ROCKWELL: Good morning. This is the LEW ROCKWELL SHOW. And how great it is to have as our guest this morning Judge John Denson. John is a long-time practicing lawyer in Opelika, Alabama, and he was a judge. But, always, his whole life, he’s been a great student of history, especially war history, especially revisionist war history. And we love having him come onto the show and tell us about the important new books that we should be aware of, about the actual conduct of U.S. wars, the reasons for them, and all the things that the standard historians don’t tell us.

So John is going to start off today by talking about two extremely important new books, one on World War I, one on World War II.

So, John, tell us.

DENSON: All right, well, Lew, of course, you know and we’ve talked about my interest in the wars. It’s mainly about, why did a war start. And when America is involved, why did America get into the war. And then, of course, I’m interested in how it ended and whether it ended with a just peace or not.

So the two books I’m talking about today, published this year. One is how we got into World War I, and mainly just limited to Wilson’s decision to take us into that war. And the second one is about World War II. It’s about a sensational new book written by Herbert Hoover and just released this year. He finished writing the book in 1963 and died at the age of 90, in 1964, and it’s just released this year.

So those are the two books, and I’ll probably start off with World War I.

ROCKWELL: Great. Well, tell us the title first.

DENSON: The title of the book is Nothing Less Than War, by Justus Doenecke. And the title comes from Wilson’s address to Congress to get them to declare war. He wanted them to merely recognize that nothing less than war already existed. Rather than asking them to declare it, he just wanted them to declare it already existed.

(LAUGHTER)

So that’s the reason for the title.

Professor Doenecke states — in the book, he says that much of his research over the years has been focused upon opponents of American foreign policy during the initial years of World War II and the Cold War. And he says this work continues somewhat in that vein. So he tries to present a balanced approach. In other words, he gives you the pro and con of the people that were influencing Wilson to get into the war and those telling him to stay out.

But he presents mainly an examination of Wilson’s leadership and how he interacted with the people that were around him. And one of the conclusions that Doenecke comes to is that Wilson failed in his selection of people to advise him because Doenecke says they all let him down. They were all encouraging him to get into war, except William Jennings Bryan, his secretary of state. So otherwise, he tries not to — Doenecke tries not to take sides. He just presents both sides. But that was one of the conclusions that the people around Wilson let him down.

ROCKWELL: An actual honest historian, in other words.

DENSON: Yes. He tries to be balanced, whereas, the Hoover book, Hoover is attacking. He doesn’t try to present an historian’s balanced view. It’s his opinion about what he thinks. So Doenecke is a professional historian with many good books. And this is one of the best because I think that the point is so important.

I want to quote about the importance of decision (sic) from one of Murray Rothbard’s books. It’s Wall Street, Banks and American Foreign Policy. And Murray says, “American entry into World War I in April, 1917, prevented a negotiated peace between the warring powers and drove the allies forward into a peace of unconditional surrender and dismemberment, chaos and disruption throughout Central and Eastern Europe at war’s end, and the consequent rise of Bolshevism, Fascism and Nazism to power in Europe. In this way, Woodrow Wilson’s decision to enter the war may have been the single most fateful action of the 20th century, causing untold and unending misery and destruction. But Morgan profits were expanded and assured.”

So I agree with Murray’s assessment that this decision was maybe the most fateful decision an American president has ever made because I think it led directly, as Murray says, to World War II, to Nazism, to Bolshevism, and so forth. So this book is strictly about what influenced Wilson’s decision. And he was not pressured by public opinion. There were no polls saying you’ve got to go to war. There was no one single event like Pearl Harbor. There were series of events but nothing that just drove America to war. So it was really a decision made by Wilson to present it to Congress. And it was highly debated in Congress. And that’s where the real debate took place.

But some of the interesting parts to me is that Doenecke goes into some of Wilson’s ideas before he was president and shows his proclivity towards war and wanting to get into a war.

And here’s some of the views Doenecke presents. He says that, “The United States was founded to serve humanity, bringing liberty to mankind.” And in 1904, Doenecke says, “The future president spoke of sharing America’s global calling with the British Empire. Wilson said, quote, ‘The Anglo-Saxon people have undertaken to reconstruct affairs of the world and it would be a shame upon them to withdraw their hand’.”

And Wilson had strong English ties. I didn’t know this. His mother was born in the British Isles. And his paternal grandparents were both British. He says, Doenecke says, “Wilson admired the English culture and institutions, esteeming the practices of Parliament.” And then he says, “Wilson believed in overseas expansion.” Wilson is quoted as saying, quote, “Our interest must march forward, altruists though we are, other nations must see to it that they stand off and do not seek to stay us.” Those were all his views before he was president.

ROCKWELL: Wow.

DENSON: So it so sets the tone.

Two of the people who were trying to get him into the war were Teddy Roosevelt, who kept calling him a coward, and Henry Cabot Lodge, who was a Senator that was constantly lobbying for America to get into the war.

William Jennings Bryan was the one that tried to prevent it. And, of course, he couldn’t, so he resigned as secretary of state.

ROCKWELL: One of Rothbard’s laws was always, “Nobody ever resigns.”

(LAUGHTER)

But, of course, in this case, he actually did resign. Maybe we can forgive him for some of his economic ideas because of his conduct in this.

DENSON: That’s right. He was the only one for peace.

The vote was finally 82 to six in the Senate, and 373 to 50* in the House.

One of the interesting things that Doenecke brings out is Congressman Charles Lindbergh, the father of the aviator, he points out that Wilson was praised for creating the Federal Reserve System in 1913. But the Congressman, he says, quote, “Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, Republican from Minnesota, father of the famous aviator, blamed the, quote, ‘greedy speculators of the money trust,’ end quote, as revealed in supposed Federal Reserve documents that were overseas, and that caused that — for bringing the nation to the verge of hostilities.” In other words, Lindbergh was saying it was the Federal Reserve that helped us get into the war.

(LAUGHTER)

But to me, the most sensational quotation about Wilson and the war is the conversation he had in March before the declaration in April. And he’s talking with Frank Cobb, the crusading editor of New York World. He says, Doenecke says, “After confessing that he had done everything possible to avoid the war, Wilson expressed deep anxiety. Once the United States entered the conflict. Quote, ‘The spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street’.” And Doenecke says, “The Constitution, not to mention freedom of speech and assembly, could not survive the ordeal.” In short, quote, “It required illiberalism at home to reinforce the men at the front. In addition, Germany would be badly beaten or defeated and that the peace would be a dictated one. There would be no neutral bystanders left to foster a just settlement.”

ROCKWELL: Wow.

DENSON: Now, that’s Wilson’s idea before he asked for the declaration of war. And it’s obvious he saw what it was going to do.

ROCKWELL: And he was elected as president on a peace ticket, wasn’t he?

DENSON: Elected. Yes, kept us out of war, was his slogan —

(LAUGHTER)

— when he was elected in 1916.

But to think that he could see all that in advance, and then to get into it. It’s a war that America should not have entered.

The main thing, of course, was American policy towards the submarine warfare of the Germans. Several attempts were made in Congress. One was the McLemore Resolution in the House and the Gore Resolution in the Senate that tried to either force the president to warn people to stay off the ships or to do something to not provoke this submarine warfare. So Wilson took the position that, no, people have a right to travel and we don’t want to interfere with their right to travel. So some nut could get on a British ship and it be sunk and be a cause for war.

The disappointing part of the book was that he used a book about the Lusitania, written by sort of a court historian named Thomas Bailey, who apologized for Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor and so forth, and doesn’t really hit the nail on the head about the Lusitania.

The book that I hoped that he would have talked about is entitled, The Lusitania, by Colin Simpson. I’ve cited and talked about that book a lot. And it really tells the true story, I believe, of the sinking of the Lusitania. And it involves Churchill, who was in charge of Cunard line; nationalized the line when the war started. And the British had designed a ship so they could carry munitions and they — this was while Secretary of State Bryan was still in office. And the Germans informed Bryan that the Lusitania, which was going to sail from New York to England, contained contraband, illegal weapons and ammunition that was being shipped, and that they intended to sink it, and that he should tell the president and the president should warn Americans to stay off the ship. And Wilson refused to do it. The Germans ran ads in the New York papers, telling people, stay off this ship; it’s going to be sunk. And, of course, it was the fastest, greatest ship in the world.

Churchill changed the captains. And then he gave orders as the ship approached England for the escort to leave it, for it to slow down and stop evasive action. And Churchill knew that there was a German sub there. And it sank the Lusitania and I think 123 Americans. So it sort of became the emotional part, almost the Pearl Harbor. But it happened, I think, in 1915, so, long before the declaration of war. But it was the sort of thing that indicted Wilson and Churchill too in my mind. And I thought Doenecke would say something more about that in his book but he didn’t.

But nevertheless, I think it’s just a great book. I highly recommend it. It’s an important decision. It shows that it was almost discretionary to Wilson about getting us in and, yet, he had full knowledge of what it was going to cause and the dreadful consequences to America and to peace in the world. And he knew that it would be an unjust peace as a result.

ROCKWELL: Which is what he wanted.

DENSON: I guess. Yes.

ROCKWELL: Yes. I notice from the title of the book, it sort of reminds me of the fact that, of course, at that point, he wanted to be like what subsequent presidents have become, guys who can declare war on their own say so, which is a dictator.

DENSON: Yes.

ROCKWELL: Because he wanted to say it was already war so Congress was merely ratifying, not actually declaring.

DENSON: Well, he brings up also about Philip Dru: Administrator, the book that was written by House.

ROCKWELL: Yes.

DENSON: Who was a close adviser. And it was published anonymously first. And Doenecke says that there’s no evidence that Wilson actually read it but he did take it with him on a vacation. And in that book, it talks about House creates this dictator that changes the whole world. And it’s pretty much the plan, you know, of going into a war and having a dictator that dictates how things will be put together.

ROCKWELL: And a fascist social and economic system domestically.

DENSON: Right.

ROCKWELL: And, of course, it sort of has come true, Phillip Dru: Administrator.

DENSON: Right.

ROCKWELL: Now we’ve got an Obama Dru: Administrator, a George Dru, whatever, but —

(LAUGHTER)

The system seems to abide.

DENSON: The second book is one that I saw advertised in the Hoover Press this time last year. It was going to be published in May of 2011. And I kept waiting for it and they never did send it. I kept calling and finally it came out just in November of this year. The title of it is Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of the Second World War and Its Aftermath. And he called it, at various times, his magnum opus, or his war book.

And most of us, who defend the free market, Libertarians, have had to talk about Herbert Hoover in a different way, in that most of the time we are trying to set the record straight that the Depression was not caused by Hoover’s failure of laissez faire policies. Because Hoover was part of the Progressive movement. And he served as secretary of commerce and then as president and he believed in some government regulation of the economy. We have not seen him as a champion of freedom at all.

But in this book, he emerges as part of the Old Right. And he becomes the most anti-war American of his day and very supportive of the America First movement. And he actually ran for president, tried to get the nomination, Republican nomination, in 1940, as an anti-war candidate. He could see all of Roosevelt’s moves towards trying to get us into war. And he thought that if he could get the Republican nomination that he could prevent America from getting into World War II. And, of course, Wendell Willkie won.

And Hoover was suspicious that people had sabotaged his campaign and his speech. And he says that, “There’s going to be books written to justify all my conclusions.” And so there is a book now out called Desperate Deceptions: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939 to 1944, by Thomas Mahl. And it talks about how they sabotaged the Hoover campaign to make sure that Wendell Willkie was the Republican nominee so that there would be no challenge to Roosevelt’s foreign policies.

ROCKWELL: I also like how Mahl describes what they did with the pollsters, the big national polling companies, in cooperation with the Roosevelt administration — of course, with the British too — phony’d up the polls so that, even though there was no increase in American sentiment for intervention, Gallup and all the rest of the polls showed increasing war fever on the part of the American people. And it was all just a trick, all just a lie, just the propaganda, things like that. I always think — when I think about polls today, or at any other time, I always remember the Mahl book because they were happy to turn them into lying machines for the government, like the rest of them.

DENSON: Right. Well, there’s so much written about a guy named William Stephenson, who went by the code name “Intrepid,” that was — had a secret organization of the British located at Rockefeller Center, working directly with Churchill to get America into the war. That was their whole purpose. And they were here in 1939. And they provided a false map to Roosevelt; provided a false document to Hitler, trying to stir up things. And so they were working behind the scenes much more than Hoover realized.

It’s a 900-page book. And I don’t want anybody to be scared away, because it’s what you call a page-turner. Because this is, to me, one of the best, most revealing revisionist histories of World War II that is around.

Let me read a couple of paragraphs right at the end that sort of summarizes what the book is about.

Hoover states, “From the ample lessons of World War I and its aftermath, I opposed every step towards World War II and the foreign policies that flowed from it. I make no apologies, for every day since has confirmed my judgment. A host of other public men and women and, indeed, the majority of the American people were opposed to the intervention in the war. The reasons for our opposition should be made clearly a part of the public record. And this record should include the great difficulties under which we, of the opposition, labored. We were viciously attacked by the Roosevelt and Truman administrations and their collaborators. Moreover, the character of the propaganda used by these administrations should also be part of the record.”

This next sentence is close to my heart because it’s the reason for doing the book, The Costs of War.

Next, Hoover says, “A far more important purpose of these volumes is to remind our people of the consequences of war. The victors in modern war are in reality the vanquished. If at times this narrative appears to be blunt in its conclusions, I hope the reader will keep in mind the results of 20 years of Roosevelt, Truman domination of America. These policies made nearly half the world Communist, armed and bent on the destruction of all free men; made another one-third of the world Socialists, both seeking to infect American life. The cost to the American people has been 400,000 dead sons; nearly 800,000 more wounded; and imposed on us the need to support two million widows, orphans and disabled veterans; saddled us with more than $300* billion in federal obligations; brought taxation through the front door as to every cottage and every — inflation through the back door, as to make a post-war income of $5,000 a year no greater than the purchasing value than a pre-war income of $2000; undermined our savings for insurance and old age; and in the end, brought us 10 years of Cold War and no peace at the end yet.”

ROCKWELL: Wow.

DENSON: So, sort of lays it out exactly why he wrote the book.

ROCKWELL: I once was in a discussion with the former head of the Hoover Institution in California. He was chastising me for Murray Rothbard’s great book, America’s Great Depression, where he talks about Hoover as predecessor of the New Deal and his agricultural and other interventionist economic policies. Of course, that was true. I mean, Murray wrote a great book and shows that side of Hoover. But I said to him, why doesn’t the Hoover Institution ever discuss peace. I said, it’s in your title, “War, Revolution and Peace,” but you never discuss Hoover’s actual views on foreign policy. Of course, I had no idea about this book. But I did know, as president, he was not a warmonger.

DENSON: Well, yes, and, of course, there wasn’t a war going on and when he was president in ’28 to ’32, and so he had no reason to express his views on war. But he had seen the results of World War I and became one of the most respected men in the world, I mean, after World War I, when he saved millions and millions of lives while — organization of a food program. And it’s his celebrity status in that regard that opened so many doors to him that he could talk with people all over the world and get documents. He had people furnishing him documents that nobody else could get. And those are supposedly located at the Hoover Institute. So it’s there’s great source of material for revisionist historians at the Hoover Institute on War, Revolution and Peace. So —

(LAUGHTER)

ROCKWELL: You know, you mentioned that he was Progressive. But maybe, unlike today’s Progressives, he was actually — there were a number of Progressives who were anti-war. He wasn’t the only one. So even though the movement — it’s very unfortunate from an economic standpoint. And, of course, it had its Teddy Roosevelts and Woodrow Wilsons, but they weren’t all bad. I mean, there were some good guys, like Hoover.

DENSON: One interview that was interesting is that he was travelling at in Europe — and he traveled all the time. He lived in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York but he traveled all over the world. And he just happened to be in Europe and our ambassador to Germany couldn’t get an audience with Hitler. But Hitler gets in touch with Hoover and asks him to come see him and talk to him. So he has an interview with Hitler. And then Goering asked him to come and see him and he went to Goering’s house. But it’s things like that where he had access to people that nobody else could see and talk to. And so it lends a lot of credibility to this book because he talked to these people.

He talked to Joe Kennedy at length about the guarantee of Britain to Poland. And Kennedy was supposed to write a book about this. But, anyway, there’s about three pages dedicated to his talk with Joe Kennedy. And Kennedy confirmed to him that the British government was aware that the Versailles Treaty needed to be revised. And they had no real objection to it being revised, even by Hitler if he did it peacefully. And so when the invasion of Czechoslovakia took place and then Britain took a hard line and gave Poland a guarantee that they would back them up, and for them not to negotiate on Poland, then the war started.

And Kennedy said that it was very much against the British policy for them to make that guarantee but that Roosevelt intervened, through his Ambassador Bullitt, and told the Polish people not to negotiate with Hitler. And if they got into war, if a war erupted, that if they wanted America backing, then they had to make that guarantee to Poland. And so Kennedy and Hoover both felt that if that guarantee had not been made, there would have been only one war and that would have been Stalin and Hitler. And that’s what Hoover says. The only inevitable war was between Stalin and Hitler. And we should have let them battle each other to a frazzle.

And there’s an excellent book about that called the War of the Century: When Hitler Fought Stalin, by Laurence Rees. And it talks about how terrible that war was. And that’s what Hoover talks about a lot, is that war should have put the two dictators at each other’s throats and reduced them down to nothing. We should not have intervened on either side of that war. The only other place I’ve seen that is in Forrestal Diaries, where somebody played golf with Kennedy and heard that. But here, Kennedy talks with Hoover at length about it.

Of course, another thing is Pearl Harbor. Hoover sees every move that Roosevelt is doing to try to, first, provoke the war with Germany and get them to fire the first shot, and he can’t get them, you know. So then he turns to Japan. And he sees that as one of the great deceits — Roosevelt provoked Pearl Harbor. Now we have the book Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor, by Robert Stinnett, that gives us the McCollum paper that shows the eight steps that McCollum told Roosevelt to follow to provoke the war. And Hoover follows all those steps. Of course, he didn’t know there was —

(LAUGHTER)

— a McCollum memorandum. But, anyway, he sees Roosevelt as provoking Pearl Harbor.

He goes through about 19 failed statesmanship ideas. One that I had never heard of that occurs before the war was that while Hoover was president in 1932, he set up a world economic conference to be held in 1933. And part of reason for setting up the conference was to try to restore the gold standard worldwide. And he said as soon as Roosevelt came into office and the preliminary work had been done, and Roosevelt called in 10 prime ministers to Washington with whom he agreed to restore the gold standard in international transactions and, suddenly, the conference was repudiated and Roosevelt canceled it. And then Hoover says, “His own Secretary of State Hull explicitly denounced this action by Roosevelt as the roots of World War II.” And never, never run across that.

Secondly, he goes through another problem — was the recognition of Communist Russia in 1933 by Roosevelt. Most countries had treated the Russians, the Bolshevik regime, as outlaws and criminals. And Roosevelt recognized them as a legitimate government. And Hoover says, “Four presidents and five secretaries of states (sic), Democrats as well as Republicans, had, with knowledge of the whole purpose and methods of international Communism, refused such action.”

He goes into Munich, too. And, to me, that’s one of the most complicated subjects to talk about, Munich and appeasement. That’s become just sort of a dirty word. But Hoover explains how the Versailles Treaty needed to be revised. And as I’ve said, the British took the position with Hitler and let him know, we have no problem with you revising the treaty as long as you do it peacefully. So the idea of going to Munich was to try to undo some of the things that had been done by the treaty.

Poland had ceased to exist as a country before World War I. It had been taken over and split up by Germany, Russia and the Austrian Empire. So part of the purpose of the Versailles conference was to recreate the country of Poland. So they took various things away from Germany and they split Germany in half. And East Prussia was split off by a corridor that went to the sea. And a city, the German city of Danzig was there and it was a German city. And so the British had taken a position, yes, you need to revise that; we agree with that. And then, suddenly, Roosevelt steps in and tells them, tells the British, you know, tell Poland not to negotiate with Hitler on that anymore and go to war.

