A 9/11 Anniversary special: What if the Pearl Harbor Era had 9/11 Era insanity?

[CJK]

THOUSANDS FEARED DEAD IN FRANCE INVASION

June 7, 1944

Washington—American and British forces met stiff resistance as they stormed ashore in the long dreaded invasion of France yesterday.

Although initial details were sketchy, sources have told the Times that thousands were killed or missing in the assault. If so, it would represent yet another blow to the Roosevelt administration’s faltering war effort and perhaps even more importantly, what is left of its ability to maintain political support at home.

The invasion apparently targeted five separate beaches in the Normandy region of France. Times correspondents on offshore warships reported an enormous number of soldiers being treated for wounds and injuries. The somber mood was summed up by one private who had lost his leg to a German mortar: 

“It’s the most horrible thing me and my fellow comrades have ever experienced. They make war look like it is all fun and games back home but in reality it is the most hellish experience imaginable.”

The fact that such statements have occurred this early, in what Roosevelt himself has admitted will be a long and difficult campaign, may indicate that American resolve will crack before the Germans.

By all accounts the Germans, far from being demoralized by Allied air and naval supremacy, fought back with remarkable determination bordering on fanaticism.   

Worse from the administration’s viewpoint was that the news threatened to overshadow the capture of Rome just two days earlier, the first glimmer of progress in Italy since that front bogged down into a bloody stalemate many months ago.

“If he was looking forward to a ‘Rome bounce’ in the polls, he certainly won’t get one now” said Bill Roberts, a Democratic pollster.

Impatience at home

“The bottom line is that the American people are fed up with these wars which have cost so much in blood and treasure,” said an anonymous Democratic strategist.

“For some, the turning point came after we got crushed in the Philippines, for others it was when the President bungled his response to the U-boat offensive on the East Coast. Still others have never gotten over the Tarawa fiasco. And at home we’ve had so many strikes and riots that it feels like our very fabric is being torn apart.”

Asked what he would recommend for Roosevelt he said “he has to figure out how to get out of Europe before election time if he wants to keep his job.”

Indeed, even if American forces eventually clear the Germans out of France, it seems unlikely that there would be any political capital to actually invade Germany itself.

This was summed up by a Midwestern man, one of the 35% who still tepidly support the war in Europe, when he commented that “I think we should kick the Germans out of France but I think it would be a total waste if our boys got blown up fighting in a place like Germany. If German people won’t rise up against Hitler or Nazism, why on earth should we fight and die expecting them to suddenly change their attitudes?

“We can’t impose democracy through the barrel of a gun. We learned that in the last war. If we have to get rid of Hitler, I think Russia should do the job. I know they would impose Communism on the Germans, but those nut-jobs deserve it, frankly.”

Mixed reaction in France

The invasion brought mixed reaction among the French populace. There were feelings of joy, relief, indifference, cynicism, and downright bitterness.

“The Americans claim they are here to liberate us, but in reality they are just as bad as the Germans,” one 42 year old French civilian told us. “Even though they claim to only hit military targets, they have wantonly smashed our cities to bits with their bombers and have killed thousands of innocent people.”

Another civilian, a 36 year old female was less critical. “I’m glad they are finally coming to save us from Hitler. We should be grateful.” But, she added “On the other hand, there are valid concerns that the Americans will act according solely to their own interests, and ignore what the people of France want and need.”

Tactics questioned

The curious choice of Normandy as the attack point raised eyebrows from military experts consulted by the Times.

General John Pershing, who led the American Expeditionary Force in the First World War, said that Normandy was poorly suited for landings compared to other parts of France closer to Allied supplies in Britain.

He added that the President disregarded pre-war advice that indicated that 20 million men would be required to defeat Germany, far fewer than those that are being deployed now.

Republican Criticism Mounts 

Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey did not make any comment on the invasion on the campaign trail yesterday, but in the evening his campaign released a statement critical of Roosevelt’s policy.

“While I wholeheartedly support our troops in uniform who are performing bravely despite dubious leadership at home, it is a tragedy that this came about at all. This is the wrong war, at the wrong place at the wrong time. The president still does not understand that it was Japan that attacked us, not Germany. Yet he has spent two-thirds of the $15 trillion these wars have cost to fight a war of choice with Germany. The fact that he has adopted this desperate escalation is a signal that he has no real exit strategy and is basically gambling with the lives of our young men in uniform. The American people understand that it is high time that we end this war and bring them home.”

Anti-war Senator Robert Taft was even harsher in a speech he gave on the Senate floor.

“This President has destroyed tens of thousands of American and European lives and has virtually abolished civil liberties at home. The average American has been turned into a virtual slave thanks to the Roosevelt war-policy. We are being drafted, detained, censored, and forced into a corrupt ration system all so this President can continue to meddle in European affairs. The two wars in Europe and the Pacific, which have so far cost a combined 90,000 dead and $15 trillion, have been primarily fought by the poor and uneducated while the man in the White House today has known only wealth and privilege.

“It has become increasingly clear to all that the President exploited the December 7 tragedy for political gain and has grossly hyped the threat that Germany poses to us. His claim that Germany planned to attack Latin America has been debunked by the press as the hoax it was. The only real ‘winner’ of these wars has been the Soviet regime, as we are enhancing their power by waging war against her historical enemies Germany and Japan.”

Base Support Erodes

While Democrats remain generally supportive of the President, their support falls far short of the lofty heights he obtained following the December 7 attacks.

