To Win the Lost War

By Lawrence Cambria

Perhaps the most long overdue work ever written about World War II and Americas role in winning it. Bold, fresh, unique, extremely well documented, and brutally honest, in To Win the Lost War Lawrence Cambria examines and analyzes the war at numerous levels and spaced intervals in order to provide the reader with an ongoing assessment of the overall situation as the war progressed. He examines, analyzes, and compares the major turning points of the war in Europe in order to determine which has the best claim to being the decisive turning point. He also takes a fresh look at Americas war experience, bringing into focus numerous aspects of the war which are unknown to most Americans. Finally, he brings greater context to the importance of the American military effort.
With To Win the Lost War the author joins a growing number of contemporary scholars who are making many of the same observations that he has. In fact, his work draws on a bibliography of works from more than 200 scholars on the war and has more than 1,100 supporting footnotes. In To Win the Lost War Lawrence Cambria separates popular myth from reality and provides his readers with observations on the war from perspectives that many have never considered. Read To Win the Lost War. It will change the way you look at World War II forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514426999

Lawrence Cambria

Lawrence H. Cambria graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Rhode Island in 2005 with a B.A., in history and a minor in political science. He has also taken courses at the University of Georgia, Louisiana State, Oklahoma State, the University of Illinois, and Ohio University. His major area of knowledge is military history, and in particular, World War II. Aggressive and cocky by nature, as a student in college the author loved to debate with his professors and occasionally had to be reminded who was actually running the classroom. However, his work was recognized as exceptional by most of his professors, including his World War II instructor Stanley Hilton of LSU, who stated that the author had been, “one of the top two or three people ever to take the course.” Along with a lifelong love of history, the author has spent much of his life practicing martial arts and playing chess, both of which, like war, involve tactics, strategy, and the application of force. At the present time he resides in Rehoboth, Massachusetts and is currently working on his next work, The Democrats and Republicans: A Historical Comparison.

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Copyright © 2016 by Lawrence Cambria.

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Rev. date: 01/25/2016

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Author’s Notes

Preface

1    Assertions, Myths, And Observations

2    Assessing The Major Powers

3    The Run-Up To The War: Lessons And Implications For Future Events

4    The Blitzkrieg Begins

5    The Empire Stands Alone

6    Eastern Sun Rising

7    Operation Barbarossa: The Real War Begins

8    The Battle Of Kursk

9    El Alamein And Stalingrad

10    The Summer Of No Return

11    Super Weapons: Hitler’s Last Hope

12    America’s War Experience Reexamined

13    Burying The Myth Of America’s Vital Importance To The Defeat Of Germany

14    In The Footsteps Of Napoleon

Appendices

Bibliography

For my beautiful daughter Reagan Thatcher

INTRODUCTION

On September 1, 1939, in an unprovoked act of aggression the armed might of the German army rolled across the Polish border. Two days later the governments of Britain and France would declare war on Germany, marking the official start of World War II. The greatest war in the history of the world had begun. It would last six years, ravaging two continents, and spreading death and destruction on an unparalleled scale across much of the globe. Thousands of cities and towns would be destroyed, and more than fifty-five million people would lose their lives in what would be the greatest man-made disaster in human history.

At the time it was seen by many as a war in which madmen bent on global domination had banded together in order to overthrow the old world order, and replace it with a new one, in which individual freedoms would be replaced by the bonds of slavery in the service of the master races. In America it would come to be seen as the ultimate struggle between the forces of good and evil, a struggle that would determine the course of human history and the very existence of the United States itself, a struggle in which the United States would throw the decisive weight into the scales of victory.

While this is the commonly held American perception of the war the reality is that very little of it is actually true. The fact of the matter is that we, in our rightful pride over our wartime contributions and sacrifices, have greatly exaggerated the threat posed by the Axis Powers to the freedom and security of the United States and our contribution to the defeat of one of them: Germany. The truth is often uncomfortable and inconvenient. On occasion we are forced to confront the reality that significant events in our history have been misrepresented or exaggerated well beyond that which the evidence supports. Sometimes too our heroes are revealed to have been less than what we believed them to be. This, unfortunately, is the case here.

I became interested in World War II before my tenth birthday and have had a fascination for it ever since. As such, I pored over every book and watched every documentary I could, trying to devour every minute detail and trivial fact. As I matured I made a conscious effort to look at the war as impartially and analytically as possible, not as an American but as a seeker of knowledge and truth. During the process I began to notice a profound difference between the way the war was being portrayed in movies, American folklore, and classrooms; and what was actually supported by the conditions, developments, numbers, statistics, and numerous other factors that determine the outcome of wars. I also noticed that in a roundabout way the comments and observations of many military historians provided glaring contradictions to the popularly accepted American myths. In more recent years a growing number of them have even openly and plainly stated the obvious facts. Nonetheless, the popular myths still survive despite the ocean of readily available evidence disproving them.

