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Re-Visiting The English Patient: Re: Re: Thought you might be interested...Read the article this discussion is about
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I will defer to your comments on the novel as you make some very good points. I do disagree just a wee-little bit :-) with your implied agreement with U.S. critics in the 1930s and 40s. The U.S. could've done more certainly when Hitler began his militaristic expansion, but by the time England "stood alone" on the other side of the Channel, America was giving assistance - from "Lend-Lease" to providing safe havens for English families and children that needed to escape Hitler's brutal bombing campaigns. (I believe Canada was doing the same regarding the latter). Political realities were such in America, however, that the U.S. wasn't prepared to go to war until after it was attacked. As to "reneging on its obligations," I take strong exception to our country's European critics on that score. One of the reasons that Adolf Hitler was so successful in stirring up anger and support in his political rise in Germany was the fact that the European nations dealt so harshly with Germany after World War One. That is an undisputed fact of history, yet what is conveniently forgotten by America's critics is that U.S. President Woodrow Wilson tried to persuade his World War One European allies to be more prudent and less retaliatory in the post-World War One peace accords and arrangements. Europe didn't listen. It's true that the U.S. Senate torpedoed America's entry into the League of Nations, a forerunner of the United Nations - and one of the many ideas of President Wilson. But that was partly due to the fact that Europe had disregarded all of Wilson's other ideas and many in America saw them creating their own problems and that America should not concern itself with cleaning up their mess. This is part of why many Americans saw Hitler as Europe's problem. Unfortunately, they didn't fully appreciate the scope of his evil and the danger he posed to the world overall - until millions of lives had already perished. There's plenty of blame to go around for World War Two. America shouldn't shoulder most of it. On the contrary, if it weren't for American entry into that war, things would have turned out differently. -- posted by Brian Tubbs
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Brian Tubbs
