How to Start a War

Pretext
n. [Latin praetextum, pp. of praetextere, to weave before, pretend, disguise; prae-, before + texere, to weave], a false reason or motive put forth to hide the real one; excuse.

Stratagem
[Gr. Strategema, device or act of a general; stratos, army + agein, to lead], a trick, scheme or device used for deceiving an enemy in war.

How to Start a War

The American Use of War Pretext Incidents
(1848-1989)

the BIg Lie

Propaganda

Public Relations

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RICHARD SANDERS / Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT)

Throughout history, war planners have used various forms of deception to trick their enemies. Because public support is so crucial to the process of initiating and waging war, the home population is also subject to deceitful stratagems. The creation of false excuses to justify going to war is a major first step in constructing public support for such deadly ventures. Perhaps the most common pretext for war is an apparently unprovoked enemy attack. Such attacks, however, are often fabricated, incited or deliberately allowed to occur. They are then exploited to arouse widespread public sympathy for the victims, demonize the attackers and build mass support for military “retaliation.”

Like schoolyard bullies who shout ‘He hit me first!’, war planners know that it is irrelevant whether the opponent really did ‘throw the first punch.’

As long as it can be made to appear that the attack was unprovoked, the bully receives license to ‘respond’ with force. Bullies and war planners are experts at taunting, teasing and threatening their opponents. If the enemy cannot be goaded into ‘firing the first shot,’ it is easy enough to lie about what happened. Sometimes, that is sufficient to rationalize a schoolyard beating or a genocidal war.

Such trickery has probably been employed by every military power throughout history. During the Roman empire, the causes of war -- cassus belli -- were often invented to conceal the real reasons for war. Over the millennia, although weapons and battle strategies have changed greatly, the deceitful strategem of using pretext incidents to ignite war has remained remarkably consistent.

Pretext incidents, in themselves, are not sufficient to spark wars. Rumors and allegations about the tragic events must first spread throughout the target population. Constant repetition of the official version of what happened, spawns dramatic narratives that are lodged into public consciousness. The stories become accepted without question and legends are fostered. The corporate media is central to the success of such ‘psychological operations.’ Politicians rally people around the flag, lending their special oratory skills to the call for a military “response.” Demands for “retaliation” then ring out across the land, war hysteria mounts and, finally, a war is born.

Every time the US has gone to war, pretext incidents have been used. Upon later examination, the conventional perception of these events is always challenged and eventually exposed as untrue. Historians, investigative journalists and many others, have cited eyewitness accounts, declassified documents and statements made by the perpetrators themselves to demonstrate that the provocative incidents were used as stratagems to stage-manage the march to war.

Here are a few particularly blatant examples of this phenomenon.

1846: The Mexican-American War

CONTEXT After Mexico’s revolution in 1821, Americans demanded about $3,000,000 in compensation for their losses.1 Mexico abolished slavery in 1829 and then prohibited further U.S. immigration into Texas, a Mexican state. In 1835, Mexico tried to enforce its authority over Texas. Texans, rallying under the slogan "Remember the Alamo!”, drove Mexican troops out of Texas and proclaimed independence. For nine years, many Texans lobbied for US annexation. This was delayed by northerners who opposed adding more slave territories to the US and feared a war with Mexico.2

In 1844, Democratic presidential candidate, James Polk, declared support for annexing Texas and won with the thinnest margin ever.3 The following year, Texas was annexed and Mexico broke off diplomatic relations with the US. Polk sent John Slidell to Mexico offering $25 million for New Mexico, California and an agreement accepting the Rio Grande boundary. Mexican government officials refused to meet the envoy.4

PRETEXT John Stockwell, a Texan who led the CIA’s covert 1970s war in Angola, summed up the start of Mexican American war by saying “they offered two dollars-a-head to every soldier who would enlist. They didn't get enough takers, so they offered a hundred acres to anyone who would be a veteran of that war. They still didn't get enough takers, so [General] Zachary Taylor was sent down to parade up and down the border -- the disputed border -- until the Mexicans fired on him.... And the nation rose up, and we fought the war.”5

President Polk hoped that sending General Taylor’s 3,500 soldiers into Mexico territory, would provoke an attack against US troops.6 “On May 8, 1846, Polk met with his Cabinet at the White House and told them that if the Mexican army attacked the U.S. forces, he was going to send a message to Congress asking for a declaration of war. It was decided that war should be declared in three days even if there was no attack.”7

When news of the skirmish arrived, Polk sent a message to Congress on May 11: “Mexico has passed the boundary of the U.S. and shed American blood on American soil.”8 Two days later Congress declared war on Mexico.9

RESPONSE Newspapers helped the push for war with headlines like: “‘Mexicans Killing our Boys in Texas.’10

With public support secured, U.S. forces occupied New Mexico and California. US troops fought battles across Mexico and stormed their capital. A new more US-friendly government quickly emerged. It signed over California and New Mexico for $15 million and recognized the Rio Grande as their border with the US state of Texas.11

General Taylor became an American war hero and he rode his victory straight into the White House by succeeding Polk as president in 1849.

REAL REASONS The US secured over 500,000 square miles from Mexico, including Texas, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, California and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.

The war was a boon to US nationalism, it boosted popular support for a very weak president and added vast new territories to the US where slavery was allowed.

1898: The Spanish-American War

CONTEXT Cubans fought several wars to free themselves from Spanish colonial rule, including 1868-1878, 1879-1880 and 1895-1898.12 In 1898, Cubans were on the brink of finally winning their independence. The US government agreed to respect Cuba’s sovereignty and promised they would not step in.

"On January 24, [1898] on the pretext of protecting the life and safety of Mr. Lee, U.S. consul in Havana, and other U.S. citizens in the face of street disturbances provoked by Spanish extremists, the Maine battleship entered the bay of Havana.”13

PRETEXT On February 15, 1898, a huge explosion sank the USS Maine killing 266 of its crew.14

In 1975, an investigation led by US Admiral Hyman Rickover concluded that there was no evidence of any external explosion. The explosion was internal, probably caused by a coal dust explosion. Oddly, the ship's weapons and explosives were stored next to the coal bunker.15

RESPONSE The Maine’s commander cautioned against assumptions of an enemy attack. The press denounced him for "refusing to see the obvious." The Atlantic Monthly said anyone thinking this was not a premeditated, Spanish act of war was "completely at defiance of the laws of probability."16

Newspapers ran wild headlines like: “Spanish Cannibalism,” “Inhuman Torture,” “Amazon Warriors Fight For Rebels.”17 Guillermo Jimpnez Soler notes: “As would become its usual practice, U.S. intervention in the war was preceded by intensive press campaigns which incited jingoism, pandering to the most shameless tales and sensationalism and exacerbated cheap sentimentality. Joseph Pulitzer of The World and William Randolph Hearst from The Journal, the two largest U.S. papers... carried their rivalry to a paroxysm of inflaming public opinion with scandalous, provocative and imaginary stories designed to win acceptance of U.S. participation in the first of its holy wars beyond its maritime borders.”18

US papers sent hundreds of reporters and photographers to cover the apparent Spanish attacks. Upon arrival, many were disappointed. Frederick Remington wrote to Hearst saying: “There is no war .... Request to be recalled.” Hearst’s now-famous cable replied: "Please remain. You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." For weeks, The Journal dedicated more than eight pages per day to the explosion.19

Through ceaseless repetition, a rallying cry for retaliation grew into a roar. “In the papers, on the streets and in…Congress. The slogan was "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain."20

With the US public and government safely onboard, the US set sail for war launching an era of ‘gunboat diplomacy.’ Anti-war sentiments were drowned out by the sea of cries for war. On April 25, 1898, the US Congress declared war on Spain.

REAL REASONS Within four months “the US replaced Spain as the colonial power in the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico, and devised a special status for Cuba. Never again would the US achieve so much…as in that ‘splendid little war,’ as…described at the time by John Hay, future secretary of state.”21

Historian Howard Zinn has said that 1898 heralded “the most dramatic entrance onto the world scene of American military and economic power.… The war ushered in what Henry Luce later referred to as the American Century, which really meant a century of American domination.”22

1915: World War I

CONTEXT In 1915, Europe was embroiled in war, but US public sentiment opposed involvement. President Woodrow Wilson said they would “remain neutral in fact as well as in name.”23

PRETEXT On May 7, 1915, a German submarine (U-boat) sank the Lusitania, a British passenger ship killing 1,198, including 128 Americans.24

The public was not told that passengers were, in effect, a ‘human shield’ protecting six million rounds of US ammunition bound for Britain.25 To Germany, the ship was a threat. To Britain, it was bait for luring an attack. Why?

