Losing World War II

A glorious moment against tyranny shadowed by an ignominy of helping tyranny

by Dan Lieberman / January 13th, 2024

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill desperately tried to persuade United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to declare war on Germany and enter World War II. The U.S. president recognized Nazi Germany’s threat to Western civilization and U.S. interests but his intuition told him that the American people were not ready for battle. Complicating a proposed alliance was FDR’s critical attitude toward the British Prime Minister; they had met at a 1919 post-World War I conference, where Roosevelt considered Churchill a heavy drinker who behaved in a superior manner. The British PM also represented the colonialists of the British Empire and supported the empire’s hold on world trade and world prices. Roosevelt sought the end of colonialism and the beginning of free trade. He considered Winston Churchill as an obstacle to achieving both pursuits.

German forces conquered France and Roosevelt realized the need to help Britain. His help considered British soldiers fighting the war with U.S. armaments and not together with U.S. soldiers. The entrance of the Soviet Union into the war increased the president’s belief that the joint Anglo-Soviet forces, aided by U.S. war materials, would be able to defeat Germany without the U.S. entering the war. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor reorganized the war map and Roosevelt found his nation forced into battle.

The U.S. declared war on imperial Japan and not on Nazi Germany. After Germany declared war on the U.S., considered one of the most strategic blunders ever made by a country at war, the U.S. returned the favor and entered the European theater of war. In December 1941, the U.S. military was unprepared and suffered quick losses from an advancing Japanese army. Preoccupied with stopping the Japanese, U.S. strategists had no will to fight on two fronts. However, they did. In the finest years of their history, the American people sacrificed everything, stood united as never before and never since, produced armaments at a record pace — a warship each day ─ and, together with the Soviet Union, liberated Europe and Asia from aggression and oppression.

To those who observe events from a socio-economic perspective, America fought in World War II to prevent German and Japanese economic dominance and assure American hegemony. Those familiar with FDR and America of that time have a different perspective — Roosevelt was an internationalist who believed no country should dominate and no country should be dominated. At Yalta, he knew that the United States and the Soviet Union would emerge as the dominant world powers and to prevent clashes, each needed its sphere of influence and defensive perimeter. Being dominant did not mean dominating and Roosevelt, maybe naively, expected that the Socialist Soviet Union would treat all nations in its sphere of influence as an equal partner. He titled the war effort “America, the arsenal of democracy,” assuring, by morality and military might that liberty and freedom would be made available to all.

Future U.S. presidents betrayed Roosevelt’s vision. The U.S. achieved dominance and fought to preserve it. The glow of the shining World War II years began to dim and was extinguished by President Biden’s actions at the start of Israel’s war on Gaza. Americans were now supporting tyranny that had many elements to what they had fought against, willing accomplices to an apartheid Israel that supposedly arose from the ashes of the Holocaust and developed from embers that characterized Nazi Germany — ultra-nationalism, racism, militarism, irredentism, belief in the unique folk, and perpetuation of genocide. List the characteristics of nations and compare apartheid Israel with Nazi Germany and the two nations have many similar characteristics, while apartheid Israel shows little relation to Western democracies. Not everyone will agree with the comparisons made with the writer’s knowledge and honest effort. Others can construct their comparison tables and gather their conclusions.

• Israel does not have the totalitarian rule that characterized Nazi Germany but, during the last decades, extreme right governments have governed. Critics of China’s government rail at Xi Jinping’s extended rule after a 10-year presidency of two terms. Benjamin Netanyahu ruled for 11 years and has ruled again for the last year.
• Israel does not have a corporate state (Fascist economy), where the government exercises strict control over corporate behavior and essentially regulates the economy. Social control is much less in Israel but existent. Modern techniques allow Israel’s intelligence agencies to conduct greater surveillance of the population, more than the intrusions that existed in Nazi Germany.
• Israel is not nearly at the sinister level of the brutal Nazi system that murdered, plundered, and brought chaos to all of Europe but its policies have usurped Palestinian lands, held the Palestinians in captivity, destroyed their tools for having a decent life, reduced their feelings of security, and are directed to diminish their will to live; policies that are genocidal.

Assisting the development of apartheid Israel into acquiring characteristics associated with Nazi Germany and rewarding it for its brutal activities are one part of contemporary U.S. governments’ betrayal of World War II efforts to combat tyranny. The other part allows the memory and deaths of those who died in the World War II Holocaust to be used to advance Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.

