"The 'Good War' Myth of World War Two" Topic

"World War II was not only the greatest military conflict in history, it was also America's most important twentieth-century war. It brought profound and permanent social, governmental and cultural changes in the United States, and has had a great impact on how Americans regard themselves and their country's place in the world.

This global clash -- with the United States and the other "Allies" on one side, and Nazi Germany, imperial Japan and the other "Axis" countries on the other -- is routinely portrayed in the US as the "good war," a morally clear-cut conflict between Good and Evil. / 1

In the view of British author and historian Paul Addison, "the war served a generation of Britons and Americans as a myth which enshrined their essential purity, a parable of good and evil." / 2 Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme wartime Commander of American forces in Europe, and later US president for eight years, called the fight against Nazi Germany "the Great Crusade." / 3 And President Bill Clinton said that in World War II the United States "saved the world from tyranny." / 4 Americans are also told that this was an unavoidable and necessary war, one that the US had to wage to keep from being enslaved by cruel and ruthless dictators.

Whatever doubts or misgivings Americans may have had about their country's role in Iraq, Vietnam, or other overseas conflicts, most accept that the sacrifices made by the US in World War II, especially in defeating Hitler's Germany, were entirely justified and worthwhile…."
Full text here
link

Amicalement
Armand

"This way to the Dawghouse,gentlemen. . ."

Dontcha just love revisionist historians, spitting on the graves of heroes just to peddle their books…

I wonder how many of these geniuses it would take to storm OMAHA Beach?

If you can't say something that isn't jingoistic, don't say anything. Critique the piece, but don't drag out the hoary old 'spitting on graves' and it's variations.

"Have you looked at our caps recently Hans? They've got skulls on them"

"Are we the baddies?"

"Good War" is a contradictio in terminis. "Good War" does not exist – war is just a dirty violence.

"most accept that the sacrifices made by the US in World War II, especially in defeating Hitler's Germany, were entirely justified and worthwhile…"

Surely not those who have lost children or loved ones !

The old "An ambiguous good guy is infinitely worse than an honest bad guy" fallacy, thereby completely ignoring the realities of politics and the tough choices to make.

The article makes a point for actually declaring war on the USSR after the invasion of Poland (at a point where it would be the most inconvenient move possible) and then another one that we should never have supported them, for Hitler was the lesser of two evils.

Let's assume that we hadn't supported the USSR in WWII and that Hitler was able to create a Reich reaching into the Urals, I'm willing to bet that the article today would have made the plea that while Stalin was a monster, the mistake not to support him cost the lives of far too many allied soldiers, accompanied by a rant about the evil of having nuked several German cities full of refugees and innocent people for the sake of winning the war. I'll leave you to imagine the scenario of France and Britain declaring war on Germany and the USSR in 1940 …

I have an intense dislike for these kinds of attempts to hold the moral high ground for the only purpose than to look down on everyone else. The allies may have made mistakes but I'd rather have this than live in a European hell-hole of volence and war for the last 70-odd years and I don't need someone to cherry-pick their nirvana fallacy idea of how things should have been run so that it matches their arbitrarily impossible high standard flights of fancy !

This is an issue with distinctly ticklish implication. On one hand, "The Institute for Historical Review" is closely related to the David Irving school of revisionist history and should therefore be read with commensurate care. On the other hand, much of the real truth of the Second World War remains to this day heavily obscured and distorted beneath a heavy layer of our own official propaganda, which lingers to this day.

Strictly my opinion, of course.

B

Quoting "A People's History of the United States" is the first red flag (no pun intended). Second, didn't Germany declare war on the United States or has that been revised by the Committee of Historical Review?

DM

"We the people of the……provide for the common defense,…….."
Thought the US was physically attacked by an axis nation and their cohorts declared war on the US. Also read somewhere that there is "no substitute for victory." Ain't freedom great, where you can hold these discussions, after that victory

If looking for a rather raw and balanced book along these lines I highly recommend Studs Terkel's "The Good War". A decent review here:
link

America was attacked, it had no choice in the matter. End of.