British Admiralty leader, Winston Churchill, had already commissioned “a study to determine the political impact if an ocean liner were sunk with Americans on board.”26 A week before the incident, Churchill wrote to the Board of Trade’s president saying it is “most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hopes especially of embroiling the U.S. with Germany.”27

British Naval Intelligence Commander, Joseph Kenworthy, said: “The Lusitania was sent at considerably reduced speed into an area where a U-boat was known to be waiting and with her escorts withdrawn.”28

Patrick Beesly’s history of British naval intelligence in WWI, notes: "no effective steps were taken to protect the Lusitania.” British complicity is furthered by their foreknowledge that: · U-boat commanders knew of the Lusitania’s route, · a U-boat that had sunk two ships in recent days was in the path of the Lusitania, · although destroyers were available, none escorted the Lusitania or hunted for U-boats, · the Lusitania was not given specific warnings of these threats.29

RESPONSE US newspapers aroused outrage against Germany for ruthlessly killing defenceless Americans. The US was being drawn into the war. In June 1916, Congress increased the size of the army. In September, Congress allocated $7 billion for national defense, “the largest sum appropriated to that time.”30

In January 1917, the British said they had intercepted a German message to Mexico seeking an alliance with the US and offering to help Mexico recover land ceded to the US. On April 2, Wilson told Congress: “The world must be safe for democracy.” Four days later the US declared war on Germany.31

REAL REASONS Influential British military, political and business interests wanted US help in their war with Germany. Beesly concludes that “there was a conspiracy deliberately to put the Lusitania at risk in the hope that even an abortive attack on her would bring the U.S. into the war.”32

Churchill’s memoirs of WWI state: "There are many kinds of maneuvers in war, some only of which take place on the battlefield.... The maneuvre which brings an ally into the field is as serviceable as that which wins a great battle."33

In WWI, rival imperialist powers struggled for bigger portions of the colonial pie. “They were fighting over boundaries, colonies, spheres of influence; they were competing for Alsace-Lorraine, the Balkans, Africa and the Middle East.”34 US war planners wanted a piece of the action.

"War is the health of the state," said Randolph Bourne during WWI. Zinn explains: “Governments flourished, patriotism bloomed, class struggle was stilled.”35

1941: World War II

CONTEXT US fascists opposed President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) from the start. In 1933, “America's richest businessmen were in a panic. Roosevelt intended to conduct a massive redistribution of wealth…[and it] had to be stopped at all costs. The answer was a military coup…secretly financed and organized by leading officers of the Morgan and du Pont empires.”36

A top Wall Street conspirator said: "We need a fascist government in this country…to save the nation from the communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built.”37

The Committee on Un-American Activities said: “Sworn testimony showed that the plotters represented notable families -- Rockefeller, Mellon, Pew, Pitcairn, Hutton and great enterprises -- Morgan, Dupont, Remington, Anaconda, Bethlehem, Goodyear, GMC, Swift, Sun.”38

FDR also faced “isolationist” sentiments from such millionaires who shared Hitler’s hatred of communism and had financed Hitler’s rise to power as George Herbert Walker and Prescott Bush, predecessors of the current president.39 William R.Hearst, mid-wife of the war with Spain, opposed a war against fascism. Hearst employed Hitler, Mussolini and Göring as writers. He met Hitler in 1934 and used Readers’ Digest and his 33 newspapers to support fascism.40

PRETEXT On December 7, 1941, Japanese bombers attacked the US Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, killing about 2,460. people. 41 FDR, and his closest advisors, not only knew of the attack in advance and did not prevent it, they had actually provoked it. Lt. Arthur McCollum, head of the Far East desk for U.S. Navy intelligence, wrote a detailed eight-step plan on October 7, 1940 that was designed to provoke an attack.42 FDR immediately set the covert plan in motion. Soon after implementing the final step, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.

After meeting FDR on October 16, 1941, Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote: "We face the delicate question of the diplomatic fencing to be done so as to be sure Japan is put into the wrong and makes the first bad move -- overt move.” On November 25, after another meeting with FDR, Stimson wrote: "The question was: how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot.”43

The next day, an insulting “ultimatum” was delivered to the Japanese. The US intercepted a coded Japanese cable calling the ultimatum a “humiliating proposal” and saying they would now prepare for war with the US.44

The US had cracked Japanese diplomatic and military codes.45 A Top Secret Army Board report (October 1944), shows that the US military knew “the probable exact hour and date of the attack.”46 On November 29, 1941, the Secretary of State revealed to a reporter that the attack’s time and place was known. This foreknowledge was reported in the New York Times (Dec. 8, 1941).47

RESPONSE After Pearl Harbour, the US quickly declared war against Japan. With media support, “Remember Pearl Harbour!” became an American rallying cry. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the US.

As the war wound down, decoded messages revealed to the US military that Japan would soon surrender. They knew the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unnecessary. Although nuclear weapons are commonly believed to have ended WWII, they were an opening salvo in the Cold War against the USSR.

REAL REASONS The US used WWII to maneuver itself into a position of superiority over former imperial rivals in Europe. In Parenti’s words the US “became the prime purveyor and guardian of global capitalism.”48 As the only nation wielding nuclear weapons, the US also became the world’s sole superpower.

1950: The Korean War

CONTEXT There is “extensive evidence of U.S. crimes against peace and crimes against humanity” KWCT committed after they occupied southern Korea in September 1945. The US worked to “create a police state…using many former collaborators with Japanese rule, provoke tension…between southern and northern Korea, opposing and disrupting any plans for peaceful reunification. The U.S. trained, directed and supported ROK [South Korea] in systematic murder, imprisonment, torture, surveillance, harassment and violations of human rights of hundreds of thousands…, especially…nationalists, leftists, peasants seeking land reform, union organizers and/or those sympathetic to the north.”49

University of Hawaii professor, Oliver Lee, notes a “long pattern of South Korean incursions” into the north. In 1949, there were more than 400 border engagements. A US Army document states: “Some of the bloodiest engagements were caused by South Korean units securing and preparing defensive positions that were either astride or north of the 38th parallel. This provoked violent North Korean actions.”50

PRETEXT On June 25, 1950, the North Korean military were said to have moved three miles into South Korea territory.

Dr. Channing Liem, the former South Korean ambassador to the UN (1960-1961) wrote: “For Washington, the question, ‘who fired the first shot?’ carried special significance…. Assistant Secretary of State for UN Affairs…[revealed] before the Senate Appropriations Committee, 1950, the US had devised a plan prior to the start of the war to gain approval from the UN to send its troops to Korea under the UN flag in the event that South Korea was attacked. It was imperative, therefore, that the ‘first shot’ be fired by the North, or at least that such an argument could be made.”51

ROK President Syngman Rhee triggered the war “with behind the scene support of John Foster Dulles,” the former-U.S. Secretary of State who met Rhee (June 18, 1950) just days before the pretext incident. Dulles told Rhee that “if he was ready to attack the communist North, the U.S. would lend help, through the UN…. He advised Rhee…to persuade the world that the ROK was attacked first, and to plan his actions accordingly.”52

Albert Einstein told Liem in 1955 that “the US was manipulating the UN…. [It] was being exploited by the great powers at the expense of the small nations…. He went on to say great powers do not act on the basis of facts only but manufacture the facts to serve their purposes and force their will on smaller nations.”53

I.F.Stone was perhaps the first to expose how a US diplomat deceived the UN Secretary General into believing there had been an unprovoked North Korean attack.54

North Korea claimed the attack began two days earlier when ROK divisions launched a six-hour artillery attack and then pushed 1 or 2 kilometers across the border. They responded to “halt the enemy's advance and go over to a decisive counterattack.”55

RESPONSE Secretary of State, Dean Acheson was “quick to seize the opportunity to blame the war on North Korea regardless of the evidence.” North Korea was accused of “brutal, unprovoked aggression.”56

The public was told that this ‘invasion’ was the first step in Soviet plans for world domination. Anyone opposing the war was called a communist. McCarthyism was on.

On June 27, 1950, Truman orders US troops to support South Korea, Congress agrees and the UN Security Council approves the plan.57

About three million civilians were killed, two-thirds in North Korea.58

REAL REASONS To maintain power, South Korea required major US military support. One month before the pretext, Rhee suffered a terrible electoral defeat. Opposing North Korea, diverted public attention from Rhee’s repression to the communist north.

The war was used to triple the Pentagon budget, boost NATO’s military build-up and create a new military role for the UN that could be manipulated by the US.

1964: The Vietnam War

CONTEXT Long before WWII, Vietnamese fought for independence from French Indochina. Resistance continued when Japanese troops occupied the colony during the war. Much of the region reverted to French control after the war. As early as 1950, the US aided French efforts to defeat the Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary forces. When France lost a decisive battle in 1954, the Geneva Accord recognized the independence of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Vietnam was “temporarily” divided. Ngo Dinh Diem’s repressive regime in South Vietnam was backed by thousands of US military “advisors.” A military coup overthrew Diem in November 1963.59

That same month, President Kennedy -- who had resisted escalating the war -- was assassinated. President Johnson took power and began intensified US involvement in Vietnam.

PRETEXT On July 30, 1964, enemy torpedo boats supposedly attacked a US destroyer, the USS Maddox, in North Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin. This lie of an “unprovoked attack” against a “routine patrol” threw the U.S. headlong into war.

The Maddox was actually involved in “aggressive intelligence gathering in coordination with actual attacks by South Vietnam and the Laotian Air Force against targets in North Vietnam.”60 They wanted to provoke a response “but the North Vietnamese wouldn't bite. So, Johnson invented the attack.”61

The US task force commander for the Gulf of Tonkin “cabled Washington that the report was the result of an ‘over-eager’ sonar man who picked up the sounds of his own ship's screws and panicked.”62

RESPONSE On August 5, 1964, although he knew the attack had not occurred, Johnson couldn’t resist this opportunity for a full-scale war.

Johnson went on national TV to lie about the Tonkin incident and to announce a bombing campaign to “retaliate.” The media repeated the lie ad nauseum. The fabricated assault was “used as justification for goading Congress into granting the president the authorization to initiate a protracted and highly lucrative war with North Vietnam.”63 Johnson asked Congress for powers “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the US and to prevent further aggression.”64

Before the war ended in 1975, about four million in Southeast Asia were killed.

