By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, August 5, 2021
In 2015, Alice Sabatini was an 18-year-old contestant in the Miss Italia contest in Italy. She was asked what epoch of
the past she would have liked to live in. She replied: WWII. Her explanation was that her text books go on and on about
it, so she’d like to actually see it, and she wouldn’t have to fight in it, because only men did that. This led to a
great deal of mockery. Did she want to be bombed or starved or sent to a concentration camp? What was she, stupid?
Somebody photoshopped her into a picture with Mussolini and Hitler. Somebody made an image of a sunbather viewing troops
rushing onto a beach.[i]
Mushroom cloud of unspeakable destruction rises over Hiroshima following the first wartime dropping of an atomic bomb on
August 6, 1945 (US government photo)
But could an 18-year-old in 2015 be expected to know that most of the victims of WWII were civilians — men and women and
children alike? Who would have told her that? Certainly not her text books. Most definitely not the endless saturation
of her culture with WWII-themed entertainment. What answer did anyone think such a contestant would be more likely to
give to the question she’d been asked, than WWII? In U.S. culture as well, which heavily influences Italian, a top focus
for drama and tragedy and comedy and heroism and historical fiction is WWII. Pick 100 average viewers of Netflix or
Amazon and I’m convinced a large percentage of them would give the same answer as Alice Sabatini, who, by the way, was
declared the winner of the competition, fit to represent all of Italy or whatever it is Miss Italia does.
WWII is often called “the good war,” and sometimes this is thought of as principally or originally a contrast between
WWII, the good war, and WWI, the bad war. However, it was not popular to call WWII “the good war” during or immediately
after it happened, when the comparison with WWI would have been easiest. Various factors may have contributed to the
growth in popularity of that phrase over the decades, including increased understanding of the Holocaust (and
misunderstanding of the war’s relationship to it),[ii] plus, of course, the fact that the United States, unlike all the other major participants, wasn’t itself bombed or
invaded (but that’s also true for dozens of other U.S. wars). I think a major factor was actually the War on Vietnam. As
that war became less and less popular, and as opinions were deeply divided by a generation gap, by a division between
those who had lived through WWII and those who had not, many sought to distinguish WWII from the war on Vietnam. Using
the word “good,” rather than “justified,” or “necessary,” was probably made easier by distance in time from WWII, and by
WWII propaganda, most of which had been created (and is still being created) after the conclusion of WWII. Because
opposing all wars is considered radical and vaguely treasonous, critics of the war on Vietnam could refer to WWII as
“the good war” and establish their balanced seriousness and objectivity. It was in 1970 that just war theorist Michael
Walzer wrote his paper, “World War II: Why Was This War Different?” seeking to defend the idea of a just war against the
unpopularity of the war on Vietnam. I offer a rebuttal to that paper in Chapter 17 of Leaving World War II Behind. We saw a similar phenomenon in the years 2002 to 2010 or so, with countless critics of the war on Iraq emphasizing
their support for the war on Afghanistan and distorting the facts to improve the image of that newer “good war.” I’m not
sure many, if anyone, would have called Afghanistan a good war without the war on Iraq or called WWII a good war without
the war on Vietnam.
In July 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump — in arguing that U.S. military bases named for Confederates should not have
their names changed — proclaimed that these bases had been part of “beautiful world wars.” “We won two world wars,” he
said, “two world wars, beautiful world wars that were vicious and horrible.”[iii] Where did Trump get the idea that the world wars were beautiful, and that their beauty consisted of viciousness and
horribleness? Probably the same place Alice Sabatini did: Hollywood. It was the film Saving Private Ryan that led Mickey Z in 1999 to write his book, There Is No Good War: The Myths of World War II, originally with the title Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of the “Good War.”
Before rushing back in a time machine to experience the glory of WWII, I’d recommend picking up a copy of Studs Terkel’s
1984 book, The Good War: An Oral History of World War II.[iv] This is first-person accounts from veterans of WWII telling their memories 40 years later. They were young. They were
put into a non-competitive brotherhood and asked to do great things and see great places. It was tremendous. There was
smoking, and swearing, and alcohol so you could bring yourself to shoot at people, and vicious violence with the simple
goal of survival, and stacks of dead bodies in trenches, and ever-watchful vigilance, and deep wrenching moral guilt,
and fear, and trauma, and virtually no sense of having made a moral calculation that participation was justified — just
pure dumb obedience to be questioned and regretted later. And there was the stupid patriotism of the people who didn’t
see the real war. And there were all the people who didn’t want to see the horrifically disfigured survivors. “What kind
of war do civilians suppose we fought anyway?” asked one veteran.
