Total War and Unconditional Surrender: America’s Export to the World

If one were to believe the history books, the American Experience and Exceptionalism shone bright and clear from the effort and success to leave the British Empire to the rescue of Europe in WWI and WWII. Actual history shows that our exceptional export of ideas and character were not a rosy as the history books might paint.

There was a way that nations fought from the 1600s and into the 1700s that had been influenced by both Christianity as well as those who understood that war happened when politics failed, which meant that the people in general were caught in the middle of various power struggles in Europe. The American Revolution was fought mainly around large population centers usually having armies square up to each other in open fields and having at it. There were exceptions on both sides where military leaders like Banastre Tarleton and even some patriot militia would discard honorable warfare to achieve short-term military objectives, but in the end those tactics had their own “blowback”. The civilian sentiment played an important role in the way the effort for independence of each of the 13 states would play out before the British grew tired of the conflict and costs.

Even the War of 1812 was fought this way and the treaty signed a few years later involved both parties at the negotiation table just like what they did in Paris in 1783 after the American Revolutionary War. Once again, principles, honorable principles prevailed even when warfare was “in session”.

The War Against Southern Independence (called the American Civil War in US government history books) unveiled the inherit evil that is at the core of humans in a broken world. Driven by desperation, principles are cast aside in the effort to short-cut to a desired outcome.

The truth be known, the seven states that seceded actually took the high ground in formulating their reason for divorce with the federation. They knew that the US Constitution, the law of the land, was to be central in their rationale in desiring to exit, just like the 13 colonies did with England 80 years prior. Lawyer speak made these documents stress the way the slavery issue made the separation a necessity. The Constitution had allowed chattel slavery, and so the seven southern states made their case based on this “issue”.

In reality, the main issue was financial and economic in nature, but to prove that based on the Constitution would have been a tough fight. The southern region in general was the wealthiest in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was penned but by 1860 this region had seen their power be eclipsed by the North and the West (existing Midwest). Tariff revenue sources were a hot issue since the South bore the brunt of that expense. Additionally, this revenue funded not only the general government but also internal improvements, mainly in the northern states. Also, industries like the railroad and steel industry received corporate welfare at the expense of the southern businessmen. Additionally, southern plantations were financed by the Northeast elite bankers and until 1808 these same businessmen supplied the slave ships that would transport blacks rounded up by other blacks on the African continent to the United States and other areas in the Caribbean after it was illegal to do so in the US. The southern chattel slavery economic profitability was on the downward trend as most economists expected maybe 5-10 years left in this business model.

It should also be noted once more that Lincoln offered the seven southern states “perpetual legal slavery” via the proposed 13th amendment (Corwin Amendment) if they re-entered the union. Not one state considered that. They really wanted independence and all the risks that entailed instead of a continued marriage to the northern states. Even if it meant that run-away slaves making their way to the United States (all but those seven states that seceded) would indeed be free and not be required by law to be returned as the Fugitive Slave Act mandated. Most people in the North did NOT want ex-slaves fleeing north to take the lowest paying jobs, as even Lincoln feared this.

With that long introduction and setting of context, there was an article that brought to light (for me anyway) what this internal conflict offered to the world. A clip from it said:

So in a very literal sense the Civil War was the first World War. It not only created a powerful nation of organized resources and potential military might, but the greater world wars took their pattern from the American one, even to the trench system Lee set up at Petersburg .. What this country brought to Europe was unconditional surrender. The actual phrase was used by Roosevelt in the Second World War, but it was not his phrase. Grant had delivered it to the Confederate Command at Fort Donelson in February, 1862. Its implication is total surrender or total destruction, or slavery, or whatever. A strange alternative to be delivered by one Christian state to another; and yet it had precedent in Sherman’s harrying the lands of Mississippi and Georgia ..

U.S. (Unconditional Surrender) Grant or William Tecumseh (Total War) Sherman transitioned warfare to not only be brutal for military personnel and civilians in proximity, but also back to the way pre-Christian influenced empires operated, the slaughtering/slaving of the people in conquered lands.

The nineteenth century abandoned God officially, and the faith of Christian communicants was absorbed into the powerful western will; and this will set out, openly at last, to know and control not only nature but the universe. In the late stages of any society there is always the aging form and the formlessness of the new pistis, but this is no new faith; it is a perversion of faith, the final and open acceptance of Machiavelli’s science of politics, the politics whose end is absolute power, whose technique is reason without any theological restraint.

The transition from a republic that was a federation of states to a democracy that makes politics a god, will always keep evolving lower and lower in morality as the narcissist leaders practice power over principles.

Sherman said “War is Hell,” and by this he meant total war, openly carried out upon the civil population, with the shrewd understanding that if the source of supply was cut off, the armies would dwindle and perish.

This policy was then brought to the American Indians, then to the Spanish empire after Spain was falsely accused of blowing up the USS Maine in Havana, Cuba and to the Germans during WWI as well as the failure to include the Germans in the negotiated surrender, treating Germany like the North treated the South after the war with military districts, corrupt politics and the hatred of the people.

Yes, this part of the American “Exceptionalism” is rarely taught in schools or even in “approved” books. I would rather have American history taught in books like the authors of the Bible described the events of the Hebrew people, the nation Israel and the leaders of Jesus’ day .. communicating the good, the bad and the ugly.

