How America’s infatuation with World War II has eroded our conscience. In fact, the record of Allied misdeeds is a long one, and includes the British-American bombing of German cities, a terroristic campaign that took the lives of more than half a million civilians, the genocidal "ethnic cleansing" of millions of civilians in eastern and central Europe, and the large-scale postwar mistreatment of German prisoners. Indeed, the work that academic researchers undertook during the war led in part to the creation of agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. In the view of British author and historian Paul Addison, "the war served a generation of Britons and Americans as a myth which enshrined their essential purity, a parable of good and evil." The ultimate purpose was to remove a potential menace to themselves, and thus ensure their own security. 67-72; Alfred M. de Zayas, The German Expellees: Victims in War and Peace (New York: 1993); Frederick J. P. Veale, Advance to Barbarism (IHR, 1993); Jörg Friedrich, The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945 (Columbia University Press, 2006); Ralph F. Keeling, Gruesome Harvest (Chicago: 1947). / 10 This is hardly surprising, given that America's two most important military allies in the war were Great Britain and the Soviet Union – that is, the world's foremost imperialist power, and the world's cruelest tyranny. 4. Americans who express admiration for the US role in World War II, and for Franklin Roosevelt's presidential leadership, have little moral right to complain when presidents follow his example and lead the country into war by breaking the law, subverting the Constitution, and lying to the people. ( http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p389_Hitler.html ), Adolf Hitler, “Hitler Answers Roosevelt.” Speech of April 28, 1939. See, for example: Max Hastings, Bomber Command (New York: 1979); Giles MacDonogh, After the Reich (2007); N. Davies, No Simple Victory (2007), pp. / 30. Our perspective on history profoundly shapes our actions in the present, often with grave consequences for the future. David L. Hoggan. 3 (New York: DaCapo, 1987), p. 629. 3. 12, 17. In fact, on each side there were regimes that were repressive or dictatorial, as well as governments that had broad public support. It’s unfortunate that his otherwise superb review was marred by this faulty misreading. The war had also prompted the country to invent a miraculous economic machine that seemed to grant as many wishes as were asked of it. The South won the second. Twenty-five years after the end of the conflict, he wrote: / 34, "We won the war in a military sense; but in a broader sense it seems to me we lost it, for our Western civilization is less respected and secure than it was before. In a letter to the President, written while he was serving as the chief US prosecutor at the great Nuremberg trial of 1945-1946, Jackson acknowledged that the Allies "have done or are doing some of the very things we are prosecuting the Germans for. ( http://ihr.org/other/RooseveltBritishCollusion ), M. Weber, “The Hossbach 'Protocol': The Destruction of a Legend” (review). This article was presented as a lecture at an IHR meeting in Costa Mesa, California, on May 24, 2008. Patrick J. Buchanan, Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War': How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World (New York: Crown, 2008). Boris Sokolov, Myths and Legends of the Eastern Front. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War. But because the masses are notoriously shortsighted and generally cannot see danger until it is at their throats, our statesmen are forced to deceive them into an awareness of their own long-run interests. American schools, the US mass media, government agencies and political leaders have for decades carried on a campaign of emotion-laden, one-sided propaganda to uphold the national mythology of World War II. Drawing conclusions from our understanding of the past, we make or support policies that greatly impact many lives. by Mike Dawson. How strange those words sound today. 606-615; Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939-1941 (New York: 1976), pp. But as we have seen, presidential deception to justify war did not start with him. Studs Terkel, "The Good War" (1984), p. 193. This comic is an adaptation of Chris Hayes’ piece ‘The Good War on Terror’ first published by In These Times in 2006. Allan Nevins, Henry Steele Commager, A Pocket History of the United States (New York: Washington Square Press, 1986), p. 433. Also in crass violation of international law, the officially neutral US government provided massive "Lend Lease" aid to Germany's enemies, especially Britain and its empire, as well as to Soviet Russia. C. Tansill, Back Door to War (1952), pp. Roosevelt's goal was to provoke an "incident" that would provide a pretext for open war. But the war itself was horrendous. R. H. S. Stolfi, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny. Blume’s “Fallout” was masterly, until he asserted that there was — to use his words — no “cover-up to hide the realities of radiation sickness from public knowledge.” But that seems to go against what Blume is saying. / 25, In the view of British historian J.F.C. Herbert C. Hoover, Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and its Aftermath (George H. Nash, ed.). Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire." ( http://www.antiwar.com/horton/?articleid=11213 ), 13. Cold War, the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. Many of the countries allied with the US were headed by governments that were oppressive, dictatorial, or otherwise non-democratic. Both would be really Jewish control." Shortly after the end of the war, the victorious powers put Germany's wartime leaders on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. 9, 10, 420, 421. The Aug. 30 review by William Langewiesche of Lesley M.M. Eisenhower declaration of June 6, 1944, issued in connection with the D-Day invasion. 