The myths that make up most of what most people think they know about WWII don’t resemble the reality, but do endanger
our real world. I examine those myths in Leaving World War II Behind, which exposes the fact that the United States and other world governments refused to save those threatened with
genocide by the Nazis, that activists struggled in vain to get the U.S. and UK and other governments to take any
interest in saving millions of quite savable lives; the fact that the United States engaged in an arms race and
provocations with Japan for years and sought to generate a war and was not surprised by it; that the Nordic Race and
other eugenics theories used by the Nazis were concocted principally in California; that the Nazis studied segregation
laws in the United States and used them as models; that U.S. corporate funding and supplies were absolutely necessary to
the Nazi war effort; that genocide was a Western practice in no way new; that the war never needed to happen; that the
U.S. government viewed the Soviet Union as the primary enemy even when allied with it; that the Soviet Union did the
vast bulk of defeating Germany; that nonviolence was highly effective against Nazis; that there was significant
resistance to the war in the United States; that war spending is not the best way to boost an economy; etc.; etc.; and
of course that nothing we’re told about Hiroshima is true.
There is a myth that by participating in WWII, the United States did the world such a favor that the United States now
owns the world. In 2013, Hillary Clinton gave a speech to bankers at Goldman Sachs in which she claimed that she had
told China that it had no right to call the South China Sea the South China Sea, that the United States could in fact
claim to own the entire Pacific by virtue of having “liberated” it in WWII, and having “discovered” Japan, and having
“bought” Hawaii.[v] I’m not sure how best to debunk that. Perhaps I can advise asking some people in Japan or Hawaii what they think. But
it’s worth noting that there was no flood of mockery for Hillary Clinton of the sort experienced by Alice Sabatini.
There was no noticeable public outrage over this reference to WWII when it became public in 2016.
Perhaps the strangest myths, though, are those about nuclear weapons, especially the idea that by murdering huge numbers
of people with them a far greater number of lives, or at least the right kind of lives, were spared. The nukes did not
save lives. They took lives, possibly 200,000 of them. They were not intended to save lives or to end the war. And they
didn’t end the war. The Russian invasion did that. But the war was going to end anyway, without either of those things.
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that, “… certainly prior to 31 December, 1945, and in all
probability prior to 1 November, 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even
if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”[vi]
One dissenter who had expressed this same view to the Secretary of War and, by his own account, to President Truman,
prior to the bombings was General Dwight Eisenhower.[vii] Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bard, prior to the bombings, urged that Japan be given a warning.[viii] Lewis Strauss, Advisor to the Secretary of the Navy, also prior to the bombings, recommended blowing up a forest rather
than a city.[ix] General George Marshall apparently agreed with that idea.[x] Atomic scientist Leo Szilard organized scientists to petition the president against using the bomb.[xi] Atomic scientist James Franck organized scientists who advocated treating atomic weapons as a civilian policy issue,
not just a military decision.[xii] Another scientist, Joseph Rotblat, demanded an end to the Manhattan Project, and resigned when it was not ended.[xiii] A poll of the U.S. scientists who had developed the bombs, taken prior to their use, found that 83% wanted a nuclear
bomb publicly demonstrated prior to dropping one on Japan. The U.S. military kept that poll secret.[xiv] General Douglas MacArthur held a press conference on August 6, 1945, prior to the bombing of Hiroshima, to announce
that Japan was already beaten.[xv]
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William D. Leahy said angrily in 1949 that Truman had assured him only
military targets would be nuked, not civilians. “The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no
material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender,” Leahy said.[xvi] Top military officials who said just after the war that the Japanese would have quickly surrendered without the nuclear
bombings included General Douglas MacArthur, General Henry “Hap” Arnold, General Curtis LeMay, General Carl “Tooey”
Spaatz, Admiral Ernest King, Admiral Chester Nimitz, Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, and Brigadier General Carter Clarke.
As Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick summarize, seven of the United States’ eight five-star officers who received their
final star in World War II or just after — Generals MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Arnold, and Admirals Leahy, King, Nimitz,
and Halsey — in 1945 rejected the idea that the atomic bombs were needed to end the war. “Sadly, though, there is little
evidence that they pressed their case with Truman before the fact.”[xvii]
On August 6, 1945, President Truman lied on the radio that a nuclear bomb had been dropped on an army base, rather than
on a city. And he justified it, not as speeding the end of the war, but as revenge against Japanese offenses. “Mr.
Truman was jubilant,” wrote Dorothy Day. Weeks before the first bomb was dropped, on July 13, 1945, Japan had sent a
telegram to the Soviet Union expressing its desire to surrender and end the war. The United States had broken Japan’s
codes and read the telegram. Truman referred in his diary to “the telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace.” President
Truman had been informed through Swiss and Portuguese channels of Japanese peace overtures as early as three months
before Hiroshima. Japan objected only to surrendering unconditionally and giving up its emperor, but the United States
insisted on those terms until after the bombs fell, at which point it allowed Japan to keep its emperor. So, the desire
to drop the bombs may have lengthened the war. The bombs did not shorten the war.[xviii]
Presidential advisor James Byrnes had told Truman that dropping the bombs would allow the United States to “dictate the
terms of ending the war.” Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal wrote in his diary that Byrnes was “most anxious to get
the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in.” Truman wrote in his diary that the Soviets were preparing to
march against Japan and “Fini Japs when that comes about.” The Soviet invasion was planned prior to the bombs, not
decided by them. The United States had no plans to invade for months, and no plans on the scale to risk the numbers of
lives that U.S. school teachers will tell you were saved.[xix] The idea that a massive U.S. invasion was imminent and the only alternative to nuking cities, so that nuking cities
saved huge numbers of U.S. lives, is a myth. Historians know this, just as they know that George Washington didn’t have
wooden teeth or always tell the truth, and Paul Revere didn’t ride alone, and slave-owning Patrick Henry’s speech about
liberty was written decades after he died, and Molly Pitcher didn’t exist.[xx] But the myths have their own power. Lives, by the way, are not the unique property of U.S. soldiers. Japanese people
also had lives.
Truman ordered the bombs dropped, one on Hiroshima on August 6th and another type of bomb, a plutonium bomb, which the
military also wanted to test and demonstrate, on Nagasaki on August 9th. The Nagasaki bombing was moved up from the 11th
to the 9th to decrease the likelihood of Japan surrendering first.[xxi] Also on August 9th, the Soviets attacked the Japanese. During the next two weeks, the Soviets killed 84,000 Japanese
while losing 12,000 of their own soldiers, and the United States continued bombing Japan with non-nuclear weapons —
burning Japanese cities, as it had done to so much of Japan prior to August 6th that, when it came time to pick two
cities to nuke, there hadn’t been many left to choose from. Then the Japanese surrendered.
That there was cause to use nuclear weapons is a myth. That there could again be cause to use nuclear weapons is a myth.
That we can survive significant further use of nuclear weapons is a myth. That there is cause to produce nuclear weapons
even though you’ll never use them is too stupid even to be a myth. And that we can forever survive possessing and
proliferating nuclear weapons without someone intentionally or accidentally using them is pure insanity.[xxii]
Why do U.S. history teachers in U.S. elementary schools today — in 2021! — tell children that nuclear bombs were dropped
on Japan to save lives — or rather “the bomb” (singular) to avoid mentioning Nagasaki? Researchers and professors have
poured over the evidence for 75 years. They know that Truman knew that the war was over, that Japan wanted to surrender,
that the Soviet Union was about to invade. They’ve documented all the resistance to the bombing within the U.S. military
and government and scientific community, as well as the motivation to test bombs that so much work and expense had gone
into, as well as the motivation to intimidate the world and in particular the Soviets, as well as the open and shameless
placing of zero value on Japanese lives. How were such powerful myths generated that the facts are treated like skunks
at a picnic?