"A People's History of the United States"

One of the reasons I was glad to leave the Boston area was that we had Howard Zinn on one side of the Charles River and Noam Chomsky on the other.

B

It's awfully easy for Americans to feel smug about the "Good war" since they never had to face direct attack or occupation or invasion threat or suffer civilian casualties -- the war wasn't so "good" for most other major participants.

When I see this:

"Have you looked at our caps recently Hans? They've got skulls on them"

"Are we the baddies?"

I have to also remember that there are lots of US military units today displaying skulls and death-metal insignia, formally or informally, in battle zones and elsewhere. I always find it very sad and disturbing that so-called good guys would associate themselves with iconography more normally seen displayed by "the bad guys." You'd think we'd had enough of that back in WWII.

@piper909

Here this might help with your rather dour disposition:

YouTube link

piper909 I believe you mistake the term "The Good War". It refers to a just war. A war with clear aggressors and the evil they stood for. It was a war worth fighting. It was not good nor pleasant for any country from the standpoint of enjoyment.

Pretty sure the 17th/21st Lancers would take issue with their using bad guy emblems –

link

Gary

The "historical revisionist" (ie: modern Nazi glorificationist) movement has, for years, consistently used three principal rhetorical tactics.

1) The calculus of moral equivalence
War is bad. Violence is violence. If you wage war, you are just as bad as the opponent you wage war against.

No, if you are attacked, or if your allies are attacked, it is not a moral flaw to go to war. It may be an unhappy development when a nation is pushed into war it does not want, but it is not a moral flaw.

German civilians died under allied bombs. This is the same thing as Nazi's gathering up and exterminating untold millions of innocents, from populations that were already under their control.

No, it isn't.

Stalin was bad. Stalin was aggressive. Yet we didn't wage war on the Soviet Union. Therefore there is no justification for war against Nazi Germany.

No, regardless of Stalin, the war against Nazi Germany was entirely justified.

2) Injection of doubt
Was it REALLY 6,000,000 Jews? Here is a credible source that says it was only 5,870,000 Jews. And how did they count that? How do they know it was 5,870,000 and not 5,869,998? In fact they don't. So don't believe any of "their" numbers. It was probably closer to 200, like this guy over here says. I mean, if the numbers are not right, one number is as good as another, isn't it?

No. Just because credible numbers, counted by credible sources, might differ by 2% or even 5%, that does not mean all numbers are the same.

Here someone says this thing happened on this date, and if you look it is clear it could not have happened on that date. So don't believe anything he says.

No. Sometimes in war, sometimes in history, the date will be off. Or the time of day will be off. Or the it happened in a different town, or in a different sequence, than it is remembered. That does not mean it didn't happen. It just means that more study might be needed to ferret out exactly what did happen, when, in what sequence.

3) Blame shifting
You allied with Stalin. You are just as bad as Hitler.

No. To defeat the worst, you sometimes make accommodations with the not-quite-worst. That does not make you evil, just practical.

Germany offered to ship the Jews to other nations. Those nations didn't take them in. So they share the blame.

A share of the blame, small or large, does not mean that the principal criminal act was any less criminal. If the U.S. can be criticized for not taking in Jewish refugees in 1936, that does not in any way absolve the Nazi's of the blame for seeking to exterminate all of Europe's jews.

Look at how those Jews behaved. They probably deserved what they got.

No they didn't. Doesn't matter if they did or didn't own banks, or shops, or farms. Doesn't matter if they did or didn't go quietly, or they complained but no one listened. Doesn't matter if they looked different, talked different. They did not deserve what they got, and there is no moral justification for shifting blame to the victims or those who sought to help the victims.

She wore slinky clothes. She deserved to be attacked by the sexual predator.

He wore a fancy watch. He deserved to be robbed and shot.

No. The victim does not deserve the blame. It may be prudent not to wear a fancy watch or to make shows of your wealth in bad areas of town, but that does not absolve the criminal of blame if he robs you.