Hundreds of books, films, plays (the Holocaust Theater Catalog has chronicled over 950 theater works from around the world relating to the Holocaust), TV dramas, radio broadcasts, and streaming videos on the Holocaust are available. A new performance appears every year. In 2022-2023, the silver screen featured The Zone of Interest, a loose film adaptation of Martin Amis’ 2014 novel, which describes, in fiction, the domestic life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess and his family. Hasn’t this genre been done before, except the locales were on southern plantations? Who can be interested in the make-believe day-to-day walking around of a family with whom nobody has sympathy?

Tom Stoppard’s LEOPOLDSTADT (Vienna’s Jewish Quarter) played on Broadway from September 2022 to July 2023. Set in Vienna, the play follows the lives of one extended and prosperous Jewish family from 1899, through the war years and into the middle of the twentieth century.

An opera, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, based on a 1962 book and a later film, had a short run in Manhattan in 2022.  A brief description.

The Garden of The Finzi-Continis is set on the eve of World War II and tells the story of an aristocratic Italian-Jewish family, the Finzi-Continis, who believe they will be immune to the changes happening around them.  As they make a gracious haven for themselves in their garden, walling out the unpleasantness of the world outside, Italy forms its alliance with Germany and begins to enforce anti-Semitic racial laws.  But the Finzi-Continis discover too late that no one is immune, no one is untouchable.

I don’t expect any artistic presentations on the 75-year ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, which has enough tragic stories to fill Broadway theaters for 15 million years, but how about something on Rohingya, Cambodia, Darfur, or Armenians, just one presentation? If events during WWII are appreciated, why not more in the visual arts that feature the heroism of American soldiers and the effects of the war on the American people — powerful dramas that inspire, encourage, and renew patriotism?

The extensive concentration on one particular atrocity captures each generation and accumulates material that can be revived after many years. For what purpose? It cannot be for an entertainment purpose ─ these are not themes that can be entertaining. Can’t be for commercial purposes ─ these stories don’t stimulate the box office. Can’t be for educational purposes ─ they have not prevented other mass atrocities or genocides, which is an important consideration. The cultural expressions of the WWII Holocaust serve to emotionally attach viewers to one ethnicity as perpetual victims and sympathize with them in the creation of a state that is also always a victim and must use pulverizing force against the worldwide army of anti-Semites who are conspiring to destroy that state.

The plethora of Holocaust dramas that suffocate the senses is not enough to rally Americans to support Israel. We also have museums. In twenty-six states there are sixty-six Holocaust museums and educational centers.

In the U.S. there are two prominent World War II history museums — The National WWII Museum, in New Orleans and The National Museum of the Pacific War, in Fredericksburg, Texas. Two other museums, World War II American Experience, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and the Wright Museum, located in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, “recognize and honor the contributions and enduring legacy of WWII-era Americans.” In addition to the two major and minor museums, there are another 128 museums and exhibits in the U.S. that focus on or relate to some aspect of World War II. Strange that the U.S. gave priority to constructing the Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1980 on prime and reserved land for federal buildings and did not finish construction of the World War II memorial (a World War I memorial is now being constructed) until 2004, 24 years after establishing the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Unfortunately, the National WWII Museum has not escaped the clutches of the holocaust industry; for some unknown reason, it includes lectures, such as, “Why Did ‘Kristallnacht’ Happen? Teaching the History of European Antisemitism.” Why does a study of events that occurred before WWII, that are discussed in other venues, that is one part of a European history that has religious wars, and has no direct relation with Americans, appear in a national museum of World War II?

Why do U.S. authorities give little attention to an important period in U.S. history and give excessive attention to a tragic occurrence in a foreign country visited upon foreign people? We know Americans have not reacted to the World War II Holocaust and used their might to prevent other genocides. Do Americans enjoy any of these lugubrious, doleful, and depressing presentations of man’s inhumanity to man? Maybe, yes. The Native Americans constructed a museum of affirmation in Washington, DC, with exhibits describing the cultures of existing and living tribes. The museum does not highlight the genocides visited upon the indigenous peoples. The initial reaction to its presentation was not encouraging, Americans expected more blood and battle.

We could give Americans what they may want by converting the Holocaust Memorial museums into museums that describe the genocides of the indigenous tribes. Better than that ─ turn the Holocaust Memorial museums into inspirational museums, where Americans learn of the heroism, wisdom, and sacrifices of American people and institutions who fought for peace, justice, and freedom. American museums for Americans — museums that inform, give hope, arouse optimism, make Americans feel good, bring Americans together, and make them want to work united, as they did during the difficult World War II years.

Reverse what is now drastically wrong. Stop the special interests that manipulate and control the American people. If Israel carries out the genocide, which seems more likely each day, the World War II sacrifices and Holocaust deaths will have been in vain, the Statue of Liberty will signify hypocrisy, and the American Republic, established in 1789, will have reached its end.

Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com. He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan.