Nibelung
01.09.2005, 16:17
http://www.barnesreview.org//May_2002/WW2_/ww2_.html
WWII:
An Unnecessary War
By Alex S. Perry Jr.
There was absolutely no need for World War II. Adolf Hitler was doing everything he could to come to peace terms with Britain, but Winston Churchill would not have it. Churchill knew of the many peace offers coming from the German government. He knew that neither Hitler nor any other Nazi leaders wanted to fight Britain.
Winston Churchill wrote to Josef Stalin on January 24, 1944, to tell him that Britain was going to continue the fight to the complete destruction of Germany no matter what. He should have been more exact and said that Britain was going to stay in the war as long as the United States was willing to do most of the fighting and all of the financing. Churchill’s letter read, in part:
We never thought of peace, not even in that year when we were completely isolated and could have made peace without serious detriment to the British empire, and extensively at your cost. Why should we think of it now when victory approaches for the three of us?1
What Churchill meant by “when we were completely isolated” was the time before Russia and the United States became involved. Churchill kept the war going for a purpose. Britain at this time was so weak that Germany could have smashed her within a few weeks. Had Hitler been the kind of man history says he was and had he captured the British army at Dunkirk, which he could easily have done and should have done, he could have written the peace ticket without invading Britain. Churchill’s worried son Randolph asked Churchill a few days after he became the prime minister how could he expect to win this war. Churchill replied, “I shall drag the United States in.”2
And so he did, and he knew he could. And how did he do it? He could not have dragged the United States in had Franklin Roosevelt not wanted to be dragged in, in the first place. He did it by not giving up—that is, by not accepting the peace terms Germany was offering. Roosevelt’s great fear was that the war would be over before America could get in. FDR wanted to go down in history as a wartime president. Roosevelt and Churchill were in secret communication be fore Churchill became prime minister. This is the reason why Tyler Kent, who worked in the code room in the American Embassy in London beginning in 1939, was thrown in prison as soon as Churchill took office. Kent was sentenced not for anything criminal, but because of what he knew. Roosevelt would not rescue this American citizen from Churchill’s clutches because Kent had proof that FDR was promising the British leader that he would eventually come into the war. Churchill records a conversation he and Harry Hopkins had on January 10, 1941:
The president is determined that we shall win the war together. Make no mistake about it. He has sent me here to tell you that at all costs and by all means he will carry you through, no matter what happens to him. There is nothing that he will not do, so far as he has human power.3
Churchill became prime minister on May 10, 1941. When the Germans captured Poland, they found in the Polish archives the evidence about the part FDR played in getting the fuse of World War II lit. These Polish records were transported to Berlin for safekeeping, and when Germany fell to the Allies, they were shipped to Washington, where they were kept under lock and key for about 20 years so that no one could see them.
David Irving reports in Hitler’s War what these documents say:
A different aspect of Roosevelt’s policy was revealed by the Polish documents ransacked by the Nazis from the archives of the ruined foreign ministry buildings in Warsaw. The dispatches of the Polish ambassadors in Washington and Paris laid bare Roosevelt’s efforts to goad France and Britain into war with Germany while he rearmed the United States and psychologically prepared the American public for war. . . . [I]n spring of 1939, [Ambassador William C.] Bullitt quoted Roosevelt as being determined “not to participate in the war from the start, but to be in at the finish.” . . . The Warsaw document left little doubt as to what had stiffened Polish resistance during the August 1939 crisis.
Irving quotes Baron von Weizaecker as saying that Hitler “had set his heart on peace” and Hitler as saying “The survival of the British empire is in Germany’s interest too.” Hitler “felt he had repeatedly extended the hand of peace and friendship to the British, and each time they had blackened his eye in reply.”4
Prof. G.C. Tansill’s Back Door to War, Chap. XXIII, states that it was Roosevelt, above all others, who was working unceasingly for war. Tansill cites evidence to show that Roosevelt was using every channel at his disposal to encourage Chamberlain to go to war with Germany. Roosevelt was telling Britain and France that he would come to their aid at once should they go to war against the Germans. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy was repeatedly telling Chamberlain that America would rush to the assistance of Britain and France in the event of unprovoked aggression, and Bullitt was encouraging France to believe the same thing.5
Likewise Eleanor Roosevelt reveals that her husband was not surprised nor upset, although he allowed the public to draw the impression that he was, with the attack on Pearl Harbor. The disaster at Pearl “was a great fulfillment” as far as Roosevelt’s worry over the matter was involved, and Mrs. Roosevelt “tells us that he was more ‘serene’ than he had been for a long time.”6
Hitler’s mistake in not capturing Britain right away was based on his belief that he was in contact with a strong peace movement in England. The peace movement was controlled by Churchill, but Hitler did not know this. All the German letters and messages sent to the peace movement were intercepted by the British government. Rudolf Hess was invited to come to Britain by this fake peace movement to discuss and make plans for peace. The sole purpose for this deception of the Germans was to delay the end of the war with Germany until the United States could involve itself.
