Here’s a 60 Minutes segment I found both intriguing and touching. The show reveals a ton of Nazi documentation on the Holocaust (50 million pages!) that has only recently been made public. The documents and artifacts were found by the Allies after the war and sequestered in a town called Bad Arolsen (you can even search the archive here).

The Nazis were obsessive at recording everything, including details of the victims they killed in the camps. Why? Because they wanted to prove to their superiors that they were “getting the job done.” The minutiae recorded, including the number and size of the lice on prisoners’ heads, is amazing.

Some of the most moving parts include showing three Holocaust survivors their own records, records they’d never seen before. One rolls up his sleeve to show a tattooed number corresponding to his camp document.

I, for one, never thought deeply enough about the Ukraine/Russia war to think about the simple issue posed by this Quillette piece (no, it’s not a right wing rant). Click on the screenshot to read it:

The dilemma is expressed in the title and in this paragraph by Lloyd, a contributing editor at the Financial Times and co-founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism:

An existential choice faces Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine. It is perhaps the worst choice facing any head of state in the world—between capitulation before Russian President Vladimir Putin and continued resistance to the Russian invasion. If Zelensky chooses the former, there is no guarantee—or even a realistic hope—that any agreement to end hostilities will be honoured a minute longer than Putin finds convenient. On the other hand, continued resistance guarantees that many more Ukrainians—military and civilian—will die and many more cities and towns will be reduced to rubble, even if victory (whatever that looks like) is achieved eventually.

Although I thought the war would be over quickly, with Russia the victor, I still think Russia has the upper hand. As the NYT reports today, Russia is firing more missiles at Kyiv, and Putin has threatened to stat firing at new targets if the West supplies Ukraine with longer-range missiles. The Donbas region is well on its way to complete control by Russia, and reports of Ukrainian advances are rare.  This makes the “existential choice” more likely. Is there anyone who still thinks that Ukraine will expel Russia entirely?

The West, too, is starting to pressure Ukraine to settle. Germany has failed to come through with promised weapons, probably because it stands to lose the most in terms of Russian gas. France is waffling too; from the NYT:

President Emmanuel Macron of France’s assertion that Ukraine and its allies should refrain from humiliating Moscow to improve the possibility of a negotiated settlement touched off a fiery response from Kyiv. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said that such statements “can only humiliate France and every other country that would call for it.”

Refrain from humiliating Moscow? They conducted a brutal invasion, killing thousands of civilians, and committing numerous war crimes, and we shouldn’t “humiliate” them?? There’s only so far you can go with Realpolitik, and giving in to Putin doesn’t include that. But what’s the alternative?

Lloyd gives two reasons why Putin invaded:

So, why did Putin do it? For two reasons, above all. First, he was tormented by the prospect of Ukraine becoming wholly democratic and pro-Western—an example he feared would inspire the very many Russians who wish to see their own country develop an active civil society. Second, were this to happen, it would thwart Putin’s clearly expressed aim to merge the three Slav states of the former Soviet Union into a partial reconstruction of the Russian empire—Belarus is already in Putin’s pocket; Ukraine is now fighting to stay out of it; and Russia has allotted itself the role of imperial master. In a 5,000-word essay published in July last year and titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” Putin denied that Ukraine is a separate state, and warned that Russia could not permit it to drift into the West’s orbit.

He suggests, giving a link, that Putin may be seriously ill, and thus trying to cement his legacy:

He has come to see the reconstitution of the most important part of the Russian empire as his legacy. If rumours of Putin’s failing health are true, that legacy may soon become operative, which has led observers to speculate that the precipitate invasion was the decision of a sick man in a hurry. Putin’s imperial ambitions and iron determination make him an impossible interlocutor—a man determined, as Emmanuel Macron has discovered, not to give an inch.

The more I watch this war (and remember, I’m no pundit), the more I think Lloyd is right. Every day 100 Ukrainian soldiers die—and there’s a finite number of them—the more I think that Zelensky will have to cut some kind of deal with Putin. The problem, of course, is that Putin is a liar and a cheat, and his promises are worth nothing,

It’s a bad business all around, but I don’t think Ukraine will do anything more than survive as a smaller portion of itself (and without NATO membership). But let’s take a poll, and explain your opinion below.