And in Munich, the Sudeten Germans were incorporated into Czechoslovakia. And the British had no problem with the Sudeten Germans coming back into Germany. And they thought that Danzig should probably come back to Germany as a city, that there should be a railroad or a road built across Germany to East Prussia to rejoin Germany.

So Hitler was doing all this knowing that the British were not opposing it. And then, suddenly, Roosevelt steps in and tells them, you know, the British not to negotiate anymore and tells Poland don’t negotiate anymore, and tells the British, give a guarantee to the Poles that you’ll back them up and we’ll back you up. So it goes into a lot of the problems with Munich and appeasement. There’s a whole lot about the guarantee of Poland.

Also, the undeclared war that he had with Germany by the Lend-Lease program. In other words, that was almost an act of war, well, by furnishing materials to the British.

He was very critical of Roosevelt for his alliance with Stalin. He thought that the Roosevelt administration was full of Communists and —

ROCKWELL: It was.

DENSON: And so now we have the book The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors, by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel. And it goes into great detail. Even Harry Hopkins, who is Agent number 19 — lived in the White House; second most powerful man in America; right there with Roosevelt — was a direct Communist agent, according to the Venona cables. These were intercepts by the FBI that were following all of the Communist infiltration of Roosevelt’s administration. And Hoover was — knew about a lot of that. Very critical of Roosevelt and his allowance of the Communists inside of his government.

Hoover praises this little book here, Great Mistakes of the War, by Hanson Baldwin, that I’ve used a lot in talks. Hanson Baldwin was a writer for The New York Times and covered World War II. And he condemns the unconditional surrender policy as the most dreadful decision that Roosevelt made. And Hoover agrees with that. That was one of the worst things that could have been done. It lengthened the war. It probably caused twice as many people to be killed. It led eventually to another thing that Hoover objected to and that was not accepting the peace proposal of Japan. He says that it was known as early as February and as late as May, 1945, that the Japanese were willing to surrender if they could keep their emperor.

ROCKWELL: They were trying to surrender.

DENSON: They were trying to surrender and they were sending messages. And he condemns Truman because he says Truman should not have continued the unconditional surrender policy. He should have accepted the peace proposal of Japan and not dropped the atomic bombs.

He’s also critical of Roosevelt before the war for not accepting Japanese peace proposals by Prince Konoe. He goes into great detail about that. That the Japanese were doing everything within their power to try to reach a peace agreement but Roosevelt refused to meet with him. So —

ROCKWELL: He wanted war.

DENSON: And he wanted a war. And I’ve written at other places, I think the reason he wanted it is he wanted to create the United Nations and he had to have a war to do that. And America had to be in it to do that.

He sort of liked Truman as a person and —

(LAUGHTER)

— he condemns his policies. But he wrote to Truman and said he was thinking about writing an article. Of course, he was writing this book. He said, I may be a little critical of you. And Truman wrote back and said, I hold you in such high esteem there’s nothing you could say that would bother me. And so he condemns Truman for his Cold War policy, containment policy, the Potsdam Conference; condemns Roosevelt for Tehran and Yalta. He condemns Roosevelt and Truman for the loss of China, forcing Chiang Kai-shek to take in the Communists. And so he says that it’s a combination of the Roosevelt, Truman administrations that set us up for the Cold War, the War in Korea.

So this is from sort of a man on the inside. He wrote 33 books. And this is the only one of his books that I’ve read but it is a blockbuster. It is the best World War II revisionist history I’ve read.

ROCKWELL: Wow.

DENSON: By a real statesman. So we can condemn Hoover for his economic policies in the ’29 Depression, but I think he’s a real ally for us that I believe that we need the revisionism for World War II.

ROCKWELL: And, of course, Murray always held that the key issue is always foreign policy in war and peace. And revisionism, of course, telling the actual facts of the situation —

DENSON: Right.

ROCKWELL: — versus government propaganda, is just essential. So this is a very high accolade for Herbert Hoover —

DENSON: Yes.

ROCKWELL: — that he wrote this book. It’s too bad it took so long to publish, but obviously better late than never.

(LAUGHTER)

DENSON: That’s right. Well, it’s edited very well by George Nash, who has a Ph.D. from Harvard in history, and wrote a book, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945,* I think it was. But he was hired to help publish this book because it had to be edited and put together. It was sort of in pieces and parts. And he has an excellent long introduction that sort of sets the stage for it. So it’s hard for me to emphasize too much how important I think this book is and how helpful it will be to people who are involved in trying to revise history so that we can avoid wars.

ROCKWELL: I notice that it’s getting very little attention. You’ve written about it. Pat Buchanan has written about it. But so far as I know, that’s about it. So it’s important to tell people about this book to let them know it exists. A great resource for college students or even high school students —

DENSON: Yes.

ROCKWELL: — going into this sort of thing. And you don’t have to read it from beginning to end. You can just look at the specific parts if you want. But as you say, Hoover turns out to be a wonderful writer.

DENSON: I had been looking for this book for a long time. When it came out and I began to look at it, I thought of Pat Buchanan and his book about The Unnecessary War. So I wrote him a letter and I said, Pat, you have got to get this book. I said, this backs up everything you’ve said. And so he wrote back and said he ordered it; hadn’t heard about it. And then I saw that he did a piece for you on LewRockwell.com on Pearl Harbor, which is — came right out of — he recommended the book, so. And in his article on LewRockwell.com, he says take a week off and read this book. It’s important.

(LAUGHTER)

It an easy read though if you’re interested in this subject. So I would highly recommend it.

ROCKWELL: Well, John Denson, thanks so much for all your work, editing The Costs of War, a very important book in the history of the war revisionism, for writing A Century of War, and also editing a book on the presidency, the presidents as tyrants. Keep it up is all I can say.

DENSON: Thank you very much.

ROCKWELL: Well, thanks so much for listening to the LEW ROCKWELL SHOW today. Take a look at all the podcasts. There have been hundreds of them. There’s a link on the upper right-hand corner of the LRC front page. Thank you.

END

* – This information was corrected and will differ from the audio.

December 28, 2011

John V. Denson [send him mail] is a practicing attorney in Alabama and an adjunct scholar at the Mises Institute. He is the author of A Century of War, and editor of The Costs of War and Reassessing the Presidency.

The Best of John V. Denson

It is interesting to compare Lincoln and his treachery in causing the Southern “enemy” to fire the first shot at Fort Sumter, resulting in the Civil War, with Roosevelt’s similar manipulation causing the attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into World War II.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., a well-known American “court historian,” has written the definitive defenses for both Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt regarding their reprehensible behavior in causing their respective unnecessary American wars. He clearly documents the unconstitutional behavior of both and offers great praise for the same. He attempts to justify the actions of both presidents on grounds that they were acting during a “crisis” pertaining to the “survival of the American government,” and that their unconstitutional actions were thereby made “necessary.” Schlesinger has stated that “Next to the Civil War, World War II was the greatest crisis in American history.”[1] His defense of these two “great” presidents is as follows:

Roosevelt in 1941, like Lincoln in 1861, did what he did under what appeared to be a popular demand and a public necessity. Both presidents took their actions in light of day and to the accompaniment of uninhibited political debate. They did what they thought they had to do to save the republic. They threw themselves in the end on the justice of the country and the rectitude of their motives. Whatever Lincoln and Roosevelt felt compelled to do under the pressure of crisis did not corrupt their essential commitment to constitutional ways and democratic processes.[2]

Schlesinger, however, recognizes the terrible precedents that were created by these presidents’ violations of the clear constitutional restrictions on their office:

Yet the danger persists that power asserted during authentic emergencies may create precedents for transcendent executive power during emergencies that exist only in the hallucinations of the Oval Office and that remain invisible to most of the nation. The perennial question is: How to distinguish real crises threatening the life of the republic from bad dreams conjured up by paranoid presidents spurred on by paranoid advisers? Necessity as Milton said, is always “the tyrant’s plea.”[3]

Let us add to John Milton’s statement a more specific warning by William Pitt in his speech to the House of Commons on November 18, 1783: “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants.”[4]

Finally, it is instructive to compare the circumstances for Lincoln at Fort Sumter with those for Roosevelt at Pearl Harbor. In neither case was there an actual “surprise” attack by the enemy. In fact, there was an extended period of time, many months prior to the “first shot,” in which both Lincoln and Roosevelt had ample opportunity to attempt to negotiate with the alleged “enemy,” who was desperately trying to reach a peaceful settlement.

In both cases, the presidents refused to negotiate in good faith. Lincoln sent completely false and conflicting statements to the Confederates and to Congress – even refused to talk with the Confederate commissioners. Roosevelt also refused to talk with Japanese Prime Minister Konoye, a refusal that brought down the moderate, peace-seeking Konoye government and caused the rise of the militant Tojo regime. Both Lincoln and Roosevelt repeatedly lied to the American people and to Congress about what they were doing while they were secretly provoking the “enemy” to fire the first shot in their respective wars. Both intentionally subjected their respective armed forces to being bait to get the enemy to fire the first shot.

Also, a comparison of circumstances clearly shows that both Lincoln and Roosevelt had ample opportunity to present their arguments and the question of war to Congress as the Constitution clearly required them to do. In fact, Congress in both cases was desperately trying to find out what the presidents were doing, and in both cases the presidents were hiding evidence from them. In Lincoln’s case, Congress probably would not have declared war for either the real reasons Lincoln went to war or for those he used only for propaganda. Similarly, Roosevelt could have presented the question of war to Congress and attempted to persuade Congress and the American people that we needed to join Soviet Russia and Great Britain to fight tyranny in Germany.

This might have been embarrassing to the Roosevelt administration in light of the fact that Congress may not have wanted to declare war and join with Soviet Russia, which was already one of the greatest tyrannies the world had ever known, while Germany was Russia’s main enemy. A majority in Congress surely were aware of the dangers of Communism, while Roosevelt never seemed to grasp the total evil of Stalin or Communism. Roosevelt gave Stalin everything he wanted throughout the war and referred to this mass murderer as “Uncle Joe.” The wartime conferences at Teheran and Yalta clearly demonstrated Roosevelt’s complete and secret capitulation to Communism in Russia and China.[5]

Before World War II started in Europe in 1939, it was widely known that Stalin had already murdered more than ten million innocent, unarmed people, three million of whom were Russian peasants he killed between 1928 and 1935. Communism believed that private property was the main source of evil in the world, and therefore he took the privately owned land from these self-sufficient people.[6]

Also, in the period from 1936 through 1938, Stalin murdered millions more during his reign of terror after the “show trials,” purging from the Communist Party those he thought were disloyal.[7] Hitler, on the other hand, before 1939, and primarily from June to July 1934, had murdered fewer than one hundred in his purge of the Storm Troopers.[8] This is not to defend Hitler, or to deny that he was evil, but a comparison of these two murderers and tyrants (as Stalin and Hitler were known in the period from 1939 to 1941), shows that Roosevelt could hardly have asked Congress to declare war and to join with Stalin and Communism yet still argue that he was fighting a noble war against tyranny.

Private Enterprise Compared with Free Enterprise

Another interesting comparison of the situations affecting the decisions of Lincoln and Roosevelt is that economic interests of an elite few played a major role in the decisions of both presidents to instigate a war. It is doubtful that either Lincoln or Roosevelt would have wanted to disclose the influence of these economic interests to the public in a congressional hearing where the question of war was to be decided upon. The study of the history of wars indicates that economic factors have always played a major role in starting wars, but rarely are these economic factors disclosed to the public as the reasons.

Many businessmen and bankers believe in private enterprise but do not believe in free enterprise. In Lincoln’s case, the private-enterprise capitalists wanted Lincoln to have a war in order to prevent the South from establishing a free-trade zone with a low tariff. They wanted Lincoln to protect their special interests by keeping the tariff high, while still forcing the South to remain in the Union to pay the tax.

These types of people want a partnership between private enterprise and the government, which is the essence of fascism and the cause of many wars. In the case of Roosevelt, he was greatly influenced, even controlled at times, by the Anglo-American establishment, which was composed of prominent businessmen and bankers who owned or represented large economic interests, both domestically and globally. They also wanted a partnership with government to protect their private businesses and economic interests, especially from formidable industrial and commercial competitors like Germany and Japan. Today the economic establishment in America is much larger than just the Morgan and Rockefeller interests but is just as active in trying to influence government, especially the foreign policy – primarily through the president to further their economic interests.

Ludwig von Mises made a clear distinction between private enterprise and free enterprise. Mises wanted a complete separation of the economy from the government, just like separation of church and state, which meant no regulation or control by the government but also no partnership with or help from the government, either economically or militarily. In the free-enterprise system, if any business or any bank wants to transact business globally, it must do so at its own risk and without the help of the government.

There would be no foreign aid, especially no aid to prop up dictators in order for them to do business with any particular economic interests. There would be no war in order to create a devastated area like Bosnia or Yugoslavia that needs to be rebuilt by American businesses who have the political influence to get these foreign contracts. Mises thought that separation of the economy from the government was necessary in order to produce peace rather than war.

A major contribution of Mises and the Austrian School of economics is to show that government intervention and regulation of the economy is the actual cause of the boom-and-bust cycles, while a free market is very stable and self-correcting in a short period of time. Furthermore, Mises showed that coercive monopolies are created by government and not by the free market. Therefore, the economy does not need government regulation or control to stabilize it and will function better by being completely separated.

Mises’s other recommendation, seen in the following statement, is to reduce the size and power of the central government in general in order to protect individual liberty:

Durable peace is only possible under perfect capitalism, hitherto never and nowhere completely tried or achieved. In such a Jeffersonian world of unhampered market economy the scope of government activities is limited to the protection of the lives, health and property of individuals against violence or fraudulent aggression.[9]

Mises goes on to state that

All the oratory of the advocates of government omnipotence cannot annul the fact that there is but one system that makes for durable peace: a free market economy. Government control leads to economic nationalism and thus results in conflict.[10]

This complete separation of the economy and the government is what Mises meant by “perfect capitalism,” which promotes peace and prosperity rather than war and welfare.

Foreign Influence – The Anglo-American Establishment

In Roosevelt’s case, a foreign government clearly influenced and literally worked secretly and directly with him to cause the US to enter World War II in complete violation of President Washington’s warning in his “Farewell Address” against allowing the influence of foreign governments to control American policy. This is still a major problem today with America’s foreign policy. American political leaders have not only ignored President Washington’s warning about the dangerous influence of foreign powers, but they have also ignored his excellent advice that we should avoid permanent entangling alliances, such as the United Nations and NATO. Washington advised us to have as little political connection with other governments as possible, while having trade relationships with all and without preferential status. Mises and President Washington are not advocating isolationism; they are advocating global trade with all nations.

President Washington warned emphatically against getting involved in the quarrels of Europe. Under President Clinton, the US readopted the Wilsonian foreign policy of crusading throughout the world as its policeman by disguising imperialism with the term “humanitarianism,” a policy that involves American armed forces in matters which have no relationship to real American interests or the defense of the American people and their homeland. Many members of Congress are now calling for the draft again in order to have enough soldiers to be the world’s policeman.

Charles Beard, the famous historian, warned that we would lose our freedom if we adopted a policy of “perpetual war for perpetual peace,”[11] and it was one of our Founders, James Madison, who warned that, “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”[12] War necessarily concentrates political power into the hands of a few – especially the president – and diminishes the liberty of all.

Reclaiming the Dream of Our Founders

If Americans are to reclaim the dream of our Founders and have peace and prosperity instead of war and welfare, we must understand the ideas and institutions that promote those conditions. Americans must appreciate and adopt the free-enterprise system and reject the private-enterprise system. Since the beginning of the 20th century, we have been on a collision course with disaster by following political leaders who got elected and maintained their power through the war and welfare system of politics.

Americans will never reclaim the dream of their Founders if presidents like Lincoln and Roosevelt are held up as examples of “great” presidents. We must impeach those presidents who ignore that the Constitution grants the war-making power exclusively to Congress, and certainly impeach those who mislead Congress into a declaration of war with false information.

Americans need to oppose and destroy the “imperial presidency” because of what it has already done and will do to our country and to our individual freedom. The first step toward that goal is to recognize Presidents Lincoln and Roosevelt for what they really were: American Caesars.

Notes

[1] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), p. 116.

[2] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “War and the Constitution: Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt,” in Lincoln, the War President: The Gettysburg Lectures, Gabor S. Boritt, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 174; emphasis added.

[3] Ibid., p. 176; emphasis added.

[4] John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, Emily Morrison Beck, ed., 14th ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1968), p. 496.

[5] George N. Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1959); and for an explanation of Roosevelt’s delivery of China to the communists, see Anthony Kubek, How the Far East Was Lost: American Policy and the Creation of Communist China, 1941–1949 (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1963); see also Perlmutter, FDR and Stalin.

[6] R.J. Rummel, Death by Government (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1995), p. 10; see also Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

[7] Rummel, Death by Government, p. 10; see generally Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties (New York: Macmillan, 1968).

[8] Rummel, Death by Government, pp. 111–22.

[9] Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1969), p. 284; emphasis added.

[10] Ibid., p. 286.

[11] Harry Elmer Barnes, ed., Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, p. viii.

[12] James Madison, “Political Observations,” Letters and Other Writings of James Madison (1795) (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1865), vol. 4, pp. 491–92; also see further quotations from Madison in John V. Denson, “War and American Freedom,” in The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories, John V. Denson, ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1999), pp. 6–11.

Reprinted from Mises.org.

John V. Denson [send him mail] is a practicing attorney in Alabama and an adjunct scholar at the Mises Institute. He is the author of A Century of War, and editor of The Costs of War and Reassessing the Presidency.

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This summer I attended a weekend seminar sponsored by Auburn University on the subject of World War I literature. I did not know what to expect in regard to any antiwar literature but I was very surprised to be introduced to what I now believe to be the best antiwar novel and movie. William March is the author of this novel Company K and the movie goes by the same name. My favorite antiwar novel and movie prior to this was All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich M. Remarque, a German soldier who fought in the trenches during World War I. March wrote about his similar experiences as an American Marine in the same trenches. Both authors speak of the horror and brutality of the experience of modern warfare and nothing about individual bravery, patriotism or the "glory of war."

The real name of William March was William Edward Campbell, who was born in Mobile, Alabama and grew up in small towns in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. He attended the University of Alabama School of Law and worked for a law firm in New York City. When America entered WWI he enlisted in the Marine Corps and saw extensive action in the hardest, bloodiest battles, including Verdun and the Meuse-Argonne. He was highly honored and decorated by both the French and the Americans by being awarded the French Croix de Guerre and by America, with the Distinguished Service Cross and the Navy Cross. He makes no reference in the book to his individual actions or honors.

After the war, March returned to Mobile, Alabama and became one of the organizers and a shareholder in what became an extremely successful business by the name of Waterman Steamship Corporation. He served as its vice-president and eventually became very wealthy as a result of his investment. He resigned early and began to travel widely in Europe, especially to Hamburg and London, and then returned to New York City to write his first novel, Company K which was published in 1933. He wrote several other novels including Come in at the Door, The Tallons, and The Looking Glass. He finally returned to the South, living in the French Quarter of New Orleans, where he wrote his final novel, The Bad Seed. It was later made into a play and then a Hollywood movie, which brought him some notoriety. This last novel is about an eight-year-old girl who does not know right from wrong and becomes a murderer. March died in his sleep in 1954 at the age of 61.

Company K had apparently been out of print for several years when director and producer, Roger Clem, who is mainly known for his documentary films, made the movie in 2004, with an excellent cast, and can be rented from Netflix. The movie faithfully captures the essence and meaning of the novel about the futility and brutality of war, and especially the psychological scars left on the soldiers. In 2006, the University of Alabama Press reprinted the novel. Writer and literary critic, Alistair Cooke has described March as "the unrecognized genius of our time."