Go back and read that article for it's construction. You'll see these three tactics at use again and again. The calculus of moral equivalency, the injection of doubt, and blame shifting. Their game is, if nothing else, entirely consistent. Has been since the leaflets and pamphlets of the neo-nazi movement in the 1970s. Has been since they overran the usenet chat groups in the 1990s.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

I like your post Mark. I've never understood why some people can't accept that it was a war of good against evil, and good won.

Agree with Mark and Foxweasel

As to the US, say what you want but Japan attacked the US and Germany declared war on the US – so I don't see how the good olde US of A could do anything except beat the pants off them

Mark, if you get a chance please contact me at marc33594ATyahooDOTcom. Thanks

Mark 1 with a walk off home run! Excellent post.

While I don't agree with their moral relativism, the war was not black and white, good and evil. No war is, but in order to win a war you must convince your people it is good versus evil and good must sacrifice to win.

The mythos of WWII has been a major source of why the US has failed at war since. People who don't understand history convinced themselves that we were pure as the driven snow. That any war less pure than that imaginary view of WWII can't be good. They then are unwilling to engage in propaganda to create the good and evil image, and then fail to fight the war because it is not good versus evil. Worse, they then fight the war without taking the necessary steps to win to avoid doing anything not good. While I hate the revisionist efforts, what the mythos has done in the foreign policy realm is far worse.

I'd say it is the opposite as well, the US is so hung up on "total victory" they consider anything less a failure. (And ww2 was not exactly total victory either)

Did anyone read footnote #34 in this article. I don't really understand what the author was thinking when he added the second part of the footnote. It is a big red flag for me however and makes me wonder what's going on in the author's mind.

That caveat being said, I don't think questioning whether a myth or mythos has arisen in the American gestalt about WWII is necessarily revisionism. Certainly at watershed moments in the last 70 years of American history WWII and the 'Greatest Generation' has been widely invoked by writers and public speakers for all sorts of purposes. WWII has to some extent been mythologized in the American public's collective memory as it has in many other states. The fact that the American experience was so different from the Soviet experience in WWII means that both nations are really recalling very different facets of the same war, almost two different wars. Likewise the myth of WWII is different in the UK and in France because of their different circumstances and how those circumstances shaped their national perception of the war. These differences are what make these national recollections of the war subjective myths rather than concrete and objective data. The myths are based on concrete events but the perception of those events alters the myth.

The Myth of the Good War is not what really happened in WWII. It is what we think happened during this second great conflict of the 20th century. What we think happened depends on many factors. Our knowledge of the events of the war. Our familiarity with other perspectives of the war. Our own upbringing, our values, our biases and our personal experiences (first or second hand) of the events leading up to the war, the actual war and the aftermath and ramifications of the war. These colour our understanding of the war.

A rural, European immigrant whose destitute family fled war-torn Europe in the interwar years and who migrated to America and became an ardent isolationist will see the Second World War in one way. An American who grew up in the 1950's or 1960's in a peaceful, middle class neighborhood and learned of the war from the stories of parents, relatives, teachers and through books/comics/TV/movies will have a very different perspective. A reasonably well educated and informed young adult in the year 2016 will see things very differently from the others described above. The war happened but its memory is lost or soon will be. Some of the facts will remain but the intangible recollections and impressions which inform those facts will fade and disappear. All that will be left is the myth and the mythos which have accreted onto the name WWII and the skeleton of data which is available.

The meaning of WWII has and will change with the years as the myth is molded and molds itself in each following generation. Even the most devoted historians and military enthusiasts will never be able to reconstruct the ur-myth of WWII let alone recapture the real war. They will try but their own unique and peculiar biases, perceptions, values and experiences will shape the myth that they build from the facts and recollections available to them. The war is lost like a dreadful thunderclap in the past, the myths will triumph in procession through the minds of today and tomorrow.

