Es Geloybte Aretz - a Germanwank
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Easy to lose forget just how alien his worldview was, from the perspective of we enlightened moderns.
Sarcasm, right? I'm just looking at this as, "I wish all the POTUSs' after him were this cold-blooded IOTL."
Well, I don't know. Yes it was sarcasm, but I'm not at all sure I wrote the same sarcasm into it that you read out of it.
You seem to have assumed I was talking about his realpolitik. I was more referring to his opinion that Russia will be fine as long as it steps up to the Burden and ethnically cleanses it's virgin territories. I'm mildly surprised you missed it.
That and his opinion of what Russia deserves if it can't manage that, which gets more troublesome the longer you think about it. He's arguing that if Russia becomes weak, a superior race should get involved, take over all that land, and presumably either eliminate the native population, or reduce them to colonial servitude of one form or another. To frame it in OTL's terminology, Theodore Roosevelt is casually endorsing the primary long-term political goals of Adolf Hitler. That's really not even an exaggeration.
In realpolitik terms, he's also helping ensure a second Mitteleuropan total war. "Don't stop the Russians getting hurt, leave them politically isolated, and make no push for a change in the political system that created this conflict." Keep in mind that he is, as Germany's creditor, potentially in a position to avert part of the oncoming disaster.
I'll happily take Jimmy Carter over that, to be perfectly honest.
As for the sarcasm, it was directed at the idea that modern humans are particularly enlightened.
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Oh I got it, but from a different angle. "Either the Russians get their mess in order and modernize, or they deserve to be slapped around until they learn to." From that point in time, Russia hasn't exactly done well for itself in the eyes of the middle-aged. A colossus with clay feet astride a massive chunk of land. Back then "race" was injected like a turkey baster, when only the hardcore nutters took it in full. Yeah, some lingering bigotry on TR's part, but he never was a Hitler.
I don't necessarily disagree with your general take on how Russia would be seen at the time, or with the ubiquity of the use of race in discourse at the time. It's more that I wouldn't say that excuses anything. Some of TR's country's most valuable territory is firmly incorporated because of mass death that occurred in living memory, and he lives in the world of King Leopold's Congo, the Scramble, the Raj, and much else. He knows exactly what the words he's using translate to in human lives, accepts that, and chooses to make a virtue of the apparent necessity.
I also agree that he had very little in common with Hitler. He was a well-to-do historian, rancher, and politician who believed in the rule of law, had interest in only modestly-scaled wars of expansion, and lived in a country where all the white people were settlers, and mixing. The two lived in dramatically different contexts, and were shaped by them.
And also he was Teddy Roosevelt - one of the most unique and colorful characters in the centuries that hosted him. So yes, he never was "a Hitler." How could he have been? [Interesting question, actually.]
Mr. Roosevelt did just endorse the major long-term political aim of OTL's version of Hitler, though; and he did so with roughly identical justifications for the act. And incidentally, the two happen to have shared a near-identical perspective towards the native peoples of the US.
So you read "We must consider that their land is, in fact, wasted on them and should by rights go to a more vigorous people in need of new frontiers," and interpret that to mean "Either the Russians get their mess in order and modernize, or they deserve to be slapped around until they learn to."
I have to say, I think that's stretching the passage fairly dramatically to suit a charitable interpretation.
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I think his words should not be measured what People AFTER him did. Ist more like they represent the "Feeling" of the day. Either you HAVE colonies or you ARE a colony - widely simplified.
I assume TR means if Russia can't hold and settle her vast lands, Amreica might take ist bit too. After all Siberia is not too far from Alaska. Siberia is like the old west is some regards so if the US could settle the west it can settle Siberia too.
IN Addition someone has to "own" China - Russia was a big contender - out of the Picture Americas share will grow. And seeing Russia as a "savage" Nation paints a different Picture of Japans victory over it.
Is the MAc TR refers to our old Mackensen?