Truth.

Truth-seekers these days have to expend a lot of effort to mine the accounts of days gone by, but it is written that “the truth shall set you free”

-SF1

 

 

1933: Depression, Election of FDR to Lead the United States to Prosperity

A slight rabbit trail is needed for me to see the parallels that will converge in 1940 as another world war breaks out in Europe. Since I am slowly reading the book “Appeasement”, as I posted about last week, I decided I needed some background on the American front towards balancing what really happened in the months and years leading up to a big fight on a global scale.

I also posted yesterday about the rift between two US heroes, FDR and Charles Lindbergh, and remembered that at one time I read the book “The Roosevelt Myth” by John T. Flynn that I felt would fill in the gaps I had in making a good run on the real issues and decisions of the 1930s.

I have seen this time and again in my lifetime, a presidential candidate makes promises, only to break them time and again when in office. FDR was no exception to the rule as he set the tone for stretching the executive branch’s power, like his cousin Teddy Roosevelt did, to the max.

FDR, sworn in on 04MAR1933 had stated this just under a week later:

“For three long years,” he said, “the federal government has been on the road toward bankruptcy. For the fiscal year 1931 the deficit was $462,000,000 . . . For the fiscal year 1932 it was $2,472,000,000 . . . For the fiscal year 1933 it will probably exceed $1,200,000,000 . . . For the fiscal year 1934 based on appropriation bills passed by the last Congress and estimated revenues, the deficit will probably exceed $1,000,000,000 unless immediate action is taken.” Then he warned: “Too often . . . liberal governments have been wrecked on the rocks of loose fiscal policy. We must avoid this danger.”

Then the kicker:

He declared “the credit of the national government is imperiled.” And then he asserted: “The first step is to save it. Recovery defends on that” The first step was a measure to cut government payroll expenditures 25 per cent. The second step, incredible as it may sound, was to authorize a bill providing in effect for the biggest deficit of all—$3,300,000,000 ..

Ouch. Seriously?

.. [by JUN1933] The “spendthrift” Hoover [previous president Herbert Hoover] was in California at his Palo Alto home putting his own affairs in order, while the great Economizer who had denounced Hoover’s deficits had now produced in 100 days a deficit larger than Hoover had produced in two
years.

You cannot make this stuff up. The USA is still paying on that debt!

If we were to compare the character of Herbert Hoover and FDR, the events in last few weeks of Hoover’s lame-duck administration sums it up quite nicely:

.. In his [FDR’s] speech of acceptance of the nomination he talked about all sorts of problems, including the woes of Puerto Rico, but never mentioned the banks. In his discussion of the Democratic platform in his first radio address he ignored the banking question. He delivered a group of addresses on various specific problems—agriculture, labor, foreign policy—but none on the growing banking issue…

.. After his election when the fatalities among the banks became critical, he remained quite unmoved by it. There can be no doubt about this. Ray Moley, who was at his side through these days, has written that between February 18, when he got Hoover’s ominous warning, and March i, he could not discover how seriously Roosevelt was impressed with the seriousness of the crisis. With this in mind, let us return to the alarming letter which Hoover sent to Roosevelt. Hoover wrote that letter on February 17. He sent it by a Secret Service messenger who put it directly in Roosevelt’s hands on February 18. It was the morning of February 19 that Roosevelt went over to the Inner Circle dinner. And all that day he never showed it to anyone. He did not hand it to Moley until hours after he got it. Twelve days later Hoover had not yet received
even an acknowledgment of the letter. Then, on March 1, he got Roosevelt’s reply with this curious explanation. Roosevelt said he had written an answer over a week before but through some oversight of his secretary it had not been sent. When he did reply, twelve days later, he indicated there was nothing he could do…

This trait would be one of FDR’s strongest, outright lying. Is that a 20th century “add-on” for US presidents?

.. By February 19, gold withdrawals from banks increased from five to fifteen million dollars a day. In two weeks $114,000,000 of gold was taken from banks for export and another $150,000,000 was withdrawn to go into hiding.
The infection of fear was everywhere. Factories were closing. Unemployment was rising rapidly. Bank closings multiplied daily…

It was now dawning on Hoover that he and Roosevelt were talking about two different things. Hoover was talking about saving the banks and the people’s savings in them. Roosevelt was thinking of the political advantage in a complete banking disaster under Hoover. Actually, on February 25, Hoover received a message from James Rand that Rexford Tugwell had said that the hanks would collapse in a couple of days and that is what they wanted…

FDR sacrificed other’s investments, American’s savings, for his own political expediency. If you want big, central government, you will have this immorality on a grand scale. The hope that the republic, the federated states and the three pillars of US government would somehow keep things in check totally failed in the 20th century, all because of an “emergency”. Between that and wars, leading nations can be pretty heady stuff, with plenty of money and plenty of power.

In a rare moment of clarity, Abraham Lincoln said:

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

In the middle of crisis, noble men weep, but political SOB’s laugh. But I digress:

.. The following day the situation grew worse. New York and Chicago banks were forced to pay out $110,000,000 in gold to foreigners and $20,000,000 to others, while another $20,000,000 was drained away from the interior banks. At this point the panic spread to the Federal Reserve Board officials. Bankers in New York and Chicago had been in practically continous session. Fatigue had done its work. Panic spread amongst them.

On the eve of FDR’s swearing in as president of the United States, he outright lies yet again:

That night Roosevelt’s quarters in the Mayflower were filled with callers. At 1130[PM] the telephone rang. It was Hoover. He told Roosevelt he was still willing, with his consent, to issue the proclamation against hoardings and withdrawals. He asked Roosevelt if he agreed with him there should be no closings. Roosevelt answered: Senator Glass is here. He does not think it is necessary to close the banks—my own opinion is that the governors of the states can take care of closings wherever necessary. I prefer that you issue no proclamation
of this nature. There the conversation ended. Roosevelt then told Glass that the Federal Reserve Board had urged Hoover to close the banks, that Hoover had refused saying most of the banks still open were solvent, and that he told Hoover Senator Glass agreed with him. Then Glass asked Roosevelt what he was going to do. To Glass’ amazement, he answered: “I am planning to close them, of course.” Glass asked him what his authority was and he replied: “The Enemy Trading Act”—the very act Hoover had referred to and on which Roosevelt had said he had no advice from Cummings as to its validity. Glass protested such an act would be unconstitutional and told him so in heated terms. “Nevertheless,” replied Roosevelt, ‘I’m going to issue a proclamation to close the banks.”

A political animal the likes the US had not seen since Abraham Lincoln. (Possibly with the exception of the pastor’s son, Woodrow Wilson)

Unbelievably, FDR was indeed an economic moron, who had no grand plan and had no clue how to reopen the banks. In the end:

.. To the great audience that listened to the [12MAR1933] fireside chat, the hero of the drama—the man whose genius had led the country safely through the crisis of the banks—was not any of the men who had wrestled with the problem, but the man who went on the radio and told of the plan he did not construct, in a speech he did not write.

So we have come full circle. Stupid masses elect a stupid man as their messiah, and they are fully in love with the leader of their democracy. Mod rule (i.e. democracy) is not a pretty sight.

For years and decades men and women all over this nation will have been convinced of the righteousness and noble nature of this man that led them through the Great Depression, including my own grandfather, a small land owner with 25 cows to milk, who saw FDR give hope to Americans, electric to their homes, and safety in fighting WWII. He defended FDR to his dying day!

The chart below says more accurately what really happened:

The hypocrisy was heavy in the air during the passing of the Congressional bill to reopen the banks when FDR shared:

.. The next day Roosevelt sent his now famous message to Congress deploring the disastrous extravagance of the Hoover administration, uttering many of those sentences about balancing the budget, the fatalities of government spending, etc., which were to be quoted against him so many times, and calling for powers to reduce salaries and government expenses. As one reads that message now it is difficult to believe that it could ever have been uttered by a man who
before he ended his regime would spend not merely more money than President Hoover, but more than all the other 31 Presidents put together—three times more, in fact, than all the Presidents from George Washington to Herbert Hoover.

Quite the negative legacy, once you are aware of the real story behind the narrative, the history books and the teachers that take those history books at face value. What can a person do but hope that this might help convince some people that collectivist governments (democracies, Marxism, Socialism and Communism) are a bad road to travel.

I will continue to read the book “The Roosevelt Myth” as that book starts to unpack the “New Deal” (all versions) as I dive back into the book “Appeasement”.

Stay tuned.

-SF1

Why Has the “Official” U.S. History Overshadowed the Real Heroes? [Part 2 of 2]

Lindbergh with Marine pilots, a F4U Corsair in the South Pacific.

As promised, I will now offer the bright side of the two heroes who emerged in the United States in the early 20th century. I had hoped to include Charles Lindbergh in my last post, but there was way to much hubris to deal with in writing about FDR, and the sad fact was, there was actually way more material, but I do hope y’all get the point. Much less principled men and politicians get the attention of the masses than do the true heroes who stand by their principles.

I think perhaps of all the things a police state can do to its citizens, distorting history is possibly the most pernicious”

-Robert A. Heinlein

Once again I will heavily reference the 5 year old article by John J. Dwyer from ‘New American’ called “FDR vs. Lindbergh: Setting the Record Straight”. John’s article weaves his article more of the angst that FDR had with the popular Lindbergh over the truth-telling Charles shared over the years. The example of the executive order FDR flubbed in replacing a private industry with army pilots was the first issue that Lindbergh brought to light in 1934:

Lindbergh had never pursued political causes and had retreated with Anne from public view — and the vulture-like pursuit of the media — following the staggering loss of their son, but then Roosevelt, riding a historic wave of success and popularity, issued an executive order in early 1934 that outlawed an entire industry, private airline mail carrying.

There is a lot to be said of those who prefer to stay out of the limelight and shine their own light via more humble arenas. Lindbergh at his core was a humble man, but sometimes even the humble has to stand up for what is right:

The “Lone Eagle” [Lindbergh’s nickname] burst back into the limelight with a brief letter to the president protesting his actions. Lindbergh declared them “unwarranted and contrary to American principles” in their wielding of federal government power over the private sector whose production funded that government.

FDR, on the other hand, was an arrogant SOB that came across as a more gentle soul in public. What a facade:

FDR attempted to portray Lindbergh as a tool of the airlines. “Don’t worry about Lindbergh,” he scowled to an aide. “We will get that fair-haired boy.”

