Woodrow Wilson Quotes

The Lusitania was an American passenger liner that was torpedoed by the German U-Boats. Edith Cavell was a British nurse who was assisting all wounded in Belgium, and Captain Charles Fryatt, was an English Merchant Captain who when his ship was attacked by a German submarine, fought back and rammed and sank the sub. In each case the German behavior was contrary to the then norms of civilized warfare.

The Times regretted that the Germans did not speak to the Austrians more vigorously when they were threatening to attack Serbia who harbored anti-Austro-Hungarian terrorists (see {642085}). What the Times editors did not realize was that the Germans had already made their war plans (see {642092}) and the Serbian issue was just the justification they needed to implement them. So there was no real reason for the Germans to discourage the Austro-Hungarian Empire from its mission to punish Serbia.

There were actually very few incidents of civilian resistance to the German invaders and occupiers. However, they were exaggerated and used as a pretext for what amounted to atrocities and war crimes against the Belgian Civilians.

The Second World War was not the first time Germany had committed war crimes and atrocities as a matter of government policy. Hitler and the Nazis then expanded on an evil tradition that was already embedded in the German militaristic culture. See {642193} and {642190} for other examples.

The German Generals talked him out of the idea, but the quotation gives an insight into the Character of the German Leader. It never occurred to him that the Russians might retaliate and murder German prisoners.

The day before, Helms’ deputy testified about the high number of civilian casualties that American bombing of North Vietnam had caused.

Lindbergh, a great aviator, was a Fascist who like most of the America Firsters was a great admirer and supporter of Hitler and Mussolini. The British and the Jews were by no means unified in favor of war but the majority of each group was. The British had theor Fasscists including the Duke of Windsor who was pressured to abdicate. There were even some Jews who thought that Hitler was an aberation and the German people would never follow him. But the American right wing extremists were adamant that the United States should not enter the war. Even after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the German Declaration of War against the United States many of the

On March 9-10, 1945, over three hundred B-29 Superfortresses loaded with 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs flew over Tokyo bombing the city in waves for 6 hours. Over 250,000 buildings were destroyed and more people were killed than would be in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki which were destroyed by atomic bombs. See {615730} and {615733}. The technique called area bombing was then implemented on Japanese cities 66 more times. Stimson was seriously worried that there would be no large targets in Japan left on which the dramatic effect of the atomic bomb could be demonstrated. And without such a demonstration, there would not be a likely Japanese surrender as all the devastating conventional bombing had not persuaded the Japanese. A land invasion with perhaps millions of casualties might be required.

Turkey, under the control of the triumvirate of the 3 Young Turks had massacred almost all of the Armenian population in the area claimed by Turkey. At the end of WWI, there were many demands that those who ordered the policy of a Turkish genocide and those who carried it out by brought to justice—tried and punished. The Sultan had done little if anything to stop the slaughters although he was very weak, Turkey under the Young Turks had also picked the wrong side and allied with the Germans. The Sultan and his Grand Vizier were trying to pick up the pieces and maintain the Ottoman Empire as best they could despite they the fact that they lost control of much of their vast territory. At the Paris Peace Conference, the Grand Vizier virtually admitted the crimes and committed the Turkish government to determining the guilty and bringing them to justice. He actually had 50 of the worst offenders arrested (See {620595}.). However, there were a few tried and one governor of a province was hanged and a few others received short jail sentences. Talaat, the worst of The Young Turks regarding the genocide, escaped to Germany. But he was tracked by a surviving Armenian who assassinated Talaat. The assassin was acquitted by a sympathetic German court which ruled that the extermination of the assassin’s family had been so traumatic that temporary insanity relieved the assassin of criminal responsibility.

Germany had invaded and occupied much of Europe. These two fronts accounted for the majority of the German casualties. The Germans not only violated the Geneva Convention and the Laws of War repeatedly, but as you can see from this quotation, it was deliberate policy. Keitel was tried and hanged after the war. See {621438} .

The United States Senate must ratify all treaties before they can become effective. The Senate has been very reluctant to ratify treaties where the U. S. government or any of its citizens could come under the jurisdiction of any legal entity which did not abide by all the rights citizens are guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution. As a result, we do not recognize the World Court and the Treaty of Rome for example. The latter is the one that gives the World Court jurisdiction over a high level official who commits war crimes even in his own country. The result is that many dictators who do not want to be constrained by international law, do not sign the treaty fending off any pressure to do so by pointing to the United States. But Rothkopf and others who agree with him have not yet been able to come up with a mechanism that will assure American Constitutional rights to Americans who might be involved with the World Court and allow the court to punish the dictators who abuse their own population. The French would like their laws and constitution to control. The Russians, theirs. The Chinese, theirs. Every American public official takes an oath to defend The Constitution. That is their primary duty. Foreign policy and punishing international war criminals must take a lower priority.

Wilson did not threaten Germany when they invaded Belgium in WWI. TR thought Wilson “soft”. He entered the war 3 years later only after the Germans had torpedoed two American passenger liners. The Germans were hoping to keep America out of the war. TR would have threatened Germany at the beginning, and if they did not withdraw from Belgium, he would have sent American troops. Wilson was not sure public opinion would support American entry into the war, even after our first ship was sunk by German U-boats. It took two. Roosevelt, as he said in the letter, the American people would have followed him. He was probably right as his public popularity was very high and he had remarkable leadership skills. He did not assess public opinion. He made public opinion. Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt are probably the only 3 American Presidents who had the trust and leadership ability to lead the country into a major war where we were not attacked first without lying as to the circumstances and the danger. President Clinton honestly led the country into the Balkan war, but it was to be an air war only with no soldiers fighting on the ground. It was a significant war that we won and did not lose a single fighter.

The Ambassador of Bavaria represented an area where the politicians saw democrats and socialists as their great enemy, as did many of the leading right wing conservatives in all of Germany. They believed that a great war would give them a chance to crush democratic socialism in Europe. Bethmann warned that just the opposite might result, and indeed it did. He was correct. Many of the crowned heads of Europe were deposed and the democratic socialists emerged as a major political factor in the victorious democracies. Bethmann-Hollweg, however, was not a strong leader and could not prevent the Conservatives, the military leaders, and Kaiser Wilhelm from initiating WWI.