I undertook the writing of this book in order to help the American people gain a better understanding of the war and America’s contribution to its ending, and to see reality in all of its ugliness, as Cromwell would have had it, with all of its warts in plain view (and stripped of all myth and misconception). It is well past due that we reassess both our contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany and the threat supposedly represented to our freedom and existence by the Axis Powers, and put things in a proper, more factually based perspective.

Much of my life has been devoted to the study of World War II and years of research to the writing of this book. I have carefully and painstakingly examined a considerable amount of readily available evidence from solid, scholarly, and official sources of information. I have also, I believe, done a thorough and thoughtful analysis. In the process I have compiled a considerable amount of numerical, statistical, operational, and circumstantial evidence which when taken in its entirety presents an illuminating and often unflattering picture of America’s war effort, one that is far removed from the exaggerated claims and sanitized images we have come to accept as being representative of reality.

The honest student of history will read the following pages with an open mind and thoughtfully consider the evidence presented in them. The skeptic or blind patriot, however, will simply dismiss them as nonsense, lies, or anti-American propaganda and will no doubt denounce the author as a liar, a fool, or both. However, I am confident that the evidence I have put forth, in what I believe to be a well-supported analysis, will solidly make my case. I believe that the arguments and observations I have made and the conclusions I have drawn are strong enough to stand up to close scrutiny. I also believe that this book will eventually force American academia to reassess the way the history of the war is taught in the United States.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Every work of history requires the author to seek assistance from others including scholars, editors, and institutions. Therefore I would like to take a moment to acknowledge those people and organizations that assisted me during my years of research.

I owe a debt of gratitude to the libraries and staffs of the towns of Seekonk and Rehoboth, Ma., for procuring numerous sources of information that were not readily available. I would like to mention my friend livestock farmer Mark Hass of Rehoboth. Mark is a well-read student of World War II with considerable knowledge of the US Navy’s submarine campaign in the Pacific. The numerous books he graciously offered to let me borrow from his private collection of works on the war were helpful in rounding out the text and providing numerous fascinating and obscure points of interest. I would also like to thank my friend retired history teacher Doug Gobeille, also of Rehoboth, who read part of the first draft and offered numerous insights and comments. I would like to thank my close friend Kim Abers for her research efforts. Kim is a tireless researcher and provided valuable resource material in numerous areas and was a great help in procuring online information in particular. I would also like to thank my friend Ed Buist of Florida. Ed is a well-read WWII aficionado and member of a military reenactment association. He served as a fact checker for the main text on its historical contents, doing his own research in order to check my information and sources for accuracy. Finally, I must also give special thanks to political science professor Federigo Argentieri of John Cabot University, Rome, who graciously offered to review the original text.

AUTHOR’S NOTES

This book marks my first attempt to write a work of history. As a nonprofessional writer it has certainly not been an easy task, nor has it always been a pleasant one. Many a time I was tempted to tear up my notes and throw them, along with my computer, out the window. The worst and most challenging part has been acting as my own copyeditor. Many an hour was spent poring over my grammar book examining particular aspects of proper writing. Many a night was spent correcting punctuation errors, re-writing whole sections, adding some, deleting some, and moving others around. However, despite my efforts there will probably still be a small number of errors that have escaped my attention. For these I apologize.

PREFACE

Claim: It is to them [the men of D-Day] that we owe our freedom today.

Historian Stephen E. Ambrose

Counterclaim: it was in the Soviet Union that the Wehrmacht’s back was broken long before the Western Allies landed in France …

Historian Omer Bartov

In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, a vast fleet of ships loomed majestically on the horizon as it made its way slowly and inexorably towards a lonely stretch of barren, windswept beaches in northern France. Across the English Channel they had come–packed with some 156,000 troops, hundreds of tanks and artillery pieces, and thousands of support vehicles. Their mission–to storm Hitler’s vaunted Atlantic Wall, begin the liberation of Western Europe, and open Stalin’s long awaited second front.

The stunned German troops holding the Wall watched in disbelief as the Allied armada, looking like an unstoppable tide of ships and landing craft, steadily advanced towards their positions. It was the day that many Germans, including Hitler, had long expected–the day that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had labored furiously to prepare for. In his eyes as well as those of many on both sides, it was to be the day of destiny for the German war effort and the Third Reich itself. A cataclysmic struggle was about to take place. To many of the soldiers and civilians on either side it seemed as if the very outcome of the war would hang in the balance.

