(Part I in my series -- Condemned to Repeat It: Myths and Lessons of the 20th Century.) 

Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana's chilling aphorism is as true today as on the day he wrote it.  And the key to his aphorism lies in the word "study," for it is not enough to merely read history.  Far too often, the casual reading of history has led to the perpetuation of myths which led us to repeat the mistakes of the past, rather than learning from them.

One such myth -- which resonates in the United States to this day -- is die Dolchstoßlegende (literally, "the Back-Stab Legend") of the German defeat in World War I.  In this essay, I will briefly explore the history of die Dolchstoßlegende and how the acceptance of that myth led to the orgy of destruction which was World War II.  I will then explore how America has adopted the same myth after the Vietnam War, and how our Dolchstoßlegende led to and is now being used to perpetuate the mire of the Iraq War.

The origins of the First World War are complex, stretching back to the defeat of Varius at the Teutonburger Wald in the 1st century and the concommitant European belief that the German people were never properly civilized by inclusion in the Roman Empire.  The more direct causes of the First World War -- the war which set the stage for every major foreign policy issue of the 20th century, and into our own time -- were essentially three-fold: (1) the universal belief, throughout Europe, that Germany and France could not coexist, that eventually one of them must and would destroy the other; (2) the resulting network of interlocking treaties which, collectively, meant that any border skirmish would lead to a Great Power war; and, (3) the militarization of industrialized Europe, which meant that any such war inevitably be a long, bloody battle of attrition.

That third element -- the militarization of Europe -- is paramount, because none of the Great Power leaders fully appreciated or were willing to accept its implications.  On August 2nd, 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II assured the German troops that they would "be home before the leaves fall."  In Russia, military leaders were divided; the optimists thought the war be over in two months, while the pessimists who thought it would last three.  Those who said it would last six months were labeled "defeatist."  And similar assurances were made -- and believed -- in Paris, in London, and in Vienna.  It was assumed that this new war, like the Franco-Prussian and Crimean Wars of forty years earlier, would end quickly and decisively.

What none of those leaders took fully into account was that the European population had quadrupled in those forty years, and that the size of the armies had increased ten-fold.  No longer were armies of 100,000 men marching out on campaigns which could, in theory, be decided in a coup de main.  Million-man armies, supported by industrial economies geared for war, simply could not be crushed so easily.  Any such war would, of necessity, be drawn out into a war of attrition, seige warfare on a national scale, the outcome determined not by the brilliant maneuvers of generals but by economic starvation.

Four years later, that economic starvation had worked its dreadful effect.  Revolution had taken Russia out of the war.  Germany, freed of a threat from the east, was fighting only on Belgian and French soil.  Her armies were still able to make limited attacks in the west, but only at a horrible cost with with only minimal, purely tactical gains.  Moreover, Germany was starving -- literally -- under the stranglehold of the British blockade of the North Sea.  Every month, tens of thousands of German citizens died of starvation and disease.  Desertion in the army, all but unheard of under legendary Prussian leadership, was rampant.  Lacking food, fuel, ammunition, and access to the resources by which to acquire them, Germany's defeat was inevitable.

On November 10, 1918, encouraged by an offer from U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, a German delegation approached the French lines under a white flag, and was led to the field headquarters of Marshal Foch, the French Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces.  Foch had not heard of Wilson's offer, and in any case was not disposed to offer lenient terms, as his own son had recently died at the front.  The peace terms Foch proposed were brutal: withdrawal from all occupied territory, including the Rhineland and Alsace-Lorraine; total dismantling of her armed forces; accepting the continuation of the British blockade, thereby allowing Britain to decide whether the German people ate or starved; and many more.

While the German delegation was meeting with Foch, starving Germans rioted in Berlin and Kaiser Wilhelm ordered German troops to shoot on sight.  The resulting uproar led Wilhelm to abdicate, both for himself and his son, leading to the complete collapse of the German government.  In the light of these events, and facing the prospect of the total annihliation of the German people through famine and disease, the German delegation accepted Foch's terms and the armistice was signed at 5am on November 11, 1918.  The "Great War," the "War to End All Wars," was over.

But ... German troops were still on Belgian and French soil.  No Allied troops had yet crossed the German frontier.  And in those two facts -- irrelevant in terms of Germany's capacity for continued resistance -- lay the seeds of die Dolchstoßlegende.

For no sooner were the troops demobilized and on their ways home that the whispering began:  the German army and the German nation had been "stabbed in the back."  The delegation who met with Marshal Foch had "surrendered at the conference table what the army had won in the field."  The notion began in the minds of generals who, far removed from the suffering at home, believed they still had the means of victory.  It was nurtured by returning troops who wished to believe that their comrades had died in a victorious cause ... a cause then betrayed by the cowardice of politicians at home.