The myth of the good war is a powerful one in many countries and is therefore a potent catalyst to motivate people and shape public opinion. While some may hold their myth of the good war as a sacred trust, to be preserved and protected, others will see it as a useful tool for persuasion or manipulation and will try to bend it to their purpose. Thus these more pragmatic persuaders/manipulators also shape the myth by using it for their own purposes (fair or foul). They soon discover that their version of the myth has a greater impact on their target audience if they can dispel other contradictory or complicating myths. A process of mythical natural selection begins as myths are reshaped and adapted to make better tools and the survival of the fittest (most utilitarian) myths drives a societal evolution of the mythos. The myth are ever changing.

That is why the examination of the Myth of the good war is a valid avenue for research, discussion and debate. It is not revisionism. Life is revisionism. The examination is an attempt to understand the revisionism which inexorably occurs to erode and change the myths we all share and agree to believe – i.e. History.

Cheers.
Rod Robertson.

Did anyone read footnote #34 in this article.

I did. If anyone wants to really understand what this article is about, I suggest they read footnote #34 too.

I don't really understand what the author was thinking when he added the second part of the footnote.

Yes you do. You just don't want to admit it to yourself. But if you read that footnote, you can not help but to understand exactly what the author was thinking.

For those who didn't read it, here is the footnote in it's entirety:

34. Charles A. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: 1970), pp. xiv-xv;

Donald Day, for years a correspondent in central Europe for the Chicago Tribune, was even more emphatic in viewing an Allied victory as catastrophic for Europe and the West. "Speaking as an American and as a newspaperman of 15 years experience who knows something about both the United States and Europe," he wrote in early 1943, "I think an American control and administration of Europe would be just as destructive and ruinous as Soviet control. Both would be really Jewish control." Donald Day, Onward Christian Soldiers (Noontide Press, 2002), p. 168.

If you find the Donald Day reference to be somehow out of place, then you do not understand the first part of the footnote. It was Charles Lindbergh who told the country, in September of 1941:

The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration. Instead of agitating for war, Jews in this country should be opposing it in every way, for they will be the first to feel its consequences. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.

It is a big red flag for me however and makes me wonder what's going on in the author's mind.

But I can tell you what's going on in the author's mind. It is clear from his writing.

Directly from the article:

America's other great wartime ally, the Soviet Union, was, by any objective measure, the most tyrannical or oppressive regime of its time, and a vastly more cruel despotism than Hitler's Germany. As historians acknowledge, the victims of Soviet dictator Stalin greatly outnumber those who perished as a result of Hitler's policies. …

In fact, the record of Allied misdeeds is a long one, and includes … the genocidal "ethnic cleansing" of millions of civilians in eastern and central Europe, and the large-scale postwar mistreatment of German prisoners.

Take a look at this passage critically.

Can you see the calculus of moral equivalency in this statement? Can you see the injection of doubt? The blame shifting?

I do not, for one moment, mean to belittle the evil of Stalin's regime, nor do I underestimate the intense challenge for those poor nations and peoples of Eastern Europe who were stuck between Hitler on one side, and Stalin on the other.

But finding Stalin reprehensible does not mean that war against Hitler was unjustified. So applying the tools of the revisionist (for-warning: some calculus of moral equivalency follows) it seems to me that:

Stalin managed what, about 20 million dead over an un-interupted rule of about 30 years (including those who died of malnutrition during the war brought on by Hitler). Call it 25 if you prefer, I've seen several numbers in that range.

Hitler managed to rule Germany from about 1931, and Germany and Austria from 1936. His dominion over non-germanic countries only began in mid-1939, and was over by the end of 1944 (with again the exception of Germany and Austria). So he had about 5 1/2 years.

About 11-12 million dead in the camps (not counting the 30 – 45 million killed by his military adventures) was all Hitler was able to accomplish, thanks to the allies. But it was only the smallest fraction of what he sought to accomplish. What would we have expected if Hitler had had 30 years of un-interrupted rule over Eastern Europe?

The Generalplan Ost called for the eliminating huge numbers of people from Eastern Europe … the Kleine Planung (Small Plan) during the war, was to be followed by the Grosse Planung (Big Plan) to be extended over 20 to 30 years after the war had been won. If Hitler had been in power as long as Stalin, he planned to reduce by 50+% the number of Czechs, 50+% of Russians, 80+% of Poles, 65+% of Ukrainians, 75+% of Byelorussians, and more (Lithuanians, Latvians, etc. etc.).

