There's hardly any topic among twentieth century history that is more misunderstood among the masses than the most devastating, destructive, and genocidal conflict in human history, the Second World War. Many military and diplomatic documents have still not been declassified by the victors who won the war. But more than that, there is a depressingly high degree of ignorance concerning simple, yet no less pertinent, facts in regards to world events surrounding the period before, during, and after the years 1939 through 1945. For now, let's focus on Europe and the United States while trying to be as specific and as clear as possible.
It has been said by many that the first casualty in any war is the truth. Over sixty years after Admiral Donitz of the German Navy signed the official unconditional terms of surrender, there are still atrociously dishonest lies of commission and omission, even among so-called scholars and historians, when writing about or talking about what renowned British historian Norman Davies aptly referred to as Europe in Torment. A very illustrative example of a significant truth often neglected by educators, think-tanks, and the intelligentsia is the Soviet Union's holocaust against the Ukrainian nation from 1933 to 1934. At least seven million Ukrainian and Russian farmers were deliberately being starved to death at a time when the major Western newspapers completely ignored the Soviet crimes against humanity and in many notable cases, (such as Pulitzer Prize winning NY Times reporter Walter Duranty's denial of the Soviet-engineered famine), actually covered up the Soviet Union's extermination of millions of people. It should be remembered that the New York Times is owned by the same family now as it was in the 1930s, the Sulzberger family.
Everyone has heard about the German invasion of Polish territory in September of 1939 in order to get back the historically German city of Danzig and the so-called "Polish Corridor," which connected East Prussia with the rest of Germany. Far fewer, however, are knowledgeable of the Soviet Union's invasion of the other three-fifths of Poland only two and a half weeks after. As Western Europe was exhausting itself in a war against a Germany whose imperial aims lied entirely in the east, Stalin used this extra time not only to step up the production of tanks and planes (all designed for a war of offense as evidenced by their design), but also by annexing the three Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the Romanian provinces of Bessarabia and Bukovina, and parts of Finland. At a time when the United States was officially neutral and Britain was ostensibly fighting a war for "Polish freedom," Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were doing everything in their power to keep the war going by sabotaging all of the very generous German offers for peace treaties (September & October 1939, April & May 1940, March 1941) which were quite the opposite of the shamed Treaty of Versailles twenty years earlier. More than that, FDR and Winnie gave financial, military, diplomatic, and moral support to the blood stained Great Terrorist they liked to refer to as "Uncle Joe." (analogous to Ronald Reagan referring to Hitler as "Uncle Adolf")
Coupled with this distortion of the news was a seemingly endless flood of anti-German films rising out of Hollywood, which was hardly a fair broker when it came to accurately portraying life in Germany for the average German, let alone German foreign policy aims (the exceptions of people who did not benefit by the National Socialist seizure of power are obvious to the educated reader and need not be stated at this time). A handful of example propaganda movies from that period include:
The Great Dictator (1940) 15 October.
Inside Nazi Germany (1938) 21 January.
Four Sons (1940) 4 June.
International Lady (1941) 16 October.
Three Faces West (1940) 3 July.
It would do the reader well to first remind himself that Poland had been ruled over by Russia, Germany, and Austria for hundreds of years prior to the Versailles Treaty of 1919. If a mind dedicated to reason and unfettered by the intense climate of emotional post-war rationalizing can truthfully examine the situation in 1939, he'll immediately recognize the hypocrisy of the British in declaring war on Germany for invading Poland while at the same time not declaring war on the Soviet Union for invading the other half of Poland. When Stalin took advantage of the bogus situation in Western Europe by starting a war with Finland in the winter of 1940, where was the outcry from the papers? Was the territorial integrity of Finland worth less than Poland's? How about when Britain, under Churchill, violated Norwegian neutrality by mining her waters and islands as preparation for an occupation of Norway in an effort to stop the shipment of Swedish iron ore to Germany?
Nicknamed "Operation Wilfred" by Churchill, this sneaky plan was also diabolically clever because even if the Germans found out, their likely response would once again make Churchill look good and strengthen his own rhetoric. As it actually happened, Germany did find out through a wiretap and barely beat the British to it.
The average British citizen had no clue that Hitler had no designs on Western Europe, but was forced to occupy the west as a defensive measure against Britain's attempt to open up new fronts in Germany's rear. The average Englishman's knowledge of what was happening came from radio and newspapers. As this writer mentioned before, the first casualty in any war is the truth. Another casualty was the lack of knowledge about the British attempt to land troops in Denmark. But once again, the Germans barely found out in time and beat them to it. Churchill also had no problem with enlarging the British Empire with 1.6 million extra square miles of colonies by occupying Italian and French territories in Africa and the Mediterranean, as well as in the Middle East. For hundreds of years England had practiced a divide and conquer strategy in foreign affairs, and since the Age of Louis XIV, had done its damndest to make sure no one power rose to hegemony on mainland Europe. But as times had surely changed, so should have foreign policies. A related aside is that if it weren't for Mussolini's blunderous invasion of Greece, Hitler would not have had to spare more troops and supplies to push back the British on that front as well.
