A Look At The Real Reasons For World War 2

[Orwellian_Ghost]

'Human Smoke' by Nicholson Baker

An inside look at the inexorable march of Britain and the United States toward World War II.
By Mark Kurlansky
March 9, 2008

The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

Simon & Schuster: 576 pp., $30

...

Nicholson Baker's "Human Smoke" is a meticulously researched and well-constructed book demonstrating that World War II was one of the biggest, most carefully plotted lies in modern history. According to the myth, British and American statesmen naively thought they could reason with such brutal fascists as Germany's Hitler and Japan's Tojo. Faced with this weakness, Hitler and Tojo tried to take over the world, and the United States and Britain were forced to use military might to stop them.

...

The facts are powerful. Baker shows, step by step, how an alliance dominated by leaders who were bigoted, far more opposed to communism than to fascism, obsessed with arms sales and itching for a fight coerced the world into war.

...

Churchill was not driven by anti-fascism. In his 1937 book "Great Contemporaries," he described Hitler as "a highly competent, cool, well-informed functionary with an agreeable manner." The same book savagely attacked Leon Trotsky. (What was wrong with Trotsky? "He was still a Jew. Nothing could get over that.") Churchill repeatedly praised Mussolini for his "gentle and simple bearing." In 1927, he told a Roman audience, "If I had been an Italian, I am sure that I should have been entirely with you from the beginning to the end of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism." Churchill considered fascism "a necessary antidote to the Russian virus," Baker writes. In 1938, he remarked to the press that if England were ever defeated in war, he hoped "we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among nations."

...

In the 1930s, U.S. industry was free to sell the Germans and the Japanese whatever they'd buy, including weapons. Not to lose out, the British and French sold tanks and bombers to Hitler. Calls by Joseph Tenenbaum of the American Jewish Congress to boycott Germany were ignored. There was no attempt to contain, isolate, hinder or overthrow Hitler -- not because of naiveté but because of commerce. It was the Depression. There were Germans trying to overthrow Hitler, but the U.S. and Britain and their industries were obstructing that effort.

...

People are going to get really angry at Baker for criticizing their favorite war. But he hasn't fashioned his tale from gossip. It is documented, with copious notes and attributions. The grace of these well-ordered snapshots is that there is no diatribe; you are left to put things together yourself. Read "Human Smoke." It may be one of the most important books you will ever read. It could help the world to understand that there is no Just War, there is just war -- and that wars are not caused by isolationists and peaceniks but by the promoters of warfare. *

...

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-bk-kurlansky9mar09,0,6763134.story

[LanternWaste]

1. I imagine that Joseph Persico's book, 'Roosevelt's Secret War' would be a good counterpoint

I imagine that Joseph Persico's book, 'Roosevelt's Secret War' would be a good counterpoint to the above argument. It's a good read, and most likely in many libraries...

[bryant69]

2. Trashing Roosevelt?

Nice. So which historical figures do you admire? Stalin?

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[roguevalley]

19. given the lack of communications at the time and all the variables

such as the disbelief that things like this could happen, I would believe it was more a tragedy that came about by inertia and a lack of concise information than FDR going to war because it was a plot. God.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Slightly strange for the review to never mention Czechoslovakia, or Poland

Seeing as those loom large in any real discussion of the start of World War 2. No-one has claimed that the war was started to protect the Jewish population of Europe, so I can't see why that is discussed at length here.

I must admit I was unaware that Hitler had any British or French tanks and bombers. Can anyone expand on this?