REAL REASONS As during the Spanish-American war, the American business elite sought to acquire colonies from failing imperial powers.

President Dwight Eisenhower propounded the ‘Domino Theory’ in 1954.65 If South Vietnam ‘fell,’ then other countries would too, ‘like a set of dominos.’ The Vietnam War was a threat to all revolutionaries and their supporters.

The war also gave a huge boost to US war industries. Other US corporations wanted access to region’s markets and resources, like tin, tungsten, rubber.66

1983: The Invasion of Grenada

CONTEXT For decades, Eric Gairy dominated the tiny British colony of Grenada. Gairy “a vicious dictator…[was] the only Caribbean leader to maintain diplomatic relations with Pinochet’s Chile.” When his “notorious security forces” returned from training in Chile “‘disappearances’ became frequent.”67 ‘Gariyism’ was so bad that when Britain offered independence, Grenadans united to “shut down the country…prior to Independence Day, February 7, 1974."68

The New Jewel Movement (NJM) led a successful uprising on March 13, 1979. The NJM “organized agrarian reform…, expanded trade union rights, advanced women's equality…, established literacy programs and instituted free medical care.”69

The CIA "relentlessly used every trick in its dirty bag” including "an unending campaign of economic, psychological and openly violent destabilization." Reagan met Caribbean leaders, the US urged "regional governments to consider military action" and CIA chief, William Casey, met Senate Intelligence Committee members "to discuss CIA involvement." Gairy began “recruiting mercenaries from…the Cuban exile community in Miami.”70 (ER BS p.3-5)

In October1981, a US military exercise simulated an invasion of Grenada ostensibly to rescue Americans and "install a regime favorable to the way of life we espouse."71

In March 1983, Reagan exclaimed on TV that Grenada’s tourist airport threatened US oil supply routes.72

On October 19, 1983, NJM leader Maurice Bishop, and others, were put under house arrest during an coup by NJM’s Deputy PM Bernard Coard. Oddly, they were freed by a "well organized crowd…including counter-revolutionary elements…with anti-communist banners…. [led by] well known businessmen…. Who organized this rally, planned so well, and in advance?" Freed NJM leaders were whisked away and as a “crowd gathered…the soldiers, apparently panicked by explosions, opened fire.… something provoked them, leading to a massacre." NJM leaders surrendered to soldiers and were soon executed.73

Significantly, "Pentagon officials informed Members of Congress that they had known of the impending coup…two weeks in advance."74

The coup plotters were charged with the murders but their lawyer, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clarke believe them innocent of the murders.75 It seems the coup was hijacked by US interests to kill some NJM leaders, jail the rest and set the stage for an invasion.

PRETEXT In his Naval Science course, Captain M.T.Carson lists the invasion’s "stated reasons" as "protect Americans, eliminate hostage potential; restore order; requested by OECS [Organization of Eastern Caribbean States]."76

The US helped form the OECS, and then got it and the Grenadan governor to "request" an invasion. Under “potential problem,” Carson notes "Act fast with surprise and present world with fait accompli. If not, world opinion of U.S. invasion of tiny country will be critical. So: · “Get OECS to request action.” · “Get Governor Scoon to request action.” · “Emphasize students-in-danger aspect"77

Carson quotes a "medical school official": "Our safety was never in danger. We were used as an excuse by this government to invade…. They needed a reason…and we were it." MTC Most students "insisted” that they were “not…in any danger before the US invasion; only afterwards."78

RESPONSE On October 22, 1983, "Operation Urgent Fury" was ordered.79 Three days later, the invasion hit like a cyclone.

The Organization of American States "deeply deplored" the invasion and the UN Security Council voted 11 to 1 against it.80

REAL REASONS Grenada threatened the US by providing a powerful example of viable alternative ways to organize social, political and economic structures.

Carson lists these reasons: · "Chance to eliminate Communist regime and replace with pro-U.S. government” · “Demonstrate U.S. military capabilities” · “President Reagan commented that U.S. military forces were back on their feet and standing tall."81

US military morale was damaged two days before the invasion when 241 Marines were killed in Lebanon.82

The Wall Street Journal said the invasion made Grenada a "haven for offshore banks."83

1989: The Invasion of Panama

CONTEXT The Panama Canal has dominated Panama’s history. US military invasions and interventions occurred in 1895, 1901-1903, 1908, 1912, 1918-1920, 1925, 1950, 1958, 1964 and 1989.84

In November 1903, US troops ensured Panama’s secession from Colombia. Within days, a treaty gave the US permanent and exclusive control of the canal.85

Former Panamanian military leader, Manuel Noriega, recruited by US military intelligence in 1959, attended the US Army School of the Americas in 1967 and led Panama’s military intelligence the next year. By 1975, the US Drug Enforcement Agency knew of Noriega’s drug dealing. He met, then-CIA Director, George Bush in 1976.86

In 1977, Presidents Jimmy Carter and Omar Torrijos, signed a treaty to return the canal to Panamanian control in 1999. Other Americans undermined the treaty using “diplomatic…and political pressure, through to economic aggression and military invasion.”87

In the early-1980s, Noriega’s drug smuggling helped fund the contras in Nicaragua. He took control of Panama’s National Guard in 1983 and helped rig elections in 1984. Falling from US favour, the US indicted Noriega for drug crimes in 1988.88

On April 14, 1988, Reagan invoked “war powers” against Panama. In May, the Assistant Defense Secretary told the Senate: “I don’t think anyone has totally discarded the use of force.”89

PRETEXT On December 16, 1989, there was what media called an “unprovoked attack on a US soldier who did not return fire.”90 The soldier was killed when driving “through a military roadblock near a sensitive military area.”91 Panama’s government said “U.S. officers…fired at a military headquarters, wounding a soldier and…a 1-year-old girl. A wounded Panamanian soldier…confirmed this account to U.S. reporters.”92 The wife of a US officer was reportedly arrested and beaten.

RESPONSE George Bush called the attack on US soldiers an “enormous outrage”93 and said he “would not stand by while American womanhood is threatened.”94 Noam Chomsky questions why Bush “stood by” when a US nun was kidnapped and sexually abused by Guatemalan police only weeks earlier, when two US nuns were killed by contras in Nicaragua on January 1, 1990, and when a US nun was wounded by gunmen in El Salvador around the same time.95

The US media demonized Noriega and turned the “‘Noriega’ issue into an accepted justification for the invasion…. Colonel Eduardo Herrera, ex-Director of [Panama’s] ‘Public Forces,’…said: “If the real interest of the US was to capture Noriega, they could have done so on numerous occasions. [They] had all of his movements completely controlled.”96

On December 20, 1989, “Operation Just Cause” began. More than 4,000 were killed. US crimes included indiscriminate attacks, extra judicial executions, arbitrary detentions, destruction of property (like leveling the Chorrillo neighborhood), use of prohibited weapons, erasing evidence and mass burials.97

A US-friendly president, Guillermo Endara, was soon sworn in on a US military base.

REAL REASONS The Carter-Torrijos Treaty was torn up and the Panama’s military was dismantled.

A right-wing, US think tank stated in 1988 that: “once [Panama] is controlled by a democratic regime….discussions should begin with respect to a realistic defense of the Canal after…2000. These discussions should include the maintenance, by the US, of a limited number of military installations in Panama…to maintain adequate projection of force in the western hemisphere.”98

The invasion was a testing ground for new weapons, such as the B-2 bomber (worth US $2.2 billion) that was used for the first time.

The invasion also: · rectified “Bush's ‘wimpy’ foreign relations image” · gave a “spectacular show of U.S. military might in the final months before the Nicaraguan elections, hinting…that they might want to vote for the ‘right’ candidate.” · “sent a signal…that the US…[would] intervene militarily where the control of illegal drugs was ostensibly at stake. · “demonstrated the new U.S. willingness to assume active, interventionist leadership of the ‘new world order’ in the post-Cold War period.”99

CONCLUSIONS

There are dozens of other examples from US history besides those summarized here. The “Cold War” was characterized by dozens of covert and overt wars throughout the Third World. Although each had its specific pretexts, the eradication of communism was the generally-used backdrop for all rationales.100

Since the Soviet Union’s demise, US war planners have continued to use spectacular pretext incidents to spawn wars. Examples include Iraq (1991), Somalia (1992), Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1995) and Yugoslavia (1999).

Throughout this time, the US “War on Drugs” has been fought on many fronts. Lurking behind the excuse to squash illicit drug trafficking, are the actual reasons for financing, training and arming right-wing, US-backed regimes, whose officials have so often profited from this illegal trade. The CIA has used this trade to finance many of its covert wars.101 The “War on Drugs” has targeted numerous countries to strengthen counter-insurgency operations aimed at destroying opposition groups that oppose US corporate rule.

Military plotters know that the majority would never support their wars, if it were generally known why they were really being fought. Over the millennia, a special martial art has been deliberately developed to weave elaborate webs of deceit to create the appearance that wars are fought for “just” or “humanitarian” reasons.

If asked to support a war so a small, wealthy elite could shamelessly profit by ruthlessly exploiting and plundering the natural and human resources in far away lands, people would ‘just say no.’

