WHAT MOVIE SPAWNED A MAJOR POLITICAL MOVEMENT?

CAN AMERICA FACE ITS PAST??   Hugh Murray

  Rob Quinn of Newser, 2/5/25 reported:

    "One of the thousands of silent films believed to have been lost forever is lost no more. The Heart of Lincoln, a 1915 Civil War drama, was found by Dan Martin, an intern going through old reels Historic Films Archive in Greenport, Long Island, NBC News reports. Martin, a film preservation student, tells Newsday that most of the material he was going through consisted of "kind of dry" old education reels discarded by universities, but he recognized Francis Ford's name when he rolled the credits on the old 16-millimeter print. Ford, who directed the movie and starred as Abraham Lincoln, is the older brother of John Ford, who won a record four Oscars for best director, including one for 1940's The Grapes of Wrath."

                             Hugh Murray

My point is different: - 1915 "The Heart of Lincoln" found. Was it a hit when released? How big?  In 1913 the blockbuster film of that era covered some of the same material, but in a different way.  "Birth of a Nation." was probably the most popular American film until "Gone with the Wind" in 1939. It earned more in sales until "Gone with the Wind."  Birth was the product of D W Griffiths.  It was shown in the White House, and Pres. Woodrow Wilson declared, in a film's slide, that it was written in lightning. Birth depicts some scenes from the War Between the States, the pain when family members fight for different sides, and finally the defeat of the South,.  The second half of Birth portrays the results of defeat. the foolishness of the Northerners who sought to remake the South without understanding it. The film shows how many local whites were oppressed by the corrupt Republicans and their unschooled allies.  Finally, in desperation,  the local whites, defeated by the war and then dispossessed by corrupt and coddled local scallywag's, carpet bagger Yankees, and illiterate former slaves.  In desperation the local whites banded together in informal organizations to overthrow the Reconstruction governments. It was made to encourage audiences to emote as the Klansmen rode at night to restore order. And cheer the audiences did!  

        The American film industry has produced many popular and artful and money-making films.  To this day Hollywood means movies.  However, unlike all the popular and arty and money-making films that came later, none did what Birth of a Nation succeeded in doing.  Birth created a movement!   Birth was so popular a film, it brought about a revival of the KKK, and not only in the South. No wonder Pres. Wilson, Democrat, who had been Chancellor of Princeton U., prided himself that no blacks were admitted to the prestigious university under his leadership. Wilson, Democrat, also segregated the Federal Civil Service, and require a person's photo when applying for a federal job so no blacks would be hired. Wilson segregated the military too. And so he led America into war, the war to save democracy. And the war to end all wars. The book that inspired the film "Irth of a Nation" was The Clansman.  Has any other film had such impact?  In 1924 the KKK had a march on Washington.  A candidate for the Democratic nomination was endorsed by the KKK.  Another faction, oppossed, favord Roman Catholic NY Gov. Al Smith.  It took 103 ballots before the delegates ignored both major factions and chose a lesser known candidate, who did poorly in the general election against Calvin Coolidge.

     Wilson, a Democrat, is considered a progressive President.  For Sec. of the Navy, he chose Josephus Daniels, a Democrat from North Carolina.  Daniels had personally partaken in the overthrow of the last Republican city in the South, Wilmington.  White mobs overthrew the GOP-Populist local government, chasing out some, burning out others, and using bullets too.  With such a background, Pres. Wilson chose Daniels as his Sec. of the Navy, a very important post as war loomed.  Daniels is credited in making it easier to advance in the navy on experience in the service, and less on outside credentials.  He is also noted for his view, the greatest crime in America is allowing blacks to vote.  For Under Sec. of the Navy, Pres. Wilson chose a young, healthy New Yorker, Franklin D. Roosevelt.  When FDR became President, he retained a segregated Civil Service, and a segregated military.

             A few days ago, tha last surviving member of the Tuskegee Airmen died at age 100, Harry Stewart, Jr.  Basically, this was like other black units in the military, segregated.  Of course, to begin, there were white instructors to teach all how to fly, and there were some whites too, but overall it was a segregated unit, like the rest of the American military.  I worked for a white who was an officer of an all black artillary in WWII.  I am not implying that segregated units were necessarily bad, they can promote pride and enthusiasm.  That is the advantage of the HBCUs.

     My point is that the US was conflicted on race from the beginning.  The Civil War was fought to end the slave-power, and slavery.  Beginning in 1865 riots and Lincoln's assassination brought the Radical Republicans to power in Congress, but they were often foiled by War Democrat Pres. Andrew Johnson.  The Civil Rights Amendments to the Constitution seemed tp solve the problem.  But a guerrilla war in the South, waged by whites wearing informal rebel attire, Klan white, red shirts, or whatever, against former black Union soldiers, Republicans, white teachers in black schools, black businesses, etc.  Pres. Grant tried to go after the Klan, but in the disputed election of 1876, the North promised to remove Yankee troops from the area.  With the fall of Wilmington in 1898, one could speak of the Solid South (solidly Democratic, solidly segregated).  The North and South were re-united, symbolized as many from both parts of the nation volunteered in the Spanish American War that brought us Puerto Rico, Philippines, and influence in Cuba.

     Like the other great nations in 1900, America was a racist nation too.  And up to 1950 or so.  What changed America????

WHITE ETHNICS DENIED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION STATUS

The following is meant to be part of a chapter of my forthcoming book on civil rights and affirmative action.  This excerpt is a partial review of Skrentny's Minority Rights book.  Hugh Murray

THE MINORITY RIGHTS REVOLUTION(Cambridge, MA and London, Eng.: Belknap Press

of Harvard U. Press, 2002) by JOHN D. SKRENTNY

John D. Skrentny's The Minority Rights Revolution is probably the last, best academic history of the development of affirmative action in the United States. Overall, it is not an easy read or a beautifully crafted one, as he must describe laws, bureaucracies, rulings and regulations, court interpretations – not exactly the venues of poetry. Occasionally, political strategies are also included. What makes this an important work is that Skrentny attended Harvard as a graduate student where he was awarded a degree and studied under the prominent scholar Orlando Patterson; Skrentny interviewed men like Hugh Graham Davis, author of an earlier, fact-filled work on the development of civil rights; and Skrentny also interviewed Alfred Blumrosen, who may be considered the chief architect of what we call today affirmative action (hereafter AA). Skrentny's book is published by Belknap of Harvard University Press; it is academically solid with an abundance of discursive footnotes. Thomas Sugrue, a reviewer of this book, declared that Skrentny “has written the definitive account of the dramatic expansion of minority rights in America in the 1960s and 1970s.”(book's back cover) This work satisfies both academia and the Establishment. But what does it omit? What are the major questions about the development of “civil rights” that he fails to ask?

On page V, Skrentny asserts that he is mainly on the Left politically. He adds, “Policy elites make decisions and those decisions matter.”(14) In his book he basically traces the elite and how it, and its employees, arrived at what today we call affirmative action. Yet in doing so, Skrentny changes the meanings of words in an Orwellian sense. Thus, “The minority rights revolution was a sudden growth of federal legislation, presidential executive orders, bureaucratic rulings, and court decisions that established nondiscrimination rights.”(4) No, that sentence is absurd. Instead it established the right, and often the duty, to discriminate against white men. All are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Prior to outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, Nazi legal experts researched America's segregation laws, for the purpose of adopting some for use against the Jews in Germany.(See James Q. Whitman, Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, Princeton U. Press, 2017) But once war erupted with the US, the Germans willingly highlighted the hypocrisy of the US that complained about Germany's racial laws when the US had numerous racial laws of its own. Skrentny does not mention it, but through WWII a majority of American states had laws forbidding intermarriage of different races. The Japanese invaded much of Asia, but they hoped the local people would view them not as invaders but as liberators! They would liberate the Philippines from the colonialist, white racist Americans; the Indonesians from the colonialist, white racist Dutch; IndoChina from the colonialist, white racist French; Hong Kong, Malaysia, Burma, India, from the colonialist, white racist British empire. Within the US, most Japanese (citizens or not) were interned in camps under Roosevelt, so they were generally too isolated to be aware of current Japanese propaganda: however that propaganda did evoke some response among other minorities, including on the then tiny Black Muslim movement. To counter this Axis appeal, “...President Franklin Delano Roosevelt strongly promoted the United States as a symbol of human rights and race equality.”(11)

Skrentny titles his second chapter - “'This is war and this is a war measure': racial equality becomes national security.”(21) In a radio address in January 1941 Roosevelt declared that those fighting against the Axis were fighting for the Four Freedoms: freedom of speech and expression; freedom of religion; freedom from want; and freedom from fear.(24) A few months prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and America's official entry into the conflict, Roosevelt signed and Executive Order to promote Fair Employment practices in America's expanding war-time industries. While Skrentny spends some pages on FDR's proposed social programs during the war, he does not mention a plank in the 1944 Democratic Party's platform that would limit salaries to a high of $25,000 a year.

