Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Plus ça change, plus c’est le même chose

Captain Harry Butcher served as General Eisenhower's naval aide from July 1942 until the war's end. He also served for a period in SHAEF's public relations department. In 1946 Butcher published My Three Years with Eisenhower. The book is made up of Butcher's official military diary during the entire period. Although quite long at nearly 900 pages it provides fascinating insights into Eisenhower's strategy.

The book also provides many interesting asides and tidbits, such as this one of December 10, 1942:
[Robert] Murphy and [Julius] Holmes had been sent by Ike to perk up [French Admiral Francois] Darlen on his liberalization of Nazi-inspired decrees in the form of a new ordinance, which is supposedly being rewritten. Darlen had shown Murphy and Holmes a letter from a rabbi in Constantine, urging that reform of the hard and unjust laws against the Jews in Africa be modified slowly. If done too rapidly, the rabbi reared reprisals against Jews by Arabs. Ike had heard from London that it would be helpful to have the revised ordinance there before the secret debate re Darlen comes up in the Commons Thursday ... What tickled me was the shuttling between the two groups: in one we were liberating the Jews, at least as far as the Moslems would permit; in the other, General Patton was figuratively racing through Spanish Morocco like a gay caballero on the back of a tank. [Page, 219-20]
It appears that the Arabs supported the Nazi inspired laws aimed at oppressing the Jews of North Africa. I wonder how the usual apologists will blame this on Israel.

Crossposted at The Dougout

2 comments:

Just Cause said...

Its well known that Hitler had a Middle East connection for his 'final solution' in the guise of Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

Not that Husseini needed his arm bent to actually help Hitler exterminate Jews in the first place. As we all know, the Quaran advocates the killing of Jews as the 'mischief makers' of the world.

Thankfully not long after Hitler had a meeting with the Grand Mufti in 1941 who had asked Hitler to expand his program into the Middle East but was told that it wasn't the right time, the allies began to get the upper hand and the Nazis lost grip on territory in the mediterranean and the middle east.

I have recently finished a book called Churchill and Hitler, in Victory and Defeat, which has plenty of accounts of discussions Churchill had regarding 'Mohammedians' ideology being similar to Nazism. Indeed, a lot of time was spent nurturing the British/Arab relationship because of fears that Hitler would exploit the anti-semetic sentiment in Muslim Arab groups.

These are all inconvenient, irrefutable facts however as with many such facts these days, they are irrelevant if they don't support the lefts ideology that Israel and Western society in general are to blame for all the worlds ills.

Here is a useful resource of information on the Grand Mufti:

http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_mandate_grand_mufti.php

Pastorius said...

Patton racing through Spanish Morocco like a gay cabellero on the back of a tank?

I take it the word gay didn't mean quite the same thing back then.

Oh, if only Patton would have had his way in that war, many other problems would have been fixed a long time ago.