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It is natural and good that we revise our interpretations of past history now and then in the light of new evidence and the emergence of new perspectives on human affairs. But there seems to be going on at the moment a revisionism about World War II that is somewhat distorted in judging good and evil. This new perspective is endemic in what is called the alternative right and is appearing even in more mainstream sources. This view suggests that the Allies were mistaken and corrupt in destroying Nazi Germany and thereby inflicted a grave damage on Western civilization that is responsible for our present troubles. I was shocked and disturbed when this view emerged in response to a little something I wrote on what claimed to be a Southern site. I was attacked by numerous persons and ridiculed as a fool who did not understand history in my sympathy for Britain over Nazis. I have been defending the South for half a century. I thought I deserved a little respect on a “Southern” site. These were people claiming to be Southern. They are people afraid to use their real names. They differ in content but are similar in character to the horde of shallow leftist pseudo-intellectuals destroying civilised understanding by their distortions of history. There are some elements in the Yankee national character that hint of fascism, but it is impossible to imagine anything more alien to the Southern tradition than goose-stepping German aggressors. It is true that World War II turned out badly. It weakened the British, French, and Dutch empires, allowing Communism and chaos across Asia, and it gave much of Europe to the Soviet Union. But what happened later does not invalidate war against the Nazis. History often plays tricks like this. According to our new revisionists, Hitler was a nice idealist who did not want to make war on Britain (as long as they agreed with him) and was only trying to save Europe from Communism. Britain declared war on him anyway. We are given pictures of a fat, corrupt, Jewish-controlled Churchill as responsible for starting World War II. This is to misunderstand the situation of 1939 entirely. It had long been a standing principle that no one power should be allowed to dominate Europe. Hitler had already conquered and occupied much territory. The invasion of Poland against his own promise indicated a lasting threat. It is true that Britain and France could not help Poland and that they did not declare against the Soviet Union for taking part of that overrun country. But declaring war might deter Hitler from further invasions and the Soviets were not an immediate threat to Western Europe. The Western powers were by no means perfect. There is no perfection among humans. But compared to the aggressive Nazi police state they were models of decent behaviour and constitutional government. It is true that the war damaged Britain, perhaps irrecoverably, but World War II was still their “finest hour,” deserving lasting admiration. It is true that the Allies engaged in terror bombing of civilians, but the Germans started it. And what about this resurrected Hitler? He created a police state that weighed heavily on his people, curtailing their freedom and demanding extreme and endless sacrifice, though being Germans many of them liked it. Military genius he thought himself to be. He had some early successes due to the hesitancy of the Western powers to get into war again. But thinking he could conquer Russia in a few weeks - one of the stupidest delusions in the history of the world. He never understood Britain or Russia. Like all bad people he thought others had the same motivations as he did. He continually overruled able and patriotic generals who understood his mistakes. In the latter stages of the war he was a weakened drug addict ready to sacrifice his people to the last man, woman, and child because they had failed his divine mission. And hiding in a bunker and escaping the consequences of his actions as his country collapsed. Some patriot! We cannot imagine such behaviour by Churchill or DeGaule. The Germans should have overthrown the destroyer of their country by 1944, but they were too used to following orders and thinking of themselves as superior. Part 1 of 2.
50 Comments
ID Reader
8/31/2025 11:10:25 pm
The comments section must have really chapped your hide for you to post this after the site has gone offline. I remember that article, and I remember the responses. The behavior you saw was a combination of several factors.
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Joseph Johnson
9/1/2025 02:06:39 am
Dr. Wilson, not only the Alt right but some libertarians seem to think that Churchill was a nascent neocon.
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Clyde N Wilson
9/1/2025 05:33:58 am
ID, I have probably never been in as much danger as the younger people, but my Southern stand has not been costless.. It is wrong to call bring Lee and Davis into alliance with Hitler. The closer connection is Lincoln and Hitler. It is wrong to connect the South with things totally non-Southern.
