I also disagreed with Bret's essay, but for completely different reasons.
We all agree that facists can be extremely successful at battles, as you've laid out below. Bret doesn't make this explicit, but his argument appears to accept this point.
What I think Bret adds to the picture is "don't confuse battlefield success with winning wars. Strategy matters. A lot. And facist nations are constitutionally bad at it." I think this is a good point. Furthermore I think facism's battlefield success and strategic hubris are intertwined, both emerging out of their distain for their opponents, so that it's either hard or impossible to produce a 'fixed' facism that is genuinely good at war, not just at winning battles. I think this point is very relevant to anyone tempted by facism as a solution to the weakness of liberal democracies.
Where Bret's essay disappointed me was that it's an explicitly ad hominem argument aimed at facists that keeps taking time out to sneer at facists. Nothing undermines your argument like being rude about the group you're trying to persuade! As a result I think this is an argument that will in practice only be read by non-facists, for whom I agree the take home message ought actually to be "Be aware that facists can be very strong on the battlefield, and might start a war with you even if it is sheer lunacy to do so."
On your other point, I see 'chooses sensible wars to fight' as distinct from 'good at fighting wars'. War strategy matters, not just battles, yes, but I'm unwilling to lump the whole of diplomacy (including deciding who to fight) into a subset of 'war', as that loses us meaningful and useful points.
As I said above, I do think Bret has a point about fascism being prone to be punch-drunk and starting too many wars. I think it overclaims, partly because we've not had very many actual fascist states, and to really accept this we have to assume there was no plausible outcome post, say, 1937 that didn't end with total Axis defeat. I think that unlikely: Britain surrendering in 1940 was very plausible (and probably the logical - if not the moral - thing for us to do at the time, though I'm very glad we didn't). Also what if we hadn't broken Enigma, Hitler hadn't declared war on the US, etc? A model which assumes Nazi Germany automatically loses because it's bad at war seems problematic; a better model for me is to describe it as very good at war, such that it took a superlative effort by the Allies to overcome and defeat it.
I do take your point that starting the first war unwisely is quite distinct from whether you're good or bad at war once it's started (and Hitler was very successful against France and Britain, so I'm not sure how unwise we can call his decision to invade Poland). However declaring war on extra countries while you're still in the first war is being bad at war, because it's an action in war that drastically reduces your chances at winning that war.
I do also take your point that we're in danger of fatalism "we infer from Nazi Germany losing that it was inevitable that Nazi Germany would lose" when infact there were a couple of years there were it was a very near run thing. However I don't think it was purely Allied brilliance that stopped the Axis. I think the Axis made fatal strategic blunders in putting the Allies together against them. Conversely I think that part of Churchill's brilliance as a war leader was his diplomacy. Right from his first weeks' in office you can see that he's laying the ground for an alliance with America. An alliance that's a long way off, but he has the vision to see it, the talent to see how to make it more likely, and to the diplomatic hard labour to bring it about.
I agree that we don't have the kind of sample size to perform a statistical analysis on facism's performance - one rarely does in history - but I think we can see a causal link between facism's ideology and it's strategic blunders which is as close to evidence as you get in this field.
Fundamentally I don't see what's so alien about the idea that "If you keep losing wars, this is outstanding evidence that you're bad at war. If you keep winning wars, this is outstanding evidence that you're good at war." Any other definition seems like the sort of reality denying nonesense we mock wokery for.
You make a fair point! Though an equally common-sense approach would be to say, "If an entity can only be beaten at activity X by multiple other entities teaming up against it, this is outstanding evidence that the entity is good at activity X."
I agree with all your specific points about WW2.
Ultimately this is purely a semantic issue. I think my approach aligns more closely with natural language and also guards better against complacency; however, I accept yours is entirely self-consistent and workable.
At some level we've reached a semantic impasse, but I can't let the remark on natural language go.
If we say someone is good at chess we mean they're good at winning games of chess. If they lose all the games they play, they're not good at chess!
If we say someone is a good campaign manager we mean they're good at getting their candidate elected. If they lose all the elections they run, they're not good at campaign management! (Insert joke about Toby Ziegler)
If we say someone is good at winning work, we mean that they get a lot of the bids they go in for. If they never land any of the bids they go for they're not good at winning work!
When we say a nation is good at war the natural language position is that this means they tend to win wars! Never winning any of the wars they're involved in is a sign they're not good at war!
A tennis coach who took me, and taught me so well that I lost tennis matches 3 sets to 2 against Murray, Djokovic and Nadal would be a brilliant tennis coach even though I never won a match.
A campaign manager who got 300 seats in Parliament for a party led by Homer Simpson would be a brilliant campaign manager.
The problem with Bret's argument (and I agree with you in generally enjoying and finding value in his work) is that '(real) fascism has never really been tried' so there's a very small evidence base of a) fascist countries and b) fascist countries fighting wars.
Essentially the whole argument boiled down to "Germany and Italy lost WW2" and there was very little evidence (or any evidence) that they lost because they were fascist. It relied on the logic that Germany was stupid to fight WW2 (because it lost) and it fought because it was fascist, which was fairly tendentious.
I suspect deep down that Bret knows this. I wonder if the trigger for this was pressure from his students so his heart wasn't really in it? For "fascists are stupid" read "Trump is stupid"...?
"being comprehensively despite massively outnumbering their opponents" is missing a 'beaten'
"in the real world, they first brought Europe to its news." is probably 'knees'
"only at the cost of millions of life" -> 'lives'
Fixed, thanks!
