OMNI
WORLD WAR II—THE “GOOD WAR”?—NEWSLETTER #2,
December 4, 2018.
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice,
and Ecology.
(#1 May
17, 2013).
http://omnicenter.org/donate/
My blog: War and Warming
http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/
http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/
Contents World War II, #1, http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2013/05/us-in-world-war-ii-good-war-newsletter-1.html
Contents World War II, #2
Dick
Bennett, Introductory
Dick, Good Wars
in US Wars?
Dick’s
Newsletters, US Invasions and Occupations
Laurence Vance,
Best Books
Patricia Hynes,
WWII and US Militarism
Thomas Fleming,
Pearl Harbor Provoked
TEXTS
Ted Grimsrud. The Good War That Wasn’t — And Why It
Matters: World War,
II’s Moral Legacy.
II’s Moral Legacy.
War in Pacific
Marino’s Review
of Piehler and Pash, eds., New
Perspectives
Two
Explanations of the Atomic Bombing and Japanese Surrender
Richard B. Frank, Downfall: to Compel
Surrender and End the War
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: to
Prevent Soviet Invasion
Dick, WWII and
Attack on Constitution and Civil Liberties: Internment of Japanese-Americans in
Arkansas
War in Europe
Charles Glass, The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War
II
PBS, “Nazi Mega
Weapons ‘Part One’” July 17, 2013
Dick, Real
Theme of the Nazi Atlantic Wall and Allied Victory
Hitchcock, The
Human Costs of Allied Victory and Liberation
Contents of
WWII Newsletter #1
The “Good War,”
The “Great Generation”
Song “Nostalgic
for the Forties” by Nick Masullo, 2007 (set to music by Kelly Mulhollan)
Hitler’s
Anti-Semitism
USA IN WWII
GOOD
WARS IN US WARS? By Dick Bennett
OMNI has for
seventeen years believed in preventing wars by advocating world peace through
education, the arts and sciences, faith traditions, nonviolence, social and
economic justice, human rights, mutual understanding, conflict resolution,
diplomacy, negotiation, exchange programs. We have not promoted pacifism. That
is, our advocacy has not been absolutist, but has depended upon the search for
historical truth. Since some US wars
might have been justified, study of US history has been an integral part of our
program. We have tried to understand
which of the many US
wars and interventions could be justified.
While US flag patriots have promoted the righteousness of all US wars in
an expanding empire, we, and the peace movement in general, have tried to
discover, through a careful reading of US history, how many regime overthrows,
coups, interventions, invasions, and occupations were defensible.
Some recent books
about this history include American Wars:
Illusions and Realities edited by Paul Buchheit, that examines nineteen
illusions leading the US to war, and Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, a
study of the toppling of fourteen foreign governments. Earlier, two books by William Blum surveyed
all of the US interventions
since WWII: Killing Hope and Rogue State . “From
1945 to the end of the century, the United States attempted to overthrow more
than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist
movements struggling against intolerable regimes” (Rogue State, first edition, p. 2). These books give us a history of
the US
as global bully. The peace movement
opposed and opposes post-WWII US wars (invasions and interventions) because
most, perhaps all, have been unnecessary, illegal, and immoral.
World War II is
not included in these histories; it has been “the good war” that produced “the
greatest generation.” However, recently US behavior in
that war has received closer scrutiny.
In Worshipping the Myths of World
War II, Reflections on America’s Dedication to War, Edward Wood, Jr.,
examines four myths “that have masked the real nature of World War II and all
our wars that followed” (p. x). Many
articles and some books question the ethics and practical effectiveness of
allied air war. The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon by
Michael Sherry traces the development and horrendous consequences of
indiscriminate bombing of cities by air war. A.C. Grayling’s Among
the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WW II Bombing of Civilians
in Germany and Japan denounces
indiscriminate, “area” bombing.
Keith Lowe’s Inferno 1943: the Fiery
Destruction of Hamburg evokes the horrors of Hamburg’s destruction.
John Dower’s War Without Mercy shows
the similarities of US and Japanese bigotry and ferocity. And there are more.