March tells the stories of 137 members of Company K in the first person, some describing contemporary events, some recounting the war long afterwards, and some speak from the grave. A brilliant introduction is provided by Phillip D. Beidler, a professor of English at the University of Alabama. He describes the book as " . . . the most furious novel of war ever written by an American up to its time and quite arguably at least as furious and graphic as any written since." Beidler goes on to say:

So throughout Company K, the narratives of individual soldiers become a litany of callousness, brutality, and degradation. This is most clearly reflected in a single incident lodged both literally and figuratively at the center of the book, something that might be thought of as the novel’s primal scene: the execution of twenty-two German prisoners. The order, as a series of narratives tell us, is passed down from Captain to Sergeant to the Corporal who leads the detail. Otherwise good and decent men recoil, yet now participate in mass murder. Private Walter Drury, the one soldier who refuses the order and runs is subsequently sentenced to twenty years in prison. (128—129) His friend, Private Charles Gordon, remains, and, as he fires, sees the enormity of the deed in all the fullness of its awful truth. "Everything I was ever taught to believe about mercy, justice and virtue is a lie," he thinks. "But the biggest lie of all are the words, u2018God is Love.’ That is really the most terrible lie that man ever thought of." (130—132) Meanwhile, the thing done, Private Roger Inabinett rummages nonchalantly among the bodies for valuables and souvenirs. On Sunday, we are told by Private Howard Nettleton, they are all ordered to go to church. (138—139)

Professor Beidler also states:

As with Hemingway, mixed with the violence and the brutalization, there is some talk of loss of illusion, of betrayal through patriotic lies. Yet in March, more than in any of his contemporaries, this too is ultimately subsumed into a depth of horror that goes far beyond any Lost Generation conceit. Here, individual soldiers come relentlessly forward, one after the other, the living and the dead commingled, to offer grim first-person testimony; and in narrative after narrative, there is mainly just one fundamental fact of modern warfare: the fact of violent, ugly, obscene death. Men die of gas, gunshot, grenade. They die by the bayonet. They are literally disintegrated by high explosive. They commit suicide. They murder prisoners. They murder each other. They kill wantonly and at random, at times in error and virtually always against whatever small portion they can recall of their better instincts. Killing and dying, dying and killing, they have lost touch with any fact of life save the fact of death’s absolute dominion. This final reality March insists on to the degree that he often seems to have less in common with his fellow Americans than with his British poet-contemporaries such as Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, and Seigfried Sassoon. And, as with the latter, the death depicted is never gallant sacrifice. It is not grand, valorous, brave death. It is bowel-ripping, head-shattering, body-rending death. It is the kind of death that makes men scream for their mothers, soil their trousers, dissolve themselves into whimpering wrecks. Moreover, it is death on the whole vast scale of modern mechanization.

Beidler concludes, "In sum, a novel formed again, as with Company K, from a collocation of individual fragments, becomes a vast, enormous testament to the utter insignificance of individuality in a world of modern, mass-production war."

Even though, William March (William Edward Campbell), after the war became a very successful and wealthy businessman and a brilliant novelist, he suffered terribly for the rest of his life from what we now call "post-traumatic stress" or severe depression, nightmares, hysterical reactions related to his throat and eyes and required frequent psychiatric assistance. This book is written by a soldier who experienced the greatest horror in protracted and intense combat, unlike the writer, Stephen Crane, who experienced no combat, yet wrote the excellent book about war realism, The Red Badge of Courage. This American classic about the Civil War that has been read and studied by generations of readers, however, is not the more brilliant and disturbing antiwar novel Crane originally wrote. It is now known that the original publication in 1895 was altered by the publisher, D. Appleton and Co. of New York, by making many deletions, including an entire chapter to present a less realistic picture of war so as to be more acceptable to the readers of the time. Ernest Hemingway, who only experienced about six days of combat as a Red Cross ambulance driver still wrote a widely acclaimed novel, A Farewell to Arms. Some critics say Hemingway suffered more psychological trauma from being rejected by the nurse who cared for him in the hospital and became his girlfriend and then left him for an Italian officer, than from the wounds received in combat. Other literary critics say

" . . . his description of the German attack on Caporetto — of lines of tired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized — is one of the greatest moments in literary history."

When you read the stories told by March however, and see them depicted in the movie, you can feel the passion and experience the horrible pain of someone who had actually been there and suffered through it all for a long period of time. In Company K March portrays himself as Private Joseph Delaney, who writes a book after the war and explains to his wife the reason for writing it:

I wish there were some way to take these stories and pin them to a large wheel, each story hung on a different peg until the circle was completed. Then I would like to spin the wheel, faster and faster, until the things of which I have written took life and were recreated, and became part of the wheel, flowing toward each other, and into each other, blurring and then blending together into a composite whole, and unending circle of pain . . . . That would be the picture of war. And the sound that the wheel made, and the sound that the men themselves made as they laughed, cried, cursed or prayed, would be, against the falling of walls, the rushing of bullets, the exploding of shells, the sound that war, itself, makes . . .

The book and movie Company K are highly recommended and hopefully will become widely known and understood in order to help stop the mindless, unnecessary foreign wars and foreign policy America has engaged in for so long. March recognizes that simply telling the horrors of war will not be enough. It will also take a widespread understanding of the false reasons and premises used to get America into unjust, aggressive wars and knowledge of the real consequences of those wars, especially the loss of freedom which occurs whether you win or lose. Unfortunately, March does not address the alleged reasons for the war, or America’s entry into it, but he has one of the soldiers in the book state:

At first I used to listen to Les Yawfitz and that fellow Nallett argue in the bunk house. They’d been to college, and they could talk on any subject that came up. But mostly they talked about war and how it was brought about by moneyed interests for its own selfish ends. They laugh at the idea that idealism or love of country had anything to do with war. It is brutal and degrading, they say, and fools who fight are pawns shoved about to serve the interest of others.

For a while I listened to them, and tried to argue the thing out in my mind. Then I quit thinking about it. If the things they say are really true, I don’t want to know it. I’d go crazy and shoot myself, if I thought those things were true . . . . Unless a man does feel like that, I can’t understand how he would be willing — how he would permit himself to —

So when they start talking now, I get up and leave the bunk house, or turn over to the wall and cover up my ears.

Regrettably, most Americans protect their comfort level by navely believing the patriotic political myths about all of our wars being just and for the defense of our freedom. Most people do not want to be disturbed or shocked by the real truth concerning the horrors experienced by our soldiers in actual combat. William March certainly addresses this last subject in Company K better than any other novel I’ve read.

John V. Denson [send him mail] is the author of A Century of War, and editor of The Costs of War and Reassessing the Presidency.

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Whenever I debate the original American foreign policy of non-interventionism with an advocate of America’s 20th Century foreign policy of interventionism I am confronted with the statement that World War II occurred because America returned to its policy of "isolationism" after World War I. They argue that our failure to adopt the Versailles Treaty and to join the League of Nations allowed Hitler to come to power and eventually conquer Europe after the appeasement of Great Britain and France.

The best response to this argument is that if America had been true to its Founders’ non-interventionist foreign policy and had refused to enter World War I there would have been a negotiated treaty in 1917 and no harsh Versailles Treaty forced on Germany. Without the harsh Versailles Treaty, Hitler and Nazism would not have come to power. If the war had ended in the early part of 1917, there would have been no successful Russian Revolution and no successful birth of Communism. In short, there would have been no World War II. Admittedly, both of these arguments by the interventionists and the non-interventionists are counter-factual arguments. However, you can call as your primary expert witness in support of American non-interventionism none other that Winston Churchill. He made a statement to William Griffen, editor of the New York Enquirer in August of 1936 and it was reported by Mr. Griffen as follows:

America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn’t entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these u2018isms’ wouldn’t to-day be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government, and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives.

(See Military History of the Western World by J.F.C. Fuller, vol. III, p. 271, paperback edition published by Da Capo Press. Fuller is one of the world’s foremost military historians.)

The above quotation has been hidden from the general public, as you might expect, because a few years later Winston Churchill was conspiring with Franklin Roosevelt secretly to get America back into the European War which began in 1939. This 1936 statement by Churchill would have been very damaging to their plans. It should also be remembered that Churchill was one of the persons who acted secretly to get America into World War I with the sinking of the Lusitania.

For centuries European politicians had been concerned with the "balance of power" to keep one country from becoming a hegemonic power. The stalemate reached during World War I in early 1917 showed that this "balance of power" had kept the competing nations from having a victor in the war which would have resulted in a negotiated peace treaty if America had not entered the war. Instead, America’s entry into the war destroyed this "balance of power" completely and allowed America and its allies to force a very unfair and harsh Versailles Treaty on Germany. I believe that World War I and World War II were really one war with a twenty year recess and it was the harsh and unfair Versailles Treaty which allowed Hitler to come to power which then led directly to renewal of the war in 1939 in Poland when the League of Nations failed to revise the treaty, which it had the specific authority to do. Many people rightly condemned the League of Nations for its failure to revise the treaty. This failure of peaceful revision led directly to Hitler’s revision by force and to World War II.

John V. Denson [send him mail] is the author of A Century of War, and editor of The Costs of War and Reassessing the Presidency.

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Bully Boy: The Truth About Theodore Roosevelt’s Legacy, by Jim Powell

Jim Powell’s new book on Theodore Roosevelt (hereinafter T.R.) is more of an economic history of the Progressive era than a biography of the former president, but he completes a valuable trilogy with his prior books, Wilson’s War and FDR’s Folly. In these three books he conclusively refutes the mainstream historical myth that the free market failed and caused the 1929 Depression and that FDR solved the problem with his New Deal. The Progressive era’s two main presidents, T.R. and Wilson, share the blame of heaping more federal controls over the economy by creating both the Federal Reserve System and an income tax in 1913, as well as getting America into World War I. Powell’s book on FDR clearly shows that the New Deal prolonged the 1929 Depression rather than solving it.

Powell demonstrates how T.R. created governmental monopolies while alleging that he was fighting monopolies created by the free market. His conservation efforts were counterproductive and he was basically a champion of the "progressive" idea of increasing the power of the federal government while diminishing individual rights and the concept of Federalism created by our founders.

This book counters the usual mainstream history contained in such books as The Readers’ Companion to American History, edited by Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, which extols T.R. as the "most dynamic of American presidents." He is especially praised in this book for what became known as the "Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine" wherein he proclaimed that it was America’s right to intervene in any Latin American country that was not being managed well.

Powell does not compare T.R. with Mussolini, but having read an excellent biography of the Duce entitled Mussolini: A Biography by Denis Mack Smith shortly before reading Powell’s book on T.R., I noticed many glaring similarities. I believe Powell’s book shows that T.R. deserves the label of "America’s Mussolini." Powell provides a quote from T.R. which states "I don’t think that any harm comes from the concentration of power into one man’s hands." Powell states further, "Roosevelt expanded the power of the executive branch at the expense of Congress." Smith states that Mussolini brought about the "extreme centralization of power that almost everything depended on him; if he was away from Rome, much of the administration simply came to a halt." Smith further states that Mussolini believed in personal rule by him even though he created a vast bureaucracy to control the economy. Powell states that T.R. believed that "politicians could solve the problems of the world if only they were given enough power." Powell quotes T.R. as saying, "I did greatly broaden the use of executive power" and concludes that "Indeed, Roosevelt ushered in the practice of ruling by means of executive orders, bypassing the congressional legislative process. There had been presidential directives since the beginning, but they had seldom been used. During the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, they became known as executive orders. From Lincoln to Roosevelt’s predecessor, William McKinley, there was a total of 158 executive orders. Roosevelt, during his seven years in office issued 1,007 . . . . Only two other presidents issued more executive orders than he: his fellow progressive Woodrow Wilson (1,791) and his distant cousin, Franklin Deleno Roosevelt (3,723)."

Besides their egocentric personalities and their economic policies, the most glaring similarity between Mussolini and T.R. is their praise of war and its “benefits.” Smith states that "Imperial expansion became more and more a favorite theme" of Mussolini’s speeches. Smith goes on to state that Mussolini "began to refer more frequently to war as one of the few truly ennobling and energizing facts of human experience and to imperialism as the supreme test of a nation’s vitality." Smith states that Mussolini was "obsessed by the idea of war as something glorious" and that "war . . . was the only truly beautiful action that made life worth living." Smith quotes Mussolini as stating, "War is the most important thing in any man’s life" and that "only through military glory could a country become great, only battle makes a man complete . . . . "

Powell states that "Theodore Roosevelt believed war was glorious, even healthy for a nation. He thought that reasons for participating in war should not be limited to national defense. He insisted that the United States should intervene in affairs of other nations and enter into other people’s wars to do good." Powell further states that T.R. "Claimed that war would make better men and a better world. He longed for the excitement of war as he showed clearly in the Spanish-American War, when he resigned from his position as assistant secretary of navy to enter the fighting and secure a measure of glory." Powell reveals the fact that T.R. actively lobbied to obtain the Congressional Medal of Honor, but was denied this because he only served for two weeks and his "exploits were limited to a single day. More than a century later Roosevelt was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously by President Bill Clinton." Powell goes further by quoting T.R. "No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war."

Powell’s book points out the aggressive measures of T.R. in gaining Federal control of the economy in order to eliminate the free market. Powell states, "Theodore Roosevelt claimed that politicians and bureaucrats could achieve fairness by interfering with the economy." He "never recognized the fatal flaw of giving a few people enormous power over the entire economy." Powell points out that it was T.R. who introduced his slogan, "The New Nationalism" by which he meant, "Executive power as the steward of the public welfare." T.R. believed that it was within the president’s power "not only his right but his duty to do anything that the needs of the nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the constitution or by the laws."

Powell quotes T.R. as stating, "I am a Hamiltonian in my governmental views, especially with reference to the need of the exercise of broad powers by the national government." I believe that if you connect the dots you will see a straight line from Hamilton to Henry Clay to Lincoln to T. R. to Wilson and finally to FDR. All of these politicians believed that the federal government should be in control of the economy but certain businesses should be favored by a partnership with the government through subsidies and other benefits.

Powell points out that T.R. dropped out of law school and used some of his large inheritance to run a ranch but his own attempt at business was a complete failure. Powell states, "Roosevelt knew little about business, as his disastrous ranching losses made clear and he certainly never seems to have thought about the function of prices in an economy."

In conclusion Powell certainly depicts T.R. as one of the most energetic presidents but further concludes that this trait was disastrous for the peace and prosperity of America. Powell concludes this excellent book with the statement, "What we need, most of all is liberty and peace," but he demonstrates clearly that T.R. was not the man to give us either one.

A shorter version of this article appeared in The Freeman.

John V. Denson [send him mail] is the author of A Century of War, and editor of The Costs of War and Reassessing the Presidency.

A new book
entitled The
Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable by George
Victor and published by Potomac Books Inc. of Washington, D.C.
is well researched and gives a very clear picture of how and why
the Pearl Harbor myth was created. This "patriotic political
myth" states that the attack by the Japanese was unprovoked
and was a surprise to the Roosevelt administration, as well as,
the key military personnel in Washington; but the commanders of
Pearl Harbor were at fault for not being ready. Based on a good
summary of the up-to-date research the author, who is an approving
admirer of Roosevelt, concludes that Roosevelt deliberately provoked
the attack and that he and his key military and administrative
advisers clearly knew, well in advance, that the Japanese were
going to attack both Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. Roosevelt
wanted to get into the European War but he had been unsuccessful
in provoking Germany; therefore, he considered the sacrifice of
Pearl Harbor and the Philippines as the best way to get into the
European War through the back door of Japan. The cover-up of this
strategy started immediately after the attack and continues to
this day. The author concludes that this information of the coming
attack was intentionally withheld from the military commanders
because it was known that the Japanese were depending upon the
element of surprise and if warnings had been sent to the commanders
of Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, their preparation for the
attack would have caused the Japanese to cancel their plans.

The losses
and damages at Pearl Harbor are described by Victor as follows:

"In
the Pearl Harbor attack, the United States lost twenty-four
hundred troops along with a quarter of her fleet. Many military
leaders and Knox, Hull, and Roosevelt had underestimated the
harm Japan could do, even by a surprise attack. And U.S. losses
were much increased by two unlikely events. A Japanese bomb
penetrated the battleship Arizona's armor at an odd
angle, reaching her magazine and causing her to explode. And
the torpedoed battleship Oklahoma capsized. The explosion
of the Arizona and the capsizing of the Oklahoma
resulted in the drowning of sixteen hundred sailors."

The tremendous
losses in the Philippines have been virtually hidden from the
American public but they were mostly the native soldiers and civilians.
Victor states:

"The
Philippines suffered widespread destruction and was captured.
Twenty-four hundred troops and seventy civilians were lost in
Hawaii. In the Philippines, one hundred forty thousand troops
were lost and civilian deaths — still unreported — are estimated
to have been as high as three million. Nonetheless, the defeat
at Pearl Harbor became a wrenching tragedy, and the administration
sacrificed the commanders there to restore public confidence,
while the defeat in the Philippines became a noble defense.
Despite devastation and loss of the Philippines, a public relations
operation turned MacArthur into a hero and he was promoted.
The public reaction is not strange, however, when seen in the
light of government control of information — a usual wartime
practice."

The author
states that the most recent Pearl Harbor investigation by Congress
in October, 2000 resulted in a resolution by Congress "calling
on President William Clinton to restore the reputations of Short
and Kimmel. It provoked the flurry of accusations that Congress
was usurping the job of historians, revising history, and reviving
a long-discredited conspiracy theory. Clinton took no action on
the resolution."

The author,
Victor, includes a chapter from the viewpoint of the Japanese.
They were being pressured strongly by Germany to enter the war
by attacking the Soviet Union, thereby creating a two-front war
for the Communist nation. This strategy came within the actual
interests of Japan since they, like Germany, saw Communism as
a great evil and a threat to their respective nations. Furthermore,
Japan had substantial claims to parts of Manchuria as a result
of defeating Russia in the war of 1905. Both Germany and Japan
wanted to avoid a war with America at almost any cost. Roosevelt
was well aware of this pressure on Japan by Germany but he felt
that it was necessary to protect the Soviet Union as being the
best weapon against the Germans, and therefore, he wanted to prevent
Japan from attacking Russia. Roosevelt began extensive provocations
to cause Japan to abandon its attack on Russia and instead attack
America which also served the purpose of giving Roosevelt the
reason to enter the war. Roosevelt launched an eight-point provocation
plan primarily through the cutting off of oil supplies to Japan
so that by the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor Japan was virtually
out of oil and on the verge of industrial and military collapse.
The attack on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines also would provide
Japan with the ability to attack the Dutch interests in the Pacific,
thereby giving them a new supply of oil.

Victor sees
Roosevelt's decisions as being based upon the assumption of the
truth of the following statement: "Hitler's plan to conquer
and enslave most of the world was hardly a secret." The author
cites no authority for this plan of Hitler to conquer the world
and you will not find this in the two books that Hitler wrote
nor in any of his speeches. His intentions were well known before
and during the war. He stated from the beginning, before he took
power, as well as thereafter, that he was against the harsh and
unfair Versailles Treaty which virtually disarmed Germany and
it included the inequities created for Germany in Poland and Czechoslovakia,
which he intended to correct either through negotiation or, if
necessary, by force. He stated and wrote that the only war he
wanted was to fight Communism and to regain some of the living
space that Germany had acquired in their treaty with Russia during
World War I, which was abrogated by the Versailles Treaty. Nevertheless,
the defeat of Hitler, not Germany, appears to be the premise upon
which the author states that Roosevelt acted so that the end justified
the means. Hitler, the man, must be defeated at all costs and
these costs included the sacrifice of Pearl Harbor and the Philippines
in order to get into the European War via Japan.

I need to
depart from a review of Victor's book momentarily in order to
take issue with his basic assumption that Roosevelt's main interest
was the defeat of Hitler. If his primary end was simply the death
of Hitler, Roosevelt had an excellent opportunity of letting the
key military officers in the regular German army carry out a plan
of assassination.