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/1/2025 12:17:56 pm
We have a conundrum. What Dr. Wilson says about the Nazis in 1939 is correct. What the Nazis say about the Jews in America in 2025 is correct. So what do we do moving forward?
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George Fitzhugh's Ghost
9/1/2025 01:51:28 pm
I assume this essay was aimed at the boys from Identity Dixie, a site I used to read, in wake of an exchange *last year* regarding Southerners and White Nationalism that occurred there. Why Dr. Wilson waited until the site was down to post this, when ID cannot officially reply, I do not know. Regarding his statement about "what claimed to be a Southern site", does a site cease to be Southern if it does not always defer to Wilson's Boomer era take on Jeffersonianism? Was ID still a Southern website when he positively reviewed the ID orbit book "An Honorable Cause" at Abbeville in May 2023, but ceased to be Southern when they did not get in line with his thoughts on race, WWII history, and the JQ?
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/1/2025 08:00:51 pm
Let me strike the tent, as Robert E. Lee said. Our ancestors were not Nazis. Call it jeffersonianism, federalism, Christian, etc. I assume you are taking the conversation to the logical conclusion: Nazism or Genocide?
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/1/2025 08:37:01 pm
I would say his writings are even more relevant now than his writings from the 1970s and 1980s. Not only relevant, but full of great wisdom for us to follow. Yes, they may be too optimistic like Jefferson was of the agrarian voter. But in defense of Jefferson, don’t voting records of agrarian voters show they have greatly favored republicanism over Statism???
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/6/2025 03:46:40 pm
Where did you go? You want me to do all the work for you? Unlike you, I don't waste my time listing evidence and being very intellectual anymore. It doesn't matter. To your defense, you come off much more civil and intellectual than me. I'm not that way anymore. I think the time for that has ended...feel free to come back and agree and disagree with anything I have written...
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Clyde N Wilson
9/1/2025 02:41:01 pm
I don't want to exaggerate my losses. I was not pushed out of my university. Maybe I am outdated and irrelevant , now, but I think the more intelligent young people recognise the Abbeville position as our best hope. It is reality rather than ideology. Noone can be Southern and a Nazi at the same time.
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/1/2025 07:38:32 pm
There’s no hurt feelings. I get it, Dr. Wilson Life is very busy. Family also is more important than ‘strangers’ over the internet. For the record, I embrace the Jeffersonian tradition. I despise Nazi ideology. My stomach turns every time I hear anyone, but especially a Southerner, talk that Nazi nonsense.
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/1/2025 08:09:48 pm
If you are a Southerner or just plain lover of liberty reading this post and comments, please don’t turn your back on the Jeffersonian tradition. And our Christian heritage.
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/1/2025 08:20:05 pm
Let me spit out this question: can the Jeffersonian tradition and/or true federalism exist in a non-homogenous society? Or are we doomed to embrace Nazism or Communism? Good day.
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9/1/2025 11:29:01 pm
"Can federalism exist in a non-homogenous society?" Good question, General! Leslie A. White, in his book "The Science of Culture: A Study of Man and Civilization, argues that cultures may be divided into three sub-systems: the technological, the sociological, and the ideological. The technological subsystems contain the energy of the earth needed for survival and the tools used to harness it; the sociological system is comprised of the social structure and governmental organization that orchastrates the technological subsystem; and the ideological subsystem is comprised of the values, beliefs, religions, etc. that justify it all. White argues that while the ideology and social structure influence the culture, it is the technological subsystem that determines it. Therefore, a pastoral culture has one form of government, an agrarian culture has another, and an industrial culture has yet another. If that is valid, then we see the devolution of our historical Jeffersonian federalism into a complex, authoritarian, centralized, multi-cultural, buteaucratic, ever-more-totalitarian statism.
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9/1/2025 11:37:48 pm
That is, as we evolve (devolve?) from an agrarian culture into an ever-more complex culture with the Industrial Revolution, the Atomic Revolution, the Cyber Revolution, and go spiraling off into our frenzy.