[northzax]

5. i think Baker would argue

although I am just supposing this, having not read the book, that by the time Czechoslovakia and Poland really entered the picture, the die were already cast and war was inevitable.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Given that most people spend a lot of time saying Hitler was appeased

by the British government in the lead up, it's an aspect that really has to be fully addressed. Baker may well do, but the review is pretty useless without it - it must have ignored the main part of the book. :shrug:

[struggle4progress]

24. US Congress in 1936 forbid arms sales to belligerents and made the prohibition permanent in 1937

http://www.historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=605

[struggle4progress]

25. US military appropriations did not grow quickly until after the invasion of Poland

DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER
805 KIDDER BREESE SE -- WASHINGTON NAVY YARD
WASHINGTON DC 20374-5060

Budget of the US Navy: 1794 to 2004

1920 $628,726,000
1921 $768,532,000
1922 $508,155,000
1923 $330,607,000
1924 $302,855,000
1925 $308,810,000
1926 $310,591,000
1927 $332,071,000
1928 $348,332,000
1929 $383,143,000
1930 $364,693,000
1931 $403,243,000
1932 $359,199,000
1933 $571,927,000
1934 $352,433,000
1935 $346,296,000
1936 $489,005,000
1937 $529,059,000
1938 $524,772,000
1939 $673,792,000
1940 $1,137,608,000
1941 $4,465,684,000
1942 $21,149,323,000

http://209.85.207.104/search?q=cache:8pZJGoJrM-MJ:www.history.navy.mil/library/online/budget.htm+historical+US+defense+appropriations+1930&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=20&gl=us

[struggle4progress]

30. In the 1930's, there was no shortage of war opponents in the US, including a number of

internationally recognized figures like Jane Addams, whose opposition to the prior Great War now gave her substantial credibility

In fact, she shared the 1931 Nobel Prize for her work:

Jane Addams
The Nobel Peace Prize 1931
... Publicly opposed to America's entry into the war, Miss Addams was attacked in the press and expelled from the Daughters of the American Revolution ...
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1931/addams-bio.html


Groups in which she played a major role had substanmtial political connections:

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION, 1919-1959
<written by Archivist Eleanor Barr in 1987>

The United States Section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom originated in January 1915 ... At a conference in Washington (DC), called by Jane Addams and Carrie Chapman Catt, approximately 3,000 women approved a platform calling for ... the limitation of armaments and the nationalization of their manufacture ... Addams was elected chairman of the WPP.

In April 1915, representatives of the WPP participated in the International Congress of Women held at The Hague ... Addams .. chaired the Hague Congress ...

... In May 1919, the second International Congress of Women was held in Zurich .. while the Paris Peace Conference was in session. When the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were made public .. the Zurich congress passed a number of resolutions pointing out the dangers to permanent peace contained in the .. the treaty ... The delegates voted to form a permanent organization, changing its name to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom ... Jane Addams was made international president

... In November 1919 the WPP voted to change its name to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Section for the United States ... For a number of years, WILPF had sought to find a way to curb private profit and traffic in the weapons of war. At the 1933 Annual Meeting, the U.S. Section adopted a resolution urging President Roosevelt to propose a senatorial investigation into the private manufacture of arms. Dorothy Detzer is credited with influencing Senator Gerald P. Nye to introduce, in January 1934, a resolution to investigate the manufacture of armaments ... The Nye Commission proposed a comprehensive program of interlocking legislative measures to maintain peace and to safeguard the rights of U.S. citizens ... WILPF celebrated its 20th anniversary in 1935. A banquet was held in Washington (DC) on May 02, 1935, to honor Jane Addams. Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the main speakers ...

http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/peace/DG026-050/dg043wilpf/history.htm


Thus, Americans listened when the Nye Commission told Congress in 1936:

"... the whole process of selling arms abroad thus .... has 'brought into play the most despicable side of human nature; lies, deceit, hypocrisy, greed, and graft occupying a most prominent part in the transactions.' The committee finds such practices on the part of any munitions company, domestic or foreign, to be highly unethical, a discredit to American business, and an unavoidable reflection upon those American governmental agencies which have unwittingly aided in the transactions so contaminated. The committee finds, further, that not only are such transactions highly unethical, but that they carry within themselves the seeds of disturbance to the peace and stability of those nations in which they take place ..."
http://astro.temple.edu/~rimmerma/nye_commission_report.htm

[Hobarticus]

6. Any British or French weapons the Germans had, were captured

after the opening of hostilities on the Western front. The BEF fled the continent, leaving everything but their clothes on their backs.

