Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Colby Benjamin
Title : 'Twas a famous victory Deception and propaganda in the war with Germany
Year : 1974

Link download : Colby_Benjamin_-_Twas_a_famous_victory.zip

Introduction. The United States fought World War II in Europe for the stated objective of bringing peace and freedom to peoples everywhere. As set forth in the Atlantic Charter and held before the American people, the aim was "to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want." The war against Germany in particular was portrayed as a holy war. General Eisenhower entitled his experiences Crusade in Europe, and not with tongue in cheek, for that is the way it was presented to the American people and the way most of them came to accept it. The forces of good were ranged on one side and the forces of evil on the other, and unconditional victory over evil became necessary at all cost to establish a just and durable peace. It was a war to the death for virtue. The miliary aim was achieved. The Nazi regime was destroyed and all Germany was prostrated. But the victory, instead of bringing peace and freedom for all, set up a vastly expanded Communist Russia as an oppressive colossus of Europe. Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and eastern Poland became part of the Soviet state. German territory was handed to the Poland that remained, and all was turned over to communism. The remainder of eastern Germany became a Communist Soviet satellite. Communist regimes were installed in the "liberated" countries of central and eastern Europe, and far more people were placed under Stalin's despotism than had ever been subjected to the dictatorship of Hitler. As Winston Churchill wrote in the preface to The Second World War: "... after all the exertions and sacrifices of hundreds of millions of people, and of the victories of the Righteous Cause, we still have not found peace or security, and ... we lie in the grip of even worse perils than those we have surmounted." A cold war soon developed between the United States and its Soviet ally. American forces engaged in a bitter conflict in Korea against armies organized and supplied by the Soviet. Only a sharp confrontation brought the removal of Russian-installed missiles from Cuba, and the Soviet-buttressed regime of that country, just off American shores, has sought to promote Communism wherever it could in the Western Hemisphere. At every possible point, the Soviet Union has aided the spread of political philosophy and governmental systems totally alien to democracy, while continuing political repression at home. The United States has disengaged at last from a disastrous war in Vietnam which it entered to try to halt the Communist march in Asia. In the Middle East, Russia and the United States arm rival nations engaged in a continuing struggle. The cold war has thawed and there has been marked improvement in the relations of the United States with the Soviet Union, where the most murderous aspects of Russian communism have been at least suspended. But there is still no political or personal freedom in the Soviet, and the iron heel of communism is still on the European states over which it acquired control with unconditional victory in the war. And despite expanding commercial relations between the world's two strongest nations, they confront each other with terrifying arsenals of nuclear weapons which could be unleashed in an instant. Basically, the former allies maintain a truce, armed to the teeth. Germany, subjugated and carved up by the victors, was to be held powerless for the long future. But soon after the war it became the West's chief European bastion against Russia. United States forces are maintained there to discourage any warlike Soviet moves. The United States and Germany jointly develop weapons of war and German army flyers train above the deserts of Arizona. The nation which the West proposed to reduce to little more than a bare existence is an industrial giant and the chief proponent of economic union of the European democracies. ...