Before you accept any blame-shifting on to the Americans or the British, or even the Soviets, consider this. If not for the terrible price paid by the allies, if not for the terrible and destructive war that was waged against Germany, the death tole from Hitler's camps and campaigns against civilian populations would have numbered in the hundreds of millions.

That is the actual balance, when you compare moral equivalence. Stalin wanted to rule a huge and obedient population. Hitler wanted to eliminate a huge population. For one, war and death were means to an end. For the other war was a means, but death was the end goal.

Now let's look at the genocidal "ethnic cleansing" of millions of people in post-war Eastern Europe.

I mean no disrespect to those of Polish heritage, whether from or still in Poland. I do not belittle the suffering and the challenges endured during post-war period when the nation's eastern and western borders were shifted, or during the decades in which the Soviet Union sat over the country as both occupier and overlord.

But I think it is pretty clear, even to a Pole, that most Poles survived the Soviet occupation. If the Nazi's had remained in Poland, there would be no Poles left for me to address, as the Nazi plan called not only for eliminating the great majority of the people, but also called for the extinguishing of every vestige of Polish identity -- all literature, all art, all references to Polish language and history.

That is what the term "genocide" means. It does not mean you move individuals from here to there. It does not even mean that you kill a lot of individuals. It means you are seeking to destroy an entire people, both the population, and their identity as a people. No one was in a position to stop Stalin from his plans in Poland. If he was, in fact, engaged in genocide, then today there would be no Poland and no Poles. But there are.

One must be either a) entirely ignorant of the meaning of the word, or b) deliberately trying to equate the unequal, to apply the term "genocidal" to the post-war border shifts and migrations.

Anyone care to guess if this author was a) or b) ?

This is not someone who is pursuing an honest and balanced investigation of the historical record. He does not seek to understand history, but to re-write history.

He continues to use the same 3 ingredient recipe that has been seen dozens of times in dozens of other historical writings, in other forums for historical discourse.

1 ) Injection of doubt.
2 ) The calculus of moral equivalency.
3 ) Blame shifting.

I've seen it all before. I don't doubt I'll see it all again. And again. And again.

Sigh …

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

War is war with 'good' and 'bad' on both sides. How just is it that Finland was basically forced to fight against us? In that part of the war, as far as I'm concerned the Finns were 'good', 'we' were bad. Likewise, who was 'worse' – Stalin or Hitler? Surely that depends on your point of view – sometimes both options are 'bad'.

And yes, America came into the war because: a) An oil embargo against Japan meant that they felt they had no alternative – not looking at the rights and wrongs of this, just the reason. b) Germany declared war on America, not the other way round. So, if America hadn't placed an oil embargo on Japan, would Japan have attacked, and if Germany hadn't declared war, would America have declared war on Germany or would they have concentrated on Japan?

America came into the war because: a) An oil embargo against Japan meant that they felt they had no alternative – not looking at the rights and wrongs of this, just the reason.

OPEC initiated an oil embargo on the U.S. in 1973. So we had no choice but to attack Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuela, right?

I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound critical. Yes, the sequence of events is correct. But that does not make a causal link.

Japan did not feel they had no alternative. They had several alternatives. They enunciated those alternatives, they debated those alternatives. They preferred the alternative of attacking the U.S.

So, if America hadn't placed an oil embargo on Japan, would Japan have attacked…?

Japan was attacking. They had been attacking for 4 years already. It was only that they had not attacked the U.S. … yet.

If the U.S. had not put an oil embargo on Japan, the Japanese might still have found the SE Asian possessions of European nations falling under the German thumb to be irresistible.

It would be as credible if not more so, in terms of cause-and-effect, to say "America came into the war because: a) Japan was relentlessly invading and attacking nations and territories all over Southeast Asia, and they felt that they needed to get the USN out of the way to continue their conquests – not looking at the rights and wrongs of this, just the reason."

