World War II – The Real Story

The world was getting along just fine when an anti-Semitic madman named Adolf Hitler seized control of Germany in 1933 and immediately embarked on his twin goals of world conquest and genocide, primarily targeting innocent Jews.

To most U.S. citizens, the sentence above is the gospel truth. But it isn’t true at all. If you’re a history student, see how many errors, or “red flags,” you can spot.

Wow, I spotted EIGHT red flags in that one sentence!

1. The world was hardly getting along just fine before War II. The British and French still ruled colonial empires, and the U.S. had replaced Spain as the de facto colonial overlord in Latin America. The misery and suffering were enormous.
2. Hitler was anti-Jew, not anti-Semitic; his allies actually included Arabs. In fact, a few Jews supported him as well, though his general hatred of Jews appears to be well established.
3. Hitler was hardly a “madman,” though I suppose it depends on how you define the term. He probably did more to help Germany than any U.S. president ever did to help the United States. As a military leader, Hitler took on the three most powerful European nations plus the United States and was ominously close to victory.
4. Hitler didn’t “seize” power, not immeditately, at least; he was appointed Chancellor in 1933.
5. Nor did Hitler immediately lash out. He endured considerable provocation before he finally struck back.
6. It’s hard to imagine how world conquest could have been one of Hitler’s goals. Merely conquering and controlling all of Europe would have been an enormous feat.
7. Though there’s little doubt that Hitler did hate Jews, there’s no proof that his goals included genocide.
8. Not all the Jews Hitler persecuted were “innocent.”

At the same time, Hitler imposed his prudish values on the German people, turning Berlin into a ghost of its former self and wrecking the economy.

1. The statement that Hitler “imposed his prudish values on the German people” is questionable.
2. Whether or not Hitler improved Berlin or wrecked it is a matter of perspective. Before Hitler came to power, Berlin was known as Europe’s sex capital. Some equated it with freedom, while others described it as a cradle of sleaze.
3. Wreck the economy? Adolf Hitler was probably the best thing that ever happened to Germany’s economy—and he worked his miracle in peacetime. In contrast, the U.S. was rescued from its Great Depression by a war-time economy.

To divert attention from Germany’s domestic problems, Hitler started World War II—“the war to end all wars”—by seizing Austria and invading Poland, then invading and conquering every nation in Western Europe except the British Isles (United Kingdom). Hitler conquered France in just a few weeks and came very close to crushing the British. Next, Hitler broke a non-aggression pact with a peaceful giant, the Soviet Union, invading that country in an effort to acquire new lands for the German people, along with the USSR’s vast resources.

1. As mentioned above, Germany’s domestic problems weren’t that bad after Hitler took charge.
2. It’s impossible to determine who really started WWII. It’s popularly assumed that WWII started with the invasion of Poland—but how does a war between neighboring nations constitute a “world war”? The British and French declared war on Germany, turning it into a much bigger conflict. They also forced their colonial subjects to support them, effectively making it a world war.
3. World War II isn’t nicknamed “the war to end all wars.” World War I was the war that was supposed to end all future wars.
4. Hitler didn’t seize Austria; the overwhelming majority of Austrians wanted to be annexed by Germany.
5. Hitler didn’t invade every nation in Europe. He never attacked Switzerland or Spain, for example.
6. The Soviet Union was hardly a peaceful nation. Like the British, the French and the U.S., it invaded other countries. Moreover, some people think Joseph Stalin killed more people than Adolf Hitler did.
7. There is powerful evidence that Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in a quest for living space and natural resources. However, the evidence isn’t conclusive.

The Nazis’ horrifying atrocities left their mark in all the countries they overran. Nowhere was this truer than France, the country Hitler hated most.

1. One of the biggest ironies of WWII is the fact that the German invasion of France was arguably a more civil affair than the French Revolution. Many French citizens were certainly killed during the invasion, and the Germans enacted the same repressive measures conquering armies normally enact. But there were few, if any, orgies of mass rape, torture or slaughter. The Nazis certainly didn’t bring any guillotines with them.

However, the darkest deeds were performed in Germany itself, where lampshades were even made of human skin—the skin of Jews, of course.

1. This fairy tale is so far-fetched even the Jews seldom repeat it any more.

All might have been lost if the United States hadn’t entered the war in 1941, after Hitler foolishly declared war on the U.S. for no legitimate reason whatsoever. The turning point of the war was the Allied landing at Normandy Beach in France, remembered as D-Day. It was by far the most significant battle of WWII.