I assume TR means if Russia can't hold and settle her vast lands, Amreica might take ist bit too. After all Siberia is not too far from Alaska. Siberia is like the old west is some regards
so if the US could settle the west it can settle Siberia too.IN Addition someone has to "own" China - Russia was a big contender - out of the Picture Americas share will grow. And seeing Russia as a "savage" Nation paints a different Picture of Japans victory over it
. Is the MAc TR refers to our old Mackensen?
No one has measured his words by what people after him did, yet. That's what I was getting at with the list of contemporary.... issues. I did measure his words by what people after him said, though.
Now I absolutely agree that his words represent the feeling of the day. In fact, that's the entirety of my first comment - that what was acceptable conversation and taken for granted as a fact of life, now can easily come off as monstrous.
I do also agree that many at the time did feel, naturally enough, that it was colonize or be colonized. It's totally natural for him to feel that way. If I'd been born into the average middle-class American family (never mind the equivalent family in Britain or Japan) in the right decade, I might have felt the same way. But that doesn't alter the content of what he is saying or its implications in the slightest.
I did hit everyone's emotional buttons by Godwinning the discussion, so it is sort of my fault if the topic drifts or people read things into the conversation that were never said. But since the words do precisely line up with the Nazis' foreign policy goals, I really didn't see an alternative.
When Roosevelt's father was born, there were over a quarter of a million Indians in California. When Roosevelt is saying this, there are perhaps as much as one-tenth that number. Now very little of that death toll was deliberate, but everyone in the US is aware that the prerequisite for the existence of most states was the extinction of most of its previous inhabitants.
It's silly to pretend this isn't a big part of what he has in mind when he says things like this. Most likely, it is exclusively what the president would have had in mind. It's more plausible than assuming he meant the Russians would treat Siberia like India, certainly. I will grant that he might possibly have had a vague thought that Germany would treat European Russia as its India, rather than its Canada, but the language used and his own perspective as an American suggests the most likely subtext.
As a historian, he was also no doubt aware that the same had occurred or was occurring in Canada, the West Indies, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, et cetera. More vigorous races taking over large chunks of land would, to him, implicitly involve the death and marginalization of most of the previous inhabitants.
Comparing the man to his contemporaries, rather than the history he'd have in mind - he's been living through a period in which colonialism involved routine atrocities on regional scales. There's no room in his background to assume that his hypothetical - a hypothetical he feels is "by right" - doesn't take for granted mass death and displacement for the Russian people (or for their colonial subjects).
Possibly he has in mind a sort of "for their own good" ethos, but he saw what was done with the Native Americans as largely for their own good, as well. The same man who said "I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth."
I assume TR means if Russia can't hold and settle her vast lands, Amreica might take ist bit too. After all Siberia is not too far from Alaska. Siberia is like the old west is some regards
Possibly that is a factor.
IN Addition someone has to "own" China - Russia was a big contender - out of the Picture Americas share will grow. And seeing Russia as a "savage" Nation paints a different Picture of Japans victory over it
Is the MAc TR refers to our old Mackensen?
It does, doesn't it?
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They actually didn't. Hitler considered the Native Americans to be at least "honorary aryans", and in his wettest dreams wanted to restore them in control of the majority of the American landmass.
It has been theorized that this was because he liked Karl May novels as a youth, in which the natives and their culture were heavily romanticized. Just goes to show how ridiculously arbitrary his racial theories were...
Really? Can you cite that, by any chance?
I was aware of his infatuation for Karl May, and how this influenced his attitude towards ethnic Slavic peoples - "treat them as redskins" - but I'd never heard of that. Very interesting.
Easy to lose forget just how alien his worldview was, from the perspective of we enlightened moderns.
One wonders how the people of 2115 will view our own age.
At any rate, the position of the Roosevelt Administration is a pretty simple one
Mr. Loomis is to do whatever is in the national interest of the United States. Mostly, that means supporting whatever outcome will maximize the chance of getting German loans owed to U.S. creditors paid in a timely manner - and, if it can be done without prejudice to those interests, "by all means try to foster goodwill and secure a humane treatment of all the victims of this war." That's it.