But one book
has a special importance for us on December 7.
Roland Worth, Jr. in No Choice But War: The United States Embargo
Against Japan and the Eruption of War in the Pacific (McFarland, 1995) finds much to blame
in both countries for causing World War II in the Pacific. He expresses no sympathy for Japanese
militarism, ruthless aggression, and mass killing. But he also shows “the pivotal role of the
U.S.-led economic embargo in pushing Japan over the edge into overt
hostilities against the West. In other
words the U.S. decision to embargo 90 percent of Japan’s petroleum and
two-thirds or more of its trade led directly to the attack on Pearl Harbor on
December 7, 1941.” “It was not just a
matter of Japanese imperialism; the misjudged American response [of total
embargo] sealed off the possibility of a peaceful solution or even of ‘hot cold
war’” and pushed the Japanese “beyond the point of no return” (ix-x).
During the past
two decades, the official, patriotic, illusory enthusiasm for US wars that led
to more wars has received significant deflation. The US wars were not
inevitable and as we have seen have been disastrous. You and I now have a
well-substantiated history that can lead to peace. Our task on Pearl Harbor Day and on all
war-making National DAYS (e.g., the replacement of Armistice Day by Veterans Day) is to make that history
known to the next generations of young people.
Selected Dick’s
Newsletters on US
Invasions and Occupations
include the following (additional newsletters for these topics are being
prepared, and newsletters for others are available):
European Westward
Conquest: N. America
European
Westward Conquest: Pacific
World War I
World War II
Latin America
Korean War
Vietnam War
Afghanistan War
Iraq Wars
(The larger frame of US interventions is provided by William Blum in his four books,
particularly Killing Hope [1995,
updated 2004], covering 1945-2004, and Rogue
State [2000], containing “A Concise History of US Global Interventions 1945-Present”)
Laurence Vance’s best books choices:
If you read only one book on World War I, read Jack Beatty’s The Lost History of 1914: Reconsidering the
Year the Great War Began. If you read only one book on World War II, read
Ted Grimsrud’s The Good War That Wasn’t —
And Why It Matters: World War II’s Moral Legacy. If you read only one book
on the Vietnam War, read Nick Turse’s Kill
Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. And now I can say
that if you read only one book on the morality of just war theory, read Robert
Meagher’s Killing from the Inside Out:
Moral Injury and Just War.
Laurence M.
Vance [send him mail]
writes from central Florida. He is the author of War, Christianity, and the State: Essays
on the Follies of Christian Militarism; War, Empire, and the Military: Essays on
the Follies of War and U.S. Foreign Policy; and many other books. Visit his website.
And if you
read only one newsletter on WWII, read these two.
“The seeds of American
militarism spawned by the Second World War compel us to probe beneath the ‘good
war’ moniker because it is the
poster war that keeps war acceptable in our society.” Patricia Hynes. “The Bombing of Royan”
Because in 1941 President Roosevelt “feared that a call for
intervention would have been defeated in Congress…, he adopted a strategy of
provoking Germany and Japan into attacking the United States. He finally succeeded with Japan….” that had
an alliance with Hitler (483). Thomas
Fleming. The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I. Basic Books, 2003.
TEXTS
Ted
Grimsrud . The Good War That Wasn't--and Why It Matters: World War II's Moral
Legacy. Cascade Books, 2014. 296.
Publisher’s
Description: A war is always a moral
event. However, the most destructive war in human history has not received much
moral scrutiny. The Good War That
Wasn't--and Why It Matters examines the moral legacy of this war, especially
for the United States.
Drawing on the just war tradition and on moral values expressed in widely circulated statements of purpose for the war, the book asks: How did American participation in the war fit with just cause and just conduct criteria?
Subsequently the book considers the impact of the war on American foreign policy in the years that followed. How did American actions cohere (or not) with the stated purposes for the war, especially self-determination for the peoples of the world and disarmament?
Finally, the book looks at the witness of war opponents. Values expressed by war advocates were not actually furthered by the war. However, many war opponents did inspire efforts that effectively worked toward the goals of disarmament and self-determination.
