Brand of Brothers

 “Leaving World War Two Behind,” by David Swanson, 2020

This is a book that shows in detail how WWII was no accident, but was caused by war profiteering, imperial competition between the great powers, anti-communism and commonplace colonial and racist ideas.  In other words WWII was embedded in the pre-war capitalist social structure.  Swanson comes at it from a moralistic and pacifist place, but the result is the same.  WWII has been endlessly depicted by the corporate media as ‘the good war’ – in the process hiding how it didn’t have to happen at all.   It was the bloodiest war in history – between 70-85 million died during WWII across the world, the vast majority civilians.

Swanson first takes up the issue of ‘the Jews’ – as if WWII was about saving the Jews.  It wasn’t.  Prior to the war, not one country accepted, even over many years, Jewish refugees from Germany, as anti-Semitism was widespread, including in the U.S.  Suggestions by Hitler they be shipped to various marginal countries were turned down.  Not until the very end of the war did the U.S. military act on long-held information that death camps were operating – not even when Hungary’s Jewry were transported to the Auschwitz-Bikenau death camp starting in May 1944.

Two is the issue of the Versailles Treaty.  Even a retrograde capitalist like Churchill knew the draconian conditions imposed on Germany in 1919 by France, England, the U.S. and others would lead to another war.  Many called Versailles ‘an armistice,’ not a peace treaty.   

Three, Hitler and the Nazi Party got many of their racist ideas and plans for Jews, Romani, the disabled, homosexuals and others from the U.S. eugenics movement, immigration blocks, sterilization laws, Native American reservations, segregation and Jim Crow.  Zyklon B was first used in the U.S. in 1924 to execute criminals.  The U.S. pledge of allegiance first involved that ‘one-armed salute’ we know so well from Nazi imagery.  

Four, ‘lebensraum’ – living space – was something Hitler, inspired by the conquering of the U.S. West by white Europeans, advocated - except this time the slogan for Germans was “go East, young man.”  Slavs in Poland, Russia, Ukraine etc. were simply another kind of Indian.  Germany itself had practiced colonial killing of the indigenous in South-West Africa prior to this, as had so many other colonial nations.

Five, U.S. companies like IBM, Dupont, ITT, Chase and National City banks, GM and Ford funded, produced and worked in Germany and Vichy France before, during and after the war, promoting Hitler as a savior of capitalism in a world-wide crusade against the USSR and domestic communism, while also making hay as war profiteers.  GM owned Opel, which was a prime German producer of military tanks, while IG Farben worked with Dupont and U.S. companies and directors to gain an advantage in rubber production – not to mention Zyklon gas.  Albert Speer mentioned how useful U.S. corporate development of synthetic oil was to the Nazi war effort. The International Chamber of Commerce, led by an American, even had a large, celebratory meeting in Berlin in 1936.  After this its leader went on to Italy to meet Mussolini.  All told 150 U.S. companies did business with Nazi Germany but were untouched by the U.S. government due to their power and influence.

Six, Swanson covers the anti-Communist and anti-Soviet nature of the Nazi / Blackshirt war, embedded in the capitalist need to protect large private property.  It was the Soviet Army and the Chinese Communist revolutionary army that took on the vast bulk of fighting against Germany and Japan, while the ‘Allies’ nibbled around the edges, not invading France until June 1944.  The open liberal capitalist strategy was to let each side destroy each other, than pick up the pieces.

Most partisan units in various countries were led by leftists, especially in Yugoslavia, in France, in Greece, in Italy.  Countries like the USSR had to defend themselves from the fascist onslaught, so Swanson’s ‘pacifism’ and ‘non-violence’ – which he directly advocates for those who were invaded - would have been a failed and absurd response.  Amazingly, after the military defeat of Germany Churchill, Patton, the German Admiral Donitz and the Dulles brothers advocated continuing the war by militarily attacking the USSR.