With the defeat of Hitler and Tojo, the US was soon engaged in a Cold War with Stalin's Communist Soviet Union. The world-wide Communist Parties had long stressed their opposition to both racism and colonialism (except when the topic was Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe.) To many major players in the United States, if America was to achieve “world leadership and defeat communism,” the US would have to “eliminate white racism, both domestically and internationally.”(72) To achieve this end, some states enacted their own FEPC laws, the US Supreme Court outlawed legally segregated schools in 1954, Pres. Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock in 1957 to insure that several Black students could attend the white Central High School (of course, Ike was a Republican, but nevertheless, no president had sent troops South on behalf of Blacks since the Reconstruction era), and a few years later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 [hereafter, CRA]. “Because these reforms were classically liberal, however, the new laws did not identify any particular minority groups. The initial civil rights gains for blacks, for example, in fact protected any and all Americans. These were simply nondiscrimination provisions.”(84, emphasis in Skrentny's original.)

Black historian, former Chair of the Civil Rights Commission, and left-wing activist Mary Frances Berry asserted that the CRA of 1964 did not apply to whites; it was enacted for Blacks. At first glance, Skrentny seems to agree with her. He writes: “..., it must be emphasized that American citizens and political elites saw Title VII and the entire CRA of 1964 as being a law for African Americans.”(100) But on the very next page he quotes a leading liberal politician and floor manager pushing the proposed legislation through a Senate where filibusters had killed previous bills. The Minnesota senator was one of those most responsible for garnering the votes to pass the CRA into law and: “Senator Hubert Humphrey stated bluntly that 'the bill has a simple purpose...to give fellow citizens – Negroes – the same rights and opportunities that white people take for granted.'”(101) Here, as elsewhere, Humphrey spoke of equal rights, NOT preferential rights over whites. Skrentny also reports, it was not only Humphrey who interpreted things this way, for “...the civil rights leaders before 1965 never made affirmative action as later understood one of their central demands [however] the policy nevertheless became civil rights...”(343, again, the emphasis in Skrentny's original).

Skrentny acknowledges that AA meant “official minorities,” and abandoning the classical liberal approach concerning individual rights, and replacing it by dividing the nation into “oppressed minorities and privileged majorities.”(85) Moreover, AA was a cheap, easy, available way to appease the desires of the EEOC.(86) Who should be included on the list of minorities on the EEO forms to be sent to employers? The replies would determine whom they had hired and in what proportion. Blumrosen, of course, wanted the data concerning Blacks hired at any given firm. Earlier forms for various government agencies had included listings for Puerto Ricans or Mexican Americans or Spanish-speaking, American Indians, and various words to include Asians too. The early EEOC forms did not include the category for women, although women were included in the CRA. Nor did the EEOC inquire of employers about Poles, Greeks, Irish, or Roman Catholics, or Jews. There were no inquiries on the forms about those categories, even though the CRA included categories for banning discrimination based on national origin or religion. But the EEOC ignored these aspects of the law. The reason for this omission: Skrentny thought the employer could readily make a tally by looking at his work-force, without asking them. This was not necessarily true, as most Hispanics viewed themselves as white, so looking at them might not have revealed that they were Hispanic. If the employer then checked their names, he could also have checked to see a Polish name, a Greek one, and Irish one. Yet, the ethnics were not counted in the government's official tally.

In the 1940s and 50s, Jews were included on some government forms. Blacks objected, and the Jews decided not to press the issue, as they were also aware of how the data might be used against them.(282-83) In the EEOC the question of religious AA in hiring was never broached.(435) For a time during President Nixon's drive to promote Black capitalism, and other minority enterprises, the Small Business Administration did include Hasidim (a very Orthodox Jewish group), but that effort did not last long.(162-63) Skrentny asserts that there were no AA university quotas for white ethnics (310); but he is wrong. Beginning in 1976 Italian-Americans were granted the privileged AA status at the City University of New York.(See Linda Kirillova's MA Thesis, “When Affirmative Action is White: Italian-Americans in the City University of New York, 1976 – Present,” Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 2016) Nevertheless, this appears to be so unique that Skrentny's assessment of the issue is essentially correct. Blumrosen defended the policy of excluding white ethnics from AA because to do otherwise would have interfered with the main goal of helping Blacks.(438)

But there is another reason white ethnics were not included on the EEOC forms that would have given them a guaranteed percentage of jobs, places in universities, promotions, etc. Would the inclusion of white ethnics really have harmed the Blacks? The Black proportion of the population presumably would remain the same. Was Blumrosen's explanation for the exclusion, the “reason,” or a rationale for depriving white ethnics of AA privileges? And many white ethnics did seek to be included among the AA beneficiaries. Indeed, Polish advocates wanted to know why Hispanics were the only whites included in AA.(293) And being excluded from the government's list of official minorities meant that “national policy therefore racialized ethnics as privileged whites.”(314) And today in public schools from elementary to high school to university, there are lectures and classes taught stressing how all whites are privileged and therefore ought to be restricted. In some classrooms today, several teachers have boasted that they do not call upon whites. From the seemingly minor point of an agency creating distorted regulations and sending employers questionnaires demanding information about employment of certain minorities, but ignoring other minorities, from that act of excluding some groups on a government form, from that seed forests of hatred have blossomed.

Bottom line, author Skrentny, like almost all academics, supports affirmative action and the manipulations of the elite forces to impose it on America. I disagree, and this review will be part of my forthcoming book seeking to expose the lies and deceptions of the civil rights movement.

FDR Vs. LINDBERGH

THOSE ANGRY DAYS: ROOSEVELT, LINDBERGH, AND AMERICA'S FIGHT

OVER WORLD WAR II, 1939-1941 (New York: Random House, 2013)

BY LYNNE OLSON

Rev. by Hugh Murray

A good read does not make a good book. Olson's volume is well-written, easy to follow, flowing along with the American nation from its isolationism of 1939 when war erupted in Europe, to the day of infamy when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Those were angry days, when most Americans, some 70% according to a poll she cites (p.28), believed in 1937 that the US had been tricked into mistakenly entering the Great War (WWI). Many continued to believe it best for America to stay out of the wars boiling over in 1939. Others, like Pres. Franklin Roosevelt, viewed Hitler as a threat to America, with his blitzkrieg over Poland in 1939, followed by further blitz victories over Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and finally France in spring and summer of 1940. Hitler followed with his surprise attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941; Roosevelt concluded that all that posed a great threat to the US and the world. Roosevelt pushed to end American neutrality, pressed for a draft law at home, repeal of the Neutrality Act, the sale of arms to help Britain, and then lend lease, to keep supplying Britain as it verged on bankruptcy. To prevent German occupied Denmark from claiming Danish islands, the US occupied Greenland and Iceland, even escorting British convoys of ships to Iceland. The American ships even sailed beyond and there were minor skirmishes with German U-boats. In the fall of 1941 Roosevelt issued a shoot on sight order against the German subs. On the heated debate that occurred in America over all these policies, policies that were shoving America to the brink of war with the German Reich, Olson is good. She describes in America the growing intensity, anger, hatred on both sides, easily lumped into two camps – isolationists vs. interventionists.

However, Olson leaves out an important part of the equation – and she is too knowledgeable to ascribe this omission to ignorance. Thus, she blithely writes: “Indeed the US never faced any serious threat of internal subversion before or during the war.”(337) What bull! Olson must have heard of the Manhattan Project, the A-bomb, the Rosenbergs, and the many others? All striving to give Stalin the American atomic secrets. Was this not a serious threat of internal subversion during the war? Furthermore, there was also internal subversion BEFORE the US entered WWII, and that subversion is related to how American entered WWII.

Olson writes: “HUAC had been set up in 1934 as a special committee to investigate pro-Nazi and other right-wing extremist groups in the United States. After ending its operations a year later,...revived by Congress in 1938 under...Rep. Martin Dies, a right-winger, anti-New Deal Democrat...Dies focused...on...Communist presence in organized labor and the federal government....[Dies] worked to portray the New Deal as part of a vast Communist conspiracy.”(327-28)

Olson understands the HUAC of Rep. Dies had a different mission from the earlier committee that investigated “pro-Nazi and other right-wing extremists groups.” Perhaps the main difference between the Dies and the previous HUAC led by N.Y. Rep. Samuel Dickstein was that the New Yorker was at that time being paid $1,250 a month by the Soviet NKVD. Perhaps, that might help explain why the earlier committee was less interested in uncovering any Soviet penetration of the US government or any criminal activity by left-wing extremists. Olson, in a typical case of liberal bias and blindness, condemned the Dies' exposes as McCarthyism before McCarthy (and she did not mean that as a compliment). Of course, Olson fails to mention Dickstein's connection to the Soviets as an example of foreign penetration of the US government.(328-29)

Olson's myopia on the Communist issue leads her to misinterpret much of the period 1939-41, the scope of her book. Even the terms “isolationists” and “interventionists” had to be slightly scrambled during this period, and the reason was Communism.

