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Title: A New Look at How World War II Happened
Source:
Lew Rockwell
URL Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo142.html
Published: May 1, 2008
Author: Thomas DiLorenzo
Post Date: 2008-05-01 06:44:15 by Ada
Keywords: None
Views: 376
Comments: 20
Nicholson Baker’s new book Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, is one of the most unique nonfiction books you’ll ever read. Based on voluminous research of newspaper and magazine articles, radio speeches, memoirs, diaries, and biographies, Baker’s 566-page book gives the reader an extraordinary look into the mindsets of all the major actors in the lead-up to the war. Each paragraph of the book is written like a press release of an important event on a particular day, and is not necessarily related to the previous or succeeding paragraph. At first I thought this would be an extremely boring read, kind of like looking through old newspapers. But the information in the book is so interesting (and sometimes astounding) that I read it in one sitting (admittedly a forced "sitting" on a 9-hour flight from Vienna to Washington, D.C.). Many of the icons of "the greatest generation" are portrayed not quite as heroically as they are by their hagiographers and government-school textbook writers. Perhaps the most striking facts in this regard is how Baker portrays the real Churchill. Winston Churchill is shown to have been consumed by an extraordinary hatred of the German people from an early age. "The British blockade" of Germany, Churchill is quoted as saying approvingly in 1914, "treated the whole of Germany as if it were a beleaguered fortress, and avowedly sought to starve the whole population – men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound – into submission." General Sherman could not have said it better if one transposes "Germany" for "the South." In 1918 Eleanor Roosevelt complained about being invited to a party by financier Bernard Baruch, saying "I’d rather be hung than be seen at" the party because the attendees were "mostly Jews." Her husband Franklin, noticing in 1922 that one-third of the freshman class at Harvard was Jewish, "went to the Harvard Board of Overseers, of which he was a member," leading to a change in admissions policy such that "over a period of years the number of Jews should be reduced one or two percent a year until it was down to 15%." Churchill published a newspaper article on February 8, 1920, in which he apparently took a break from his unbridled hatred of everything German to declare that his "real enemy" was "the sinister confederacy of international Jewry," which he blamed for communism. He then turned his talents to India, Iraq, and other recalcitrant parts of the British empire. Being given responsibilities for developing British air power, he advised a subordinate that "I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes." Subsequently, the British air force "bombed and strafed rebellious tribes" in Iraq, "fired on them with gas-filled shells, burned villages . . ." Churchill congratulated the British commander "upon the distinct improvement in the situation" in Iraq. If there was a British Fox News Channel at the time, it would have spent months celebrating the success of Churchill’s "surge" policy. Meanwhile, the "Royal Air Force dropped more than 150 tons of bombs on India" in 1925 to tame the "rebellious tribes" there. War is hell for those who wish to secede from exploitative empires. In the 1920s Churchill admired Mussolini as much as he admired any man. "I could not help being charmed by Signor Mussolini’s gentle and simple bearing, and by his calm, detached poise in spite of so many burdens and dangers," he said on January 20, 1927. As late as the mid 1930s Churchill was also heaping lavish praise on Hitler. "Those who have met Herr Hitler," he said, have found a highly competent, cool, well-informed functionary with an agreeable manner, a disarming smile, and few have been unaffected by a subtle personal magnetism." Has there ever been a worse judge of character than Winston Churchill? The man who just recently had a statue erected in his honor at Hillsdale College was a highly paid "consultant" to the munitions industry during the 1920s and ’30s, fetching $12,500 per speech, paid for by such people as Sir Harry McGowan, deputy chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries, which manufactured TNT, bombs, ammunition, and poison gas. He went on multi-city tours warning of dire consequences if the nation did not become "strongly armed." He was an early 20th century Richard Perle, Bill Kristol or Dick Cheney, to make an America analogy. As soon as Gandhi began influencing millions of Indians, he and some 60,000 of his followers were imprisoned in 1930. This led Churchill to declare that "Gandhi-ism and all it stands for [peaceful resistance to tyranny] will, sooner or later, have to be . . . crushed." "Gandhi had replaced Lenin as Churchill’s arch nemesis," writes Baker. Baker discusses how the diabolically-evil Stalin, bosom buddy of FDR and Churchill, intentionally