Or to say "America came into the war because: a) German conquests over France and Holland, and their relentless and distracting attacks on Britain, emboldened Japan to presume they could absorb several lucrative Southeast Asian colonies without interference from the traditional European powers, if they could get the USN out of the way first – … So if Germany had not attacked Western Europe, then Germany would not have had to declare war on the US"

Let's ask the author of the article in the OP. He can probably tie the Jews or Stalin into the blame game, too.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

'I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound critical.'

Critical is fine.

Every war is based on preceding events – they don't usually occur in isolation. In the case of Japan they were in a war with China. Countries go to war with each other. In this case, USA oil embargo was not only seen as a hostile act, it was a hostile act that would have crippled Japan within 6 months. OPEC was never in that position.

And it was a causal link – '26 July when the President, against the advice of his Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold R. Stark, issued an order freezing Japanese assets in the United States. Since Japan no longer had the dollars with which to purchase the urgently needed materials of war, the effect of this measure, which the British and Dutch supported, was to create an economic blockade of Japan. So seriously did Admiral Stark regard this move that he warned Admiral Thomas C. Hart, commander of the Asiatic Fleet, to take "appropriate precautionary measures against possible eventualities." [12] '

'The sharp American and British reaction to their move into Indochina came as a surprise to the Japanese and precipitated an intensive review of the nation's readiness to wage war. The picture was not encouraging. The powerful Planning Board which co-ordinated the vast, complex structure of Japan's war economy found the country's resources meager and only enough, in view of the recent action of the United States, for a quick, decisive war to gain the riches of the Indies. "If the present condition is left unchecked," asserted Teiichi Suzuki, president of the board, "Japan will find herself totally exhausted and unable to rise in the future." The blockade, he believed, would bring about Japan's collapse within two years, and he urged that a final decision on war or peace be made "without hesitation." [13] The Navy's view was equally gloomy. There was only enough oil, Admiral Osami Nagano told the Emperor, to maintain the fleet under war conditions for one and a half years and he was doubtful that Japan could win a "sweeping victory" in that time. His advice, therefore, was to drop the Tripartite Pact and reach agreement with the United States. '

link

Germany did not have to declare war on America – after all, Japan didn't declare war on Russia…

Incidentally, re revisionism…

Doesn't that depend on what is being revised and how? If it corrects myths then I agree with it, looking at:

1 ) Injection of doubt.
2 ) The calculus of moral equivalency.
3 ) Blame shifting.

If there is doubt, then it should be challenged.
If you want to say that 'everything our side does is good – you are probably deluding yourself. Yes, Stalin was as bad as Hitler.
If you want to shift the 'blame' – doesn't this depend on whether the 'blame' has been fairly distributed in thefirst place.

None of the above (other than Stalin as evil as Hitler) is aimed at any country, individual or group of ndividuals – it's just to say that accepting things at face value is not a good way to do things. In some cases, critical analysis – not 'revisionism' as implied here – may spoil the views of the rose-tinted glasses brigade or a nations smugness about their actions.

Fine. In those cases it's about time!

But ONLY if justified by evidence.

Well, one need only google "Mark Weber Institute for Historical Review" to see that something is very rotten here. I think a quick review of e-documents available even at a glance moves Mr. Weber and his institute from the revisionists' camp to full-blown holocaust deniers. All should be very sceptical of the author's motives and analysis.

More the pity because the notion of the good war myth of WWII has been used and abused to shape US policy over the last 70+ years and an objective look at that process and its implications would likely be a beneficial analysis. But coloured by the poison pen of Mr. Weber and his kindred deniers it is of no use at all save as a cautionary tail to always read the footnotes!

Thank you Mark 1 for your vigilance and your clarity.

Cheers.
Rod Robertson.