In Greg Mitchell’s 2020 book, The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood — and America — Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, we have an account of the making of the 1947 MGM film, The Beginning or the End, which was carefully shaped by the U.S. government to promote falsehoods.[xxiii] The film bombed. It lost money. The ideal for a member of the U.S. public was clearly not to watch a really bad and
boring pseudo-documentary with actors playing the scientists and warmongers who had produced a new form of mass-murder.
The ideal action was to avoid any thought of the matter. But those who couldn’t avoid it were handed a glossy big-screen
myth. You can watch it online for free, and as Mark Twain would have said, it’s worth every penny.[xxiv]
The film opens with what Mitchell describes as giving credit to the UK and Canada for their roles in producing the death
machine — supposedly a cynical if falsified means of appealing to a larger market for the movie. But it really appears
to be more blaming than crediting. This is an effort to spread the guilt. The film jumps quickly to blaming Germany for
an imminent threat of nuking the world if the United States didn’t nuke it first. (You can actually have difficulty
today getting young people to believe that Germany had surrendered prior to Hiroshima, or that the U.S. government knew
in 1944 that Germany had abandoned atomic bomb research in 1942.[xxv]) Then an actor doing a bad Einstein impression blames a long list of scientists from all over the world. Then some
other personage suggests that the good guys are losing the war and had better hurry up and invent new bombs if they want
to win it.
Over and over we’re told that bigger bombs will bring peace and end war. A Franklin Roosevelt impersonator even puts on
a Woodrow Wilson act, claiming the atom bomb might end all war (something a surprising number of people actually believe
it did, even in the face of the past 75 years of wars, which some U.S. professors describe as the Great Peace). We’re
told and shown completely fabricated nonsense, such as that the U.S. dropped leaflets on Hiroshima to warn people (and
for 10 days — “That’s 10 days more warning than they gave us at Pearl Harbor,” a character pronounces) and that the
Japanese fired at the plane as it approached its target. In reality, the U.S. never dropped a single leaflet on
Hiroshima but did — in good SNAFU fashion — drop tons of leaflets on Nagasaki the day after Nagasaki was bombed. Also,
the hero of the movie dies from an accident while fiddling with the bomb to get it ready for use — a brave sacrifice for
humanity on behalf of the war’s real victims — the members of the U.S. military. The film also claims that the people
bombed “will never know what hit them,” despite the film makers knowing of the agonizing suffering of those who died
slowly.
One communication from the movie makers to their consultant and editor, General Leslie Groves, included these words:
“Any implication tending to make the Army look foolish will be eliminated.”[xxvi]
The main reason the movie is deadly boring, I think, is not that movies have sped up their action sequences every year
for 75 years, added color, and devised all kinds of shock devices, but simply that the reason anybody should think the
bomb that the characters all talk about for the entire length of the film is a big deal is left out. We don’t see what
it does, not from the ground, only from the sky.
Mitchell’s book is a bit like watching sausage made, but also a bit like reading the transcripts from a committee that
cobbled together some section of the Bible. This is an origin myth of the Global Policeman in the making. And it’s ugly.
It’s even tragic. The very idea for the film came from a scientist who wanted people to understand the danger, not
glorify the destruction. This scientist wrote to Donna Reed, that nice lady who gets married to Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, and she got the ball rolling. Then it rolled around an oozing wound for 15 months and voilà, a cinematic turd emerged.
There was never any question of telling the truth. It’s a movie. You make stuff up. And you make it all up in one
direction. The script for this movie contained at times all sorts of nonsense that didn’t last, such as the Nazis giving
the Japanese the atomic bomb — and the Japanese setting up a laboratory for Nazi scientists, exactly as back in the real
world at this very time the U.S. military was setting up laboratories for Nazi scientists (not to mention making use of
Japanese scientists). None of this is more ludicrous than The Man in the High Castle, to take a recent example of 75 years of this stuff, but this was early, this was seminal. Nonsense that didn’t make it
into this film, everybody didn’t end up believing and teaching to students for decades, but easily could have. The movie
makers gave final editing control to the U.S. military and the White House, and not to the scientists who had qualms.
Many good bits as well as crazy bits were temporarily in the script, but excised for the sake of proper propaganda.
