Old movies and unwelcome history

The moment the Japanese Empire bombed Pearl Harbor, the vast majority of Americans were committed heart and soul to winning the world war that the sneak attack abruptly brought our nation into. But as welcome as the ultimate victory was, World War II’s conclusion was, like most wars, a mixed blessing. For while the Nazis, fascists and warlords were thoroughly defeated, one of our principal allies, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (deceased, 1991) was in command of central Europe and portions of the Far East. No less pleased at the outcome as the western allies–the United States, Great Britain and France–the USSR nevertheless was a regime no less hateful than the ones defeated in war. In Europe, a divided continent entailed further divisions within defeated countries, specifically, Germany and Austria. In both countries, four zones of occupation were established at the Potsdam Conference, not only for these countries but for their capital cities, Berlin and Vienna. The division of Germany epitomized the tragic results of the "good war," as it came to be called, with crises in 1948 and 1961 that threatened another world war, and the remarkably peaceful outcome of 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, erected in 1961. Austria was more fortunate, as the four-power occupation of the country and its capital ended with its official neutrality, agreed to at a summit conference in 1955.

But, of course, this was not the case in the immediate aftermath of the war, as painfully the true nature of our Soviet allies became clear. It was bad enough that Soviet troops remained from the Baltic republics to Bulgaria. But even those persons in Russia and its satellites who managed to flee ahead of those troops to the western democracies were relentlessly pursued by Soviet authorities.

Operation Keelhaul was the wrenching obligation of Western powers to deal with the Soviet refugee "problem." Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the heroic Russian writer who took on the Communist colossus and ultimately won, denounced even the estimable Winston Churchill for consenting to this massive human tragedy. Because the operation mocked everything the victorious allies fought (and prosecuted German and Japanese leaders) for, it was given little publicity.

But movie makers in those days took note. "The Red Danube," an MGM production of 1949, (shown on TCM) zeroed in on the grisly work of Soviet repatriation with telling effect. Despite the British occupation forces’ determination to carry out their orders to deliver thousands of unhappy and unwilling refugees from Soviet tyranny to their horrible and undeserved fate, the truth obtrudes itself.

Here is a useful plot summary from IMDb (Internet Movie Database):

"Shortly after the end of World War II, British Colonel Michael 'Hooky' Nicobar (Walter Pidgeon) is assigned to a unit in the British Zone of Vienna. His duty is to aid the Soviet authorities to repatriate citizens of the Soviet Union, many of whom prefer not to return to their home country. Billeted in the convent run by Mother Auxilia (Ethel Barrymore), Nicobar, and his military aides Major John 'Twingo' McPhimister (Peter Lawford) and Audrey Quail (Angela Lansbury), become involved in the plight of a young ballerina (Janet Leigh) who is trying to avoid being returned to Moscow. Nicobar's sense of duty is tested as he sees first hand the plight of the people he is helping return to the Soviet Union; his lack of religious faith is also shaken by his contact with the Mother Superior."

I read several of these plot summaries, all of which equivocated in some way on the momentous issues involved. To say that "many" of the Soviet citizens "prefer[red] not to return to their home country" is a huge understatement. All were actively hostile to the idea, for it does not take a genius to figure out that a regime that deprives you of your liberty is to be avoided at all costs. Other summaries called the movie "propaganda" and "heavy handed." That’s how things appear to those who are either ignorant of political realities or wilfully blind for the sake of avoiding conflict.

But the summaries indicate that there are several threads in this movie. Front and center is the painful dilemma of the officers of a good regime being ordered to deliver unwilling people to an evil one. The film "humanizes" this weighty issue with a young officer’s passion for a beautiful victim of the massive roundup. (The officer’s aide is also in love with him.) So our hearts tug for the young couple’s fight to avoid her repatriation and hurt badly when events conspire against them.

Col. Nicobar’s sense of duty, reinforced at all levels of the British command, is not hard to admire, but our awareness of the evils it brings about forces us to stop and think. As determined as he is to carry out his orders, a combination of the true facts of the repatriation and his being prodded by the mother superior, produce a far different outcome. Looking back at the event, today’s reviewers reflect the influence of postwar revisionism that refuses to acknowledge that the Cold War was rooted in Soviet tyranny, and of "political correctness" that all too incorrectly seeks to banish religious issues from public discussion.

The good-hearted and honest colonel has difficulty reconciling the existence of massive evil in the world with the promise of love and peace that is the Christian message. He is not one to change his mind easily for, as John Adams long ago observed, "facts are stubborn things." Not only Nazi atrocities but, as he is painfully learning, Soviet atrocities shake the world, leaving men like him with the unending duty of opposing them by force. Religious sentiment, he believes, is no better than rank superstition in the face of these great evils.

