WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #9

 

WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS

WORLD WAR II

David Swanson, Leaving World War II Behind.

Review by Kevin Barrett | September 28, 2020, Aletho News

Peace activist David Swanson is the author of the new book Leaving World War II Behind. He debunks the standard misconceptions about the mythical “good war.”

WAS IT ABOUT SAVING JEWS?

“In reality, the U.S. and British governments engaged for years in massive propaganda campaigns to build war support but never made any mention of saving Jews.” (p.21)

WAS IT ABOUT STOPPING HITLER’S EUGENICS?

“Eugenics had British and U.S. roots and was popularized by Americans in the first two decades of the Twentieth Century…eugenics was funded by the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Harriman railroad fortune.” (chapter 4)

WAS IT ABOUT STOPPING NAZI SLAVE LABOR?

“As I write this, California is using prisoners to fight forest fires, paying them $1 an hour…” (p.55)

WAS IT ABOUT STOPPING NAZI “LEBENSRAUM” EXPANSION?

“In Mein Kampf, Hitler invoked the American conquest of ‘the West’ as a model for Nazi continental territorial expansion in ‘the East.’” (p.67)

WERE WE FIGHTING GOOSE-STEPPING MANIACS DRUNK ON THEIR “ONE ARMED SALUTE”?

“If you do a web search for images of ‘Bellamy salute’ you find countless black-and-white photographs of U.S. children and adults with their right arms raised stiffly out in front of them in what will strike most people as a Nazi salute. From the early 1890s through 1942 the United States used the Bellamy salute…” (p.94)

DID WE STOP THE NAZIS FROM CONQUERING AND OCCUPYING THE WHOLE WORLD?

“The Nazis did not have the ability to occupy even half of the Soviet Union. Some of the nations they occupied in Europe, as we will see below, effectively challenged their rule. Nonviolent resistance in Germany itself, as we will also see below, showed great potential. Nonviolent resistance to tyranny around the world, as we will see, in the past 75 years has proven itself more effective than armed struggle. The idea that Nazism could have lasted and grown to eventually include an attack on the United States is more fantasy than history.” (p.130)

WOULD PEACE HAVE BEEN WORSE?

“In recorded human history, there’s no worse catastrophe than WWII. There’s nothing else that did as much immediate and lasting damage in the space of less than a decade. WWII killed 70 to 85 million human beings. In most wars prior to WWII, including WWI, the majority of deaths were of participants in the wars. With WWII and most wars that have followed it, the majority of deaths have been civilians. WWII injured, traumatized, rendered homeless, and displaced millions of people on an unmatched scale.” (p.147)   MORE    https://kevinbarrett.heresycentral.is/2020/09/swanson-ww2/

 One of the obstacles since 1945 to converting the now trillion dollar Pentagon budget to desperate human needs has been the glorification of the US “victory” in  WWII.   We must stay prepared, the great myth goes, to defend our nation nobly against future Hitlers, Mussolinis, and Hirohitos.   In his book Leaving World War II Behind, David Swanson challenges that patriotic thesis and calls into question the myths in which it thrives.  

       Is this a proper concern for OMNI's Climate Book Forum?   The present convergence of massive US militarization and the climate calamity (blowtorched by the Covid-19 pandemic) calls us to examine our failure to organize against that calamity in the context of so much of our treasure being wasted on not only immoral and illegal but unnecessary wars.   Swanson's book opens windows and doors and gates to free us from the delusions surrounding "the Great War"

 that for generation after generation have been fostered by our leaders.

     Dick