If it’s any consolation, it could have been worse. Paramount was in a nuclear arms film race with MGM and employed Ayn
Rand to draft the hyper-patriotic-capitalist script. Her closing line was “Man can harness the universe — but nobody can
harness man.” Fortunately for all of us, it didn’t work out. Unfortunately, despite John Hersey’s A Bell for Adano being a better movie than The Beginning or the End, his best-selling book on Hiroshima didn’t appeal to any studios as a good story for movie production. Unfortunately, Dr. Strangelove would not appear until 1964, by which point many were ready to question future use of “the bomb” but not past use,
making all questioning of future use rather weak. This relationship to nuclear weapons parallels that to wars in
general. The U.S. public can question all future wars, and even those wars it’s heard of from the past 75 years, but not
WWII, rendering all questioning of future wars weak. In fact, recent polling finds horrific willingness to support
future nuclear war by the U.S. public.
At the time The Beginning or the End was being scripted and filmed, the U.S. government was seizing and hiding away every scrap it could find of actual
photographic or filmed documentation of the bomb sites. Henry Stimson was having his Colin Powell moment, being pushed
forward to publicly make the case in writing for having dropped the bombs. More bombs were rapidly being built and
developed, and whole populations evicted from their island homes, lied to, and used as props for newsreels in which they
are depicted as happy participants in their destruction.
Mitchell writes that one reason Hollywood deferred to the military was in order to use its airplanes, etc., in the
production, as well as in order to use the real names of characters in the story. I find it very hard to believe these
factors were terribly important. With the unlimited budget it was dumping into this thing — including paying the people
it was giving veto power to — MGM could have created its own quite unimpressive props and its own mushroom cloud. It’s
fun to fantasize that someday those who oppose mass murder could take over something like the unique building of the
U.S. Institute of “Peace” and require that Hollywood meet peace movement standards in order to film there. But of course
the peace movement has no money, Hollywood has no interest, and any building can be simulated elsewhere. Hiroshima could
have been simulated elsewhere, and in the movie wasn’t shown at all. The main problem here was ideology and habits of
subservience.
There were reasons to fear the government. The FBI was spying on people involved, including wishy-washy scientists like
J. Robert Oppenheimer who kept consulting on the film, lamenting its awfulness, but never daring to oppose it. A new Red
Scare was just kicking in. The powerful were exercising their power through the usual variety of means.
As the production of The Beginning or the End winds toward completion, it builds the same momentum the bomb did. After so many scripts and bills and revisions, and
so much work and ass-kissing, there was no way the studio wouldn’t release it. When it finally came out, the audiences
were small and the reviews mixed. The New York daily PM found the film “reassuring,” which I think was the basic point. Mission accomplished.
Mitchell’s conclusion is that the Hiroshima bomb was a “first strike,” and that the United States should abolish its
first-strike policy. But of course it was no such thing. It was an only strike, a first-and-last strike. There were no
other nuclear bombs that would come flying back as a “second strike.” Now, today, the danger is of accidental as much as
intentional use, whether first, second, or third, and the need is to at long last join the bulk of the world’s
governments that are seeking to abolish nuclear weapons all together — which, of course, sounds crazy to anyone who has
internalized the mythology of WWII.
There are far better works of art than The Beginning or the End that we could turn to for myth busting. For example, The Golden Age, a novel published by Gore Vidal in 2000 with glowing endorsements by the Washington Post, and New York Times Book Review, has never been made into a movie, but tells a story much closer to the truth.[xxvii] In The Golden Age, we follow along behind all the closed doors, as the British push for U.S. involvement in World War II, as President
Roosevelt makes a commitment to Prime Minister Churchill, as the warmongers manipulate the Republican convention to make
sure that both parties nominate candidates in 1940 ready to campaign on peace while planning war, as Roosevelt longs to
run for an unprecedented third term as a wartime president but must content himself with beginning a draft and
campaigning as a drafttime president in a time of supposed national danger, and as Roosevelt works to provoke Japan into
attacking on his desired schedule.
