The Good War?

The Second World War is widely known and talked about as "the Good War." At first glance this seems strange, as it was the bloodiest and most deadly war in human history; it had a death toll of 50 to 70 million, with far more casualties reported in the Allies camp than among the Axis powers.

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The reason why it's called "good" is because nations led by brutal dictators (Germany, Italy, and Japan) fought democratic nations, led by Great Britain and the United States. It was democracy against brutal totalitarianism, freedom against holocaust, in short it was good versus evil, and the good side won... The only problem with this popular view on the Second World War is that it's misleading at best. The truth is that there was no good side; there was bad and worse. What we learn at school is a highly sanitized version of our own histories; it's always a version that minimizes or completely excludes the wrongdoings of the powers that be and the winners, who are usually the same. In the case of the "Good War," the saying "history is always written by the winners" should be slightly adjusted to "whoever writes history will be made out to be the winner." Let me explain...

In the west we learn at school that the Second World War was won by the Allied forces, but mostly America. Many books are written and films are made about the military might and the heroic sacrifices of the American military. D-Day is the favorite subject, I think, among writers and film makers as the quintessential exemplar for American heroism and self-sacrifice. The Longest Day, Where Eagles Dare, Patton and of course Saving Private Ryan are just a few titles that spring to mind about that horrific day of June 6, 1944. Many American soldiers died that day and this landing at Normandy is still the largest seaborne invasion in history. However, this landing was possible only because the majority of German forces were being pinned down by the Soviet forces on the east front.

If history was told truthfully, we would all know that this "Good War" was won by the Soviet Union. They top all the statistics; they have by far the most casualties, 8 out of 10 German soldiers killed, were killed by them. The Allied western forces led by America and Great Britain, caused by far most of the civilian deaths, with the bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki most prominently among their aerial killing-sprees. And what's most disturbing is that there's no proof that these bombings did anything to influence the outcome of the war; especially the atomic bombs dropped in Japan were mainly to signal America's might to the Soviet Union, as Japan had already lost the war at that point.

If you're a regular reader of my blog you already know all this, but it's always good to see and hear these points being made by someone who's more credible than little old me; I'm just some old dude writing on the internet. So, please watch the below linked interview with Danny Sjursen, a retired U.S. Army major, historian and author who teaches history at West Point, the United States Military Academy. He's being interviewed about his new book, "A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism."

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