Gently, but firmly, the mother superior reminds him, by her persistence in fighting for Maria’s release and even publicizing the whole repatriation issue with the Pope, as well as by her pointed observation that God did not do these wicked deeds but man, Nicobar sees a new and more compelling duty to risk his position and his sustenance by refusing to carry out any further cooperation with the Soviets’ nefarious project. The denouement will bring delight to every lover of liberty and freedom of conscience.

Momentous issues at mid century gave many people a sense of moral clarity than has seldom been seen since. We can be grateful to old Hollywood (and Turner Classic Movies) that it made films worthy of the best characters that humanity has put forth. May it plague the consciences of those who will not see the truth that is right in front of them.

What's become of the spirit of '81?

Mention the French Riviera and most people will conjure up images of le casino in Monte Carlo, le port in Saint Tropez, la Croisette in Cannes, or la Promenade des Anglais in Nice. Less obvious are visions of Grasse, a small town tucked away in the hinterland, a 30-minute drive north of Nice, and proudly described by the locals as the capital of the French perfume-making industry. From a historical perspective, the town’s claim to fame lies elsewhere, more particularly in François Joseph Paul de Grasse’s decisive participation in the American Revolutionary War against the British along with Comte de Rochambeau, Admiral d’Estaing and Lafayette.

De Grasse, who was born and raised in nearby Bar-sur-Loup, is indeed best remembered in South-Eastern France for defeating the British Fleet in the Battle of Chesapeake in September 1781. De Grasse’s victory in the Bay on board le Ville de Paris that year conclusively cut off supplies from the forces led by General Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, contributed to Cornwallis’s surrender to General Washington’s Continental Army, and ultimately paved the way for British initiatives to negotiate an end to the war and, afterwards, for the adoption by the newly-created United States of America of a Constitution strictly limiting government and uniquely experimenting with individual freedom and responsibility.

As a sign of gratitude for his services during the American Revolutionary War, François Joseph Paul de Grasse was later made a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, the organization founded in 1783 to promote the ideals and fellowship of all those who had gallantly fought for freedom during the war. The original copy of de Grasse’s Cincinnati membership certificate can be seen in the small museum dedicated to the memory of the French admiral in Grasse.

Ominously, the museum was poorly attended when I went there last October. Small wonder. A recent poll conducted in France by IFOP and published in Paris Match on November 5th, 2009 shows that 82% of French people still enthusiastically support Barack Obama’s big-government agenda one year after his election as President of the United States.

Sadly, at least on this side of the Atlantic, the spirit of ’81 as embodied by Comte de Grasse more than two hundred years ago appears to have fatally faded away.

Young skulls full of green mush

As any visitor to Cuba will tell you, slogans like "Hasta la victoria siempre" (towards victory always) or "Socialismo or muerte" (socialism or death) are dotted here and there all over the Caribbean island for fear that the long-suffering local population might lose sight of the ill-fated goals of the communist revolution that took place there under the leadership of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in 1959. The way things are going in France right now, pockets of little Cubas are very likely to sprout up all over the country as the summit on climate change in Copenhagen next month looms larger and larger. I personally know of one such Cuban-like ideological treadmill: the High School in Lyon, France’s second-largest city, where I am completing my third year as a teacher of Anglo-American Studies.

About two months ago, straight from the French Department of Education came a diktat to the effect that all public schools in the country had to organize teaching activities aimed at promoting so-called environmentally-friendly sustainable development, i.e. socialism. I have been asked to participate. Needless to say that I have sustainably declined.

One of the ideas some of my colleagues have come up with, though, is to translate the speeches President Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown are expected to make in Denmark next month, and to flash up bits of the speeches on large TV screens dotted here and there all over the school for fear that the students might lose sight of the ill-fated goals of the green revolution that is currently taking place in France under the leadership of President Nicolas Sarkozy. With so much hot air coming out of the screens, I guess temperatures will rise exponentially all over the school and melt what little critical thinking is left in the French education system.

As the episode illustrates, descriptions of President Sarkozy as a conservative are misleading. On global warming, as in many other policy areas, Sarkozy is just about as conservative as Newt Gingrich sitting on a couch with Speaker Pelosi touting misguided bipartisan efforts to save the planet.

The green revolution currently going on in France is being every bit as destructive of individual freedom and responsibility as the ominous events of 1789 there, or, for that matter, those in Cuba more than 150 years later. In other words, welcome to the new land of scorching propaganda, brainwashing, intellectual goose-stepping and, I almost forgot, youth duly decked out in Guevara accessories and apparel as the latest fashion dictates.

Are you sure you want to be next, America?

Revisionists diss Reagan in Berlin

As many of you know, yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And do you know what? In all the hoopla surrounding the celebration yesterday -- not one person at the commemoration event in Berlin mentioned the role of Ronald Reagan. Can you imagine that?