We now face another broad thematic pretext for war, the so-called “War Against Terrorism.” We are told it will be waged in many countries and may continue for generations. It is vitally important to expose this latest attempt to fraudulently conceal the largely economic and geostrategic purposes of war. By asking who benefits from war, we can unmask its pretense and expose the true grounds for instigating it. By throwing light on repeated historical patterns of deception, we can promote skepticism about the government and media yarns that have been spun to encourage this war.

The historical knowledge of how war planners have tricked people into supporting past wars, is like a vaccine. We can use this understanding of history to inoculate the public with healthy doses of distrust for official war pretext narratives and other deceptive stratagems. Through such immunization programs we may help to counter our society’s susceptibility to “war fever.”

Endnotes

1. “History of Mexico, Empire and Early Republic, 1821-55,” Area Handbook, US Library of Congress.

2. Shayne M. Cokerdem, “Unit Plan: Manifest Destiny and The Road to the Civil War.”

3. P.B.Kunhardt, Jr., P.B.Kunhardt III, P.W.Kunhardt, “James Polk,” The American President, 2000.

4. “Diplomatic Approaches: U.S. Relations with Mexico: 1844-1846,” LearnCalifornia.org, 2000.

5. John Stockwell, “The CIA and the Gulf War,” Speech, Santa Cruz, CA, Feb.20, 1991, aired by John DiNardo, Pacifica Radio.

6. Betsy Powers, “The U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-48,” War, Reconstruction and Recovery in Brazoria County.

7. “The White House and Western Expansion,” Learning Center, White House Historical Association.

8. Powers

9. White House Historical Association

10. Stockwell

11. P.B.Kunhardt, Jr., P.B.Kunhardt III, P.W.Kunhardt

12. Ed Elizondo, “History of the Cuban Liberation Wars,” Oct.2, 2001.

13. Guillermo Jimpnez Soler, "The emergence of the United States as a world power", Granma International, Aug.7, 1998.

14. Bill Sardi, “Remember the Maine! And the Other Ships Sunk to Start a War” Oct.16, 2000.

15. Michael Rivero, “Dictatorship through Deception,” New Republic Forum, Dec.24, 1999.

16. Rivero

17. J. Buschini, “The Spanish-American War,” Small Planet Communications, 2000.

18. Soler

19. Buschini

20. Buschini

21. Soler

22. Howard Zinn, “History as a Political Act,” Revolutionary Worker, December 20, 1998.

23. Woodrow Wilson, Message to Congress, Aug. 19, 1914, Senate Doc.#566, pp.3-4, World War I Document Archive.

24. Greg D.Feldmeth, “The First World War,” U.S. History Resources, Mar.31, 1998.

25. James Perloff, “Pearl Harbor,” The New American, Vol. 2, No. 30, December 8, 1986.

26. James Perloff

27. Winston Churchill, cited by Ralph Raico, “Rethinking Churchill,” The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories, 1997.

28. Harry V.Jaffa, “The Sinking of the Lusitania: Brutality, Bungling or Betrayal?” The Churchill Center.

29. Patrick Beesly, Room 40: British Naval Intelligence, 1914-18, 1982 cited by RR

30. Peter Young, “World War I,” World Book Encyclopedia, 1967, pp. 374-375.

31. Wendy Mercurio, “WWI Notes, From Neutrality to War,” Jan.2002.

32. Patrick Beesly, cited by Ralph Raico

33. Winston Churchill, cited by Ralph Raico

34. Howard Zinn, “War Is the Health of the State,” A People's History of the United States, 1492-Present, Sept. 2001.

35. Zinn

36. Steve Kangas, “The Business Plot to Overthrow Roosevelt,” Liberalism Resurgent: A Response to the Right, 1996.

37. Gerald MacGuire, cited by Steve Kangas

38. Dale Wharton, Book review of The Plot to Seize the White House (1973) by Jules Archer, Eclectica Book Reviews.

39. Webster G.Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, “The Hitler Project,” George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, 1992.

40. David Nasaw, “Remembering ‘The Chief,’" interview, Newshour, Sept.7, 2000.

41. Joseph Czarnecki, Richard Worth, Matthias C. Noch and Tony DiGiulian, “Attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941,” The Battles Of The Pacific.

42. Steve Fry, “Author: FDR knew attack was coming,” The Capital-Journal, June 12, 2001.

43. Henry Stimson, cited by Robert Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbour, 2000.

44. Percy L.Greaves, Jr., “What We Knew,” Institute for Historical Review, Winter, 1983, p.467.

45. “The MAGIC Documents: Summaries and Transcripts of the Top-Secret Diplomatic Communications of Japan, 1938-1945,” GB 0099 KCLMA MF 388-401.

46. Paul Proteus, “Part One: Pearl Harbour,” America's Phoney Wars.

47. Rivero

48. Michael Parenti, Against Empire, 1995, p.36.

49. “Final Judgement of the Korea International War Crimes Tribunal,” June 23, 2001.

50. Oliver Lee, "South Korea Likely Provoked War with North," Star-Bulletin, June 24, 1994.

51. Channing Liem, The Korean War (6.25, 1950 - 7.27, 1953) - An Unanswered Question, 1993.

52. Liem

53. Albert Einstein cited by Channing Liem.

54. I.F.Stone, Hidden History of the Korean War, 1952, cited by Channing Liem.

55. Liem

56. Lee

57. Jim Caldwell, “Korea - 50 years ago this week, June 25-28, 1950,” ArmyLINK News, June 20, 2000.

58. Jon Halliday and Bruce Cumings, Korea: The Unknown War, 1988, p.200, cited by Robin Miller, “Washington's Own Love Affair with Terror”

59. Sandra M.Wittman, “Chronology of US-Vietnamese Relations,” Vietnam: Yesterday and Today.

60. Rivero

61. John DiNardo, “The CIA and the Gulf War,” aired by Pacifica Radio.

62. Rivero

63. DiNardo

64. Joint Resolution, U.S. Congress, Aug.7, 1964, “The Tonkin Bay Resolution, 1964,” Modern History Sourcebook, July 1998.

65. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Domino Theory Principle, 1954,” Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954, pp.381-390. (News Conference, April 7, 1954.)

66. Eisenhower

67. Ellen Ray and Bill Schaap, “US Crushes Caribbean Jewel.” Covert Action Information Bulletin (CAIB), winter 1984, p.8

68. Jeff Hackett, “Burying ‘Gairyism.’” Bibliographies

69. Preface to Maurice Bishop speech “In Nobody's Backyard,” April 13, 1979, The Militant, Mar.15 1999.

70. Ray and Schaap, pp.3-5

71. Ray and Schaap, p.6

72. Clarence Lusane, “Grenada, Airport ’83: Reagan’s Big Lie,” CAIB, Spring-Summer 1983, p.29.

73. Ray and Schaap, pp.10-11

74. Ray and Schaap, p.5

75. Alan Scott, "The Last Prisoners of the Cold War Are Black," letter, The Voice (Grenada), April 20, 2001.

76. Capt. M.T.Carson, USMC, (Marine Officer Instructor), “Grenada October 1983,” History of Amphibious Warfare (Naval Science 293), Naval Reserves Officer Training Corps, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

77. Carson

78. Ray and Schaap, p..8.

79. Carson

80. “Failures of U.S. Foreign Policy,” Alternativeinsight, Sept.1, 2001

81. Carson

82. Alternativeinsight, Sept.1, 2001

83. Anthony Arnove and Alan Maass, “Washington’s war crimes,” Socialist Worker, Nov.16, 2001.

84. Zoltan Grossman, “One Hundred Years of Intervention,” 2001.

85. Commission for the Defence of Human Rights in Latin America (CODEHUCA), This is the Just Cause, 1990, p.115.

86. Richard Sanders, “Manuel Noriega,” Press for Conversion!, Dec. 2000, p.40.

87. CODEHUCA, pp.117, 108

88. Sanders

89. CODEHUCA, p.108

90. Richard K. Moore, “The Police State Conspiracy an Indictment,” New Dawn Magazine, Jan.-Dec. 1998.

91. Noam Chomsky, “Operation Just Cause: the Pretexts,” Deterring Democracy, 1992.

92. Chomsky

93. Alexander Safian, “Is Israel Using ‘Excessive Force’ Against Palestinians?” Fact sheet: Myth of Excessive Force, Nov.9, 2000

94. Chomsky

95. Chomsky

96. CODEHUCA, p.106.

97. CODEHUCA, passim

98. Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), “Panama: A Test for U.S.-Latin American Foreign Relations,” Interhemispheric Resource Center Bulletin, May 1995

99. FOR

100. William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, 2000.

101. Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, 1991.

The War On Terrorism

Lies told the American people by Roosevelt

Every step which brought Americans closer to entering World War II, was presented as 'steps to keep us out of the war' by Roosevelt. We have been fed hideous lies by the 'victors' of the numerous wars. Those 'victors' are the International Masters of Finance, by which they control the media, education, publishing houses, Hollywood, large corporations, and most especially the world economic system; therefore their agents manipulate and control government leaders who have consistently led us into war. In America, without the acquiescence of State Legislators, this could never have happened, nor could it be happening today.