The world of the 1930s seemed to crash on 23 August 1939 when the two leading antagonistic nations, Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviet Union, signed a non-aggression pact. We now know there were secret clauses so it was, in effect, an aggression pact by the two tyrannies to divide much of Europe between themselves. Just 9 days following the signing of that non-aggression pact, war began on 1 September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland – the blitzkrieg. On 3 September, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Often overlooked, on 19 September 1939 the Soviet Union also invaded Poland, from the east. However, Britain and France, which had declared war on Germany because of its war against Poland, DID NOT declare war on the USSR. The apparent reason, - there was a view in the West that declaring war on Stalin would force him to get closer to Hitler. And one possible reason for Stalin's delay in his entry into the war for Poland's spoils: the USSR and Japan had been engaged in an undeclared war around their puppet states of Manchukuo and Mongolia. That was a war the supposedly weak USSR easily won, but both belligerents preferred to keep news of the war quiet. Meanwhile, Poland was quickly crushed, and divided, between the Germans and Soviets by the end of September 1939.

As the blitzkrieg completed in Poland, all was then quiet on the western front. Indeed, it was so quiet on the Franco-German border, they called it the sitzkrieg. In the east, Stalin prepared to expand the borders of the USSR into Europe. In October 1939 his government made territorial demands upon Finland, which had been a Russian province during Czarist days. He demanded that the Finns give the Soviets most of the Karelian Peninsular which contained the main defenses against the Russians that had been constructed by the Finns since their independence; in return, he offered the Finns a large area of wasteland. Stalin's demands were to be only only the first, for he later intended to make Finland a Soviet satellite. Stalin made no war plans, because he expected the Finns to yield to his demands. When the Finns rejected Stalin's swap, he had to show the Finns a lesson. Soviet troops invaded Finland on 30 November 1939. As part of secret protocols of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Finland had been assigned to the Soviet sphere of influence. Hitler, an indirect ally of Stalin, refused to aid the Finns, and worse, refused to allow Hungarian forces transport military and other aid across Germany and German occupied lands. Finland might look large on the map, but in 1939 its population was a mere 3.5 million, compared to the 170.6 million in the USSR.

In the US, many isolationists were fiercely anti-communist, and Soviet aggression against Finland, prompted a great increase in anti-communism. Even the moribund League of Nations expelled the USSR because of its aggression against Finland. Yet, the American isolationists did not become over-night interventionists, in part because of the difficulties in attempting to help Finland. Germany could block Western access to the Baltic. Republican former Pres. Herbert Hoover did raise a large sum for clothing and medical supplies for the Finns, and he delivered strong anti-communist speeches, but the GOP, even if it had wanted, did not have the power to get the US to help Finland militarily. Roosevelt, who did have power, did not want to push Stalin closer into the arms of Hitler, so although the Neutrality Act had been modified, the Roosevelt Administration refused to sell arms to Finland. The Finnish Ambassador declared that decision a death sentence.

Poland, a nation of 35 million would last for less than a month after invasion. Tiny Finland would endure for 3 1/2. Though the Red Army stumbled, and seemed to have great difficulty in advancing through the peninsular, eventually, with great cost, they broke through. By 13 March 1940 the war was over and Finland sued for peace. It had to give up important strategic territories, but it would retain its independence. The Soviets lost 127,000 soldiers killed. “The whole world was shocked by the unbelievable weakness of the Red Army.”(Viktor Suvorov [Vladimir Rezun], The Chief Culprit: Stalin...p. 140) Suvorov disagreed with most of the commentators. The war started in the far north in December, when the sun sets at 4pm, earlier in the northern sectors. The average temperatures during the “Winter War” were minus 21 to minus 24 Celsius – minus 6 to minus 11F. While Hitler and the West concluded that the months it took to defeat Finland proved Soviet military weakness, Suvorov concluded; “If it [the Red Army] was capable of advancing in such conditions, then it was capable of advancing in any other conditions ...”(Suv. p. 144) Advancing even to Berlin, and Paris!

So in June 1940, when the West was shocked by the German blitzkrieg again, and Hitler was celebrating a triumphal visit in Paris, Stalin now made demands for bases on the soils of the 3 small Baltic nations: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All were close enough to Finland to be aware of the consequences of any rejection. Soviet troops “were invited” into all 3 nations; soon Communist governments were imposed, and in 1941 they were incorporated into the USSR.

Stalin then made demands on Romania for the province of Bessarabia. The Romanians also quickly yielded to the Soviets. All this was accomplished in accord with the Hitler-Stalin Pact. But when Soviet ships began to get closer to oil fields in Romania and pose another threat to strategic metals in the Baltic, Hitler began to have doubts about his alliance with Stalin. Meanwhile, despite all theses Soviet “advances,” no one declared war on the USSR.

After the German blitz in the West, conquering from Norway to Paris to the Mediterranean in spring/summer 1940, the Roosevelt Administration sought to help Britain in its lonely struggle against the Axis. Because Britain was desperate and lacking funds, the Administration proposed a Lend-Lease bill, whereby America would lease bases on British islands and America would lend Britain ships. Here is how Olson describes the raging debate in the US - “thousands of activists poured into Washington to buttonhole members of Congress...Lend-Lease foes paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue,...'Kill Bill 1776, Not Our Boys.' An organization called American Peace Mobilization picketed day and night outside the White House, its members carrying signs denouncing Roosevelt as a war monger. One of the ubiquitous right-wing mothers' groups also appeared outside the White House...”(278-79) I contend that by placing her sentences in this manner, Olson leaves the impression that the APM was another right-wing group. It was not – it was a Communist-front. Surely Olson knew that, but she chose to mislead her readers. To make it clear, as Olson does not, after the signing of the Ribbentrop-Molotov non-aggression treaty in August 1939, the world Communist movement ceased its anti-fascist struggles, reversing its 1934 “popular front” policies of working with liberals. When war broke out in Poland in September 1939, the CPUSA, like the rest of the global Communist movement, now saw the greatest threat, not from Hitler, but from the imperialist powers – Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, who were oppressing hundreds of millions of colonial peoples. Therefore, the American Communist movement and its fronts were “anti-imperialist,” opposed to any actions that would aid Britain or France. The APM was the American expression of this general Communist policy. The APM did picket the White House with signs like, “The Yanks Are Not Coming,” until 22 June 1941, when Hitler and his European allies launched a surprise attack against the USSR. Overnight the American Peace Mobilization changed its name to the American Peoples Mobilization, demanded US intervention in the European war, and the same picketers of the White House now carried signs, “Send the Yanks!”

Olson included a footnote, which again, revealed her myopia. “The Almanac Singers, an antiwar folksinging group whose members included Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie introduced a song 'Plow Under' soon after [isolationist Mont. Dem. Sen. Burton] Wheeler” remarked that, like the New Deal agricultural program to raise pork prices by plowing under every fourth pig, now Roosevelt's policies would plow under American soldiers in the same manner. The Almanacs sang, “Instead of hogs it's men today, Plow the fourth one under.”(276) The Almanacs followed the CP line. They also sang against lending and leasing. After 22 June 41, however, in accord with the new Comintern policies, they dutifully demanded that America send aid to all nations engaged in the fight against Hitler and the Axis, and they destroyed all of their anti-war recordings still in stock.

On 16 October 1941 off Iceland, a German torpedo struck the American ship, the Kearney, killing 11 American sailors.(400) Roosevelt proposed modifying the Neutrality Act and ordered a “shoot on sight” policy and the arming of American merchant vessels. On 31 October 41 the American ship Reuben James was sunk by a German U-boat. Many interventionists were hoping Pres. Roosevelt would use this German attack as grounds to declare war against Hitler's Reich. But Roosevelt chose not to do so, disappointing the pro-war groups. The pro-war coalition had grown since 22 June to include the formerly anti-war CP activists. Suddenly pro-war, “Upset that no one seemed to care [about the 100 plus young sailors who had lost their lives]...,the folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote a song called 'The Sinking of the Reuben James' and recorded it with Pate Seeger.”(406) It became a folk classic. However, had the ship been sunk in the early part of 1941, before Hitler struck at Stalin, neither Guthrie nor Seeger would have bothered or publicly cared about the 100+ lost seamen.

American voters were aware of events in Europe, and American opinion generally changed with news from abroad. The problem, of course, then as now, what are the biases of the media in reporting the news? Most Americans were opposed to Hitler and to Stalin. True, fascists and communists had their supporters in America, but to most Americans, those were radical fringe extremists. Invasions in Manchukuo probably troubled few in America outside the State Dept. and Naval Intelligence. Mussolini's assault on Abyssinia may have wakened some American Blacks to world problems, but the American Depression, and how to climb out of it was still the dominant issue. The revolt by the 4 generals and the Falange against the left-wing government in Spain did rouse more Americans, with some left-wingers volunteering to fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to support the Republic. In opposition, the popular radio priest, Father Coughlin devoted time on his national network to report how the Falange was defending Christian values in Spain, and the leader of the rebels, Gen. Francisco Franco was gratefully receiving aid from Mussolini and Hitler against the Communist Republican Govt. Indeed, the only major country to help the Republic was Stalin's USSR. Father Coughlin established a weekly newspaper, Social Justice, and he gathered his Social Justice warriors into the National Union for Social Justice. Coughlin not only denounced Communists, but also the “International Jews.” Some estimate the radio priest was heard by up to 90 million Americans each Sunday. When CBS dropped his popular broadcasts from its network, Coughlin put together his own chain just for his sermons. His weekly Social Justice magazine gained a million subscribers. And in it he explained to his readers how social justice was being implemented in the thriving nations of Italy and Germany. Olson states that Coughlin's organized followers beat Jews and others who rejected appeals to purchase the Social Justice magazine.

On the other side, the Communists, even if members of the Peace Mobilization, were hardly pacifists. They fought anti-union bosses, non-union workers, Trotskyists, members of opposition rallies, and scuffled with police. Hemingway went to Spain to toll the bells; Orwell went to save the Spanish Republic by joining a Trotskyist militia, and was lucky to exit Spain before the NKVD got to him. Picasso painted Guernica, to reveal the horrors of bombing civilians. The fascists killed poet Federico Lorca, and the Left sought to destroy the plans and early stages of Gaudi's cathedral, Sagrada Familia. To anyone watching the news, the struggle in Spain between Fascists and the ever-increasingly Communist dominated Republic, all assumed that the next big war would be between those two giant ideological contenders – fascists vs. communists. In Spain, Franco won for the Falange and the fascist side. And then, the world was turned upside down when Stalin and Hitler, instead of going to war with each other, joined together in the non-aggression pact of August 1939.

The American public was being swayed by the wars blasting round the world. While movies sought to remain apolitical (Europe was a profitable market for Hollywood films), the newsreels (and cartoons) that preceding the showing of the feature films, were important for molding opinion in the era before television. Henry Luce, chief of Time-Life magazines, also created the weekly news film, “The March of Time.” “Movietone News,” and others also were seen in different theaters. Luce was an interventionist. But men with cameras showing aggressive wars, would inevitably show wounded and dead Chinese and victorious Japanese; marching soldiers of the Wehrmacht, Italian planes bombing natives in Africa, etc. These pictures tended to stir the audience to take sides in distant conflicts. This would not necessarily make them interventionists, but it tended to make them less sympathetic to Germany, Italy, and Japan.

By the late 1930s radio technology had advanced so some radio stations and CBS, in particular, began to include reports from journalists in Europe. Americans were interested in the live reports of what might become conflicts, or even a general war. Important in forming opinion would be those like Edward R. Murrow, who broadcast from London as the Luftwaffe dropped bombs on Britain's capital. The Germans hoped the bombing would compel the British to negotiate a peace, as had France, and thus end the war whose continuance only served the “plutocrats.”

Olson says little about radio in her volume, a great failure in the pre-TV era. When discussing that medium a few points should be stressed: The National Broadcasting Company began its chains officially in November 1926. It was one company, but in reality 2 networks, the red, the more popular chain with the stronger stations; and the blue. By 1930, the leader of the Radio Corporation of America, NBC's parent corporation, was David Sarnoff. On January 1929 a newly reorganized competitor began broadcasting as the Columbia Broadcasting System, led by William Paley. Paley, as a manufacturer of cigars, had been a major advertiser on the precursor radio chain to CBS. NBC Red, NBC Blue, and CBS were the three dominant networks during the period under discussion. Significantly, both Sarnoff and Paley were Jewish. Might this not affect the portrayal of Germany on their networks? In 1934 another network started, but it was a looser chain, often with weaker stations. In 1940 the FCC sued NBC maintaining that its two major networks were a monopoly, and should be divided. The legal cases took time but in 1943 the US Supreme Court ordered the severance of the NBC Red and Blue chains. Eventually, the Blue network would re-emerge as ABC, but during the period 1939-41, the leaders of the 3 biggest networks were Sarnoff and Paley.

One powerful station held a large portion of stock in the Mutual Broadcasting System, the station owned by the Chicago Tribune with the modest call letters, WGN for World's Greatest Newspaper. The Tribune was strongly isolationist, and its editor, Col. Robert McCormick, a staunch enemy of Roosevelt's New Deal. Mutual grew to have more stations than the other chains, but in North Carolina, for example, 4 stations each sufficed for the NBC's and CBS chains to cover the entire state; Mutual required 14 stations. I don't know, but suspect the news and commentary on Mutual in those angry days was probably different from the reporting on NBC and CBS. That Mutual was the poorest of the networks can be seen by the late 1940s with the growth of television. NBC, CBS, and even ABC made the transition to network television; Mutual failed to do so.

[Though it comes from a later period, one incident may illustrate the contrast in interpreting the news. On 9 March 1954 Edward R. Murrow's CBS-TV program “See It Now” was devoted to an attack on the methods of Sen. Joseph McCarthy in allegedly exposing subversion in the US Govt. The very next day on Mutual Radio, commentator Fulton Lewis, Jr. had as his guest Sen. McCarthy to defend himself and his Committee from liberals like Murrow; McCarthy asserted that they the committee was being fair to the accused, who ought to cooperate in exposing other subversives in Govt service.]

Generally, the radio chains were not neutral; they were interventionist and anti-Nazi. And Hollywood? Olson writes: In 1936 “energized by the growing threat of Nazi Germany, hundreds of screenwriters, directors, actors, and producers had come together to form the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, which became the focal point of liberal interventionist activity...sponsored rallies, mass meetings, and letter-writing campaigns...from support of the Loyalists forces in the Spanish Civil War to backing the beleaguered Federal Theatre Project.”(361) What Olson does not reveal is that the League was a Communist front. When some speakers rose and urged that they denounce Communist as well as Nazi totalitarianism, they were booed and hissed. Furthermore, after August 1939 (Hitler-Soviet Pact), the organization voted itself out of existence, for the Comintern had decided that Britain and France were a greater danger than Nazi Germany. The leaders of the HANL then joined the American Peace Mobilization. Again, let me emphasize, the HANL, the organization Olson implies was liberal, was in fact a Communist-front with considerable influence in Hollywood.

Olson mentions that Hollywood did begin to produce anti-Nazi films by 1940 like “Foreign Correspondent,” “Confessions of a Nazi Spy,” and “Mortal Storm,” but what she fails to mention is the films that were not made about Communist spies. In this period there were top-selling books exposing Soviet espionage in the US and its brutality elsewhere, but none were transferred to the big screen. Later, in a film guild newspaper, the Worker, Dalton Trumbo in 1946 conceded that his colleagues could not always bring progressive novels like Howard Fast's “Freedom Road” to the screen; nevertheless the Communist Trumbo boasted that his comrades had successfully prevented production of anti-Communist movies, “Out of the Night,” “Report on the Russians,” “There Shall Be No Night,” “Adventures of a Young Man,” and Trotsky's biography of Stalin. Diana West charges that the Communist influence in Hollywood was so prevalent that it created a hole in American culture in what was not produced. (Diana West, American Betrayal, pp. 88-89) Would anyone today know of the influential book, Gone With the Wind, if the movie version had been vetoed? (For more on Trumbo, see Kenneth Billingsley, Hollywood Party, pp. 92-93) Once America entered WWII, pro-Stalinist films were made in Hollywood at the request of the Roosevelt Administration, such as “Mission to Moscow,” and “North Star.”(374)

It may have been acceptable in Hollywood to be interventionist or ever a member of the anti-interventionist APM, but when Lillian Gish joined the America First group, she could no longer find work in films. She resigned from America First to find employment. We rarely hear of the Hollywood blacklist of conservatives. Yet, liberal Olson is so besotted of the mainstream myth of McCarthy that she writes that during the post-WWII Cold War era in Hollywood “anyone who had ever marched against Hitler or Mussolini was at risk of loosing his or her livelihood...ruining hundreds if not thousands of lives.”(374) Dalton Trumbo was one of the famous Hollywood Ten, blacklisted for refusing to answer questions about Communism after WWII. But during the war, he boasted he and his comrades were vetoing the making of any film critical of Communism. As Olson seems incapable of distinguishing a Communist front from a liberal organization, she probably opposed any exposes of Communists or spies in Hollywood or elsewhere. And there were Communist spies elsewhere.

In 1941 after Japan occupied part of Vichy French IndoChina and made some demands upon Siam, the Roosevelt Administration froze all Japanese assets in the US and “further Japanese purchases of American goods, including oil, had to be cleared by a government committee...The president, however, had not intended his order to signal an automatic cutoff of oil. He wanted to keep his options open and the Japanese at the negotiating table. Nevertheless, State Dept. officials applied the freeze in such a way that no further exports...were released to Japan...the crisis that Roosevelt hoped to put off for as long as possible was now on his doorstep.(410-11, emp. Mine)

That sounds innocuous enough. But in late 1941 the USSR was fighting for its life against the German and Axis invasion. The last thing Stalin wanted was a major attack on his flank. In the book, Operation Snow (2012) by John Koster we learn that a Soviet agent, Vitalii Pavlov gave orders to Harry Dexter White, director of the Division of Monetary Research of the US Treasury Dept., to provoke Japan to attack the US so that the island empire would not strike north against Soviet Siberia. Between the lines written by Olson, you can see the successful work by a Soviet agent in the American Treasury Dept. in cutting off oil to Japan, making the negotiating table useless, and prompting the Japanese to attack the US rather then the USSR. “Harry Dexter White, acting under orders of Soviet intelligence, pulled the strings by which [US Sec. Of State] Cordell Hull and [State Dept expert] Stanley Hornbeck handed the Japanese an ultimatum that was tantamount to a declaration of war – when both the Japanese cabinet and the US military were desperately eager for peace...Harry Dexter White gave us Pearl Harbor.”(Koster, p. 215) Olson is oblivious to the Communist penetration of the US Govt. that had major consequences – war.