The Good War That Wasn't--and Why It
Matters develops its
arguments in pragmatic terms. It focuses on moral reasoning in a commonsense
way in its challenge to widely held assumptions about World War II.
Endorsements
& Reviews
"Military
spending, as Eisenhower warned, generates wars. Myths about World War II
generate military spending. World War II has been propping up military spending
through decades of wars openly acknowledged as disasters. This book exposes
World War II as a crisis that need not have been created and could have been
handled otherwise. That understanding should save the U.S. about $1 trillion a
year and a great many people their lives."
--David Swanson, author of War Is
a Lie
"Ethicist Ted Grimsrud asks us to look past the romanticism, the myth-making, and the nostalgia that have grown up around the Second World War and make a clear-eyed appraisal of the conflict's real costs. Employing classic just war theory, Grimsrud shows how the U.S. war effort fell far short of that theory's minimal criteria. Then, drawing on the insights of Christian pacifism, he proposes alternatives--applicable then and now--for building communities of resistance that treat all life as precious." --Steven M. Nolt, author of Seeking Places of Peace
Contributors
Ted Grimsrud is
Professor of Theology and Peace Studies at Eastern Mennonite University in
Harrisonburg, Virginia. Among his books are Instead
of Atonement: The Bible's Salvation Story and Our Hope for Wholeness (2013),
Compassionate Eschatology: The Future as
Friend (2011), A Pacifist Way of
Knowing: John Howard Yoder's Pacifist Epistemology (2010), and Theology as if Jesus Matters (2009).
PACIFIC
THEATER
Michella Marino review of Kurt Piehler and Sidney Pash, eds. 'The United States and the Second World War:
New Perspectives on Diplomacy, War, and the Home Front'
https://networks.h-net.org/node/12840/reviews/56056/marino-piehler-and-pash-united-states-and-second-world-war-new
Publishers Description: …. Offering a topic for almost any
scholar interested in the American war experience, the essays broadly span the
origins and conclusion of World War II, the home front, the military at war,
oral history and the experience of the individual soldier, and the peace
movement. More specifically, the essays cover the following topics: the
U.S. Navy’s convoying of merchant ships in 1941, American containment of Japanese expansion prior to Pearl Harbor,
the Office of War Information’s role in postwar foreign policy, the sexual
morality and fidelity of American military wives during wartime, the defense
and criticism of the Sherman tank, how lessons from the Mediterranean amphibious
assaults led to the navy’s success on D-day, the importance of the army’s usage
of oral history in documenting the war effort, the role of the U.S. Coast Guard
in overseas amphibious operations, the
wartime reactions and contributions of both secular and religious pacifists,
the national and international
discussion and debate over the postwar occupation of Japan, and the influence
antinuclear activists wielded in molding public memory of the dropping of the
atomic bombs. . . .
One of the major strengths of the
book lies in its reexamination of well-worn topics, such as women’s roles on
the home front or America’s
responsibility in instigating the war with Japan. For
instance, Pash’s essay “Containment, Rollback, and the Onset of the Pacific
War, 1933-1941” provides a fascinating look into the gamble the Japanese took
in declaring war on Russia in 1904 and their similar gamble in declaring war on
the United States four decades later. Japan’s second attempt to defeat a
much larger nation ended in a drastically different outcome. Using terms most
often associated with the Cold War era, Pash shows how the American policy shift
from one of containment to rollback
“[A]n impressive achievement: a boot-level take on the conflict
that is fresh without being cynically revisionist.” —The New Republic
TWO VIEWS OF JAPANESE SURRENDER:
RICHARD FRANK’S Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire and TSUYOSHI HASEGAWA’S Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan.
Frank offers the traditional explanation of
the atomic bomb decision as necessary to end the war; Hasegawa the revisionist position of the bomb
to prohibit the Russians from advancing eastward.
This comparative review sides with Frank: Racing the Enemy - Boston University, www.bu.edu/historic/hs/kort.html,
“Racing the Enemy: A Critical Look” by Michael
Kort.
Racing
the Enemy — Tsuyoshi Hasegawa | Harvard University Press www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674022416
Hasegawa rewrites the standard history of the end of
World War II in the Pacific by fully integrating the three key actors in the
story--the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan.