GENERAL KROMWELL
9/2/2025 06:53:18 am
YES!!!! This is one of my favorite topics to talk about with other intellectuals. Love what you wrote. Is the toothpaste already out of the tube as Bob Haldeman I think said? Is it too late to go back? Is Statism the norm in a post-Industrial Revolution society? It appears so. Who owns America? Well, it ain’t us. 9/2/2025 12:30:09 am
So when America draws on the "Treasury of Virtue" that Father Abraham bequethed her, and goes off on her Crusade to Make the World Safe for Democracy or We'll Bomb You Back to the Stone Age, it is an excercise that goes against the natural order. One does not impose parliamentary democracy on a Bedouin tribe of camel herders without imposing their fundamental way of life first. When that foolish effort meets with natural resistance, you end up having to bomb them back yo the stone age, which begets "terrorism," the "poor man's atomic bomb." Which begets "The (endless) Wars on Terror," and job security for the military/industrial complex, etc. etc. etc... and if anyone doesn't like it, the totalitarian State will explain it to you.
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Clyde N Wilson
9/2/2025 04:56:33 am
For the record, I am not a Boomer. I was born before Pearl Harbor.
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/2/2025 06:44:59 am
See comment below addressed to you in the fist half.
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George Fitzhugh's Ghost
9/2/2025 06:25:15 am
It appears General Kromwell's comments were directed at me. Let me clarify, although I thought I was already clear. I am not a Nazi. I do not support National Socialism. I was simply contending that Hitler was the lesser evil when Europe was looking down the barrel of the Soviets ever expanding communist revolution in 1939. I even said that we did *NOT* have to go full Corey Mahler to take a moderate position on Hitler.
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/3/2025 03:55:35 am
Don’t be silly. I meant Jefferson’s view of federalism. Clearly, I did not mean I would turn my back on my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. John 14:6. Don’t do red herring nonsense.
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/3/2025 04:03:31 am
Correction. And Jefferson’s view of republicanism. Not just federalism. Republicanism isn’t just about the nature of government. Question my devotion to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ again and I’ll go full Oliver Cromwell in Ireland.
GENERAL KROMWELL
9/3/2025 12:11:52 pm
Please don’t go anywhere. Now that I’ve had time to read what yo write, I agree with some of what yo say. You are very articulate in your response. Whereas, I am just very gruff now.
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/4/2025 06:21:16 am
So what solutions do you offer? The civic nationalists have failed us. Clearly, you can’t be a Southerner without being White. Yes, there are Black Southerners, but there is no South without the White Southerner. But there is more to being a Southerner than being White. I have more in common with a traditional, Mexican Catholic than a White woke libtard.
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/2/2025 06:43:14 am
Lol, I know you are not a boomer. You were born 10 years after my namesake. I was indulging him. The word “boomer” isn’t even intellectually applicable to you even if you were born after 1945.
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Clyde N Wilson
9/2/2025 08:28:12 am
George Fitzhugh was a very untypical Southerner. His standpoint was eccentric to the body of Southern thinking. Did you know he went to work for the Freedman's Bureau after the war?
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/2/2025 11:48:37 am
The League of the South uniting with Nazis was a travesty. But what’s the alternative? Our enemies have wicked and disgusting plans for us. They seek our genocide. And are doing well doing it. They seek our physical and sexual enslavement. One group of people will not stop seeking our annihilation. Trump loves them. I despise Nazism.
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Robert M. Peters
9/3/2025 09:00:49 am
What do we do? Well, we do not embrace communism, fascism, Naziism or liberalism or the centralized Hobbesian state which rules over us today. The Russian write Alexander Dugin has rejected those three. He speaks of the fourth way. We have to find our own "four way." We must nurture the virtues, passing them to the next generations. We cannot look for allies among the demons.