Other countries were selling pre-war Germany equipment, like trucks, that may have had a dual purpose, but no way were these nations actively re-arming Germany.

It was in Germany's economic best interest to restart their own arms industry.

Germany went to great lengths to disguise their gradual re-arming. They created entire bureaucracies to disguise arming and training their soldiers under the auspices of public works, and airliners designed and built in the 30's always had a dual-purpose role in mind from the word go.

Why go through that, if they could just re-arm on the international arms market?

I call bullshit.

[independentpiney]

12. I'll second your bullshit call.

Claiming that the French in particular, intentionally rearmed Germany is ridiculous.

[kenfrequed]

36. all protestations of cow feces aside

There is ample historical evidence to point that American corporations were very much in bed with facists. Ford motors, Dupont, and IBM willingly and readily provided aid to rearming Germany and investing in German industry.

Roosevelt inherited this situation, he did not cause it. And in fact his administration would later go after these profiteers and facists (though not as successfully as I would have liked).

[independentpiney]

38. Correct,, but everything was dual use

They were not selling armaments. And the claim that the French were selling them tanks and military planes is absurd.

[Hobarticus]

39. I agree, US industry was invested in Germany

And that investment did indeed assist in rearmament, there's no question in my mind about that.

Hell, after the war Henry Ford sued the US gov't - and WON - for bombing the auto plants he'd built in Germany. Talk about a facist-lovin' SOB.

But the US or Britain or France did not "re-arm" Germany with blatant arms sales as the article claims. I don't recall Messerschmitts and Panzers being built in the States. The idea that France and Britain would re-arm Germany willingly is laughable.

[Thothmes]

46. What was the title of the Law suit by Ford and

where was it filed and when. Ford also built an automobile plant in the Soviet Union.

[Hobarticus]

55. Oh, it gets better...

Apparently Ford was double-dipping....it was drawing claims for bombing damage from the Nazis during the war, AND from the US after the war. Nice.

Fordwerke received compensation from the Nazi government for bombing damage in 1941. But a 1942 German law denied such recompense to businesses whose majority ownership was held by foreigners from hostile nations. In 1967, the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the U.S. Congress made a compensatory award to Ford for its German subsidiary's wartime losses after extended negotiation and deliberation. The gross figure was almost $1.1 million.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/ford.html

Actually, it appears that GM also sought damages....that, after reaping the windfall from contracting for the duration of the war.

[Thothmes]

56. Thanks

I wonder if Ford ever got any compensation from the Soviets for the Ford Plant built at Gorky

[Lydia Leftcoast]

52. I remember reading that people in Köln, Germany, would go to the

local Ford plant at night, believing that it would not be bombed.

[Hobarticus]

57. That would make sense...

When there's no where else to turn, people will grasp at any thread of safety, perceived or real.

[struggle4progress]

43. There are, of course, always people who believe they can profit from

wars and war-related activities. But this fact was widely recognized in the United States between the two world wars. The report of the Ney Commission, for example, provides some valuable insight into period politics: it essentially accuses the arms industry of starting wars. It is very difficult to imagine any recent US Congress producing anything like it

[Thothmes]

45. Ford was an equal opportunity capitalist

He helped Stalin set up the only automobile factory in the Soviet Union in 1937.

[northzax]

4. just more anti-Hillary stuff

Nicholson Baker also wrote VOX, which is one of the books that Monica Lewinsky bought to give to Bill Clinton at KramerBooks in Dupont Circle. This is all an attempt to remind people of that.

that said. I like Baker, I like Kurlansky, might have to go find it.

[Sequoia]

7. Thanks. I want to read it.

So Roosevelt isn't the God people think he was and Churchill wasn't the saviour of England after all...bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Japan.

[LeftishBrit]

51. Yup, it would have been so wonderful for the Nazis to take over Europe permanently!!!!

(And I have no doubt that the Allies' motives were not always pure as the driven snow. Nevertheless, it is a good thing that Hitler was defeated.)