The peace offer Hitler had in mind, if Britain would assume a neutral position, was such an astounding offer that Herbert Hoover, when he was told of Hitler’s terms from Ambassador Kennedy, gasped: “Why didn’t the British accept?” “Nothing but Churchill’s bullheadedness,” replied Kennedy.7 Kennedy’s statement was enough to condemn Churchill as a war criminal.
At the height of Hitler’s power, the German chancellor offered to withdraw from France, Denmark and Norway.8 He proposed to roll back his army without a shot being fired. He would make peace with England even if England would not agree to return the German colonies, which Britain had taken from Germany at the end of World War I.9
Hitler did not want war. He was so against war that he said it would not do Germany any good, even if Germany won the war, as war would put an end to all his plans. “Hitler was not thinking of war,” Albert Forster, 36-year-old district leader of Danzig, told Churchill, as “the Führer’s immense social and cultural plans would take years to fulfill.”10
Hitler expressed this opinion: “A European war would be the end of all our efforts even if we should win, because the disappearance of the British empire would be a misfortune which could not be made up again.”11 He told the Dutch fascist leader Anton Mussert: “We have not the slightest reason to fight Britain. Even if we win, we gain nothing.”12 Hitler was such an admirer of the British empire that he offered to defend the empire anywhere in the world with German troops should Britain ever need them.13
Hitler did not want to take over the world. This idea is British propaganda. Churchill and Roosevelt wanted war, and they forced it on Germany. Hitler did all he could to be friendly with Britain and France.
The duke of Windsor thought, in July 1940, that the war was allowed to go on only because certain British politicians and statesmen—if they can be called anything that sounds so dignified—had to have a reason to save their faces, even if this meant that the British empire would be bankrupted and shattered.14
Churchill and Roosevelt knew what was going on. Churchill bragged that “War is a game that has to be played with a smiling face.”15 Surely, they must have thought the tricks they were playing on their own countries and the world as something funny. But at the same time, millions of British and American soldiers and civilians were persuaded to look upon this war as something serious. They had no choice.
Misleading the public is truly the mark of a cynical politician and the dishonest news media, in time of war as well as at other times. These two men, Roosevelt and Churchill, instead of saving the world from some great evil, as Tom Brokaw maintains, multiplied the evils the world had to face.
One of the meanest tricks Churchill played on the Ger mans was the trick he played on Hess. On May 10, 1941, Hitler’s right-hand man flew alone to the duke of Hamilton’s estate in Scotland. He expected to land at an airfield nearby. But when he got there, he could not find the airfield and had to bail out. Not knowing how to do this, he had great trouble getting out of the plane. Finally, he turned the plane over and fell out. It was Hess’s first time to use a parachute. Hess was expecting to be received with dignity. Instead, he was seized, thrown into prison and held incommunicado the rest of his life. He was charged with “crimes against peace” at Nuremberg and sentenced to life imprisonment. The last 20 years of his life, he was held in solitary confinement and not allowed to see his wife or son. Hess was given the heaviest sentence possible—a sentence worse than death.
Hess’s flight to Britain was done in the hope that he could convince the British government to make peace with Germany. Because of Hess’s efforts to bring peace to Europe, he became truly a “prisoner of peace.”
The old saw, “All’s fair in war,” can never be applied to Hess. The treatment he received from the Allies from May 10, 1941, until the day he died was a crime.16 Hess would not have made his flight to Britain had not he and Hitler, in their anxiousness for peace, been fooled into believing that they were in contact with a strong peace party in Britain. There had been a strong peace party in Britain at one time, but most of its members had been thrown in jail by Churchill’s administration, and the rest could not express themselves.
