CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

World War Two, the “No Good” War

The ruins of Dresden, after the Allied bombing. Public domain.

September 1 is the anniversary of the start of World War Two in Europe.  On that date in 1939, Nazi Germany launched an invasion of Poland from the west and a few weeks later, the Soviet Union invaded from the east. Hitler and Stalin signed a Non-Aggression Pact shortly before they carved up Poland but that ceasefire didn’t last beyond June 1941.

World War Two has been heralded for more than 50 years as the “Good War” – in contrast to subsequent U.S. military debacles in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran.  But World War Two cannot be glorified without hiding a heap of lies and millions of corpses.

Less than six months before the war started in Europe, H.L. Mencken warned in the Baltimore Sun: “The main reason why it is easy to sell war to peaceful people is that the demagogues who act as salesmen quickly acquire a monopoly of both public information and public instruction.” Looking at the peril of another world war, Mencken predicted, “On the day war is declared, the Espionage Act will come into effect, and all free discussion will cease… Any argument against the war itself, and any criticism of the persons appointed to carry it on, will become aid and comfort to the enemy.” Mencken wrote, “A few weeks of [pro-war] razzle-dazzle will suffice to convert most people to the war and to intimidate and silence the stray recalcitrant who holds out.” Thanks to massive pressure to conform and submit, “The dissenter is not only suspected by all his neighbors; he also begins to suspect himself.” Unfortunately, the U.S. government vindicated Mencken’s worst fears on censorship during the war and far beyond.

President Franklin Roosevelt worked ceaselessly and shamelessly to drag America into the European conflict. He capped off his 1940 reelection campaign by promising voters: “Your president says this country is not going to war.” FDR portrayed World War Two as a fight for democracy, which required endless hornswoggling of the American public regarding U.S. allies.

The Roosevelt administration engineered a movie tribute to Stalin — Mission to Moscow — that was so slavish that Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich observed that “no Soviet propaganda agency would dare to present such outrageous lies.” In his 1944 State of the Union address, Roosevelt denounced those Americans with “such suspicious souls — who feared that I have made ‘commitments’ for the future which might pledge this Nation to secret treaties” with Stalin at the summit of Allied leaders in Tehran the previous month. Roosevelt helped set the two-tier attack that permeated much of postwar American foreign policy — denouncing cynics, while betraying foreigners whom the U.S. government pretended to champion.

In a private conversation at the Yalta conference in early 1945, Roosevelt assured Stalin that he was feeling “more bloodthirsty” than when they previously met. Immediately after the Yalta conference, the British and American air forces turned Dresden into an inferno, killing up to 50,000 civilians.........

© CounterPunch