[Sequoia]

53. You know some people would've wanted it.

That's why I won't read "what if" books. Some being those awful, "what if the South had won the Civil War" novels. Hopefully, this book is on the way to me!

[leftchick]

8. wow!

:wow:

Anti-Semitism was rife among the Allies. Of Franklin Roosevelt, Baker notes that in 1922, when he was a New York attorney, he "noticed that Jews made up one-third of the freshman class at Harvard" and used his influence to establish a Jewish quota there. For years he obstructed help for European Jewry, and as late as 1939 he discouraged passage of the Wagner-Rogers bill, an attempt by Congress to save Jewish children. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said in 1939 of German treatment of Jews that "no doubt Jews aren't a lovable people. I don't care about them myself." Once the war began, Winston Churchill wanted to imprison German Jewish refugees because they were Germans. What a comfort such leadership must have been to the Nazis, who, according to the New York Times of Dec. 3, 1931, were trying to figure out a way to rid Germany of Jews without "arousing foreign opinion."

Churchill is a dominant figure in "Human Smoke," depicted as a bloodthirsty warmonger who, in 1922, was still bemoaning the fact that World War I hadn't lasted a little longer so that Britain could have had its air force in place to bomb Berlin and "the heart of Germany." But no, he whined, it had to stop, "owing to our having run short of Germans and enemies."

[ConcernedCanuk]

10. Don't forget Prescott, GW's Grandpa had his fingers in starting WW2 - Jr's trying for WW3

.
.
.

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

A more in-depth analysis includes the following:

Chapter - II - The Hitler Project

Bush Property Seized--Trading with the Enemy

/snip/

The great financial collapse of 1929-31 shook America, Germany and Britain, weakening all governments. It also made the hard-pressed Prescott Bush even more willing to do whatever was necessary to retain his new place in the world. It was in this crisis that certain Anglo-Americans determined on the installation of a Hitler regime in Germany.

http://www.tarpley.net/bush2.htm

The Bush family are warmongers from WAY back.

Hope George is the last one.

[Wiley50]

11. Capitalism has always been mortally threatened by Communism

Whereas, Fascism is just the next logical step for authoritarian capitalism

It's lefties vs righties

I, for one, wish to move farther left, to socialism.

I've never been selfish enough to be a successful capitalist anyway

[selador]

32. rubbish

you don't have to be selfish to be a successful capitalist.

what a bunch of anti-capitalist rubbish!

sounds to me like sour grapes.

[ronnie624]

54. Sounds to me

like someone who realizes that humans can be motivated by something other than greed.

Capitalism sucks, and it will eventually destroy human civilization.

[Selatius]

13. World War Two likely would not have happened if the US avoided World War One

Without the US to tip the balance of power during the war, a negotiated and fairer settlement would've been negotiated at the bargaining table. With the Allied victory, Germany was forced to pay the vast bulk of war costs regardless of fault. What emerged some two decades later was a vengeful Germany wanting to repay the humiliation visited upon it with the Treaty of Versailles.

[coalition_unwilling]

14. Most objective historians of World War I hold that Imperial Germany

was indeed responsible for World War I, having offered Austria-Hungary a 'blank check' to go after Serbia, following assassination of Archduke Ferdninand.

[Selatius]

15. True, but if the US had avoided the war, a negotiated settlement was far more likely.

Instead, the final agreement was rather lopsided and punitive, leading of course to Nazi Germany.

[independentpiney]

16. That's probably true to some extent

But at the same time the European system of alliances had made a wider war inevitable if Serbia and Austria-Hungary went to war. And Serbia's refusal to pay reparations for the assassination left Austria-Hungary no choice but to declare war, in the context and mindset of the times anyway. Trying to place responsibility for the war on any single country isn't possible.

[coalition_unwilling]

50. Austria-Hungary would never have gone to war with Serbia without

the "blank check" from Imperial Germany. The generals in Wilhelmine Germany were itching for a fight and found a willing patsy in Austria Hungary. Primary responsibility for World War I, imho, falls squarely upon Imperial Germany and no other country. Hence reparations regime imposed at Versailles.