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h/t: Steve

Remember, I am not a political pundit. All I can do is express an average liberal American’s worry about politics. So this average liberal was concerned by the NYT headline below (click on screenshot):

The normal first reaction would be “What the hell? First Biden threatens, and implements, in cooperation with other European and First World nations, extremely strict sanctions designed to make life very uncomfortable for Putin. Now, however, they’re worried that the imposition of those very sanctions will anger Putin even more, so that he’ll lash out like a fighting bull stabbed by a picador. Who’s in charge here?” From the NYT:

Senior White House officials designing the strategy to confront Russia have begun quietly debating a new concern: that the avalanche of sanctions directed at Moscow, which have gained speed faster than they imagined, is cornering President Vladimir V. Putin and may prompt him to lash out, perhaps expanding the conflict beyond Ukraine.

In Situation Room meetings in recent days, the issue has come up repeatedly, according to three officials. Mr. Putin’s tendency, American intelligence officials have told the White House and Congress, is to double down when he feels trapped by his own overreach. So they have described a series of possible reactions, ranging from indiscriminate shelling of Ukrainian cities to compensate for the early mistakes made by his invading force, to cyberattacks directed at the American financial system, to more nuclear threats and perhaps moves to take the war beyond Ukraine’s borders.

The debate over Mr. Putin’s next moves is linked to an urgent re-examination by intelligence agencies of the Russian leader’s mental state, and whether his ambitions and appetite for risk have been altered by two years of Covid isolation.

. . .Nonetheless, Mr. Putin’s reaction to the initial wave of sanctions has provoked a range of concerns that one senior official called the “Cornered Putin Problem.” Those concerns center on a series of recent announcements: the pullout of oil companies like Exxon and Shell from developing Russia’s oil fields, the moves against Russia’s central bank that sent the ruble plunging, and Germany’s surprise announcement that it would drop its ban on sending lethal weapons to the Ukrainian forces and ramp up its defense spending.

But beyond canceling the missile test, there is no evidence that the United States is considering steps to reduce tensions, and a senior official said there was no interest in backing off sanctions.

And indeed, from what I hear, the sanctions are playing hob with the Russian economy, exactly as intended. The Ukrainians, though doomed, are fighting back gallantly, earning the admiration of all lovers of democracy. So why are people worried even more now? Well, the nervous Nellies have three concerns:

1.) More hacking. From the NYT:

Just looking at the NYT headline below made me ill.

Now we all knew that Trump is a man without scruples, morals, or empathy, but I’m hoping that, by supporting Putin, he’s gone too far this time. Most Americans are on the side of Ukraine (after all, we still stand for democracy against dictatorshis); though, curiously, the Democrats seem more hawkish than the Republicans.  But Trump. . . . well, he’s rootin’ for Putin. And why not? Trump aspires to be like Putin.

Click to read, if you can bear it

Only hours before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, former President Donald J. Trump again praised the cunning of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia while lashing out at the intellect of President Biden.

“I mean he’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Putin to donors and Republican lawmakers at Mar-a-Lago, his private club, on Wednesday. “I’d say that’s pretty smart.”

The kind words a former president gave a foreign adversary locked in a geopolitical showdown with the United States — and committing the most egregious act of aggression in Europe since World War II — would be virtually unprecedented, except that Mr. Trump himself had praised Mr. Putin only a day earlier, saying his aggression was “genius” and “very savvy.”

Most Republican leaders, though not all Republicans, have condemned Putin’s arrant action, and though some Republicans don’t care, I haven’t seen any save Trump actually praise Putin.

Later on Wednesday, after the fighting had begun and explosions could already be heard in Kyiv and around Ukraine, Mr. Trump called into Fox News, where he claimed that the crisis would not have happened if he were still in the White House.

Both in his speech and on Fox News, Mr. Trump repeated his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

“He was going to be satisfied with the peace,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Putin, “and now he sees the weakness and the incompetence and the stupidity of this administration.”

Now it’s not clear that Trump actually said that Putin is doing a good thing by invading Ukraine, for his praise of Putin preceded the actual invasion. But in saying that “the crisis would not have happened if he were still in the White House,” I’m pretty sure that Trump means, “Putin and I are pals and understand each other; we would have cut a deal that would have prevented the equation.” He’s not saying, “Had I been President, I would have used the U.S. military to prevent this crisis.”

One hopes that Trump has shown his ultimate rottenness here, and that even many of his supporters will be revolted by his praise of Putin during the invasion of a democratic country. But never underestimate the ability of Republicans to cling to Trump like remoras to a shark.  Most of them probably don’t even care what’s happening in Europe.