WWII
JAPANESE AMERICAN INTERNMENT CAMPS MUSEUM, MCGEHEE, AR: COLLAPSE OF CIVIL
LIBERTIES DURING WAR
VISIT
BY DICK BENNETT AND PAT SNYDER AUGUST 30, 2013, by Dick Bennett
Pat Snyder drove us from Maumelle , AR to McGehee , AR and the Japanese-American Internment
Camp Museum ,
titled the “Jerome-Rohwer Interpretive Museum
and Visitor Center ,” and at Rohwer the National
Historic Landmark where one of the two camps once spread out over the corn and
cotton fields. The last hour of our trip
took us through mile after mile of cotton, milo, and soya fields of southeast Arkansas , once included
in the South’s “Black Belt”. The morning
was already hot and dry, and many abandoned buildings and meager houses evoked
impoverishment. But so long as the
aquifer still produced the water essential to the economy of the entire area,
the people could hang on, and a few could become rich.
McGehee, a few miles off the interstate,
looked baked. A little town of about
6,000, it gathered all the little businesses that serviced the agricultural
economy. Its small size and apparent
lack of wealth, and my recollection of the animosity in the US during WWII against “Japs” made
McGehee an unlikely place for an idealistic social project like a museum to
remember the Japanese-Americans who had been housed in two camps a few miles
north and south of the town. I was prepared
for an incompetent, shabby installation of a biased history.
We turned into the street and
encountered a modest but attractive sign surrounded by a well-tended
flower-garden. And then we saw the
building, the old train station given to the city for the museum. This was the first of the many contributions
we were to discover that had made the project possible. A new roof, new large sign, fresh paint--the
building seemed to offer a confident welcome to visitors.
Inside the door I thought I had entered
another world from the one outside. The
office portal to the museum display greeted us with attractive colors and
display cases of books and selected artifacts.
And the curator, Susan Gallion, welcomed us eagerly, for only a few
persons had visited that day. She was
ready to give us a guided tour in two meanings:
she had the time and she was informed about the museum’s contents.
The museum produced the same surprise as
did the building: it had clearly been
designed and assembled by a professional curator who knew how to design a
complex display and who knew and reported the historical facts. Gone were the anti-“Jap” feelings of WWII;
in every display compassion for the Japanese-American victims of injustice was
palpable, for the explanation of the injustice was set forth calmly and clearly
but emphatically.
Afterward we visited the remains of the
Rohwer camp. For as far as we could
see, where the camp had been is now covered with crops, except for the camp
cemetery. Here we found in roughly
chronological order the graves of the Japanese-Americans who died there. In front had been added an obelisk and
symbolical tank in honor of the Japanese-American soldiers who fought In Italy
and France against Hitler during WWII.
All needed repair, and in fact a sign announced that repairs were to
occur in the summer of 2013, though the work had not yet begun by late August.
We headed back to Maumelle on Highway 65
at Dumas. We had seen a significant
museum, which will gradually become known to the people of Arkansas , the nation, and the world. Ms. Gallion wrote to me September 15: “We now have hit 3 countries: United Kingdom , Canada ,
and Japan !
And, have had close to 1650 visitors!”
The truth is told here about a great
injustice committed by our government against a group of innocent citizens and
about a great injury to our Constitution whose Bill of Rights was intended to
prevent such injustices. Our completely
innocent West-coast Japanese-American citizens, on account of the racism and
the fear and panic by leaders and public alike following Pearl Harbor, were
judged guilty by association, uprooted from their homes in a military
operation, and transported more than half-way across the country to alien
Arkansas most of whose citizens were hostile, and forced to live in hastily
assembled barracks for two years. Yet
now in the little town of McGehee, a museum shines a bright light of constitutional
truth for a wiser future.
WAR IN
EUROPE
Charles Glass. The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War
II. Penguin, 2014. 400
Pages.