[leveymg]

20. There's another story behind the start of WWI: a false-flag operation by a disloyal faction of the

Russian secret service, the Okhrana. See, The History of Dirty-Tricks (Part III): Who Gained From Old Europe's Self-Destruction?
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0612/S00194.htm

SNIP

Czar Nicholas II inherited the Great Power ambitions of his ill-fated ancestors, most of whom had been assassinated by their own secret police, as well as the Russian Empire's spectacular overstretch in the Balkans. He was a considerably less capable Commander-in-Chief than his father, Alexander III.

In the vacuum of leadership that attended Nicholas's reign (1897-1917), factional strife within his intelligence services ran wild. This lack of command and control over foreign operations of the Okhrana, already accustomed to a swaggering domestic role as semi-autonomous Court Police, led to the Okhrana's heavy hand in the assassination on July 24, 1914 of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria at Sarajevo. This assassination, of course, directly triggered World War One resulting in the fall of the Russian Imperial Dynasty. As will be discussed in the chapters below, this was hardly the first regicide carried out by the Okhrana – the Czar's Guard had exercised their police powers on a number of occasions since the 1700s, usually to terminate overly-ambitious members of the Romanov clan. There is considerable evidence that the Czar's intelligence service – either an ultra-nationalist faction within it or the element that served Berlin (the Okhrana's other master), over the previous two centuries – preemptively started World War One before Russia was fully prepared to fight.

By 1914, Russia's relations with Prussia, its historical trading partner and banker, had long been strained. Russian nationalists became assertive after Germany raised protective tariffs in 1878, leading to a crippling of Russian export earnings, particularly for agricultural goods and textiles that provided the bulk of the income that supported the Czar and the landed gentry. Rising tensions were also, in no small part, due to the provocations committed by the Okhrana, after its operations were expanded into a truly modern, international agency in 1881. In an environment of a mounting trade war with Germany, a series of inflammatory forgeries appeared, the "Ferdinand documents", which seemed to implicate the German Kaiser in a plot to take over the Bulgarian throne and the Balkan states. The source of these “Kuriosnye dokumenty” , as Alexander III called them, was unbeknownst to the Czar at the time, his own secret policemen in the Paris Embassy under Ambassador Mohrenheim.

Nicholas had his own “Neo-con” problem, 9/11 and Iraq War

As will be seen in greater detail below, the seeds of war between Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary were planted in the mid-1880s. By the time of the Bosnian crisis of 1908-09, they had bloomed into armed skirmishing between proxy armies. The first round of this contest for the Balkans was a humiliating slap-down of Russia's south Slavic allies, Bulgaria and Serbia, by Turkish forces backed by Austria-Hungary and Germany. This did not long deter the ambitions of the southern trans-Slavs. In March 1912 a secret treaty was signed between Bulgaria and Serbia, stipulating that in the event of a war with Turkey, the Czar would mediate any disagreement between the two over the contested territory of Turkish Macedonia. When French President Poincare learned of the pact five months later, he exclaimed to the Russian Foreign Minister, "To tell you the truth, it is a convention for war. Moreover, the treaty contains the germ not only of a war against Turkey, but of a war against Austria"(E. Taylor (1963): 193-4). Such a war, as he knew, would inevitably involve Russia, and its ally of convenience, France, against Germany.

SNIP

[SidneyCarton]

23. This is really interesting!

I admit, it may be possible. The Serbs and the Russians were close in that period, as they are today. If there were some pan-Slav activists in the Okhrana, in contact with Colonel Dragutin Dimitrovic's intelligence organization (as we may safely assume there probably were) then perhaps the whole Serbian "Black Hand" was a front organization, much like the CIA has done, well everywhere.

That said, Kaiser Wilhelm and the Austro-Hungarian government were doubly stupid for taking the bait. There is actually some excellent scholarship in this field that notes how Austrian High command was all too eager to go to war with Serbia, even though they were woefully unready.