Within a decade, die Dolchstoßlegende was accepted as fact by the German people.  The real lesson of the First World War -- that Germany lacked the resources to defeat a coalition of France, Russia, Britain, and the United States -- was lost.  In the words of the old western movie Who Shot Liberty Valance:  "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

And the legend was that Germany's army had won the First World War, had defeated that coalition, until the German government lost its nerve and surrendered, a "stab in the back" to the brave (and victorious) German troops.

The widespread acceptance of that myth -- and pure myth it was, for Germany could not have held out through the winter of 1918-19 -- led the German people to accept a leader who, twenty years later, promised that this time they would do it right.  This time, Hitler assured the general staff and the people, no German politician would lose his nerve.  This time, they would stay the course, no matter what the cost.  This time, Germany would win.

And so, again, Germany marched to war on September 1, 1939, ultimately facing the same coalition that had defeated her two decades before.  And Hitler did not lose his nerve.  He stayed the course ...

... and Germany was crushed to rubble.

Only in 1945 did the German people accept the real lesson of 1918, that Germany lacked the economic resources to conquer Europe.  In that humiliating defeat, the indisputable proof of that lesson, lay the seeds of today's peaceful Germany, her network of economic treaties with France that led to the formation of the European Union, a common currency, and the moving tribute to humanity that is die Europabrücke -- the "Bridge of Europe" over the Rhine River between Strasbourg and Kehl -- the symbol of nations formerly at war and now committed to a common, beneficial peace.

The United States adopted her own Dolchstoßlegende in 1975, after the fall of Saigon.  The U.S. military -- the legend says -- was victorious in every engagement it fought against the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.  The U.S. military could have won, indeed had won, in Vietnam.  But the military was "stabbed in the back" by irresolute politicians in Washington and a media which betrayed them by turning public opinion against the war.  The generals' "hands were tied."  They "weren't allowed to win."  Henry Kissinger "gave away in Paris what the military had won in Vietnam."

Like die Dolchstoßlegende in Germany after World War I, our Dolchstoßlegende was never more than myth.  The Vietnamese people had been fighting wars of independence for a century: against China, then France, then Japan, then France again, and finally the United States.  The Vietnamese people were willing to continue fighting in perpetuity, regardless of relative casualty rates, in order to secure an independent, united Vietnam.  Short of annihilating the entire Vietnamese population -- a policy and a price too horrific to contemplate -- there was no way the United States could defeat that unification and independence movement.

That was the real lesson of Vietnam: that U.S. military force, applied all but unilaterally, simply cannot impose the dictates of U.S. policy on a foreign nation halfway around the world.  We did not lose in Vietnam because "our hands were tied."  We lost because our mission there was impossible.

But, like die Dolchstoßlegende in Germany after World War I, our Dolchstoßlegende has had tragic consequences.  In the wake of Vietnam, the "legend became fact," and the actual lesson was ignored.  In the words of Santayana, we were "condemned to repeat it."

But this time, we were assured, we would "do it right."  The U.S. military decided that control of the U.S. media was essential to winning a war; that the media could not be allowed to "poison public support at home."  Thus were we treated to the public relations masterpieces that were Grenada, Panama, and Desert Storm, each carefully sanitized, each presented in video game-like images of precision strikes that only killed the bad guys.

This time, George W. Bush assured us, we would "stay the course."  No U.S. leader would be permitted to lose his nerve.  No U.S. leader would give the troops a "stab in the back" by "surrendering at the conference table what the army had won in the field."

And Bush has not lost his nerve ...

... and the United States military is being bled white, at a cost of $11,500 per American household per year, a cost being borrowed against the labor and sweat and ideas of our grandchildren and great grandchildren ...

... in a war which cannot be won and could never have been won, because the mission assigned our troops in Iraq was every bit as impossible as the mission assigned our troops in Vietnam: to impose the dictates of U.S. policy on a country halfway around the world.

And so, as we stand on the eve of an election which is -- by every public opinion sampling -- a referendum on that war, rather than a public debate on the reasons for that war, on the conduct of that war, on the viability of that mission ... as conceived and conducted by one political party with complete control of both the Executive and Legislative branches ...

... we are told that the opposition party, a party out of power, a party which has not been able to shape U.S. policy for six years ...

... we are told that the leaders of this opposition party have betrayed and will betray our troops, will give our brave men and women a "stab in the back," will "surrender at the conference table what our army has won in the field."

President Bush's claim that a vote for the Democrats is a vote for "the terrorists win and America loses," and the near manic clamor of the Rovian spin machine about a bungled joke about the stupidity of our current leadership, is simply the latest incarnation of our Dolchstoßlegende.

Until we learn from the past, we remain ...

... condemned to repeat it.

Cris Brown