164-165.Also quoted there by Fussell is Eric Severeid, an influential American journalist and commentator, who wrote that the war "absolutely" was a "contest between good and evil.". On Oct. 25, 1941, US Assistant Secretary of State Adolph Berle told Americans that Hitler and the Nazis "planned to conquer the entire world." The consequences have proved that I was right." Professor Bailey went on to offer a cynical view of American democracy: "A president who cannot entrust the people with the truth betrays a certain lack of faith in the basic tenets of democracy. Paths of Glory. Crimes against humanity also include the mass expulsion of populations. The three Allied leaders accomplished what they accused the Axis leaders of Germany, Italy and Japan of conspiring to achieve: world domination. At the end of the war the United States was the only major nation not shattered in the global conflict. / 22, President Roosevelt's record of lies is acknowledged even by his admirers. We say aggressive war is a crime and one of our allies asserts sovereignty over the Baltic States based on no title except conquest." World War II is the war thrown into our faces by the war-making establishment, as it tries, in each war that we face, to wrap itself in the mantle of good and righteous World War II." Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), Harry Elmer Barnes, ed., Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (Institute for Historical Review, 1993). "War" is a counterculture era soul song written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong for the Motown label in 1969. And it is this very outlook that moved President George W. Bush to refer to his "war on terrorism" as a "crusade," and, in a major speech, to proclaim a US foreign policy dedicated to "ending tyranny in the world." Source cited: W. Churchill, The Second World War. Within the younger generation Induction, then destruction Who wants to die? Press, 1994). Indeed, for decades that was a proud claim of Moscow's leaders. "We learned from Hitler at Munich," he said, "that success only feeds the appetite of aggression. Liz assists Caleb in a military trial. Once Germany and Japan were defeated, though, the US and the Soviet Union squared off against each other, which made it impossible for the UN to function as President Roosevelt had intended. And although Britain and France went to war supposedly to protect Polish independence, at the end of the fighting in 1945 – after five and a half years of horrific struggle, death and suffering – Poland was still not free, but instead was entirely under the brutal rule of Soviet Russia. / 15. "Speaking as an American and as a newspaperman of 15 years experience who knows something about both the United States and Europe," he wrote in early 1943, "I think an American control and administration of Europe would be just as destructive and ruinous as Soviet control. He studied history at the University of Illinois (Chicago), the University of Munich, Portland State University and Indiana University (M.A., 1977). / 14, After "forty months of war duty and five major battles" in which Edgar L. Jones served as "an ambulance driver, a merchant seaman, an Army historian, and a war correspondent," he wrote an article dispelling some myths about the Americans' role in the war. See: M. Weber, "Roosevelt's 'Secret Map' Speech," The Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1985. I read this riveting, Pulitzer winning book it when it was first published in 1984. World War II is the war thrown into our faces by the war-making establishment, as it tries, in each war that we face, to wrap itself in the mantle of good and righteous World War II.". 102-103, 474 , 476; See also: F. P. Yockey, Imperium (Noontide Press, 2000). 16. / 33, In the view of Charles A. Lindbergh, the world-famous author and aviator, the war was a great setback for the West. Stark memo to Secretary Hull, Oct. 8, 1941. Quoted in: Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939-1941 (New York: 1976), p. 426. Terkel was one of the best interviewers ever and this is one of his best books. Other equally unneutral acts followed – the seizure of Axis shipping, the freezing of Axis funds, the transfer of tankers to Britain, the occupation of Greenland and, later, of Iceland, the extension of lend-lease to the new ally, Russia, and ... the presidential order to 'shoot on sight' any enemy submarines." The Aug. 30 review of Chris Wallace’s “Countdown 1945” correctly notes that the United States estimated an invasion of Japan would result in the deaths of 500,000 to one million Americans. Paths of Glory is actually a bit of an anti-war … ( http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard165.html ), 39. ( http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p125_Weber.html ), Alfred M. de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Expulsion of the Germans from the East (University of Nebraska, 1989), ©2013-2021 INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW, http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-2_Weber.html, http://www.antiwar.com/horton/?articleid=11213, http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/nonatlserv.shtml, http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p167_Webera.html, http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard165.html, http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs77.html, http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p389_Hitler.html, http://ihr.org/other/HitlerAnswersRoosevelt, http://ihr.org/other/what-the-world-rejected.html, http://ihr.org/other/RooseveltBritishCollusion, https://www.ihr.org/jhr/v04/v04p372_Weber.html, http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v04/v04p135_Weber.html, http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p125_Weber.html. But he fails to note this: A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s staff estimated that the invasion would also cost five million to 10 million Japanese fatalities. 64-67, 12. "We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled the flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter-openers." Quoted in: Studs Terkel, "The Good War" (New York: 1984), p. 8. I've never been to sea on a destroyer, let alone at war on one, but after this book, I feel that I … Whitfield first produced the song – an obvious anti-Vietnam War statement – with The Temptations as the original vocalists. 