About five years later, prompted once more to come out of the shadows, Lindbergh caught on to the war-fever that came out of the FDR camp and Charles could not let this one go either:

Lindbergh presciently discerned the gathering dangers to the nation, and began a series of radio broadcasts and public speeches in September 1939 against America’s involvement in yet another European war. In one speech, he issued “a plea for American independence,” asking, “Why in this second century of our national existence must we be confronted with the quarrels of the old world that our forefathers left behind when they settled in this country?”

This is straight up US founder’s non-intervention foreign policy.  Reluctantly, Charles became political one more time:

Though he personally disdained public involvement in controversial political issues, he eventually joined America First, the 800,000-strong noninterventionist (but not pacifist) organization, and he crafted a platform comprised of four main elements: 1) an embargo on offensive weapons and munitions to warring nations, 2) the unrestricted sale of purely defensive armaments to anyone who wanted them to protect themselves from attack, 3) the prohibition of American shipping from the belligerent countries of Europe and their danger zones, 4) the refusal of credit to belligerent nations or their agents.

Lindbergh’s tenets were intended to ward off another experience like World War I wherein U.S. banks loaned the Allies the funds to buy American munitions and, hence, pushed strongly for American involvement in the war and for Allied victory in order to ensure repayment of their loans.

It sounds like a boat-load of common sense to me, but to a government trying to mask its failure of addressing the Great Depression Rx call the New Deal, it desperately needed some distraction. In response to this, FDR goes all out to get that “fair-haired boy”:

In response to Lindbergh’s opposition to the president’s aggressive policies, Roosevelt loosed all but the hounds of hell on him, and the media — a media that Lindbergh biographer Scott Berg stated “had grown to resent Lindbergh’s uncooperative attitude, [and] instantly revised history.” FDR’s political allies excoriated the aviator with an armada of untrue accusations. They called him an “isolationist,” though he advocated vigorous American commercial trading around the world and urged the United States not to “build a wall around our country and isolate ourselves from contact with the rest of the world.” .. Roosevelt’s allies also called Lindbergh a defeatist and appeaser of Germany, though at the same time Lindbergh managed to gain unprecedented access to the German Luftwaffe (the German air force) and became the first non-German to fly the legendary Messerschmitt 109 fighter plane, and he provided intelligence to the U.S. military about Nazi capabilities. Hap Arnold declared, “Lindbergh gave me the most accurate picture of the Luftwaffe, its equipment, leaders, apparent plans, training methods, and present defects that I had so far received,” and Arnold invited him to serve on an elite U.S. military aircraft development board.

Lindbergh was called a Nazi “fellow-traveler,” and Roosevelt and others privately said he was a Nazi. Yet Lindbergh spoke and wrote in many venues of his disgust with Nazi excesses and wrongdoing.

He was called an anti-Semite, primarily due, as historian Duffy wrote, “to a single claim he made,” in one Des Moines speech, “that Jews were among the influential groups [including the British and the Roosevelt administration] that shaped America’s war policies…. Lindbergh never blamed American Jews for their attitude toward the war. To the contrary, even as he criticized Jewish support for war, he expressed sympathy and understanding for the Jewish position.”

All this sounds too familiar, being called a Russian-bot today comes to mind. Some things never change either, like the “anti-Semite” accusation. But the propaganda smear was not enough for FDR, as he wanted to bury Lindbergh:

Roosevelt’s forces went after Lindbergh, other non-interventionists, and even critical letter-writers to the White House in additional ways, as Duffy chronicled. These included telephone wiretaps, room listening devices, public smear campaigns, and in general trying “to find some dirt” on them. The president himself initiated a cooperative venture with J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI in which the White House supplied the bureau the names and addresses of the letter senders so that the FBI could provide information on them.

Y’all thought that these tactics against whistle-blowers was a recent thing, think again. Politics operates primarily on having dirt on other people as leverage. Government in particular thrives on this, which is why the NSA does what it does every single day with your tax money, spy on everything you say and do and track wherever you go, the ultimate police state.

But I digress .. back to some more principled Lindbergh moments:

The enduring vindictiveness of Roosevelt evidenced itself in his determination to keep Lindbergh from any military role in the U.S. war effort, despite the aviator’s wholehearted support of the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and his stature as one of the world’s foremost aviation experts. Wiser heads eventually prevailed, and Lindbergh’s wartime resumé was extraordinary.

He corrected problems in the Army’s B-24 Liberator bomber, flew high-altitude test flights in the P-47 Thunderbolt fighter, and conducted dangerous research on combating airborne oxygen blackouts, using himself as guinea pig. At 42 years old — virtually invalid age for a fighter pilot — he flew 50 combat missions in the Pacific. Colonel Charles MacDonald, commander of the famed “Satan’s Angels” fighter group, said, “Lindbergh was indefatigable. He flew more missions than was normally expected of a regular combat pilot. He dive-bombed enemy positions, sank barges, and patrolled our landing forces on Noemfoor Island. He was shot at by almost every anti-aircraft gun the Nips [Japanese] had in western New Guinea.”

He also increased the bomb load of the Navy’s F4U Corsair fighter plane to 4,000 pounds, the heaviest ever carried by the fighter, then personally dropped it on Wotje Island, demolishing a Japanese anti-aircraft gun battery. After he devised how to extend the P-38 Lightning fighter’s flight distance by hundreds of miles, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in the Pacific Douglas MacArthur engaged him as a consultant and offered him whatever plane he wished to fly. Lindbergh’s discovery of how to improve the P-38’s flying distance enabled the fighter plane to escort bombers to the Japanese-held island of Palau, aiding in the capture of the island and leading to its use as a launching pad for MacArthur’s triumphant return to the Philippines.

