Object-oriented programming requires good generic containers for objects. But strong compile-time type checking destroys the ability to create such containers

I disagree. While many popular static type checking languages have poor mechanisms for handling generic containers, some have rather nice ones.

For example I find Eiffel's generic classes elegant and powerful.

It also looks likely that Java will be getting generic types in the nearish future - although I've not spent the time to see whether its a nice implementation (although pretty much anything would be better than the current ghastly casting nonsense).

This isn't to say Java is one of my favourite languages (its not my most hated either :-)