Charmed Into Bloodshed

SELLING WAR:

THE
BRITISH PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN AGAINST AMERICAN "NEUTRALITY"
IN
WORLD WAR II

In “The New Dealers' War,” Thomas Fleming, goes into reasons for the German war declaration in detail. Fleming claims that President Roosevelt manipulated Germany into declaring war on the U.S., which Germany did on December 11,1941, three days after we declared war on Japan. Fleming lays out the scenario. The situation was that Hitler had his hands full with Russia and did not want to force the U.S. into the war. But Japan urged Germany to join in, and Winston Churchill also wanted the U.S. in to take pressure off Great Britain, who by then was all alone on the western front since France had surrendered in 1940. Fleming writes:

On December 9, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt made a radio address to the nation that is seldom mentioned in the history books. It accused Hitler of urging Japan to attack the United States. “We know that Germany and Japan are conducting their military and naval operations with a joint plan,” Roosevelt declared. “Germany and Italy consider themselves at war with the United States without even bothering about a formal declaration.” This was anything but the case, and Roosevelt knew it. He was trying to bait Hitler into declaring war, or, failing that, persuade the American people to support an American declaration of war on the two European fascist powers.

In his declaration of War on the United States on December 11, 1941, Adolf Hitler refers to the volunteers from many other European nations who joined in the German offensive against the Red Army. He named Slovaks, Hungarians, Rumanians, Italians, Spaniards, Croatians, Norwegians, Danes, Dutchmen, Flemings, Belgians, even Frenchmen.

******

During the battles against the Soviets, many Russian soldiers joined up with the German army, hoping the Soviet regime would be overthrown. After the war, thousands of Russian soldiers fled to the western sector of Germany where the American "allies" were holding tyrannical court, expecting to be given amnesty.

No. Uncle Joe Stalin wanted them back home. They were shipped back to the Soviet Union and executed.

Hitler referred to the International Masters of Finance as 'parasites'. That best describes them.

The never ending War on Terror today, like the other never ending wars on drugs, crime, etc.-- no declared enemy and no Congressional declaration of war -- is no different. If you doubt it, stick around, do your homework and it will become clear.

Germany is perhaps the only great nation, which has never had a colony either in North or South America, or otherwise displayed there was any political activity, unless mention is made of the emigration of many millions of Germans and of their work, which, however, has only been to the benefit of the American Continent and of the U.S.A

~from Declaration of War on the US by Adolf Hitler
December 11, 1941

Trial of Accused Nazi War Criminals

Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany
12th March to 22nd March, 1946

Eighty-Fourth Day: Monday, 18th March, 1946

HERMANN WILHELM GÖRING: DIRECT EXAMINATION

DR. HORN (counsel for the defendant von Ribbentrop):

Q. American war propaganda consistently spoke of Germany's aggressive intentions toward the Western Hemisphere. What do you know about this?

A. The Western Hemisphere? Do you mean America?

Q. Yes.

A. Even if Germany had completely dominated the nations of Europe, between Germany and the American continent there are, as far as I still recall from my geographic knowledge, about 6,000 kilometres of water, I believe. In view of the smallness of the German fleet and the regrettable lack of bombers to cover this distance, which I already mentioned, there was never any question of a threat against the American continent; on the contrary, we were always afraid of that danger in reverse, and we would have been very glad if it had not been necessary to consider this at all.

As far as South America is concerned, I know that we were always accused, by propaganda at least, of economic penetration and attempted domination there. If one considers the financial and commercial possibilities which Germany had before and during the war, and if one compares them with those of Great Britain or America, one can see the untenability of such a statement. With the very little foreign exchange and the tremendous export difficulties which we had, we could never constitute a real danger or be in competition. If that had been the case, the attitude of the South American countries would presumably have been a different one. Not the mark, but only the dollar ruled there.

DR. HORN: Thank you.

Attacks and Threats on the U.S. in WW2

Forgery

On Oct. 27, 1941, FDR, locked in mortal combat with an America First Committee that was resisting his drive to war, played his trump. On Navy Day, at the Mayflower Hotel, FDR declared,

I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler's Government – by planners of the New World Order. ... It is a map of South America ... as Hitler proposes to reorganize it. ... This map makes clear the Nazi design, not only against South America but against the United States as well.

Roosevelt was not done. I also have, he informed his audience, a Nazi document detailing plans "to abolish all existing religions, liquidate all clergy and create an 'International Nazi Church.'

In the place of the Bible, the words of 'Mein Kampf' will be imposed and enforced in a Holy Writ. And in the place of the cross of Christ will be put two symbols – the swastika and the naked sword. ... The God of Blood and Iron will take the place of the God of Love and Mercy.

The Nazi plans for eradicating Christianity were never found. And the map? A forgery by British agent Ivar Bryce, who worked under Churchill's man William Stephenson, who had been given his mission: Provoke America to go to war with Germany.

As Nicholas Cull relates in "Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign Against American 'Neutrality' in World War II," the "most striking feature" of Bryce's fake map "was the complicity of the president of the United States in perpetrating this fraud."

In his address to Congress calling for war, after Pearl Harbor, FDR did not even mention Germany. Yet Hitler stunned the world by declaring war on America. Why? Among the reasons cited by Germany was the provocation of FDR's Navy Day speech and fake map.

Stephenson's forgery was a triumph and served as backdrop for Clare Luce's remark that Roosevelt "lied us into war because he did not have the political courage to lead us into it."

Though Stephenson used fraud and blackmail to goad us into a war that killed and wounded a million Americans, he is the hero of the best-seller "A Man Called Intrepid." And not only has FDR been forgiven, he has been celebrated. His lies, it is said, were noble lies, to rouse an isolationist America into doing its duty and ridding the world of Adolf Hitler.

Roosevelt's Wrong Enemies

In a hasty move made in the name of national security, FDR needlessly swept some 4,000 civilians from their homes in Latin America......

Franklin Roosevelt often lied to further his goals. In a radio address broadcast to the nation on 23 October 1940, for example, he gave "this most solemn assurance" that he had not given any "secret understanding in any shape or form, direct or indirect, with any government or any other nation in any part of the world, to involve this nation in any war or for any other purpose." But American, British and Polish documents (mostly released many years later) proved that this "most solemn assurance" was a bald-faced lie. Roosevelt had, in fact, made numerous secret arrangements to involve the U.S. in war.

Of all his speeches, perhaps the best example of Roosevelt's readiness to lie is his 1941 Navy Day address broadcast over nationwide radio on 27 October.

A lot had happened in the months preceding that address. On 11 March 1941 Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease bill into law, permitting increased deliveries of military aid to Britain in violation of U.S. neutrality and international law. In April Roosevelt illegally sent U.S. troops to occupy Greenland. On 27 May he proclaimed a state of "unlimited national emergency," a kind of presidential declaration of war that circumvented a power constitutionally reserved to Congress. Following the Axis attack against the USSR in June, the Roosevelt administration began delivering enormous quantities of military aid to the beleaguered Soviets. These shipments also blatantly violated international law. In July Roosevelt illegally sent American troops to occupy Iceland.

The President began his Navy Day address by recalling that German submarines had torpedoed the U.S. destroyer Greer on 4 September 1941 and the U.S. destroyer Kearny on 17 October. In highly emotional language, he characterized these incidents as un-provoked acts of aggression directed against all Americans. He declared that although he had wanted to avoid conflict, shooting had begun and "history has recorded who fired the first shot."

What Roosevelt deliberately failed to mention was the fact that in each case the U.S. destroyers had been engaged in attack operations against the submarines, which fired in self-defense only as a last resort. Hitler wanted to avoid war with the United States, and had expressly ordered German submarines to avoid conflicts with U.S warships at all costs, except to avoid imminent destruction. Roosevelt's standing "shoot on sight" orders to the U.S Navy were specifically designed to make incidents like the ones he so piously condemned inevitable. His provocative efforts to goad Hitler into declaring war against the U.S. had failed and most Americans still opposed direct involvement in the European conflict.

And so, in an effort to convince his listeners that Germany was a real threat to American security, Roosevelt continued his Navy Day speech with a startling announcement:

Hitler has often protested that his plans for conquest do not extend across the Atlantic Ocean. I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler's government -- by the planners of the new world order. It is a map of South America and a part of Central America as Hitler proposes to reorganize it.

This map, the President explained, showed South America, as well as "our great life line, the Panama Canal," divided into five vassal states under German domination. "That map, my friends, makes clear the Nazi design not only against South America but against the United States as well."

Roosevelt went on to reveal that he also had in his possession "another document made in Germany by Hitler's government. It is a detailed plan to abolish all existing religions -- Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike" which Germany will impose "on a dominated world, if Hitler wins."

The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are to be liquidated. In the place of the churches of our civilization there is to be set up an international Nazi church, a church which will be served by orators sent out by the Nazi government. And in the place of the Bible, the words of Mein Kampf will be imposed and enforced as Holy Writ. And in the place of the cross of Christ will be put two symbols: the swastika and the naked sword.

Roosevelt emphasized the importances of his "revelations" by declaring:

Let us well ponder these grim truths which I have told you of the present and future plans of Hitlerism.

All Americans, he said, "are faced with the choice between the kind of world we want to live in and the kind of world which Hitler and his hordes would impose on us." Accordingly, "we are pledged to pull our own oar in the destruction of Hitlerism."

The German government immediately responded to Roosevelt's speech by denouncing his "documents" as preposterous frauds. The Italian government declared that if Roosevelt did not publish his map "within 24 hours, he will acquire a sky high reputation as a forger." At a press conference the next day, a reporter rather naturally asked the President for a copy of the "secret map." But Roosevelt refused, insisting only that it came from "a source which is undoubtedly reliable."