Then there’s historian and WWII veteran Howard Zinn’s 2010 book, The Bomb.[xxviii] Zinn describes the U.S. military making its first use of napalm by dropping it all over a French town, burning anyone
and anything it touched. Zinn was in one of the planes, taking part in this horrendous crime. In mid-April 1945, the war
in Europe was essentially over. Everyone knew it was ending. There was no military reason (if that’s not an oxymoron) to
attack the Germans stationed near Royan, France, much less to burn the French men, women, and children in the town to
death. The British had already destroyed the town in January, similarly bombing it because of its vicinity to German
troops, in what was widely called a tragic mistake. This tragic mistake was rationalized as an inevitable part of war,
just as were the horrific firebombings that successfully reached German targets, just as was the later bombing of Royan
with napalm. Zinn blames the Supreme Allied Command for seeking to add a “victory” in the final weeks of a war already
won. He blames the local military commanders’ ambitions. He blames the American Air Force’s desire to test a new weapon.
And he blames everyone involved — which must include himself — for “the most powerful motive of all: the habit of
obedience, the universal teaching of all cultures, not to get out of line, not even to think about that which one has
not been assigned to think about, the negative motive of not having either a reason or a will to intercede.”
When Zinn returned from the war in Europe, he expected to be sent to the war in the Pacific, until he saw and rejoiced
at seeing the news of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Only years later did Zinn come to understand the inexcusable
crime of enormous proportions that was the dropping of nuclear bombs in Japan, actions similar in some ways to the final
bombing of Royan. The war with Japan was already over, the Japanese seeking peace and willing to surrender. Japan asked
only that it be permitted to keep its emperor, a request that was later granted. But, like napalm, the nuclear bombs
were weapons that needed testing.
Zinn also goes back to dismantle the mythical reasons the United States was in the war to begin with. The United States,
England, and France were imperial powers supporting each other’s international aggressions in places like the
Philippines. They opposed the same from Germany and Japan, but not aggression itself. Most of America’s tin and rubber
came from the Southwest Pacific. The United States made clear for years its lack of concern for the Jews being attacked
in Germany. It also demonstrated its lack of opposition to racism through its treatment of African Americans and
Japanese Americans. Franklin Roosevelt described fascist bombing campaigns over civilian areas as “inhuman barbarity”
but then did the same on a much larger scale to German cities, which was followed up by the destruction on an
unprecedented scale of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — actions that came after years of dehumanizing the Japanese. Aware that
the war could end without any more bombing, and aware that U.S. prisoners of war would be killed by the bomb dropped on
Nagasaki, the U.S. military went ahead and dropped the bombs.
Uniting and strengthening all of the WWII myths is the overarching myth that Ted Grimsrud, following Walter Wink, calls
“the myth of redemptive violence,” or “the quasi-religious belief that we may gain ‘salvation’ through violence.” As a
result of this myth, writes Grimsrud, “People in the modern world (as in the ancient world), and not least people in the
United States of America, put tremendous faith in instruments of violence to provide security and the possibility of
victory over their enemies. The amount of trust people put in such instruments may be seen perhaps most clearly in the
amount of resources they devote to preparation for war.”[xxix]
People aren’t consciously choosing to believe in the myths of WWII and violence. Grimsrud explains: “Part of the
effectiveness of this myth stems from its invisibility as a myth. We tend to assume that violence is simply part of the
nature of things; we see acceptance of violence to be factual, not based on belief. So we are not self-aware about the
faith-dimension of our acceptance of violence. We think we know as a simple fact that violence works, that violence is necessary, that violence is inevitable. We don’t realize that
instead, we operate in the realm of belief, of mythology, of religion, in relation to the acceptance of violence.”[xxx]
It takes an effort to escape the myth of redemptive violence, because it’s been there since childhood: “Children hear a
simple story in cartoons, video games, movies, and books: we are good, our enemies are evil, the only way to deal with
evil is to defeat it with violence, let’s roll.