589, 601; Frederic R. Sanborn, "Roosevelt is Frustrated in Europe," in H. E. Barnes, ed., Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (1993), pp. 33. / 24. The French are so violating the Geneva Convention in the treatment of [German] prisoners of war that our command is taking back prisoners sent to them [for forced labor in France]. Doubleday & Co., 1976. Press, 1990), p. 48. / 9. Many Americans are understandably outraged by the deceit and falsehoods of President George W. Bush and his administration in seeking public support for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. 13. They also acted to control their own populations, each country with its own techniques – crude in the Soviet Union, sophisticated in the United States – to make their rule secure.". ( http://ihr.org/other/what-the-world-rejected.html ). Thanks for giving me respite from the storm. 573 f. 21. Churchill then said, "Might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of people, in such an off-hand manner? See also: James McMillan, Five Men at Nuremberg (London: 1985), pp. I urged that we should allow those two dictators to exhaust each other. In order to defeat Germany and Japan we supported the still greater menaces of Russia and China – which now confront us in a nuclear-weapon era. The country was overwhelmingly noninterventionist to the very day of Pearl Harbor, and an overt attempt to lead the people into war would have resulted in certain failure and an almost certain ousting of Roosevelt in 1940, with a complete defeat of his ultimate aims.". Quoted in: Robert E. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg (New York: 1983), p. 68. Join thousands of mighty heroes in Azeroth, a world of magic and limitless adventure. Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory, Winston Churchill 1941-45, Vol. Press, 1999), p. ix (preface); Soviet losses in the three-week Berlin offensive of April 16 to May 8, 1945, it's been estimated, were greater than the total of American dead in the Second World War, and greater than the losses of the Western allies in the whole of 1945. Those defects are exactly what accounted for the cover-up, and a cover-up it surely was. Ooh, war Is an enemy to all mankind The thought of war blows my mind War has caused unrest. "World War II has warped our view of how we look at things today," said US Navy rear admiral Gene R. LaRoque, who served in 13 major battles during the war. 18. Absolutely (nothin') Say it, say it, say it (War) Woah-h'uh (h'uh) yeah uh (What is it good for?) The selfless dedication demonstrated by the Communist Party during the war years further solidified the trust, respect and love it enjoys among the Soviet people." Both these countries now went to work – without swastikas, goose-stepping, or officially declared racism, but under the cover of 'socialism' on the one side, and 'democracy' on the other, to carve out their own empires of influence. Following their secret rendezvous, Liz and Caleb find themselves on a case together, defending a soldier court-martialed for sabotaging the weapon of his superior officer. Let us burn the paper." 31. War fiction is apparently very difficult to carry off well. / 2 Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme wartime Commander of American forces in Europe, and later US president for eight years, called the fight against Nazi Germany "the Great Crusade." Source cited: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1942, vol. The War is the story of the Second World War through the personal accounts of a handful of men and women from four American towns. Hitler, for his part, was anxious to avoid conflict with the United States. Robert Conquest, a prominent scholar of twentieth century Russian history, estimates the number of those who lost their lives as a consequence of Stalin's policies as "no fewer than 20 million." Fuller, A Military History of the Western World , Vol. / 36, Since 1945, American presidents have repeatedly sought to justify US military actions in foreign countries by recalling the "good war" and, in particular, the US role in defeating Germany. iv-v (preface). Mark Weber is director of the Institute for Historical Review. As part of this effort, the President and other high-ranking American officials broadcast fantastic lies about supposed plans by Hitler and his government to attack the United States and impose a global dictatorship. The policy’s success was measured in part by the rapidity with which most Latin American states rallied to the Allies during World War II. "What kind of war do civilians suppose we fought, anyway?," he told readers of The Atlantic monthly. World War II was not only the greatest military conflict in history, it was also America's most important twentieth-century war. VII (Houghton Mifflin, 1986), pp. ", In 1940, shortly after he was named prime minister, Winston Churchill spelled out, in two often quoted speeches, his reasons for continuing Britain's war against Germany. Their hearts ran away with their heads and their emotions befogged their reason. ), The Chief Culprit: Stalin's Grand Design to Start World War II. The D-Day landing in France by American and British forces, which is often portrayed in the United States as a critically important military blow against Nazi Germany, was launched in June 1944 -- that is, less than a year before the end of the war in Europe, and months after the great Soviet military victories at Stalingrad and Kursk, which were decisive in Germany's defeat. Another popular American assumption is that this country's enemies in World War II were all non-democratic dictatorships. J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World, Vol. 2 Corinthians 10:3,4 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: … Ephesians 6:12-18 27. Ooh war, Good God (h'uh) y'all! Fuller, President Roosevelt "left no stone unturned to provoke Hitler to declare war on the very people to whom he so ardently promised peace. As historians acknowledge, the victims of Soviet dictator Stalin greatly outnumber those who perished as a result of Hitler's policies. ", As part of the US government's campaign to incite war, President Roosevelt in 1941 ordered the US Navy to help British forces in attacking German vessels in the Atlantic. H. P. Willmott, The Great Crusade: A New Complete History of the Second World War (New York: 1990), p. 452; In the view of historian John Lukacs: "Their [the Soviet Russians'] resistance and victory over the Germans was their greatest – no, their only great – achievement during the seventy-four years of Soviet Communism." Focal Point, 2002. N. 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