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if-you-fan-a-fire · 4 months ago

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Security Treaty Renewal and Okinawa (1970-1)

"At least until the anti-security treaty and Okinawa movements of the early 1970s, the left believed in the utility of continuing the tactic of indefinite campus strikes. The histories of 1968 and afterward, though, have completely neglected the politicization and expansion of campus struggles to nearly all universities in Japan. To this day, the majority of those who research the history of the student movement say nothing about the 1970 anti-security treaty movement or the Okinawa struggle. The majority of researchers understand the movements from 1968 to the early 1970s merely as precursors to the citizens' and social movements that came later. They completely ignore the political processes by which the campus protests became the 1970 anti-security treaty and Okinawa protests. Not only that, but the political movements of the times were portrayed as if they had all fallen apart due to uchi geba [internal violence].

Consider several incidents from this period: the November 1971 Shibuya riot, the mail bomb sent to a police chief in December 1971, the actions of the East Asia Anti-Japanese Armed Front [Higashi Ajia Han-Nichi Busó Sensen), and the bombing of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters. These were extreme actions, and the people who carried them out were similarly radical. Nevertheless, the majority of intellectuals have ignored the political meanings of these events and have interpreted them as part of a process of increasing militancy and violence in the New Left's internal battles. Moreover, these researchers make no distinction between intra-sect purges and battles between groups. For example, the Red Army incident was treated as an example of growing extremism in the battles between the old and New Left; not only that, but it was portrayed as the only possible outcome of the struggles between these entities.

This is the way in which intellectuals reproduced the historical vision of the ruling class, which emphasizes security and defense of the social order. The result of this development was a rather vague historical consciousness that asserted an unmediated connection between the 1968 student movement and the citizens' and social movements of the 1970s. The effect of this historical consciousness has been enormous, as both the New Left and the old left movements cut themselves off from militant protest and became depoliticized, their leftism reduced to a theory of justice. An intellectual who was at the time labeled "a humanist" described the differences between the old and New Left in this manner: "The New Left is 'new' because it is different from the old Left, which supports socialism and communism. They have taken from the old left an interest in social justice."

A mutual interest in social justice was presented as the common interest of the old and New Left, and the main body of this argument was to turn both the old and new into versions of the American egalitarian liberal movements of the time." Alternatively, the old and New Left were each seen as movements that merely "resisted," on the level of micro-situations within civil society.

In opposition to this dominant historical interpretation, what we must recall and acknowledge is that both the New Left and old left were aiming to broaden the campus struggle by politicizing it and taking it to a national level. Because the movements were connected with the United States-Japan Security Treaty and Okinawa, they were believed to lead inevitably to a revolutionary situation. To put it bluntly, from 1969 to 1970, both the old and the New Left expected a revolution. These were not simply fantasies, though; this expectation was based on a realistic assessment of the situation. What must be remembered, at the very least, is that both the Okinawa and the 1970 security treaty protests were linked to the military. In other words, they were connected to the state's largest violent apparatus.

After 1970, when the left won a majority in elections, they were capable of passing a resolution to exit the security treaty, but doing so would have resulted in a military conflict between the United States and Japan. Even if the left were to gain a majority through peaceful and democratic means, an armed conflict with the United States would inevitably lead to the loss of state power. The Communist Party tried to adopt a policy of popular parliamentarism and structural reform, but there was always an aspect of its program that implied armed conflict with the United States. It was for precisely this reason that the party adopted policies of "waiting for the enemy to attack" and "legitimate self-defense." In 1971, Fuwa Tetsuzo, who worked out the strategy of "popular parliamentarism,” remarked:

In a situation under which the Liberal Democratic Party has a majority in the Diet, it's very difficult for us to form a majority to do anything positive. Even if we are able to keep a lid on the things the LDP majority tries to do against the will of the people through our actions within and without the Diet, it is difficult for us to move things in a different direc- tion... In a situation where the LDP is trying to use its parliamentary majority, there is no option but to look for the intervention of the people, who after all are sovereign.

When it comes to extra-parliamentary action concerning important issues like Okinawa, the people who have a degree of sovereignty outside the Diet, the people who cannot approve of the contents on the agreement on the repatriation of Okinawa, take all sorts of actions to reflect their will in the Diet. Their actions combine with our action in the Diet and make us stronger."

Fuwa appears to be giving a simple outline of party strategy, but we should remember that, at the time, the power behind "extra-parliamentary action" was deemed extremely radical. No matter how far the tilt toward parliamentarism, as long as the party foresaw the arrival of a revolutionary situation, it had to emphasize a strategy that included the exercise of an extra-parliamentary "sovereign power." In connection to this issue, I would like to quote a passage from Kimi no Okinawa [Your Okinawa], which is the most famous document from the Communist Party-affiliated youth and student movement:

Make no mistake, the "US-Japan Security Treaty Prosperity" was squeezed out of the sweat and blood of workers on the mainland. But that is not all. The US-Japan Security Treaty Prosperity was drawn even more from the blood and tears of Okinawans and the blood of the people of Vietnam... Think about it. If you consider Okinawa to be your problem, you can understand the lively crowds of workers fighting for Okinawa in workplaces all over Japan.

The ruling class must be shaking. It's like when that financier, on seeing the whirlpool of the demonstrations in 1960 said "This is a revolution" and dropped his spoon mid-meal. Or like Shin Nitetsu's president Inayama, who, on seeing the results of the provincial 1971 elections said "I no longer understand where Japan is going." The ruling class looks strong, but they are trembling with fear that the anger over pollution, prices, and "rationalization" will flow into the Okinawa protests.

Both the old and the New Left were united in expecting the arrival of a revolutionary situation. Of course, conflict - some of it armed - continued among the groups who called themselves the "vanguard party" and other groups trying to become the "vanguard party," but one must remember that, at least at the level of the mass movement, there were many points of agreement about the political issues confronting the left. Hirotani Shunji, who directed the University of Tokyo struggle but was later removed from his leadership position, attested to the "unity" of the old and New Left:

They competed with each other in elections for office, but if the results produced, for example, a Minsei council president, a Kakumaru or a Chukaku vice-president, they would have no choice but to work together... The reason they could not accept "Trotskyists" in a unified student front was not because the Trotskyists had an anti-Communist political direction, but because they were groups who trampled over democracy and ripped apart mass organizations. So if the Trotskyists had respected democracy and stopped all their internal violence [uchi geba] we should have joined with them in a unified front, yes.

The Communist Party's approach to the New Left was widely adopted by the party's student activists, including during the anti-security treaty and Okinawa protests. However, the central party clamped down on this loose strategy among student party members. The beginning of the clamp-down was the critique of the "new opportunism."

- Yoshiyuki Koizumi, "The Japanese Communist Party since 1968: Between Revolution and Reform," in Gavin Walker, ed., The Red Years: Theory, Politics and Aesthetics in the Japanese ‘68. London and New York: Verso, 2020. p. 125-129

#social justice #history of social justice #militant action #okinanwa #1970 anti-security treaty movement #far left #protest action #political protest #political violence #new left #1968 #japanese 68 #japanese history #left history #reading 2023 #the red years #japanese communist party #communists #radical history

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imustbenuts · 8 months ago

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I wanna do research on the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front and their Daidoji leader but I'm gonna end up on a watch list if I go too deep weh

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rolandneptune · 11 months ago

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On Anti-Japan Thought / 半日思想について

2021, risograph and laser print

Writer, translator, illustrator, printmaker

Bilingual (Japanese and English) 30 page zine that opens from one end in English, and the other in Japanese. Original illustrations and J to E translation with a risograph cover.

"The East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front was a series of autonomous anti-imperialist guerilla cells formed in Japan in the 1970s. Between 1974 and 1975 each formation of EAAJAF - Ookami [Wolf], Daichi no Kiba [Fangs of the Earth], and Sasori [Scorpion] - conducted a number of bombings targeting the imperialist core of Japan. This is translation of a letter written in 1982 by Masashi Daidouji, a member of the Ookami cell of the EAAJAF.

The Japanese government coordinated a mass arrest of seven members of EAAJAF on May 19, 1975. Daidouji was among them and was eventually sentenced to death. Throughout their legal battle and time in prison, members of EAAJAF and their supporters outside continued putting pressure on the institutions around them, particularly for better conditions for prisoners in Japan.

This letter, from Daidouji to his friend Nobuhiro Takemoto, is one within an anthology of letters and writings to and from Daidouji while in prison. It was first published in 1984 and re-released in 1992. The title of the letter - On Anti-Japan Thought - is from this book."

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sanemyamen · 2 years ago

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shihlun · 4 years ago

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East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front (2019)

#East Asia Anti Japan Armed Front #documentary #poster #film #동아시아반일무장전선 #東アジア反日武装戦線

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 4 years ago

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Unification Church / Family Federation of America turned into a political machine – Allen Tate Wood

▲ Allen Tate Wood in the front of the line

In the summer of 1969 the Unification Church in America had no more than 6 or 7 centers with a total membership numbering around 150. During that summer Neil Winterbottom, from the national headquarters in Washington D.C., visited the commune. He was English, about my age, bright and well read. He seemed more dynamic than my compadres in Berkeley.

He suggested that I should come to the headquarters in Washington. I came back East to Princeton, N.J., to visit my family, whose skepticism about my new found religion only strengthened my commitment. Their suggestion that this group might be a front for Korean neo-fascism was preposterous. I did not tell them then that I knew Moon was the Messiah. Time was short. The world had to be saved. I had found my work at last.

Washington D.C. – Capitol Of The Archangel Nation

I arrived in Washington D.C. for the second Freedom Leadership Foundation conference. Neil Salonen, who in 1975 was Moon’s right hand man in the United States, was ordered by Moon in the summer of 1969 to found the Church’s anti-Communist movement in this country and to name the organization the International Federation for The Extermination of Communism. Salonen set the Freedom Leadership Foundation as the American Branch of the IFEC. On paper the FLF exists as a nonprofit, non partisan educational corporation whose stated objective is to educate American Youth about the dangers of Communism. From its inception FLF was funded by the Unification Church. At this stage in the movement’s development, the general membership was politically unsophisticated. The idea of a political arm was new and the purists in the movement who believed that a Church should have nothing to do with politics voiced strong opposition. It was pointed out to them that the church in Japan and Korea carried out extensive anti-Communist political programs and that it was the “master’s” express desire to begin political work in the U.S. Thereafter opposition to political work was seen as infidelity to the Master.

In the fall of 1969 FLF launched a public relations campaign against the October 15 and November 15 Vietnam Moratoriums. Unification Church members went full steam into the political operation as well as stepping up the usual witnessing and teaching of the Divine Principle. From this perspective my paid job in the office of Congressman Frank Thompson Jr., democrat from New Jersey, certainly appears odd. “Thompy” was known as an opponent of the war and supported Gene McCarthy for President in 1968. While my “boss” on the Hill was making stronger statements than ever against the War in Vietnam, after hours I was in the streets leafleting for the Master in support of it. In the fall of 1969 and the winter of 1970 Salonen scouted the hard-line anti-Communist groups in D.C. The fruits of his labor were winning the friendship and support of several influential men, including David Martin, the late Senator Dodd’s foreign affairs assistant (later a member on the staff of the Senate’s Internal Security Committee), Dolph Droge and Sven Kramer, Nixon’s special assistants on Vietnam and Charles Stephens, an independently wealthy man in his early thirties, who devoted a good deal of his time to promoting aggressive war policies through ad hoc groups of his own creation on campuses throughout the country. In the fall of 1969 and the spring of 1970 I worked increasingly with FLF.

Partisan Political Activity

In March of 1970 Salonen stepped down from the Presidency of FLF as a result of internecine conflict between himself and W. Farley Jones (then President of the Unification Church in America). Salonen was sent to Colorado to cool off and I was made President of FLF. It was not until a year later that I discovered that my sudden promotion over the heads of my superiors was a result of the leadership’s conviction that I could “easily be controlled,” and that my clean cut American good looks and the gift of gab made me an ideal front man.

In May, Charles Stephens and I, with coaching from David Martin, formed a political lobby group called “American Youth for A Just Peace.” I called Unification Church members from all over the country to assist in a lobbying campaign in defense of Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and against the McGovern-Hatfield and Cooper-Church bills to limit American involvement. We ran several full page advertisements in the Washington Star and Washington Post, defending military aid to Cambodia, signed with my name as chairman. As a result the South Vietnamese Embassy invited AYJP members on a VIP tour of Vietnam. Eight Unification Church members, Stephens and two of his associates and I flew to Vietnam on August 22, 1970 for a ten day visit crowned by dinner with South Vietnamese President Thieu in the Presidential Palace in Saigon. While we were in Saigon, the Cambodian government invited us to visit Cambodia. We spent five days there. General Lon Nol gave us an audience.

We appeared on CBS national television evening news. Walter Cronkite transported the audience at home in the U.S. to our group digging a fortification ditch around the perimeter of Phnom Penh. Shovel in hand, I begged for more military aid for Cambodia in its struggle against communist aggression. The CBS correspondent described me, I remember, as a spokesman for a group of young Americans who had come to Southeast Asia to “find the facts.” The South Vietnamese government paid for our round trip air fare with the explicit understanding that we would use the information we gathered to fight the Peace Movement on U.S. campuses and to generate support for the war. We were given royal treatment. At each stop the red carpet was rolled out. In Cambodia when we disembarked from the plane there were several thousand people waiting at the airport to greet us. A double row of 100 school girls was holding red roses. I felt like Lord Jim.

We left Cambodia and flew to Japan to visit the Japanese Unification Church and to participate in the World Anti-Communist League’s fourth annual conference held in Kyoto. That was followed by a mass rally of 25,000 people in Tokyo at the Budokan Sports Palace. The WACL conference was sponsored by the International Federation for Victory Over Communism, the political arm of the Japanese Unification Church. Delegates from 53 nations attended. The American delegate was Senator Strom Thurmond and the honorary chairman of the conference was a prominent Japanese industrialist, Ryoichi Sasakawa.

Meeting The Shogun

Sasakawa was a fascist youth leader in the 1930s. The Japanese Unification Church proudly told us that Sasakawa had helped create the Japanese Kamikaze program and that he had been instrumental in the Hitler Tojo pact. Sasakawa was convicted as a class A war criminal at the end of World War II and spent several years in jail. In 1975 he was the president of 13 major Japanese corporations, including the largest ship building company in Japan. He is also head of all Japanese karate schools. Sasakawa, on a visit to the Korean Unification Church, told church members that he was “Mr. Moon’s dog.”

After the WACL Conference we visited Unification Church centers in Japan. They were awe-inspiring to all of us. Then there were approximately 3,000 dedicated young followers who lived in Church centers for 20 to 100 members all over Japan. Seventy percent of them were involved in full time fundraising by selling flowers on street corners 14 hours a day. The rank and file members lived on a diet of rice and bread crusts. Church centers usually consisted of two large rooms with several smaller rooms adjacent. The large rooms served as separate men’s and women’s sleeping quarters. Anywhere from 10 to 50 people would sleep on tatami mats on the floor in one of the larger rooms. The center leader had a room to himself. The atmosphere in these centers was one of rigid military discipline and self-denial. All the Japanese martial virtues were harnessed and focussed on the molding of a group psyche whose sole object was to exalt Moon.

At The Feet Of “The Master”

After 17 days in Japan, seven of us flew to Korea to meet Moon and to visit the Korean Unification Church. We were housed in the dormitory of one of Moon’s Anti-Communist training centers, inside the walls of the Unification Church’s air rifle factory, about an hour and a half drive from Seoul. Now, after praying in his name for 16 months, I was finally to meet the “Master”. From our window in the Anti-Communist training dormitory we saw Moon and his wife approaching across the dry mud field separating the dormitory and the air rifle factory. I, with the others, ran out of the building and raced across the muddy yard to greet them. I saw a dark haired, heavy set man whose receding hairline accentuated an already ample brow. He was wearing a white peasant tunic and dark trousers. He looked as he did in his photographs but older and heavier. His disciplined movements and compact body conveyed a sense of coiled power. Moon shook hands with each of us, smiling broadly. I saw, as he turned sideways in front of me, a large piece of red wax in his right ear. I treasured this excrescence as a sign of his humanity.

My Mission

During my visit to Korea in October I was given a private audience with Moon. I was ushered into a lounge adjacent to his private quarters above the main church building in Seoul. We sat opposite each other on a plain rug separated by a black lacquer table inlaid with two finely worked mother of pearl dragons. For an hour he instructed me on various matters. The only interruption was the arrival of a messenger, a Korean man in his forties who prostrated himself at Moon’s feet before addressing the “Master.” Moon said to me, “You have a great responsibility. It is your job to initiate the work of winning the academic community in America to my side.” Further he said, “The allegiance of the scholarly community is a vital key in my plan to restore the world. Since universities hold the reigns of certification for all the major professions and since universities are the crucible in which young Americans form their basic attitudes and life directions, we must forge a path toward influencing and ultimately controlling American campuses.”

Moon held the Japanese Church up to us as an example of the true pattern of serving the Messiah. It was his intention to shame us into greater fervor and zeal, and his tactic was largely successful. The relative impotence of the American church in comparison with the militancy, power and organization of the Japanese Unification Church was a source of humiliation to us all. Moon told us that he could not come to America until we had significantly increased our numbers, demonstrated a higher level of personal sacrifice, and achieved greater organizational unity. On our return to the U.S. we brought intimations of the future directions of the movement in America.

I returned to the U.S. on October 6, 1970, in time for an early morning press conference with AYJP co-chairman Charles Stephens. Between October and December Stephens and I spoke to civic groups in Washington, issued a bi-monthly tabloid to congressmen and senators, and did all we could to beat the war drum in the nation’s capitol. AYJP was staffed entirely by Unification Church members.

This is an extract from My Four and One Half Years with The Lord of The Flies

Allen Tate Wood on Sun Myung Moon and the UC

Minions and Master

Mis Cuatro Años y Medio con el Señor de las Moscas . por Allen Tate Wood

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Bo Hi Pak declared he was leaving the UC and tore up his membership form in a top leader’s meeting in Korea

__________________________________________

World Domination – Sun Myung Moon’s many attempts ended in failure

Robert Parry’s investigations into Sun Myung Moon

Sun Myung Moon: The Emperor of the Universe, transcript and links

Sun Myung Moon – Emperor, and God

FBI and other reports on Sun Myung Moon

United States Congressional investigation of Moon’s organization

Politics and religion interwoven

The Resurrection of Reverend Sun Myung Moon

Why do so many evangelicals continue to deny that Biden won the election?

The forgotten figure who explains how Trump got almost 74 million votes – The Washington Post

The Tragedy of the Six Marys website

#Allen Tate Wood #Sun Myung Moon #Unification Church

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i-want-it-all-or-nothing-at-all · 5 years ago

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The geo-political struggle and arms race with the communist world known as the Cold War lasted so long (1945–1991), and was so fraught with existential danger to human civilization, that it is often forgotten that the United States and Soviet Union had been allies against Nazi Germany. Strategic as it was, this alliance came down to a marriage of expediency and no sooner had the dust of war settled than the erstwhile confederates confronted each other over the spoils of victory. At war’s end the United States’ continental territory was untouched and it was by far the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet. The Soviet Union, where most of the European fighting had been waged, lay in ashes with 30 million dead. With their common enemies prostrate the two allies briefly had a positive opportunity for a workable compromise over military and economic issues, and thus for a more peaceful future. But peace was not on the horizon.

After World War II anti-communism became the watchword of the day and the Soviets were demonized as entirely responsible for the state of tension that unfolded dangerously and rapidly. Neither side was blameless but the record clearly shows more effort at conciliation by Moscow than by Washington. Unwilling to acknowledge that the USSR had vital national security issues far more pressing than their own, advocates of a permanent military establishment and Open Door to the markets of Eastern Europe and East Asia claimed that the Soviets and Chinese communists had replaced the Nazis and imperial Japan as the threats to the ‘American way of life’. On the basis of this claim they militarized American society as never before.

Atwood, P. L. (2010). War and Empire: The American Way of Life. Chapter 9: Cold War: The Clash of Ideology or of Empires? Pluto Press. [bold and italisized emphasis added by me] Rest of the chapter below the break.

SOVIETS INDISPENSABLE TO DEFEAT OF HITLER

In American popular culture World War II is seen as the victory of democracy over German and Japanese dictatorship, with the United States playing the major role. There is no denying that US military fi repower defeated Japan. Indeed, American war planners never doubted victory. Americans have been loath, however, to accept less than full credit for triumph over Nazi Germany. Certainly the American Lend-Lease program provided Britain and the Soviet Union with essential resources, including arms, and the massive American and British aerial bombardment of German factories and cities contributed to Hitler’s downfall. But in terms of ground combat and the defeat of millions of Nazi soldiers, the Soviet Red Army was indisputably central. The war on Europe’s eastern front was far more destructive and savage than in the west and millions of soldiers and civilians on both sides perished. More than two-thirds of Hitler’s legions were concentrated against the Soviets, where they fought a desperate and losing effort to keep the Red Army at bay. When German forces entered the Soviet Union in 1941 they committed atrocities on a colossal scale, including the roundup and systematic extermination of Jews, and the slaughter of many other civilians. By late 1942 the Red Army had reversed Germany’s fortunes and in 1945 broke through into Germany itself and began to exact an equally atrocious retribution.

It is often forgotten too, deliberately omitted, that when the Nazis conquered states in Eastern Europe they subordinated their governments and forged military alliances with these puppet regimes. The result was that Hungarian, Ukrainian, Romanian and other pro-Nazi troops invaded Soviet Russia alongside the Germans as partners. Thus, it was on the basis that these regimes had waged war against the USSR that the Red Army occupied these nations after driving the Nazis back, eventually to total defeat. In the popular view of the Cold War the Reds had occupied innocent nations illegitimately. But this was false. The Soviets planted themselves in Eastern Europe for much the same reasons that the US occupied western Germany and Japan. It is true that the smaller nations of Eastern Europe were pawns but they were bargaining chips to each side. Both the US and USSR wished Europe to be reconstructed along lines benefi cial to their specifi c economic and security interests. In terms of physical security there was no doubt as to which nation had the greater claim.

The overwhelming majority of Hitler’s best troops had been locked in mortal struggle in the east. Thus, when the US fi nally, in the last year of war, was able to employ its vast wealth of resources to mount the largest seaborne invasion force in history on the north coast of France, the effort succeeded only because the least combat experienced, and fewest, Nazi troops were there as defenders. Had the bulk of Nazi forces not been bogged down in the east they would have been on the beaches of France and therefore no such invasion would have been possible or even considered. Hitler could not have been defeated without the Soviet Union. Had he confi ned his effort to conquering western Europe, and not attacked Russia, Europe’s recent history would be very different.

But Hitler had made it supremely clear in his book Mein Kampf that he intended to extend German living space (lebensraum) to the Slavic east and to defeat communism once and for all. The Soviet system had only recently been stabilized after years of civil war and internal communist party purges. Stalin feared that the western European powers might align with Germany against him. Since he desired no such war he allied with Hitler in 1939. This certainly disappointed the British and US bitterly. But then in the late summer of 1941 Hitler reneged on his pact with Stalin and invaded the USSR. By this time the US was in an undeclared but de facto naval war with Germany. Once full-scale declared war broke out both Britain and the United States understood that Germany could only be defeated with the aid of the Soviets. This posed a very difficult problem for American goals. If US foreign policy was predicated upon keeping an Open Door for American business enterprise to the resources, markets and labor power of Europe as a whole, and the Nazis had to be prevented from shutting that portal, this goal could only be achieved with the indispensable assistance of a regime that had been equally hostile to the Open Door. At best only half the loaf of American war aims could be attained. Instead of Nazi autarky throughout Eastern Europe, Soviet communism would prevail, and whatever access American corporations might have to trade with this bloc it would not be on American terms. The cold hard fact was that at war’s end the Russians occupied the same territory in Europe’s east as had the Nazis.

Some historians argue that if Roosevelt had been younger, healthier and able to continue he might have arranged a favorable agreement with Stalin that may have benefited both nations. FDR would have faced the same bitter opposition his successor faced domestically, but he was far more sophisticated a politician and more of a realist. The Soviets had been portrayed in heroic terms by the US press and Hollywood while the war was still ongoing, but rightists and anti-communists in the US were already in 1945 accusing Roosevelt of having lost Eastern Europe to the hated Reds, though the region was hardly America’s to lose. In any case Roosevelt died just as the war was ending and his place was taken by an inexperienced and easily manipulated, at least initially, Harry S. Truman, who was himself reflexively anti-communist and who almost immediately went on the political and ideological offensive against yesterday’s ally.

YESTERDAY’S ESSENTIAL ALLY BECOMES THE NEW THREAT

In short order the Truman Administration claimed that the Soviets had now replaced the Nazis as the principal threat to global order and American national security. Less than three months after Japan’s surrender on 2 September 1945 the enormously influential Life magazine startled readers with graphic depictions of a Soviet atomic missile attack on US cities, though pointedly the Soviets did not possess an atomic bomb, and intercontinental missiles did not exist and would not until 1957. Most mainstream publications followed suit with lurid depictions of what the USSR could do to the US despite its obvious weakness. In 1946 Admiral Chester Nimitz, hero of the Pacific War, declared, with no evidence whatever, that the Soviets were preparing to bomb England and launch submarine attacks against American coastal cities. Presidential adviser Clark Clifford claimed that the communist threat was so dire ‘the United States must be prepared to wage atomic and biological warfare’. Only five months after Germany surrendered, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a report calling for the atomic bombing of 20 cities in the USSR if that country ‘developed either a means of defense against our attack or the capacity for an eventual attack on the United States’ (author’s emphasis).

All this despite the fact that the USSR had suffered the greatest devastation to its national territory of any belligerent, worse even than atomically desolated Japan, and had not the remotest possibility of attacking the United States. Nor did it have such an intention.All of European Russia’s major cities and towns, estimated at 70,000, were destroyed, its roads, and railways in ruins, its crops and livestock dead or stolen, and at least 30 million of its soldiers and civilians dead. Though the Red Army was immense, and its soldiers extremely combat-hardened, it showed no signs of moving beyond the territories it had wrested from the Nazis with so much blood. Nor did it seek territorial gains in Western Europe or the Middle East. Yet, the American public was indoctrinated to believe that Soviet-led communism was on the march with the goal of ‘world conquest’. This was exactly the propaganda employed about the Nazis and Japanese. The permanent enemy required for a permanent war economy had miraculously materialized.

This is not to say that Soviet communism lived up to its promises, or functioned as a benevolent regime. Far from it. Russia was behaving as Russia had always behaved, and still does. The Soviet victory enabled Stalin to re-extend control over some of what had been lost to Russia’s empire during World War I and what he deemed Tsarist Russia’s natural sphere. After two devastating invasions in a quarter century the Soviet general staff obsessed over territorial security. The Yalta Accords of 1945 reflected the realities of war. The Soviet Union occupied Eastern Europe as a result of its overwhelming victory over the Nazis. This enormous contribution to Nazi defeat had to be acknowledged. Yalta also accorded the Soviets territories in East Asia, some of which had been forcibly taken from Russia in its war against Japan from 1904 to 1905. At the time the accords were signed then Secretary of War Henry Stimson acknowledged they recognized the USSR’s vital concerns for future security. The same Joint Chiefs who planned a sneak attack on Russia out of fear of its military power also said in another position paper that the USSR’s policy was defensive in nature and aimed merely ‘to establish a Soviet Monroe Doctrine for the area under her shadow, primarily and urgently for security’.

Harry S. Truman’s ascension to the presidency on the sudden death of FDR in April 1945 brought about a sea change in the US’s relationship with the USSR. Demonizing the Soviets quickly became the major component in the campaign to assert the newfound power in Washington’s hand to reconstruct and stabilize the global capitalist economy. Therefore, in order to gain the American people’s support for the remilitarization and increased tax burden that would be required to confront this new enemy, the highly positive image of the Soviets, that portrayed Stalin and the Red Army as noble allies in the war against Nazism induced by American propaganda, had to be reversed.

A hopeful moment thus became a tragic one, yet entirely in keeping with the historical thrust of American development and foreign policy. Though the seeds of both world wars were planted in Europe, the United States entered each war knowing that European empires and Japan would be sapped, if not finished. By 1940 a golden opening had arisen for Washington to intervene at the right moment, replace many of its rivals at the pinnacle of global power and reconfi gure global order. Already, the phrase ‘American century’ had entered the public vocabulary.

The major problem for American post-war plans was that though the war had been a pyrrhic victory for Russia it still remained a great power, and it straddled much of Europe. Despite no navy to speak of and no airforce capable of crossing oceans, the USSR had the largest, most-bloodied, most combat experienced army on earth. Even so, though it occupied much of the very region the US had wanted freed from German rule and opened to American enterprise, it was not capable, nor did it desire, to occupy Western Europe.

Uppermost on Stalin’s agenda was rebuilding an utterly devastated nation and ensuring that invasion by a foreign enemy could never take place again. For Soviet foreign policy maintaining control of Eastern Europe as a bulwark, a cordon sanitaire, was indispensable against any possibility of incursion from the west. To safeguard their country and their rule the Soviets were more than willing to modify the doctrines of communism and world revolution. Had the Truman Administration been willing to acknowledge this profound need on the part of the Soviets, and to work with them to guarantee their security, the possibilities for subsequent cooperation might have proved invaluable to both nations. Genuinely frightened by American actions in the early Cold War, the Russians were goaded to intensify their own acquisition of atomic weapons, thereby ensuring that Soviet nuclear capabilities would become the very threat, and the only such threat, to American national security that propaganda had claimed but which had been utterly false (author’s emphasis).

THE ATOMIC ARMS RACE BEGINS

As American officials intended, the atomic bombings of Japan had badly unnerved the Soviets. Not only were the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a warning that such destruction of entire cities and ruthlessness against helpless civilians could be visited elsewhere, they also ended the war abruptly on American terms, forestalling the USSR’s occupation of Japan, to prevent any repeat of the problems inherent in the division of Germany.

The future of atomic weapons thus lay at the center of both nations’ critical concerns. Many Americans, including leading atomic scientists who developed the bomb, had worried that nuclear weapons in the hands of one nation would induce a terrifying arms race that portended the annihilation of human civilization. The Soviets demanded the destruction of all existing atomic weapons, though no American offi cial believed they would stop their own program. To mollify domestic critics the Truman Administration created a special committee headed by Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson to advance policies for the control of such armaments and atomic energy in general. When this committee’s proposals were deemed too soft, its recommendations were replaced by those of Wall Street baron, Barnard Baruch. The Baruch Plan demanded that the Soviets submit to international inspections and end their A-bomb project, then in its early stage, while the US would retain its atomic monopoly until satisfi ed no Soviet bomb would or could be created. Then, and only then, would the US reconsider whether or not to destroy its own bomb making capacity. It was, as a Baruch staff member conceded, ‘obviously unacceptable to the Soviets with the full realization that they would reject it’. Acheson himself said that the Baruch Plan would guarantee the failure of international control of atomic weapons. The Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted only one dimension of control. ‘The bomb should continue to be at the heart of America’s arsenal, and a system of controls should be established that would prevent the Russians from developing the weapon.’ The nuclear arms race, that on more than one occasion would bring the world to the brink of Armageddon, was on.

SOVIETS WITHDRAW VOLUNTARILY FROM CONQUERED AREAS

In early 1946 Winston Churchill made his famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech in the US in which he described what he termed the barbaric and illegitimate domination of Eastern Europe by the Soviets. Yet, as prime minister of Britain, and Stalin’s ally, he had cut a bargain with the Soviet dictator himself by which Britain would recognize Soviet mastery throughout the east in return for Stalin’s acknowl-edgement of Britain’s continued sphere in Greece, a bargain Stalin kept. The real record of Soviet actions in the immediate post-war period demonstrated a genuine willingness to cooperate with the US and its allies. Austria had been annexed by Germany in 1938 and so had also participated in the invasion of Russia. At war’s end the Red Army occupied about half of Austria, but it withdrew voluntarily.

Similarly, the Soviets also withdrew from Chinese territory occupied when the Red Army declared war on Japan in 1945. In 1947 Truman issued his famous doctrine in which he accused the Soviets of intervening in Greece’s civil war waged between native Greek communists and right-wing forces that had collaborated with the Nazis, and who were then also supported by Britain. But Stalin kept his word with Churchill and gave no aid to the Greek communists. That is precisely why the Greek communists were defeated.

In yet another case both Russia and Britain had occupied Iran and Azerbaijan in order to keep immense reserves of oil from Nazi control. FDR had assured Stalin that Russia could obtain Iranian oil for necessary reconstruction after the war. The Soviets agreed to withdraw from this area by March 1946, yet when the time came they balked; not because they wished to annex the region but to ensure that Iran would provide the USSR with oil. Initially the Truman Administration urged the Iranians to broker such an oil deal. At this early stage of American power Washington was already maneuvering to create a buffer between the USSR and Middle East oil, and saw Iran as pivotal. So, after the Soviets did withdraw Washington then told Iran to renege.

In every one of these cases there was nothing the US could have done had Russia actually behaved in the manner that American propaganda falsely claimed, that is, with military force. In the case of Iran even the A-bomb was useless since that would have irradiated and poisoned (or utterly destroyed) the oil wells. In fact, Russian actions belied the claim that they were relentlessly pursuing new conquests. No evidence existed of any Soviet desire to move militarily beyond the areas occupied during the rout of Nazi Germany. By contrast Britain still had its imperial armies all over the globe, as did the US. None of this meant that Stalin did not remain a despot; it meant that the Soviet leadership was committed to traditional Russian concerns of security and dominance within its perceived sphere. To ensure their security the Soviets were willing to meet the US approximately half way. George F. Kennan of the State Department, the very architect of early American Cold War policy of containing the Soviet Union, nevertheless continued to insist that ‘Our first aim with respect to Russia in time of peace, is to encourage and promote by means short of war the retraction of undue Russian power and influence from the present satellite area.’

Ever the pragmatist and realist FDR recognized that the Red Army occupied Eastern Europe and could not be removed, as did Churchill despite his later hypocrisy. The Yalta Accords, agreed in April 1945 between the US, Britain, and the Soviet Union, not only reflected the real balance of power at that moment but affi rmed the division of Europe with the possibility for future mutual cooperation. Months later the balance of power would be altered exponentially by the American atomic bomb.

It is true that communist parties in western Europe, especially in France and Italy, were very strong and posed an electoral threat to the American reconstruction agenda in that region. Communists could rise to power there democratically and showed every sign of doing so, owing to widespread dissatisfaction with the regimes that had brought on war and ruin. Certainly the Soviets aided such political movements where they could, but given the Soviets’ own domestic problems such assistance was minimal. The American response was to deploy the newly established Central Intelligence Agency to areas where electoral communist success was possible, there to employ every dirty trick available, including bribery, vote fraud and even assassination to prevent communist electoral success. In both France and Italy the CIA worked openly with organized crime to intimidate organized labor. Ironically the US accused the Soviets of thuggery. If democracy was to result in communist gains then democracy had to be jettisoned.

CAPITALISM AND COMMUNISM VIE FOR THE LOYALTIES OF THE DEFEATED EMPIRES’ COLONIES

Americans are educated to take capitalism for granted as the only rational system of social and economic organization. The brutal and unjust history of capitalist evolution is all but censored. Indeed, while communist nations were usually derided as slave states, the fact that slavery and mass slaughter were indispensable ingredients of western capitalism’s rise is not open for discussion, at least in mainstream forums. When communist ideas began to percolate into society they were both an intellectual and grass roots response to the very real depredations of capitalism. Clearly communist revolutions did not succeed in creating better societies for their peoples, as capitalist societies claim they do for their own. Soviet rule over its satellites was brutal. But if the capitalist west prospers greatly today it does so directly as an historical legacy of the early western conquest of much of the planet, a system erected as a result of genocide and slavery at its dawn and maintained by exploitation and war to this day. The west can and does vilify communist crimes. But there is nothing in the communist record not matched by capitalist societies in terms of crimes against humanity. The record of capitalist larceny is why so many colonized peoples struggling for independence from western rule turned toward communist and socialist ideas in the aftermath of World War II; that, and their recognition that the European empires, and Japan, were finished. As victims they had first hand knowledge of the west’s hypocrisy and its claims to bring the benefits of civilization to the benighted denizens of what was condescendingly termed the ‘Third World’. They knew that western nations prospered at their expense. Nationalists like Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh had seen first hand the beneficence of French capitalism and rejected it utterly. European colonizers employed noble rhetoric and platitudes but the realities involved plantations and mines that paid slave wages, a system backed by prisons and executions. The widely held notion that the US opposed communism on moral grounds is flatly contradicted by the fact that throughout the Cold War Washington overthrew numerous democracies because they pursued policies in opposition to US intentions. In many cases the US filled these power vacuums with bloody dictatorships every bit as brutish and criminal as anything to be found in the communist world.

American policy-makers understood that World War II’s costs in lives and treasure would all but bankrupt western Europe’s empires, and Japan’s, presenting the long anticipated opening to replace them, if not in exactly the same way. So the stage was set for a titanic struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union for the loyalties of the former colonial subjects. This contest was one of the cardinal issues at the heart of American opposition to the communist world. Throughout the post-war era, until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, both sides would square off and on too many occasions would stand at the brink of nuclear war. At other times the two opponents would arm proxies such as Koreans, Vietnamese, Cubans, Angolans, Ethiopians and many others, and foster wars all over the planet such that by the end of the twentieth century almost as many people would die of these so-called ‘savage wars of peace’ as had been killed in World War II.

The Great Depression in the US had been caused by speculation in stock markets, overproduction, restriction of credit, collapsed purchasing power and the closure of overseas markets by countries reverting to economic nationalism, or autarky, especially Britain, Germany and Japan. The USSR already impeded capitalist penetration on American terms. In the decade before the war most foreign markets were off limits to American goods and services. Then the war itself shattered the global capitalist system. This was the deepest crisis facing American political, social and economic stability at home immediately in the post-war years. There was absolutely no military threat from any corner of the globe. American analysts reasoned that the only way to avert a return to stagnation was through the economic and financial reconstruction of the global order on American terms.

THE THREAT OF A CLOSED WORLD REMAINS: GERMANY BECOMES A NEW AXIS

American policy faced a four-pronged threat: the ruined nations of Europe and Asia – both friends and former foes – might revert to the economic nationalism and closure of markets that had characterized the pre-war years. Post-war impoverishment in these regions might lead populations toward communism and socialism. Ruined nations could not buy American goods owing to their lack of dollars. Finally, the colonies were in revolt, threatening to align themselves with Moscow, or in nationalist directions otherwise independent of US desires.

So the key to post-war American strategy focused fundamentally on economic security, not the claimed military threat from communism. The ‘closed world�� that had preceded the war, with restrictions on market access and discriminatory trade practices such as tariffs, was a major factor in the depth of the Great Depression. In order ‘to maintain a world economic order based on free trade and currency convertibility’ the US hosted the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 at which the American dollar was pegged as the standard, backed by the world’s greatest gold reserves, against which all other currencies would exchange. This gave the US economy preponderant leverage over the evolution of the new global system.

Germany was the key to reconstruction strategy as the new ‘axis’ of an integrated European market. At the end of the war Germany had been co-occupied by the US, Britain and the USSR. The issue of the shape of Germany’s reunification had been left open by the big three powers. Russia occupied about one-third of the nation, the largely agricultural eastern sector, while the US and Britain ruled the industrial west. This posed an immediate problem for US–Soviet cooperation since Russia wanted to carry off Germany’s remaining industrial plants as part of the exacting indemnity it desired and as a measure to cripple any future re-industrialization that could lead to Germany’s remilitarization. This came directly into conflict with American goals. As Stalin saw matters, the issue revolved around Russian need for security versus American desire for gain. The question of Germany’s future would ultimately be the root of Washington’s decision to militarize the Cold War.

US ambassador to the newly created United Nations, John Foster Dulles, said ‘a healthy Europe’ could not be ‘divided into small compartments’. It had to be organized into ‘an integrated market big enough to justify modern methods of mass production for mass consumption’. An early draft of the Truman Doctrine had declared that:

Two great wars and an intervening world depression have weakened the system almost everywhere except in the United States...if, by default, we permit free enterprise to disappear in other countries of the world, the very existence of our democracy will be gravely threatened.

Envisioning a global ‘America, Inc.’ Washington policy-makers would anoint defeated Germany and Japan as junior partners with management rights over many of the areas formerly comprising the very empires they had sought to rule. In order to renew capitalist prosperity the US would ally with its former enemies to thwart the opposition of both communists and any economic nationalists (any who put their national economic interests before American corporate interests) on the scene. What Truman, a Democrat, and Dulles, a Republican, feared above all was any return to self-contained economic blocs that would freeze American enterprise out. Whether this took the form of Stalinism, Chinese communism, state socialism or Arab nationalism, any type of economic autarky anywhere was unacceptable to official Washington. In 1904 Teddy Roosevelt had extended the Monroe Doctrine and American dominance throughout the western hemisphere; now Truman, in his famous doctrine of 1947, would extend it to the planet.

CONTROL OF OIL BECOMES THE LINCHPIN OF AMERICAN POLICY

Fundamental to American management of capitalist economies, and the military power to back it up, was control of the resource necessary to fuel the system. In the words of the US State Department oil had become ‘a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history’. James Forrestal, who had directed the Navy Department during the war and would soon become the nation’s first Secretary of Defense, put matters quite baldly. ‘Whoever sits on the valve of Middle East oil may control the destiny of Europe.’ George Kennan, architect of early anti-communist policy, wrote that ‘US control over Japanese oil imports would help provide “veto power” over Japan’s military and industrial policies.’ In another position paper the State Department declared:

Our petroleum policy is predicated on a mutual recognition of a very extensive joint interest and upon control...of the great bulk of the petroleum resources of the world...US–UK agreement upon the broad, forward-looking pattern of the development and utilization of petroleum resources under the control of the two countries is of the highest strategic and commercial importance. [author’s emphasis]

The inclusion of the British government in this proposed condominium was quite disingenuous, since American policy all along had been to displace Britain at the top of the system, to remake it on American terms: to play Rome to Britain’s Athens.

As we have seen, the Middle East had been cynically carved up and occupied by Britain and France after World War I. Owing to the shock and cost of World War II both nations were losing their empires. Having ascended to the pinnacle of the system that had evolved by conquest, the US would shortly, in the name of countering communists but really in order to maintain its new position, be forced to intervene in the Middle East for strategic reasons and to ensure its access to and control over the disposition of vital oil. Solving these problems would require outlays of US tax revenues that would dwarf the costs incurred by the war itself, and if not managed tightly could lead back to depression.

The Truman Doctrine of 1947 committed the US to provide assistance to any nation at risk from communist movements or insurgencies, but it was also a major response to the economic uncertainties facing reconstruction of the global system. The capitalist British Empire had been the greatest impediment to American hegemony in the pre-war system. In another of history’s ironies Prime Minister Churchill had allied with the US in order to save his nation’s empire, only to see it bankrupted by victory. Britain had succumbed to classic ‘imperial overstretch’, and the main beneficiary of this precipitous decline was its ally and rival. In desperate need of loans from the only nation with funds, London agreed to convert its currency, the pound sterling, to dollars, thereby transferring economic management at home and economic control of its dominions to the US. The imperial roles had been reversed, a goal sought by Washington and Wall Street for half a century. But the US had also now adopted Britain’s role as enforcer in the empire she was losing. The first stop was Greece, formerly London’s satellite, now in danger of succumbing to home-grown communists.

The anti-communist propaganda of the Truman Doctrine also prepared the American public and Congress for even greater outlays of American dollars. Truman’s message emphasized the communist threat to Greece, Turkey and the oil of the Middle East, but this was not entirely honest. Its deeper goal was to overcome political reluctance to extend massive loans for European recovery. As noted, Stalin was not interfering in the Greek civil war between communists and rightists. The aid thus extended by Truman defeated the Greek communists and lined the US up with a reactionary and dictatorial regime. There was no evidence that the Soviets were interfering in Turkey and that Muslim nations’ communists were a weak minority in any case. As Chairman Arthur Vandenburg of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee told Truman, if he wanted Congress to put up the money he would have ‘to scare hell out of the American people’. Thus an equally massive distortion and deception campaign about Russia’s proclaimed threat was set in motion to match the enormous outlays of funds that would be necessary to rebuild Europe’s shattered economies to suit the American agenda of a world open to American corporate penetration. Communism was on the march the public was told; only the United States stood in its path.

THE ‘MARTIAL PLAN’

Named after Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the European Recovery Program is often presented as an impeccable example of American generosity towards war-ruined nations, including former enemies. But the plan was crafted primarily as a measure to resolve the ‘dollar gap’ crisis and restore the US economy and international trade. Prior to the depression and war, Europe and Japan had exported their products to the US and been paid in dollars, which these nations then used to import American products. In the post-war period European currencies and the Japanese yen were essentially worthless. In the absence of dollars to buy American goods, global trade could not be re-established and the US was in danger of falling back into depression, mass unemployment and social instability. The plan envisioned ultimately an integrated European Common Market, with a re-industrialized Germany at its core and a common currency easily converted into dollars. Billions of tax dollars would be pumped into ruined Europe (with a similar plan for Japan) and then be re-circulated back into the US to purchase reconstruction services and materials from American companies. The war-devastated nations would be rebuilt and American prosperity would return.

The key to European recovery, said American analysts, was Germany. Secretary Marshall declared that ‘the restoration of Europe required the restoration of Germany. Without a revival of Germany’s production there can be no revival of Europe’s economy.’ The chairman of General Motors, then the largest corporation in the world, said that without German integration into a common European market ‘there is nothing that could convince us in General Motors that it was either sound or desirable or worthwhile to undertake an operation of any consequence in a country like France’.

France itself was adamantly opposed to re-industrializing the neighbor that had invaded it twice that century but was induced to accept the plan when it realized that the enormous reparations it desired from Germany could only be obtained if German industry was resurrected. France also fervently wanted to hold on to its empire, especially in North Africa and Indochina. To have any hope of success it would have to depend on the United States and would therefore be required to go along with the Marshall Plan.

Russia, however, was a very different case. Under no circumstances could the Soviet Union accept a reunified Germany reconstructed along the lines that had enabled its rise as a military power in the first place. Germany had also twice invaded Russian territory in one generation, with consequences far more extreme than for France. The USSR desperately needed aid, even more than the nations of western Europe, and at the final allied conference at Potsdam had asked Truman for a $10 billion loan, having previously been promised $6 billion by FDR. Stalin took measures to cooperate with the US, such as allowing non-communists to share rule in strategic Poland and Czechoslovakia, by withdrawing troops from Austria, Manchuria and Iran, and by refraining to support communist movements in China, Greece and elsewhere. Washington had continued to dangle the possibility of the loan to Moscow without making any concrete guarantees. It never did extend the money.

In 1948 the US offered Marshall Plan aid to Czechoslovakia which had fallen under Nazi rule during the war when its puppet government had allied with Hitler. Nevertheless, that nation was allowed by Stalin to have elections in which non-communists shared power. Czechoslovakia straddled east and west and sought good relations with both sides. But it was clear that acceptance of Marshall Plan aid would tie the small nation’s economy to the west and erode the cordon sanitaire that Soviet foreign policy saw as key to its national security. Rather than allow Czechoslovakia out of its orbit the Soviets ruthlessly toppled the non-communist government of Edward Benes and occupied the country. This was the first military foray conducted by the Soviets after World War II, and it occurred in a nation that had been an enemy, and had previously been occupied by the Red Army. This move against the Czechs hardly portended the global conquest that Washington’s propaganda insisted was the Soviet goal.

Had Italy at the time elected a communist government and showed signs of lining up with the USSR the United States would have overthrown that government (actually it would never have allowed any communists, elected or not, in the first place). Nevertheless, Washington seized upon the Czech overthrow as perfect evidence of its own propaganda. The Reds were relentlessly seeking world conquest and would have to be ‘contained’. The die was cast. The USSR would be denied reconstruction aid, it would be banned from the renewed global economic system and its proclaimed menace would be employed to justify rearmament in the US and Western Europe.

Critics of the European Recovery Plan in the US, like FDR’s former vice-president Henry Wallace, dubbed it the ‘Martial Plan’. Wallace, who was running for president in the 1948 election, argued strenuously that Truman’s policies were deliberately fostering mistrust, a dangerous arms race and potential future war. Like FDR he believed that mutual cooperation between Washington and Moscow could be worked out favorably to both nations, if only the US would take seriously Russia’s genuine security concerns. He and many others doubted Truman’s professed humanitarian motives for the plan, believing it was calculated primarily to profit large corporations, especially many war industries that had grown to gargantuan proportions as a result of wartime contracts with guaranteed profits. What would the workforce’s share be? If a new war should come who would do the dying?

In response to the dispute over the Marshall Plan big business established the Committee for the Marshall Plan. Massively funded by concerns like Chase Bank, General Motors, Westinghouse, Standard Oil and numerous Wall Street law firms and brokerage houses, the public was saturated with media ads touting the benefits the economy would reap. Simultaneously, critics were portrayed as communists or communist sympathizers. New epithets entered the political vocabulary. Opponents of the plan, or of Truman’s anti-communist policies in general, were now derided as ‘stalinoids’, ‘parlor pinkos’ and communist ‘fellow travelers’. The most conservative elements in the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) were enlisted to line the unions up with corporate America. The Truman Administration also mandated the Federal Employee Loyalty Program requiring millions of federal employees to take a loyalty oath. This energized the extreme right wing in American politics since it more than implied that the administration had allowed itself to be infi ltrated by ‘subversives’ and fed the witch hunt against any critics of US foreign policy that followed. Wallace himself, whom FDR had trusted as he had never trusted Truman, was depicted in the popular press as Stalin’s ‘stooge’. The former Vice-President’s interest in eastern religions was ridiculed and condemned as a betrayal of America’s ‘Christian heritage’. The strongest political link to FDR’s New Deal, Wallace and his bid for the presidency, was derailed by such caricatures. An age of irrationality, intolerance, censorship and militarized anti-communism had dawned and would dominate American domestic politics almost for half a century.

HE FUTURE OF GERMANY FURTHER POLARIZES THE COLD WARThe years 1948–1950 were critical to the evolution of American Cold War policies and the future of American democracy. The crucial issue of Germany heated nearly to atomic warfare over the capital city of Berlin; the Chinese communists overthrew the regime the US had propped up against Japan; the Soviets exploded their fi rst atomic bomb; war in Korea broke out suddenly, and across the globe the colonies were in open revolt. Panic gripped the Truman Administration while its right-wing opponents mounted a hysterical condemnation of the government’s policies. Owing to its unpopularity, the draft laws of World War II had been allowed to lapse but on 24 June 1948 Congress instituted a new Selective Service Act that would conscript able-bodied males for compulsory military service, not to defend American shores but once again to be deployed thousands of miles from home.27 The militarization of the Cold War and the creation of the ‘permanent war economy’ was now becoming law. The National Security State, what President Dwight Eisenhower would later call the ‘military-industrial complex’, was now unremittingly fastened on to American life, adding new branches to the republican form of government, neither elected nor seemingly subordinate to the original three prescribed by the Constitution. (The Constitution prescribes a legislative branch, an executive and a judicial. The new National Security State involved the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council which effectively acted as new branches unelected by anyone.) Coupled with the rising power of the Central Intelligence Agency this ‘secret government’, operating behind the scenes and in the shadows of American political life, would maneuver ceaselessly to reduce government ‘by the people’ to political theater once and for all.The fate of Germany, split between the capitalist west and Soviet east, polarized the issues between the US and USSR. By 1948 it was clear that no compromise on Germany’s reunifi cation could be reached that satisfi ed either side. When the US announced that it had created a separate currency for West Germany the Soviets decided to close the border between their zone, East Germany, and the West, halting any progress toward reunifi cation. The American intent was to foster re-industrialization and economic stability in West Germany such that it could begin importing American and western European products. This fl atly rendered null the agreement made at Yalta for Russian reparations from the wealthier, industri

APA (American Psychological Assoc.) Atwood, P. L. (2010). War and Empire : The American Way of Life. Pluto Press.

#world war ii #world war 2 #wwii #ww2 #united states #us #soviet union #russia #cold war #communism #ussr #open door policy #militarism #military industrial complex #us aggression

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shafran-saffron · 1 month ago

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You ever see a historical paper so good you want to bookbind it and put in on your shelf..?

I don't care if it's only 25 pages and the cover would literally be bigger than the content

#my inspiration for this post is #“Anti-Japan: The Life and Death of the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front” literally has no reason to be as well written as it is #i always find my faves in Wikipedia sources for some reason haha #what do i even tag this as #studyblr #Wikipedia #bookblr #(?)#even though i don't really read normal books lol #good enough i guess

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davidshawnsown · 4 years ago

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COMMEMORATIVE MESSAGE IN HONOR OF THE 75TH DIAMOND JUBILLEE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE GREAT ALLIED VICTORY OVER JAPAN IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION AND THE VICTORIOUS AND DEFINITE CONCLUSION OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Ladies and gentlemen, to all the people of the United States of America and Canada, to all our remaining living veterans of the Second World War of 1939-1945 and of all conflicts past and present and their families, to our veterans, active servicemen and women, reservists and families of the entire United States Armed Forces and Canadian Armed Forces, and to all the uniformed military and civil security services of the Allied combatants of this conflict, to all the immediate families, relatives, children and grandchildren of the deceased veterans, fallen service personnel and wounded personnel of our military services and civil uniformed security and civil defense services, to all our workers, farmers and intellectuals, to our youth and personnel serving in youth uniformed and cadet organizations and all our athletes, coaches, judges, sports trainers and sports officials, and to all our sports fans, to all our workers of culture, music, traditional arts and the theatrical arts, radio, television, digital media and social media, cinema, heavy and light industry, agriculture, business, tourism and the press, and to all our people of the free world:

Our greeting to the millions who today celebrate such an important day in our history.

For it was on this day in history when in 1792 when the September Massacres, the mass slaughter of the Catholic clergy and supporters of the monarchy during the early stages of the French Revolution, began as revolutionary crows stormed into the prisons killing supporters of the deposed royal family.

It was on this day in 1872 that the Battle of Sedan ended with a historic defeat for the French Army.

It was on this day in 1960 when the in-exile Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration held its very first elections.

And today, September 2, in the midst of the fact that the world is now currently in one of the greatest crises of our times in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in millions being infected and in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people around the world, as well as the cancellations of many events and of sporting activities and the postponment of many others as a precautionary measure for the sake of protecting public health and well-being, we today celebrate with great joy the anniversary of all anniversaries: the 75th Diamond Jubilee year anniversary of the signing of the official documents of the unconditional surrender of the whole of Japan to the victorious Allied Powers and the conclusion of the Second World War, 6 years and a day after it began with the Nazi German advance to western Poland in 1939. It is a day of profound celebration of the historic day that finally ended years of long and bitter war against the Axis aggressor in many parts of the world, a war that would in the end cost the lives of millions of people, the dignity of millions of women and children, the loss of many precious works of art and culture and the destruction of countless architectural wonders, economies and industries. It is a day wherein we reflect the sacrifices of the millions of men and women who fought and worked in the side of the victorious Allies in the united cause of the defense of lives and individual freedoms against the totalitarian aggressor bent on destroying freedom and independence for the sake of fascism, opresssion and abuse of human rights and liberties. It is a day of remembrance of the memories of the millions of martyrs of the uniformed military, law enforcement and civil defense services of the Allied Powers who perished during this terrible period in human history. It is above all a joyful day of celebration of the victory against the forces of evil and the beginning of the long era of peace.

On this day exactly 75 years ago, aboard the historic battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) off the waters of Tokyo Bay, military representatives of both the Allies and the Empire of Japan signed the papers that formally ended a six year old war (eight long years of warfare in East Asia) and brought forth the victory over the Axis aggressors in the Asia-Pacific, with the acceptance of Japan and her armed forces of the terms of unconditional surrender of the country to the victors as agreed before earlier in the year in Postdam and as announced to the whole of the country the month before, with with ceremonies of surrender being conducted in other parts of East Asia in the coming days marking the close of another memorable but bloody chapter in world history. On that day the world witnessed the beginning of a long but painful road to peace that would in the following years be riddled with the blood of future regional wars, but lined with the sacrifices of millions whose sacrifices during those six long years brought forth the ideals of a better world for our future generations, a world full of peace and progress, where people live in harmony, friendship and cooperation. On that day the world celebrated the victory won against the Axis Powers whose plans for evil domination in the world and the suffering of millions were ended by the Allied Powers. On that day the world gave its thanks to the millions of men and women, collectively dubbed as the Greatest Generation, the millions of active and reserve servicemen and women of the armed forces, police, fire, border protection, civil defense, emergency response and intelligence organizations, as well as all paramilitary and law enforcement auxillary organizations of the Allied Powers whose tenacity, courage, hard work, dedication, resiliency and profound active support in the battlefields in land, air and sea in conventional and unconventional military and paramilitary operations, intelligence gathering and counter-intelligence operations, law enforcement, emergency response, disaster and war relief and rehabilitation operations, whether be in enemy territories or in friendly lands, together with the millions of working men and women of the home front industries who helped supply needed equipment, fuel, water and vehicles, as well as shipping and aerial supplies and even clothing, furniture and needed medical supplies and food, all to the servicemen and women in the frontlines, the medical professionals who helped in treating the wounded, the chaplains who prayed for the living and the dead and the people in culture and the arts, in the press, film and television, in businesses and enterprises, and in sports either as serving in the uniformed organizations or in active support for the war effort at home secured the cause of liberty and independence of millions all over the world against the Axis Powers and collectively as one people ended the threat posed by them to the free world and to the whole of humanity. For such a great victory, that had been paved by the blood of the millions of lives lost during this long and painful conflict, including Jews, members of other religious communities, people who sympathized with the resistance movement and anti-Nazi activists and politicians, as well as of Poles and others in Soviet concentration camps and Gulag camps and by exile to other parts of the USSR of various ethnic communities, as well as the massive Japanese persecution, injustices, murder and violent acts directed at the Chinese and dissident citizens and people of other faiths in the Asia-Pacific and Axis aerial bombardments and sea attacks on merchant shipping and supply convoys, had indeed been impossible if not for the great support shown by every one of our millions of people, who through their efforts contributed to the great and glorious victory that we remember today. Such indeed is the importance of this great victory that we remember on this very day of our history, exactly 75 years ago today.

We indeed cannot forget so great a sacrifice by millions of people from all walks of life who perished in so severe a global conflict as this, with millions of civilian fatalities, and millions more who died among those in the uniformed organizations and paramilitary groups of the Allies who fought against the aggressor.

We cannot forget too the martyrdom of millions who suffered gravely at the hands of the Axis governments and socio-political organizations.

We cannot forget as well the heroism of millions who fought in the battlefields of this long conflict, in places like Dunkirk, Leningrad, the Brest Fortress, Moscow, Tula, Borodino, Sevastopol, El Alamein, Tobruk, Stalingrad, Kursk, Normandy, Caretan, Paris, Minsk, Monte Cassino, Eindhoven, Rome, Smolensk, Kiev, Kharkiv, Odessa, Lyon, Bastogne, Warsaw, Bryansk, Anapa, Smolensk, Lviv, Shanghai, Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Peninsula, Corregidor Island, Singapore, Besang Pass, Hong Kong, Wuhan, Midway Island, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, the Santa Cruz Islands, Belgrade, Sofia, the Caucasus, Karelia, Cologne, Xiamen, Budapest, Tunis and many more, in the land, air, and sea, from every terrain and in any weather condition, from the sands of the Sahara, up to the Normandy beaches, the British skies, the forests and plains of the Low Countries, the mighty mountains and valleys of the Alps and Balkans, the marshes at Pripyat, the Ukrainian steppes to the Arctic and the snowy lands of Scandinavia, towards the jungles of Myanmar and the Malay Peninsula, the Philippines and Indonesia, in the changing terrains and landscapes of China and Korea, and in the Pacific Islands and New Guinea, dinstinguishing themsleves for their country and for the whole of humanity in conventional and unconventional military and paramilitary operations, intelligence gathering and combat and service support, led by heroic commanding officers coming from all walks of life, graduates of military academies and officer candidate institutes, whose efforts received for them the honor and glory of their country and people, many of them at the cost of losing their lives in battle.

And we cannot forget as well the contributions of millions in the home front in the victory that is celebrated today in the Asia-Pacific, thru their efforts to support those in the battlefields and overseas bases with much needed equipment, supplies and essential equipment, in addition in supporting war bonds activties and listening to artists who time and again gave concerts and shows to those in the armed forces at home and overseas, while also watching movies and documentaries about the war during this time in our history.

This was indeed a day that everyone had waited all these 6 years. A day the millions who fought in the Allied military forces and guerilla organizations anticipated, many would die in combat but many more lived to see this day come, a day that would usher in the end of this long conflict and the victory won against the Axis Powers. Indeed the sacrifices of the millions who were mobilized to fight those who were threatening peace and the future of the world, as well as the blood poured by those who fell in this long period of our history, and the suffering felt by so many people in the territories where the war had impacted directly all led up to this great day. Of the millions who answered the call, millions less died in battle in the uniforms of the Allied armed forces and paramilitary organizations in Europe, North Africa and the Asia-Pacific and in naval operations everywehre, while millions still lived long for the great day of victory to arrive on the 2nd of September, 1945, exactly 75 years ago.

Today, in remembrance of the victory won against the Allies and the end of this great war, we remember these millions of active and reserve men and women of the military forces and paramilitary organizations of the Allies, today only by the thousands who are still alive ever to celebrate this momentous occasion of such an important anniversary of the victory won over the Axis Powers in the Asia-Pacific and the end of this long and bitter conflict that forever changed human history. We must never forget that this victory was made possible because of their adversity in battle, determination, iron-willed strength, courage, friendship, bravery and perserverance, and above all the readiness to sacrifice life and limb for the sake for the cause of the defeat of the ideologies that begun this conflict eight decades past in Eastern Europe.

Marking this great anniversary, with deep respect and profound gratitude we today honor these millions of heroes, who, through their personal and combined efforts, secured the final victory we honor today against the Axis Powers, ending once and for all their evil plans for the domination of the world and the repression of peoples. Today and always may we by our words and actions recall the memory of these men and women who served during those years of combat in every corner of the world who are even in this present time and in a modern way of life are still honored not just by battle honors and monuments but also in various works and in radio, television, film and digital media, and who today we, the descendants of this heroic and great generation of heroes, and the generations of tomorrow must keep in our minds and hearts, among them the men and women of the intelligence services who helped provide the Allied military leadership with information on enemy locations and movements, Easy Company of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, formerly 4th Brigade Combat Team and now 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps, United States Army, the brave men of the 1st Marine Division’s 1st, 5th and 7th Marine Regiments, the tankers of the 2nd Armored Division, the aviators and air crews of the 8th Air Force, and all our sportsmen and women who served under the colours of the Allied military forces during the long war and helped win the definite victory against tyranny and oppresion, be forever in our memories and our profound remembrance, not just by their families and descendants but by the very people they fought and died for in the fields of battle, the frontlines, the concentration camps and the home front, and by the people and youth of today and our future generations of men and women, most especially to all considering careers in the uniformed services, so that their legacies to the peoples of the world will be conserved for posterity and for the sake of those who will follow in their footsteps today and in the future. On this day of celebration for millions of people all over the globe we once again send our greetings to the hundreds of thousands of men and women in active service and in the reserves in the armed forces, police, public security, forestry, border security, civil defense and emergency services of the Allied combatant countries and their families,our working people, agricultural workers and those working in science and technology, education, tourism, culture and the arts and in the mass media and the press and all our sportsmen and women, as well as our military and civil uniformed service veterans and their families, and the families of all who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for the defense of our principles and of our liberty and independence. In addition to these individuals and public and private corporate and cooperative entites, in light of the ongoing global pandemic caused by COVID-19, we also today remember the modern day heroes of this disastrous time: our medical workers and professionals treating the sick and the dying even at the cost of their lives, as well as those working in essential and permitted industries and enterprises, which have also suffered from the economic fallout of this pandemic, whose determination, courage and firm hope in the future, with firm compliance with health and safety protocols, have ensured the survival and resilience of our people and economies in the face of such a health crisis never seen in over a century, and the people working for the research, development and manufacture of medications and vaccines against the virus and its effects on our health and well-being. As we today celebrate this historic anniversary of the victory won against the Axis Powers in the Asia-Pacific, let us not forget them as well, for these are the great men and women who are the descendants to the millions who fought for this great victory and are the ones tasked to carry the flames of this great victory into the future. May we forever never ever forget the Allied heroes and martyrs of the Second World War in Europe, North Africa and the Asia-Pacific who all through these years of warfare helped make possible the victory we celebrate today, 75 years on to the day of the conclusion of this war and of the victory against the Axis Powers in all the theaters of this global conflict, and in looking onwards to the anniversaries of such a great victory even without the presence physically of the heroic generation that won this war against the evil aggressors, may we forever inherit their legacy of service to their country and people, towards the defense of the freedom and independence of the free world against domestic and foreign enemies and ideologies against the spirit and legacy of those who fought for the sake of the human race and the peace and progress of the world.

To all of you, our dear living veterans of this war who still are with us, rest assured that as you all live our remaining days on this earth, we will forever honor and remember the great victory you all won against the forces of international fascism, imperialism, dictatorship, racism, xenophobia and totalitarianism symbolized by the Axis Powers, carry onwards the memories of your service with the armed forces of the victorious Allied Powers and instill in our future generations the value of patriotism, courage, audacity, bravery, cooperation, respect, harmony and dignity, and above all, the value of helping in the defense of the country and people for the continued survival of our freedom and independence, towards the goal of a better tomorrow strong and free for our children and grandchildren. By your legacy we therefore promise to forever honor your combined sacrifices and contribution to the victorious conclusion of this long war, to work hard to defend the principles of independence and sovereignty and give all our time and talent in labor in times of war and peace and in times of disaster and need for the sake of building a stronger, prosperous and independent world by building up our economy, fighting the ills of our current society, improving education, help preserve the environment, promote culture and the arts as well as local traditions and the way of life of aboriginal and Native American communities, promote and protect the freedom of religion and the sanctity of human lives, promote a healthy lifestyle and a sporting way of life, and forever honor the places and people who are part of our history while maintaining readiness to instill in our future generations a spirit of preparedness to serve their country and people to the best of their ability and fight the evils that are still present in our world of today!

Today, as the world celebrates this historic 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, we, the millions of people of the free world, today we pledge, more than ever before, to honor the sacrifices of the heroes of the past and work towards achieving the goals of peace and progress and a better world fought by these valiant men and women who risked their lives for the defense of our liberties and civil and human rights against the Axis Powers and ensured the victorious advance towards a world that is just and diverse, where Nature’s wonders have been restored to former glories and wherein humanity lives in the spirit of peace, friendship and cooperation built on the heroic acts by the heroes of our past.

On this very great day of our history and in the history of humanity, this very important day in which we celebrate as one people the 75th year anniversary of the official glorious and victorious conclusion of the 6-year long Second World War, and the official surrender of the military forces of the Empire of Japan, we greet all of you the people of the free world, and most especially to all of you our remaining veterans of this long and great conflict, who helped win this great victory and opened the gates for a better future for all of humanity, as heroes who risked even their lives for the defeat of the military and political might of the Axis Powers, to all you our veterans of succeeding conflicts and in UN peacekeeping operations worldwide and to all and of our men and women and veterans of the military and civil uniformed services and uniformed youth groups from all the Allied combatant countries as we today mark 75 years since the final defeat of the Axis Powers in the Asia-Pacific and the victory over the Empire of Japan!

For all of us, it wil forever be a day of remembrance and celebration of the great victory in which our forebears won against the might of the Axis Powers all over the world, and a day in which we will forever uphold the legacy of the millions who died for the values that are worth defending and fighting for, then as in today. We will never stop honoring the blessed memory of these men and women who sacrificed their lives for the freedom and independence of our world. We will never stop reminding our children and future generations of the cost of the freedoms we celebrate. And we shall always light up the legacy in which these millions of men and women lived and fought for, which is the great victory that we celebrate today.

Today, we celebrate with all of you, the people of the free world and forever treasure in our hearts and minds the memory and legacy left behind by these the millions of men and women who 75 years ago celebrated the conclusion of such a war that forever changed our world and a war that they won against the forces of the Axis Powers at the cost of millions of lives lost from the plains and mountains of Europe, the sands of northern Africa and the Middle East, towards the diverse lands of the Asia-Pacific. Today and always we continue to remember their sacrifice for the sake of us and for the generations to come who will forever honor and commemorate their contributions to freedoms we cherish to this day. Even as the growing tide of evil may be rising again, united with the men and women of our NATO armed forces and the armed forces of our allies abroad in the performance of their patriotic, internationalist and military duties for the sake of the freedom and independence of the peoples of the free world, armed with the best and modern equipment, arms, vehicles, ships and aircraft, and united with the public security services and the hard work of our people of all sectors of society, no obstacle cannot be overcome, no problem can be left unsolved and no stone left unturned in our efforts to forever maintain the legacy left behind by these heroes of the Second World War, who fought at the cost of their lives to win the victory that we celebrate not just on this day but also every day of our lives!

More than ever before in our history, we will never let the fire of the great victory won 75 years ago fade away in our hearts, and forever maintain the legacies of victory won by the great generations who fought before us!

Today, as we mark this great day in our history, may we never regret to recall the heroic deeds of our predecessors who fought in this war and of all our past naval aviators who flew throughout all these years for the sake of the freedom and independence not just of the United States of America and Canada, but the freedom and independence of all of the free world. May we as one united people never tire of honoring the memory of our heroic forebears and always work hard to be worthy of their sacrifices, most of all, for the sake of our present and for the future of our world and of all humanity. We will never forget their tireless sacrifices for the sake of the freedoms we enjoy today and always uphold what this victory truly means – a victory against the ever present forces of international fascism and totalitarianism around the world!

nd in conclusion, as we today mark this historic anniversary since the victory over Japan and the conclusion of the Second World War, as we today mark it with remembrance and joyful celebration, may we who keep this sacred holiday and recall the millions who died to make this victory possible with respect and reverence especially for those who went before us shall be worthy of what they fought and died for, for building a world of peace, harmony and progress, a clean environment, and a brighter future for all our children and grandchildren - truly the very future that is truly worth defending and the very future our forefathers fought with their very own lives. With our greatest gratitude may we, the successors to this great generation of victors, always and forever treasure in our hearts all those who have gone before us and have entrusted to us the spirit of defending our freedom and liberty in all those years from the beginning of the war up to the great victories in which we honor today, everyday and in the years and decades to come! And may we forever cherish the victory won today, the very reason of the freedoms we live, and forever kindle the fire of victory that will enflame our memories both now and in the brighter tomorrow that is to come!

As the men of Easy Company would always say: WE STAND ALONE TOGETHER!

ETERNAL GLORY TO THE MEMORY OF THE MEDICAL WORKERS AND PROFESSIONALS AND PERSONNEL OF UNIFORMED SERVICES WHO PERISHED IN THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC!

ETERNAL GLORY TO THE MLLIONS OF THE FALLEN AND THE HEROES AND VETERANS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN EUROPE, NORTHERN AFRICA AND THE ASIA-PACIFIC FROM 1939-1945, WHOSE LEGACY WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN BY ALL OF US TODAY AND BY ALL THE GENERATIONS TO COME!

ETERNAL GLORY TO ALL THOSE WHO GAVE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE FOR THE FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE OF OUR WORLD AGAINST FASCISM, NAZISM AND IMPERIALISM IN THE FIELDS OF BATTLE, THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS, AND IN THE HOME FRONT!

LONG LIVE THE VICTORIOUS MEN AND WOMEN IN THE SERVICE OF THE ALLIES OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN EUROPE, NORTHERN AFRICA AND THE ASIA-PACIFIC!

LONG LIVE ALL THE ALLIED MILITARY, PARAMILITARY AND CIVIL VETERANS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR!

LONG LIVE THE INVINCIBLE AND FOREVER VICTORIOUS PEOPLE OF THE FREE WORLD AND ALL OUR SERVING ACTIVE AND RESERVE SERVICEMEN AND WOMEN AND VETERANS OF THE ARMED SERVICES OF ALL THE COMBATANT ALLIED COUNTRIES THAT HELPED WIN THIS GREAT WAR AGAINST FASCISM, NAZISM AND IMPERIALISM, AS WELL AS ALL OUR ACTIVE AND RESERVE SERVICE PERSONNEL, CIVILIAN EMPLOYEES AND VETERANS OF THE POLICE, FIREFIGHTING, FORESTRY, BORDER CONTROL, CUSTOMS AND RESCUE SERVICES AS WELL AS OUR YOUTH OF TODAY AND THE CHILDREN OF OUR TOMORROW WHO WILL CARRY ON THE LEGACY OF ALL THOSE WHO HAVE GONE BEFORE THEM, ESPECIALLY TO THE MILLIONS OF MEN AND WOMEN WHO TOOK PART IN THIS GREAT WORLD WAR!

LONG LIVE THE GLORIOUS 75TH YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE END OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN THE PACIFIC AND CHINA-BURMA-INDIA THEATERS OF OPERATIONS AND THE GREAT VICTORY OVER THE FORCES OF THE EMPIRE OF JAPAN AND THE AXIS POWERS!

GLORY TO THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, CANADA, THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND AND FRANCE, TOGETHER WITH THE ARMED SERVICES OF THE OTHER VICTORIOUS COMBATANT COUNTRIES OF THE ALLIED POWERS, GUARDIAN DEFENDERS OF OUR DEMOCRATIC WAY OF LIFE, OUR FREEDOM AND OUR LIBERTY AND GUARANTEE OF A FUTURE WORTHY OF OUR GENERATIONS TO COME!

TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND TO ALL OVER THE WORLD, A VERY HAPPY 75TH VICTORY OVER JAPAN DAY!

And may I repeat the immortal words of the Polish National Anthem:

Poland has not yet perished, so long as we still live!

CURRAHEE! AIR ASSAULT! ARMY STRONG! SEMPER FI!

Ooooooooooooooooooraaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!

1830h, September 2, 2020, the 244th year of the United States of America, the 245th year of the United States Army, Navy and Marine Corps, the 126th of the International Olympic Committee, the 124th of the Olympic Games, the 102nd since the conclusion of the First World War, the 81st of the beginning of the Second World War in Europe, the 79th since the beginning of the Second World War in the Eastern Front and in the Pacific Theater, the 75th since the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the victories in Europe and the Pacific, the 73rd of the modern United States Armed Forces and the 53rd of the modern Canadian Armed Forces.

Semper Fortis

JOHN EMMANUEL RAMOS-HENDERSON

Makati City, PH

(Requiem for a Soldier) (Honor by Hans Zimmer)

(Slavsya from Mikhail Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar)

(Victory Day by Lev Leshenko)

(Last Post) (Taps) (Rendering Honors)

#hbo war #hbo war fandom #victory over japan day #band of brothers #the pacific #masters of the air #vj day #vjday75 #vj day 75 #den pobedy #victory day

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cincinnatusvirtue · 5 years ago

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December 7th: Attack on Pearl Harbor, America enters WWII

December 7th, 1941, famously referred to by then US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a “date which will live in infamy” became the rallying cry for America’s official entry into the then two year running Second World War. Though in the case of Japan, the war had really been raging with its conquest of East Asia and China in particular since 1937 or even 1931 depending on your definition. Imperial Japan’s attack on the US naval fleet docked at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii really was the culmination of a longstanding rivalry between the two nations over the course of the preceding decades.

In some ways the story dates back to the start of American-Japanese relations when a US fleet under Commodore Matthew C Perry arrived in Japan in 1853 and ending the longstanding period of isolation Japan had followed for centuries under the Tokugawa Shogunate. This forced open diplomatic and trade relations, which was soon followed up by European powers and brought Japan into the modern era. Over the next century, Japan saw rapid modernization, with the Meiji Restoration of the Japanese Emperor from ceremonial figurehead to absolute ruler, the true expansion of the new Japanese Empire began after this time period Rapid social and internal reform combined with gradual imperial expansion. Japan famously defeated China in the 1894-1895 First Sino-Japanese War, which gave Japan control over Korea in it’s sphere of influence and Japan’s subsequent invasion and occupation of Taiwan. This was followed by victory over the Russian Empire in 1904-1905s Russo-Japanese War. However, the peace for this war brokered by then US President Theodore Roosevelt, limited Japanese gains to a few ports and islands, but effective greater political influence in the region. Japanese nationalists however, saw this as the first US attempt to limit Japan’s influence in the Greater Asia-Pacific region, suspicious that America was clamoring to gain its own influence here.

America for it’s part had indeed expanded into this region with the 1898 annexation of the Republic of Hawaii, which in turn was a largely American sponsored effort to overthrow the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1894. After 1898 it was the US Territory of Hawaii (statehood of Hawaii occurring in 1959). American influence in the region further expanded with the 1898 Spanish-American War, which saw the US destroy the last elements of Spain’s longstanding overseas empire, occupying/liberating Cuba and annexing Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. Also occupying and annexing Guam and most importantly the Philippines in the Pacific. America would also acquire the island of American Samoa in this period.

These two parallel examples of imperialism and expansion sowed the seeds of conflict that would emerge in World War II. Both the US and Japan were technically on the same side during the First World War in opposition to the Empire of Germany. Japan got limited territorial gains from German Pacific islands and German colonies in China. Japan also pressed during the Treaty of Versailles conference for a clause supporting racial equality, it saw limited support and was ultimately not included.

Japan and the US also sided with other Allied nations in an intervention in the Russian Civil War to end the Communist rise leading to the Soviet Union. Japan occupied parts of Siberia but due to objections from the US was forced to scale back its occupation and eventually withdrew altogether along with all other Allied nations.

The 1920′s saw Japan enter an economic recession while America was experiencing an economic boom. Both sides were signatories of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty which saw to limit the navies of the US, Britain, France, Italy and Japan from escalating into an arms race. Japan would withdraw from this treaty in 1934.

1931 saw both sides come to loggerheads even more with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria (Northern China) with Japan’s military taking increasingly a nationalist tone and exerting control over the Japanese government. The invasion lead to the establishment of a Japanese puppet state, Manchukuo. This invasion lead to condemnation of Japan and its withdrawal from the League of Nations. 1937 saw the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, which saw Japan invade China in the middle of a civil war between Nationalist and Communist elements. This would interrupt the civil war for the duration of World War II with almost all Chinese parties fighting united against the Japanese invaders, despite friction and some fighting between both sides. Japan initially pushed back the Chinese in eastern parts of the country and was to commit well known atrocities against the Chinese populace, most famously in Nanjing in 1937-38. Meanwhile, Japan had drawn closer ties to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during this time, culminating in the 1940 military alliance, the Tripartite Pact committing the Axis Powers to mutual defense, its main target was the United States.

1939 saw the start of the Second World War with Germany’s invasion of Poland and the subsequent British and French declarations of war. Japan monitored the war but was committed to defeating China at the time. With the fall of France to Nazi Germany in 1940, Japan took this chance to overtake French Indochina (Vietnam) and this lead to the US, Britain the Netherlands declaring a trade embargo. Effectively this cut off Japan’s oil imports, 80% of which came from America and vital to its war efforts. Seeing this as further evidence of America and Britain’s attempts to curtail Japan’s influence and project for a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”, a euphemism for Japanese imperialist control of East Asia and the Pacific, Japan began to develop plans for an attack against the US, Britain and the Netherlands.

The plan for war was developed under Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, the Japanese military and approved of eventually after much discussion by the Japanese Emperor and his council. The goals were to launch simultaneous attacks against American, British and Dutch interests in the Pacific. Namely, removing America from the Philippines, Guam and elsewhere in the Pacific Islands, conquering British Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) for its oil supply. The attack was meant to be overwhelming and fast, crippling the naval capacity of America especially and making a rapid peace thereafter. The plan for the attack of the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii would be executed in surprise fashion without declaration of war, influenced by Japan’s attack in 1904 on Imperial Russia’s naval base at Port Arthur. It was also influenced by Britain’s successful plane oriented bombing of Italian ships at Taranto in 1940. The goal was to sink and destroy as many ships as possible so that’s America’s naval capacity would be diminished to the point it couldn’t fight an effective naval war in the Pacific.

Americans polled at the time by Gallup were in the majority thinking war with Japan was imminent and there had been warning signs of war breaking out, but nothing conclusive. The Japanese plan called for the use of aircraft carriers sending warplanes and small submarines from a great distance to launch in successive waves with the hopes of destroying American aircraft carriers docked at Pearl Harbor. The attacked commenced at 7:48 AM local time with 183 Japanese warplanes launching from north of the island of Oahu, US radar detected the planes incoming but mistook them for US planes on maneuvers from the US mainland, the planes began bombing and strafing runs of US ships right away. The US returned fire with its own planes and anti-aircraft guns. Subsequently a second Japanese wave of planes attacked in quick succession. These were coupled with midget submarine torpedo attacks.

The battle was over in 90 minutes and was a tactical Japanese victory. US casualties included 2,200+ military personnel killed and 65 civilians and hundreds wounded. Half of the casualties occurred with the explosion of the forward magazine of the American battleship the USS Arizona. Four American battleships were sunk, four damaged along with damage to numerous other ships, 188 aircraft destroyed and 159 damaged. Japan lost 64 airmen and sailors in the attack, 29 planes destroyed, 74 damaged and 4 midget submarines sank, one was grounded and a single sailor taken prisoner, becoming the first Japanese POW of the war with America. Japan delayed its declaration of war on America by three hours. America declared war by vote of Congress the next day, after President Roosevelt’s speech. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy also declared war on America and the US responded mutually by December 11th. The US would now have to fight a two front war in Europe and the Pacific. Japan’s surprise attacks elsewhere against other American, British and Dutch targets were also mostly successful. However, fate worked against Japan at Pearl Harbor in one crucial aspect, American aircraft carriers (their primary target) were not present, having been out at maneuvers at sea and this combined with American industrial output in the coming months were to have grave consequences for Japan’s war effort, especially as its navy would be decisively destroyed at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, thereafter putting them on the defensive and the road to final defeat...

#pearl harbor #world war 2 #military history #usa #japan #on this day

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