As has often happened, the truth about the map did not emerge until many years after the war: It was a forgery produced by the British intelligence service, most probably at its technical laboratory in Ontario, Canada. William Stephenson (code name: Intrepid), chief of British intelligence operations in North America, passed it on to U.S. intelligence chief William Donovan, who gave it to Roosevelt. In a memoir published in late 1984, war-time British agent Ivar Bryce claimed credit for thinking up the "secret map" scheme. Of course, the other "document" cited by Roosevelt, purporting to outline German plans to abolish the world's religions, was just as fraudulent as the "secret map."

Some U.S. officials were concerned about British wartime efforts to deceive the American government and people. In a 5 September 1941 memorandum forwarded to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle warned that British intelligence agents were manufacturing phony documents detailing supposed German conspiracies. Americans should be "on our guard" against these British-invented "false scares," Berle concluded.

It's doubtful if any of Roosevelt's great contemporaries, including Stalin, Hitler and even Churchill, ever delivered a speech as loaded with falsehoods as brazen as those in his 1941 Navy Day address. On at least one occasion, Roosevelt privately admitted his willingness to lie to further his goals. During a conversation on 14 May 1942 with his close Jewish adviser, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., the President candidly remarked:

I may have one policy for Europe and one diametrically opposite for North and South America. I maybe entirely inconsistent, and furthermore, I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help us win the war.

Sources

Bratzel, John F., and Leslie B. Rout, Jr., "FDR and The 'Secret Map'," The Wilson Quarterly (Washington, DC), New Year's 1985, pp. 167-173.

"Ex-British Agent Says FDR's Nazi Map Faked," Foreign Intelligence Literary Scene (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America), December 1984, pp. 1-3.

"President Roosevelt's Navy Day Address on World Affairs," The New York Times, 28 October 1941.

Adolf Hitler - An Overlooked Candidate for the Nobel Prize
By Alex S. Perry Jr.

If anyone deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, it was Adolf Hitler. Hitler did not want war. World War II was forced on Germany. Poland was encouraged to attack Germany by the promises of British Ambassador Sir Howard William Kennard and French Ambassador Leon Noel. They promised unconditionally that England and France would come to Poland’s immediate aid should she need it in case of war with Germany; therefore, no matter what Poland did to provoke Germany’s attack, Poland had an assurance from England and France. With this guarantee, Poland began acting ruthlessly. In addition, Kennard and Noel flattered Poland into thinking she was a great power. As the Chinese proverb says, “You can flatter a man to jump off the roof.” They sabotaged the efforts of those Polish leaders who wanted a policy of friendship with Germany. 1

To understand how the war in 1939 between Poland and Germany, and consequently WW2, unfolded, it is not sufficient to look at - and accept - the widely-held view that peace-loving and weak little Poland was attacked by an ever-marauding National Socialist Germany. Rather, one must look much deeper into history.

This conflict which cost many millions of lives did not originate with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, as is still claimed today by over-simplifying historians. It is not just a black-and-white story, but a complex one. It was also not caused by the Polish mobilization of her army two days previous, on August 30, 1939, although the mobilization of a country's army, according to international standards, is equal to a declaration of war on the neighboring country.

[Poland's decision of August 30, 1939 that was the basis for general mobilization marked a turning point in the history of Europe. It forced Hitler to wage war at a time when he hoped to gain further unbloody victories.

- Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Polish General and Minister-in-Exile, August 31st, 1943]

Heinz Splittgerber, in his short book Unkenntnis oder Infamie? quotes a number of Polish sources which reflect the atmosphere in Poland immediately before the hostilities commenced. On August 7th, 1939 the Ilustrowany Kurjer featured an article "which described with provocative effrontery how military units were continually foraying across the border into German territory in order to destroy military installations and to take weapons and tools of the German Wehrmacht back to Poland. Most Polish diplomats and politicians understood that Poland's actions would perforce lead to war. Foreign Minister Beck... tenaciously pursued the bloodthirsty plan of plunging Europe into another great war, since it would presumably result in territorial gains for Poland." 1 He goes on to cite some 14 incidents where Polish soldiers aggressively crossed the border, destroying houses, shooting and killing German farmers and customs officers. One of them: "August 29th: "State Police Offices in Elbing, Köslin and Breslau, Main Customs Office in Beuthen and Gleiwitz: Polish soldiers invade Reich German territory, attack against German customs house, shots taken at German customs officials, Polish machine guns stationed on Reich German territory." 2

These and many more are the things one must take into account before making the fallacious accusation that Germany was the one to have started WW2. The following quotations are added here to show that not only Poland was bent on war against Germany, but also her ally Great Britain (and France). Although it is still widely believed that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on September 29th, 1938 (Munich) honestly tried for peace, one has to consider the possibility that his real goals were somewhat different. Only five months later, on February 22nd, 1939, he let the cat out of the bag when he said in Blackburn:

During the past two days we have discussed the progress of our arms build-up. The figures are indeed overwhelming, perhaps even to such an extent that the people are no longer able even to comprehend them.... Ships, cannons, planes and ammunition are now pouring out of our dock yards and factories in an ever-increasing torrent... 3

Max Klüver writes:

Of the considerable body of evidence that gives cause to doubt whether Chamberlain actually wanted peace, one noteworthy item is a conversation [after Hitler's address to the Reichstag on April 28th,1939, W.R.] between Chamberlain's chief advisor Wilson, and Göring's colleague Wohlthat... When Wohlthat, taking his leave, again stressed his conviction that Hitler did not want war, Wilson's answer was indicative of the fundamental British attitude that could not be a basis for negotiations between equals: 'I said that I was not surprised to hear him say that as I had thought myself that Hitler cannot have overlooked the tremendous increases which we have made in our defensive and offensive preparations, including for instance the very large increase in our Air Force.' 4

And on April 27th, 1939, England mobilized her armed forces. Heinz Splittgerber quotes Dirk Bavendamm, Roosevelts Weg zum Krieg (Ullstein-Verlag, Berlin 1989), who writes:

Since England had never yet introduced universal conscription during peacetime, this alone virtually amounted to a declaration of war against Germany. From 1935 to 1939 (before the outbreak of the war) England's annual expenditure on war materials had increased more than five-fold. 5

In 1992 and 1993, Max Klüver, another German historian, spent five weeks in the Public Record Office in London searching through documents which, after fifty years of being hidden from public scrutiny, were now open to researchers. He writes in his book Es war nicht Hitlers Krieg:

How little the British cared about Danzig and the allegedly endangered Polish independence is also shown by the following brief prepared for Colonel Beck's visit of April 3 [1939]. The brief states: 'Danzig is an artificial structure, the maintenance of which is a bad casus belli. But it is unlikely that the Germans would accept less than a total solution of the Danzig question except for a substantial quid pro quo which could hardly be less than a guarantee of Poland's neutrality.

But such a deal would be a bad bargain for England. It would shake Polish morale, increase their vulnerability to German penetration and so defeat the policy of forming a bloc against German expansion. It should not therefore be to our interest to suggest that the Poles abandon their rights in Danzig on the ground that they are not defensible. 6

Klüver concludes:

So there we have it clearly stated: in the own British interest, the matter of Danzig must not be solved and peace preserved. The British guarantee to Poland, however, had reinforced the Polish in their stubbornness and made them completely obdurate where any solution to the Danzig question was concerned. 7

The American Professor Dr. Burton Klein, a Jewish economist, wrote in his book Germany's Economic Preparations for War:

Germany produced butter as well as 'cannons', and much more butter and much fewer cannons than was generally assumed." 8 And again: "The overall state of the German war economy ... was not that of a nation geared towards total war, but rather that of a national economy mobilized at first only for small and locally restricted wars and which only later succumbed to the pressure of military necessity after it had become an incontrovertible fact. For instance, in the fall of 1939 the German preparations for provision with steel, oil and other important raw materials were anything but adequate for an intense engagement with the Great Powers. 9

One only has to compare Mr. Klein's observations with what Mr. Bavendamm wrote about the British preparations for a major war at the same time, and the blurred picture that is painted by historians becomes much more transparent: the Germans were not the ones to provoke WW2.

Besides Chamberlain, there were others in influential and powerful positions in England who were much more outspoken about their wishes. Winston Churchill, for instance, said before the House of Commons on October 5th, 1938: "... but there can never be friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi power, that Power which spurns Christian ethics, which cheers its onwards course by a barbarous paganism, which vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses, as we have seen, with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force." 10

Hitler, of course, knew this very well. In Saarbrücken, on October 9th, 1938 he said: "...All it would take would be for Mr. Duff Cooper or Mr. Eden or Mr. Churchill to come to power in England instead of Chamberlain, and we know very well that it would be the goal of these men to immediately start a new world war. They do not even try to disguise their intents, they state them openly..." 11

As we all know, the British government under Chamberlain gave Poland the guarantee that England would come to its aid if Poland should be attacked. This was on March 31st, 1939. Its purpose was to incite Poland to escalate its endeavors for war against Germany. It happened as planned: England declared war on Germany on September 3rd, 1939, but not on the Soviet Union who also attacked Poland, and this is proof enough that it was England's (and Chamberlain's) intention in the first place to make war on Germany. Thus WW2 was arranged by a complicity between Britain and Poland. It was not Hitler's war, it was England's and Poland's war. The Poles were merely the stooges. Some of them knew it too - Jules Lukasiewicz, the Polish ambassador to Paris, for instance, who on March 29th, 1939 told his foreign minister in Warsaw:

It is childishly naive and also unfair to suggest to a nation in a position like Poland, to compromise its relations with such a strong neighbour as Germany and to expose the world to the catastrophe of war, for no other reason than to pander to the wishes of Chamberlain's domestic policies. It would be even more naive to assume that the Polish government did not understand the true purpose of this manoeuver and its consequences. 12

Notes

1 Heinz Splittgerber, Unkenntnis oder Infamie? Darstellungen und Tatsachen zum Kriegsausbruch 1939, pp. 12-13. Quoted from Oskar Reile, Der deutsche Geheimdienst im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Ostfront, Augsburg: Weltbild, 1990.