starved to death millions of Ukrainians in the early 1930s, forcing survivors to eat field mice, insects, and dead children. Baker also provides chapter and verse of the evidence that FDR knew how horrifically the European Jews were being persecuted in Germany and elsewhere, but steadfastly refused to lift a finger to help them. When a reporter asked him if there was any place in the world where the persecuted European Jews should be able to seek refuge, FDR answered "No, the time is not ripe for that." As far as allowing Jewish refugees into the United States, FDR said in 1938 that that would be impossible because "We have a [immigration] quota system." Baker provides additional information in support of the well-documented book by Robert Stinnett, Day of Deceit, that FDR not only knew in advance about the attack on Pearl Harbor, but had been orchestrating an effort to get the Japanese to attack the U.S. for years. He correctly anticipated that it would be the best excuse to get the U.S. involved in the European war. He cites Henry Stimson’s diary where he talks about a White House meeting with FDR on November 25, 1941 where Stimson said: "The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves." Once the war was on, Churchill gleefully waged total war on German civilians as well as its military. When asked why he was not bombing more German cities populated mostly by civilians, he said "My motto is business before pleasure." British subjects were sacrificed in order to heat up war fever, just as some 2000 Americans were sacrificed for the same purpose at Pearl Harbor. Knowing about a planned German air raid on Coventry, Churchill made sure that the city was not warned. Five hundred people died in the raid and much of the city was destroyed. Churchill did not visit Coventry after the raid, but "asked for heavy publicity to be given to the Coventry raid." Baker also cites some first-hand accounts from people who had met with Hitler and came away with a very different opinion of him than the one Churchill had formed in the 1930s. They said things like, his eyes bulged out from his head in a most un-natural way; he had a maniacal, unstable temper; he was clearly insane; etc. Most Americans of my generation have always held such opinions, but it is interesting to read these first-hand accounts of unmitigated evil. The words of war opponents are also chronicled in Human Smoke, and the book is worth the price for these facts alone – facts that are always ignored and dismissed as the rantings of "isolationists." The book is dedicated to them for their heroic but unsuccessful efforts "to save Jewish refugees, feed Europe, reconcile the United States and Japan, and stop the war from happening."
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#1. To: Ada, aristides, FDR cultists (#0)
Great article, and so much for those who idolize FDR. Winston Churchill was also a supporter of eugenics. In 1910, Churchill wrote to the Prime Minister Herbert Asquith to express his support for a Bill that proposed the introduction of compulsory sterilization for the 'feeble-minded' in Britain. Two years later, Churchill attended the First International Eugenics Congress in London and even agreed to become its Vice-Chairman.
and below, the happy ending: Mussolini became one of the main figures of the Axis powers and, on 10 June 1940, Mussolini led Italy into World War II on the side of Axis. Three years later, Mussolini was deposed at the Grand Council of Fascism, prompted by the Allied invasion. Soon after his incarceration began, Mussolini was rescued from prison in the daring Gran Sasso raid by German special forces. Following his rescue, Mussolini headed the Italian Social Republic in parts of Italy that were not occupied by Allied forces. In late April, 1945, with total defeat looming, Mussolini attempted to escape to Switzerland, only to be captured and summarily executed near Lake Como by Communist Italian partisans. His body was taken to Milan where it was hung upside down at a petrol station for public viewing and to provide confirmation of his demise. ...Executed by his own countrymen.
Government by propaganda As dictator of Italy, Mussolini's foremost priority was the subjugation of the minds of the Italian people and the use of propaganda to do so; whether at home or abroad, and here his training as a journalist was invaluable. Press, radio, education, films — all were carefully supervised to create the illusion that fascism was the doctrine of the twentieth century, replacing liberalism and democracy.
Hitler with Mussolini during a parade.
Mussolini and others hanging for public display.
Just sold me the book. I am buying all this stuff not only for myself but for the kids to have it.
Antiparty - find out why, think about 'how'
Just ordered a copy. Thanks for this review.
The author "forgot" to mention that it was two evil "friends" that agreed to start WW2... "Hitler and Stalin"
there's no accounting for some people's tastes...or different strokes for different folks. i wonder if churchill had homosexual tendencies.
If resembling J.Edgar Hoover counts, I'd say, 'Yes.'