[leveymg]

26. Both the Rusians and the Austro-Hungarians were woefully unready

Berlin, to whom a faction of the Okhrana had long held allegiance, was quite well prepared to fight and win an easy victory in the East. Read the article. It goes into the calculations made by the Russians about their own state of unpreparadness, and how the whole thing got started by overzealous Slavic nationalists and the Black Hand organization being secretly run by the Okhrana chief in Belgrade.

The three-part version originally posted at DKos has the footnotes:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/11/15/105045/13
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/29/84552/975 (footnotes)

[SidneyCarton]

27. I'll check it out.

[leveymg]

33. Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[independentpiney]

17. I think you're spot on with that.

Neither side could have gone on much longer either, so US entry may not have even shortened the war by much.

[Dammit Ann]

18. thank you.

k/r.

[pork medley]

21. interesting n/t

[SidneyCarton]

22. I can't quite agree with Mr. Baker's assertion.

Churchill was certainly no saint, indeed if you read any biography about him you find that he had a bad habit of latching onto an idea and only letting it go at the greatest expense to both his own and his nation's credibility. (Consider, if you will, the Dardanelles campaign) As Churchill was a fanatic anti-communist long before Hitler arrived on the world stage, it should not be surprising that he would latch onto Fascism early in its inception. Furthermore, considering Churchill's predilection for uniforms and martial traditions, one wonders that if things had been different at the end of WWI if he wouldn't have been Oswald Moseley on steroids.

However, Baker goes a little far in asserting that the Second World War was nothing more than a grandiose and sinister plot by American and British capitalists. To do so overlooks various problematic details. To begin with there is the Versailles Treaty, which effectively sought to emasculate Germany at the end of the First World War. The resentment engendered by this humiliation, particularly when Germany remained wholly unoccupied at the end of the war created an explosive political atmosphere in Weimar Republic, allowing for Hitler's rise to Power. The Nazi's rode the waves of German resentment on a revenge ticket. Their ideas were a mixture of militarism, romanticism and anti-semitism that, while existent in other contemporary nations really manifested themselves in a uniquely German manner through National Socialism. Hitler himself wrote in Mein Kampf as early as 1926 about his hostile intentions for the rest of Europe. While it may be argued, (and often has been) that Hitler was little more than a pawn of the industrialists, the outcome of the war, particularly in its brutal last years, proves that although the capitalists may have thought they were manipulating him, he in fact was pulling the strings.

I'm not saying that the Allies, and our nation in particular don't have bloody hands in this affair. Without Versailles Hitler would not have been the man he was, and Henry Ford supplied much of the anti-semitic drivel that the Nazi's took as gospel. However, the Second World War came about due to the Allies inability or unwillingness to enforce the harsh treaty they had used to end the First. Their timidity, not their bellicosity caused this awful conflict.

[Disturbed]

28. The US entered into War due to Japan's attack.

That story is also not as simplified as most have been told.

Also, most people forget that the US did not declare War on Germany.
Germany declared War on the US. Another screw up on Hitler's part, as was
his invasion of Russia.

[Thothmes]

47. Hitler was obligated to declare war on the U.S.

because of his treaty with the Japanese Government.

[Hawkowl]

29. The author is a MORON on NPR

I listened to this guy on NPR last night. He really doesn't know his asshole from a hole in the ground. Meticulously researched? According to what?

"No diatribe; you are left to put things together yourself." What utter insane, cowardly BULLSHIT. You have to put it together yourself because HE can't put together what isn't there! He was a whiny, apologetic, intellectually weak guest and weaker author. He draws no conclusions and simply asks impossible "what if?" type questions completely based in fantasy. He admitted that he knows NOBODY who actually participated in WWII. NOBODY.

If you wish to study history. STUDY but don't fall for this horse shit.

[struggle4progress]

31. It's simply idiotic to think Germany could have gone to war dependent on foreign arms suppliers:

war production needs are intensive, and so they required a well-established domestic war industry

They built that industry, and paid for it in part by arms exports to Latin America

[Hobarticus]

35. More than that...one doesn't build a resurgent economy

on importing arms. Hitler put Germany back to work, that was a large part of his appeal to the working class in the 30s.