On that day great heroism would be displayed and sacrifices made by tens of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, and airmen. Great tragedies awaited many of them. Faraway places with unfamiliar names like Sainte Mere Eglise, Point Du Hoc, and Carantan would become forever embedded in our nation’s collective consciousness. Faraway beaches with familiar sounding yet unlikely names would become places of horror and legend, like Utah … and Omaha.

More than seventy years have passed since that Homeric struggle took place on that lonely forbidding shore. Most of the brave souls who stormed the beaches that day only to find too heavy fire and too little cover have passed away into eternity. Those that do remain still carry the emotional and physical scars that traumatized their bodies and souls on that longest day. They remember with horror and pride their service, sacrifice and suffering amidst a sea of chaos, explosions and blood with few comparisons in American history. They remember too the importance that had been attached to their individual missions and the invasion itself. They had come to free the oppressed peoples of Western Europe and save the remainder of the world, including the United States, from the Nazi menace.

Each year in both America and Western Europe the heroes of D-Day are remembered in stories and tributes bestowed upon them by national leaders and dignitaries in Europe and the United States. We remember them with pride and recall their daring and deadly exploits, nurturing a legend that has grown stronger with the passing of time. Yet for all of our rightful pride in the accomplishments of our nation and its brave men on that day and those that followed on that hostile, war-torn continent the truth of the matter is that the importance of the invasion of Normandy, as well as that of all of America’s actions on and over the European mainland, has been greatly exaggerated. The sad truth is that when great-granddad stormed the beaches of Normandy he did so in a war whose final outcome had long been decided and was no longer in doubt.

This statement will no doubt come as a shock to many Americans as a result of the myths they have been conditioned to believe over the decades since the war’s end. However, the truth of the matter is that military historians have known for decades that Germany could never have won a world war and was irrevocably losing the war in Europe long before the D-Day landings took place. The reality is that far too many Americans have been unknowingly indoctrinated by our leaders, military heroes, news media, entertainment industry, and schools into believing a sanitized, inflated, and mythical version of World War II that is far less accurate than they realize. There is perhaps no greater example of this than our greatly exaggerated belief in the importance of Americans storming Omaha and Utah beaches on D-Day. To this day many Americans regard it as having been the decisive event of the European war as well as vital to our survival as a nation. Among them are numerous famous and respected people who have referred to the D-Day invasion as an act that literally saved the world. Overlooked almost completely by all of them are the geopolitical, industrial, military and other realities that existed at that time, which as will be clearly demonstrated, had already doomed Hitler’s Germany to ultimate defeat long before the landings at Normandy took place.

While the American contribution during the Normandy landing operations and subsequent days of fighting to establish a firm and unified beachhead provided many gripping, inspiring and tragic demonstrations of American courage, daring, and sacrifice, it was far from deserving of the exaggerated level of importance that it usually receives in America. A closer look at the initial invasion itself reveals glaring indicators of an overall strategic situation which does not lend support to the common American perception of the event. The very fact that the Normandy landings had been successfully conducted facing, virtually no naval resistance beneath the cover of an Anglo-American sky, provides obvious, undeniable, and compelling evidence that the Germans were already clearly losing the war and headed for certain defeat before they took place. However, despite these obvious indications as to the parlous state of Hitler’s Germany by June 1944, and their corollary implications, they seem to go unnoticed by the public at large.

Ironically, the true importance of the D-Day landings and those that followed along France’s southern coast was not in defeating the already fatally stricken Axis beast, but in their effect upon the conduct and ultimate outcome of the long struggle that followed with the Soviet Union in the decades after the war. While the landings at Normandy greatly facilitated the Allied war effort and American forces were certainly heroic in helping to finish off the still powerful Wehrmacht, their ultimate value to the United States, Britain and the Western world was not in saving them from the Nazi menace, but in defending them from the Soviet threat that arose from the ashes of Europe during the early post-war years.

Without the Normandy invasion the war may have gone on a bit longer; however, it is clear that regardless of whether or not the Germans had continued to hold Western Europe against the Anglo-Americans, they would have inevitably been crushed by the huge and unstoppable Red Army already within striking distance of the German homeland and rolling inexorably westward. This would not only have left Stalin in control of all of Germany with all its industrial resources at his disposal, but in sole possession of its advanced production and research facilities for missile and jet technology. The Red Army would have also been poised to fill a power vacuum in Western Europe that could have easily led to a Soviet occupation of France, the Low Countries, and perhaps even Spain with not so much as a single American or British soldier in a position to oppose them, at a time when America’s budding atomic weapons program could have offered little or nothing in the way of effective deterrence.

The implications of Russian control of German technological advancements and all of Western Europe, for the outcome of the Cold War, are enormous. Had the D-Day landings not taken place perhaps we would have ultimately lost the Cold War. With all of Western Europe under its control the Soviet Union would have represented a much more realistic threat to invade Britain, or even the United States, than Germany ever did. Although it is just a myth that the men of D-Day saved us all from speaking German today, it is possible that they may have saved us all from having to learn to speak Russian.

CHAPTER ONE

ASSERTIONS, MYTHS, AND OBSERVATIONS

Assertion One: The Axis Powers were never as serious a threat to the safety and security of the United States as most people believe.

To this day Americans look back with justifiable pride on our nation’s tremendous war efforts, sacrifices, and accomplishments, as well as the bravery of our men during World War II against the Axis Powers, even to the point of referring to Americans of that time as the Greatest Generation. The reality, however, is that Americans have innocently, perhaps, greatly exaggerated the danger posed by the Axis Powers to the United States. Despite the myths that persist to this day the fact of the matter is that neither Germany nor Japan ever represented a realistic threat to invade or conquer the United States. Nor as will be clearly demonstrated was it either of their intention to do so. As such they were never the threat to our freedom or existence that many people believed them to be or believe now.

Assertion Two: American military operations were not vital to the defeat of Nazi Germany

Despite the many glorious depictions of our war effort the harsh reality is that while direct American military involvement in the Pacific theatre was certainly vital to the defeat of Japan, in the European theatre it was neither decisive nor necessary for the defeat of Germany. The truth is that in regard to Germany at best American participation helped speed up and simplify an ongoing process that was already leading to an inevitable conclusion. Although it may not have been recognized by many people at that time, through the benefit of hindsight it is clear that the Germans were irrevocably losing the war before the first American units landed on the European mainland or the first American bomb fell on German soil. In fact, a strong argument can be made that the Germans were doomed to defeat before the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor and officially entered into the war. The unpleasant truth of the matter is that the American military was a relatively minor factor in and late comer to the war in Europe despite the numbers of men and weapons and the incredible amount of materiel involved. America’s entry into the war merely emphasized the point that the Germans could not win–nothing more! That is precisely why I titled this book To Win the Lost War.

Assertion Three: It was on the Russian Front that Germany was ultimately defeated

The history of World War II as seen through the eyes of most Americans is one in which the United States comes charging over the hill like the cavalry in an old Western, saving the day when all seems lost. As attractive as this view may be, however, it is both far removed from the facts and extremely unfair to the nation that sacrificed, endured, suffered, and contributed far more to the defeat of Germany than all other nations combined: the Soviet Union. It is indicative of the scale and scope of events on the Russian Front that more than half of the deaths–both civilian and military, that occurred during the war occurred there. It is also instructive to note that more Russians probably died during the almost 900 day German siege of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) than were lost by both Britain and the United States, including civilians, during the entire war.¹

Although the actual turning point of the war in the European theater remains a debated subject, one which will be analyzed in the following pages, what is beyond any reasonable dispute is that at whichever point the war turned irrevocably against the Germans it was largely the result of their conflict on the Russian Front with the Soviet Union. From the opening of hostilities between Germany and the Soviet Union in June 1941, to the raising of the Soviet flag above the Reichstag in Berlin in May 1945, most of the German army was fighting in the East.² There, huge battles, sometimes involving more than a million men and thousands of armored fighting vehicles, raged in a titanic struggle–waged by both sides without morality–where no rules or laws were observed, and where war was fought with a level of savagery and cruelty on a scale so vast as to be without parallel.³ (It is estimated that on average some 9 million men were involved in actions on the Russian Front at any time.⁴) Many of these battles were fought at places that most Americans have never heard of–like Belgorod, Pskov, Rzhev, Kremenchug, Konotop, Kalinin, Kharkov … and Kursk. And at a few places that they have–like Moscow, Leningrad … and Stalingrad.

The size of the war on the Russian Front was such that many historians refer to the Russo-German conflict of 1941-1945 as a separate war and regard it as the greatest war of all time; and despite all American claims and myths to the contrary, the undeniable and unavoidable evidence conclusively demonstrates that it was the Soviet Union, not the United States, which ultimately defeated the Third Reich. The vast expanse of the Russian Front was the anvil upon which the mighty Wehrmacht was smashed, and the hammer of its destruction was the Red Army.⁵

In the following pages I will conclusively demonstrate that our commonly accepted depiction of the American war experience has, in fact, been exaggerated to mythical proportions. Myths, unlike facts, however, cannot stand up to close scrutiny. It is now time to take a close look at the war and dispel them one by one.

Myths, Lies, and Reality: Examining the Mythology of World War Two

Check: With the possible exception of the Civil War, no event in our history is shrouded with more mythology and misconceptions than World War II.

Historian Mark Stoler

Checkmate: I am quite happy to mislead and to tell untruths if it will help to win the war.⁶

President F.D. Roosevelt

How did the myths about the Axis threat originate, and why do they still persist some seventy years after the end of the war? An examination of these two questions is central to the issue of trying to understand why so many Americans still fervently believe that America’s existence as a nation was at risk during the war and was preserved only by the indispensable and timely actions of the United States military. While it is certainly easy to understand how so many of the so-called greatest generation could have believed this myth it is much less so for those that have followed, since over the decades since the war’s end much information has been analyzed and put forth that clearly disprove it. The same is true of almost all of the war myths. Nonetheless, many Americans continue to believe in them.

Some of the myths about the war actually began before it even started. Many of these were largely the result of ignorance of actual circumstances. Others were the result of other contributing factors including exaggeration, and unfortunately (as will be seen), the occasional willingness of the President and the State Department to intentionally mislead the American people for what they clearly believed to be the greater good. In fact of all of the contributing factors arguably the most influential were the words of the President. Long before the outbreak of war, Roosevelt, who saw the Nazis as a direct threat to America,⁷ innocently perhaps, exaggerated the danger Germany posed to the United States to incredible proportions that went well beyond reality. His understandable concern for the safety of the free people of Europe and the United States led him to make numerous statements and take numerous actions that contributed to the unwarranted fears of the American people and the creation of numerous myths, some of which were fostered by the War Department through the use of newsreels and other forms of propaganda.

Starting with his repeated references to events taking place in Europe during the thirties, Roosevelt made sure that the American people were well aware of the activities of the Nazis and the threat he believed they posed to the freedom of people everywhere. Once the war in Europe actually started his tone became increasingly alarmist. In early 1940, as a result of the ongoing German invasion of Norway he declared a national emergency, implying that Hitler’s invasion of that small, distant nation posed a direct threat to the freedom and security of the United States. He was technically correct. It was indeed a national emergency … for Norway. However any idea that the security of the United States was threatened by the German invasion of the distant and insignificant Scandinavian state was absolute nonsense.⁸

Shortly after, the President grossly exaggerated the size of the German Luftwaffe when in mid-May he told Congress that it possessed 20,000 aircraft (this was probably more military aircraft than existed in the entire world) and that Germany was producing them at a much greater rate than the Allies were.⁹ The former claim was absurd, the latter simply wrong. The President, however, was not alone in accepting the wildest reports about the size of the Luftwaffe and spreading them around.¹⁰ William L. Shirer, a respected journalist living in Germany at the time, also believed and reported the same wildly inaccurate figure.¹¹

Presidential rumors were not just confined to exaggerated claims about the Luftwaffe or the invasion of Norway, however. In May 1941, with tiny Bulgaria now allied to Germany; the small states of Yugoslavia and Greece conquered; and Rommel invading a giant sandbox in the African desert thousands of miles from anything of vital importance to the United States, Roosevelt declared the general European situation to be a national emergency. Again, this was clearly a gross exaggeration to say the very least. A closer look at the situation reveals a far less menacing image. Apparently lost in the President’s analysis were the British victory during the Battle of Britain, the sinking of the Bismarck, the recent successful British naval actions against the Italian navy in the Mediterranean Sea, and the earlier decimation of the pitifully small German surface fleet during the Norway operations.¹²

But despite these signs that Germany was not the overwhelming force he imagined it to be, President Roosevelt saw only a growing danger and continued to exaggerate the German threat. Speaking to the press in February 1942, only weeks after America’s official entry into the war, he told the American people that not only could the Germans shell American coastal cities such as New York, but that under the right conditions they could probably bomb cities as far inland as Detroit.¹³ In view of the facts this was either a very misguided statement or an intentionally dishonest one. The reality is that in February 1942 the only vessels available to the Kriegsmarine that were realistically capable of firing on the American mainland at all were submarines with single 88mm (3.5in.) deck guns with ranges effectively limited to several miles. What little remained of the small German surface fleet hung close to port or operated in the Baltic Sea for most of the remainder of the war due to the overwhelming superiority of the Royal Navy, and eventually, a lack of fuel. And under no circumstances whatsoever was it possible for Germany to bomb cities in the interior of the United States such as Detroit. In fact, it couldn’t even bomb cities on the East Coast. The Luftwaffe did not possess so much as a single aircraft capable of trans-Atlantic flight, let alone the ability to fly halfway across the country to bomb Detroit.¹⁴ The effective range of even the best German bombers of the time was no more than several hundred miles, not even enough to make it halfway across the Atlantic on a one way suicide mission.

In view of these facts it is extremely difficult to understand how the President could have made such an outlandish claim. … But he did. Unfortunately President Roosevelt was either completely unaware of or disgracefully willing to ignore the facts on this and numerous other issues and occasions. In either case he repeatedly overstated the threat to America that Germany represented. Taken in their entirety his irresponsible statements amounted to unwarranted fear mongering. However, such statements coming from the President and others, had a considerable effect upon the feelings and beliefs of the American people, helping to foster the image of an all-powerful Germany capable of and bent upon world conquest, and representing a direct threat to America’s existence. As a result of such statements many thousands of air marshals, all along the East Coast and well into the interior, watched vigilantly for German aircraft that would never come. Meanwhile many Americans living near the coasts lived in a state of unwarranted fear of invasion or attack. The reality, however, is that despite Roosevelt’s claims to the contrary, at no time during the war was the general population of the United States in any real danger.¹⁵ The sad truth of the matter is that President Roosevelt, the father figure of the nation and an inspirational and charismatic leader during times of crisis both real and imagined, was also, where the war was concerned, somewhat of a storyteller. His stories, unfortunately, live on in the minds of far too many Americans as reality.

Notwithstanding Roosevelt, perhaps none have perpetuated myth with more apparent authority or effect than former general and president, Dwight Eisenhower. As a legendary general, war hero, and respected president, over the decades his words have resounded with authority in the minds of millions of Americans. Standing on the beach at Normandy in 1964, the former commander of the Allied forces that stormed the beaches twenty years earlier rendered his own mythical version of events, declaring that the men of D-Day preserved our way of life and prevented Hitler from destroying freedom in the world.¹⁶ While Eisenhower may well have believed that to be the case, his statement, as with many of Roosevelt’s, was far removed from reality.¹⁷

Myths about the Germans were also fostered by many people in Europe, including British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In his understandable effort to instill firm resolve in his people he also occasionally exaggerated the Nazi threat. On one occasion during the war he told the British people that the future of all mankind might be hanging in the balance.¹⁸ As with Roosevelt’s wildly inflated claims Churchill’s gloomy assessment went well beyond reality. While his statement may have been true in England’s case, no such threat existed to the future of all of mankind and certainly not to that of the United States.

Other myths were fostered during the war by the soldiers, sailors and airmen doing the fighting. Most of these men truly believed that they were fighting to save the future of the United States, sentiments that were held and often reinforced by their superiors. Over the years the stories and opinions of these aging war heroes have helped solidify these myths in the minds of most Americans as facts. It is small wonder that such myths are still being accepted by many misguided people in America. A more sober analysis, however, reveals that the reality is much different.

Apart from the propaganda, misguided beliefs, and false assertions made by world leaders, scholars, and participants in the war–some of the myths that have been created were the result of naive or misguided people in the general public. Long before the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939, myths of German military power were being fostered in Europe and America by well-meaning but misinformed people including American national hero Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh, who admired Hitler¹⁹ and had friendly relations with Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, returned from a trip to Germany in 1938, long before Roosevelt got into the act, spreading wildly inflated estimates about the size of the Luftwaffe.²⁰

As both a famous aviator and national hero Lindbergh’s words and opinions were seized upon by many and quickly accepted as fact.²¹ But in his fervor to see that America did not become involved in the growing storm looming on the European horizon, he helped establish the myth of overwhelming German power–spreading the rumor that the Luftwaffe was ten times larger than the combined air forces of Britain, France and Russia²² and that Germany was producing as many as 1,500 more aircraft every month.²³ In reality the Luftwaffe counted only about 1,500 aircraft in its inventory at that time and was producing some 280 each month; figures far removed from Lindbergh’s overblown claims.²⁴

While it is true that the Germans possessed a large and growing air fleet by the start of World War II, far from being the largest in the world the Luftwaffe was comparable in size to the air force of France and vastly inferior in numbers to that of the Soviet Union. And contrary to another popular myth at the time, the aircraft operated by the Luftwaffe were not generally superior to those of the more advanced western European states. Still, rumors such as these helped foster in many Americans the notion that Germany represented a much greater threat to the world and the United States than the facts warranted.

Exaggerations of German strength put out by the President, Lindbergh, and others, led to the rise of unbridled fear among the American people. Until well into the war many Americans believed that Germany posed an invasion threat to the United States should Britain and France be defeated and their fleets captured.²⁵ Such fears were entirely unfounded however, a point that will be clearly demonstrated later. Ironically, after defeating France in the late spring of 1940, rather than incorporating the French fleet into the Kriegsmarine, Hitler actually allowed the Vichy government to keep part of it in order to protect its own colonies.²⁶ Had American beliefs in Hitler’s worldwide expansionist aspirations or fears of direct invasion been justified, Hitler would certainly have incorporated such vessels into his own navy for just such a purpose, and would have taken all of France and its colonies for Germany. However, in spite of this rather glaring contradiction, the threat of invasion continued to loom like a storm cloud on the horizon, in many Americans’ minds.

In my mind one of the most irrational of all American war worries was the notion that Germany, a nation with a tiny navy, would defeat an island nation with a huge one and then use the captured ships to invade the United States. Unlike France, which could be easily invaded by land, thus allowing the defeat of the state and the acquisition of its surrendered war fleet by the invader, no such situation existed where Britain was concerned. In order to have captured the Royal Navy Britain would first have to have been defeated. In order to defeat Britain, barring a successful submarine blockade, the Germans would have had to invade and occupy it. This would have required that they first eliminate or severely reduce the Royal Navy in size and power. This would have had to be done by a nation with an already tiny and battered naval force of its own. Furthermore, much of the Royal Navy was not stationed in the North Sea area but scattered across the many oceans and seas of the world, well out of reach of Hitler and his admirals. As such, even in the unlikely event of a German victory there would have probably been little of the Royal Navy available for the Germans to absorb and probably no German navy left to absorb it. In the end, as with so many other fears, the threat of Germany capturing the Royal Navy and using it to invade the United States was blown out of all proportion to reality and rests, like so many other myths about the war, in the realm of fantasy.

Why We Fight

The threat posed by Germany (and Japan) to the United States was also blatantly misrepresented in government newsreels put out by the War Department and shown to the troops and civilians during the war. Done with lots of fluttering flags, patriotic music and statements and liberally sprinkled with references to God and righteousness, the Why We Fight films, encapsulated into a documentary series still shown today, amounted to little more than propaganda and were filled with many grievous and inexcusable distortions of the facts. Like Lindbergh’s exaggerated claims about German air power the government would not be outdone in its ability to make the Axis threat appear much larger than the facts warranted. (Such actions followed a similar pattern of government propaganda during World War I.)²⁷

However, whether misguided or not in their beliefs or less than completely honest with the American people, our leaders viewed the Nazis and Imperial Japanese as legitimate threats to our national security and acted in a way that they believed to be in the national interest. Nonetheless, many myths, lies, and distortions of reality were incorporated into these newsreels, whose effects and influence still survive, coloring our perceptions of the war to the present day. Ironically the introduction to the first film of the series claims that the purpose of the films is to give factual information as to the causes and events that compelled the United States to enter into the war. As will be clearly demonstrated this was a patently dishonest claim worthy of the Nazis themselves.

Volume One of the Why We Fight series, Prelude to War, makes repeated assertions that the Axis Powers had formed a unified plan for total world conquest. This is perhaps the greatest lie or innocent falsehood ever told by our government. The reality is that the Axis Powers never collectively planned a systematic conquering of the world, nor in fact were their individual efforts ever coordinated in any meaningful way.²⁸ Perhaps no greater example of this is the fact that when the Japanese attacked the United States in December 1941, Hitler was as surprised as everyone else.²⁹ It is true that they had divided the world into spheres of influence; however, no realistic plans or proposals for world-wide conquest had ever been given serious consideration by any but a few lonely voices within the Axis ranks, none of whom were calling the shots.

Repeated claims are also made that the Japanese steadfastly pursued the so-called Tanaka Plan, claims that are patently false.³⁰ Although some within the Japanese military establishment believed in the concept of worldwide Japanese conquest the leaders who actually controlled policy had much more limited aspirations. (This matter will be discussed later.) The film also quotes Vice-President Henry Wallace (who admired Stalin) unrealistically referring to the struggle between the Allies and the Axis as a struggle between the free world and the slave world. This statement was misleading since one of our allies, the Soviet Union, was itself a slave empire as well as an expansionist state. There is also clear hypocrisy evident in the facts that prior to its production the Soviets had already invaded several countries as part of an arrangement with Germany signed prior to the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, and been expelled from the League of Nations for their invasion of Finland in 1939/40; yet no mention of these events is ever made. This might have been convenient–had the film done so, many soldiers would have had to question why the United States government viewed the Germans as aggressors but not the Russians.