In a head-to-head aerial dogfight with a Japanese group commander, Lindbergh missed crashing head-on with the enemy’s plane by five feet and shot it down. Aiding a fellow pilot in another dogfight, he got jumped by a Mitsubishi Zero that fired from directly behind him as he “commended [his] soul to God,” but another American fighter shot down the Zero in the nick of time.

I never hear of all this. My last recollection from my history teachers was that Charles melted into obscurity after challenging the thought that the US must enter WWII.

Charles experience in the South Pacific left him reflective on what he saw. Once again he would not keep quiet:

Having personally confronted the true horrors of war in the Pacific, though, Lindbergh bitterly denounced it in his private journal: “As the awful truth of the German crimes against the Jewish people came out, here we were, doing the same thing to the Japs.” He wrote about the attitudes he encountered: “‘They really are lower than beasts. Every one of ’em ought to be exterminated.’ How many times I heard American officers in the Pacific say those very words!… And ‘Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?’”

He chronicled the shooting of Japanese soldiers attempting to surrender so that other Japanese soldiers would remain in the jungle and slowly starve; Marines firing on unarmed Japanese swimming ashore at Midway; troops machine-gunning prisoners on a Hollandia airstrip; Australians shoving captured Japanese out of transport planes over the New Guinea mountains; Japanese shinbones carved off for letter openers and pen trays; Japanese heads buried in ant hills “to get them clean for souvenirs”; and “the infantry’s favorite occupation” of poking through the mouths of Japanese corpses for gold-filled teeth. He added, “What is barbaric on one side of the earth is still barbaric on the other.”

“Judge not that ye be not judged,” he continued. “It is not the Germans alone, or the Japs, but the men of all nations to whom this war has brought shame and degradation.” He also wrote of the legacy of using violence to solve mankind’s ills: lynchings, witch-burnings, “burnings at the stake for the benefit of Christ and God.”

Epic stuff that history books failed to capture. This is all by design as the US Empire has to hide heroes like this to keep the narrative intact that the US Empire, the state, is worthy of worship. As a result, the masses say the pledge, worship that flag, do your duty and vote, but don’t you dare be critical of the US government, that would be unpatriotic, or would it? What did our founders do with the British Empire?

So now what? In summary:

Franklin Roosevelt graduated onto the front of textbooks, currency, and best presidents’ lists. Charles Lindbergh, meanwhile, won the laurels of hatred and slander reserved for the truest patriot, he who loves his country enough to criticize her for her own good — a lesson that patriots of today know only too well is repeated almost daily in America through the cooperation of likeminded media and politicians.

Charles would lead a quite life after WWII retiring to Hawaii and dying there in 1974. I never even knew he was still living when I was reading about him in my history books and World Book Encyclopedias.

It is time to unearth these real heroes from having been buried by our government. We can’t afford to return to the days like John Adams’ administration when the Alien and Sedition Act made it a crime to be critical of the US government:

Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which made it a crime for anyone to criticize the government ”through writing or any other shape, form, or fashion.” Specifically, criticizing the president, Congress, the military, or the flag was made illegal.

Just over 20 years after divorcing the British Empire, the federation, now under the Constitution did this? Fast forward another 100 years and then you had this:

U.S. Sedition Act of 1918 … made it a crime to ”willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States.”

Our true history ain’t pretty, can’t we just be honest about this?

A true test of freedom is when you find out who you can’t criticize, am I right?

Enough for now, get out there and enjoy your weekend all!

-SF1

Why Has the “Official” U.S. History Overshadowed the Real Heroes? [Part 1 of 2]

Not a surprise to FDR, Pearl Harbor was a surprise to thousands of sailors that died that day! FDR’s economic policies in 1940 and into 1941 maneuvered the Japanese to strike out at Pearl Harbor while the US Navy had broken the Japanese code which Washington DC deciphered and did not pass on to sailors at Pearl Harbor.

Time and again lately, I run into a bit of history, real history, of real heroes in the United State’s past, I have NEVER heard about them, in a substantial way, in United States academia’s “official” history!

I think I am getting a bit ticked that the “great”, “free” and “exceptional” United States of American would have to twist its own history apparently to paint our government itself as exceptional, all day everyday, apparently.

A few months ago I ran across this article, promptly bookmarked, from ‘New American’ by John J. Dywer that outlines what has happened all along in this country (and other countries as well):

But the actual histories of the men suggest that “history” is often little more than propaganda that has been oft repeated. An accounting of the quality of the men’s judgments, their standards of behavior in interpersonal conflicts, and their personal accomplishments makes it logical that American history should, instead, laud Lindbergh while recoiling from Roosevelt.

There you have it. History as told by the intellectual class in academic books and in academia in a democracy ends up being a distorted version of what really happened. History is written by the victors, not just of wars, but of political struggles as well.

Enter two heroes of the early 20th century in the United States, one you will remember, the other, you may know a few passing facts.