Dumb, dumb, dumb hypothesis.

[kenfrequed]

37. Uhm huh???

I'm sorry but without Ford motors and a few other corporations the Nazi clambering to power would have been harder. Of course after the Nazis started invading other nations some of these corporations were stopped.

[Hobarticus]

40. Nonsense

German engineering and manufacturing has always been some of the finest in the world. They didn't need the French, or Ford, to re-arm.

Germany was freakin' broke between the wars. Where did they make the money to buy these weapons with?

Hitler was able to rebuild the entire economy, and thus win over the working class, by going on a re-armament footing. You can't revitalize a collapsed economy, or rebuild a massive offensive weapon, strictly on arms imports. That is absurd.

True, Ford did build truck factories in Germany, pre-war....TRUCK factories. Yes, trucks are indeed used for war, but building a few truck factories is hardly "re-arming".

[Thothmes]

48. Ford also had the only truck factory in the Soviet Union at Gorki

[struggle4progress]

42. There is, of course, no question that various industrialists collaborated with the Nazis

motivated by a desire for profit or by anti-semitism or by sympathy for rightwing ideology. And of course the full history of the period cannot be recounted accurately if one ignores such collaborations

But to say that, is not at all the same as saying that the leaders rest of the world deliberately armed the Nazis to start another world war. For most of a decade, the Nazis were in control of Germany -- and they set out in a methodical way, not only to structure the German economy for war production, but also to use their absolute control over the social structure (including media, civic organizations, and educational institutions) to advance a war ideology that portrayed and punished dissidents (as anti-German traitors responsible for all Germany's woes because they had "stabbed Germany in the back") and portrayed the rest of the world as racially inferior groups that should be pushed aside or exterminated as Germany expanded in a quest for Lebensraum

The view of history suggested in the OP may generate enough controvery to sell a few books but it is fundamentallyy dishonest. One can, for example, regard Churchill as a man of many failings; he was extremely conservative and rabidly anti-communist; sometimes, his views were right on the mark and other times not. But he did not have the power, and does not seem to have had the inclination, to bullshit England into a unnecessary war with Germany: remember that in 1922 his constituents threw him out of office and replaced him with the socialist ED Morel, who had served prison time during the Great War for pacifist activities. There was no enthusiasm throughout most of Europe for another Great War

[ThomWV]

34. And is it assumed that the world would have happily acquiesced to the murder of 6 million jews?

As if it didn't matter a bit?

[Hobarticus]

41. Nicholson Baker is a career fiction author, folks...

Not a historian. While he's actually a terrific writer, he's hardly likely to turn history on it's ear with his hypothesis.

On edit: sorry, "Time's Arrow" was by Martin Amis.

:blush:

[Orwellian_Ghost]

44. People should bear that in mind

I find it very encouraging that World War II revisionism is becoming an open topic in our culture. I hope that in the next few decades, it loses its unique status as the one historical war we're not supposed to scrutinize too closely.

Ultimately I think folks will come to find that this book is ultimately worthwhile in that respect but my guess, and that is all it is, is that the book will receive such reactionary scrutiny so as to bury the entire idea of refuting the many WW 2 mythologies.

It's also important here to recognize that the OP is only one review from one person and let us hope that we get past knee-jerk responses.

[muriel_volestrangler]

49. In the 2 days since your first paragraph in the post above was written on another blog

(it's from a site that is not welcome on DU, so I won't link to it), there have been several well written responses above, that are in no way 'knee-jerk' . They point out bizarre claims, such as Britain and France selling tanks and bombers to Germany, which seem rather key to the thesis in the LA Times review (whether that's the thesis of the book is more difficult to say).

Since the method of writing the book seems to have been to get information from newspaper reports at the time, and largely ignore the possibility of using other sources that became available later, it seems this book is still in the 'first draft of history' stage, and doesn't make use of the hindsight that writing later actually gives you.