has the right to remain silent; few have the ability.
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Here are some links to trail websites.
Here is an updated version of a Labor Day essay posted several years ago.
There has been a lot of talk about “American Exceptionalism” recently. The left side of the political spectrum generally disdains the concept, while the right wishes to affirm it. The concept has many contours that we can debate, but one thing is clear, whether or not the United States of America is exceptional, it is clearly contrary. The evidence?
Being a natural born contrarian, and libertarian, I applaud America’s exceptionalism here, now, and in the future.
Happy Labor Day
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This week marks the 70th anniversary of the United States finally ending World War II with its two atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Recent years have seen quite a bit attempted historical revisionism and doubts, particularly by the left, of the morality of President Truman’s decision to use those weapons.
Bret Stephens wrote this in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal:
“Historical judgments must be made in light not only of outcomes but also of options. Would we judge Harry Truman better today if he had eschewed his nuclear option in favor of 7,000 casualties a week; that is, if he had been more considerate of the lives of the enemy than of the lives of his men?
“And so the bombs were dropped, and Japan was defeated. Totally defeated. Modern Japan is a testament to the benefits of total defeat, to stripping a culture prone to violence of its martial pretenses.”
World War II was a total war, at least for the primary belligerents. If total war does not end in total victory for one side, and total defeat for the other, it does not end—a cessation of hostilities is merely a truce and the fighting will inevitably resume.
The 1914-1918 conflict was a total war for the European adversaries, but not for the United States. It ended with Germany agreement to an armistice. At the time of the armistice, German troops were still on French and Belgian soil. None of its adversaries occupied any part of German territory except its overseas colonies. Per the terms of the peace, the German army withdrew across the Rhine and disbanded, essentially unmolested in the process. The manner of what was essentially a conditional surrender made later claims of a “stab in the back” of a victorious army by politicians and bankers plausible. Little more than two decades later, the world was plunged into and even greater and more destructive war in involving the same belligerents.
Not so after 1945. The western allied powers had learned their lesson. They demanded unconditional surrender from both the Germans and Japanese. In May, after its cities had been destroyed, in some cases, utterly, and British and American ground troops penetrated deep its homeland, Germany unconditionally surrendered. Japan meanwhile fought on, even though its cities had suffered as much or even more destruction as Germany’s. Japan’s samurai culture held that there was dishonor in surrender. Defending its many Pacific island possessions, that army often fought to the last man.
A plan for invasion of the Japan islands was formed. Casualties on both sides were estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. The bombs made a forceful invasion unnecessary. Many American lives doubtless were saved. And as an added bonus, because Germany and Japan were left with no doubt they had been defeated, they changed their ethic. Since 1945, neither one has troubled the world.