Was there perhaps another motive for Churchill's anti-German stance? When Stalin invaded Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1940, and added those briefly independent nations to the Soviet slave empire, where was the outcry from Churchill for their territorial integrity? When the NKVD agents butchered tens of thousands of the most prominent people in those Baltic countries, where was the protest from the newspapers in America and Britain? Might this outrageous double standard have had anything to do with Churchill's close friendship with anti-German millionaire Henry Strakosch, or with his close association with the Board of Deputies of British Jews, or with his contacts Bernard Baruch and Henry Morgenthau? Is it at all possible that these affiliations of his may have influenced his policy-making decisions and motivated his attitudes, sincere or not, towards German imperial ambitions? Perhaps the opinions and attitudes of the men who controlled the majority of newspapers and radio stations in Britain and America were somewhat biased, especially when one considers their ethnic background. It would be willful ignorance to deny or marginalize this factor. One can be sure that if the American and British mass media in the 1930s were being run by Goebbels's tribe instead of Baruch's tribe, the tone and content of films and editorials pouring forth from the West would have been very different.
More than that, Britain herself did not conquer a quarter of the world by being "nice," and therefore was in no moral position to tell Germany it couldn't reclaim some disputed land in its own backyard. Besides, much of the land Germany was trying to get back, such as the city of Danzig and the stretch of land connecting Germany to East Prussia, was of course historically German territory. It's understood that the average movie-goer or High School History teacher has not read Churchill's War or Hitler's War by David Irving, or Hitler's Table Talk, or Hitler & Stalin by Alan Bullock, and consequently is unfamiliar with the records, documents, war diaries, speeches, transcripts, dossiers, and wiretaps demonstrating Hitler's desire to avoid war with Britain and France, and even entertaining the possibility of a pact with Poland against the Soviet Union. These Polish, British, German, and American documents show the British covertly manipulating the Polish government into acting very obstinate in its dealings with the German diplomats, similar to the way in which Roosevelt would deliberately sabotage friendly diplomatic relations with the Japanese in order to provoke Japanese aggression. Continued assurances and promises by the British could have explained Poland's overconfidence in its sense of security and ability to repel a German attack, especially considering that Poland still had an active cavalry in 1939. All of the captured records unambiguously reveal Hitler's reluctant decision to go to war with Britain.
The records also show his orders to the Wehrmacht to halt their tanks at Dunkirk and allow the British time to escape back across the Channel because he wanted to leave them with some dignity. It was hoped that this gesture would help soften the defeat. Interestingly, it was Churchill, not Hitler, who started the deliberate targeting and bombing of civilian populations. Churchill deliberately provoked Hitler in the spring and summer of 1940 by sending out RAF squadrons over Berlin schools and hospitals. He did it repeatedly over the course of three months until Hitler finally had enough and took the bait. Before this antagonism, Hitler personally ordered the bombing on Britain to be restricted to military targets only (such as airfields and munitions factories). After Churchill's diabolical provocation, Hitler retaliated with the notorious Blitz in September of that year. The rest is well-known history. Churchill, like the shrewdly calculating and deceitfully sinister politician that he was, used this attack to make himself look good. While English women and children were undergoing the horrors of a Luftwaffe bombing their prime minister intentionally provoked, Churchill remained safe underground inside a fortified bunker on Downing Street. His pretentious speeches about "fighting on the beaches" during England's "finest our" were intended to galvanize the British into rallying behind their leader. Predictably, they worked, thanks in no small part to the unconditional support of the British mass media.
Just as the Brits were deceived and lied into a horrendously unnecessary war, so too were the Americans duped, betrayed, and deceived by their duplicitous FDR who provoked a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as a means to bring American boys into the most destructive war in history. For his part, Hitler believed the British were bluffing and would ultimately come to their senses and not stubbornly commit themselves to an unnecessary conflict that would bankrupt the British Empire. He also knew that sooner or later he'd inevitably come to blows with the expansionist Soviet empire. When the British and French refused to stay out of the affairs of central Europe, he had no choice but to make a temporary pact with Stalin and divide up Poland. This gave Stalin extra time to prepare for a "liberation" of the capitalist nations and produce even more planes, tanks, guns, and artillery. After Hitler's quick victories in the West, he offered to make peace with Britain and France on three separate occasions. This was from the magnanimous position of a conqueror, and not that of an exhausted and desperate defender.
The last thing Hitler, or any German statesman, wanted was to be locked and squeezed in a two-front war. Again it needs to be emphasized that Hitler had to secure his rear by knocking out France and Britain quickly, make peace with them, and then utilize his strategic position to wipe out communism while getting some land out of it. He saw the Soviet colossus as a threat to all of Europe, and was determined to destroy her. Germany was not even prepared for a war with the West. The Hossbach memorandum of 1937 clearly shows that Germany was unsure of when and if war would break out in the West. If it did, Hitler and the High Command expected it to come sometime between 1941-1945. Amazingly, German industry was not geared towards "total war" until 1944.
Excluding the lies and distortions being spewed out by anti-German and pro-Soviet newspapers during the 1930s, Hitler's entire foreign policy from day one was consistent with what he had written in Mein Kampf in 1924, and with every single diplomatic mission, namely, to seek an alliance with Great Britain and Italy. Throughout the 1930s, Hitler had done everything he could to try to make an alliance and be friends with Great Britain. He respected them for their accomplishments and contributions to civilization, and considered their domination of the world to be proud proof of Aryan supremacy. There were receptive factions within and without English society who recognized the advantages in having a strong, pro-British, anti-communist German state in the heart of Europe as a friend and ally. Edward VIII is one of the most famous examples.
In spite of the frenzied, hysterical tone of the minority-controlled radios and newspapers, the overwhelming majority of British and Americans still saw no justifiable reason why some territorial dispute in central Europe was worth the lives of their sons. Even Neville Chamberlain later remarked that the Polish Corridor wasn't worth a drop of blood from one English grenadier. But none of this mattered to the small minority of people in America and Britain who only cared about destroying a Germany they despised for electing a leader that they hated for obvious reasons.
To be continued...