Olson writes of the many problems in the Lindbergh marriage. On the cover of her book are the pictures of two men, two antagonists during the period of her study – FDR and Charles Lindbergh. If she is going to discuss the marriage difficulties of one of the protagonists, why is she silent on the other? Olson's silence is another form of bias. Were there not troubles in the marriage of the Roosevelt's during this period?

But the most blatant example of Olson's bias in her assessment of the two antagonists is when she calls Lindbergh an anti-Semite.(xxx)

In September 1941 as America sailed ever closer to war against Germany in the Atlantic, Lindbergh, the leading spokesman of the anti-interventionist America First Committee, decided to speak and identify outright those most responsible for pushing America into war. They were the Roosevelt Administration, the British, and American Jews. Olson notes, Lindbergh leveled “...his sharpest criticism for the president and his men,...devoting only three paragraphs to Jewish influences.”{378) But the Jewish comments broke a taboo and set off a storm. Lindbergh asserted that the reason the Jews were a danger in this setting was because of “ 'their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government.'”(378) Olson does concede that “on at least one occasion, FDR voiced “...some views similar to Lindbergh's,” that the Jews were outsiders and that America was a Protestant country.(383)

Olson dismissed as “erroneous” the view that “Jews dominate the media.”(385) She writes: “Fewer than 3% of US newspaper publishers were Jewish...” Some newspapers, however, have large circulations; others tiny; some have prestige; others not. On a different subject, Olson would dismiss the influence of Communists in Hollywood, also, but Dalton Trumbo boasted of the influence he and his comrades had in preventing the making of films critical of communism. As to Jewish influence in the media, which Olson also dismisses, I ask the reader a simple question: How many Americans died in WWII? Now, how many Jews died in WWII? She presents the answer to the former.(p. 436) She does not have to include the answer to the second question because most educated Americans know it already. Why do educated Americans know the data on Jewish deaths in WWII but not know the number of Americans killed in that war? Does this not illustrate the Jewish influence on American culture, and that influence is a consequence of Jewish prominence in the media?

I am not denying that some of Lindbergh's views were anti-Semitic. Olson quotes from his private journal of April 1939: “A few Jews add strength and character to a country, but too many create chaos...and we are getting too many.”(380) So, in the contrast Olson has drawn between Lindbergh and FDR on anti-Semitism, Lindbergh is clearly the ogre, properly chosen as the villain in Philip Roth's award-winning, nightmare fantasy novel of 2004, The Plot Against America. But Olson has weighted the scales in Roosevelt's favor. Absent from her bibliography is the article by Rafael Medoff (Los Angeles Times, 7 April 2013) on Franklin Roosevelt's private views of the Jews. Thus, “in 1923, as a member of the Harvard board of directors, Roosevelt decided there were too many Jewish students at the college and helped institute a quota ...” Olson does discuss university policies limiting Jews by quotas(381), but never connects the quota programs to FDR. In one short paragraph, Olson notes that Roosevelt, though sympathetic to the Jewish plight, did little to help them before and during the war. She quotes Arnold Forster asserting “'FDR failed Jews in their darkest hour.'”(385) Medoff explains the not so obvious hurdles Jewish hopeful immigrants faced. “The US immigration system severely limited the number of German Jews admitted during the Nazi years to about 26,000 annually – but even that quota was less than 25% filled during most of the Hitler era, because the Roosevelt administration piled on so many extra requirements...For example, starting in 1941, merely leaving behind a close relative in Europe would be enough to disqualify...- ...Nazis could threaten the relative and force the immigrant into spying for Hitler.” Medoff discounted that possibility as absurd. (I could find no Jews listed as spies for Germany during WWII. On the other hand, many Jews were part of the Soviet network: Harry Dexter White [Weit] in Treasury, and many atomic spies, among whom were: Theodore Hall [Holtzberg], Saville Sax, Morris Cohen and wife Lona, David Greenglass, Harry Gold, George Koval, Irving Lerner, and of course, the Rosenbergs.) Moreover, Medoff asks a question, “Why didn't the president [FDR] quietly tell his State Department (which administered the immigration system) to fill the quotas for Germany and Axis-occupied countries to the legal limit? That alone would have saved 190,000 lives. It would not have required a fight with Congress or the anti-immigration forces; it would have involved minimal political risk to the president.” Perhaps Medoff answers that question when he reported in the same article of Roosevelt “dismissing pleas for Jewish refugees as 'Jewish wailing' and 'sob stuff.'” But FDR called Lindbergh a Nazi, and some of the media apparently believed the president. Olson calls Lindbergh an anti-Semite. But Lindbergh cannot be held responsible for the probable loss of 190,000 Jews, - but FDR can.

Roosevelt was clearly hostile to the Hitler regime. He allowed the British intelligence units to work inside the US, and even received the help of MI6 in establishing the first American national intelligence organization, the OSS. Roosevelt allowed the FBI to wire tap, intercept mail, even that of foreign embassies, and permitted the FBI to smear opponents and disrupt their activities.(xix) “In September 1939, he [FDR] told an associate that it was going to be 'a dirty fight.'...and he played a major role in making it so. Convinced that the isolationists, particularly Lindbergh, posed a major threat... Roosevelt..., assisted by a covert British intelligence operation, embarked on a campaign to destroy their credibility, influence, and reputations.”(xix) Roosevelt thought that Lindbergh was a Nazi,(103) and that he and other opponents should be muzzled.(310-11) FDR openly compared Lindbergh to the Copperheads of the American Civil War, the Northerners who sympathized with the Confederacy.(314) By 1941 America First found it impossible to hire public parks for rallies, and Lindbergh's books were removed from public libraries. Yet, Olson writes, “Feeding Lindbergh's persecution complex...”(376) were additional verbal assaults on him by members of the President's Cabinet. Persecution complex?!? There was real hatred of and persecution of Lindbergh stirred up by Roosevelt's Government; it was not simply the imagination of the famous flier.

What was Lindbergh's great crime? Lindbergh believed that Communism was a huge tyrannical system and a greater danger to the world than Hitler's Nazism.

When Hitler and his European allies struck eastward against the Soviet Union, what should the rest of the world do? Hitler thought the war would be short and the Soviet's would quickly crumble before his seasoned fighters. Why worry about winter supplies? A few years earlier, most Americans in 1939 knew that France had Europe's best army and the Maginot Line for defense; so it would be just a matter of time to starve Germany into submission. Those assumptions quickly proved to be wrong, but still many assumed the Red Army was undoubtedly weaker than the defeated French one. British PM Churchill was no Communist sympathizer. When Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 and pulled Russia out of WWI, Churchill urged Western intervention in Russia to aid the anti-communist White forces. His objective was to smother the babe of Bolshevism in its crib. But when Hitler attacked Stalin, Churchill, then standing alone against the Germans, was delighted; he said he would make a deal with the devil to defeat Hitler. Churchill announced his Govt would send aid to the USSR (though as British resources were so depleted, this may have been more propaganda than reality). Because many thought the Soviets would collapse in about 7 weeks, there was a question of how viable any promise might be. FDR “cautiously followed Churchill's lead, and in August 1941 pledged to send “planes, tanks, trucks, and other aid to Stalin...”(347) Olson assures her readers that most Americans, assessing Germany as “a far greater immediate danger” than the USSR, supported the President's decision.(347)

Elsewhere, Olson reported how FDR and his supporters working inside the Gallup polling company manipulated the questions to skew poll results.(343) Not all Americans were on board with helping the Red Army. Missouri Dem. Sen. Harry Truman asserted, “'If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible.'”(346) Truman seemingly supported a balancing act for the US, liking neither totalitarian belligerent. A 3^rd position was enunciated by Lindbergh. “At an America First rally...Lindbergh declared that while he opposed US alliances with foreign countries, he 'would rather see my country ally herself with England, or even with Germany with all of her faults, than with the cruelty, the godlessness, and the barbarism that exists in Soviet Russia.' Unsurprisingly, this inflammatory remark touched off another round of bitter attacks against him.”(346) Clearly, Lindbergh was in a camp hostile to Roosevelt's policies; but was he that far from Truman's skeptical idea? Moreover, was it such an inflammatory notion to judge the USSR as a tyranny worse than that of Nazi Germany?

There is a scene in the wonderful film, “Europa, Europa” 1990, that occurs shortly after the beginning of the German attack on Poland in September 1939. The film is based on the autobiography of the protagonist, Solomon Perel, a young Jew whose family flees persecution in Germany. They move to Poland. but in September 1939, the Germans invade. Now Solly and his brother, along with masses of Poles, flee the incoming German army. They reach a river and have to cross it, some by boat, others swimming. As they cross, they see some turn round after reaching the farther shore, and begin swimming back to the side whence they came. What's happened? The Red Army has invaded Poland from the east. An existential moment! Generally, most Jews keep heading eastward, toward the Russians, away from the Germans. Most Christians seem to be turning around, now fleeing westward toward the Germans, away from the Soviets. Given a choice between the two great tyrannies of that time, some chose to race toward the Reds, others toward the Nazis.