2 ibid., p. 14

3 Foreign Ministry, Berlin 1939, Deutsches Weißbuch No. 2, document 242. Quoted in Hans Bernhardt, Deutschland im Kreuzfeuer großer Mächte, Preußisch Oldendorf: Schütz, 1988. 4 Max Klüver, Es war nicht Hitlers Krieg, Essen: Heitz & Höffkes, 1993.

5 Kirk Kunert, Deutschland im Krieg der Kontinente, Kiel: Arndt, 1987.

6 Max Klüver, op.cit.

7 ibid

8 Burton H. Klein, Germany's Economic Preparations for War, vol. CIX, Cambridge, Mass., 1959. Quoted in: Joachim Nolywaika, Die Sieger im Schatten ihrer Schuld, Rosenheim: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1994.

9 ibid

10 Winston Churchill, Into Battle, Speeches 1938-1940, Quoted in: Udo Walendy, Truth for Germany, Vlotho: Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, 1981.

11 Foreign Ministry, Berlin 1939, Deutsches Weissbuch No. 2, document 219. Quoted in Max Domarus, Hitler-Reden und Proklamationen, vol. I...

12 Jules Lukasiewicz, quoted in Bolko Frhr. v. Richthofen, Kriegsschuld 1939-1941, Kiel: Arndt, 1994

From the very first day onward, Hitler had taken great pains to settle all differences with the Great Powers and especially with Germany's neighbours in a peaceful manner, but when he found that he was never met half-way he eventually resorted to those politics that were inevitable in light of the inconsistent attitude of the former enemy nations. However, he always maintained his wish to avoid a war.

In the Polish Question indisputable documents prove beyond any doubt that he proceeded so cautiously that a settlement must have been reached if only the other side had been willing; and indeed there were circles on the other side - the British Ambassador Henderson among these first and foremost - which desired a settlement, but were not sufficiently decisive forces in the matter. It is amazing to see with what patience Hitler took up each and every offer of mediation, right up to September 3, 1939. Since this fact is particularly annoying to those who would falsify history to Germany's detriment - and this also includes German historians - they invent the lie that at the Conference in Berchtesgaden on August 22, 1939 Hitler had allegedly expressed concern that "some son of a bitch might interfere at the last minute with an offer to mediate." At least one officer, General Hermann Böhm, Admiral (ret'd.), has taken it upon himself to refute, under oath, this and other lies contained in the so-called minutes of this Conference.

Did not Hitler offer peace terms to the enemy powers on October 6, 1939 after the victory over Poland, and on July 19, 1940 after the victory over France, and did he not later respond favorably to several attempts made by neutral parties to restore peace - all of which attempts were rejected out of hand by Germany's enemies? The spirit in which our present historians judge these efforts towards peace is shown by the fact that they are either not mentioned at or else are downplayed with a sneer.

Just as [Woodrow] Wilson ... led the United States into World War I, ‘to make the world safe for democracy’ – so Franklin D. Roosevelt ... led it into World War II, in the name of the ‘Four Freedoms.’ ... In the case of World War II, [those overwhelmingly opposed to war ... were silenced and] smeared as ‘isolationists,’ ‘reactionaries,’ and ‘American-First’ers.’ World War I led, not to [Wilson’s] ‘democracy,’ but to the creation of three dictatorships: Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany. World War II led, not to [Roosevelt’s] ‘Four Freedoms,’ but to the surrender of one-third of the world’s population into communist slavery.

~Ayn Rand

Poland delivered the first blow, and Hitler announced, “Since dawn today, we are shooting back,” when he spoke to the Reichstag on Sept ember 1, 1939. “Shooting back” is not the statement of an aggressor. 2 When Hitler attacked, Donald Day said, Poland got exactly what she deserved. None of Poland’s immediate neighbors felt sorry for her. Poland had conducted a policy of terror. Ethnic Germans living on German soil that had been given to Poland at the end of World War I by the Versailles Peace Treaty had been so mistreated that 2 million left the area for Germany and elsewhere. 3 They were driven from what had been their homeland long before World War I. Leon Degrelle, a young Belgian political leader in the 1930s, and who later joined Hitler’s hardest fighting unit, the Waffen SS, with over 400,000 other non-German European volunteers, says, “Of all the crimes of World War II, one never hears about the wholesale massacres that occurred in Poland just before the war. Thousands of German men, women and children were massacred in the most horrendous fashion by press-enraged mobs. Hitler decided to halt the slaughter and he rushed to the rescue.” 4 Young German boys, when captured by the Poles, were castrated. 5

William Joyce, nicknamed Lord Haw Haw by British propaganda, became a German citizen and took up for the German cause. He described the conditions of the Germans who were living in Poland because of the Versailles Treaty:

German men and women were hunted like wild beasts through the streets of Bromberg. When they were caught, they were mutilated and torn to pieces by the Polish mob. . . . Every day the butchery increased. . . . [T]housands of Germans fled from their homes in Poland with nothing more than the clothes that they wore. Moreover, there was no doubt that the Polish army was making plans for the massacre of Danzig. . . . On the nights of August 25 to August 31 inclusive, there occurred, besides innumerable attacks on civilians of German blood, 44 perfectly authenticated acts of armed violence against German official persons and property. These incidents took place either on the border or inside German territory. On the night of [August 31], a band of Polish desperadoes actually occupied the German Broad casting Station at Gleiwitz. Now it was clear that unless German troops marched at once, not a man, woman or child of German blood within the Polish territory could reasonably expect to avoid persecution and slaughter. 6

Due to Poland’s atrocious acts against the German people, Hitler declared to British Ambassador Sir Nevile Henderson on August 25, 1939:

Poland’s provocations have become intolerable. 7

So Poland delivered the first blow, not Germany. The first blow was important to the United States in its war with Japan. It gave the United States the right and justification to do whatever was necessary to defeat the Japanese. But Germany did not have this right with Poland even after Poland had delivered the first blow. What fair-minded man, if he knew the true facts involved in the Polish situation, could blame Hitler for his retaliatory attack on Poland? Poland, if any nation ever did, deserved exactly what Germany gave her in return. But Hitler did not even want to do what he had to do. No sooner than Hitler began protecting the German people inside Poland, he was ready to stop all hostilities and begin peace negotiations. Prince Sturdza narrates:

Only hours after the outbreak of hostilities between Germany and Poland, Mussolini, renewing his efforts for peace, proposed to all the interested powers an immediate suspension of hostilities and the immediate convocation of a conference between the great powers, in which Poland would also participate. Mussolini’s proposals were, without any delay, accepted by all governments concerned except Great Britain. 8

Before war broke out Britain’s ambassador to Berlin, Sir Nevil Henderson, on August 30, 1939, said, in his final report of Germany’s proposed basis for negotiations, “Those proposals are in general not too unreasonable.”

Even Pierre and Renee Gosset, in their rabid anti-German book Hitler, declare:

It was a proposal of extreme moderation. It was in fact an offer that no Allied statesman could have rejected in good faith.”9

As early as January 1941, Hitler was making extraordinary efforts to come to peace terms with England. He offered England generous terms. He offered, if Britain would assume an attitude of neutrality, to withdraw from all of France, to leave Holland and Belgium . . . to evacuate Norway and Den mark, and to support British and French industries by buying their products. His proposal had many other favorable points for England and Western Europe. But England’s officials did not want peace. They wanted war. Had they not celebrated their declaration of war by laughing, joking and drinking beer? 10

Hitler allowed the British to escape at Dunkirk.

He did not want to fight England. German Gen. Blumentritt states why Hitler allowed the British to escape:

He [Hitler] then astonished us by speaking with admiration of the British Empire, of the necessity for its existence, and the civilization that Britain had brought into the world. He remarked with a shrug of the shoulders, that the creation of the Empire had been achieved by means that were often harsh, but “where there is planning there are shavings flying.” He compared the British Empire with the Catholic Church—saying they were both essential elements of stability in the world. He said that all he wanted from Britain was that she should acknowledge Germany’s position on the continent. The return of Germany’s lost colonies would be desirable but not essential, and he would even offer to support Britain with troops if she should be involved in any difficulties anywhere. 11

Blumentritt’s statement is not the only notice about Hitler’s hope of peace and friendship with England. The renowned Swedish Explorer Sven Hedin observed Hitler’s confusion about Britain’s refusal to accept his peace offers: Hitler “felt he had repeatedly extended the hand of peace and friendship to the British, and each time they had blacked his eye in reply.” Hitler said, “The survival of the British Empire is in Germany’s interests too because if Britain loses India, we gain nothing thereby.” 12 Harry Elmer Barnes says that Hitler lost the war because he was too good.

