http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2982503Oh my.
Orwellian_Ghost (1000+ posts) Mon Mar-10-08 12:36 PM
Original message
A Look At The Real Reasons For World War 2
'Human Smoke' by Nicholson Baker
The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization
Nicholson Baker's "Human Smoke" is a meticulously researched and well-constructed book demonstrating that World War II was one of the biggest, most carefully plotted lies in modern history. According to the myth, British and American statesmen naively thought they could reason with such brutal fascists as Germany's Hitler and Japan's Tojo. Faced with this weakness, Hitler and Tojo tried to take over the world, and the United States and Britain were forced to use military might to stop them.
...
The facts are powerful. Baker shows, step by step, how an alliance dominated by leaders who were bigoted, far more opposed to communism than to fascism, obsessed with arms sales and itching for a fight coerced the world into war.
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Churchill was not driven by anti-fascism. In his 1937 book "Great Contemporaries," he described Hitler as "a highly competent, cool, well-informed functionary with an agreeable manner." The same book savagely attacked Leon Trotsky. (What was wrong with Trotsky? "He was still a Jew. Nothing could get over that.") Churchill repeatedly praised Mussolini for his "gentle and simple bearing." In 1927, he told a Roman audience, "If I had been an Italian, I am sure that I should have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism." Churchill considered fascism "a necessary antidote to the Russian virus," Baker writes. In 1938, he remarked to the press that if England were ever defeated in war, he hoped "we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among nations."
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In the 1930s, U.S. industry was free to sell the Germans and the Japanese whatever they'd buy, including weapons. Not to lose out, the British and French sold tanks and bombers to Hitler. Calls by Joseph Tenenbaum of the American Jewish Congress to boycott Germany were ignored. There was no attempt to contain, isolate, hinder or overthrow Hitler -- not because of naiveté but because of commerce. It was the Depression. There were Germans trying to overthrow Hitler, but the U.S. and Britain and their industries were obstructing that effort.
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People are going to get really angry at Baker for criticizing their favorite war. But he hasn't fashioned his tale from gossip. It is documented, with copious notes and attributions. The grace of these well-ordered snapshots is that there is no diatribe; you are left to put things together yourself. Read "Human Smoke." It may be one of the most important books you will ever read. It could help the world to understand that there is no Just War, there is just war -- and that wars are not caused by isolationists and peaceniks but by the promoters of warfare. *
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http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-bk-kurlansky9m...
Oh my again.
roguevalley (1000+ posts) Mon Mar-10-08 03:55 PM
Response to Reply #2
19. given the lack of communications at the time and all the variables such as the disbelief that things like this could happen, I would believe it was more a tragedy that came about by inertia and a lack of concise information than FDR going to war because it was a plot. God.
Of course the rogue primitive has a point, but I still blame this really stupid "compartmentalization of information" as used by Roosevelt, and later Nixon, for all their subsequent woes.
Hobarticus (1000+ posts) Mon Mar-10-08 01:00 PM
Response to Reply #3
6. Any British or French weapons the Germans had, were captured after the opening of hostilities on the Western front. The BEF fled the continent, leaving everything but their clothes on their backs.
Other countries were selling pre-war Germany equipment, like trucks, that may have had a dual purpose, but no way were these nations actively re-arming Germany.
It was in Germany's economic best interest to restart their own arms industry.
Germany went to great lengths to disguise their gradual re-arming. They created entire bureaucracies to disguise arming and training their soldiers under the auspices of public works, and airliners designed and built in the 30's always had a dual-purpose role in mind from the word go.
Why go through that, if they could just re-arm on the international arms market?
I call bullshit.
independentpiney (621 posts) Mon Mar-10-08 02:25 PM
Response to Reply #6
12. I'll second your bullshit call.
Claiming that the French in particular, intentionally rearmed Germany is ridiculous.
kenfrequed (1000+ posts) Mon Mar-10-08 07:14 PM
Response to Reply #6
36. all protestations of cow feces aside
There is ample historical evidence to point that American corporations were very much in bed with facists. Ford motors, Dupont, and IBM willingly and readily provided aid to rearming Germany and investing in German industry.
Roosevelt inherited this situation, he did not cause it. And in fact his administration would later go after these profiteers and facists (though not as successfully as I would have liked).
Hobarticus (1000+ posts) Mon Mar-10-08 07:35 PM
Response to Reply #36
39. I agree, US industry was invested in Germany
And that investment did indeed assist in rearmament, there's no question in my mind about that.
Hell, after the war Henry Ford sued the US gov't - and WON - for bombing the auto plants he'd built in Germany. Talk about a facist-lovin' SOB.
But the US or Britain or France did not "re-arm" Germany with blatant arms sales as the article claims. I don't recall Messerschmitts and Panzers being built in the States. The idea that France and Britain would re-arm Germany willingly is laughable.