1. Saying Germany had no legitimate beef with the U.S. is a stretch. The U.S. was working behind the scenes to support Germany’s enemies. There were also a lot of powerful Jews in the U.S. who were constantly scheming against countries not under their control. Moreover, Hitler couldn’t have forgotten the fact that the U.S. had helped defeat Germany in World War I—a war that was none of the United States’ business.
2. Though D-Day was indeed a very important event, it might be more accurate to call it the turning point of the war on the Western Front, rather than the turning point of the entire war.
3. The fiercest fighting of the war occurred on the Eastern Front. Several battles between the Germans and the Soviets made D-Day look like a picnic.

Though the Soviet Union was allied with the United Kingdom, France and the U.S., it operated in the shadows and isn’t popularly remembered as one of the good guys, because it was a communist country. Indeed, the Allies quickly found themselves united against a new enemy as WWII was replaced by the Cold War.

1. It’s true that the Western powers didn’t embrace the Soviet Union with enthusiasm. However, the USSR hardly operated in the shadows. As related above, it bore the brunt of the fighting.

The war in the Pacific pitted the U.S. and its allies against Imperial Japan, which sucker punched the U.S. with a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, destroying more than four dozen ships. Though some bloody battles were fought, particularly on the island of Iwo Jima, the Japanese were no match for the U.S., which humanely ended the war by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, effectively eliminating the need for an even bloodier invasion of Japan.

1. The attack on Pearl Harbor remains one of World War II’s biggest mysteries. Many people believe the U.S. knew about the pending attack but deliberrately look the other way. Why? Because an attack on the U.S. would give the government an excuse to declare war against Japan.
2. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, along with the fire bombings of Tokyo and Dresden, Germany, rank among history’s greatest de facto war crimes. Many people believe the U.S. dropped atomic bombs in order to intimidate the Soviet Union. Of course, playing with its new toy was also good practice.

The biggest heroes of World War II included the British bulldog Winston Churchill and U.S President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who pulled the U.S. out of the Great Depression before taking on the racist Nazis. People from South Africa to India thanked Churchill and Roosevelt for protecting them from the evils of Naziism.

1. For whatever it’s worth, Churchill wasn’t re-elected after WWII. Nor was he a hero to the millions of colonial subjects who knew him as a racist tyrant.
2. Speaking of racists, it’s interesting to note that, during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, U.S. track star Jesse Owens was congratulated by Adolf Hitler, but U.S. president Frankilin D. Roosevelt only met with white athletes. This strange fact is a reminder that the U.S. fought the racist Nazis with a segregated military, with black people back home not even allowed to vote and most Native Americans confined to reservations. And let’s not forget the Japanese interment.
3. In fact, WWII generally coincided with the Great Depression. The U.S. government embraced war as a scheme for making money. Bombing factories in Europe and Japan was a great way to reduce competition.
4. Here’s a piece of trivia they don’t teach in school: Approximately THREE MILLION Indians starved to death as Churchill forced his colonial servants to support the war effort. That’s half the number of Jews that were allegedly killed by the Germans, and the Indians were truly innocent. (See How Churchill Starved India)

One grisly statistic says it all: Six million innocent Jews died in German gas chambers. It was by far the greatest crime against humanity ever.

1. No one knows for sure how many Jews died in Germany.
2. No one knows for sure if any Jews died in gas chambers.
3. Whether or not the Holocaust ranks as the greatest crime against humanity is a matter of opinion. Some would argue that it was one of the best things that ever happened.

Today, the swastika is all that remains of Hitler’s evil vision, representing nothing but Naziism.

1. Actually, the swastika is one of Finland’s national emblems. In fact, the swastika has been used by various Eurasian peoples for thousands of years. It has even been used by some Native Americans.

One of the few bright spots was the creation of Israel, a concept that was born out of the ashes of World War II.

1. If a global poll was taken, most people would probably not describe Israel as a bright spot.
2. Actually, the groundwork for the creation of Israel was laid long before World War II. That’s one of the reasons some conspiracy analysts think WWII was manipulated or even started by the Jews.

Have your eyes been opened?

I just gave you a list of exactly three dozen red flags. If you don’t agree with all of my opinions, it really doesn’t make much difference. If you could shoot down two thirds of my arguments, we’d still be left with a dozen red flags.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

World War True isn’t going to be an encyclopedic work. It will touch on a lot of topics, including some fringe conspiracy theory, but the foundation of the book is simple: A list of 100 red flags.

Of course, a simple list of red flags might be a little dull, so we’ll explore them in a little more detail—and we won’t focus on World War II alone. After all, the three million people who died in India never fought in the war.

We’ll take a look at the global economy, the Bolshevik Revolution and the mass starvation that made the first half of the twentieth century such a desperate era.

Most people think of World War II as a battle between good and evil. I see it as a power struggle between rival European nations, European powers and their colonial subjects, Western capitalism vs communism and the rich versus the poor. And guess who was caught right in the middle?

Adolf Hitler.