Churchill had, so he told his secretary in a discussion about British aid to Russia, “only one purpose: the destruction of Hitler. And my life is much simplified thereby.”17
It would have been much easier and less costly in lives and materials, not only for the British but also for the Germans and Americans, to have encouraged the Germans to eliminate Hitler instead of trying to eliminate both the Germans and Hitler. “Unconditional surrender” sounds melodic, inspiring and dramatic. But this is all the value it had. It led the people in the Allied nations to think the Germans would never give up until they were totally demolished. It prolonged the war and made it even more bitter.
There is a hint that Hitler would have volunteered to retire had his retirement meant that Britain would have assumed a friendly attitude toward Germany. “Days before the beer hall bomb [Munich, November 8, 1939] there was a hint that [Hitler] was prepared to go very far, indeed. Ger man Prince Max Hohenlohe had spoken in Switzerland with representatives of Vansittart, secretary of the British Foreign Office, returning to Germany to report to Göring that peace with England was possible, but only with Hitler and Ribbentrop removed from power. One observer recorded in his diary that Göring replied that Hitler would agree to this.”18
Mary Ball Martinez’s Pope Pius XII During the Second World War states:
To their astonishment, the four Jesuit historians came upon records documenting the personal involvement of Pius XII in a plot to overthrow Hitler. In January 1940, he was approached by the agent of a certain clique of German generals, who asked him to tell the British government that they would undertake to “remove” Hitler if they were given assurances that the British would come to terms with a moderate German regime. Pius XII promptly passed along this message to Sir D’Arcy Osborne, Britain’s envoy to the Holy See. The offer was turned down.19
However, on a number of occasions the Germans had offered to remove Hitler from power if they were given reasonable peace terms for doing so. Joseph E. Davies, at a town hall meeting in Los Angeles, January 20, 1943, disclosed that the Germans had offered to retire Hitler in 1940 if the British would make peace with Germany.20 If the Germans could get rid of Hitler anytime they desired, then Hitler’s “total dictatorial control” over Germany was not so total and not so dictatorial as believers in the war propaganda think, and the Germans were not his robotic slaves.
Hans Kohn reviewed John Scott’s Duel for Europe in the December 14, 1942 New Republic (799). He stated, “If Britain had wished to make peace with Ger many, she could have done it easily in 1939, in the summer of 1940, and again in the spring of 1941.” It was not Hitler and Germany who could be described accurately as the war maniacs. The war maniacs were Roosevelt and Churchill and their backers, such as Bernard Baruch and Samuel Untermeyer.
One of the reasons used to justify the destruction of the Nazi system was that Hitler was a dictator. It was assumed that the Germans could not get rid of him. But why should the happiest people in the world, as David Lloyd George spoke of the Germans after Hitler came to power, want to dispose of their leader? The “unconditional surrender” declaration should dispel all thought about Hitler being in absolute command of everything in Germany. It was not the Germans who were forcing Hitler upon themselves. Roosevelt and Churchill were doing it for them, and for the sole purpose of keeping the war going as long as possible.
How did Hitler become the German leader? British history professor A.J.P. Taylor gives the answer in The Origins of the Second World War:
Hitler was appointed chancellor by President Hindenburg in a strictly constitutional way and for solidly democratic reasons.21
Conservative politicians led by Papen . . . recommended him to Hindenburg [and] kept the key posts for themselves.22
He did not “seize” power. He waited for it to be thrust upon him by the men who had previously tried to keep him out. In January 1933, Papen and Hindenburg were imploring him to become chancellor, and he graciously consented.23
Germany never threatened Britain. Hitler had always wanted to be a good neighbor and a good friend to the British. As late as January 29, 1942, after Britain had been at war with Germany for two years and five months, Hitler expressed a desire to help the British by sending them 20 divisions to aid them in throwing the Japanese invaders out of Singapore.24 He bent over backwards in showing his earnestness and generosity. He never would have gone to war against the British if the British had not attacked Ger many, or, as Churchill blazoned, “We entered the war of our free will, without ourselves being directly assaulted.”25
Churchill was not elected—as Hitler was in Germany—to be the prime minister by the British people. Churchill was put in power by the “powers behind the scenes” for the sole purpose of keeping the war going. Churchill’s job was not to make peace but to make war.
In August 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill hypocritically said in the third point of the Atlantic Charter that they respected “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live.” Unless the words “all peoples” do not mean what they say, then this article clearly applies as much to the Germans as to anyone else.
