This book documents the case that World War II happened in such a different world that it has little relevance to today's foreign policy, as well as the case that U.S. participation in WWII was not justifiable. Specifically, WWII was not fought to rescue anyone from persecution, was not necessary for defense, was the most damaging and destructive event yet to occur, and would not have happened had any one of these factors been missing: World War I, the manner in which WWI was ended, U.S. funding and arming of Nazis, a U.S. arms race with Japan, U.S. development of racial segregation, U.S. development of eugenics, U.S. development of genocide and ethnic cleansing, or the U.S. and British prioritization of opposing the Soviet Union at all costs. The author corrects numerous misconceptions about the most popular and misunderstood war in western culture, in order to build a case for moving to a world beyond war.
Оглавление
David Swanson. Leaving World War II Behind
1. What WWII has to do with military spending
2. WWII was not fought to save anyone from death camps
3. WWII did not have to happen
4. The United States did not have to develop and promote the dangerous bunk science of eugenics
5. The United States did not have to develop the practice of racist segregation
6. The United States did not have to develop practices of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and concentration of people on reservations
7. The United States did not have to fund and arm the Nazis
8. The United States did not have to prioritize opposing the Soviet Union
9. The United States did not have to develop the pledge of allegiance and the one-arm salute
10. The United States welcomed Nazis into the U.S. military
11. The United States did not have to engage in an arms race with Japan
12. WWII does not prove that violence is needed for defense
13. WWII was the worst thing humanity has done to itself and the earth in any short period of time
14. WWII in western culture is a dangerous set of myths
15. There was resistance to WWII in the United States
16. WWII created taxes
17. The world has changed: Hitler is not coming to get us
18. WWII and the case for war abolition
About the Author
Acknowledgements
184 Ken Silverstein, The Nation, "Ford and the Führer," January 6, 2000, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/ford-and-fuhrer
Отрывок из книги
“I’m going to perform a magic trick by reading your mind,” I tell a class of students or an auditorium or video call full of people. I write something down. “Name a war that was justified,” I say. Someone says “World War Two.” I show them what I wrote: “WWII.” Magic!1
If I insist on additional answers, they’re almost always wars even further in the past than WWII.2 If I ask why WWII is the answer, the response is virtually always “Hitler” or “Holocaust” or words to that effect.
.....
In July 1940, Adolf Eichmann, a major planner of the holocaust, intended to send all Jews to Madagascar, which now belonged to Germany, France having been occupied. The ships would need to wait only until the British, which now meant Winston Churchill, ended their blockade. That day never came.46 On November 25, 1940, the French ambassador asked the U.S. Secretary of State to consider accepting German Jewish refugees then in France.47 On December 21st, the Secretary of State declined.48 On October 19, 1941, former U.S. President Herbert Hoover, in a speech on the radio, said over 40 million children in German-invaded democracies were dying as a result of the British blockade. He denounced it as a “holocaust.”49
On July 29, 1942, Eduard Schulte, the chief executive of a German mining company, risked his life to take knowledge of the mass murder underway in German camps to Switzerland to get it into the hands of Gerhart Riegner of the World Jewish Congress. For Riegner to get it to the president of his organization, Rabbi Stephen Wise, in New York, he had to ask the U.S. diplomats in Bern to send it. The U.S. State Department buried the report, sharing it with neither Wise nor President Roosevelt. After a month’s delay, Wise received the report through the British government. He announced that Germany had killed 2 million Jews and was at work killing the rest. The New York Times put that story on page 10.52