I also disagreed with Bret's essay, but for completely different reasons.
We all agree that facists can be extremely successful at battles, as you've laid out below. Bret doesn't make this explicit, but his argument appears to accept this point.
What I think Bret adds to the picture is "don't confuse battlefield success with winning wars. Strategy matters. A lot. And facist nations are constitutionally bad at it." I think this is a good point. Furthermore I think facism's battlefield success and strategic hubris are intertwined, both emerging out of their distain for their opponents, so that it's either hard or impossible to produce a 'fixed' facism that is genuinely good at war, not just at winning battles. I think this point is very relevant to anyone tempted by facism as a solution to the weakness of liberal democracies.
Where Bret's essay disappointed me was that it's an explicitly ad hominem argument aimed at facists that keeps taking time out to sneer at facists. Nothing undermines your argument like being rude about the group you're trying to persuade! As a result I think this is an argument that will in practice only be read by non-facists, for whom I agree the take home message ought actually to be "Be aware that facists can be very strong on the battlefield, and might start a war with you even if it is sheer lunacy to do so."
I agree with your critique of his essay too.
On your other point, I see 'chooses sensible wars to fight' as distinct from 'good at fighting wars'. War strategy matters, not just battles, yes, but I'm unwilling to lump the whole of diplomacy (including deciding who to fight) into a subset of 'war', as that loses us meaningful and useful points.
As I said above, I do think Bret has a point about fascism being prone to be punch-drunk and starting too many wars. I think it overclaims, partly because we've not had very many actual fascist states, and to really accept this we have to assume there was no plausible outcome post, say, 1937 that didn't end with total Axis defeat. I think that unlikely: Britain surrendering in 1940 was very plausible (and probably the logical - if not the moral - thing for us to do at the time, though I'm very glad we didn't). Also what if we hadn't broken Enigma, Hitler hadn't declared war on the US, etc? A model which assumes Nazi Germany automatically loses because it's bad at war seems problematic; a better model for me is to describe it as very good at war, such that it took a superlative effort by the Allies to overcome and defeat it.
I do take your point that starting the first war unwisely is quite distinct from whether you're good or bad at war once it's started (and Hitler was very successful against France and Britain, so I'm not sure how unwise we can call his decision to invade Poland). However declaring war on extra countries while you're still in the first war is being bad at war, because it's an action in war that drastically reduces your chances at winning that war.
I do also take your point that we're in danger of fatalism "we infer from Nazi Germany losing that it was inevitable that Nazi Germany would lose" when infact there were a couple of years there were it was a very near run thing. However I don't think it was purely Allied brilliance that stopped the Axis. I think the Axis made fatal strategic blunders in putting the Allies together against them. Conversely I think that part of Churchill's brilliance as a war leader was his diplomacy. Right from his first weeks' in office you can see that he's laying the ground for an alliance with America. An alliance that's a long way off, but he has the vision to see it, the talent to see how to make it more likely, and to the diplomatic hard labour to bring it about.
I agree that we don't have the kind of sample size to perform a statistical analysis on facism's performance - one rarely does in history - but I think we can see a causal link between facism's ideology and it's strategic blunders which is as close to evidence as you get in this field.
Fundamentally I don't see what's so alien about the idea that "If you keep losing wars, this is outstanding evidence that you're bad at war. If you keep winning wars, this is outstanding evidence that you're good at war." Any other definition seems like the sort of reality denying nonesense we mock wokery for.
You make a fair point! Though an equally common-sense approach would be to say, "If an entity can only be beaten at activity X by multiple other entities teaming up against it, this is outstanding evidence that the entity is good at activity X."
I agree with all your specific points about WW2.
Ultimately this is purely a semantic issue. I think my approach aligns more closely with natural language and also guards better against complacency; however, I accept yours is entirely self-consistent and workable.
At some level we've reached a semantic impasse, but I can't let the remark on natural language go.
If we say someone is good at chess we mean they're good at winning games of chess. If they lose all the games they play, they're not good at chess!
If we say someone is a good campaign manager we mean they're good at getting their candidate elected. If they lose all the elections they run, they're not good at campaign management! (Insert joke about Toby Ziegler)
If we say someone is good at winning work, we mean that they get a lot of the bids they go in for. If they never land any of the bids they go for they're not good at winning work!
When we say a nation is good at war the natural language position is that this means they tend to win wars! Never winning any of the wars they're involved in is a sign they're not good at war!
I just disagree with this.
A tennis coach who took me, and taught me so well that I lost tennis matches 3 sets to 2 against Murray, Djokovic and Nadal would be a brilliant tennis coach even though I never won a match.
A campaign manager who got 300 seats in Parliament for a party led by Homer Simpson would be a brilliant campaign manager.
I agree we are at a semantic impasse.
Thanks, this was an interesting read
The problem with Bret's argument (and I agree with you in generally enjoying and finding value in his work) is that '(real) fascism has never really been tried' so there's a very small evidence base of a) fascist countries and b) fascist countries fighting wars.
Essentially the whole argument boiled down to "Germany and Italy lost WW2" and there was very little evidence (or any evidence) that they lost because they were fascist. It relied on the logic that Germany was stupid to fight WW2 (because it lost) and it fought because it was fascist, which was fairly tendentious.
I suspect deep down that Bret knows this. I wonder if the trigger for this was pressure from his students so his heart wasn't really in it? For "fascists are stupid" read "Trump is stupid"...?