Allen Dulles
was stationed in Switzerland with the OSS (which preceded the
CIA) and was assigned the primary duty of seeing if there was
a resistance movement in Germany which might overthrow Hitler.
Dulles learned of a very substantial plot to kill Hitler early
in the war in 1942 after Germany's defeat at Stalingrad. While
Stalin had murdered 35,000 to 50,000 of his senior military officers
prior to the war in order to put in his loyal officers, Hitler
had resisted this strategy and did not purge the regular German
army of its senior officers. Early in the war a large number of
these senior officers, including his Chief of Staff, General Ludwig
Beck, built up a strong resistance movement with the purpose of
assassinating Hitler and then surrendering to the American and
British forces. They intended then to continue the war against
Communism and the Soviet Union. A new government was to be created
with Beck at the head and Dr. Carl Goerdeler, former mayor of
Leipzig, to be the two top people. There was originally a large
group who helped draw up the plan which included numerous civilians
who would serve in the new democratic government, so it was not
just to be a military coup. Dulles stated that even after the
resistance movement had been discouraged by Roosevelt's unconditional
surrender policy, nevertheless, a small group of officers who
remained committed to the assassination of Hitler made an unsuccessful
attempt on Hitler's life on July 20, 1944. Hitler rounded up all
of the people who were even suspected of being a part of this
plot and this amounted to over 200,000 Germans who were put in
concentration camps and many were killed. The two principal high-ranking
German officers who took part in the plot met their fate on the
next day after the attempt, with one being shot by a firing squad
and General Beck was allowed to commit suicide in the presence
of the Nazi officers.

When Roosevelt
first learned of this significant resistance movement and the
plan of the Germans to surrender immediately to America and the
British, he unilaterally announced the unconditional surrender
policy which caused much of the resistance movement to dissolve
and their plans to be abandoned. Roosevelt's unconditional surrender
policy was not well received by either Churchill or Stalin. Dulles,
as well as, many key military advisers, were unsuccessful in getting
Roosevelt to abandon or substantially revise this policy. They
pointed out to Roosevelt that it would discourage the assassination
of Hitler. It would make the Germans fight harder, cause the war
to last longer and be more costly than necessary. Roosevelt's
policy required unconditional surrender to the British, the Soviets
and America simultaneously. No surrender would be accepted unless
it was made to all three at the same time. Many of the German
officers decided that they would rather fight against all three
rather than surrender to the Soviet Union. (See Germany's
Underground: The Anti-Nazi Resistance by Allen Dulles
and Unconditional
Surrender by Anne Armstrong.)

One of the
best writers on World War II was Hanson Baldwin, who covered the
war for The New York Times. After the war he wrote a book
entitled Great
Mistakes of the War, which was published in 1949. Baldwin
says the greatest mistake made was the unconditional surrender
policy of Roosevelt. He states that the policy "probably
discouraged the opposition to Hitler" and adds that it "probably
lengthened the war, cost us lives and helped to lead to the present
abortive peace." Baldwin then points out that it also had
a detrimental effect in the war against Japan. The Japanese had
indicated they were willing to surrender if the unconditional
surrender policy was changed so as to allow them to keep their
Emperor but President Roosevelt ignored the offer in January of
1945. After Roosevelt's death, President Truman stated he was
going to continue the unconditional surrender policy and rejected
the offer in July, 1945. The war continued and Truman ordered
the atomic bombs to be dropped in August of 1945 and the surrender
followed in September. The Japanese were allowed to keep their
Emperor after the war, and so in the end, the unconditional surrender
policy was dropped as to Japan, but only after they were bombed
with two atomic bombs. (See The
Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb by Dennis D. Wainstock
and The
Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb by Gar Alperovitz.)

My argument
is that Roosevelt's unconditional surrender policy was designed
to stop the resistance movement because Roosevelt did not want
an early end to the war. He wanted a new chance to create a world
organization, which he may have actually believed would end all
war for the future. President Wilson had made this promise with
the creation of the League of Nations. Roosevelt's plan was to
bring all nations under the cover of the United Nations with America
and the Soviet Union as the remaining two super powers who would
be virtually in control of this new world organization. Roosevelt
had been part of the Woodrow Wilson administration and personally
witnessed the worldwide adulation of President Wilson immediately
after World War I when he came to Europe. Roosevelt saw the admiring
mobs of people who lined the streets in France and Italy to cheer
Wilson and the newspaper reports stated that thousands of people
lined the railroad tracks at night just to watch Wilson's train
go by. Wilson was considered by millions of people as the greatest
man in the world at that time because it was perceived that he
brought peace to the world and had saved Europe. His vision for
the League of Nations was considered by many as the hope of the
future throughout the world to stop all war forever. (See Paris
1919: Six Months that Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan.)
Roosevelt made 800 speeches in his vice presidential campaign
in 1920 praising the League of Nations. Roosevelt felt that America's
entry into World War II would give him a chance to succeed where
his mentor and idol, Woodrow Wilson, had failed when the American
Senate failed to approve the Versailles Treaty which contained
the provision creating the League of Nations.

In August
of 1941, Roosevelt met with Churchill prior to Pearl Harbor and
brought up the United Nations idea to which Churchill objected.
Nevertheless, Churchill went along with it because he needed America
in the war. Stalin also objected to the United Nations idea and
both he and Churchill felt that the postwar settlement should
have separate spheres of influence for each victor rather than
a world organization to which the countries might lose their sovereignty
and also lose control of their special goals.

The best
account of Roosevelt and the United Nations is thoroughly covered
in the book entitled FDR
and the Creation of the U.N. by Townsend Hoopes and Douglas
Brinkley published by the Yale University Press in 1997. Both
authors are admirers of Roosevelt and of his accomplishment in
creating the United Nations. A brief summary of the main points
and several excerpts will tell that story.

"On
November 10, 1939, Pope Pius XII proclaimed the need to establish
u2018a stable international organization' after the war. In a private
response of December 23, President Roosevelt voiced his belief
that, while no spiritual or civic leader could now define a
specific structure for the future, u2018the time for that will surely
come'; meanwhile, the United States would u2018encourage a closer
association between those in every part of the world — those
in religion and those in government — who have a common purpose.'
"

The authors
then point out that extensive planning began to take place by
others in regard to the postwar settlement:

"Into
this planning vacuum stepped the private Council on Foreign
Relations with an offer to study postwar issues secretly and
make its deliberations available to the State Department. The
council was a Northeastern seaboard phenomenon, an elitist mix
of prominent New York bankers and lawyers with European interests
and prominent academics and intellectuals, many of whom had
served as advisers to Woodrow Wilson at the Paris peace conference.
The businessmen provided the money, while the scholars furnished
most of the intellectual leadership. The council operated mainly
through off-the-record conferences, study groups, and small
dinners confined to members, who were addressed by foreign or
American statesmen. It published Foreign Affairs, a
scholarly quarterly that had become the leading American journal
of its kind. In an age when fewer than one thousand Americans
could claim a journeyman's competence, or even a sustained interest,
in foreign affairs, the Council on Foreign Relations was a rare
island of influence and expertise in the body politic."

In less than
one month after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941
and followed immediately by the declaration of war by Congress,
Roosevelt began forming the United Nations into a specific entity:

"On
January 1, 1942, the Soviet and Chinese ambassadors in Washington
joined with Roosevelt and Churchill (who had arrived at the
White House in late December) in signing the Declaration by
United Nations. The following day, representatives of twenty-two
other nations at war with the Axis powers added their signatures
to the document, which created a wartime alliance of states
who promised to wage war with all of their resources and not
sign a separate peace. The president apparently thought up the
name u2018United Nations' and secured the Prime Minister's approval
by bursting into his bedroom at the White House while the doughty
Britain was taking a bath."

Roosevelt
felt that Wilson had been partly to blame for the failure of the
Senate to authorize the signing of the Versailles Treaty, thereby
causing America not to join the League of Nations. Roosevelt felt
that he could be more flexible if he only had a war which would
give him an opportunity to succeed where Wilson had failed. Hoopes
and Brinkley give a quick historical review as follows:

"The
Senate's rejection of the League of Nations treaty on March
19, 1920, was a result of many factors, of which perhaps the
most basic was the enduring fear and contempt for Europe's continual
intrigues and wars. As most Americans saw it, they had sent
their young men to France in 1917 to fight and die for a worthy
cause — to make the world safe for democracy." But they
had recoiled in disgust and disbelief at the spectacle of greed
displayed by the European victors and embodied in the vengeful
Treaty of Versailles. More direct and immediate reasons for
the Senate's rejection of the League were the personal bitterness
between President Wilson and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R-Massachusetts),
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the
misplaced loyalty of the Democratic Senators to their party
leader in the White House. The primary cause of failure, however,
was the absolute rigidity rooted in moral and intellectual arrogance,
of Woodrow Wilson."

The authors
point out that Roosevelt was much more flexible and willing to
compromise in order to create the United Nations.

After America
entered the war there was a great deal of activity in trying to
help Roosevelt create the United Nations. Hoopes and Brinkley
state the following:

"John
Foster Dulles apparently felt that the Shotwell group was too
secular, for he formed the Commission to Study the Bases of
a Just and Durable Peace, under the auspices of the Federal
Council of Churches. In one of many speeches, he declared, u2018the
sovereignty system is no longer consonant with either peace
or justice,' and said that he was u2018rather appalled' at the lack
of any agreed peace aims u2018to educate and crystalize public opinion.'
Yet he too offered no specific remedies. In a long editorial
in Life magazine entitled u2018The American Century,' publisher
Henry Luce noted the u2018golden opportunity' for world leadership
that the United States had passed up in 1919, and called on
the American people to help Roosevelt succeed where Wilson had
failed. It was now the time, Luce wrote, to accept u2018our duty
and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in
the world.' "

Hoopes and
Brinkley go on to describe Roosevelt's immediate public endorsement
of the United Nations in his State of the Union address as follows:

"The
President's State of the Union address on January 6, 1942 —
just one month after the attack on Pearl Harbor — was praised
by George Orwell on BBC radio as a u2018complete and uncompromising
break . . . with isolationism.' Roosevelt said, u2018the mood of
quiet grim resolution which here prevails bodes ill for those
who conspired and collaborated to murder world peace. The mood
is stronger than any mere desire for revenge. It expresses the
will of the American people to make very certain that the world
will never so suffer again. He referred to the signing of the
Declaration by the United Nations just six days before, and
defined the primary objective of that act to be u2018the consolidation
of the United Nations' total war effort against our common enemies.'
His focus was entirely on the war effort.

But if
the Administration had decided that the public disclosure of
postwar plans were dangerously premature, such inhibitions did
not apply to the press and private sector. Throughout 1942,
there was a steady procession of proposals for shaping the new
world and educating the American people.

The Commission
to Study the Organization of Peace, whose president, Columbia
professor James T. Shotwell, was an occasional adviser to the
State Department planning effort, accepted the need for an u2018Anglo
— American directorate' to run the world in the immediate postwar
period . . .

On March
5, 1942, the Commission to Study the Bases of a Just and Durable
Peace, headed by John Foster Dulles, proposed a far more radical
solution. It called specifically for a world government complete
with a parliament, an international court, and appropriate agencies.
The world government would have the power to regulate international
trade, settle disputes between member nations, and control all
military forces, except those needed to maintain domestic order…"

"A
more convincing, more sophisticated argument for realpolitik
was Walter Lippmann's 1943 best-seller, U.S.
Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic, a brilliant
essay designed to counter the idealistic one-world internationalism
of which Wendell Willkie was the leading purveyor. It sold nearly
one half million copies. Lippmann, a crusading editor who had
helped Woodrow Wilson prepare his peace program, had been disillusioned
by the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations, but
retained the conviction that American leadership in world affairs
was an absolute prerequisite of stability and peace. He thought
Willkie's thesis was founded on sand and that its corollary
— that the United States must undertake to police the world
— was a dangerous doctrine. Lippmann argued that all nations
must balance their commitments with their resources and should
avoid being overextended.

Lippmann's
formula for peace was no new League of Nations but a basic alliance
of the United States, Britain and Russia. No other nations were
serious factors in the world power equation. China and France
were not great powers. Only Britain and Russia were strong enough
to threaten U.S. security, but given America's close ties to
Britain, there was no risk from that quarter. The only real
danger was a falling out with Russia, but peace and stability
required that this be avoided at all costs, for an Anglo-American
alliance against Russia would set the stage u2018inexorably' for
a third world war."

Hoopes and
Brinkley summarize the negotiations between Roosevelt, Churchill
and Stalin, pointing out that Roosevelt suggested the Big Four
World Policeman would be America, Great Britain, Russia and China
and then there would be seven representatives of regional organizations.
However, Roosevelt privately stated to his key advisers that Soviet
Russia and America would be the two remaining super powers and
would be actually in charge of the organization. The authors then
state:

"Also,
he did not believe that Stalin would join an all — embracing
international organization without the protection of an absolute
veto power. . .

While America's
postwar planners were thinking in terms of some synthesis of
regional and global organization to replace the League of Nations,
the British Prime Minister was thinking of authoritative regional
arrangements without a global nexus, and his focus was on Europe.
He was dismissive of China, and uneasy at the idea of sharing
responsibility for the future of Western Europe with the Soviet
Union. In a note to Eden of October 12, 1942, Churchill wrote,
u2018I must admit that my thoughts rest primarily in Europe — the
revival of the glory of Europe, the parent continent of the
modern nations and of civilization.' It would be a u2018measureless
disaster if Russian barbarism overlaid the culture and independence'
of these ancient states. u2018We certainly do not want to be shut
up with the Russians and the Chinese' in Europe. Moreover u2018I
cannot regard the Chungking Government as representing a great
world power.' "

The authors
describe Roosevelt's opinion regarding the necessity of having
Stalin's cooperation for creating and operating the United Nations
as follows:

"Much
depended on Stalin, for the Soviet Union would be the only first-rate
military power on the continents of Europe and Asia after the
war. If the dictator chose cooperation, the foundations of a
peaceful society would be laid with confidence; if he chose
another course, the Western allies would be u2018driven back on
a balance of power system.' "

The authors
also cover the importance of the Yalta Conference in regard to
the creation of the United Nations:

"Calling
the Yalta Conference a turning point — u2018I hope in our history
and therefore in the history of the world' — FDR said that whether
it could bring forth lasting results u2018lies to a great extent
in your hands.' The Senate and the American people would soon
face u2018a great decision that will determine the fate of the United
States — and of the world — for generations to come.' Everyone
should understand there was no middle ground. u2018We shall have
to take responsibility for world collaboration, or we should
have to bear the responsibility for another world conflict.'
The Yalta agreements u2018ought' to spell the end of unilateral
actions, exclusive alliances, spheres of influence, and balances
of power that u2018have been tried for centuries — and have always
failed.' It was time to substitute u2018a universal organization,'
and the President was confident that Congress and the American
people would accept the Yalta agreements as laying the foundations
of u2018a permanent structure of peace . . .' "

The agreement
on Poland was entirely dependant on Stalin's word, for there
was no practical way to confront Russian power in Eastern Europe.
In part, this stance was dictated by the basic need for Russian
military cooperation to finish the war against Germany and then
join the war against Japan; in larger part it reflected FDR's
judgment that establishing the United Nations organization was
the overarching strategic goal, the absolute first priority.
He faced, as he viewed it, a delicate problem of balance. To
prevent a U.S. reversion to isolationism after the war, U.S.
participation in the new world organization was the sine qua
non, but the United Nations could not be brought into
being without genuine Russian cooperation, and that
depended on Western accommodation to unpalatable manifestations
of the Soviet Communist system in Eastern Europe." [Emphasis
supplied]

The authors
then point out that on April 6, 1945 the president authorized
Archibald MacLeish to prepare the speech he intended to make at
the opening session of the San Francisco conference. There had
been some speculation that he might even resign his position as
president in order to be leader of the United Nations. However,
on April 12, he died and the authors state:

"To
internationalists, the fallen leader promptly became a martyr
and symbol of their cause. Intoned the New Republic,
u2018Franklin Roosevelt at rest at Hyde Park is a more powerful
force for America's participation in the world organization
than was President Roosevelt in the White House."

If Roosevelt's
primary aim in World War II was to create the United Nations and
thereby bring world peace forever (in his own mind), and that
he considered the cooperation of Stalin and the Soviet Union as
the essential piece to that puzzle, this helps explain why Roosevelt
was so compromising with Stalin throughout the war. It also helps
explain why he let Harry Hopkins live in the White House and be
his closest adviser. The author, George Victor, in his preface,
addresses the fact that Hopkins was probably a Communist agent
and then he states "there are speculations that Hopkins influenced
U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union in 1941, but no evidence of
it." He then defends Hopkins by saying that Hopkins never
did anything without the express direction of Roosevelt, which
may defend Hopkins, but it certainly does not defend Roosevelt.
Roosevelt surely must have been aware of the intercepted cables
which show that Hopkins was an agent of the Soviets. The cables
called "The Venona Cables" were those communications
between Soviet spies in America that were intercepted by American
intelligence forces which were available to Roosevelt. These "Venona
Cables" were released to the public in 1995 and in a sensational
book entitled The
Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors
by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel they show the fact
that Harry Hopkins was a Soviet agent, being number 19. They point
out that the cables revealed that the Soviets were ordering tons
of uranium in March of 1943 and that Major George R. Jordan objected
to sending the uranium since he and General Groves, head of the
Manhattan project, were concerned about Soviet espionage. Major
Jordan testified that he objected to sending the uranium but that
"Harry Hopkins had told him on the phone to expedite the
shipments." Major Jordan later wrote a book claiming that
Hopkins had helped the Soviets against the interests of the United
States.

In conclusion
of my argument, I take issue that the end justified the means,
and therefore disagree with Victor on this point. Roosevelt's
personal ambitions for greatness, obtaining worldwide adulation,
and his desire to create the United Nations could hardly be considered
ends that justified the means he employed.

Getting back
to Victor's book, he states in his last chapter entitled "History
and the Unthinkable" that the disaster in Pearl Harbor "needs
to be remembered, not for anything about Japanese treachery or
U.S. blunders. Its main lessons are about sacrifice, deception
and political considerations as common features of military planning."
He points out that other presidents have caused similar sacrifices
of the lives of soldiers and sailors, as well as civilians, with
similar acts of deception for political considerations. He states:

"Polk,
Lincoln and McKinley confronted dilemmas between what they considered
important U.S. interests and popular opposition to war. Lincoln's
problem was extreme; for years, conflict over slavery had been
tearing the nation apart. As Lincoln saw it, the secession and
the likelihood of further splitting threatened the nation's
existence. u2018However, there was one way out,' according to historian
Richard Hofstadter, u2018the Confederates themselves might bring
matters to a head by attacking Sumter . . . . It was precisely
such an attack that Lincoln's strategy brought about.' Hofstadter
added that u2018the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor did for [Roosevelt]
what the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter had done for Lincoln.'"

Victor carefully
analyses the situation with Abraham Lincoln as being comparable
to Roosevelt in starting their respective wars:

"On
becoming president in 1861, Abraham Lincoln's highest priority
was preserving the Union. To end the secession, he was willing
to guarantee federal noninterference with slavery. He therefore
pushed a constitutional amendment for noninterference through
Congress, and three states quickly ratified it, but the secession
continued. Lincoln was also willing — if necessary for preserving
the Union — to fight a war. But he found his nation — and his
own cabinet — against such a war. Even radical abolitionists
opposed it.

The Confederacy
had taken over most federal installations in its states — installations
surrendered on request by their administrators. Of those remaining
in federal hands, Fort Sumter in South Carolina was exposed
to attack and running out of supplies. Lincoln asked his cabinet's
advice on whether to supply the fort. With one exception, they
opposed it because doing it risked war. Lincoln then sent the
supplies, prompting an attack on the fort which became the incident
he used to start the Civil War.

If known
at the time, Lincoln's deliberate exposure of the fort might
have caused serious political repercussions. Later historical
accounts that imputed to him the intention of fostering an incident
for war in order to preserve the Union have created little stir.
His towering place in history is undamaged by them and he, too,
is viewed as a president with a clear idea of his mission, effective
in carrying it out."

The author,
Victor, also goes into some detail in regard to President Polk
starting the Mexican War:

"On
becoming president in 1845, James Polk told his cabinet that
California would be annexed. (His predecessors had offered to
buy California, but Mexico had refused to sell.) To his consul
in California, Polk suggested fomenting a revolution and promised
U.S. support for residents who rose against Mexico. A tiny uprising
under Capt. John Fremont had no effect on California's status.
Polk then sent an army to the Rio Grande.