Under the German occupation, Jews were targeted for extermination. Before the war some 3.2 million Jews resided in Poland; after, 100,000 had fled to the USSR, 2OO,OOO made it to the West, and 100,000 were left in Poland. Of the 24.3 million Poles in 1939, excluding various minority groups, 2,770,000 were killed during the German occupation; 150,000 killed under Soviet occupation; 1.2 million moved to the USSR or to the West. Many nations had at war's end lists of the dead killed by this group or that. And how accurate were historical judgments at war's end? Many Poles had their property confiscated too, and the Nazis sought to eliminate Polish intellectuals. But in the Soviet occupied zones, Polish officers were rounded up, and 15 to 30,000 killed in the Katyn Forest (1940-41). The Germans captured this area from the Soviets beginning 22 June 1941, and discovered the atrocity, and showed the Red Cross evidence that the Soviets had done it. After the war, the Nurnberg Trials ruled that the massacre had been the work of the Nazis; of course, the Soviets were among the winners and thus among the judges. With the fall of the USSR researchers suddenly had access to evidence demonstrating that it was the Soviets who committed this crime.

Of course, the Germans were attempting to kill as many Jews as possible, mainly through work, starvation diets, and gas chambers. But to improve the planet, certain policies were not to be limited to Jews. Millions of Soviet PoWs died in without food, heat, shelter. Poles and other “inferiors” were treated with contempt, and died of various problems. Each nation had its own tabulations of how many were killed by fascists, how many killed by communists, how many killed by Allied bombings, how many killed by – the list of categories.

Which tyranny might it be better to try to live under? To fight? Or are they both equally horrible? I do not use the term inhumane because humans have developed these methods to rob, torture (in such creative ways), kill, and dispose of the unwanted. And not always in camps. Before the war began, Germany required a midwife at each birth to an Aryan woman. If the infant was deformed, it might be taken from the mother and sent to a special hospital for special treatment (usually, starvation). Alcoholics, homosexuals, the mentally disturbed, gypsies, all might be sent to camps for rehab or other special treatment, like sterilization, castration, or starvation. And in the early days of Hitler's leadership, these efforts to improve the race were generally limited to Aryans; the Reich did not care if a Jew gave birth to a defective infant. Tens of thousands of Aryans thus discovered the pain of “improving” the race.

But Hitler was a late-comer in mass torture and murder. Concentration camps had been established by the Bolsheviks early in their struggle for power. People who had jewelry and refused to disclose it and give the state its due, might endure long punishments. The Whites, at war with the Reds, could expect no mercy. And then in the Ukraine, the “selfish” better-off farmers, unwilling to sell crops to the govt. at a reasonable (low, or no, price) had to be taught a lesson. Troops went to the farms and took; leaving nothing for the selfish kulaks. Up to 3 million of those farmers who refused to help the Bolshevik state progress, they ended in the dust bin of history, dead. If you add many more millions killed in the USSR through purges under Stalin and his successors, and then up to 50 million killed during Chairman Mao's experiments in socialism, and then the 2 million in Cambodia (about one fourth of the population) in the effort to develop the new, socialist man, and extra totals from Cuba, N. Korea, and other progressive nations, the Black Book or Communism calculated the number 100,000,000 killed by communism.

Of course, the Communists have more time; Hitler had only 12 years.

Which tyranny, if either, might be the better for the US to align with? And win with? And fight against?

In 1941 Hitler's killing machines were just getting started. Einsatzgruppen behind the lines of the invading Wehrmacht tried to kill all Communist officials and Jews as they advanced, men, women, children. But the numbers murdered were small compared to what would follow, and few knew of these policies at the time. In 1941 Stalin's state had terrorized and murdered many more people than Hitler's. And in the long run, Communists, 100 million versus Nazis, 6 million Jews and perhaps a few million others. War casualties, they can share. Of course, had the Nazis endured in power longer, they might have murdered millions more. My point is that it is not a simple question of math, or of black and white, or red and brown. If you are Jewish, it is clear what the great, frightening danger was. If you are Finnish, you might see Stalin as the great monster. Letts, Estonians, Ukrainians, Hungarians might see Communism as a far worse threat to free people than Hitler's Reich. Those nationalities would not be unanimous in their decision. Across the ocean from the tyrannies of Europe, people did come to different assessments over which was the greatest threat to the US. They gave different answers to related questions: should we aid one and how much aid should we give. Roosevelt decided to give large amounts of materiel to the Soviets. We did not follow Truman's initial advice, that the US should change sides when one totalitarian state began to win so we would then help its rival. And while we were helping the Soviets with vast amounts of food and production, numerous Soviet spies were rewarding Stalin with the secrets of our A-bomb research. Yet, even with the hindsight of decades, I too believe that Hitler was the most imminent danger to the US in 1941. But in 1941, I don't think it was a clear, easy decision, and honest people might come to different conclusions.

Olson provides a well-written history of the period, 1939-41. But hers is a distorted version. Her description of the 1940 GOP convention and its selection of Wendell Willkie, a dark horse candidate whose foreign policy was a clone of FDR's, shows how far from reality was Roth's award-winning novel in which the GOP chose the isolationist Lindbergh. Olson seems satisfied with the Eastern Establishment's sponsorship of Willkie, whose candidacy removed foreign policy from the election debate and deprived voters of an alternative to FDR's warpath. Olson clearly prefers FDR to Lindbergh and believes Roosevelt's interventionism was morally required. Olson is oblivious to differences between liberals and Communists and is blind to Soviet espionage during the Roosevelt years. Her book is unfair to Lindbergh and the millions of Americans who, with malice toward none, sought to keep us out of war.

NOT ALL QUIET ON D. WEST FRONT

AMERICAN BETRAYAL: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character

 (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, @ 2013)     by DIANA WEST

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            The US, Britain, China, and the Soviets all won WWII, but the USSR won the peace that followed.  The reason, according to Diana West, is that Communist infiltration of the American (and British and Chinese governments) led to major decisions that culminated in a longer war than necessary, the Soviet occupation of Eastern and Central Europe, and Soviet dominance in North Korea, Manchuria, and ultimately in a Communist regime victorious on the mainland of China.

            Her book has encountered fierce criticism, especially from former Left-wingers David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh, who became Reagan Republicans in the 1980s.  I learned much from this West volume, and yet I disagree with some of her major points.

            West contends that had it not been for Communist influence in the Roosevelt Administration, the Western allies could have made a deal with anti-Nazi generals in Germany who would have ousted Hitler, ceased the war in the West, closed the concentration camps, and joined with the West to protect Eastern Europe from Soviet advance.  Because this alternative would have prevented Stalinization of much of Europe, Communist agents in FDR’s government sought to prevent any consideration of this alternative.  Furthermore, this alternative policy would have ended the war in 1943 and saved the lives of millions of soldiers and civilians and victims in camps.  If only?!

            Nowhere in her book does West mention the “Dolchstoss” theory that grew to prominence in Germany at the conclusion of WWI.  She should have.  When “the Great War” ended in November 1918, there was not a single Allied soldier on German soil.  To many Germans, the armistice came as a shock.  Germany could have and should have won.  German troops were still in Belgium and France, and after Russia had been knocked out of the war, the Kaiser’s troops were also in many new states chipped from the old, huge Russian Empire.  How could Germany have lost?  The reason was the troops were stabbed in the back – by traitorous elements on the home front.  Socialists, Spartacists (soon to be Communists), strikers, the selfish, the plutocrats, and most especially, the Jews were the cause of Germany’s betrayal, Germany’s defeat.  The peace terms by the victors at Versailles brought greater grief to Germany.  Germany was condemned as guilty for starting the war, so it had to pay the cost of the war to the victors through enormous reparations.  By 1923 the German economy collapsed under the weight of massive inflation.  Poverty.  Humiliation.  Defeat.  And in 1929 Depression.  Germany could have won except for the stab in the back.  It should have won.  A new political leader promised to erase and reverse that defeat and to make the Left and the Jews pay for their treason of 1918.  Germany did not lose the First War.  If proper precautions were taken to curtail the traitorous factions, Germany would not lose a Second.

            So, in the early 1940s West suggests that American policy should have been to work with the German Army to overthrow Hitler.  Would this have ended the war in 1943?  Assuming there could be a truce on the eastern front with Stalin (a major assumption), assuming a free Poland was restored, assuming the other nations of Eastern Europe granted some democratic rights, how long might this peace last?  Surely some Germans would have felt their chance at victory under Hitler had again been thwarted, betrayed, this time by the elite nobility among the army officer corps.  In Germany there might rise a new Dolchstoss myth.  Might not a new Nazi movement develop and take hold of Germany once again?  Once again they could proclaim Germany was just about to win, when it was betrayed, this time by nobles among the politicians and general staff.  Their betrayal overthrew Hitler on the verge of victory!  Think again: Must the Western nations have to war with Germany every generation, 1914, 1939, 1964?  Or would it not be best to make the Germans realize that they did lose WWI, and make certain that they learn the lesson that they have fully lost it in WWII?  When Churchill and Roosevelt demanded “unconditional surrender” by the Axis, they were aware that many Germans had falsely assumed that they had not lost in 1918.  No more playing around; Germany will know without question that it has lost by the end of WWII.  Unconditional surrender!