As soon as the tide of battle began to favor the British empire, Churchill threw off the pretended cloak of righteousness and became openly arrogant. He said in Parliament on September 2, 1943:
The twin roots of all our evils, Nazi tyranny and Prussian militarism, must be extirpated. Until this is achieved, there are no sacrifices we will not make and no lengths in violence to which we will not go.26
Of this Nazi tyranny and Churchill’s eager desire to get rid of it, it should be pointed out that the Germans were not oppressing the British people and if the Germans wanted to live under their “tyrannical” form of government, it was none of Britain’s business. The Atlantic Charter gave the Germans this right. Churchill did not object to Soviet tyranny, for he hailed Russia as a welcome ally when she came into the war.
So it turns out the democracies were at war with Ger many to force Germany to set up a democratic form of government, even though Hitler had been democratically elected and Churchill had not.
The sixth point in the Atlantic Charter called for the “destruction of Nazi tyranny” only and no other tyranny. There fore, according to the charter, other tyrannies could live, thrive and be supported. It may be noted that the sixth point contradicts the third point. The sixth point was the same as a “secret” declaration of war against Germany. There fore, the United States was really in the war against Germany long before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Hitler’s declaration of war against the United States was made to keep his promise to Japan and to set things straight in the world as they really were. This declaration made it legal for the German navy to shoot back at the American ships in the Atlantic.
Roosevelt ordered, in April 1941, American warships to seek out and follow German ships and to radio their locations every four hours so British warships could come and open an attack. Roosevelt commanded American warships to “shoot on sight” at German submarines on September 11, 1941.27
Adm. Stark, chief of naval operations, wrote Adm. Hart on November 7, 1941: “The Navy is already in the War of the Atlantic, but the country doesn’t seem to realize it. Apathy, to the opposition, is evident in a considerable section of the press. Whether the country knows it or not, we are at war.”28
All this was in flagrant defiance of Roosevelt’s promise to Americans that we would not enter any war unless we were attacked. These orders made America an aggressor nation. American leaders, with their pretended righteousness, failed in their efforts to be the first “victims,” but this did not prevent them from pretending to be, and the nation from believing they were. American leaders were the victimizers, in many ways.
The war in the Pacific was also kept going much longer than necessary. Before the Germans were allowed to “surrender” and before the atom bombs were dropped, the Japanese were asking for peace. Gen. Douglas McArthur recommended negotiations on the basis of the Japanese overtures. But FDR brushed off this suggestion with the remark: “McArthur is our greatest general and our poorest politician.”29 This is the answer in a nutshell to why the war was allowed to go on and on, when it could have been over any day from 1943 on. It did not even have to have started in the first place, except that FDR wanted it to start.
Clare Booth Luce said at the Republican Party Convention in 1944 that Roosevelt “lied us into the war.” To get America into the war, FDR provoked the Japanese to attack. At the same time, American boys were battling to end World War II, leading American politicians were doing all they could for political reasons to continue the conflict.
President Harry Truman, in early May 1945, informed Herbert Hoover “of the extensive Japanese peace offers and admitted then that further fighting with the Japanese was really unnecessary. But Truman also disclosed to Hoover that he did not feel strong enough to challenge Secretary Stimson and the Pentagon.”
FOOTNOTES:
1 Walendy, Udo, The Methods of Reeducation, 3.
2 Kilzer, Louis C., Churchill’s Deception, 20.
3 Churchill, Winston, The Grand Alliance, 23.
4 Irving, David, Hitler’s War, 35.
5 Tansill, G.C., Back Door to War, 450-51.
6 Crocker, George Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia, 81.
7 Irving, ibid., 418.
8 Kilzer, ibid., 69-70.
9 Kilzer, ibid., 221.
10 Irving, ibid., 121.
11 McLaughlin, Michael, For Those Who Cannot Speak, 10.
12 Irving, ibid., 511.
13 Barnes, Harry Elmer, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, 162; and Irving, ibid., 371.
14 Irving, ibid., xvi.
15 Walendy, ibid., 3.
16 The Barnes Review, July/August 2001.
17 Churchill, ibid., 370.
18 Kilzer, ibid., 183.
19 Journal of Historical Review, Sept./Oct. 1993, 27.
20 Leese, Arnold, The Jewish War of Survival, 20.
21 Ibid., 97.
22 Ibid., 79.
23 Ibid., 101
24 Irving, ibid., 371.
25 Martin, James J., The Saga of Hog Island, 42.
26 Grenfell, Capt. Russell, Unconditional Hatred, 92.
27 Barnes, ibid., 487.
28 Tansill, ibid., 645.
29 Chamberlin, William Henry, America’s Second Crusade, 219.
WWII:
An Unnecessary War
By Alex S. Perry Jr.
There was absolutely no need for World War II. Adolf Hitler was doing everything he could to come to peace terms with Britain, but Winston Churchill would not have it. Churchill knew of the many peace offers coming from the German government. He knew that neither Hitler nor any other Nazi leaders wanted to fight Britain.
Winston Churchill wrote to Josef Stalin on January 24, 1944, to tell him that Britain was going to continue the fight to the complete destruction of Germany no matter what. He should have been more exact and said that Britain was going to stay in the war as long as the United States was willing to do most of the fighting and all of the financing. Churchill’s letter read, in part:
We never thought of peace, not even in that year when we were completely isolated and could have made peace without serious detriment to the British empire, and extensively at your cost. Why should we think of it now when victory approaches for the three of us?1
What Churchill meant by “when we were completely isolated” was the time before Russia and the United States became involved. Churchill kept the war going for a purpose. Britain at this time was so weak that Germany could have smashed her within a few weeks. Had Hitler been the kind of man history says he was and had he captured the British army at Dunkirk, which he could easily have done and should have done, he could have written the peace ticket without invading Britain. Churchill’s worried son Randolph asked Churchill a few days after he became the prime minister how could he expect to win this war. Churchill replied, “I shall drag the United States in.”2
And so he did, and he knew he could. And how did he do it? He could not have dragged the United States in had Franklin Roosevelt not wanted to be dragged in, in the first place. He did it by not giving up—that is, by not accepting the peace terms Germany was offering. Roosevelt’s great fear was that the war would be over before America could get in. FDR wanted to go down in history as a wartime president. Roosevelt and Churchill were in secret communication be fore Churchill became prime minister. This is the reason why Tyler Kent, who worked in the code room in the American Embassy in London beginning in 1939, was thrown in prison as soon as Churchill took office. Kent was sentenced not for anything criminal, but because of what he knew. Roosevelt would not rescue this American citizen from Churchill’s clutches because Kent had proof that FDR was promising the British leader that he would eventually come into the war. Churchill records a conversation he and Harry Hopkins had on January 10, 1941:
The president is determined that we shall win the war together. Make no mistake about it. He has sent me here to tell you that at all costs and by all means he will carry you through, no matter what happens to him. There is nothing that he will not do, so far as he has human power.3
Churchill became prime minister on May 10, 1941. When the Germans captured Poland, they found in the Polish archives the evidence about the part FDR played in getting the fuse of World War II lit. These Polish records were transported to Berlin for safekeeping, and when Germany fell to the Allies, they were shipped to Washington, where they were kept under lock and key for about 20 years so that no one could see them.
David Irving reports in Hitler’s War what these documents say:
A different aspect of Roosevelt’s policy was revealed by the Polish documents ransacked by the Nazis from the archives of the ruined foreign ministry buildings in Warsaw. The dispatches of the Polish ambassadors in Washington and Paris laid bare Roosevelt’s efforts to goad France and Britain into war with Germany while he rearmed the United States and psychologically prepared the American public for war. . . . [I]n spring of 1939, [Ambassador William C.] Bullitt quoted Roosevelt as being determined “not to participate in the war from the start, but to be in at the finish.” . . . The Warsaw document left little doubt as to what had stiffened Polish resistance during the August 1939 crisis.
Irving quotes Baron von Weizaecker as saying that Hitler “had set his heart on peace” and Hitler as saying “The survival of the British empire is in Germany’s interest too.” Hitler “felt he had repeatedly extended the hand of peace and friendship to the British, and each time they had blackened his eye in reply.”4
Prof. G.C. Tansill’s Back Door to War, Chap. XXIII, states that it was Roosevelt, above all others, who was working unceasingly for war. Tansill cites evidence to show that Roosevelt was using every channel at his disposal to encourage Chamberlain to go to war with Germany. Roosevelt was telling Britain and France that he would come to their aid at once should they go to war against the Germans. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy was repeatedly telling Chamberlain that America would rush to the assistance of Britain and France in the event of unprovoked aggression, and Bullitt was encouraging France to believe the same thing.5
Likewise Eleanor Roosevelt reveals that her husband was not surprised nor upset, although he allowed the public to draw the impression that he was, with the attack on Pearl Harbor. The disaster at Pearl “was a great fulfillment” as far as Roosevelt’s worry over the matter was involved, and Mrs. Roosevelt “tells us that he was more ‘serene’ than he had been for a long time.”6
Hitler’s mistake in not capturing Britain right away was based on his belief that he was in contact with a strong peace movement in England. The peace movement was controlled by Churchill, but Hitler did not know this. All the German letters and messages sent to the peace movement were intercepted by the British government. Rudolf Hess was invited to come to Britain by this fake peace movement to discuss and make plans for peace. The sole purpose for this deception of the Germans was to delay the end of the war with Germany until the United States could involve itself.
The peace offer Hitler had in mind, if Britain would assume a neutral position, was such an astounding offer that Herbert Hoover, when he was told of Hitler’s terms from Ambassador Kennedy, gasped: “Why didn’t the British accept?” “Nothing but Churchill’s bullheadedness,” replied Kennedy.7 Kennedy’s statement was enough to condemn Churchill as a war criminal.
At the height of Hitler’s power, the German chancellor offered to withdraw from France, Denmark and Norway.8 He proposed to roll back his army without a shot being fired. He would make peace with England even if England would not agree to return the German colonies, which Britain had taken from Germany at the end of World War I.9
Hitler did not want war. He was so against war that he said it would not do Germany any good, even if Germany won the war, as war would put an end to all his plans. “Hitler was not thinking of war,” Albert Forster, 36-year-old district leader of Danzig, told Churchill, as “the Führer’s immense social and cultural plans would take years to fulfill.”10
Hitler expressed this opinion: “A European war would be the end of all our efforts even if we should win, because the disappearance of the British empire would be a misfortune which could not be made up again.”11 He told the Dutch fascist leader Anton Mussert: “We have not the slightest reason to fight Britain. Even if we win, we gain nothing.”12 Hitler was such an admirer of the British empire that he offered to defend the empire anywhere in the world with German troops should Britain ever need them.13
Hitler did not want to take over the world. This idea is British propaganda. Churchill and Roosevelt wanted war, and they forced it on Germany. Hitler did all he could to be friendly with Britain and France.
The duke of Windsor thought, in July 1940, that the war was allowed to go on only because certain British politicians and statesmen—if they can be called anything that sounds so dignified—had to have a reason to save their faces, even if this meant that the British empire would be bankrupted and shattered.14
Churchill and Roosevelt knew what was going on. Churchill bragged that “War is a game that has to be played with a smiling face.”15 Surely, they must have thought the tricks they were playing on their own countries and the world as something funny. But at the same time, millions of British and American soldiers and civilians were persuaded to look upon this war as something serious. They had no choice.
Misleading the public is truly the mark of a cynical politician and the dishonest news media, in time of war as well as at other times. These two men, Roosevelt and Churchill, instead of saving the world from some great evil, as Tom Brokaw maintains, multiplied the evils the world had to face.
One of the meanest tricks Churchill played on the Ger mans was the trick he played on Hess. On May 10, 1941, Hitler’s right-hand man flew alone to the duke of Hamilton’s estate in Scotland. He expected to land at an airfield nearby. But when he got there, he could not find the airfield and had to bail out. Not knowing how to do this, he had great trouble getting out of the plane. Finally, he turned the plane over and fell out. It was Hess’s first time to use a parachute. Hess was expecting to be received with dignity. Instead, he was seized, thrown into prison and held incommunicado the rest of his life. He was charged with “crimes against peace” at Nuremberg and sentenced to life imprisonment. The last 20 years of his life, he was held in solitary confinement and not allowed to see his wife or son. Hess was given the heaviest sentence possible—a sentence worse than death.
Hess’s flight to Britain was done in the hope that he could convince the British government to make peace with Germany. Because of Hess’s efforts to bring peace to Europe, he became truly a “prisoner of peace.”
The old saw, “All’s fair in war,” can never be applied to Hess. The treatment he received from the Allies from May 10, 1941, until the day he died was a crime.16 Hess would not have made his flight to Britain had not he and Hitler, in their anxiousness for peace, been fooled into believing that they were in contact with a strong peace party in Britain. There had been a strong peace party in Britain at one time, but most of its members had been thrown in jail by Churchill’s administration, and the rest could not express themselves.
Churchill had, so he told his secretary in a discussion about British aid to Russia, “only one purpose: the destruction of Hitler. And my life is much simplified thereby.”17
It would have been much easier and less costly in lives and materials, not only for the British but also for the Germans and Americans, to have encouraged the Germans to eliminate Hitler instead of trying to eliminate both the Germans and Hitler. “Unconditional surrender” sounds melodic, inspiring and dramatic. But this is all the value it had. It led the people in the Allied nations to think the Germans would never give up until they were totally demolished. It prolonged the war and made it even more bitter.
There is a hint that Hitler would have volunteered to retire had his retirement meant that Britain would have assumed a friendly attitude toward Germany. “Days before the beer hall bomb [Munich, November 8, 1939] there was a hint that [Hitler] was prepared to go very far, indeed. Ger man Prince Max Hohenlohe had spoken in Switzerland with representatives of Vansittart, secretary of the British Foreign Office, returning to Germany to report to Göring that peace with England was possible, but only with Hitler and Ribbentrop removed from power. One observer recorded in his diary that Göring replied that Hitler would agree to this.”18
Mary Ball Martinez’s Pope Pius XII During the Second World War states:
To their astonishment, the four Jesuit historians came upon records documenting the personal involvement of Pius XII in a plot to overthrow Hitler. In January 1940, he was approached by the agent of a certain clique of German generals, who asked him to tell the British government that they would undertake to “remove” Hitler if they were given assurances that the British would come to terms with a moderate German regime. Pius XII promptly passed along this message to Sir D’Arcy Osborne, Britain’s envoy to the Holy See. The offer was turned down.19
However, on a number of occasions the Germans had offered to remove Hitler from power if they were given reasonable peace terms for doing so. Joseph E. Davies, at a town hall meeting in Los Angeles, January 20, 1943, disclosed that the Germans had offered to retire Hitler in 1940 if the British would make peace with Germany.20 If the Germans could get rid of Hitler anytime they desired, then Hitler’s “total dictatorial control” over Germany was not so total and not so dictatorial as believers in the war propaganda think, and the Germans were not his robotic slaves.
Hans Kohn reviewed John Scott’s Duel for Europe in the December 14, 1942 New Republic (799). He stated, “If Britain had wished to make peace with Ger many, she could have done it easily in 1939, in the summer of 1940, and again in the spring of 1941.” It was not Hitler and Germany who could be described accurately as the war maniacs. The war maniacs were Roosevelt and Churchill and their backers, such as Bernard Baruch and Samuel Untermeyer.
One of the reasons used to justify the destruction of the Nazi system was that Hitler was a dictator. It was assumed that the Germans could not get rid of him. But why should the happiest people in the world, as David Lloyd George spoke of the Germans after Hitler came to power, want to dispose of their leader? The “unconditional surrender” declaration should dispel all thought about Hitler being in absolute command of everything in Germany. It was not the Germans who were forcing Hitler upon themselves. Roosevelt and Churchill were doing it for them, and for the sole purpose of keeping the war going as long as possible.
How did Hitler become the German leader? British history professor A.J.P. Taylor gives the answer in The Origins of the Second World War:
Hitler was appointed chancellor by President Hindenburg in a strictly constitutional way and for solidly democratic reasons.21
Conservative politicians led by Papen . . . recommended him to Hindenburg [and] kept the key posts for themselves.22
He did not “seize” power. He waited for it to be thrust upon him by the men who had previously tried to keep him out. In January 1933, Papen and Hindenburg were imploring him to become chancellor, and he graciously consented.23
Germany never threatened Britain. Hitler had always wanted to be a good neighbor and a good friend to the British. As late as January 29, 1942, after Britain had been at war with Germany for two years and five months, Hitler expressed a desire to help the British by sending them 20 divisions to aid them in throwing the Japanese invaders out of Singapore.24 He bent over backwards in showing his earnestness and generosity. He never would have gone to war against the British if the British had not attacked Ger many, or, as Churchill blazoned, “We entered the war of our free will, without ourselves being directly assaulted.”25
Churchill was not elected—as Hitler was in Germany—to be the prime minister by the British people. Churchill was put in power by the “powers behind the scenes” for the sole purpose of keeping the war going. Churchill’s job was not to make peace but to make war.
In August 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill hypocritically said in the third point of the Atlantic Charter that they respected “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live.” Unless the words “all peoples” do not mean what they say, then this article clearly applies as much to the Germans as to anyone else.
As soon as the tide of battle began to favor the British empire, Churchill threw off the pretended cloak of righteousness and became openly arrogant. He said in Parliament on September 2, 1943:
The twin roots of all our evils, Nazi tyranny and Prussian militarism, must be extirpated. Until this is achieved, there are no sacrifices we will not make and no lengths in violence to which we will not go.26
Of this Nazi tyranny and Churchill’s eager desire to get rid of it, it should be pointed out that the Germans were not oppressing the British people and if the Germans wanted to live under their “tyrannical” form of government, it was none of Britain’s business. The Atlantic Charter gave the Germans this right. Churchill did not object to Soviet tyranny, for he hailed Russia as a welcome ally when she came into the war.
So it turns out the democracies were at war with Ger many to force Germany to set up a democratic form of government, even though Hitler had been democratically elected and Churchill had not.
The sixth point in the Atlantic Charter called for the “destruction of Nazi tyranny” only and no other tyranny. There fore, according to the charter, other tyrannies could live, thrive and be supported. It may be noted that the sixth point contradicts the third point. The sixth point was the same as a “secret” declaration of war against Germany. There fore, the United States was really in the war against Germany long before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Hitler’s declaration of war against the United States was made to keep his promise to Japan and to set things straight in the world as they really were. This declaration made it legal for the German navy to shoot back at the American ships in the Atlantic.
Roosevelt ordered, in April 1941, American warships to seek out and follow German ships and to radio their locations every four hours so British warships could come and open an attack. Roosevelt commanded American warships to “shoot on sight” at German submarines on September 11, 1941.27
Adm. Stark, chief of naval operations, wrote Adm. Hart on November 7, 1941: “The Navy is already in the War of the Atlantic, but the country doesn’t seem to realize it. Apathy, to the opposition, is evident in a considerable section of the press. Whether the country knows it or not, we are at war.”28
All this was in flagrant defiance of Roosevelt’s promise to Americans that we would not enter any war unless we were attacked. These orders made America an aggressor nation. American leaders, with their pretended righteousness, failed in their efforts to be the first “victims,” but this did not prevent them from pretending to be, and the nation from believing they were. American leaders were the victimizers, in many ways.
The war in the Pacific was also kept going much longer than necessary. Before the Germans were allowed to “surrender” and before the atom bombs were dropped, the Japanese were asking for peace. Gen. Douglas McArthur recommended negotiations on the basis of the Japanese overtures. But FDR brushed off this suggestion with the remark: “McArthur is our greatest general and our poorest politician.”29 This is the answer in a nutshell to why the war was allowed to go on and on, when it could have been over any day from 1943 on. It did not even have to have started in the first place, except that FDR wanted it to start.
Clare Booth Luce said at the Republican Party Convention in 1944 that Roosevelt “lied us into the war.” To get America into the war, FDR provoked the Japanese to attack. At the same time, American boys were battling to end World War II, leading American politicians were doing all they could for political reasons to continue the conflict.
President Harry Truman, in early May 1945, informed Herbert Hoover “of the extensive Japanese peace offers and admitted then that further fighting with the Japanese was really unnecessary. But Truman also disclosed to Hoover that he did not feel strong enough to challenge Secretary Stimson and the Pentagon.”
FOOTNOTES:
1 Walendy, Udo, The Methods of Reeducation, 3.
2 Kilzer, Louis C., Churchill’s Deception, 20.
3 Churchill, Winston, The Grand Alliance, 23.
4 Irving, David, Hitler’s War, 35.
5 Tansill, G.C., Back Door to War, 450-51.
6 Crocker, George Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia, 81.
7 Irving, ibid., 418.
8 Kilzer, ibid., 69-70.
9 Kilzer, ibid., 221.
10 Irving, ibid., 121.
11 McLaughlin, Michael, For Those Who Cannot Speak, 10.
12 Irving, ibid., 511.
13 Barnes, Harry Elmer, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, 162; and Irving, ibid., 371.
14 Irving, ibid., xvi.
15 Walendy, ibid., 3.
16 The Barnes Review, July/August 2001.
17 Churchill, ibid., 370.
18 Kilzer, ibid., 183.
19 Journal of Historical Review, Sept./Oct. 1993, 27.
20 Leese, Arnold, The Jewish War of Survival, 20.
21 Ibid., 97.
22 Ibid., 79.
23 Ibid., 101
24 Irving, ibid., 371.
25 Martin, James J., The Saga of Hog Island, 42.
26 Grenfell, Capt. Russell, Unconditional Hatred, 92.
27 Barnes, ibid., 487.
28 Tansill, ibid., 645.
29 Chamberlin, William Henry, America’s Second Crusade, 219.