Below is the first person I’ve read who has explicitly come out and said that we should be fighting the Russians—not with sanctions but with weapons. The author is Zoe Strimpel writing at Bari Weiss’s Substack site. Click on the screenshot below to read (and subscribe if you read frequently).

Strimpel is identified this way:

Zoe Strimpel is a historian of intimacy and gender, journalist, author and commentator based in London.

And she’s a columnist for the Sunday Torygraph.

Strimpel’s thesis is that we must show Putin that we’re resolute, and Biden is too dotty or too cowardly to do that. So long as we respond timorously, says Strimpel, and with tepid sanctions instead of flying lead, Putin will steamroller eastern Europe. Why would he stop at Ukraine?

Not only that, but if we don’t defend Ukraine, why would we defend Taiwan, which the Chinese have been eying hungrily for some time. This is all in Strimpel’s article, and I’ve put two excerpts below:

There is only one country that can bring this relitigation to an immediate end and restore order not only to Ukraine but the whole of Europe. To do that, the United States would have to convince Putin that it is willing to go to war to protect Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty. But no one believes it is.

“Deterrence is a simple equation: capability times will,” former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster told me. “I think that many of our adversaries today think our will is about zero. I think we’re set up for a cascading crisis now in large measure because of the perception that our will is diminished.”

The problem is not just that the United States has, over the past two decades, waged two unsuccessful wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor is it just that Americans are tired of fighting and don’t care about the former Soviet Union, although there’s some of that. (In a poll just released by the Associated Press, just 26 percent of Americans say the U.S. should play a major role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.) Nor is it just that Joe Biden is a weak president who lacks the energy needed to do battle with the likes of Vladimir Putin. (See, for example, the statement Biden put out shortly after the invasion was announced.)

. . . .When Putin announced that the war was starting in a televised address Thursday, he emphasized that any countries that interfered would face “consequences they have never seen.”

The question is: Will anyone test that threat? Will anyone interfere?

The Latvians, the Lithuanians, the Estonians—they’re wondering: What happens if Russian troops steamroll over us, too? If one of those countries was invaded by the Russians, it would, no doubt, invoke Article Five of the NATO treaty, which would compel all other NATO members, including the United States, to come to their defense. But would they? Or would they retreat and cower? Would they say what so many myopic and inward-looking voices have been saying for years: The Soviet Union is dead. Or, Putin just wants to control his sphere of influence, just as we do ours. Or, Who needs NATO?

What about China? The Chinese are watching the showdown between Russia and Ukraine, and they are thinking, If the Americans won’t defend Kiev, will they defend Taiwan? Will they?

So, not only do we have to convince Putin that we’ll go to war with Russia if he doesn’t back off; but to make that threat credible—because you know Putin isn’t going to believe us—we must actually go to war with Russia in defense of Ukraine. That’s what Strimpel is suggesting, or so I think.

Now we all have immense sympathy for the long-beleaguered Ukrainians, who will die by the hundreds, but deaths would skyrocket if we follow Strimpel’s advice. Has she forgotten what would happen if the U.S. and Russia cross swords? Does she not know that Russia has nuclear weapons, as do we, and that Putin has already threatened to use them should anybody intervene? Does she know that Russia does not have a “no first use” nuclear policy, and that Putin himself said that he’d be okay about responding to conventional weapons by using nuclear ones?

And even if there’s some gentlemen’s agreement that both sides will rely only on conventional weapons, Putin is not going to fold and retreat once the U.S. military starts shooting. It would be a long and bloody battle, and America doesn’t have the stomach for it more of its citizens coming home in body bags for a cause that is not crystal clear. And if we intervene, we’d have to occupy Ukraine for ages, as we did in Afghanistan.\

Following Strimpel’s advice would, pure and simple, launch World War III

Unless I’m missing something in this article, Strimpel is on the fringe of being unhinged, if she’s not there already. It’s simply too damn late to convince Putin that we would go to war if he doesn’t back off, and a threat that is idle isn’t a credible threat.

How much blood does Strimpel want spilled? And are the deaths worth the gain? These are questions she doesn’t ponder.  And all I can conclude from reading this saber-rattling from a Brit is that Bari Weiss herself has no problem with Strimpel’s views. Her site is not an op-ed site where all views are aired, and I haven’t yet seen a column that I didn’t think Weiss would approve of.

Of course, if you think we should begin shooting at the Russians, by all means say that in the comments and defend your views. In my own view, Biden and the allies have done a pretty good job so far. Now if Putin decides to really play Hitler and go after more Lebensraum, then all bets are off.