            And who might be some of those involved in the anti-Nazi, anti-Hitler German Government that was to work with the Western allies?  Along with many generals, Ms. West notes the German Ambassador to Turkey was involved in these intrigues, Franz von Papen.(284, 304)  During the Weimar Republic von Papen was a member of the Catholic Center Party, and was even appointed Kanzler for a very short time in 1932 before being replaced by a general.  Von Papen then helped overcome Pres. Hindenburg’s aversion to Hitler, so that Hitler, leader of by far the largest party in the Reichstag, was named Kanzler in January 1933.  But the conservatives were confident they had tricked Hitler, for the majority of his Cabinet would not be Nazis.  Conservatives would be the vast majority of Hitler’s cabinet and von Papen would be Vice Chancellor.  Hitler would be a figure head.  The conservative Cabinet was going to tame and restrain the fanatical Hitler.  That was the plan.  One knows how well that worked.  Indeed, on the Night of Long Knives in 1934, von Papen himself was nearly among those killed when Hitler “cleansed” his regime.  So, in the midst of war in the 1940s against Germany, Churchill and Roosevelt are to place their hopes on the likes of von Papen to tame and restrain and overthrow Hitler and establish a more democratic Germany and, and…And for this the Western allies were to jeopardize their alliance with Stalin?  One need not be a Communist agent in the Roosevelt Administration to detect some problems with the approach advocated by Ms. West.

            Diana West also believes it was Communist influence in the Western alliance that pressed for a 2^nd front landing against the Nazis in northern France.  She argues a better strategy would have been through the Balkans and the Adriatic, using the Allied armies in Italy as the base.  By invading the Balkans the Western Allies would have liberated much of Eastern Europe before the arrival of Soviet troops.  Indeed, there would have been no need for Soviet troops in the area.  So the Balkans would not have fallen under Communist rule lost behind Stalin’s Iron Curtain.

            Ms. West contends that this strategy was therefore preferable to the one which consolidated much of the Allied forces into the invasion of northern and southern France – D Day in Normandy, and the smaller invasion of southern France from the Mediterranean.  Again she blames Communist influence for selecting these targets, which left Eastern Europe prey to advancing Soviet armies.

            Let me use some of the information West provides to refute one of her arguments.  Communists in the British MI5 and the American OSS were feeding misinformation to their higher ups concerning partisan activities in Yugoslavia.(293, and also in Evans/Romerstein’s Stalin’s Secret Agents(161-62)  When the Nazis first invaded that nation in 1941 Draga Mihailovic organized an anti-fascist resistance movement.  It was not until after the Germans attacked the Soviets in the summer of 1941 that a Communist resistance movement was organized, under the leadership of Tito.  Because of Communist influence in MI5 and OSS, massive disinformation spread.  The intelligence reports of efforts to subvert the various Axis authorities established in what had been Yugoslavia were manipulated so that successful attacks by Mihailovic’s group were attributed to Tito’s instead, while the anti-Communist Mihailovic was described as ineffective, corrupt, and an Axis collaborator.  Based upon such Communist lies (emanating from the Britain’s own MI5, even Churchill turned against Mihailovic, cut off his supplies and threw Britain’s support to the Communist Tito.  Consequently, even had the preferred strategy of Ms. West been adopted, had the Western allies invaded the Balkans, they might well have established pro-Communist governments in the Balkans like one led by Tito.  The Balkans might then have gone Communist even without the Soviet Army!

            But what about Western victories in the Balkans?  In Hitler’s Neuropa, Croatia became an independent nation for the first time in the 20^th century.  Would the Croatians not have fought fiercely to defend their new nation?(Recall the ethnic wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s?)  And the Muslims?  (Some of whom joined the Wehrmacht but wearing a fez as part of their uniform.)  Would the Western allies have had a cake walk through the Balkans?  And through Greece?  Ever hear of the nearby Gallipoli?  The raid that failed dismally.  The Balkan-Adrilatic proposal of Ms. West may have left Western forces stalled in mountainous terrain and amid hostile ethnic groups resulting in bloody battles, high casualties, and very slow progress.  The Soviets may have ended up with most of the Balkans anyway.  And by our delaying D-Day, the Soviets may have driven further into Western Europe, seizing Denmark and perhaps even part of France.  And by placing more of Western material into the Balkan assaults, there would have been less for Normandy.  Could the Balkan alternative have rendered D-Day a failure?

            Enough speculation.  Despite my criticism and skepticism of some of West’s theses, I learned much from her book.  In January 2012 Russian leader Vladimir Putin in a public address thanked the Western scientists who provided atomic secrets to the Soviets so that the Communist regime could develop its own nuclear bombs.  Putin emphasized that the Soviets were provided “suitcases” filled with material; “suitcases full” he stressed.

            In West’s book one can ponder if those suitcases were shipped to the USSR from Great Falls, MT.  West discusses the sworn testimony of George Jordan before Congressional hearings in 1949-50 about his experiences shipping Lend Lease plane-loads of material in 1943.  Some were atomic materials, and some black suitcases contained materials with unusual words like uranium.(138-39, etc.)  The American in charge of Lend Lease was Harry Hopkins, whom some deemed so powerful in the FDR Administration, that called him a co-President.

            Ms. West also reveals an incident damning Hopkins on another occasion.  In April 1943  the FBI had bugged the Oakland home of Steve Nelson, a National Committeeman of the Communist Party, USA.  The FBI overheard a representative from the Soviet Embassy give money to Nelson for the purpose of him placing Communist agents “in industries engaged in secret war production…so the information could be obtained for transmittal to the Soviet Union.”(188)  West declares that this is how the Bureau first learned about the Manhattan Project to produce the A-bomb.  Because of this important information, on 7 May 1943 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote a confidential letter to one of our highest government officials, Harry Hopkins, alerting him to the problem of Soviet espionage and its connection to the CPUSA.

            West writes: “Hopkins’ reaction to Hoover’s revelation may be the most damaging…When he read what Hoover told [him] in his confidential letter…Hopkins [would] immediately turn around and tell the Soviet Embassy, where the same ‘diplomat’ was posted, that the FBI was on to them.”(188)  Hopkins, who then lived in the White House and was perhaps FDR’s chief advisor, was warning the Soviets to be careful when planning espionage against the United States.

            A few other examples of Hopkins’ influence are disclosed by West.  In April 1944 a Soviet official, Victor Kravchenko, defected in the US.  The New York Times headlined the story: “Soviet Official Here Resigns; Assails ‘Double-Faced’ Policies.”(110) The point was that while Stalin spoke of democracy, he was practicing tyranny.(128)  Kravchenko was an ‘economic attache’ in the Soviet headquarters of Lend Lease in Washington; he knew a lot.  How could this anti-Soviet expose be contained?  The Soviets requested the return of this ‘deserter’ to the USSR, and continued to press the Administration for his return.  At one point, the FBI warned him that the US State Department might apprehend him to give him to the Soviets.  Hopkins referred to him as a deserter.(132)  Meanwhile, the Soviets had a good idea of what Kravchenko was revealing.  He was talking to the FBI, but the OSS had supplied him with a typist and translator, a woman who was also a secret agent of the KGB.(118, 132)  Though Pres. Roosevelt toyed with the idea of returning Kravchenko, when the Soviets would not guarantee that he would not be shot, then FDR rejected the Soviet request for the man’s return.  On the other hand, at Yalta Roosevelt agreed to the forced return of some 2 million Soviets who had fled, escaped, deserted, (some of whom even joined fascist forces).  If they were not killed immediately, they were undoubtedly shipped to slave labor in the Gulag.

            Eventually Kravchenko would write two books exposing the Soviet tyranny and he would testify before Congress that for the Soviets, the Lend Lease (the agency he defected from) – “the Soviet Purchasing Commission…-was in reality the Soviet Spying Commission, the Soviet Thieving Commission…with its thousand-plus employees under order to filch as many industrial and military secrets as possible for the upcoming struggle between the USSR and the USA.”(114)  The American chief of Lend Lease was Harry Hopkins.  He was arguably the most important figure in the Roosevelt Administration, and yet he invariably sided with the Soviet position.  Gen. George Marshall summed things up, “Hopkins job with the president was to represent Russian interests.  My job was to represent American interests.”(181)  Perhaps Hopkins performed his job too well.  But since when is there a job description in the American bureaucracy, even at the highest level, to represent Russian (or any foreign) interests?

            I cannot here discuss all the many actions of the Roosevelt Administration that seemed to promote the interests of the Soviets above those of the US.  West reviews many of the Soviet agents in the American government.  She is excellent at exposing how the Roosevelt and Truman and Eisenhower Administrations preferred to hide and conceal information about treason from Congress and the public.  She contends Truman was more interested in pressing perjury charges against the anti-communist whistle-blower Whittaker Chambers than purging foreign agents like Alger Hiss from the State Dept.  West, like M. Stanton Evans, concludes that Sen. Joseph McCarthy was a hero; the witch-hunters were right because there were many real witches infesting our government.  West attacks the play by Arthur Miller which in academia summarizes the Left view of McCarthy and the hearings on Communism.(173)  While our military knew of the secret messages transmitted from the Soviet Embassy in Washington to Moscow as early as 1943, these documents were not made public until 1993, and the vast majority are still not decrypted.(74)  She maintains, had they been made public earlier, McCarthy would have been shown right, and most liberals wrong on the issue of subversion.  She denounced the Hollywood Left that still makes films praising the courage of the Hollywood 10, the Communists who were blacklisted in the McCarthy era.  Yet, she quotes one of those ten, Dalton Trumbo, in the Daily Worker praising their efforts of blocking any films critical of Communism.  The CP in Hollywood was blacklisting conservatives before THE blacklist of Communists.(88)  The Hollywood 10 were not defenders of freedom; they were defenders of Stalin.