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9/3/2025 08:54:51 am
Nationalism and patriotism are not the same; in fact, they are antithetical. Nationalism is an abstraction which, like all abstractions, is an ideology. Patriotism, rightly understood, the the love of the particulars of one's own people and their heritage, warts and all. When Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov wore is CCCP t-shirt when arriving at the summit between Putin and Trump, the Western media speculated, wrongly, that he was glorifying the Soviet Union. He laughed and said that the Soviet Union was part of Russian history, and, therefore, part of his patrimony for good or for bad. The German writer Goethe warned of a united Germany, i.e. a German national state which France had become. Bismarck, like Garibaldi in Italy ultimately quested for a German national state against Goethe's sage advice, not because Bismarck was a nationalist, quite the contrary, but because he saw the German petty states as too weak to counter France, Great Britain and Russia. Bismarck loved the Prussian state and knew that German nationalism, over time, would mean the end of Prussia. It should be noted that Bismarck's lineage was Slavic, i.e. part of his heritage. Yet, Bismarck set in motion a trajectory which would end with Hitler. (Note that Lincoln destroyed two unions of constitutionally federated republics: that of the United States of America and that of the Confederate States of America and replaced them with an abstract corporation with a monopoly on coercion, with the ability to define the limits of its own power and with a will animated by ideologies. The consolidated and centralized state with its fiat currency is what communism, Naziism and liberalism need in ordered to prevail as ideologies. Nationalism is itself the stalking horse for globalism for particularism, regionalism and true patrimony. A centralized Hobbesian state, whether it is run by communists, Nazis or liberals is not an option for a Southerner who is rooted in the particulars of his patrimony. This is a very complex topic with many rabbit trails. I look forward to engaging in it. For the record, I speak fluent German and am well versed in the period of the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich and the nascent beginnings of the Cold War. Sifting through the propaganda is quite difficult.
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Robert Peters
9/4/2025 07:44:28 am
The South of our patrimony, the South embedded in our very bones, no longer has a cultural, social or economic context in which to live and to thrive. We must, therefore, individually and in communion in such places as the Abbeville Institute or the Fleming Foundation nurture virtues which exemplify the South of our patrimony until there is a time and place for those seeds of virtue to sprout again, likely not in our lifetimes, however. Conjuring up Wade Hampton, the nationalism, etc., is counter productive, even destructive to those ends.
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/4/2025 12:19:25 pm
Sadly, I agree with 99% of what you wrote. Sadly. Unfortunately. So what are we? Now? We aren’t Americans. And we may be Southerners but most Southerners are not LOS or Abbeville types. And those are ones whose families have been here since 1600-1700s. Now with all the Yankees fleeing Blue States, what it means to be Southerner is pretty much dead.
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/4/2025 12:31:30 pm
Apologies to Nathan Bedford Forrest. He is of equal stature to Hampton. On and off the field and his Christian character.
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Robert Peters
9/5/2025 04:57:37 am
I am a member of the SCV which certainly has its shortcomings; however, what is it about the SCV that leads you to the label of "cucks"? I am also a Southern Baptist, and I agree with you about their apologizing for being white. Were we to "unite" with the Nazis, we would become the very antithesis of ourselves. Tolkien, in his Lord of the Rings, points out, time and again, that the temptation to use Sauron's ring, the one which binds them all, against Sauron is in fact playing right into Sauron's hands. No, we must nurture the virtues which identify us as Southerners until Providence brings forth a day in which those virtues can flourish again. He who endures to the end shall be saved.
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/5/2025 12:55:41 pm
Hey Dr. Peters, you offer me a fair question about the SCV. Let me get things settled at the home tonight and see if Google still has stuff up that I can provide as evidence, and I give you my word I’ll respond. My goal is to respond back to your question about the SCV tonight. I don’t want you thinking I’m dodging your fair question. 9/5/2025 06:41:22 pm
So, I came on to talk about these cucksters from 10 years ago. And for the record, Brad from Occidental Dissent is much more articulate than I am. I am now the anti-intellectual General Kromwell-out from the grave, and ready to drive the Yankees into the James River.
