Do dictatorships or democracies produce better soldiers?
Noteworthy exchanges recently prompted by Max Hastings’ Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-45 — in particular, the claim that the Allies’ citizen-soldiers were less effective than the soldiers of totalitarian states, and were less effectively (because less profligately) used. Online hostilities opened with Andrew Sullivan citing Hastings in attacking the argument that democracies are inherently more formidable in war than dictatorships. This prompted a worthy response from Brad DeLong, who pointed out that Allied military performance in WW2 hardly indicated an unwillingness to take casualties, and that in any event, the willingness to take casualties is by itself no guarantee of military effectiveness (there’s more, of course — I do expect readers to follow these links for themselves, ahem!). Which in turn elicited more good commentary from Steven Sailer, who contradicted DeLong in pointing to evidence that German soldiers were indeed more effective than Allied, while ending up