Ms. West generally avoids most political campaign history, but she does mention that Republican Gov. John Bricker, running mate of Thomas Dewey in 1944, did raise the issue of Communist influence in the Roosevelt White House.  Bricker accused White House staffer Lauglin Currie of being a radical if not a Communist.(169-72)  But West concedes that in 1944 most voters did not want to change horses mid-stream in a major war, and Democrat Roosevelt won his 4^th term.  But the Communist issue had been raised long before.  Before the 1936 election, the Hearst national chain of newspapers printed this short poem; “The Red New Deal with a Soviet seal/ Endorsed by a Moscow hand/ The strange result of an alien cult/ in a liberty-loving land.”  Despite the anti-FDR theme of that widely circulated poem, Roosevelt was re-elected in 1936 carrying 46 of 48 states and garnering about 60% of the popular vote.  Americans that year were more interested in jobs and welfare than talk about isms.  Of course, by printing such a poem and Republican columnists, Hearst became a target.  In 1941 Hollywood would get its revenge.  In that year the unauthorized bio-pic of William Randolph Hearst, “Citizen Kane,” burst onto the silver screen.  The Hearst newspaper and radio chain was the Fox News of its day, and highly critical of FDR.  So Hollywood did not portray Hearst as it did the god-like Roosevelt in films.  Instead, the media magnate moves from a man of social conscience to a power mad, greedy, unstable tyrant.  Well, he was against Roosevelt!  West notes the Stalinist legacy lingered in Hollywood even in 1999 when Elia Kazan, the creator of “Streetcar Named Desire,” “On the Waterfront,” and other magnificent films, was given a lifetime award from the Academy Awards.  He had to enter from a side door to avoid the protestors, and when presented, many celebrities in the audience turned their backs on him.  Kazan named the Communists, the Stalinists at mid-century.  And for that he was vilified even at the century’s end!

            Though her style is rambling, roving, and often non-linear (translate: disorganized), there are gems to be found in Diana West’s book.  Unfortunately, the book should not be the place to introduce comparisons between Communist and Islamic infiltrations in the US Government, or American appeasement of both threats.

            West complains that among leading academic historians, FDR is invariably listed among America’s best Presidents.  And certainly, on one level, the American people concur; Franklin Roosevelt is the only President elected to a 3^rd term, and then to a 4^th.  FDR was first elected during the depth of the Great Depression, led the nation out of it through his New Deal, then piloted the ship of state through the perilous storms brewing in Europe and Asia.  He outmaneuvered the very popular (probably vast majority at times) isolationists, reassuring the nation “again and again and again” as he did in his October 1940 speech (just before the election) that “their boys would not be sent to any foreign wars.”  However, when France fell to the German blitzkrieg in spring 1940, FDR violated traditional notions of neutrality, revised the American Neutrality Law, provided supplies to Britain in return for bases in the Western Hemisphere, occupied French islands off Canada, and Greenland, and later Iceland (Danish colonies).  Roosevelt had American ships shadow German u-boats and then radio their positions to British destroyers.  American ships were even escorting convoys to Britain.  It was an undeclared naval war 1940-41 between the US and Germany.  All in the name of peace; these were acts of war.  America was no longer really neutral, but the arsenal of democracy.  Meanwhile we were skirting closer to full-scale war.

            This is not the place to debate whether Roosevelt knew when and where the Japs were preparing to attack in December 1941, or even the role of Communists agents in causing the final rupture between the US and Japan.  The point here, with Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt succeeded in uniting the American nation and getting us into war.  Hitler helped a few days later by declaring war on the US (though we had engaged him in near-war for a year).  Following Pearl, the isolationists shut up; America First shut its doors, and Americans rallied round the flag.

            And here is the point misunderstood by many: to the liberals, so what if Roosevelt lied to the American people (of as Hillary Clinton told Congress about Benghazi, “What difference does it make?)?  We needed to get into the war against Germany, and we got it.  The majority of Americans were still probably isolationists into late 1941, and Col. Lindbergh and the America First had a mass following.

And there was very good reason for American isolationism.  Most Americans knew by the 1920s and 30s how the Eastern Establishment had lied to us to get us into WWI.  The propaganda stories demonizing the Germans as savage Huns, the Kaiser as a monster, cartoons of German soldiers bayoneting nuns and babies, and the whole Versailles lie that Germany was solely responsible for WWI.

            Naturally, many Americans were skeptical when the same anti-German propaganda was repeated in the late 1930s and early 40s.  When Germany attacked Poland in Sept. 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany.  But when the USSR attacked Poland from the other side 2 weeks later, still in Sept. 1939, Britain and France did nothing.  And the Soviets would occupy a larger slice of Poland than the Germans.  When Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and attacked the USSR in summer 1941, many Americans agreed with Democratic Missouri Senator Harry Truman who thought it would be good if both dictators fought it out and destroyed each other.  On the other hand, Roosevelt, pushing Lend Lease for the UK, had the wording of the legislation altered so it could also aid the USSR.  Roosevelt made Hopkins the chief of the Lend Lease program, and his notion, undoubtedly received from FDR, was to give top priority in supplies, munitions, etc., to the Soviets, above those of Britain, above those even for American troops engaged in fighting with the enemy.

            In the end, this is why the academedia complex still loves FDR.  He lied.  He defeated the wishes of the American people.  He got us into war.  He helped save the Soviets so it did not crumble under the Nazi onslaught.  Hopkins and his Lend Lease sent to Russia tons of butter (even when rationed here), Dodge trucks, tanks, planes, whatever, to the Soviets.  And the Soviets would fight with their blood and thereby save the lives of millions of Americans who would come on later in the war and save Western Europe.

            Their liberal view of history can be presented another way – what if the American people had defeated Roosevelt?  What if a Lindbergh had become President?  How would America have survived in a world with Asia under the Japanese Empire, Europe dominated by Hitler, and Eurasia under Stalin?  And if Hitler and Stalin warred against each other, the victor would control a massive super continent, eventually immeasurably stronger.  Could the American republic survive in such a world?  And if we had to fight, could we win then?  It might be too late.  So the liberals are delighted that FDR lied to the American people, manipulated them, and defeated their isolationist heroes.  The liberal Establishment’s hostility to populism did not begin in 2008 with Obama publicly sneering at those who cling to guns and religion.  Nor did it begin in 1940 with Roosevelt’s campaign for a 3^rd term.  But the elite disdain for the populist solutions was certainly reinforced by FDR’s decisions from above.  And even now liberal historians are reluctant to question his pro-Stalinist policies and Communist appeasement.

            Diana West is naïve to write that the Big Lie began in 1933 when the US first recognized the USSR.  Big lies are a part of all governments.  True, the scale of spying by the Soviets on Americans, the financial support given to the CPUSA, this was unique and beyond what one might expect from friendly countries.  And the penetration grew in the 1930s and expanded greatly during WWII – so much so that West refers to ours as an “occupied government.”  The consequences of this occupation resulted in Soviet overt occupation of Eastern Europe, and Communist dictatorships established in North Korea and China.  She notes that the charters of all the major international institutions created at the end of WWII were composed by individuals who were clearly Soviet agents or who may have been such.  Yet, in this paper I have responded that some of the decisions made by FDR and his appointees were rational choices (unconditional surrender, invasion of northern France, etc.) even if the Communists were also promoting the same policies.  If a Communist (or a Nazi) says 1 + 1 = 2, that is not a ground for us to say it is 3.  Even if there had not been a single Communist or a single Soviet agent in the Roosevelt Administration, there were reasonable grounds for the policies of unconditional surrender and the invasion of northern France.  Yes, and even a good reason to supply the Soviets with material so they could continue to fight against the Germans in WWII.  Of course, I see NO reason for supplying the Soviets with suitcases of Atomic secrets!  No reason for the betrayal of Mihailovic in Yugoslavia.  No reason for the betrayal of Chiang, the Poles, etc.  There was no good reason at the end of WWII to return all of those who had escaped the tyranny of Stalin to the Soviet dictatorship.  And there was no good reason – other than appeasement of Stalin – to forget about up to 20,000 American POWs, “liberated” by the Soviets and never returned to the West.  These policies do reflect Communist influence in the American government.  These decisions indicate that some in the American government were more interested in promoting Stalin’s way over the American way.

            Author West quotes various sources along the way who argued that the US should have bargained more with the Soviets, that we could have gotten a much better deal, especially when Stalin was hard-pressed.  But FDR did not seem interested in that for he believed he could handle Stalin.  And some in his Administration pushed for the best deal for the Soviets.  This important aspect of FDRs Presidency is what the liberal historians seek to ignore and suppress.