Clyde N Wilson
9/5/2025 05:29:40 am
Dr. Peters, right you are. We must work for the South in positive ways. Let us celebrate the many great things about our people. The South is a living cultural reality, not an ideology..
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/5/2025 12:51:29 pm
As much as I want to agree with you and Dr. Peters, you are about to be racially replaced in your own homeland. Because if Yankees and a Jewish Cabal. Being a Southern is more than being White. And you can be Black with slave blood and be a Southerner. But there is no South or Southerner without the White Man. It would be bad enough if we were just facing White people fleeing Blue States. I don’t want them. Go back to your Yankee Hellhole. But the Yankee Immigration Act and the Jewish Cabal are committing genocide not just upon Southerners, but all White people. In America and in Europe.
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9/6/2025 03:35:15 am
Looks like you're right, General. "E Pluribus Unum" reminds me of the tiger chasing Little Black Sambo 'round and 'round the palm tree until they both turn into a puddle of butter.
GENERAL KROMWELL
9/5/2025 01:05:20 pm
And for the record, Anti-Jewish Cabal promoting our genocide and/or Anti-apostate Israel does NOT EQUAL Nazi.
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Joseph Johnson
9/6/2025 07:28:19 am
Message to alt-right maniacs: Everything is not a Jewish conspiracy, everyone is not a Zionist and Hitlerism/Nazism is not an answer to our Civilizational Debacle.
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/6/2025 03:29:08 pm
I hope you are not referring to me. A Jewish Cabal committing genocide upon our people is not a crazy conspiracy theory. Remember the SPLC, when they got caught on camera with Great Replacement evidence a few years ago? On camera? That's just one example. If you were referring to me, then you sound dumb and part of the problem. The evidence is on my side. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then you should be ashamed of yourself. And you come off cuck not knowing about it.
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/6/2025 03:31:05 pm
Were you wrong assuming I am a Nazi because I point out a Jewish cabal promoting our genocide??? Surely you would not say something so dumb when: 1) I am not a Nazi. 2) The evidence is on my side...
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/6/2025 03:40:27 pm
So, let me call upon Dr. Wilson himself...Perhaps you esteemed Sir would like to address the SPLC caught on camera with evidence promoting our genocide? You aren't dumb. You know the video I am talking about. Would you like to come to my defense so I don't appear as a Nazi to people who don't want to do their homework???
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GENERAL KROMWELL
9/7/2025 08:40:05 am
I'll say it again: What do you think George Washington would have done if he had found an organization within his borders promoting his genocide???? Ask yourself that question!!!
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Scott Terry
9/7/2025 10:07:08 am
~ All are born Yankees to the race of men, in this too, now, the country of the damned ~
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Pecos Bill
9/8/2025 02:56:07 pm
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Pecos Bill
9/8/2025 03:14:40 pm
(Post got chopped short. Here's the rest.)
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Paul Yarbrough
9/8/2025 03:33:51 pm
“The southern flags and statues represent a white ethnic culture always calling the shots in society. Black perception of this is correct as the Confederacy represented white dominance until its legacy’s final end in 1964. In this, the Confederacy is in common with Hitler’s ideas of racial purity and white dominance.”
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Bill Hill
9/8/2025 10:55:53 pm
I remember the way Dr Wilson was treated in the comments that day. It surprised me but didn’t surprise me. I don’t know how anyone could love his race (including very distant ancestors) and attack a prior generation as the root of all their problems, unless of course they desperately need a scapegoat due to their lack of courage to take responsibility for the future. I don’t think there is any need to state anything further about that site except to say they were at least pushing a narrative and sharing some ideas, which is an inherently inefficient and messy process.
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Scott Terry
9/9/2025 05:01:24 am
Bill, I appreciate your comment here, especially as a fellow Carolinian.
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Bill Hill
9/9/2025 03:34:49 pm
Dear fellow Cackilackian, Leave a Reply. |
AuthorClyde Wilson is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina He is the author or editor of over thirty books and published over 600 articles, essays and reviews Archives
February 2026
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