In any event, the U.S. has little power to alter outcomes here. It is owed a lot of money, but nothing like what was owed by Allied powers by 1918 in OTL, when the U.S. was basically keeping Britain and France solvent.
Mr. Loomis is to do whatever is in the national interest of the United States. Mostly, that means supporting whatever outcome will maximize the chance of getting German loans owed to U.S. creditors paid in a timely manner - and, if it can be done without prejudice to those interests, "by all means try to foster goodwill and secure a humane treatment of all the victims of this war." That's it.
In any event, the U.S. has little power to alter outcomes here. It is owed a lot of money, but nothing like what was owed by Allied powers by 1918 in OTL, when the U.S. was basically keeping Britain and France solvent.
Go Russia! Prove that you're worthy enough to be part of the white race!
Back in the day, there were enough people actually asking that question in precisely those terms: Are Russians really white (and hence worthy of consideration as a civilised power whose opinion one must respect)? After 1917, many concluded this was not the case. Not just Nazis, either.
TR is just saying what a lot of people feel, and unlike many in Central and Eastern Europe, he has genuine sympathy for the Russian people. You don't want to ask the likes of Conrad von Hötzendorf or Dmovski what is to be done with the Russians.
P.S.: Isn't it so much like Teddy to see everything in terms of a manly challenge, an opportunity to grow? Almost like a modern management consultant. "Your currency just imploded, destroying your entire social welfare system. Now is the perfect time to develop a competitive export industry."
You know, I think about this a lot. We most likely aren't even aware at this point that some of the actions we take right now could even be considered discriminatory or offensive, but people in 2115 might think we are the biggest assholes.
Which is why I would be very careful about this whole idea that all who came before us were nothing but barbarians. There is, after all, no significant biological difference between us and the people who lived during the Great War.
Who knows what 'barbaric' acts you and I commit every day, from the point of view of the people of tomorrow.
An example I heard recently is that advances in genetics might over the next decades remove more or less all negative physical effects of incest. Most people today would agree with the notion that a relationship between cousins is disgusting and deserves to be illegal. But in hundred years an attitude like that might be seen as incredibly offensive.
I am strongly of the opinion that one should only judge an individual's character based on their time and circumstances.
https://books.google.fi/books?id=bR...&ct=result#v=onepage&q=goebbels sioux&f=false
also: American Indians and World War II by Alison R. Bernstein
The top link says that all Native Americans were approved as Aryan, but there is some confusion about this point. Apparently possibly only some of the peoples of America were.
Also, googling for this brings up some weird, weird results...
There's always the danger of chronological snobbery - something which, alas, isn't exactly unknown around here, and certainly not unknown in western cultures today (especially in academia). And history has a way of surprising us.
In a lot of ways, we're picking up where Whig history left off.
Hecatee
Donor
It took me half a week to read it all, but I'm more than impressed by this TL and the amount of research that went in it.
I'm wondering though about the choice of Brussels for the peace conference, after all the bad reputation of Leopold II and the disastrous partition of Congo. Luxembourg would almost have been as good, or more likely Washington seeing how it was the only continent no one fought on and which traded with everyone...
I'm wondering though about the choice of Brussels for the peace conference, after all the bad reputation of Leopold II and the disastrous partition of Congo. Luxembourg would almost have been as good, or more likely Washington seeing how it was the only continent no one fought on and which traded with everyone...
People of the 21st century burned their dead rather than eating them? Disgraceful.
Or the concept of lifetime marriage contracts, or maybe wage slavery. Probably we'll be held to account over the 6th mass extinction event. Maybe in the future the acknowledgment of the existence of race by a government will be as taboo as it is in the French system. Or we'll be monsters because it's legal for children to sleep with each other before the age of 22.
Or heck, maybe we'll turn on usury as the ultimate sin again.
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