The myth of redemptive violence links directly with the centrality of the nation-state. The welfare of the nation, as
defined by its leaders, stands as the highest value for life here on earth. There can be no gods before the nation. This
myth not only established a patriotic religion at the heart of the state, but also gives the nation’s imperialistic
imperative divine sanction. . . . World War II and its direct aftermath greatly accelerated the evolution of the United
States into a militarized society and . . . this militarization relies on the myth of redemptive violence for its
sustenance. Americans continue to embrace the myth of redemptive violence even in face of mounting evidence that its
resulting militarization has corrupted American democracy and is destroying the country’s economy and physical
environment. . . . As recently as the late 1930s, American military spending was minimal and powerful political forces
opposed involvement in ‘foreign entanglements’.”[xxxi]
Prior to WWII, Grimsrud notes, “when America engaged in military conflict . . . at the end of the conflict the nation
demobilized . . . . Since World War II, there has been no full demobilization because we have moved directly from World
War II to the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. That is, we have moved into a situation where ‘all times are times of
war.’ . . . Why would non-elites, who bear terrible costs by living in a permanent war society, submit to this
arrangement, even in many cases offering intense support? . . . The answer is quite simple: the promise of salvation.”[xxxii]
[i] Sabatini ended up suffering from depression, panic attacks, and bad health. See Luana Rosato, Il Giornale, “Miss Italia, Alice Sabatini: ‘Dopo la vittoria sono caduta in depressione’,” January 30, 2020, https://www.ilgiornale.it/news/spettacoli/miss-italia-alice-sabatini-vittoria-depressione-1818934.html
[ii] Geoffrey Wheatcroft, The Guardian, “The Myth of the Good War,” December 9, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/09/-sp-myth-of-the-good-war
[iii] Raw Story, Youtube.com, “Trump mocks renaming Confederate bases by suggesting naming them after Al Sharpton,” July 19,
2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7Qer5K3pw4=emb_logo
[iv] Studs Terkel, The Good War: An Oral History of World War II (The New Press, 1997).
[v] WikiLeaks, “HRC Paid Speeches,” https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/927
[vi] United States Strategic Bombing Survey: Japan’s Struggle to End the War, July 1, 1946, https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/research-files/united-states-strategic-bombing-survey-japans-struggle-end-war?documentid=NA=50
[vii] Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 164.
[viii] Bard Memorandum, June 27, 1945, http://www.dannen.com/decision/bardmemo.html
[ix] Christian Kriticos, The Millions, “An Invitation to Hesitate: John Hersey’s ‘Hiroshima’ at 70,” August 31, 2016, https://themillions.com/2016/08/invitation-hesitate-john-herseys-hiroshima.html
[x] Christian Kriticos, The Millions, “An Invitation to Hesitate: John Hersey’s ‘Hiroshima’ at 70,” August 31, 2016, https://themillions.com/2016/08/invitation-hesitate-john-herseys-hiroshima.html
[xi] Leo Szilard’s Petition to the President, https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/manhattan-project/szilard-petition.html
[xii] Report of the Committee on Political and Social Problems, https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/manhattan-project/franck-report.html
[xiii] Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 144.
[xiv] Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 161.
[xv] Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 166.
[xvi] Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 176.
[xvii] Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (Simon & Schuster, 2012), pp. 176-177. The book says six of seven, rather than seven of eight. Kuznick tells me that he did not
initially include Halsey because he received his star after the war ended.
[xviii] On the possibility of modifying the surrender terms and ending the war earlier without nuclear bombs, see Oliver Stone
and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (Simon & Schuster, 2012), pp. 146-149.
[xix] Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 145.
[xx] Ray Raphael, Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past (The New Press, 2014).
[xxi] Greg Mitchell, The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood — and America — Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (The New Press, 2020).
[xxii] Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (Penguin Books, 2014).
[xxiii] Greg Mitchell, The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood — and America — Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (The New Press, 2020).
[xxiv] “The Beginning Or The End = Classic Film,” https://archive.org/details/TheBeginningOrTheEndClassicFilm
[xxv] Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 144.
[xxvi] Greg Mitchell, The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood — and America — Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (The New Press, 2020).
[xxvii] Gore Vidal, The Golden Age: A Novel (Vintage, 2001).
[xxviii] Howard Zinn, The Bomb (City Lights Books, 2010).
[xxix] Ted Grimsrud, The Good War That Wasn’t and Why It Matters: World War II’s Moral Legacy (Cascade Books, 2014), pp. 12-17.
[xxx] Ted Grimsrud, The Good War That Wasn’t and Why It Matters: World War II’s Moral Legacy (Cascade Books, 2014).
[xxxi] Ted Grimsrud, The Good War That Wasn’t and Why It Matters: World War II’s Moral Legacy (Cascade Books, 2014).
[xxxii] Ted Grimsrud, The Good War That Wasn’t and Why It Matters: World War II’s Moral Legacy (Cascade Books, 2014).
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