Sequoia (1000+ posts) Mon Mar-10-08 01:16 PM
Response to Original message
7. Thanks. I want to read it.
So Roosevelt isn't the God people think he was and Churchill wasn't the saviour of England after all...bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Japan.
leftchick (1000+ posts) Mon Mar-10-08 01:20 PM
Response to Original message
8. wow!
Anti-Semitism was rife among the Allies. Of Franklin Roosevelt, Baker notes that in 1922, when he was a New York attorney, he "noticed that Jews made up one-third of the freshman class at Harvard" and used his influence to establish a Jewish quota there. For years he obstructed help for European Jewry, and as late as 1939 he discouraged passage of the Wagner-Rogers bill, an attempt by Congress to save Jewish children. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said in 1939 of German treatment of Jews that "no doubt Jews aren't a lovable people. I don't care about them myself." Once the war began, Winston Churchill wanted to imprison German Jewish refugees because they were Germans. What a comfort such leadership must have been to the Nazis, who, according to the New York Times of Dec. 3, 1931, were trying to figure out a way to rid Germany of Jews without "arousing foreign opinion."
Churchill is a dominant figure in "Human Smoke," depicted as a bloodthirsty warmonger who, in 1922, was still bemoaning the fact that World War I hadn't lasted a little longer so that Britain could have had its air force in place to bomb Berlin and "the heart of Germany." But no, he whined, it had to stop, "owing to our having run short of Germans and enemies."
ConcernedCanuk (1000+ posts) Mon Mar-10-08 02:03 PM
Response to Original message
10. Don't forget Prescott, GW's Grandpa had his fingers in starting WW2 - Jr's trying for WW3
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondw...
A more in-depth analysis includes the following:
Chapter - II - The Hitler Project
Bush Property Seized--Trading with the Enemy
The great financial collapse of 1929-31 shook America, Germany and Britain, weakening all governments. It also made the hard-pressed Prescott Bush even more willing to do whatever was necessary to retain his new place in the world. It was in this crisis that certain Anglo-Americans determined on the installation of a Hitler regime in Germany.
http://www.tarpley.net/bush2.htm
The Bush family are warmongers from WAY back.
Hope George is the last one.
Wiley50 (1000+ posts) Mon Mar-10-08 02:17 PM
Response to Original message
11. Capitalism has always been mortally threatened by Communism
Whereas, Fascism is just the next logical step for authoritarian capitalism
It's lefties vs righties
I, for one, wish to move farther left, to socialism.
I've never been selfish enough to be a successful capitalist anyway
One suspects the wiley one's never been energetic enough to earn his living.
selador (104 posts) Mon Mar-10-08 05:27 PM
Response to Reply #11
32. rubbish
you don't have to be selfish to be a successful capitalist.
what a bunch of anti-capitalist rubbish!
sounds to me like sour grapes.
It is sour grapes indeed.
Selatius (1000+ posts) Mon Mar-10-08 02:38 PM
Response to Original message
13. World War Two likely would not have happened if the US avoided World War One
Without the US to tip the balance of power during the war, a negotiated and fairer settlement would've been negotiated at the bargaining table. With the Allied victory, Germany was forced to pay the vast bulk of war costs regardless of fault. What emerged some two decades later was a vengeful Germany wanting to repay the humiliation visited upon it with the Treaty of Versailles.
coalition_unwilling (1000+ posts) Mon Mar-10-08 02:44 PM
Response to Reply #13
14. Most objective historians of World War I hold that Imperial Germany was indeed responsible for World War I, having offered Austria-Hungary a 'blank check' to go after Serbia, following assassination of Archduke Ferdninand.
Hmmm. One wonders what the coal primitive has been reading.
It's true that Germany gave a "blank check" to Austria-Hungary to go after Serbia, but most historians seem to agree that Austria-Hungary and Russia were more responsible, and for reasons having nothing to do with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, but rather socio-cultural-economic conflicts going back hundreds of years prior to 1914.
Selatius (1000+ posts) Mon Mar-10-08 03:21 PM
Response to Reply #14
15. True, but if the US had avoided the war, a negotiated settlement was far more likely.
Instead, the final agreement was rather lopsided and punitive, leading of course to Nazi Germany.
independentpiney (621 posts) Mon Mar-10-08 03:39 PM
Response to Reply #14
16. That's probably true to some extent
But at the same time the European system of alliances had made a wider war inevitable if Serbia and Austria-Hungary went to war. And Serbia's refusal to pay reparations for the assassination left Austria-Hungary no choice but to declare war, in the context and mindset of the times anyway. Trying to place responsibility for the war on any single country isn't possible.
coalition_unwilling (1000+ posts) Tue Mar-11-08 10:20 AM
Response to Reply #16
50. Austria-Hungary would never have gone to war with Serbia without the "blank check" from Imperial Germany. The generals in Wilhelmine Germany were itching for a fight and found a willing patsy in Austria Hungary. Primary responsibility for World War I, imho, falls squarely upon Imperial Germany and no other country. Hence reparations regime imposed at Versailles.
There's more, but the primitives are befuddled as usual.
One considers the world very fortunate that primitives don't write history.