FDR is well known as a four-term president, stories of his “fireside” chats, as well as the myth that he guided the United States out of the Great Depression with his New Deal, and that FDR, having promised peace, reluctantly guided the United States to fight Japan across the Pacific and Germany/Italy across the Atlantic to win WWII.

Lindbergh, flew solo across the Atlantic and had his son kidnapped and murdered, and later, as myth would have it, was an isolationist.

Does this fit what your high school history book or teacher taught you? My guess is that you may agree with me.

So let us tackle in “Part 1 of 2”, the hero that everyone is familiar with, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who in the beginning of his political career …:

… capitalized on the fact that his distant cousin Theodore Roosevelt was one of the most admired U.S. presidents and managed to become governor of New York. After winning two gubernatorial terms, “FDR” parlayed his own handsome visage, galvanizing charisma, and message of hope for Great Depression-ravaged America into the presidency in 1933

So far so good right? Well, it about to come off the rails if you are a fan of FDR:

Roosevelt, riding a historic wave of success and popularity, issued an executive order in early 1934 that outlawed an entire industry, private airline mail carrying. Instead, Roosevelt determined, the U.S. military would provide the air transportation for delivering air mail.

It is one thing to transition the USPS from horses to delivery vehicles, even though they STILL can’t run the monopoly with a profit, but to take on mail delivery with army pilots? Only government can come up with a decision like this, no free-market business would have been that stupid. John shares more along this line:

Brave army pilots, ill trained for their new mail-carrying mission and flying planes far inferior to the airlines’ (one commercial liner, for instance, could carry the load of six army planes) and inadequate for either the pitch black of night or the freezing, snow-blown winter, began immediately to perish.

As the body count rose to 12 and accidents to 66, masses of air mail were delayed or never delivered, and public fury mounted at the administration.

90 days later, FDR reversed his stupid decision, and one of his own shared the quick lesson learned:

Roosevelt ally Henry “Hap” Arnold, later five-star commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces during WWII, summarized the fiasco: “Within two weeks we were forced to realize that although the ‘will to do’ might get the job done, the price of our doing it was equal to the sacrifice of a wartime combat operation. Courage alone could not substitute for years of cross-country experience; for properly equipped airplanes; and for suitable blind flying instruments, such as the regular air-line mail pilots were using.”

A business leader making decisions like that would be sidelined to some area of the company where they might do the least damage, but not in government. Stupid is promoted and made exponential:

His famed “first hundred days,” contrary to many of his campaign promises about avoiding the centralization of government power, unleashed an unparalleled blizzard of legislation in which the federal government sought to correct the supposed failures of the capitalistic system — through the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and many other new laws. “It is common sense to take a method and try it,” he explained. “If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

Letting economic lightweights take charge of the whole American economy, what can go wrong? The myth that capitalism got the country in a position where unemployment was almost 25% was enough for the masses to think that FDR could do this, just with his charisma!

So we not only have stupid government, but we have stupid people.

About government, Albert J. Nock, an avid writer in FDR’s days, wrote:

“I wonder how many such men in America would know that Communism, the New Deal, Fascism, Nazism, are merely so-many trade-names for collectivist Statism, like the trade-names for tooth-pastes which are all exactly alike except for the flavouring.”
― Albert Jay Nock

About stupid people, Albert J. Nock offered a counter-balance:

The Remnant has always existed, since the beginning of man and it survives today.  It is not possessed with extraordinary intelligence, wealth or power.  Those that comprise it are just ordinary human beings, average by—and—large and you will never recognize them for what they are when you meet them, see them or hear them. They are the builders, re—builders and redeemers of humanity.  They are the ones who sustain and regenerate society — and above all else — they persevere.  You can guess who they are or might have been but you will never know with any certainty.  They are friends of liberty though, that much I know.

It was in Nock’s writings that actually gave me hope a few years ago. Discouraged by both personal and social media attempts to help people see the truth, to research for themselves the truth, I wondered if this was just a recent phenomenon. Then I found that in Albert J. Nock’s writings that in the 1930s the masses actually believe that government could not only help, but be the savior for the USA. The wisdom he offered can be found in the following:

it is Nock’s contention that when one has something of value to say, a strong and workable principle if you will, speaking to the masses and expecting wholesale results is the incorrect approach, rather, speaking through mass—man to the ‘reachable’ few is the accurate and rewarding path to take.  In that way your message is not prostituted or diluted in any way and remains true and whole.  It reaches those ‘with ears to hear,’ who are able to understand and make use of its intelligence.

This gives me hope in the few ears that can hear in 2019! I don’t need to hear rave reviews of the articles I share, I just can rest knowing that the seeds are planted, for later comes the harvest.

To quickly summarize the balance of FDR’s “wisdom”, (as we in the US Navy would call a CF, Cluster F**k, Mr. Dwyer shares:

Though the realization gradually dawned on Roosevelt and his minions that no amount of constitutionally questionable New Deal programs and Machiavellian presidential scheming could end the Depression, Roosevelt kept his programs going full steam ahead. Near the end of Roosevelt’s second term, Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau, a key New Deal architect, penned this startling confession regarding the administration’s failure: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and now if I am wrong somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosper. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And enormous debt to boot.”

As nations on nearly every continent emerged from the economic cataclysm, U.S. unemployment skyrocketed back up to nine million workers in 1939 — 12 million if counting Americans employed at taxpayer-funded “make-work” jobs — a total nearly that of when Roosevelt first won the presidency, and after oceans of New Deal spending.

