by lobotomizer | 2025-05-13 20:06:53+00:00
> Before the war, in the 20s and 30s, the American industrial establishment was quite happy...

And immediately before that, they (Americans, British, French, Japanese (!)) had invaded Russia to provide support to tsarist and proto-fascist elements that were running around committing pogroms, killing anybody not immediately prostrating themselves to their "saviors", and trying to crush the revolution.

> The keenest Interventionists were equally appalled, regarding the offer of talks [with the Soviet government] as tantamount to diplomatic recognition. From Vladivostok, General Knox sent a 'really fuming' telegram - the proposal put 'brave men...fighting for civilisation' on a par with 'the blood-stained, Jew-led Bolsheviks' - and in Archangel, American consul DeWitt Poole threatened to resign. Happening to be in Paris, Chruchill burst in on Lloyd George while he was shaving, and thundered that if one were going to recognize the regime, 'one might as well legalise sodomy.' Churchill and Foch both also privately assured White contacts that even if they rejected talks, military aid would keep flowing. The Prinkipo proposal thus died at birth.

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> It is true that the worst violence happened off-stage, in small towns away from the bases where British personnel spent most of their time. But this was not always so, and there was more than enough opportunity to find out what was happening from Jewish relief organisations, or from survivors who had fled to the cities. Typical of the way the British preferred to turn a blind eye was embedded journalist Hodgson, who tied himself in knots criticising the Volunteer Army's obsessive antisemitism ('a fierce and unreasoning hatred'), while simultaneously denying that it had committed any pogroms. He dismissed a Jewish committee's protest to British command at Constantinople as an 'effusion', and on a tour of newly captured towns claimed not to have found 'a sign or whisper of outrage'. On the contrary, he possessed 'the strongest evidence' that Denikin's orders against pogroms were being 'conscientiously observed', and 'every effort' being made, 'with great success, to prevent unnecessary bloodshed.' As for past pogroms, the were 'grossly exaggerated', and had mostly been 'fanned into existence by the nervous panicking of the Jews themselves.'

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> For the civilian population,. perhaps harshest of the winter's brutalities was the burning of front-line villages. Both sides did it, but rattled, out-of-their-depth Allied troops - ready to see a collaborator in every uncommunicative local - especially so. In early January a false alarm panicked American units into completely destroying the Vaga village of Kitsa, and Scheu describes putting part of disputed Tulgas to the torch:

>> We throw a cordon of troops around the village to prevent interference, notify natives, and set fire to village at 9 p.m. It ignites rapidly, lighting up surrounding country. Have difficulty with natives; we gave them 3 hours notice to pack and vacate. 'Twas a sad sight.

> The next day the cottages were still smoking, 'a big black smudge upon the snow.'

from Reid - A Nasty Little War