Mark 1,
There is a great gulf of difference between the Arab oil embargo, which economically inconvenienced the West, and the draconian measures quite suddenly undertaken by the USA against Japan, which would have totally collapsed its economy in short order. I cannot cite specific references, as it has been some years since I studied this topic, but the record is both painfully and documentarily clear that Roosevelt intentionally provoked Japan into war. For example, Japan had in its possession official export permits issued by the US government for at least two years worth (in terms of Japanese consumption) of US oil (The US was the traditional source of supply for approximately 70pct of Japan's oil requirements). These export permits could not legally be revoked, so the Roosevelt administration went to Plan B – a total freeze of Japanese assets in the United States in order to prevent the purchases from being consummated. US officials were under no misapprehensions about the impact and severity of this gambit upon Japan and the general sense within both the US civilian administration and military was to be prepared for war.

Why was this done? It was (IMO) an effort on the part of Roosevelt to protect British, French and Dutch colonial interests in the Asia-Pacific region and part of a sub rosa plan on the part of Roosevelt to find a way to push a largely unwilling USA into the war. Inducing someone to "fire the first shot" was what Roosevelt required to achieve that goal.

B

Mark 1 thank you for a well written and thought out rebuttal. You hit the gist of this article right over the head. Outstanding! And yes it was a war of good vs evil.

I took a moment to go to the web page of the organization who posted this carp and was not surprised to see the nature of the Nazi apologists bul

I would agree with the comments re the Institute – just look at the headings on their page:

ihr.org/other/weber_bio.html

How accurate one particular reference is does not make the method wrong – accurate critical analysis is needed. This particular group fails in that respect. This does not, of course, mean that ALL their arguments are wrong, or that history as originally written always right!

Take each one on it's own merits.

But I wonder if Japan could not have achieved its aims by not attacking the USA?

British Empire out of it as they had their hands full fighting Germany. Likewise Russia. The European countries occupied by Germany, so the Germans could have just told them to allow Japanese occupation and bang, Japan has its own supply of oil and other materials.

Sorry I have no idea on the morality of war. But if you are attacked, you either give up or fight back.

'Sorry I have no idea on the morality of war. But if you are attacked, you either give up or fight back.'

Exactly.

And who the attacker is may depend on your own perspective. The Japanese perspective was that they were attacked first by the embargo.

Or, for a more recent example, think of the cold war. Japan and the US finished up with a cold war that went hot.

link

And apologies, I spelled "tale" wrong above. I'm such a moron!

Cheers.
Rod Robertson.

I am having a hard time with those who seem to think the US oil embargo began the sequence of events which somehow "forced" the Japanese to declare war on the US. War between Japan and China flared into open conflict with the so called Marco Polo Bridge incident in July 1937. The US, along with various other nations, disapproved of Japan's actions. As years of negotiations dragged on with no appreciable concession on Japan's part the US looked for ways short of war to pressure Japan. On 26 July 1941 the embargo against Japan was announced, some 4 years after Japanese aggression in Asia.

But that didnt necessarily mean Japan still didnt have choices short of war with the US. It was Japan that chose that course among many open to it. But then Japan knew its expansionist aims were bound to collide with US interests at some point. Least you all forget Admiral Yamamoto proposed the attack on Pearl Harbor in January of 1941 a full seven months BEFORE the oil embargo. While met with opposition at the time it nonetheless illustrates the mood of the Japanese military at the time.

I suggest for a very brief history of the embargo and what precipitated it this article from the Historian's office, Department of State is a good start:
link

Go here -
PDF link
- for the point of view from the other side.

I would also suggest that the political fuze to the Pacific unpleasantness of WW2 was actually lit by the unconscionably shabby treatment of Japan by the major Entente powers at the Treaty of Versailles. Up to that time, Japan had been an avid emulator of all things "Western".

Strictly my opinion, ofcourse.

B

I think your source sums it up nicely with his statement: "Since the United States was already
determined to fight and had already started making bold actions, Franklin D.
Roosevelt was buying time with the Japan-U.S. reconciliation negotiations in
1941."

Once again Japan is blameless and it was the US which had already made up its mind to start a war just needing a pretext. An interesting paper this seems to justify Japan's actions as warranted because the US refused to provide the necessary war materials to sustain Japanese aggression in the region.

The oil embargo was only put in place to put those people in their place.

Obviously.

