Top Ten Forgotten Facts About The Second World War

Top Ten Forgotten Facts About The Second World War

Seventy years after the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945, a number of important historical details about the conflict have been forgotten by the US public. These facts may be unknown or ignored by the people of the United States, but much of the world hasn’t forgotten them, and they have relevance in relation to current events.

1. Hitler was a right-winger

Endless books and articles, such as “Liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg, have attempted to paint Adolph Hitler as some kind of leftist. These texts often play up the fact that the Nazi Party’s official name contained the word “Socialist,” or that Hitler’s speeches sometimes talked of “revolution.”

Regardless of what Glenn Beck and much of the US media would prefer to be the case, Adolph Hitler considered himself to be a right-winger. In his speeches and writings, he frequently referred to his Nazi organization as the “Party of the Right.”

When establishing the Nazi Party in the early 1920s, Hitler made abundantly clear that he was on the right wing of the political spectrum, saying: “There are only two possibilities in Germany; do not imagine that the people will forever go with the middle party, the party of compromises; one day it will turn to those who have most consistently foretold the coming ruin and have sought to dissociate themselves from it. And that party is either the Left: and then God help us! for it will lead us to complete destruction — to Bolshevism, or else it is a party of the Right which at the last, when the people is in utter despair, when it has lost all its spirit and has no longer any faith in anything, is determined for its part ruthlessly to seize the reins of power — that is the beginning of resistance of which I spoke a few minutes ago. Here, too, there can be no compromise — there are only two possibilities: either victory of the Aryan, or annihilation of the Aryan and the victory of the Jew. “

The Nazi program, despite having some populist economic policies, sought to reinforce tradition, morality, religion, and nationalism. The Nazis had absolute contempt for the “left,” which they associated with internationalism, Marxism, class conflict, and “racial impurity.”

This unfortunate detail does not fit in the with the neoconservative logic of “All bad people are on the left, Hitler was bad, so he must have been a leftist.” The ignorance of Hitler’s actual political views has led to many embarrassing incidents. In 1970, Ohio governor James Rhodes called anti-war protesters at Kent University “Brownshirts” before he sent in the National Guard, who killed four of them. During the direct aftermath of Barack Obama’s election, many right-wing activists hyped up by Glenn Beck’s televised sermons accused Obama of simultaneously being a Muslim, a communist and a Nazi.

2. The Soviet Union did more than any other country to defeat Hitler

This fact cannot be denied, but it is often unacknowledged. Even before the Second World War began, the Communist International in Moscow was directing and facilitating anti-fascist resistance from within the borders of Germany and Italy. The Soviet Union sent aid to the people of Spain to defend their republic against the Nazi-aligned Falangists. Communists around the world formed International Brigades to fight in Spain. The Soviet Union lost 27 million of its citizens in the battle against Hitler.

During the late 1930s, many came to consider the word “anti-fascist” to be a synonym for “communist.” The alliance between Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial Japan, commonly called the “Axis Powers” in US historical discourse, was officially called the “Anti-Communist Pact.”

3. Many Zionists collaborated with the Nazis

While the Israeli government frequently invokes the crimes of the Nazis to justify its existence as a “safe refuge for the chosen people,” most Jews were not Zionists at the time of the Second World War. The majority of the world’s Jews rejected Zionism and identified with Social-Democracy, communism, or anarchism. Zionism was a political current that was only strong among Jews in Britain, where it was funded and promoted by the Rothschild banking dynasty and had the support of many prominent Christian theologians.

In the context of competing with Marxism for support within the world Jewish community, the Zionist movement openly celebrated the rise of Hitler in Germany — as a defeat for their main political rival. Vladimir Jabotinsky, leader of the Revisionist Party, predecessor to the Likud Party of modern Israel, famously said, “If it were not for the Nazis’ anti-semitism, we would celebrate the rise of Hitler. He saved Germany.”

The Irgun terrorist organization which operated in Palestine frequently published pro-Nazi statements in its publications. Many meetings took place between Zionist organizations and the Nazi officials. Many Zionists argued that a victory for Hitler would force European Jews to flee to Palestine.

4. Hitler had many supporters in the USA

Henry Ford, one of the wealthiest men in the United States, was awarded the Iron Cross by the Nazi government. He was paraded throughout Germany as a hero for his development of industrial methods. Henry Ford wrote a book called “The International Jew” which put forward the Nazi perspective that the world was ruled by “Jewish Bankers” and that communism was a “Jewish conspiracy.” During the 1930s, Henry Ford began his own newspaper, The Dearborn Voice, which put forward a pro-Hitler analysis of international events.

Henry Ford was not alone. Brown Brothers Harriman, considered one of the most important Wall Street banks, had its assets frozen under the “Trading With The Enemy Act.” The Wall Street firm was essentially operating as the Nazi regime’s Wall Street stockbroker. At the time, its employees included Prescott Bush, whose son and grandson would both become US presidents.

Charles Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest with a weekly radio program, broadcast pro-Hitler sermons over the national radio waves across the United States. He formed a pro-Hitler organization called the “Union for Social Justice.” He preached that “Jewish bankers” controlled the Federal Reserve, and were attempting to foment communist revolution to destroy Christianity. His weekly broadcasts urged Roman Catholics to join violent strikebreaking organizations and fight the labor unions, which he considered to be a Jewish-communist conspiracy.

Charles Lindbergh, the famed aviator, went to Nazi Germany many times, and spoke highly of Hitler in many public speeches. When it looked like war was imminent, Lindbergh led the “America First Committee” that urged the US to “stay out” of Europe. Among the members of the America First Committee was future US President Gerald Ford.

Many pro-Nazi organizations existed across the United States during the late 1930s. Among them were the German-American Bund, the Silver Legion of America, the Black Legion, and the Mother’s Campaign. The Ku Klux Klan collapsed due to infighting after Pearl Harbor, because many of its members supported the Nazis. The Black Legion, a pro-Hitler organization of Roman Catholics in Michigan, murdered the father of Black revolutionary Malcolm X, and mobilized to attack striking autoworkers during the famous Flint Sit-Down Strike.

When the German-American Bund held a pro-Hitler rally in Madison Square Garden in 1939, hundreds of thousands of labor unionists and left-wing activists poured into the streets to protest. A group of communist activists even charged the stage and brawled with Nazi sympathizers inside the stadium.

Read more here:
[link to journal-neo.org]

Last Edited by SPUD on 09/18/2015 03:26 PM