World War II and History

It is becoming clear from history that the narrative we have been told about the Second World War is not the complete, true story.

Henry Ford receiving the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Nazi officials, 1938

Hitler was evil, yes, but he had also been supported by American business, over 100 of which had helped to rebuild the German military so that it could fight Russia and Bolshevism. The shock victories of the Blitzkrieg could not have been achieved by a country whose military had been dismantled after WWI by the Treaty of Versailles without the infusion of American capital. 

Ann Arbor Sun, 1974

America and Britain fought Hitler and Germany, but came closer to taking sides with the Nazis against the Soviet Union than many might be comfortable admitting. American industrialists looked at Hitler’s authoritarianism and found much to their liking. One of America’s top generals at the time claimed that a group of businessmen had asked him to lead a fascist coup against FDR. And, let’s not forget that the Nazis drew inspiration from America’s treatment of its slave and indigenous populations in devising their genocidal schemes, prompting at least one of them to ask when on trial at Nuremberg, how what they did to the Jews was any different from what America did to the Indians?

The German-American Bund rally that filled Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939

Perhaps worse, for other parts of the world, WWII was the moment when America, which began its history in opposition to England and colonialism, discarded its identity in order to join with Great Britain and assume the burdensome demands of world conquest and empire building, which had driven the European combatants of the previous world war to destruction — and which will drive us there, too. America, at one point, actually was that city on a hill which John Winthrop had urged the first colonists to become, as third world nations such as Vietnam and  Indonesia looked to her as an inspiration and example in their struggle to emerge from the shadow of colonialism after the Second World War — only to find their hopes dashed by the very country whose revolutionary leaders they had admired. America has become that which it formerly rebelled against. 

Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, who admired Lincoln and Washington, and quoted them in his speeches. The CIA tried to overthrow him