Mebbe so, Mark. But "blame" and "blameless" are often ex post facto constructs arbitrarily defined by the winner of the struggle. For example, consider the Mexican-American War or the Spanish-American War or the Boer Wars or the Zulu Wars. Japan had its own unique thousand year relationship with the Asian mainland, which it saw as a sphere of specific strategic interest. Viewing the Asian situation, as it then stood, solely through the lens of a US perspective does not give a complete portrait.

The USA (and I speak as a citizen thereof) is not the only nation with self-interests and it is not realistic to suppose that other nations have any obligation to subordinate themselves to another in that respect.

Wars erupt when those self-interests come into serious conflict with one another. Roosevelt and the US leadership understood the war risk potential of their policy vis a vis Japan and chose to nevertheless pursue it for motives which (to me) remain unsatisfyingly murky.

Could Japan have defused the situation by abandoning its Asian economic ambitions and subordinating itself to US diplomatic domination? Yes.

Could the USA have defused the situation by minding its own business with respect to Japanese ambitions in Asia that represented no direct threat to the USA? Yes.

But neither did so.

B

I am having a hard time with those who seem to think the US oil embargo began the sequence of events which somehow "forced" the Japanese to declare war on the US. War between Japan and China flared into open conflict with the so called Marco Polo Bridge incident in July 1937. The US, along with various other nations, disapproved of Japan's actions. As years of negotiations dragged on with no appreciable concession on Japan's part the US looked for ways short of war to pressure Japan. On 26 July 1941 the embargo against Japan was announced, some 4 years after Japanese aggression in Asia.

It might not be unreasonable to think that Japan felt no need to make concessions and that the US was interfering in matters in Japan's own back yard. Imagine how it would have gone down in the US if the USA had been involved in a war in South America and Japan had told the US to stop it and behave! Then instigated an embargo on the US that would have crippled its economy.

"…abandoning its Asian economic ambitions…" They were carrying out an aggressive WAR against China and neighbors in an attempt to expand their empire! This wasnt trade negotiations. Germany was only looking for living space for its population. Should we have shipped resources to them as well?

Fred, so what you are saying is if we were at war in South America and Japan disagreed they had an obligation to continue to supply us with the resources necessary to continue that war?

It is simple. The Japanese chose their course. The US had no obligation to support that choice with which we disagreed.

> Could Japan have defused the situation by abandoning its Asian economic ambitions

I think we should ask the Chinese and the Koreans what they think abou that.

Japan was following its own manifest destiny spurred on by the likes of the Genyosha/Black Dragons and an increasingly fanatical junior officer corps, which was to seek its own "fair share" of power among the major nations of the world. Even those who should have known better and could have put a halt to it got infected and jumped on the bandwagon.

They banked heavily on Britain moving away from the Pacific and be given its place. The US muscled in and from then on there was a clear plan to challenge the US for supremacy in Asia and the Pacific.

The rest I can only describe as a tragic comedy of errors. Japan invaded China believing it would give them a stream of resources to strengthen them for the coming fight. The fact that it became a quagmire that swallowed up more resources, lead to the idea that more conquests would bring in the resources to defeat China and free the resources to attack the US.

When in the end the US imposes an embargo, Japan is stuck in order to challenge the US for supremacy they need oil to get them out of the quagmire that is keeping them in the quagmire that prevents them from challenging the US and have no other choice than to attack the US …

Interesting that neither China or Japan wished to declare a state of war, so that both could continue getting supplies from the USA.

Fred, so what you are saying is if we were at war in South America and Japan disagreed they had an obligation to continue to supply us with the resources necessary to continue that war?

Ask yourself this question. How many colonial wars/wars of expansion were there in the first half of the 20th century and in how many of those did the US impose crippling economic sanctions on one of the participants? I think that will provide you with an answer to your question.

And here is a quote from celebrated US marine Corps General Smedley Butler just in case you thought the US wasn't in on the racket of exploiting the natives.

I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

No doubt the Standard Oil boys let the president know of their displeasure at Japan muscling in on their patch after Smedley Butler had worked so hard to make it safe for them.