All that debt for nothing, nada, zero benefit. About this time the government started the habit of “cooking the books” to make it look like things were on the up and up. There are economists that have gone back to the “books” and found blatant lying on the economic stats produced in that day, that I believe persists to the present!

So what does the state do when it feels itself back in the corner economically with no good place to go inside an election cycle? It seeks war!

In September 1939 when Germany and Russia invaded Poland, precipitating WWII, Roosevelt saw his chance to eliminate U.S. unemployment. Amity Schlaes opined in her Depression chronicle The Forgotten Man: “A war … would hand to Roosevelt the thing he had always lacked — a chance, quite literally, to provide jobs to the remaining unemployed ..  Roosevelt hadn’t known what to do with the extra people in 1938, but now (1940) he did: he could make them soldiers.” Never mind that the private-sector unemployment problem was exacerbated by the economic drag caused by his costly Big Government programs — or that going to war would make government even more expensive.

So if the New Deal fiasco was not enough, why not create more debt and involve the US in a war it didn’t need to participate in? Beside trying to entice Germany to do something, anything as an excuse to mobilize for war (like what the US did with the Lusitania to get the US in WWI), Hitler refused to take the bait. So FDR turned to Japan:

The president [FDR] implemented all eight planks of the infamous McCollum memorandum. Authored by Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum, head of the Far East desk of the Office of Naval Intelligence, these planks advocated actions about which McCollum stated, “If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war [against the United States], so much the better.” They included a new and dramatic U.S. military presence in the Far East; the gradual choking off of all crucial manufacturing elements to Japan by America and its allies; and placement of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii, an isolated outpost thousands of miles toward Japan from the American mainland.

Admiral James O. Richardson, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, immediately recognized the jeopardy in which this move placed the fleet and protested so strongly to Roosevelt that the president fired him.

After meeting with the president on October 16, 1941, Republican Secretary of War Henry Stimson, a staunch internationalist and member of the world-government-promoting Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in his diary: “We face the delicate question of the diplomatic fencing to be done so as to be sure Japan is put into the wrong and makes the first bad move — overt move.” A diary entry six weeks later following a meeting of the War Cabinet — less than two weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — clarifies what Stimson meant by “overt move”: “The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.” After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Stimson confessed that “my first feeling was of relief … that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people.” After the war, he added that, “We needed the Japanese to commit the first overt act.”

So FDR got his war, costing thousands of sailors at Pearl Harbor their lives as well as a large chunk of the Pacific Fleet. But the propaganda worked once more, the “surprise” attack was bought by 99% of Americans and suddenly, everyone was for war. Truth is indeed the first causality of war!

So enough of FDR, who I consider to be one of the five WORST presidents of the United States of American, and on to Charles Lindbergh, a true hero as you will soon see in “Part 2 of 2” to be posted soon!

Stay tuned

-SF1

“By Their Fruit You Will Recognize Them”: The 1919 Treaty of Versailles

I have a (bad?) habit. When I hear of some historical event, I look for the context and the history that preceded that event. Do I have a CSI in my DNA? I guess I just want to know the event in a holistic way so that I do not judge it by it’s appearance only. (My family knows this reference, but it works really well here)

As I pointed out in a previous post a couple of weeks ago:

My point today is that any book on any subject that has you reflecting on what you thought you knew, can launch you into doing research in and around the book reading to attempt to get at the nugget of truth that is typically obscured by an overriding narrative that the masses like to believe.

Reading a “wrong” book or a book from a different perspective from your own should never be seen as a waste of time. In fact, it is usually this kind of ‘entertaining a thought without accepting it’ is essential towards being a true CSI’er of our history.

One of the books I am reading is “Appeasement”, by Tim Bouverie. Primarily about the steps Britain took, or failed to take, with Hitler that led to a disastrous start to WWII. It is assumed in this book, written from a primarily Oxford viewpoint, that the treaty signed at the end of WWI should have kept Germany from rearming causing the British to once again cross that channel and save the day for the continent of Europe.

Well today I want to shed a little light on that treaty, which as of this past week turned 100 years old. Just today, at Lew Rockwell, a post appeared that helped me to mine this time period even more for the wisdom that can come out of understanding history, which is basically just “relationships” at a macro level.

The work by the author, Edward W. Fuller, is fascinating in that it really tells the story of the “tree” that was planted in 1919 which makes the fruit that we see in the 1930s, with Hitler’s rise to power, give us no real surprise.

I contend, that if we all really knew history well, even events that happen today might have us all asking the right questions in the search for truth. We want to be like The Who in their song “We won’t get fooled again”:

Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t want to get fooled again
No, no!
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

So let me assist in getting some major points down on the situation 100 years ago when many nations attempted to draw up a treaty to ensure that “The Great War” would not be repeated:

June 28, 2019 is the centenary of the Treaty of Versailles. The notorious treaty, signed by Germany on June 28, 1919, was the most important of the peace treaties that ended the First World War. Although each defeated nation signed its own treaty, the entire settlement is often called the Treaty of Versailles.

Yes Germany signed this treaty, however, doesn’t it really take two (or more) to actively work on hammering out a real treaty? I do think that the author of the book “Appeasement” and 95% of US citizens think and have been taught that this treaty was indeed honorable, not only in its terms but also in its inception. Mr. Fuller points out something interesting:

In early January, 1919, delegates from Britain, France, Italy, and the United States congregated in Paris. Initially, the Allies’ plan was to have a preliminary conference amongst themselves to decide on the peace terms to offer Germany. After the brief preliminary conference, the plan was to invite Germany to a full-scale peace conference to negotiate the terms.

As the Allies squabbled amongst themselves, the preliminary conference gradually developed into the full-scale conference. The Germans were not summoned to Paris until early May. And when they finally arrived, they were never allowed to negotiate the terms of the treaty. Thus, the Treaty of Versailles was a dictated treaty, not a negotiated treaty.

Whoa! While I knew that Germany got really ripped off in this treaty, I mean, it had not even entered this conflict on its own, as Eric Margolis shares:

.. Germany’s role in the conflict was no greater than the other belligerents, and perhaps less than commonly believed.  Starved into submission by Britain’s naval blockade, Germany was unfairly and foolishly saddled with total war guilt, and saw 10% of its territory and 7 million of its people torn away at Versailles by the war’s rapacious victors.

One thing that stood out to me in my read of “Appeasement” is how inadequate was my own high school and post high school history “official” education. I am so glad that at this date I can re/un-learn enough to really know what was going on and why.

Just yesterday I read that Serbia, Bosnia, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine all were relinquished by the German’s with this treaty and France and Britain would be the new overseers. Don’t tell me that this has nothing to do with the Middle East as it stands today. Something tells be there is a lot more to this story.

Eric Margolis hints at why the French and the British did not include Germany at the negotiation table when he says:

Both of these imperial powers feared Germany’s growing commercial and military power (just as the US today fears China’s rise). Germany’s vibrant social democracy with its worker’s rights and concern for the poor posed a threat to the capitalists of Britain and France. Britain’s imperialists were deeply worried by the creation of a feeble little German Empire based in Africa. At the time they controlled a quarter of the globe and all of its oceans.

One has to wonder how the world might have been if England would have acted honorably for once and put the brakes on the rush to war fever that initially was primarily a French emotion:

A total conflagration could still have been averted if Great Britain, which had been playing neutral, had boldly demanded the rush to war cease. France would have been unlikely to go to war without Britain’s supporting its left flank in Flanders.

… a coterie of anti-German officials in Britain, led by the duplicitous foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey and the ambitious, war-yearning imperialist, Winston Churchill, pushed the British Empire to war against Germany. They were joined by a cabal of German-haters in the French government. British and French industrialists, fearful of German competition, and seeing huge profits to be made, backed the war party.

Does this sound familiar or what. How much DNA was transferred to the USA when the British Empire help the American colonies get established in the 1600s?

Beyond not being an equal partner in the “negotiation” of this treaty, the obedience to the treaty’s terms were also an issue:

The military clauses of the treaty disarmed Germany. But the German disarmament was supposed to be part of general European disarmament sponsored by the League of Nations. While the Germans were disarmed by the treaty, the Allies did not fulfill their promise to disarm. This was unfair, and the Allies’ broken promise infuriated German public opinion.

Psychologically, there was more damage from this treaty to those German citizens who knew better. Consider this “feature”:

The reparations section of the treaty included Article 231 – the infamous war-guilt clause. Article 231 required Germany to accept responsibility for starting the war. This clause was unfair, because Germany was not solely responsible for the war. All the major European powers share the blame.

Anger, resentment, punishment all lead to a sense of GROSS INJUSTICE!

I, myself, am wired in a way that is incensed by injustice. Beyond injustice, is my own drive to give individuals on a micro level, and people groups on a macro level the ability to give their consent to those who would govern them, otherwise this becomes slavery even if it comes under the guise of “government” for the greater good.

.. the Allied leaders assured the world that the peace would be based on the principle of national self-determination. Their actions proved otherwise. At the conference, the Allies imperialistically carved up the world and created new but unsustainable nation states with government coercion.

Is this believable? In 2019, after a century of war with 200 million killed by governments, you just have to agree that they do lie, they all do!

So for Germany, what did this mean?

… how could a lunatic like Hitler rise to power in Germany? The answer is the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles. The German population thought the treaty was unfair, and they wanted someone to oppose it. The treaty created the platform for Hitler’s rise to power. For this reason, the Treaty of Versailles must be considered a major cause of the Second World War.

The fruit of this non-negotiated treaty was more war. Such is the wisdom of men (including woMEN) in committees … stupid is multiplied!

For the rest of the world the author concludes:

The First World War and the Paris Peace Conference led to Nazism in Germany, fascism in Italy, militarism in Japan, extremism in the Middle East, and communism in Russia, China, Korea, and Vietnam. What must be learned from the war and peace settlement? Here is the most important lesson: the free market economy is the only way to lasting world peace.

The war was caused by Europe’s imperialistic intervention in foreign trade. In the decades before the war, there was a massive drive by the European powers to expand their empires. This put the European powers on a collision course. Why the imperial expansion? The European powers did not allow other powers to trade freely in their empires. For this reason, the European powers viewed imperial expansion as the only way to gain new markets for their goods. Europe’s rejection of the principle of free trade was the fundamental cause of the First World War.

Free trade brings peace, but states love war.

Are we getting the message now?

-SF1