FYI
sniff, sniff....smells like a government conspiracy.
www.rense.com/general39/amm.htm America, The Fourth Reich By Ian Gurney info@caspro.com 7-29-3 "Dictatorships start wars because they need external enemies to exert internal control over their own people." --Richard Perle Americans are the new Nazis. There, that's earned me a lot of enemies very quickly, hasn't it? "How dare you," comes the riposte from the neo-cons in the administration and the right wing think tanks like JINSA and the PNAC, as well as the "Fox news compliant" brigade whose heads are still stuck up their backsides enjoying the televised view. "America is a democracy, a free country run by a democratically elected government. It is the land of the free, the home of the brave and the protector of the free world," I hear them chorus. To that I say: BULLSHIT. To say America is a democracy these days is just stretching things too far. Consider:- Bush was not elected by the majority of people in the USA. Admittedly the turnout was low (you do, after all, get the government you deserve if you don't excercise your franchise) but George W didn't get a mandate. To do that more than fifty percent of the voters have to vote for you, and that didn't happen. In fact Georgie boy lost. However, good old George made sure that, mandate or not, win or not, with a little help from friends and family in Florida he could win it by cheating. Let's not mince words, George W Bush STOLE the presidency of the United States. He is not the democratically elected leader of America. It also appears that some unelected officials in the Bush administration may have acquired more power than the president himself. Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton, Abrams, Rumsfeld all share the same right wing neo-conservative views held by organisations such as the Project for a New American Century, the Zionizt Organisation of America and the the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. As members of these organisations, it could be said that this unelected cabal of neo-cons in the White House and the Pentagon have interests other than America at heart. This is not only undemocratic, it is treason. So, we now see that America is governed by a president who was not democratically elected, supported by an unelected cabal of people with very extreme and in some cases, very un-American views. This cannot, therefore, classify America as a democratic country. A country that is governed by a non elected power is, as we have seen and heard these last few months concerning Iraq, Iran and North Korea, classed as a "dictatorship". Dictatorships are fascist by nature. Fascism is described as "right wing dictatorship". Just put the word fascism into your computer, highlight it and hit "Tools" followed by "Thesaurus." See what I mean? Now let's take a quick look at Germany in the 1930's and 40's as the Nazis reared their ugly heads. Here was a country that was finacially crippled with a massive budget deficit owing billions of dollars to the rest of the world. Just like the USA. In the 1930's Germany was a country where the burning of the Reichstag, engineered by Hitler and his henchmen, was used to create external enemies and to exert internal control over the German people. Hitler then used the media to lie, frighten and decieve the population, allowing a bunch of vicious, extreme, right wing megalomaniacs to gain power. Just like the USA. In the 1930's Hitler was surrounded by a group of unelected officials whose sole objective was to take control of Germany for their own ends and with the use of their military might, take control of the assets and prosperity of other, weaker countries. Just like the USA. In 1939 Hitler embarked on a series of pre-emptive attacks on sovereign nations in the name of "freeing the people" of that country. Just like the USA. In 1940 the German hierarchy started building special "camps" or detention centres in which to incarcerate and eventually execute those people considered to be "against" their regime. Just like the USA. As Germany invaded the countries surrounding them during World War II, they found that far from having conquered the country and "liberated" the people, the people of that country formed nationalist "resistance" groups and used guerilla warfare to kill, harrass and slowly demoralise the occupying army. Just like the USA. "History is little more than the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind" wrote Edward Gibbon, the British historian in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. History should teach us a great many things, but unfortunately the majority of Americans know very little about history, or for that matter, the rest of the world. Don't believe me? Ask an American where Admiral Lord Nelson, one of the worlds greatest naval commanders, died or what nationality Alexander the Great was? Better still, ask an American to point to pretty much any foreign country on a map. Try North Korea. If you know nothing of history, you cannot learn the lessons history teaches. You continue to make the same mistakes. Hitler's mistake was to wage war on too many fronts at once and underestimate the ferocity of the guerilla wars being fought against him by resistance groups all over Europe. Eventually it was Russia, or to be more precise, the Russian winter and Hitler's hubris, that proved to much for the disillusioned German troops, sick and tired of fighting and dying for a regime that they belatedly realised was illegitimate. Hitler, in the last desperate act of a cowardly tyrant, committed suicide. Germany, defeated and destroyed, had lost everything. Those who had been instrumental in Germany's war and propoganda machine where tried and executed. Eventually Germany once agaain became a democracy, but it had taken the deaths of many millions of people to restore that democracy. Despite Germany's huge arsenal of weapons, it had lost the war because those running Germany were not the democratic leaders of a democratic country, but were fascist, right wing neo-conservatives, Nazis, who propogated an illegal war through lies and deception and stirred up the anger of all decent thinking people on the planet with their evil deeds. Just like America. © Copyright: Ian Gurney July 2003. Ian Gurney is the author of the bestseller "The Cassandra Prophecy" published by International Global Press. ISBN: 0953581314. (www.caspro.com) He welcomes your comments at info@caspro.com
The Reichstag Burns The Reichstag Burns Adolf Hitler, the new Chancellor of Germany, had no intention of abiding by the rules of democracy. He intended only to use those rules to legally establish himself as dictator as quickly as possible then begin the Nazi revolution. Even before he was sworn in, he was at work to accomplish that goal by demanding new elections. While Hindenburg waited impatiently in another room, Hitler argued with conservative leader Hugenberg, who vehemently opposed the idea. Hitler's plan was to establish a majority of elected Nazis in the Reichstag which would become a rubber stamp, passing whatever laws he desired while making it all perfectly legal.