History
books describe that area as U.S. territory, Texas territory,
or land in dispute between the United States and Mexico. The
area was, however, recognized by a U.S. treaty as within Mexico's
borders. As Polk expected, Mexico attacked the army, slaughtering
a troop.

On sending
the army, Polk wrote, in advance, a request to Congress for
a declaration of war based on the incident he expected. After
it happened, he submitted his request, claiming that Mexican
troops u2018had passed the boundary of the United States . . . invaded
our territory and shed American blood upon American soil . .
. . War exists notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it.'
But Polk, not Mexico, had sought the war. Congress then declared
war on Mexico and by an easy victory, Polk acquired the southwest
for his nation."

Victor points
out that President McKinley sent the battleship Maine into
the harbor of Havana, which was Spanish territory, as a provocation
to the Spanish and when the ship exploded from within it killed
260 U.S. sailors. The false propaganda was that the Spanish caused
it, thus giving McKinley an excuse to go to war and to acquire
from Spain America's first empire. McKinley was strongly supported
in his efforts to get into the war by none other than the "Megaphone
of Mars," Teddy Roosevelt, who was serving as the Assistant
Navy Secretary. Roosevelt declared "The Maine was
sunk by an act of dirty treachery on the part of the Spaniards."
The new battle cry for the war was now "Remember the Maine."

The author
expresses no moral judgment against these presidents for starting
their respective wars and states that:

"Deception
is as old as the history of war. According to the classic work
The
Art of War by Sun-tzu u2018All warfare is based on deception.'
It is, of course, practiced on enemies, but deception is also
used on subordinates. A common example is a suicide attack.
In order to have troops carry it out officers may hide the attack's
hopelessness from them. They may even mislead troops to believe
that it will succeed."

Victor recites
the views expressed by General George C. Marshall at the Pearl
Harbor hearings before Congress in 1945–6, as follows:

"In
my view, General Marshall was indeed an outstanding chief of
staff, upright, honorable, and incorruptible — as much so as
his position permitted. Testifying to various tribunals investigating
the Pearl Harbor disaster, other military officers vigorously
denied that they had withheld vital information from field commanders.
The denials were false. Marshall was the exception; he testified
to a congressional committee that withholding vital information
from commanders was routine practice. World War II documents
show not only withholding of information from field commanders,
but also distortion of it to mislead them."

The author
concludes this extremely disturbing book with the following two
paragraphs:

"Despite
the history of war, the idea that Roosevelt withheld warnings
from Kimmel and Short for the purpose of getting the United
States openly into the European war is still unthinkable to
many people, but to fewer and fewer as the years pass. As has
happened over time with other unthinkable acts, the repugnance
aroused by the idea of using the Pacific Fleet as a lure will
probably continue to fade. Polk's exposure of an army, Lincoln's
exposure of a fort, and McKinely's exposure of a battleship
are more or less accepted. In the Philippines, Midway, Wake,
Guam, Samoa, and in other outlying islands, U.S. forces were
exposed to Japanese attack, and that is also more or less accepted.

The Pearl
Harbor disaster was different from losses of the Philippines
and other Pacific islands because it shattered America's confidence,
arousing massive fear, a crisis of trust in the nation's leaders,
and an outcry for scapegoats. The nation seized on the administration's
explanation of betrayal by Japan and by Kimmel and Short, and
the disaster unified the nation to fight World War II with the
slogan u2018Remember Pearl Harbor!' The explanation became a major
national myth, which has substantially withstood the unearthing
of secret alliances, war strategies, and warnings received in
Washington."

In the preface
the author states: "I am not the first admirer of Roosevelt
to present him in Machiavellian terms." Victor goes on to
quote an admiring biographer of Roosevelt, James MacGregor Burns,
who stated: "It was not strange that [Roosevelt] should follow
Machiavelli's advice . . . for this had long been the first lesson
for politicians." Victor's final assessment is that:

"History
has recorded many, many rulers' manipulations of their people
into war without their subordinates blowing the whistle. Presidents
James Polk, Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson did it before
Roosevelt; and others have done it after him . . . .

Presidents
who succeeded Roosevelt also ordered sacrifices, but toward
smaller and sometime meaner ends. Here Roosevelt's manipulations
and the sacrifices he ordered are compared to those of Polk,
Lincoln, McKinley and Wilson, all of whom were implementing
ends considered noble in the light of traditional values."
[Emphasis supplied]

The author,
George Victor, mentions the deceit of President Wilson in getting
us into World War I but provides no details. However, you can
find this in Charles Tansil's excellent book entitled America
Goes to War. Justice Brandeis, who was appointed to the U.S.
Supreme Court by Wilson, rendered his opinion to President Wilson
that the alleged sinking of the French cross-channel passenger
ship, the S.S. Sussex, by a German submarine in the English
Channel with the loss of lives of the U.S. citizens justified
a declaration of war against Germany by the United States. The
ship was painted all black and the usual insignia to show it was
not a military ship were missing. The German commander of the
submarine wrote that he took the ship to be a military ship rather
than a passenger ship. Wilson relied on this legal opinion of
Justice Brandeis, who was Wilson's most influential adviser along
with Col. House, and the president addressed both houses of Congress
on April 2, 1917 using the sinking of Sussex and the loss
of American lives as a reason to declare war on April 7, 1917.
It was only after America was committed to the war that the truth
came out, which apparently was not considered material by the
news media, so the public never was fully informed. The Sussex
was not sunk and no American lives were lost. The ship was torpedoed
by the Germans but made it safely to the harbor at Boulogne where
it was hidden for some period of time.

Victor mentions
that subsequent presidents to Roosevelt have also deceitfully
taken America into wars but provides no names. He could have cited
President Lyndon Johnson and his lies about the Gulf of Tonkin
incident to get Congress to authorize him to retaliate to get
America into the Viet Nam War. He could also have mentioned our
current president and the lies about weapons of mass destruction
to get us into the war with Iraq. In both cases Congress accepted
the lies of the president and unconstitutionally delegated the
war making power to the president rather than declaring war itself,
as the Constitution requires.

I agree that
Victor has accurately described the deceitful conduct of the presidents
he cites (see the chapters "Lincoln and the First Shot"
and "Roosevelt and the First Shot" in my book A
Century of War) but I strongly disagree with his conclusion
that the American people have knowingly condoned the deceitful
activity of the presidents Victor mentions because our history
books do not contain this information, it is not taught in the
schools and universities and it is not recited by the news media.
You have to have independent researchers like Victor to find and
disclose most of this information.

I wonder
if Victor's book will be taught or read at West Point, Annapolis
or the Air Force Academy. After finishing it, the famous lines
from Tennyson's poem The Charge of the Light Brigade came
to mind:

"Theirs
not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred."

July
27, 2007

John V.
Denson [send
him mail] is a practicing attorney in Alabama and an adjunct
scholar at the Mises Institute. He is the author of A
Century of War, and editor of The
Costs of War and Reassessing
the Presidency.

The
Best of John V. Denson

Every year
during the first two weeks of August the mass news media and many
politicians at the national level trot out the "patriotic"
political myth that the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan
in August of 1945 caused them to surrender, and thereby saved the
lives of anywhere from five hundred thousand to one million American
soldiers, who did not have to invade the islands. Opinion polls
over the last fifty years show that American citizens overwhelmingly
(between 80 and 90%) believe this false history which, of course,
makes them feel better about killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese
civilians (mostly women and children) and saving American lives
to accomplish the ending of the war.

The best book,
in my opinion, to explode this myth is The
Decision to Use the Bomb by Gar Alperovitz, because it not
only explains the real reasons the bombs were dropped, but also
gives a detailed history of how and why the myth was created that
this slaughter of innocent civilians was justified, and therefore
morally acceptable. The essential problem starts with President
Franklin Roosevelt's policy of unconditional surrender, which was
reluctantly adopted by Churchill and Stalin, and which President
Truman decided to adopt when he succeeded Roosevelt in April of
1945. Hanson Baldwin was the principal writer for The New York
Times who covered World War II and he wrote an important book
immediately after the war entitled Great
Mistakes of the War. Baldwin concludes that the unconditional
surrender policy ". . . was perhaps the biggest political mistake
of the war . . . . Unconditional surrender was an open invitation
to unconditional resistance; it discouraged opposition to Hitler,
probably lengthened the war, costs us lives, and helped to lead
to the present aborted peace."

The stark fact
is that the Japanese leaders, both military and civilian, including
the Emperor, were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the Emperor
could remain in place and not be subjected to a war crimes trial
after the war. This fact became known to President Truman as early
as May of 1945. The Japanese monarchy was one of the oldest in all
of history dating back to 660 B.C. The Japanese religion added the
belief that all the Emperors were the direct descendants of the
sun goddess, Amaterasu. The reigning Emperor Hirohito was the 124th
in the direct line of descent. After the bombs were dropped on August
6 and 9 of 1945, and their surrender soon thereafter, the Japanese
were allowed to keep their Emperor on the throne and he was not
subjected to any war crimes trial. The Emperor, Hirohito, came on
the throne in 1926 and continued in his position until his death
in 1989. Since President Truman, in effect, accepted the conditional
surrender offered by the Japanese as early as May of 1945, the question
is posed, "Why then were the bombs dropped?"

The author
Alperovitz gives us the answer in great detail which can only be
summarized here, but he states, "We have noted a series of
Japanese peace feelers in Switzerland which OSS Chief William Donovan
reported to Truman in May and June [1945]. These suggested, even
at this point, that the U.S. demand for unconditional surrender
might well be the only serious obstacle to peace. At the center
of the explorations, as we also saw, was Allen Dulles, chief of
OSS operations in Switzerland (and subsequently Director of the
CIA). In his 1966 book The
Secret Surrender, Dulles recalled that u2018On July 20, 1945,
under instructions from Washington, I went to the Potsdam Conference
and reported there to Secretary [of War] Stimson on what I had learned
from Tokyo — they desired to surrender if they could retain the
Emperor and their constitution as a basis for maintaining discipline
and order in Japan after the devastating news of surrender became
known to the Japanese people.'" It is documented by Alperovitz
that Stimson reported this directly to Truman. Alperovitz further
points out in detail the documentary proof that every top presidential
civilian and military advisor, with the exception of James Byrnes,
along with Prime Minister Churchill and his top British military
leadership, urged Truman to revise the unconditional surrender policy
so as to allow the Japanese to surrender and keep their Emperor.
All this advice was given to Truman prior to the Potsdam Proclamation
which occurred on July 26, 1945. This proclamation made a final
demand upon Japan to surrender unconditionally or suffer drastic
consequences.

Another startling
fact about the military connection to the dropping of the bomb is
the lack of knowledge on the part of General MacArthur about the
existence of the bomb and whether it was to be dropped. Alperovitz
states "MacArthur knew nothing about advance planning for the
atomic bomb's use until almost the last minute. Nor was he personally
in the chain of command in this connection; the order came straight
from Washington. Indeed, the War Department waited until five days
before the bombing of Hiroshima even to notify MacArthur — the commanding
general of the U.S. Army Forces in the Pacific — of the existence
of the atomic bomb."

Alperovitz
makes it very clear that the main person Truman was listening to
while he ignored all of this civilian and military advice, was James
Byrnes, the man who virtually controlled Truman at the beginning
of his administration. Byrnes was one of the most experienced political
figures in Washington, having served for over thirty years in both
the House and the Senate. He had also served as a United States
Supreme Court Justice, and at the request of President Roosevelt,
he resigned that position and accepted the role in the Roosevelt
administration of managing the domestic economy. Byrnes went to
the Yalta Conference with Roosevelt and then was given the responsibility
to get Congress and the American people to accept the agreements
made at Yalta.

When Truman
became a senator in 1935, Byrnes immediately became his friend and
mentor and remained close to Truman until Truman became president.
Truman never forgot this and immediately called on Byrnes to be
his number-two man in the new administration. Byrnes had expected
to be named the vice presidential candidate to replace Wallace and
had been disappointed when Truman had been named, yet he and Truman
remained very close. Byrnes had also been very close to Roosevelt,
while Truman was kept in the dark by Roosevelt most of the time
he served as vice president. Truman asked Byrnes immediately, in
April, to become his Secretary of State but they delayed the official
appointment until July 3, 1945, so as not to offend the incumbent.
Byrnes had also accepted a position on the interim committee which
had control over the policy regarding the atom bomb, and therefore,
in April, 1945 became Truman's main foreign policy advisor, and
especially the advisor on the use of the atomic bomb. It was Byrnes
who encouraged Truman to postpone the Potsdam Conference and his
meeting with Stalin until they could know, at the conference, if
the atomic bomb was successfully tested. While at the Potsdam Conference
the experiments proved successful and Truman advised Stalin that
a new massively destructive weapon was now available to America,
which Byrnes hoped would make Stalin back off from any excessive
demands or activity in the post-war period.

Truman secretly
gave the orders on July 25, 1945 that the bombs would be dropped
in August while he was to be in route back to America. On July 26,
he issued the Potsdam Proclamation, or ultimatum, to Japan to surrender,
leaving in place the unconditional surrender policy, thereby causing
both Truman and Byrnes to believe that the terms would not be accepted
by Japan.

The conclusion
drawn unmistakably from the evidence presented, is that Byrnes is
the man who convinced Truman to keep the unconditional surrender
policy and not accept Japan's surrender so that the bombs could
actually be dropped thereby demonstrating to the Russians that America
had a new forceful leader in place, a "new sheriff in Dodge"
who, unlike Roosevelt, was going to be tough with the Russians on
foreign policy and that the Russians needed to "back off"
during what would become known as the "Cold War." A secondary
reason was that Congress would now be told about why they had made
the secret appropriation to a Manhattan Project and the huge expenditure
would be justified by showing that not only did the bombs work but
that they would bring the war to an end, make the Russians back
off and enable America to become the most powerful military force
in the world.

If the surrender
by the Japanese had been accepted between May and the end of July
of 1945 and the Emperor had been left in place, as in fact he was
after the bombing, this would have kept Russia out of the war. Russia
agreed at Yalta to come into the Japanese war three months after
Germany surrendered. In fact, Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945
and Russia announced on August 8, (exactly three months thereafter)
that it was abandoning its neutrality policy with Japan and entering
the war. Russia's entry into the war for six days allowed them to
gain tremendous power and influence in China, Korea, and other key
areas of Asia. The Japanese were deathly afraid of Communism and
if the Potsdam Proclamation had indicated that America would accept
the conditional surrender allowing the Emperor to remain in place
and informed the Japanese that Russia would enter the war if they
did not surrender, then this would surely have assured a quick Japanese
surrender.

The second
question that Alperovitz answers in the last half of the book is
how and why the Hiroshima myth was created. The story of the myth
begins with the person of James B. Conant, the President of Harvard
University, who was a prominent scientist, having initially made
his mark as a chemist working on poison gas during World War I.
During World War II, he was chairman of the National Defense Research
Committee from the summer of 1941 until the end of the war and he
was one of the central figures overseeing the Manhattan Project.
Conant became concerned about his future academic career, as well
as his positions in private industry, because various people began
to speak out concerning why the bombs were dropped. On September
9, 1945, Admiral William F. Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet,
was publically quoted extensively as stating that the atomic bomb
was used because the scientists had a "toy and they wanted
to try it out . . . ." He further stated, "The first atomic
bomb was an unnecessary experiment . . . . It was a mistake to ever
drop it." Albert Einstein, one of the world's foremost scientists,
who was also an important person connected with the development
of the atomic bomb, responded and his words were headlined in The
New York Times "Einstein Deplores Use of Atom Bomb."
The story reported that Einstein stated that "A great majority
of scientists were opposed to the sudden employment of the atom
bomb." In Einstein's judgment, the dropping of the bomb was
a political — diplomatic decision rather than a military or scientific
decision.

Probably the
person closest to Truman, from the military standpoint, was Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Leahy, and there was
much talk that he also deplored the use of the bomb and had strongly
advised Truman not to use it, but advised rather to revise the unconditional
surrender policy so that the Japanese could surrender and keep the
Emperor. Leahy's views were later reported by Hanson Baldwin in
an interview that Leahy "thought the business of recognizing
the continuation of the Emperor was a detail which should have been
solved easily." Leahy's secretary, Dorothy Ringquist, reported
that Leahy told her on the day the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, "Dorothy,
we will regret this day. The United States will suffer, for war
is not to be waged on women and children." Another important
naval voice, the commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief
of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade
and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese
helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary
and immoral. Also, the opinion of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
was reported to have said in a press conference on September 22,
1945, that "The Admiral took the opportunity of adding his
voice to those insisting that Japan had been defeated before the
atomic bombing and Russia's entry into the war." In a subsequent
speech at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945, Admiral Nimitz
stated "The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before
the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of
Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war." It was
learned also that on or about July 20, 1945, General Eisenhower
had urged Truman, in a personal visit, not to use the atomic bomb.
Eisenhower's assessment was "It wasn't necessary to hit them
with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and
terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was
a double crime." Eisenhower also stated that it wasn't necessary
for Truman to "succumb" to Byrnes.

James Conant
came to the conclusion that some important person in the administration
must go public to show that the dropping of the bombs was a military
necessity, thereby saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of
American soldiers, so he approached Harvey Bundy and his son, McGeorge
Bundy. It was agreed by them that the most important person to create
this myth was Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. It was decided that
Stimson would write a long article to be widely circulated in a
prominent national magazine. This article was revised repeatedly
by McGeorge Bundy and Conant before it was published in Harper's
magazine in February of 1947. The long article became the subject
of a front-page article and editorial in The New York Times
and in the editorial it was stated "There can be no doubt that
the president and Mr. Stimson are right when they mention that the
bomb caused the Japanese to surrender." Later, in 1959, President
Truman specifically endorsed this conclusion, including the idea
that it saved the lives of a million American soldiers. This myth
has been renewed annually by the news media and various political
leaders ever since.

It is very
pertinent that, in the memoirs of Henry Stimson entitled On
Active Service in Peace and War, he states, "Unfortunately,
I have lived long enough to know that history is often not what
actually happened but what is recorded as such."

To bring this
matter more into focus from the human tragedy standpoint, I recommend
the reading of a book entitled Hiroshima
Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6, September
30, 1945, by Michiko Hachiya. He was a survivor of Hiroshima
and kept a daily diary about the women, children and old men that
he treated on a daily basis in the hospital. The doctor was badly
injured himself but recovered enough to help others and his account
of the personal tragedies of innocent civilians who were either
badly burned or died as a result of the bombing puts the moral issue
into a clear perspective for all of us to consider.

Now
that we live in the nuclear age and there are enough nuclear weapons
spread around the world to destroy civilization, we need to face
the fact that America is the only country to have used this awful
weapon and that it was unnecessary to have done so. If Americans
would come to recognize the truth, rather than the myth, it might
cause such a moral revolt that we would take the lead throughout
the world in realizing that wars in the future may well become nuclear,
and therefore all wars must be avoided at almost any cost. Hopefully,
our knowledge of science has not outrun our ability to exercise
prudent and humane moral and political judgment to the extent that
we are destined for extermination.

August
2, 2006

John
V. Denson [send him
mail] is the editor of two books, The
Costs of War and Reassessing
the Presidency. In the latter work, he has chapters especially
relevant for today, on how Lincoln and FDR lied us into war.

The story
of the peace conference is related by a participant who was vice-president
of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, in volume two of his
work entitled A
Constitutional View of the War Between the States: Its Causes, Character,
Conduct and Results, at pages 589 through 625.

