XThe Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, revised edition

by Jacques R. XPauwels

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781459408739
Publisher:	James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Publishers
Publication date:	03/06/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	328
Sales rank:	291,109
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

JACQUES R. PAUWELS is an independent scholar who has a special interest in 20th-century history. He has taught European history at the University of Toronto, York University, and the University of Waterloo. The first edition of this monumental work, published in 2000, has also been published in German, Spanish, and French, and has been on several national bestseller lists. This new edition has been revised and updated to incorporate new research on the war published since then.
JACQUES R. PAUWELS has taught European history at the University of Toronto, York University, and the University of Waterloo. He is available for speaking engagements; e-mail [e-mail] for details.

Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword to the New English Edition
Foreword: Objectives and Methodology
Chapter 1: Introduction: America and the Myth of the "Great Crusade"
Chapter 2: The American Power Elite and Fascism
Chapter 3: America and the Red Peril
Chapter 4: The War in Europe and America's Economic Interests
Chapter 5: Fall 1941: The Tide of War Turns in Front of Moscow
Chapter 6: Women: The United States at War with Japan and Germany
Chapter 7: Class Warfare on the American Home Front
Chapter 8: A Second Front for Stalin, or a Third Front in the Air
Chapter 9: Stalin's Soviet Union: An Unloved but Useful Partner
Chapter 10: The Liberation of Italy: A Fateful Precedent
Chapter 11: The Long Summer of 1944
Chapter 12: The Successes of the Red Army and the Yalta Agreements
Chapter 13: Dresden: A Signal for Uncle Joe
Chapter 14: From Roosevelt's "Soft Line" to Truman's "Hard Line" toward Stalin
Chapter 15: An Anti-Soviet Crusade?
Chapter 16: The Winding Road to the German Surrender(s)
Chapter 17: America Between COnfidence and Concern
Chapter 18: Nuclear Diplomacy and the Onset of the Cold War
Chapter 19: A Useful New Enemy
Chapter 20: Corporate Collaboration and the So-called "De-Nazification" of Germany (1)
Chapter 21: Corporate Collaboration and the So-called "De-Nazification" of Germany (2)
Chapter 22: The United States, the Soviets, and the Post-war Fate of Germany
Chapter 23: After 1945: From the Good War to Permanent War
Endnotes
Acknowledgements
Select Bibliography
Index