Civil rights leaders have come close to repudiating him entirely. “The President has not only failed to advance race relations, he has actually set it back for a generation with his detention of Japanese Americans and his refusal to confront southern bigots who have opposed desegregating the army,” one community organizer said.

Liberal activists have long been discontent with the cost. “I think the President missed a fleeting opportunity when he completely squandered the unity December 7 produced. He had a chance to finally invest in our nation’s healthcare, education, and international competitiveness,” said a self-described progressive columnist. “Instead, he embarked on a senseless policy of militarism. Think of what we could have had if he had taken only one tenth of the funding for his war of choice and invested in the working poor and our shrinking middle class. I guess he’d literally rather destroy other countries than compete economically.”

Democratic members of Congress up for re-election have attempted to distance themselves from a “stay the course” approach to the European war, and have advocated a phased redeployment from Europe to better protect American interests around the globe.

“Our forces are stretched thin all over the world and need to be fully engaged with the challenges of tomorrow instead of being spread out to the breaking point over Britain, Iceland, North Africa, Italy and now France,” was one New York Senators comment.

[CJK]

Anti-war Protesters Rally
   
Hours after the invasion was announced, the America First Committee held an emergency anti-war rally in Washington D.C. A press release condemned “yet another illegal attack on a sovereign nation.”

Speaker Charles Lindbergh castigated U.S. foreign policy and said it was responsible for the “blowback” we were experiencing all over the world. He argued that American support for the corrupt and unpopular Weimar Republic was responsible for Hitler’s rise to power.

He also argued that U.S. imperialism in Asia in general and the controversial pre-war sanctions against in particular Japan provoked the December 7 attacks.

Mocking Roosevelt’s claim to value freedom, Lindbergh said that “of our two main Allies, one is an Empire controlling a quarter of the world’s people; the other is governed by a brutal Communist dictator. Sorry if I don’t see much hope for liberty so long as we are allied with those countries.”

The strongest applause, however, came from Matilda Johnson, whose son was one of some 3,000 Americans killed in fighting in Tunisia.

“We know that this war is really about how King Franklin wants to line his corporate cronies’ pockets with our tax dollars,” she bellowed. “And also about how he wants American corporations to control Germany’s coal supplies.

“Every day this President has been murdering hundreds of innocent German civilians in his indiscriminant terror bombings. He is forcing our sons to become war criminals. He’s a bigger war criminal than Hitler ever was.”

The rally was attended by controversial documentary filmmaker Larry Samuelson, who argued that the latest expansion of the war proved that “the President has no real policy apart from killing people and enriching his friends.”

Samuelson has come under fire from Roosevelt supporters for reportedly working on a film about the massacre of dozens of Italian POWs by U.S. forces in Sicily last year. Brushing off the criticism, Samuelson says that “I am a patriot, and it disgusts me how this President insinuates that anyone who disagrees with him is some sort of Nazi sympathizer. I want to show the reality of what this war has cost both at home and in terms of our moral authority abroad. The soldiers that I show in the film are just as big of victims of the war machine as the Italians they murdered.”

Meanwhile, in Britain, Winston Churchill was forced to cancel a speech after thousands of protesters threatened to disrupt his him with chants of “War criminal!” and “Down with Roosevelt’s poodle!” They were apparently referring to the documents disclosed by an anti-secrecy organization last week which showed that Churchill agreed to an invasion of France in 1943 under American and Russian pressure even though he greatly preferred to continue less risky operations in southern Europe.   

Murky origins

President Roosevelt and his supporters have argued that the war in Europe was thrust upon him by the German declaration of war on December 11, 1941. Yet that view has increasingly come under fire from the intellectual establishment.

“The so called ‘German declaration of war’ when you read it, is actually clear that it is just expressing Germany’s opinion that Roosevelt himself opened hostilities with his infamous ‘shoot on sight’ order the previous September,” said Bruce Benson, author of Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 11, and the Politics of Deceit. “The fact of the matter is that it was just used as a pretext for the war that we know Roosevelt had long wanted and planned for.”

A healthy though dwindling majority of Americans continue to support the war in the Pacific, yet that conflict’s legitimacy has come under fire from a small but very vocal group of activists who question whether or not Pearl Harbor was a government conspiracy.

“We know there’s been a ton of shady activity by this government in East Asia,” said Jeffery Anderson, leader of Americans for 12/7 truth. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that the OSS was pulling the strings on these so-called ‘Japanese militarists.’” He added that the jury was still out regarding whether Germany or Poland attacked first.

Intolerance Grows

As the recent developments threatened to overshadow the two and a half anniversary of the December 7 attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, scholars have noted an alarming rise of prejudice against Fascist Americans since that day. They argue that these fears, stoked by the White House’s heated rhetoric against Nazi extremists, point to a troubling new intolerance.

“The vast majority of Fascists reject the extreme ideology that Hitler espouses,” said Matthew Ryan, professor at Yale. “They just want food on the table for their kids, and to have a prouder, more dignified spirit for their people in general. Much of the atrocity stories we hear out of Europe are probably exaggerated, to the extent they do occur it is more likely that they are driven by the forces of poverty and social exclusion than anything inherent in Fascism.”

[CJK]

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Is it just me, or are the December 7 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after December 7 — and I think even people on the left know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Douglas MacArthur, George C. Marshall, and, yes, Franklin D. Roosevelt raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war in Europe that liberals wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to this torpedo attack disaster?

The memory of 12/7 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

For obvious reasons, please don’t publish responses to my letter.

Krum Pauline

June 7, 1944

Krum Pauline is a prominent conservative economist and former advisor to Sinclair Oil