Reichstag Reichstag The German Parliament. On February 27, 1933, a staged fire burned the Reichstag building. A month later, on March 23, 1933, the Reichstag approved the Enabling Act which gave Hitler unlimited dictatorial power.
Today the media would have made a circus of Churchill and his violent comments.
“President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years,” “Maybe a hundred ... ... that’d be fine with me,” McCain responds Churchill and FDR were neither of them saints. It's just the comparison with Hitler that makes them seem that way.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
Hans Bernd Gisevius, a police official in Berlin at the time of the Reichstag fire, was convinced all his life that the Nazis were behind the fire. His evidence: on the evening of the fire, at the height of an election campaign, the Nazis' three chief speakers, Hitler, Göring, and Goebbels, were all of them in Berlin and without any speaking engagement for the evening.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
FDR, with his lust for war, intentionally allowed Pearl
Harbor, thus ensuring our entry into WWII. It could be argued his drive to
internationalism resulted in the death of millions of people. He was evil.
It could also be argued that FDR's dishonest backdoor way to get us into World War Two was the only -- or the most effective -- way to ensure the defeat of Hitler. That view is taken in the Pearl Harbor revisionist books by Stinnett and Capt. Edward Beach. Myself, I take the view that FDR probably could have brought about the defeat of Hitler in a more honest way. I deplore his dishonesty there, just as I deplore the dishonesty of the way he ensured court approval of the New Deal. He packed the Supreme Court, which then issued dishonest opinions, when he could have achieved his end by pushing through constitutional amendments. But, whether or not the means he used to achieve the defeat of Hitler were proper, any evil that he may have done in that endeavor is greatly outweighed by the good he did in defeating the evil of Hitler.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
#2. To: Ada (#0)
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (July 29, 1883 – April 28, 1945) led Italy from 1922 to 1943. He created a fascist state through the use of state terror and propaganda.
#3. To: All (#2)
#4. To: All (#3)
#5. To: All (#4)
#6. To: Ada (#0)
#7. To: Ada (#0)
#8. To: angle (#2)
Baker discusses how the diabolically-evil Stalin, bosom buddy of FDR and Churchill,
#9. To: Ada (#0)
As late as the mid 1930s Churchill was also heaping lavish praise on Hitler. "Those who have met Herr Hitler," he said, have found a highly competent, cool, well-informed functionary with an agreeable manner, a disarming smile, and few have been unaffected by a subtle personal magnetism." Has there ever been a worse judge of character than Winston Churchill?
#10. To: christine (#9)
i wonder if churchill had homosexual tendencies.
#11. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
Baker provides additional information in support of the well-documented book by Robert Stinnett, Day of Deceit, that FDR not only knew in advance about the attack on Pearl Harbor, but had been orchestrating an effort to get the Japanese to attack the U.S. for years. He correctly anticipated that it would be the best excuse to get the U.S. involved in the European war. He cites Henry Stimson’s diary where he talks about a White House meeting with FDR on November 25, 1941 where Stimson said: "The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves."
#12. To: Turtle (#11)
Baker provides additional information in support of the well-documented book by Robert Stinnett, Day of Deceit, that FDR not only knew in advance about the attack on Pearl Harbor, but had been orchestrating an effort to get the Japanese to attack the U.S. for years. He correctly anticipated that it would be the best excuse to get the U.S. involved in the European war. He cites Henry Stimson’s diary where he talks about a White House meeting with FDR on November 25, 1941 where Stimson said: "The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves."
#13. To: Ada (#0)
#14. To: Ada (#0)
#15. To: Ada (#0)
#16. To: historian1944, aristeides (#0)
Hillary: "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran in the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."
#17. To: robin (#16)
#18. To: TwentyTwelve (#15)
#19. To: aristeides (#17)
Churchill and FDR were neither of them saints.
#20. To: Jethro Tull (#19)
It could be argued his drive to internationalism resulted in the death of millions of people.
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