It must also be remembered that when Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union began, millions in the Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Baltic States welcomed the Nazis as liberators from Stalin’s tyranny. Based on Stalin’s pre-war actions, especially in the Ukraine, this can be easily understood. The fact is that during the war; Stalin’s earlier purges; and the engineered famine in the Ukraine; the Soviets were guilty of mass atrocities against both their enemies and their own citizens which rivaled or surpassed anything that either the Japanese or the Germans were guilty of.³¹ Nor were the more civilized, peaceful Western states as free or lily white as usually portrayed in our history books. Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain all maintained colonial empires that did not bestow the blessings of liberty on their inhabitants: in fact, many were regarded and treated as slave labor.³² Nor were all colonial areas willing participants in the war. In India, the Jewel of the Empire, a large revolt against entry into the war had to be brutally suppressed by the British with many deaths in the process.³³ And in perhaps one of the greatest ironies of the war, in Southeast Asia many Burmese initially viewed the invading Japanese as liberators from British tyranny!³⁴

It must also be pointed out that at the time of the film’s production there were many people in Central America, the Caribbean, and the Philippines who regarded the United States as either an oppressor or an invader. Even within America’s borders there were many who also had a less than favorable opinion of the United States. This was particularly true of blacks. Many black American citizens, like their Jewish counterparts in Germany, faced government oppression including arrests, detentions, harassments, restrictions, and beatings as a result of their race or ethnicity. They were also unfairly treated not only in society in general but in government authorized war industries, where they were paid only a fraction the amount given to their white counterparts.³⁵ Nor were they treated any better in the military, where white troops often refused to salute or take orders from black officers.³⁶ It is interesting as well as unflattering to note that many black athletes who had participated in the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin, stated that they had been treated better in Nazi Germany than they were in America.³⁷ Many were also quick to point out that America’s Jim Crow laws bore some resemblance to anti-Jewish restrictions in place in Germany.³⁸ And while German Jews were required to wear a star symbolizing their Jewishness and had racial epithets painted on their doors and shop windows; in America blacks sometimes woke to the sight of crosses burning on their lawns, and faced lynchings.

It is interesting as well as unflattering to note that fear of having American racial policies compared to those in Germany, as well as direct pressure from black activist A. Philip Randolph, led FDR to sign E.O. 8802, which created the Fair Employment Policies Committee.³⁹ Nonetheless, in America, blacks were still subjected to many institutionalized social abuses. Faced with fighting a war for a nation that oppressed them, many blacks revolted; unrest simmering below the surface of the social fabric sometimes boiled over. During the war numerous cities erupted in race riots between blacks and whites during which many people, mostly blacks, were killed. But blacks were by no means alone in being mistreated because of their race. It cannot be forgotten that while this film was being shown close to 120,000 innocent Japanese-Americans were being confined in detention camps because of their ethnicity.⁴⁰ The truth is that many Americans considered the Japanese, and in fact all Asians, to be inferiors.⁴¹ Mexican-Americans were also discriminated against and faced segregation as a result of their skin color.⁴²

The film also refers to the war as a life or death struggle for the United States. Again, in view of actual Axis intentions and capabilities this is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. Not only does it greatly exaggerate German military strength–claiming that Germany possessed 30 panzer divisions and 70 motorized divisions at the start of the war–figures far removed from reality–it also plays up the power and threat posed by Italy by referring to Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) as a modern blitzkrieg. However, a closer look at this Italian fiasco clearly demonstrates that this was hardly the case, a point that will be demonstrated in the pages to come. Where Japan is concerned the film totally (if innocently) misrepresents statements made about Japanese intentions for the war with America, claiming that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto intended that the United States would be invaded and peace terms dictated by him from the White House, inclinations he and his country never had. This too will be examined in greater detail later on.

Another misrepresentation can be found in the portrayal of the Allied states as the have-not nations and the Axis states as have nations–notions that in most important respects are entirely contradictory to the known facts. But in what could easily be called the greatest irony and demonstration of hypocrisy in the entire series–while exaggerating, misrepresenting, or blatantly lying throughout about Axis threats and capabilities, the film shows Axis radio stations broadcasting waves of lies, with the word lies shown repeatedly emanating from the top of a German radio tower, when the same claims could easily be applied to many of the statements made by the US government in the Why We Fight series.

Volume Two of the series, The Nazis Strike, unfairly claims that Germany had long expressed a maniacal will to impose its will on others and points to statements made by past German leaders, including Bismarck and the Kaiser, to back up this claim. However the general activities of neither of these men actually support this argument. In Bismarck’s case, he merely stated that Germany would one day dominate the world. This did not mean that he intended to do so. The meaning of the word itself is also open to question. Dominate can indeed mean to rule; however, it can also mean to have a prominent or superior position. Bismarck’s actions as foreign minister were much more in line with the latter interpretation of the word than the former. He was not out for world conquest, just an expanded and superior position for Germany in Europe. In fact, after having established a European empire he was satisfied and had no plans for acquiring colonies or a worldwide empire.⁴³ Instead, in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, he pursued a peace policy during his remaining years as chancellor.⁴⁴

As far as the statement by the Kaiser which claimed that Germany was created by God for civilizing the whole world is concerned–he was merely expressing