The story
begins in early January of 1865 which was before Sherman left Savannah
on his march through the Carolinas. Mr. Francis P. Blair, Sr., instigated
the conference by obtaining President Lincoln's permission to contact
Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, concerning a possible temporary
halt in the war. Mr. Blair was closely connected to the Lincoln
administration and he was concerned about the efforts on the part
of the French to establish a military presence in Mexico in order
to help them reconquer the territory that had been lost in the war
with America. Mr. Blair made his proposal to President Jefferson
Davis that a secret military conference take place and that all
hostility cease between the North and South for the purpose of letting
the American army enforce the Monroe Doctrine by directing all of
its efforts to evicting the French from Mexico, thereby stopping
any assault by the Mexicans on the southwest corner of America.
President Lincoln gave his permission to Mr. Blair to talk with
Jefferson Davis but indicated to him that he did not endorse Mr.
Blair's ideas; however, he would not stand in the way of some military
conference to discuss peace terms and to stop hostilities while
the conference was in session. Jefferson Davis listened to Mr. Blair's
proposal, met with his cabinet and it was decided that three delegates
were to be appointed to meet with President Lincoln and his Secretary
of State, William Seward. The three Confederate delegates were Mr.
Stephens, John Campbell, a former U.S. Supreme Court Justice from
Alabama, and a Mr. R. M. T. Hunter, a member of the Confederate
Senate. The Confederate delegates were given safe passage through
Northern lines and met directly with General Grant, who put them
on a boat to go to Fortress Monroe. When they reached Fortress Monroe
near Hampton Roads, Virginia, they were then escorted to another
steamer where President Lincoln and Mr. Seward were to meet with
them. The actual meeting occurred on February 3, 1865.

Mr. Seward
indicated that this was to be an informal conference with no writing
or record to be made, all was to be verbal, and the Confederates
agreed. President Lincoln announced in the beginning that the trip
of Mr. Blair was approved by him but that he did not endorse the
idea to halt the hostilities for the purpose of the American army
going to Mexico to enforce the Monroe Doctrine; however, he had
no objection to discussing a peace offer at this time. President
Lincoln stated that he had always been willing to discuss a peace
offer as long as the first condition was met and that would be for
the Confederacy to pledge to rejoin the Union. If that condition
was agreed upon then they could discuss any other details that were
necessary. Mr. Stephens responded by suggesting that if they could
come up with some proposal to stop the hostilities, which might
lead to the restoration of the Union without further bloodshed,
would it not be advisable to act on that proposal, even without
an absolute pledge of ultimate restoration being required at the
beginning? President Lincoln replied firmly that there would be
no stopping of the military operations unless there was a pledge
first by the Confederacy to rejoin the Union immediately.

Judge Campbell
then asked what would be the terms offered to the South if they
were to pledge to rejoin the Union and how would they be taken back
into the Union. Since there was no immediate response by either
President Lincoln or Mr. Seward, Vice-President Stephens stated
that it would be worthwhile to pursue stopping the hostilities to
have a cooling off period so that the peace terms might be investigated
without the passions of the war. Mr. Stephens indicated that should
the hostilities stop for some extended period of time, he felt that
there would be a good chance that many of the states would rejoin
the Union on the same terms as they had when they joined in the
beginning, but that the sovereignty of the states would have to
be recognized upon rejoining the Union. Mr. Seward objected that
a system of government founded upon the right of secession would
not last and that self-preservation of the Union was a first law
of nature which applies to nations as well as to individuals. He
brought up the point that if all the states were free to secede,
they might make a treaty with some foreign nation and thus expose
the Union to foreign aggression. Mr. Stephens responded that the
principle of self-preservation also applied to every state by itself
and it would never be in the interest of any single state or several
states to join with some foreign power against those states which
remained in the Union.

Mr. Hunter
then brought up the question of whether President Lincoln would
require the Confederate army to join with the Union army to go to
war in Mexico and stated before Lincoln answered that it was the
view of all three commissioners that the Confederates would never
agree to join with the Union army in an invasion of Mexico. Both
President Lincoln and Mr. Seward responded that the feeling was
so strong in the North to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, that they
felt that the South would not be needed in the invasion.

The subject
of slavery then came up and Mr. Stephens asked President Lincoln
what would be the status of the slave population in the Confederate
states, and especially what effect the Emancipation Proclamation
would have if the Confederates rejoined the Union. President Lincoln
responded that the Proclamation was only a war measure and as soon
as the war ceased, it would have no operation for the future. It
was his opinion that the Courts would decide that the slaves who
were emancipated under the Proclamation would remain free but those
who were not emancipated during the war would remain in slavery.
Mr. Seward pointed out that only about two hundred thousand (200,000)
slaves had come under the operation of the Proclamation and this
would be a small number out of the total. Mr. Seward then brought
up the point that several days before the meeting, there had been
a proposed 13th constitutional amendment to cause the
immediate abolition of slavery throughout the United States, but
if the war were to cease and the Confederates rejoined the Union,
they would have enough votes to kill the amendment. He stated that
there would be thirty-six (36) states and ten (10) could defeat
the amendment. The reader should be reminded at this point that
President Lincoln, in his Inaugural Address before the war, gave
his support to the first 13th amendment pending at that
time which would have explicitly protected slavery where
it already existed.

Mr. Stephens
then inquired as to what would be status of the states in regard
to their representation in Congress and President Lincoln replied
that they would have their full rights restored under the Constitution.
This would mean that there would be no punishment or reconstruction
imposed. President Lincoln then returned to the slavery question
and stated that it was never his intention to interfere with slavery
in the states where it already existed and he would not have done
so during the war, except that it became a military necessity. He
had always been in favor of prohibiting the extension of slavery
into the territories but never thought immediate emancipation in
the states where it already existed was practical. He thought there
would be "many evils attending" the immediate ending of
slavery in those states. Judge Campbell then asked Mr. Seward if
he thought there would be good race relations in the South upon
immediate emancipation and inquired about what would happen to the
freed slaves. President Lincoln responded by telling an anecdote
about an Illinois farmer and how he avoided any effort in finding
food for his hogs, and his method would apply to the freed slaves,
in other words "let'em root!" The Confederate delegation
showed no interest in protecting slavery in the Confederacy with
their only interest being independence from the Union and the protection
of the right to secede, which raised the subject of West Virginia.
Mr. Hunter asked President Lincoln whether West Virginia, which
had seceded from the State of Virginia, would be allowed to remain
a separate state and President Lincoln stated that it would. Lincoln
had once been a strong proponent of secession, and as a first-term
congressman from Illinois, he spoke in a session of the House of
Representatives in 1848 and argued that:

"Any
people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the
right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form
a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable and
most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate
the world." (emphasis supplied).

Lincoln recognized
the right of West Virginia to secede but refused to recognize the
right of the South to secede. Mr. Hunter indicated that President
Lincoln's proposal amounted to an unconditional surrender but Mr.
Seward responded that the North would not be conquerors but rather
the states would merely have to recognize national authority and
the execution of the national laws. The South would regain full
protection of the Constitution like the rest of the states.

President
Lincoln returned to the question of slavery stating that he thought
the North would be willing to be taxed to compensate the Southern
people for the loss of their slaves. He said that he had many conversations
to the effect that if there was a voluntary abolition of slavery
the American government would pay a fair indemnity and specified
that four hundred million dollars ($400,000,000) would probably
be appropriated for this purpose. Mr. Seward said that the Northern
people were weary of the war and they would be willing to pay this
amount of indemnity rather than continuing to pay for the war.

Mr. Stephens
wrote that the entire conversation took about four hours and the
last subject was the possible exchange of prisoners. President Lincoln
stated he would put that question in the hands of General Grant
and they could discuss it with Grant as they left. Finally, Mr.
Stephens asked President Lincoln to reconsider stopping the hostilities
for a period of time so that the respective sides could "cool
off," and while cooling off, investigate further possibilities
for ending the war other than by simply having the South pledge
to rejoin the Union. President Lincoln stated he would reconsider
it but he did not think his mind would change on that point. Thus,
ended the Peace Conference and the Confederates returned to meet
with General Grant and were escorted back to the Confederate lines.

In summary,
the South wanted independence, not the protection of slavery, and
the North wanted reunion rather than abolition of slavery. This
is what President Lincoln had stated in the very beginning before
the war and again what he had stated near the end of the war.

It was
generally recognized in both the North and the South by 1865 that
slavery was a dying institution, not just in America, but throughout
Western Civilization. It was also obvious to both the North and
the South that slavery would be hard to maintain in a separate Confederate
South without the constitutional and statutory fugitive slave provisions
which had required free states to return escaped slaves. In fact,
many abolitionists had advocated Northern secession before the war
as a means to end slavery by depriving the Southern states of the
benefits of the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution and the
laws relating thereto. The offer of the North to pay for the freed
slaves was merely an added inducement to rejoin the Union but Lincoln
had always been willing to accept slavery where it already existed
if the South would remain in, or later, rejoin the Union. The right
of a state to secede clearly had been accepted in the North and
the South at the time of the formation of the Union and up until
the time of the War Between the States. For example, the New England
states frequently asserted the right of secession and threatened
to use it on five occasions: in 1803 because of President Jefferson's
Louisiana Purchase; in 1807 over the Embargo Act; in 1812 over the
admission of Louisiana as a state; in 1814 at the Hartford Convention
because of the War of 1812; and finally, in 1845 over the annexation
of Texas.

If the
agricultural South rejoined the industrial North, they would again
be subject to economic exploitation of the protective tariff, which
was paid primarily by the South and was by far the main tax to operate
the central government in Washington, D.C. The North, due to their
increased representation in Congress, was able to control where
the money was spent, which was primarily for internal improvements
in the North, a practice the South considered unconstitutional.
The protective tariff and internal improvements had been two of
the key problems between the two sections since 1828, along with
the general disagreement about the size and power of the central
government in Washington.

Finally,
in order to bring into clear focus the significance of the Hampton
Roads Conference, it should be recalled that on April 4, 1861, before
the start of the war on April 12, the Secession Convention in Virginia,
which had convened in February of 1861, sent a delegate to visit
President Lincoln in the White House to discuss the results of the
action recently taken in Virginia. When the State of Virginia originally
voted on its ratification ordinance approving the U.S. Constitution,
it contained a specific clause protecting their right to secede
in the future. The delegate was Colonel John B. Baldwin, who was
a strong opponent of secession by Virginia, although he recognized
the right. His message communicated privately to the president on
April 4, was that the convention had voted not to secede if President
Lincoln would issue a written pledge to refrain from the use of
force in order to get the seceded states back into the Union. President
Lincoln told Colonel Baldwin that it was four days too late now
to take that action. Unknown to all except a few insiders of the
administration, meaning that members of the Congress did not know,
the president had already issued secret orders on April 1, to send
a fleet of ships to Fort Sumter in order to provoke the South into
firing the first shot in order to start the war. (For more details
see my chapter "Lincoln and the First Shot: A Study of Deceit
and Deception" in the book Reassessing the Presidency.)
Lincoln stated that he could not wait until the seceded states decided
what to do and added:

"But
what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery?
Am I to let them go on?"

Baldwin replied:

"Yes
sir, until they can be peaceably brought back."

Lincoln then
replied:

"And
open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten percent
tariff . . ." (as opposed to the much higher forty percent
Federal tariff). "What then would become of my tariff?"
(For more details on this meeting and a subsequent meeting with
President Lincoln by other delegates of the Virginia Secession
Convention, again see my chapter "Lincoln and the First Shot")

The original
Constitution, still in effect before the war, prohibited all "direct"
taxes on the people, i.e. income, estate, gift, etc., so almost
all the revenue to operate the Federal government in Washington
was derived from an "indirect" tax on imports. The South,
being agricultural, had to import almost all manufactured goods
from Europe (primarily England) or buy the products from the North.
The higher the tax on imports, the more protection the North got
to raise its prices for its manufactured goods and for this reason
a high import tax was called a "protective tariff." As
long as, the import tax was ten percent or less it was classified
as a "revenue tax" to which the South did not object.
In fact, the new Confederate Constitution adopted in March of 1861,
placed a maximum tax on imports of ten percent. However, when an
import tax or tariff exceeded ten percent, it became known as a
"protective tariff" for the protection of domestic (Northern)
industry. Shortly before the war, the Chicago Daily Times
was only one of many newspapers predicting a calamity for federal
revenue and business in the North if the South was allowed to secede
with its ten percent limit on import taxes which would attract trade,
especially from abroad, to the South rather than the North. In an
editorial it stated:

"In
one single blow our [Northern] foreign commerce must be reduced
to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwise trade will
pass into other hands . . . We should lose our trade with the
South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufactories will
be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system,
or that of a tariff for revenue (ten percent or less), and these
results would likely follow."

In a debate
in England, two notable British citizens, Charles Dickens and John
Stuart Mill, took opposing views on the cause of the American War
Between the States with Mill stating that the purpose of the war
was the abolition of slavery and Dickens maintained that "The
Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious
humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the
Southern states."

The meeting
at Hampton Roads in 1865 and the meeting with Colonel Baldwin in
1861 both showed that President Lincoln's concern was preventing
the secession of the South in order to protect Northern manufacturers
and to retain the tax source for the Federal government. The abolition
of slavery was not the purpose of the war. In his Inaugural Address
he promised he would invade the South for the purpose of collecting
taxes and recovering the forts but he would support the first 13th
amendment which protected slavery in the states where it already
existed.

The War
Between the States was not a noble war to abolish slavery, but instead
was a war of conquest to require the Southern states to continue
paying the taxes which paid for the federal government and to change
the system of government given to us by our Founders and instead
replace it with a strong national government thereby removing most
of the political power from the states and the people. When the
famous British historian, Lord Acton, wrote to Robert E. Lee after
the war, in a letter dated November 4, 1866, he inquired about Lee's
assessment of the meaning of the war and the result that would follow.
Lord Acton's letter stated, in part, that:

"I saw
in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of
the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as
the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy . . . . Therefore
I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our
progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which
was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which
was saved at Waterloo."

Lee replied
in a letter dated December 15, 1866, and stated, in part, what the
result would be:

" .
. . [T]he consolidation of the states into one vast republic,
sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home,
will be the certain precursor of the ruin which has overwhelmed
all those that have preceded it." (emphasis supplied).

Never have
truer words ever been written or spoken.

Rarely
do any governments, or the politicians, intellectuals and news media
who support their wars, tell the truth about the real motives for
the wars. After all, the citizens must be convinced either that
their safety is being protected from an aggressor or that the war
serves some noble purpose, because it's the citizens who fight,
die and pay the taxes. The Orwellian historians have falsified the
true purposes or motives behind most of America's wars, and have
instead given us glorified accounts designed to mislead the public
in order to justify the sacrifices the people have made. All wars,
whether won or lost, tend to centralize and increase the power into
the national government, increase the debts and taxes and diminish
the civil liberties of the citizens. It is time we begin to see
through the myths and false propaganda about American wars so that
we can prevent future wars. Americans have a strong tendency to
accept as true the false wartime propaganda which now appears in
the history books and which is repeated by politicians and intellectuals
to the effect that all of America's wars have been just, necessary
and noble. This tendency of the Americans to accept this false propaganda
tends to prevent them from questioning the alleged reasons for current
wars. There is also a strong tendency by Americans to measure a
person's patriotism by how much that person supports an American
war rather than how much the person supports the concept of American
freedom and the ideas of our Founders, which includes a noninterventionist
foreign policy

It
is time that Americans learn the truth about the real reasons behind
our wars, and particularly, the War Between the States, because
of the price that we have paid in the long-term loss of liberty
in that war. The deaths of over 600,000 American young men in that
war is not exactly inconsequential. This high death total is more
than the total of all the deaths of American soldiers in all the
other wars America has fought. The Hampton Roads Peace Conference
is a necessary piece to the puzzle of learning that truth.

The
abolition of slavery by the 13th amendment was a great
step forward in the struggle for individual freedom and it eliminated
a horrible evil in America which had been practiced for centuries
throughout the world, but the passage of that amendment was not
the purpose of the war and slavery would certainly have died soon
without a war as it did elsewhere throughout Western Civilization
without wars. It is the War Between the States which was the first
great turning point in American history away from the system of
government and the individual freedom that our Founders provided
for us. We need a new "Reformation and Renaissance," but
this time, it needs to be about government, especially the American
government. We need a new "turning point" to go in the
right direction to recover the original ideas about individual freedom
advocated by our Founders before it is too late; or have we already
passed the point of no return?

January
10, 2006

John
V. Denson [send him
mail] is the editor of two books, The
Costs of War and Reassessing
the Presidency. In the latter work, he has chapters especially
relevant for today, on how Lincoln and FDR lied us into war.

The most accurate description of the twentieth century, I believe, is u201CThe War and Welfare Century.u201D This century is the bloodiest in all history. More than 170 million people were killed by governments with 10 million being killed in World War I and 50 million killed in World II. In regard to the 50 million killed in World War II, it is significant that nearly 70 percent were innocent civilians, mainly as a result of the bombing of cities by Great Britain and America.

This number of 50 million deaths does not include the estimated 6 to 12 million Russians killed by Stalin before World War II, and the several million people he killed after the war ended when Roosevelt and Churchill delivered to him one-third of Europe as part of the settlement conferences. George Crocker's excellent book Roosevelt's Road to Russia describes the settlement conferences, such as Yalta, and shows how Roosevelt and Churchill enhanced communism in Russia and China through deliberate concessions which strengthened it drastically, while Nazism was being extinguished in Germany.

It is inconceivable to me that America could join with Stalin as an ally and promote World War II as u201Cthe good war,u201D against tyranny or totalitarianism. The war and American aid made Soviet Russia into a super military power which threatened America and the world for the next 45 years. It delivered China to the communists and made it a threat during this same period of time.

The horror of the twentieth century could hardly have been predicted in the nineteenth century, which saw the eighteenth century end with the American Revolution bringing about the creation of the first classical liberal government in the world. It was a government founded upon a blueprint in a written constitution, which allowed very few powers in the central government and protected individual liberties even from the vote of the majority. It provided for the ownership and protection of private property, free speech, freedom of religion, and basically a free-market economy with no direct taxes.

Both political factions united behind the first administration of President Washington to proclaim a foreign policy based upon non-interventionism and neutrality in the affairs of other nations, which remained the dominant political idea of America for over a hundred years.

These ideas of classical liberalism quickly spread to the Old World of Europe and at the end of the eighteenth century erupted into a different type of revolution in France, although a revolution in the name of liberty. The new ideal, however, adopted in the French Revolution was u201Cequalityu201D by force and it attempted to abolish all monarchy throughout Europe. The ideas of classical liberalism were twisted and distorted, but nevertheless were spread by force throughout Europe, thereby giving liberalism a bad name, especially in Germany; and this was accomplished by a conscripted French army.

The nineteenth century largely remained, in practice, a century of individual freedom, material progress, and relative peace, which allowed great developments in science, technology, and industry. However, the intellectual ferment toward the middle of the nineteenth century and thereafter was decidedly toward collectivism. In about 1850 the great classical liberal John Stuart Mill began to abandon these ideas and adopt socialism, as did most other intellectuals. After the brief Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, Bismarck established the first welfare state while creating the nation of Germany by converting it from a confederation of states, just as Lincoln did in America. From this point up until World War I most German intellectuals began to glorify the state and collectivist ideas. They ignored one lone voice in Germany, a lyric poet by the name of Johann Christian Friedrich Hlderlin, who died in 1843. He stated, u201CWhat has made the State a hell on earth has been that man has tried to make it his heaven.u201D [1] Hegel and Fichte immediately come to mind.

The Greatest Tragedy

Finally, the greatest tragedy of Western civilization erupted with World War I in 1914. It may be the most senseless, unnecessary and avoidable disaster in human history. Classical liberalism was thereby murdered, and virtually disappeared, and was replaced by collectivism which reigned both intellectually and in practice throughout the remainder of the twentieth century. The ideas of socialism began to take over the various governments of the world following World War I. Socialism was not initially a mass movement of the people but was a movement created by intellectuals who assumed important roles in the governments ruled by the collectivist politicians.

While I could quote from numerous political and intellectual leaders throughout the war and welfare century, I have chosen one who summed up the dominant political thoughts in the twentieth century. He was the founder of fascism, and he came to power in 1922 in Italy. In 1927 Benito Mussolini stated:

Fascism… believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace… War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it… It may be expected that this will be a century of authority, a century of the Left, a century of Fascism. For the nineteenth century was a century of individualism… [Liberalism always signifying individualism], it may be expected that this will be a century of collectivism, and hence the century of the State… For Fascism, the growth of Empire, that is to say, the expansion of the nation, is the essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite is a sign of decay and death. [2]

Guiding Principles

Mussolini's statement bears closer study because it dramatically states some of the guiding principles of the twentieth century:

1. It states that perpetual peace is neither possible, nor even to be desired.
2. Instead of peace, war is to be desired because not only is war a noble activity, but it reveals the true courage of man; it unleashes creative energy and causes progress. Moreover, war is the prime mover to enhance and glorify the state. War is the principal method by which collectivists have achieved their goal of control by the few over the many. They actually seek to create or initiate wars for this purpose.
3. Individualism, the philosophy practiced in the nineteenth century, is to be abolished and, specifically, collectivism is to rule the twentieth century.
4. Fascism is recognized as a variation of other forms of collectivism, all being part of the Left, as opposed to the Right, which is individualism. It was not until the u201CRed Decadeu201D of the 30s, and the appearance of Hitler, that leftist intellectuals and the media began to switch Fascism on the political spectrum to the Right so that the u201Cgood forms of collectivism,u201D such as socialism, could oppose the u201Cextremism on the Rightu201D which they said was fascism.

The founder of fascism clearly realized that all of these collectivist ideas, i.e., socialism, fascism and communism, belonged on the Left and were all opposed to individualism on the Right. Fascism is not an extreme form of individualism and is a part of the Left, or collectivism.

The ideals upon which America was founded were the exact opposite of those expressed by Mussolini and other collectivists on the Left. Why then was America, in the twentieth century, not a bulwark for freedom to oppose all of these leftist ideas? Why didn't the ideas of the American Founders dominate the twentieth century and make it the u201CAmerican Century of Peace and Prosperityu201D instead of the ideas of the Left dominating and making it the u201CWar and Welfare Century?u201D The failure of the ideas of the Founders of America to be dominant in the twentieth century was certainly not because America had been conquered by the force of arms of some foreign leftist enemy.

The U.S. Empire

We need to learn the real reasons why America abandoned the principles of its Founding Fathers and allowed this tragedy to occur. We must determine why America became influenced by leftist thoughts, the ideas of empire, and the ideas of glorification of the state. How did America itself become an empire and an interventionist in World Wars I and II and help create the war and welfare century in which we now live?

We can begin by examining a quote from one of the main leaders of America in the nineteenth century and the answer will become apparent. This statement was made in 1838 by a rather obscure American politician at the time who would become world famous in 1861:

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth… could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. [3]

Abraham Lincoln is the author of these words and he concluded his statement with the following:

If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. [4]

Father Abraham

Abraham Lincoln himself became the principal instigator of America's suicide. It was not a foreign foe, but it was a war, even a u201Cvictoriousu201D war, that ended the Founders' dreams in America. However, leftist intellectuals have never revealed to the American people the real cause and effect of the American Civil War, and instead have proclaimed it a u201Cnoble waru201D to free the slaves, and therefore, worth all of its costs. In fact, it was a war to repudiate the ideas of a limited central government and it moved America towards a domestic empire, which led inevitably to a foreign empire several decades later.

We can see photographs of Lincoln near the end of the war which show signs of strain. However, I think the strain was due mainly to the fact that at the end of this long and costly war, he understood that it had been unnecessary and that he had acted initially and primarily only to secure the economic and political domination of the North over the South. However, at the end of the war, President Lincoln finally understood the real costs as revealed by this statement:

As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until wealth is aggregated into the hands of a few and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of the war. [emphasis added] [5]

Other key individuals also recognized the real effect of the American Civil War. One of these was the great historian of liberty, Lord Acton, who wrote to a prominent American, Robert E. Lee, immediately after the war and stated:

I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy…. Therefore, I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo. [6]

Lee's Vision

With a careful analysis of the results of the Civil War, General Lee replied to Lord Acton in his letter dated December 15, 1866:

I can only say that while I have considered the preservation of the constitutional power of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it. [emphasis added] [7]

Lee clearly saw the North's victory as the beginning of the growth of empire at home, the loss of freedom to Americans and the destruction of the original ideas of our Founders. He also saw that the domestic empire would lead to an empire abroad. Consolidation of power into the central government is the basic premise of collectivism, and it was the basic idea the Constitution attempted to avoid. After the creation of the domestic American empire as a result of the Civil War, and then after the next three decades, America specifically repudiated its 100-year old foreign policy and initiated the Spanish-American War, allegedly to free Cuba. We now know, however, that the original and ultimate purpose of the war was to take the Philippine Islands away from Spain in order to provide coaling stations for the trade with China which was considered by many American economic interests to be essential to America's expansion.

McKinley ordered the American warships sent to the Philippines at approximately the same time he sent the battleship Maine to Cuba and instructed the American Navy to support the Philippine rebels against their Spanish rulers. McKinley asked Congress to declare war because of the sinking of the battleship Maine, but we know today that the explosion occurred within the ship and, therefore, could not have been done by the Spanish. In the Philippines, the native rebels were successful in throwing off their Spanish rulers and were aided in their effort by the American Navy. Once the rebels had succeeded, McKinley ordered the American guns turned upon the rebels, murdering them in cold blood by the thousands, and snatched their island away from them. McKinley then ruled as a military dictator without authority from Congress. Next, without any authority from Congress, he sent five thousand marines into China to help put down the Boxer Rebellion which was an effort by the Chinese to expel foreigners from their own soil. McKinley joined with other European nations in seeking the spoils of China and sacrificed America's integrity and her right to be called a leader for freedom.

Next came the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century which was America's late entry into World War I. America's entry drastically changed the balance of power of the original contenders in the war and resulted in the horrible Treaty of Versailles, which paved the road to World War II.

The Progressive Movement

America's entry into World War I was a result of the so-called Progressive Movement which worshipped the idea of democracy per se, and wished to spread it throughout the world, by force if necessary. It was this movement which in one year, 1913, caused monumental changes in America, all in the name of attacking the rich for the benefit of the poor.

The first change was the creation of the Federal Reserve System allegedly to control the banks, but instead it concentrated power into the hands of an elite few unelected manipulators. The Sixteenth Amendment allowed for the income tax and it was alleged that the Amendment only attacked the rich. However, in World War I, the tax was raised and expanded and has become the most oppressive feature of American life in this century. Today it causes middle-class Americans to work approximately five months of every year just for the government before they earn anything for themselves.

The third drastic change was the Seventeenth Amendment which gave u201Cpoweru201D to the people by letting them elect U.S. Senators rather than the state legislatures. The Founding Fathers had devised a system of state legislatures electing U.S. Senators in order to give the states the ability to restrain and limit the power of the federal government.

The Progressive Movement also promoted the personification of Isabel Paterson's u201CHumanitarian with a Guillotine,u201D described in her book, The God of the Machine, by electing President Woodrow Wilson. He was a nave, idealistic egomaniac, who took America into World War I. He did this to play a part in creating the League of Nations and help design the new structure of the world, thereby spreading the democratic gospel. Wilson allowed the House of J.P. Morgan to become the exclusive agent for British purchases of war materials in America and further allowed Morgan to make loans and extend credit to the allies. Eventually, Wilson made the U.S. Government assume all of the Morgan debt and issued Liberty Bonds so the American taxpayers could help pay for it. When the allies refused to repay their debt, America stood on the precipice of an economic disaster, which was another major factor in Wilson's decision to enter the war. However, it was World War I and its destabilization of the economies of Western nations which led directly to the disaster of the Depression of 1929. There was no failure of the free market or the ideas of freedom which led to this economic disaster. It was caused by government interference in the market primarily resulting from World War I and the reaction of various governments to that war.

War Fever

As the war fever spread and the war drums beat, few people paid attention to such editorials as appeared in the Commercial and Financial Journal which stated:

If war is declared, it is needless to say that we shall support the government. But may we not ask, one to another, before that fateful final word is spoken, are we not by this act transforming the glorious Republic that was, into the powerful Republic that is, and is to be?…Must we not admit that we are bringing into existence a new republic that is unlike the old? [8]

Wilson, like Polk, Lincoln, and McKinley before him, deceitfully made it appear that the alleged enemy started the war by firing the first shot. The German embassy warned Secretary of State Bryan that the British passenger ship, the Lusitania, was carrying illegal weapons and munitions, and was therefore a proper and perfectly legal target for submarines. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan tried to get Wilson to warn Americans not to sail on this ship but he refused to do so, seeing that the opportunity for the loss of American lives would present him with an apparent reason for entering the war. Wilson failed to give the warning and Bryan later resigned. Over 100 Americans were killed when a German submarine sank the Lusitania.

Victory Over Freedom

After World War I ended, and much like the regret expressed by Lincoln at the end of the Civil War, President Wilson looked back to the harm he had brought on America and saw part of the true nature of World War I. In an address at St. Louis, Missouri on September 5, 1919, President Wilson stated:

Why, my fellow-citizens, is there any man here, or any woman – let me say, is there any child here, who does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry? …This war, in its inception, was a commercial and industrial war. It was not a political war. [9]

It is sad to contemplate the loss of liberty caused to Americans by the u201Cvictoriousu201D wars we have fought when you look back and see that almost all of them were unnecessary to defend Americans or their freedom, and were largely economically instigated. In so many instances, the president provoked the other side into firing the first shot so it was made to appear that the war was started by America's alleged enemy. Not only did Polk, Lincoln, McKinley, and Wilson do this, but also later, Roosevelt would do it with Pearl Harbor and Johnson would do it in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution for the Vietnam War.

It is not truly a study of history to speculate on what might have happened if America had not entered World War I, but here are some very reasonable, even probable, consequences if America had followed the advice of its Founders:

1. Almost certainly there would not have been a successful Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, giving communism a homeland from which to spread throughout the world.
2. A negotiated treaty between Germany and France and Great Britain, when all were wounded but undefeated, would have prevented the debacle of the Treaty of Versailles, the greatest single tragedy of World War I. Without America's entry there would have been a treaty negotiated with co-equal partners, similar to the way the Congress of Vienna settled the Napoleonic Wars in 1815–16, with a defeated France still represented at the table by Tallyrand, and where a sincere effort was made to promote peace rather than cause a future war.

The Treaty of Versailles excluded Germany and Russia from the negotiations and declared Germany alone guilty of causing the war. It saddled her with tremendous payments for war damages and took away much of her territory. The Treaty of Versailles paved the way for Hitler whose support came democratically from the German people who wanted to throw off the unfair Treaty. Without the rise of communism in Russia and Nazism in Germany, World War II probably would not have occurred.

There are many important lessons that the twentieth century, this u201CWar and Welfare Century,u201D should teach us. One of these is summed up by Bruce Porter in his excellent book entitled War and the Rise of the State wherein he states that the New Deal u201Cwas the only time in U.S. history when the power of the central state grew substantially in the absence of war.u201D [10] He concluded that:

Throughout the history of the United States, war has been the primary impetus behind the growth and development of the central state. It has been the lever by which presidents and other national officials have bolstered the power of the state in the face of tenacious popular resistance. It has been a wellspring of American nationalism and a spur to political and social change. [11]

The same lesson is contained in a warning issued by the great champion of liberty and student of American democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville, who warned America in the early part of the nineteenth century that:

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country…. War does not always give over democratic communities to military government, but it must invariably and immeasurably increase the powers of civil government; it must almost compulsorily concentrate the direction of all men and the management of all things in the hands of the administration. If it does not lead to despotism by sudden violence, it prepares men for it more gently by their habits. All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish it. This is the first axiom of the science. [12]

Both Porter and Tocqueville are warning us that even u201Cvictoriousu201D wars cause the loss of freedom due to the centralization of power into the federal government. Another lesson is that democracy per se will not protect our freedom or individual liberty. I have heard college students ask the question: u201CWhy did the Greeks, who invented democracy, remain so critical of it?u201D The answer, of course, is that democracy, without proper restraints and limitation of powers as provided in the original American Constitution, can be just as tyrannical as a single despot. F. A. Hayek made this point when he stated:

There can be no doubt that in history there has often been much more cultural and political freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies – and it is at least conceivable that under the government of a very homogeneous doctrinaire majority, democratic government might be as oppressive as the worst dictatorship. [13]

Limiting the State

We should learn from the war and welfare century that the greatest discovery in Western civilization was that liberty could be achieved only through the proper and effective limitation on the power of the state. It is this limitation on the power of the state which protects private property, a free-market economy, personal liberties and promotes a noninterventionist foreign policy, which, if coupled with a strong national defense, will bring peace and prosperity instead of war and welfare. It is not democracy per se which protects freedom.

Too many people living in democracies are lulled into believing that they are free because they have the right to vote and elections are held periodically. If you take conscription for military service as an example, I think you would find that if it was proclaimed by a sole monarch, the people would revolt and disobey. However, in a democracy, when the politicians vote for it, the people comply and still think they are free.

The fall of the Berlin wall and the demise of the Soviet Empire do not assure us that collectivism is dead. I predict that the next assault on freedom by the new leftist intellectuals will be through the democratic process, maybe coupled with a religious movement, but certainly not coupled with anti-religious ideas. Many, maybe most Americans, who opposed Communist Russia, were convinced it was wrong and evil because it was atheistic and not because its political and economic ideas were wrong and evil. I think the new collectivist monster will be dressed in different clothing advocating equality, justice, democracy, religion, and market socialism.

Intellectuals of the Future

It will then be more important than ever for intellectuals of the future to have a correct understanding of the philosophy of individual freedom and of free-market economics in order to fight collectivism in the twenty-first century. It will be most important for Americans to understand why Ludwig von Mises, in his book, Omnipotent Government, stated:

Durable peace is only possible under perfect capitalism, hitherto never and nowhere completely tried or achieved. In such a Jeffersonian world of the unhampered market economy the scope of government activities is limited to the protection of lives, health, and property of individuals against violence or fraudulent aggression…

All the oratory of the advocates of government omnipotence cannot annul the fact there is but one system that makes for durable peace: a free-market economy. Government control leads to economic nationalism and thus results in conflict. [14]

The definition of a free market, which Mises states will allow us to have peace and prosperity, is one where the economy is not only free of government control, but also where economic interests do not control the government policy, especially foreign policy, which has been the case throughout the twentieth century and continues to the present time. The highest risk for war is where various economic interests are able to control foreign policy to promote their particular interests rather than the well-being and liberty of the individuals within a society.

The Mises Institute is working to promote the ideas of Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, Henry Hazlitt and many others who have been the true champions of freedom. These are the ideas which can make the twenty-first century one of peace and prosperity, rather than war and welfare. That is why the Mises Institute is so important to the future of America and to the world.

Notes

[1] The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek. Vol. 10. Socialism and War: Essays, Documents, Reviews. Bruce Caldwell, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 175.

[2] Benito Mussolini, u201CThe Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,u201D in Fascism: An Anthology, Nathanael Greene, ed. (N York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968), pp. 41, 43–44.

[3] The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler, ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953-55), Vol. 1, p. 109.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Francis Nielson, The Makers of War (New Orleans, La.: Flanders Hall, 1987), pp. 53-54.

[6] Essays in the History of Liberty; Selected Writings of Lord Acton, J. Rufus Fears, ed. (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Classics, 1985), Vol. 1, p. 277.

[7] Ibid., p. 364.

[8] Stuart D. Brandes, Wardogs: A History of War Profits in America (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), p. 141.

[9] The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Arthur S. Link, ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), 63, pp. 45–46.

[10] Bruce D. Porter, War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modern Politics (New York: Free Press, 1994), p. 278.

[11] Ibid., p. 291.

[12] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), Vol. 2, pp. 268–69.

[13] The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, Caldwell, ed., p. 209.

[14] Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1969), pp. 284–86.

John V. Denson [send him mail] is the editor of two books, The Costs of War and Reassessing the Presidency. In the latter work, he has chapters especially relevant for today, on how Lincoln and FDR lied us into war. This talk was delivered at the 15th anniversary of the Mises Institute in 1997.

The Christmas
Truce, which occurred primarily between the British and German soldiers
along the Western Front in December 1914, is an event the official
histories of the "Great War" leave out, and the Orwellian
historians hide from the public. Stanley Weintraub has broken through
this barrier of silence and written a moving account of this significant
event by compiling letters sent home from the front, as well as
diaries of the soldiers involved. His book is entitled Silent
Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce. The
book contains many pictures of the actual events showing the opposing
forces mixing and celebrating together that first Christmas of the
war. This remarkable story begins to unfold, according to Weintraub,
on the morning of December 19, 1914:

"Lieutenant
Geoffrey Heinekey, new to the 2nd Queen's Westminster
Rifles, wrote to his mother, u2018A most extraordinary thing happened.
. . Some Germans came out and held up their hands and began to
take in some of their wounded and so we ourselves immediately
got out of our trenches and began bringing in our wounded also.
The Germans then beckoned to us and a lot of us went over and
talked to them and they helped us to bury our dead. This lasted
the whole morning and I talked to several of them and I must say
they seemed extraordinarily fine men . . . . It seemed too ironical
for words. There, the night before we had been having a terrific
battle and the morning after, there we were smoking their cigarettes
and they smoking ours." (p. 5)

Weintraub reports
that the French and Belgians reacted differently to the war and
with more emotion than the British in the beginning. The war was
occurring on their land and "The French had lived in an atmosphere
of revanche since 1870, when Alsace and Lorraine were seized
by the Prussians" in a war declared by the French. (p. 4).
The British and German soldiers, however, saw little meaning in
the war as to them, and, after all, the British King and the German
Kaiser were both grandsons of Queen Victoria. Why should the Germans
and British be at war, or hating each other, because a royal couple
from Austria were killed by an assassin while they were visiting
in Bosnia? However, since August when the war started, hundreds
of thousands of soldiers had been killed, wounded or missing by
December 1914 (p. xvi).

It is estimated
that over eighty thousand young Germans had gone to England before
the war to be employed in such jobs as waiters, cooks, and cab drivers
and many spoke English very well. It appears that the Germans were
the instigators of this move towards a truce. So much interchange
had occurred across the lines by the time that Christmas Eve approached
that Brigadier General G.T. Forrestier-Walker issued a directive
forbidding fraternization:

"For
it discourages initiative in commanders, and destroys offensive
spirit in all ranks . . . . Friendly intercourse with the enemy,
unofficial armistices and exchange of tobacco and other comforts,
however tempting and occasionally amusing they may be, are absolutely
prohibited." (p. 6–7).

Later strict
orders were issued that any fraternization would result in a court-martial.
Most of the seasoned German soldiers had been sent to the Russian
front while the youthful and somewhat untrained Germans, who were
recruited first, or quickly volunteered, were sent to the Western
Front at the beginning of the war. Likewise, in England young men
rushed to join in the war for the personal glory they thought they
might achieve and many were afraid the war might end before they
could get to the front. They had no idea this war would become one
of attrition and conscription or that it would set the trend for
the whole 20th century, the bloodiest in history which
became known as the War and Welfare Century.

As night fell
on Christmas Eve the British soldiers noticed the Germans putting
up small Christmas trees along with candles at the top of their
trenches and many began to shout in English "We no shoot if
you no shoot."(p. 25). The firing stopped along the many miles
of the trenches and the British began to notice that the Germans
were coming out of the trenches toward the British who responded
by coming out to meet them. They mixed and mingled in No Man's Land
and soon began to exchange chocolates for cigars and various newspaper
accounts of the war which contained the propaganda from their respective
homelands. Many of the officers on each side attempted to prevent
the event from occurring but the soldiers ignored the risk of a
court-martial or of being shot.

Some of the
meetings reported in diaries were between Anglo-Saxons and German
Saxons and the Germans joked that they should join together and
fight the Prussians. The massive amount of fraternization, or maybe
just the Christmas spirit, deterred the officers from taking action
and many of them began to go out into No Man's Land and exchange
Christmas greetings with their opposing officers. Each side helped
bury their dead and remove the wounded so that by Christmas morning
there was a large open area about as wide as the size of two football
fields separating the opposing trenches. The soldiers emerged again
on Christmas morning and began singing Christmas carols, especially
"Silent Night." They recited the 23rd Psalm
together and played soccer and football. Again, Christmas gifts
were exchanged and meals were prepared openly and attended by the
opposing forces. Weintraub quotes one soldier's observation of the
event: "Never . . . was I so keenly aware of the insanity of
war." (p. 33).

The first official
British history of the war came out in 1926 which indicated that
the Christmas Truce was a very insignificant matter with only a
few people involved. However, Weintraub states:

"During
a House of Commons debate on March 31, 1930, Sir H. Kinglsey Wood,
a Cabinet Minister during the next war, and a Major u2018In the front
trenches' at Christmas 1914, recalled that he u2018took part in what
was well known at the time as a truce. We went over in front of
the trenches and shook hands with many of our German enemies.
A great number of people [now] think we did something that was
degrading.' Refusing to presume that, he went on, u2018The fact is
that we did it, and I then came to the conclusion that I have
held very firmly ever since, that if we had been left to ourselves
there would never have been another shot fired. For a fortnight
the truce went on. We were on the most friendly terms, and it
was only the fact that we were being controlled by others that
made it necessary for us to start trying to shoot one another
again.' He blamed the resumption of the war on u2018the grip of the
political system which was bad, and I and others who were there
at the time determined there and then never to rest . . . Until
we had seen whether we could change it.' But they could not."
(p. 169–70)

 
German
and British soldiers fraternize – Christmas 1914

Beginning with
the French Revolution, one of the main ideas coming out of the 19th
century, which became dominant at the beginning of the 20th
century, was nationalism with unrestrained democracy. In contrast,
the ideas which led to the American Revolution were those of a federation
of sovereign states joined together under the Constitution which
severely limited and separated the powers of the national or central
government in order to protect individual liberty. National democracy
was restrained by a Bill of Rights. These ideas came into direct
conflict with the beginning of the American War Between the States
out of which nationalism emerged victorious. A principal idea of
nationalism was that the individual owed a duty of self-sacrifice
to "The Greater Good" of his nation and that the noblest
act a person could do was to give their life for their country during
a war, which would, in turn, bring him immortal fame.

Two soldiers,
one British and one German, both experienced the horrors of the
trench warfare in the Great War and both wrote moving accounts which
challenged the idea of the glory of a sacrifice of the individual
to the nation in an unnecessary or unjust war. The British soldier,
Wilfred Owen, wrote a famous poem before he was killed in the trenches
seven days before the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.
He tells of the horror of the gas warfare which killed many in the
trenches and ends with the following lines:

If in
some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues — My friend, you
would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro
patria mori. (The Latin phrase is translated roughly as "It
is sweet and honorable to die for one's country," a line
from the Roman poet Horace used to produce patriotic zeal for
ancient Roman wars.)

The German
soldier was Erich M. Remarque who wrote one of the best anti-war
novels of all time, entitled All
Quiet On The Western Front, which was later made into an
American movie that won the Academy Awards in 1929 as the "Best
Movie" of the year. He also attacked the idea of the nobility
of dying for your country in a war and he describes the suffering
in the trenches:

"We
see men living with their skulls blown open; We see soldiers run
with their two feet cut off; They stagger on their splintered
stumps into the next shell-hole; A lance corporal crawls a mile
and half on his hands dragging his smashed knee after him; Another
goes to the dressing station and over his clasped hands bulge
his intestines; We see men without mouths, without jaws, without
faces; We find one man who has held the artery of his arm in his
teeth for two hours in order not to bleed to death."

Thomas Hardy's
poem "The Man He Killed," was published in 1902 and was
inspired by the Boer War, but it captures the spirit of the Christmas
Truce in 1914:

Had he
and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

But ranged
as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.

I shot
him dead because — Because he was my foe,

Just so:
my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although

He thought
he'd u2018list, perhaps,
Off-hand like — just as I — Was out of work — had sold his traps
— No other reason why.

Yes, quaint
and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.

The last chapter
of Weintraub's book is entitled "What If — ?" This is
counterfactual history at its best and he sets out what he believes
the rest of the 20th century would have been like if
the soldiers had been able to cause the Christmas Truce of 1914
to stop the war at that point. Like many other historians, he believes
that with an early end of the war in December of 1914, there probably
would have been no Russian Revolution, no Communism, no Lenin, and
no Stalin. Furthermore, there would have been no vicious peace imposed
on Germany by the Versailles Treaty, and therefore, no Hitler, no
Nazism and no World War II. With the early truce there would have
been no entry of America into the European War and America might
have had a chance to remain, or return, to being a Republic rather
than moving toward World War II, the "Cold" War (Korea
and Vietnam), and our present status as the world bully.

Weintraub
states that:

" .
. . Franklin D. Roosevelt, only an obscure assistant secretary
of the navy — of a fleet going nowhere militarily — would have
returned to a boring law practice, and never have been the losing
but attractive vice presidential candidate in 1920, a role earned
by his war visibility. Wilson, who would not be campaigning for
reelection in 1916 on a platform that he kept America out of war,
would have lost (he only won narrowly) to a powerful new Republican
president, Charles Evans Hughes . . . . " (p. 167).

He also suggests
another result of the early peace would have been: "Germany
in peace rather than war would have become the dominant nation
in Europe, possibly in the world, competitor to a more slowly
awakening America, and to an increasingly ambitious and militant
Japan. No Wilsonian League of Nations would have emerged . . .
Yet, a relatively benign, German-led, Commonwealth of Europe might
have developed decades earlier than the European Community under
leaders not destroyed in the war or its aftermath" (p. 167).

Many leaders
of the British Empire saw the new nationalistic Germany (since 1870–71)
as a threat to their world trade, especially with Germany's new
navy. The idea that economics played a major role in bringing on
the war was confirmed by President Woodrow Wilson after the war
in a speech wherein he gave his assessment of the real cause of
the war. He was campaigning in St. Louis, Missouri in September
of 1919 trying to get the U.S. Senate to approve the Versailles
Treaty and he stated:

"Why,
my fellow-citizens, is there [anyone] here who does not know that
the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial
rivalry?. . . This war, in its inception, was a commercial and
industrial war. It was not a political war."

The great economist,
Ludwig von Mises, advocated a separation of the economy from the
government as one important solution to war so that business interests
could not get government assistance in foreign or domestic markets:

Durable peace
is only possible under perfect capitalism, hitherto never and
nowhere completely tried or achieved. In such a Jeffersonian world
of unhampered market economy the scope of government activities
is limited to the protection of the lives, health, and property
of individuals against violence or fraudulent aggression . . .

All the oratory
of the advocates of government omnipotence cannot annul the fact
that there is but one system that makes for durable peace: A free
market economy. Government control leads to economic nationalism
and thus results in conflict.

[Omnipotent
Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War, pp.
284 and 286]

Weintraub alludes
to a play by William Douglas Home entitled A Christmas Truce
wherein he has characters representing British and German soldiers
who just finished a soccer game in No Man's Land on Christmas day
and engaged in a conversation which very well could represent the
feelings of the soldiers on that day. The German lieutenant concedes
the impossibility of the war ending as the soccer game had just
done, with no bad consequences — "Because the Kaiser and the
generals and the politicians in my country order us that we fight."

"So
do ours," agrees Andrew Wilson (the British soldier)

"Then
what can we do?"

"The
answer's u2018nothing.' But if we do nothing . . . . like we're doing
now, and go on doing it, there'll be nothing they can do but send
us home."

"Or
shoot us." (p. 110)

The Great War
killed over ten million soldiers and Weintraub states, "Following
the final Armistice came an imposed peace in 1919 that created new
instabilities ensuring another war," (p. 174). This next war
killed more than fifty million people, over half of which were civilians.
Weintraub writes:

"To
many, the end of the war and the failure of the peace would validate
the Christmas cease-fire as the only meaningful episode in the
apocalypse. It belied the bellicose slogans and suggested that
the men fighting and often dying were, as usual, proxies for governments
and issues that had little to do with their everyday lives. A
candle lit in the darkness of Flanders, the truce flickered briefly
and survives only in memoirs, letters, song, drama and story."
(p. xvi).

He
concludes his remarkable book with the following:

"A celebration
of the human spirit, the Christmas Truce remains a moving manifestation
of the absurdities of war. A very minor Scottish poet of Great
War vintage, Frederick Niven, may have got it right in his u2018A
Carol from Flanders,' which closed,

O ye
who read this truthful rime

From
Flanders, kneel and say:
God speed the time when every day
Shall be as Christmas Day. (p. 175)

December
1, 2005

John
V. Denson [send him
mail] is the editor of two books, The
Costs of War and Reassessing
the Presidency. In the latter work, he has chapters
especially relevant for today, on how Lincoln and FDR lied us into
war.

Niall
Ferguson is a history professor who taught at Cambridge and is now
a tenured Oxford don. Those are the credentials of an establishment,
or "court," historian, whose main purpose is to protect
the patriotic and political myths of his government. Professor Ferguson,
however, has written an iconoclastic attack on one of the most venerable
patriotic myths of the British, namely that the First World War
was a great and necessary war in which the British performed the
noble act of intervening to protect Belgian neutrality, French freedom,
and the empires of both the French and British from the military
aggression of the hated Hun. Politicians like Lloyd George and Churchill
argued that the war was not only necessary, but inevitable.

Ferguson
asks and answers ten specific questions about the First World War,
one of the most important being whether the war, with its total
of more than nine million casualties, was worth it. Not only does
he answer in the negative, but concludes that the world war
was not necessary or inevitable, but was instead the result of grossly
erroneous decisions of British political leaders based on an improper
perception of the "threat" to the British Empire posed
by Germany. Ferguson regards it as "nothing less than the greatest
error in modern history."

He
goes further and puts most of the blame on the British because it
was the British government that ultimately decided to turn the continental
war into a world war. He argues that the British had no legal obligation
to protect Belgium or France and that the German naval build-up
did not really menace the British.

British
political leaders, Ferguson maintains, should have realized that
the Germans were mostly fearful of being surrounded by the growing
Russian industrial and military might, as well as the large French
army. He argues further that the Kaiser would have honored his pledge
to London, offered on the eve of the war, to guarantee French and
Belgian territorial integrity in exchange for Britain's neutrality.

Ferguson
concludes that "Britain's decision to intervene was the result
of secret planning by her generals and diplomats, which dated back
to 1905" and was based on a misreading of German intentions,
"which were imagined to be Napoleonic in scale." Political
calculations also played their part in bringing on war. Ferguson
notes that Foreign Minister Edward Grey provided the leadership
that put Britain on the bellicose path. Although a majority of the
other ministers were hesitant, "In the end they agreed to support
Grey, partly for fear of being turned out of office and letting
in the Tories."

The
First World War continues to disturb the British psyche today, much
as the Civil War still haunts Americans. British casualties in the
war numbered 723,000 – more than twice the number suffered in World
War II. The author writes that "The First World War remains
the worst thing the people of my country have ever had to endure."

One
of the most important costs of the war, which was prolonged by British
and American participation, was the destruction of the Russian government.
Ferguson contends that in the absence of British intervention, the
most likely result would have been a quick German victory with some
territorial concessions in the east, but no Bolshevik Revolution.
There would have been no Lenin – and no Hitler either. "It was
ultimately because of the war that both men were able to rise to
establish barbaric despotisms which perpetrated still more mass
murder."

Had
the British stayed on the sidelines, Ferguson argues, their empire
would still be strong and viable; instead, their participation and
victory "effectively marked the end of British financial predominance
in the world." He believes that the British could have easily
coexisted with Germany, with which it had good relations before
the war. But the British victory came at a price "far
in excess of their gains" and "undid the first golden
age of economic u2018globalization.'"

World
War I also led to a great loss of individual liberty. "Wartime
Britain . . . became by stages a kind of police state," Ferguson
writes. Of course, liberty is always a casualty of war and the author
compares the British situation with the draconian measures imposed
in America by President Wilson. The suppression of free speech in
America "made a mockery of the Allied powers' claim to be fighting
for freedom."

While
the book is addressed mainly to a British audience, it is relevant
to Americans who tragically followed the British into both world
wars at a tremendous cost in freedom as a result of the centralization
of power in the leviathan government in Washington, D.C. There are
many valuable lessons to be learned from this timely and important
book.

November
12, 2003

John
V. Denson [send him mail],
editor of The
Costs of War and Reassessing
the Presidency, is an attorney living in Opelika, Alabama.
This review is reprinted from the May 2000 issue of
Ideas on Liberty.

In
the following pages I outline some of the causes for the
events of September 11 and why America’s foreign policies
not only have failed to exploit communism’s demise but have
become both more destabilizing and counterproductive. I
also try to answer the crucial question posed in my title:
Will there be another century of war?

Professor
Kolko’s theme is that the United States has become the single most
important arms exporter, thereby contributing to much of the disorder
in the world, and furthermore, contrary to America’s claims of bringing
stability to the world by its interventions, especially since 1947
in the Middle East, it has caused death, destruction and turmoil.
America has become the sole rogue superpower and is no longer restrained
by the possibility of the Soviet Union throwing a counterpunch.
Kolko states: “Communism virtually ceased to exist over a decade
ago, depriving the United States of the primary justification for
its foreign and military policies since 1945 . . . . ” Kolko points
out that America struggled to find an appropriate major enemy but
finally targeted China, which was trying to discard its communism
and establish a free market economy. However, September 11 changed
everything. Terrorism has become the world wide enemy of America
which may result in a perpetual war to oppose this sinister and
elusive enemy. He points out further that: “Bush had campaigned
in 2000 as a critic of ‘big government,’ but after September 11
he became an ‘imperial’ president with new, draconian powers over
civil liberties.”

In
regard to our policies in the Middle East since 1948, he says we
tried to keep Soviet Russia out and take over more control of British
oil interests, while assuming their contradictory policy of supporting
the state of Israel and remaining friendly to the surrounding Arab
states. Kolko shows that we supported the Shah in Iran while the
CIA and the Israeli Mossad trained the Shah’s secret police, the
SAVAK. The Shah was overthrown, largely as a result of the revolt
against the oppression by his secret police. We then armed and supported
Saddam Hussein in Iraq, giving him a massive amount of weapons,
and along with Saudi Arabia, much money, in order to fight the new
leaders of Iran.

Furthermore,
he states that the CIA set up a Vietnam-type trap for the Soviet
Union in Afghanistan, and with financial assistance from Saudi Arabia,
we armed and supplied Osama bin Ladin in order to fight the Soviets.
When Saddam and Iraq threatened Kuwait, Osama bin Ladin offered
to repel Saddam but this offer was refused. Instead, the American
coalition, with financial support from Saudi Arabia, pushed Saddam
back within his borders while leaving American troops in Saudi Arabia,
thus alienating bin Ladin, who vowed vengeance on America for this
act. Bin Ladin mobilized his forces into the al-Qaeda in 1989, by
training up to 70,000 potential fighters and terrorists while creating
cells in at least 50 countries, all initially financed with U.S.
and Saudi money. Kolko states: “But both of America’s prime enemies
in the Islamic world today – Osama bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein
in Iraq – were for much of the 1980s its close allies and friends,
whom it sustained and encouraged with arms and much else.”

Kolko
points out that American wars and various interventions have usually
produced unintended consequences which were harmful to the best
interests of America. He concludes his critique of American foreign
policy in the Middle East with the following statement:

All
of its [America's] policies in the Middle East have been contradictory
and counterproductive. The United States’ support for Israel is
the most important but scarcely the only cause of the September
11 trauma and the potentially fundamental political destabilization,
ranging from the Persian Gulf to South Asia, that its intervention
in Afghanistan has triggered.

Kolko
states that our massive support for Israel, which began in 1968,
was one of the turning points in American foreign policy:

This
aid [to Israel] reached $600 million in 1971 (seven times
the amount under the entire Johnson administration) and
over $2 billion in 1973. Thenceforth, Israel became the
leading recipient of U.S. arms aid. Today it still receives
about $3 billion in free American aid. Most of the Arab
world, quite understandably, has since identified Israel
and the United States as one.

He
points out further that our invasion of Afghanistan has greatly
destabilized the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia which
may produce even worse results for America.

American
foreign policy will now try to justify its huge military budgets
to fight terrorism, but terrorism is the guerrilla warfare weapon
of the weak against the strong, and is not overcome with huge defense
budgets, large armies and navies or high-tech airplanes. He quotes
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, however, who maintains that:

We
are perfectly capable of spending whatever we need to spend.
The world economy depends on the United States [contributing]
to peace and stability. That is what underpins the economic
health of the world, including the United States.

Professor
Kolko paints a dire future for America if it continues its frequent
interventions and warfare throughout the world:

Should
it confront the forty or more nations that now have terrorist
networks, then it will in one manner or another intervene
everywhere . . . . America has power without wisdom, and
cannot recognize the limits of arms despite its repeated
experiences. The result has been folly, and hatred, which
is a recipe for disasters. September 11 confirmed that.
The war has come home.

Kolko
summarizes American foreign policy and its results as follows: “The
United States after 1947 attempted to guide and control a very large
part of the change that occurred throughout the world, and a significant
part of what is wrong with it today is the result of America’s interventions.”
He states that we do not have to look at political arguments or
even Washington’s Farewell Address to see what our policy should
be in the future: “The strongest argument against one nation interfering
with another does not have to be deduced from any doctrine, moral
or otherwise; it is found by looking honestly at the history of
the past centuries.” He concludes with the sweeping statement that:
“Since the beginning of the last century, only wars have tested
to their very foundations the stability of existing social systems,
and communism, fascism, and Nazism would certainly not have triumphed
without the events of 1914 – 18 to foster them.”

Kolko
concludes his final chapter by stating that we cannot afford further
interventions and wars since weapons of mass destruction are prevalent
throughout the world and available to terrorists everywhere:

A
foreign policy that is both immoral and unsuccessful is
not simply stupid, it is increasingly dangerous to those
who practice or favor it. That is the predicament that the
United States now confronts.

He
further states:

The
way America’s leaders are running the nation’s foreign policy
is not creating peace or security at home or stability abroad.
The reverse is the case: its interventions have been counterproductive.
Everyone – Americans and those people who are objects of
their efforts – would be far better off if the United States
did nothing, closed its bases overseas and withdrew its
fleets everywhere, and allowed the rest of the world to
find its own way without American weapons and troops.

This
little book is so full of wisdom and good common sense, that it
should lead the way towards reaffirming our original foreign policy
of noninterventionism, so well stated by Presidents Washington and
Jefferson. American foreign policy changed to interventionism with
the Spanish-American War, and all of its subsequent wars have actually
diminished the freedom of the American people and caused death and
destruction throughout the world. The difference now is that terrorism
from the Arab world will be prevalent on our own shores rather than
in a distant Europe or Asia, as in past wars. Kolko has written
a powerful warning to the politicians of the “American Empire” about
the danger of hubris, or the arrogance of power, showing that we
should abandon our interventionist foreign policy or suffer the
same consequences as other empires (e.g., Athenian, Roman, Spanish
and British) before us. After all, our founders clearly warned us
that we would retain our freedom only so long as we remained a Republic
with limited powers in the central government and followed a noninterventionist
foreign policy.

October
11, 2003

John
V. Denson [send him mail],
editor of The
Costs of War and Reassessing
the Presidency, is a defense lawyer. A shorter version
of this review appeared in the October 2003 Ideas
on Liberty.

My
reading of the play, however, indicates that in the context in which
this statement was made, Shakespeare was actually praising lawyers
and especially their protection of the individual’s property and
personal liberty.

Shakespeare’s
play describes the conflict between the House of Lancaster and the
House of York, which is known in history as the “Wars of the Roses.”

Because
the House of York believed that it had a better claim to the crown,
York decides to stir up a rebellion and in Act III Scene I, he admits
that he has “seduced a headstrong Kentishman, John Cade of Ashford
to make a commotion, as full well he can.” The purpose is to start
a rebellion and therefore start a war in which York can assert his
claim.

In
Act IV Scene II, Cade is discussing how they will start the war
and begin oppression of the people by taking away their property
and individual liberty but his collaborator, by the name of Dick,
states that “The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers.”
The context in which this is stated is that if you are going to
oppress the people you need to kill the lawyers first.

March
4, 2002

John
V. Denson [send him mail],
editor of The
Costs of War and Reassessing
the Presidency, is a defense lawyer.

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