Jacques R. Pauwels - The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, Revised Edition [v.2]

The Myth of the Good War

America in the second World War, revised edition

Jacques R. Pauwels

James Lorimer & Company ltd., Publishers Toronto

Copyright 2015, 2002 by Jacques R. Pauwels.

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James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Publishers acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $24.3 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada. We acknowledge the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative.

Cover photo: National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, DC.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Pauwels, Jacques R., author

The myth of the good war : America in the Second World War / Jacques R. Pauwels. -- Revised edition.

A revised edition of the 2002 English translation with updated foreword.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-4594-0872-2 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-4594-0873-9 (epub)

1. World War, 1939-1945--United States. I. Title.

D769.P38 2015 940.5373 C2014-908287-8

C2014-908288-6

James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Publishers

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Foreword to the new english edition 7

Foreword: Objectives and methodology 11

Chapter 1 Introduction: America and the myth of the Great crusade 19

Chapter 2 The American power elite and Fascism 29

Chapter 3 America and the red peril 42

Chapter 4 The War in Europe and Americas economic interests 53

Chapter 5 Fall 1941: the tide of war turns in Front of Moscow 63

Chapter 6 The United States at war with Japan and Germany 75

Chapter 7 Class warfare on the American home front 86

Chapter 8 A Second Front for Stalin, or a third Front in the air? 95

Chapter 9 Stalins Soviet Union: an unloved but useful partner 107

Chapter 10 The liberation of Italy: a fateful precedent 116

Chapter 11 The long summer of 1944 123

Chapter 12 The successes of the Red Army and the Yalta agreements 132

Chapter 13 Dresden: a signal for Uncle Joe 142

Chapter 14 From Roosevelts soft line to Trumans hard line toward Stalin 169

Chapter 15 An anti-Soviet crusade? 176

Chapter 16 The winding road to the German surrender(s) 187

Chapter 17 America between confidence and concern 193

Chapter 18 Nuclear diplomacy and the onset of the Cold War 201

Chapter 19 A useful new enemy 213

Chapter 20 Corporate collaboration and the so-called de-nazification of Germany (1) 221

Chapter 21 Corporate collaboration and the so-called de-nazification of Germany (2) 237

Chapter 22 The United States, the Soviets, and the post-war fate of Germany 248

Chapter 23 After 1945: From the Good War to Permanent War 267

Endnotes 281

Acknowledgements 301

Select bibliography 303

This book was originally written in Dutch, more specifically the variety of Dutch spoken in Belgium and known as Flemish, and it was first published in Belgium in 2000. The English edition was published two years later, in 2002. Since these early years of the twenty-first century, we have come to look at the world through different glasses on account of the tragic events of September 11, 2001, as well as the so-called war on terrorism thus engendered. Nine-eleven was proclaimed to be another Pearl Harbor, and stateside the war on terrorism was and continues to be presented by the authorities and the mainstream media as another good war, like the Second World War.

However, countless people inside and outside the United States have come to question the official rationales for the war on terrorism and are convinced that it is really though not necessarily exclusively about resources such as oil, obviously a commodity of great interest to oil trusts associated with former president George W. Bush, and about profits for the military-industrial complex, exemplified by corporations such as Halliburton, closely associated with former vice-president Dick Cheney. In this context it has become less difficult to accept the notion, put forward in this book, that even in World War II, Americas quintessential good war, the role of the United States was determined far more by the interests of the countrys big corporations and banks than by the idealistic motives conjured up at the time by the authorities and echoed ever since in the media, in schools and universities, in history books, and, of course, in Hollywood productions. World War II, allegedly Americas best war ever (Michael C. C. Adams), is no longer the untouchable historiographical sacred cow it still was a dozen years ago.

Since 2002, also, numerous new books and articles have been produced on relevant topics such as the economic history of Nazi Germany and the American economic penetration of Europe in general and Germany in particular. As an example, we can cite Adam Toozes The Wages of Destruction:The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy(2006). Most important for our purposes, naturally, were the new publications dealing with the collaboration of US corporations with Germanys Nazi regime before and during the war. Henry Ashby Turners study of Opel, the German subsidiary of General Motors, entitled General Motors and the Nazis: The Struggle forControl of Opel, Europes Biggest Carmaker (2005), is a good example, and so is Edwin Blacks Nazi Nexus: Americas Corporate Connections to HitlersHolocaust (2009).

Much more is now known than a decade ago about the collaboration of major corporations and banks not only American but also German, French, Swiss, et cetera with fascist movements and regimes in general and with Nazism in particular. (I have examined these connections in a book published in 2013 in French,