Research Catalog

Title

The myth of the good war : America in the Second World War / Jacques R. Pauwels.

Author

Pauwels, Jacques R.

Publication

Toronto : James Lorimer & Company Ltd., 2015.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

326 pages; 23 cm

Summary

"A revisionist historian offers a refreshing but challenging account of the Second World War, what caused it, why it unfolded as it did, and who emerged the real victor. In the spirit of historians Howard Zinn, Gwynne Dyer, and Noam Chomsky, Jacques Pauwels focuses on the big picture. Like them, he seeks to find the real reasons for the actions of great powers and great leaders. Familiar Second World War figures from Adolf Hitler to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin are portrayed in a new light in this book. The decisions of Hitler and his Nazi government to go to war were not those of madmen. Britain and the US were not allies fighting shoulder to shoulder with no motive except ridding the world of the evils of Nazism. In Pauwels' account, the actions of the United States during the war years were heavily influenced by American corporations -- IBM, GM, Ford, ITT, and Standard Oil of New Jersey (now called Exxon) -- who were having a very profitable war selling oil, armaments, and equipment to both sides, with money gushing everywhere. Rather than analyzing Pearl Harbor as an unprovoked attack, Pauwels notes that US generals boasted of their success in goading Japan into a war the Americans badly wanted. One chilling account describes why President Truman insisted on using nuclear bombs against Japan when there was no military need to do so. Another reveals that Churchill instructed his bombers to flatten Dresden and kill thousands when the war was already won, to demonstrate British-American strength to Stalin. Leaders usually cast in a heroic mould in other books about this war look quite different here. Nations that claimed a higher purpose in going to war are shown to have had far less idealistic motives. The Second World War, as Jacques Pauwels tells it, was a good war only in myth. The reality is far messier -- and far more revealing of the evils that come from conflicts between great powers and great leaders seeking to enrich their countries and dominate the world." -- From publisher's website.

Subject

• World War (1939-1945)
• 1939-1945
• World War, 1939-1945 > United States
• United States

Note

• A revised edition of the 2002 English translation with updated foreword.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Additional Formats (note)

• Issued also in electronic format.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction : America and the myth of the "great crusade" -- The American power elite and fascism -- America and the red peril -- The war in Europe and America's economic interests -- Fall 1941 : the tide of war turns in front of Moscow -- Women : the United States at war with Japan and Germany -- Class warfare on the American home front -- A second front for Stalin, or a third front in the air -- Stalin's Soviet Union : an unloved but useful partner -- The liberation of Italy : a fateful precedent -- The long summer of 1944 -- The successes of the Red Army and the Yalta agreements -- Dresden : a signal for Uncle Joe -- From Roosevelt's "soft line" to Truman's "hard line" toward Stalin -- An anti-Soviet crusade? -- The winding road to the German surrender(s) -- America between confidence and concern -- Nuclear diplomacy and the onset of the Cold War -- A useful new enemy -- Corporate collaboration and the so-called "de-Nazification" of Germany (1) -- Corporate collaboration and the so-called "de-Nazification" of Germany (2) -- The United States, the Soviets, and the post-war fate of Germany -- After 1945 : from the good war to permanent war.

ISBN

• 9781459408722 (pbk.)
• 1459408721 (pbk.)

OCLC

• 899761431
• SCSB-12552187

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library