thank you for reply On 9/3/09, MJ <[email protected]> wrote: > > > *World War II: An Unspeakable Horror Now Encrusted in Myths > *By Robert Higgs > Sep 1, 2009 > > September 1, 1939exactly seventy years ago todayis customarily considered > the day when World War II began, owing to the German invasion of Poland. Of > course, some belligerents, most notably the Japanese and the Chinese, had > already been at war for years, and others did not join the fray until later. > The United States actually began to participate in the war almost > immediately, but its participation remained for the most part covert until > the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. > > I was born in the midst of this terrible event, and all my life, whenever > anyone referred to “the war,” I have assumed, as most Americans have, that > the reference was to World War II. It was the largest and the most horrible > of all wars, although, sad to say, it no more proved to be “the war to end > war” than its predecessor (1914-18) had been. In many ways the two world > wars are best understood as two phases of a single conflict, although the > matter is much more complicated than that formulation might suggest. > > No one knows with much confidence how many people died as a result of the > war. Estimates <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties>range > widely, from a low of about 50 million to a high of nearly 80 million. > Perhaps two-thirds of the dead were civilians. Countless others were wounded > or harmed in various ways, as by malnutrition. Millions were spiritually > scarred for life. The war was very productive of nightmares that, for some > individuals, recurred for decades. After all that had taken place between > 1939 and 1945, it was difficult to believe that the human beings of the > mid-twentieth century, many of whom had regarded themselves as civilized, > were any better than their savage ancestors of ten thousand years ago. > > Yet, oddly enough, World War II has developed a reputation in this country > as “the Good War”an unfortunate turn of phrase, if ever there was one. The > war is taken to have been good primarily because (1) the Allied side is > believed to have represented the morally virtuous side, in opposition to the > manifestly evil Axis side; (2) it got the U.S. economy out of the Great > Depression; and (3) it left the world a better place, mainly because of Nazi > Germany’s defeat. > > For me, these ideas fall under the rubric of myth. I am not saying that no > good came of the war, because obviously some did. As much as anyone, I > believe that the destruction of the Nazi regime in Germany was a splendid > thing for the human race. But every good end must be weighed against the > means by which it was achieved, and in this perspective the war’s positive > achievements take on a sickly pallor. > > In this war, the belligerents plumbed new depths of depravity: operation of > mass-destruction death camps, tortune of every conceivable kind, terror > bombing and other attacks systematically aimed at civilian populations, > crowned by the gratuitous atomic bombing of two large, defenseless cities. I > am aware that some people still defend some of these heinous actions, but in > my mind nothing the war achieved can justify them. Indeed, I seriously doubt > that anything can justify them. Yet such wanton, barbaric cruelties were > deeply woven into the fabric of the war’s conduct from its earliest days. > One is scarcely engaging in moral equivalence if one concludes that neither > side represented “the good guys.” There was plenty of evil to go around. > > I have been combatting for decades the widely believed notion that the war > got the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression. For readers who still > labor under this misconception, I recommend the first five chapters of a > book called *Depression, War, and Cold > War*<http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=65> > . > > Finally, the idea that the war left the world a better place seems to me > unacceptable as a flat, unqualified statement. Yes, the defeat of Hitler’s > regime was an excellent outcomemay such utter beastliness never dare to > show its face again. But over large parts of the territory where Hitler’s > troops had reigned supreme in the early 1940s, Stalin’s troops reigned > supreme from 1945 to 1989. It is difficult to count Stalin as anything less > than first-rate in the category of monstrous tyrants. Yet, if the war had a > clear political winner, it was he. Moreover, he and the evil Soviet regime > that carried on after his death wreaked massive human and material > destruction over a wide swath. Similarly in the East, the defeat of Imperial > Japan counts as a positive accomplishment. But that defeat removed a bulwark > against Communism’s expansion and ultimate victory in China, and like the > eastern Europeans held under Stalin’s sway, the Chinese were to pay a > terrible pricethe major political consequence of Japan’s defeat on the > mainland of Asia. > > World War II is an immense subject. Thousands of books have been written > about it from almost every conceivable angle, and thousands more books will > probably be written in years to come. The complexities being so great, > nearly everything one might say about it cries out for qualification and > clarification. Nevertheless, I am willing to assert that in important > regards the prevailing American view of the war rests on a foundation of > myths. The entire enterprise of understanding the war needs to be rebuilt > from the ground up. > > > http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=3260 > > >
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