While the theory of Hitler’s diabolism is generally accepted, there are very well informed persons who contend that he brought himself and Germany to ruin by being too soft, generous and honorable rather than too tough and ruthless. They point to the following considerations: he made a genuine and liberal peace offer to Britain on August 25, 1939; he permitted the British to escape at Dunkirk to encourage Britain to make peace, which later on cost him the war in North Africa; he failed to occupy all of France, take North Africa at once, and split the British Empire, he lost the Battle of Britain by failing to approve the savagery of military barbarism which played so large a role in the Allied victory; he delayed his attack on Russia and offered Molotov lavish concessions in November 1940 to keep peace between Germany and Russia; he lost the war with Russia by delaying the invasion in order to bail Mussolini out of his idiotic attack on Greece; and he declared war on the United States to keep his pledged word with Japan which had long before made it clear that it deserved no such consideration and loyalty from Hitler.13

David Irving’s descriptive account of Hitler’s love for Great Britain confirms what others had to say of Hitler’s desire to do no harm to England:

For 20 years Hitler had dreamed of an alliance with Britain. Until far into the war he clung to the dream with all the vain, slightly ridiculous tenacity of a lover unwilling to admit that his feelings are unrequited. As Hitler told Maj. Quisling on August 18, 1940: “After making one proposal after another to the British on the reorganization of Europe, I now find myself forced against my will to fight this war against Britain. . . .

This was the dilemma confronting Hitler that summer. He hesitated to crush the British. Accordingly, he could not put his heart into the invasion planning. More fatefully, Hitler stayed the hand of the Luftwaffe and forbade any attack on London under pain of court-martial; the all-out saturation bombing of London, which his strategic advisers Räder, Jodl, and Jeschonnek all urged upon him, was vetoed for one implausible reason after another. Though his staffs were instructed to examine every peripheral British position—Gibraltar, Egypt, the Suez Canal—for its vulnerability to attack, the heart of the British Empire was allowed to beat on, unmolested until it was too late. In these months an adjutant overheard Hitler heatedly shouting into a Chancellery telephone, “We have no business to be destroying Britain. We are quite incapable of taking up her legacy,” meaning the empire; and he spoke of the “devastating consequences” of the collapse of that empire. 14

Hitler told Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, March 2, 1940, (1) that he had long been in favor of disarmament, but had received no encouragement from England and France; (2) he was in favor of international free trade; (3) Germany had no aim other than the return of the “German people to the territorial position that historically was rightly theirs”; (4) he had no desire to control non-German people and he had no intention to interfere with their independence; and (5) he wanted the return of the colonies that were stolen from Germany at Versailles.15

Churchill wanted war. Churchill was a war criminal. Churchill did not want peace. He wanted the war to continue as long as possible.

In a January 1, 1944, letter to Stalin, Churchill said: “We never thought of peace, not even in that year when we were completely isolated and could have made peace without serious detriment to the British Empire, and extensively at your cost. Why should we think of it now, when victory approaches for the three of us?” 16 This is a confession even by Churchill that Hitler never did want war with England. Churchill in his July 1943 Guildhall speech stated quite plainly, “We entered the war of our free will, without ourselves being directly assaulted.” 17

When Churchill was leaving London to meet Roosevelt for a conference in Quebec late in the summer of 1943, a reporter asked if they were planning to offer peace terms to Germany. Churchill replied: “Heavens, no. They would accept immediately.” 18 So the war went on from August 1943 until May 1945—for 22 more months just because peace terms were not offered.

Churchill wanted England to be in war with Germany as early as 1936. 19

Roosevelt was a war criminal. He wanted war and he wanted World War II to last as long as possible.

Hitler and the German people did not want war, but Roosevelt wanted war. He worked for getting World War II started. He wanted war for political reasons. Jesse Jones, a member of Roosevelt’s cabinet for five years, states, “Regardless of his oft-repeated statement, ‘I hate war,’ he was eager to get into the fighting since that would ensure a third term.” 20

While the president repeated he did not want war and had no intent to send an expeditionary force to Europe, the militant secretaries of the Navy and of the War Department, Knox and Stimson, denounced the neutrality legislation in speeches and public declarations and advocated an American intervention in the Atlantic Battle. As members of the cabinet they could not do it without the president’s consent. 21

When the press quoted Frank Knox as saying: “The only hope for peace for the United States would be the battering of Germany,” FDR did not rebuke him. 22

Dr. Milton Eisenhower, Gen. Eisenhower’s brother, said, “President Roosevelt found it necessary to get the country into World War II to save his social policies.” 23

Clare Booth-Luce shocked many people by saying at the Republican Party Convention in 1944 that Roosevelt “has lied us [the U.S.A.] into the war.” However, after this statement proved to be correct, the Roosevelt followers ceased to deny it, but praised it by claiming he was “forced to lie” to save his country and then England and “the world.” 24

Rep. Hamilton Fish made the first speech in Congress on December 8, 1941, asking for a declaration of war against Japan. In his book, FDR: The Other Side of the Coin, Fish says he is ashamed of that speech today and if he had known what Roosevelt had been doing to provoke Japan to attack, he would never have asked for a declaration of war. 25 Fish said Roosevelt was the main firebrand to light the fuse of war both in Europe and the Pacific. 26

Roosevelt’s real policy was revealed when the Germans were able to search through Polish documents and found in the archives in Warsaw the dispatches of the Polish ambassadors in Washington and Paris which laid bare Roosevelt’s efforts to goad France and Britain into war. In November 1938, William C. Bullitt, his personal friend and ambassador in Paris, had indicated to the Poles that the president’s desire was for “Germany and Russia [to] come to blows, whereupon the democratic nations would attack Germany and force her into submission”; in the spring of 1939, Bullitt quoted Roosevelt as being determined “not to participate in the war from the start, but to be in at the finish.” 27

Oliver Lyttelton, wartime British production manager, was undeniably correct when he declared:

America was never truly neutral. There is no doubt where her sympathies were, and it is a travesty on history ever to say that the United States was forced into the war. America provoked the Japanese to such an extent that they were forced to attack. 28

The Japanese were begging for peace before the atom bombs were dropped, and MacArthur recommended negotiation on the basis of the Japanese overtures. But Roosevelt brushed off this suggestion with the remark: “MacArthur is our greatest general and our poorest politician.” 29 These statements tell the whole history of World War II from the beginning to the end, The war was started to keep Roosevelt in office and it was allowed to go on much longer than necessary—it could have been over any day from 1943 on. At the same time American boys were battling to end World War II, leading American politicians were doing all they could for political reasons to continue the conflict.

Hitler had only one goal with regard to his relations with other nations. That goal was peace. On May 17, 1933, Hitler addressed the Reichstag about his intentions:

Germany will be perfectly ready to disband her entire military establishment and destroy the small amount of arms remaining to her, if the neighboring countries will do the same thing with equal thoroughness. Germany is entirely ready to renounce aggressive weapons of every sort if the armed nations, on their part, will destroy their aggressive weapons within a specified period, and if their use is forbidden by an international convention. Germany is at all times prepared to renounce offensive weapons if the rest of the world does the same. Germany is prepared to agree to any solemn pact of non-aggression because she does not think of attacking anybody but only of acquiring security. 30

None of the “peace loving democracies” paid any attention to Hitler’s offer. The only reason why King Edward was not allowed to remain on the British throne was because he let it be known that as long as he was the king, England would not go to war with Germany.

Hitler expressed himself about the results Germany would gain from war:

A European war could be the end of all our efforts even if we should win, because the disappearance of the British Empire would be a misfortune which could not be made up again.

~Michael McLaughlin, For Those Who Cannot Speak.

Based on the above, Hitler should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously to set things straight. He was not the cause of World War II and he did not want any war. He was a man of peace and he worked for peace in every way he could.

ENDNOTES:

1 Day, Donald, Onward Christian Soldiers. Donald Day was The Chicago Tribune’s only correspondent in northeastern Europe before and during World War II.

2 McLaughlin, Michael, For Those Who Cannot Speak

3 Onward Christian Soldiers

4 The Journal of Historical Review, winter 1982

5 Fish, Hamilton, FDR: The Other Side of the Coin

6 Twilight Over England

7 The Suicide of Europe (memoirs of Prince Michel Sturdza, former foreign minister of Romania)

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 McLaughlin, op cit.

11 Barnes, Harry Elmer, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. The last sentence in the paragraph just quoted should put an end to any claim that Hitler wanted to capture the world.

12 Irving, David, Hitler’s War, paperback edition, Avon History

13 The Barnes Trilogy, section “Revisionism and Brainwashing”.

14 Irving, op. cit.

15 Tansill, Charles Callan, Back Door to War

16 Walendy, Udo, The Methods of Reeducation

17 Martin, James J., The Saga of Hog Island

18 Martin, James J., Revisionist Viewpoints

19 Neilson, Francis, The Churchill Legend

20 Jones, Jesse H., with Edward Angly, Fifty Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC: 1932-1945, New York: the Macmillan Company, 1951.

21 Fehrenbach, T.F., F.D.R.’s Undeclared War 1939 to 1941

22 Walendy, Udo, The Methods of Reeducation

23 Grieb, Conrad, American Manifest Destiny and the Holocaust

24 Walendy, op. cit., 3

25 Ibid., 144.

26 Ibid., 149.

27 Irving, op. cit.

28 The Saga of Hog Island, op. cit.

29 Chamberlin, William Henry, America’s Second Crusade

30 Neilson, Francis, The Churchill Legend

How to Start a War

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Trial of Accused Nazi War Criminals

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