Publisher’s Summary: A
groundbreaking history of ordinary soldiers struggling on the front lines, The Deserters offers a completely new
perspective on the Second World War. Charles Glass—renowned journalist and
author of the critically acclaimed Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under
Nazi Occupation—delves deep into army archives, personal diaries, court-martial
records, and self-published memoirs to produce this dramatic and heartbreaking
portrait of men overlooked by their commanders and ignored by history.
Surveying the 150,000
American and British soldiers known to have deserted in the European Theater, The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War
II tells the life stories of three soldiers who abandoned their posts in
France, Italy, and Africa. Their deeds form the backbone of Glass’s arresting
portrait of soldiers pushed to the breaking point, a sweeping reexamination of
the conditions for ordinary soldiers.
With the grace and
pace of a novel, The Deserters moves
beyond the false extremes of courage and cowardice to reveal the true
experience of the frontline soldier. Glass shares the story of men like Private
Alfred Whitehead, a Tennessee farm boy who earned Silver and Bronze Stars for
bravery in Normandy—yet became a gangster in liberated Paris, robbing Allied
supply depots along with ordinary citizens. Here also is the story of British
men like Private John Bain, who deserted three times but never fled from
combat—and who endured battles in North Africa and northern France before
German machine guns cut his legs from under him. The heart of The Deserters resides with men like
Private Steve Weiss, an idealistic teenage volunteer from Brooklyn who forced
his father—a disillusioned First World War veteran—to sign his enlistment
papers because he was not yet eighteen. On the Anzio beachhead and in the
Ardennes forest, as an infantryman with the 36th Division and as an accidental
partisan in the French Resistance, Weiss lost his illusions about the nobility
of conflict and the infallibility of American commanders.
Far from the bright
picture found in propaganda and nostalgia, the Second World War was a grim and
brutal affair, a long and lonely effort that has never been fully reported—to
the detriment of those who served and the danger of those nurtured on false
tales today. Revealing the true costs of
conflict on those forced to fight, The
Deserters is an elegant and unforgettable story of ordinary men desperately
struggling in extraordinary times.
“Powerful and often startling…The
Deserters offers a provokingly fresh angle on this
most studied of conflicts… This is a stripped down, unromanticized, intimate
history of battle in all of its confusion, chaos, terror, and moral ambiguity. Intricately
structured — the author deftly juggles three narrative strands — and
beautifully paced to build suspense, this tightly focused account, which
draws on memoirs, archives, police files, psychiatric records, is neither
reverent nor disapproving.” —The Boston Globe
“Glass is to be commended for his take on WWII through the eyes of those who ran away from it… Glass’s history might be one of the best ways of relaying the experience of war: through the eyes of the young men who charged into the line of fire, gave up the ghost, and whose only reward was living to tell the tale.” —Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)
“The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II, by the historian and former ABC News foreign correspondent Charles Glass, thus performs a service. It’s the first book to examine at length the sensitive topic of desertions during this war, and the facts it presents are frequently revealing and heartbreaking… The Deserters has much to say about soldiers’ hearts. It underscores the truth of the following observation, made by a World War II infantry captain named Charles B. MacDonald: ‘It is always an enriching experience to write about the American soldier in adversity no less than in glittering triumph.'” –Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“Glass is to be commended for his take on WWII through the eyes of those who ran away from it… Glass’s history might be one of the best ways of relaying the experience of war: through the eyes of the young men who charged into the line of fire, gave up the ghost, and whose only reward was living to tell the tale.” —Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)
“The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II, by the historian and former ABC News foreign correspondent Charles Glass, thus performs a service. It’s the first book to examine at length the sensitive topic of desertions during this war, and the facts it presents are frequently revealing and heartbreaking… The Deserters has much to say about soldiers’ hearts. It underscores the truth of the following observation, made by a World War II infantry captain named Charles B. MacDonald: ‘It is always an enriching experience to write about the American soldier in adversity no less than in glittering triumph.'” –Dwight Garner, The New York Times
PBS, AETN
Nazi Mega
Weapons: Atlantic Wall
Part
I, Wednesday, July 17 at 10:00 p.m., 2013
In a quest for world domination, the Nazis built some of the
biggest and deadliest pieces of military hardware and malevolent technology in
history.
The new three-part series, "Nazi Mega Weapons," recounts
Germany’s engagement in World War II from a unique perspective, uncovering the
engineering secrets of iconic megastructures, telling the stories of the
engineers who designed them and revealing how these structures sparked a
technological revolution that changed warfare forever.
In part one, learn about the greatest fortification project of the
20th century, Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.
To protect occupied Europe from an Allied invasion, Hitler
demanded the construction of a defensive wall stretching thousands of
kilometers from France in the south to Norway in the north. This is the story
of the vast engineering project that faced its ultimate test on D-Day.
Pictured: A scene from "Nazi Mega Weapons: Atlantic Wall."
THE
REAL THEME of THE NAZI “ATLANTIC WALL”?
by Dick Bennett
PBS misnamed their July 17 program. Or perhaps inadvertently it turned out not
to be primarily about Nazi “mega-weapons.”
Counting minutes devoted to topics, the film tells the story of the
construction of the defenses erected along the coasts of France , Belgium ,
and Holland
under the direction of the great German General Rommel, himself reporting
directly to Hitler. But it has two
powerful sub-themes perhaps prominent only to all who seek new ways of thinking
that might prevent or reduce wars and the ferocity of wars. In these perspectives it is a peace
film.
Let’s rename it “D-Day from the German
Perspective.” And the German is not
Hitler, who is barely portrayed, and not General Rommel, impressive as he
is. Nor is D-Day the Band of Brothers of heroic and magnanimous US soldiers versus a
powerful German army and one treacherous German soldier, but the opposite: an
ordinary German soldier defending his country from invasion and a defense
failed not because of lack of courage or character, but simply lack of
ammunition.
That’s a rare perspective: the enemy as a
human being just like us. The single
solder we encounter throughout the film is named and gains a presence as a
soldier doing his duty following orders just as did our soldiers. We see him anxious over the unknown invasion
locations and dates, surviving the horrendous bombardment from the invading
ships, shooting point-blank at the waves of US soldiers first with his machine
gun, and then, when he ran out of ammunition, firing his rifle until shot in
the hand, and then retreating from his bunker to fight again.
In this climax of the single soldier’s
story lies the mega-theme: he ran out of
machine-gun ammunition. Despite years
of preparation, for several reasons (troop and financial demands from the
Eastern Front, the number of US troops thrown onto the beaches)— Hitler and
Rommel were not ready: they stockpiled
too little ammunition. Thousands of US
soldiers were killed during that D-Day landing, and it might have been futile,
the film suggests, had the machine guns not been silenced by lack of bullets. D-Day was not triumphal for either enemy.
Historian William Hitchcock examines the liberation of Europe in
World War II from the point of view of the Europeans, casting a new light on
their world and ours.
Liberation: The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe by William I Hitchcock
Liberation: The Bitter Road to Freedom, Europe
1944-1945 by William I. Hitchcock
Readers today know that
attempts to end tyranny invariably bring atrocities of their own. But still,
for many the word "liberation" summons images of US soldiers handing
out Hershey's to grateful French civilians. Hitchcock's remarkable history revisits the period 1944-45, giving
voice to those who discovered that the behaviour of British, American and
Russian liberators was seldom as virtuous as the cause for which they fought.
Hitchcock is a fine storyteller and a skilful editor, choosing memorable and
often disturbing examples: a lone white ox is eaten alive by starving
Berliners; Glasgow Highlanders are billeted with a Belgian family still
mourning the loss of sons killed not by the enemy, but by an RAF bomb.
Contents World War II Newsletter #1
War Against Germany
Pauwels, Myths of the Good War
Pauwels, Why Dresden Was Destroyed
Wood, Worshipping the Myths of WWII
Hynes, Good to Bad War
Baker, For Pacifism (Dick)
Roberts, US Soldiers and French Women
War Against Japan
Roland Worth ,
US Embargo of Japan and Pearl Harbor
ICE Case Study, the Road to Pearl Harbor
Resister Hirabayashi v. US
Dick, Forgiveness , Japan
and US
END WWII NEWSLETTER #2
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