Tom Brokaw -- like many commentators -- yesterday was quick to laud the role of Mikhail Gorbachev -- the darling of the media and the Nobel Committee. Gorbachev did, of course, play a pivotal role in changing the Soviet Union and opening it up to the West. But what most analysts have missed is that Gorbachev didn't get their alone. He didn't so much as jump as was pushed -- by a resolute Ronald Reagan who was unwilling to compromise with the Soviet state and kept up a relentless pressure that broke the back of the Soviet economic system.

Ronald Reagan deserves much of the credit for the fall of the Berlin Wall -- and don't let any revisionist historian tell you anything different. Reagan's force of personality -- the force of his conviction that the Soviet Union was a system that could not stand against the march of freedom -- made it clear to Gorbachev that the Soviets could never prevail. In the face of liberal pressure to "stand down" and to give in on Star Wars and other strategic initiatives, Reagan stood fast.

The result is history. Only today that history is told with a liberal bias that sees to minimize Reagan's pivotal role.

Don't believe it. Berlin owes a huge debt of gratitude to Reagan.

Here is Reagan's famous "Tear down this Wall" speech of 1987. What other leader would have the courage to make this speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate?

Reagan's "Tear down this wall" speech in Berlin, June 12, 1987

The decline of Western civilization

The West has been warned with increasing frequency, most recently by Netherlands MP Geert Wilders, that radical Islam is making such great strides that Europe will become "Eurabia" in a few decades and that the United States is not far behind. In a speech he gave at Columbia University on October 21, Wilders spoke alarmingly of numerous incidents and ominous trends as evidence that a dynamic Islam is growing at the expense of what used to be called the Christian West.

Wilders himself has been caught in the middle of this rise and fall. For his outspoken opposition to radical Islam, he was even barred from the United Kingdom until the British courts intervened.

Because the "cultural sensitivities" are so great on this issue, it has become virtually a crime to speak frankly and truthfully about what is going on. Here is a sampler that Wilder provides, taken from the mass media reports over the last several years:

The Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard made a Muhammad-cartoon and all of a sudden we were in the middle of the so called 'Danish cartoon crisis'. The Italian author Oriana Fallaci had to live in fear of extradition to Switzerland because of her book 'The Rage and the Pride'. An Austrian politician, Susanne Winter, was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence because she spoke bluntly about the prophet Muhammad. The Dutch cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot was arrested by 10 policemen because of his drawings. And the Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh was brutally murdered in the streets of Amsterdam by a radical Muslim.

This discouraging trend can only be explained by the dynamics of radical Islam as contrasted with the decline of European Christendom. This, in turn, points to the likelihood that religious conviction, thought to be some to be irrelevant in the "post-modern" world, is decisive. Islam, after several centuries of decline, has been reshaped into a messianic force. There is nothing comparable to this among Christians.

As ominous as the constant threat of violence may be, the long term trends in Europe may be more worrisome. For decades, Europeans have permitted large-scale immigration of Africans and Asians to provide cheap labor. Unlike the United States, European nations do not encourage assimilation or movement toward citizenship. As long as Americans pledge loyalty to the principles and institutions of our country, anyone can potentially become a citizen. Not so in Europe.

As a result, millions of largely Muslim inhabitants have no compelling reason to adopt the customs of their host countries. Indeed, as their numbers increase, it is their customs and their laws that take root. Those periodic riots in Paris among unemployed Algerians or Moroccans stem from their permanent outsider status. Increasingly there is pressure to allow Muslims to govern themselves by Sharia law, a repressive code that is the rule in the despotic Muslim nations today.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has even suggested that the United Kingdom acquiesce in the establishment of Sharia there, indicating that preemptive surrender is the proper response.

Europeans generally have acted as if the Christian religion which gave their continent its distinctive identity for centuries can be abandoned without consequences.

In Europe there are many massive–and empty–Christian cathedrals. Meanwhile, Muslims are increasing their numbers through birth rates far in excess of the Europeans’, which have fallen below the replacement level of 2.1 per family.

Another way of putting this is that one cannot oppose something with nothing. If the Europeans altogether abandon the faith that inspired millions of people before them, they can be sure that Muslims will not. Some analysts have predicted that the UK, France and Germany will lead the way into a Muslim future by 2050. Major cities are already dominated by Muslims.

The American birthrate among citizens has fallen below 2.1 as well, with the vast influx of illegal aliens from south of our borders keeping that figure up for all inhabitants. The percentages of Muslims are still far below Europe but the official deference to their sensibilities is strong.

The evidence is overwhelming that as this trend continues in Europe, the change from Christianity to Islam will not be peaceful but increasingly violent. There will be increasing persecution of non-Muslims wherever Muslims are sufficiently numerous to impose their will. The Western world’s half-hearted response is not working. One can pray that a powerful spirit returns to Western civilization, but it will not come as long as it holds that what men believe about God makes no difference.