Seven, Swanson covers the goods embargo, asset freeze and halt of oil delivery to Japan prior to Pearl Harbor, which was a provocation that acted as an economic act of war. For years prior to that an earlier ‘Asian pivot' had the U.S. constructing military bases in islands all over the Pacific, while building navy ships and conducting maneuvers specifically against Japan.  The government knew Japan would attack Pearl Harbor or the Philippines in a surprise attack – and perhaps even knew of the fleet steaming towards Hawaii.  The U.S. gave Chiang Kai-shek millions in aid, planes and weapons to fight the cruel Japanese occupation of China, backing them as opposed to the more effective Chinese Red armies.  Japan offered to withdraw from parts of China and the offer was rejected by the U.S.  Swanson considers the preparations part of a plan to start or ‘trigger’ a war, which would allow the U.S. to control the whole Pacific basin and defeat their Japanese competitor.

Eight, the U.S. later ignored Japanese negotiations and pleas for surrender in order to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with Truman’s vengeful lie that these civilian cities were military targets.  The bombings were really a threat against the USSR, not a military necessity to ‘save soldier’s lives.’

Nine, after the war the U.S. took in or protected Nazis, including scientists and military figures in Operation Paperclip, while leaving nearly all Nazis alone in post-war West Germany – even promoting one to head West German intelligence.  The Nuremberg Trials only dealt with the very top fascists.  There is still a statue to Nazi scientist Werner von Braun in Huntsville, Alabama which hasn’t been removed yet, an enduring tribute to the OSS / CIA’s Operation Paperclip.

Victory!

Swanson does not focus on the WWII issue of inter-capitalist rivalry for the re-division of the world – the benefits of colonies in raw materials and cheap labor; competition between capitals in various countries – which provided economic fuel for WWII.  He doesn’t want to go near a full-blown Marxist economic perspective.  The word ‘capitalism’ is never used.  Nor does he highlight the fact that getting rid of small Jewish businesses in Germany (there were only a few large ones) would benefit Hitler’s money-grubbing petit-bourgeois shopkeeper base, who’d take them over or eliminate competition after the Jews were gone.  Lebensraum was to be a nationalist form of this same practice, but on foreign soil. 

Swanson has many surprising facts not taught or mentioned anywhere, except for those who go looking.  Certainly the vast majority of U.S. citizens know none of this.  I.E. the same system that claimed it wanted to stop the Nazis and fascism promoted the Nazis and fascism.   WWII was their dirty and bloody ‘faction’ fight, but also an attempt to crush communism.  He ends his book with a long polemic against all wars and all violence, which somewhat weakens the book.

Swanson understands that the false ‘patriotic’ reading of WWII enables present U.S. ‘humanitarian war’ – a phrase of contradictory nonsense.  Bombing, drones, embargoes, sanctions, military bases, weapons’ sales and arms’ manufacturing, low-level JSOC warfare, the ‘Defense” Department, invasions and occupations, ‘failed states,’ the massive military budget, the U.S. gun culture, our militarized police – all are its spawn. 

Hitler still lives for U.S. politicians, at least as a false foil.  Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al Assad and Vladimir Putin have all recently been described by prominent U.S. politicians as “Hitler,” justifying bombing campaigns, arms sales and invasions. Oddly, some of these same people were U.S. allies - Noriega, Hussein, Gaddafi and Putin at one time were allies, agents or promoted as good leaders.  In much the same way, Israel misuses the Holocaust to justify anything their government does.

An excellent book for those tired of a ‘history’ consisting of endless promotion of imperialist WWII. 

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 14 year archive, using these terms:  “Panzer Destroyer,” “Life and Fate”(Grossman); “Blackshirts and Reds” (Parenti); “War is a Racket” (Butler); “Enemy at the Gates,” “The Unwomanly Face of War”(Alexievich), "The Devil's Chessboard" (Talbot) or the phrase “Anti-Fascist Series.”           

Red Frog

November 20, 2021