Wwii A God War
Essay by 24 • March 25, 2011 • 1,905 Words (8 Pages) • 1,441 Views
Was World War II such a bad thin?
The vast majority of Americans supported World War II (WWII) after Pearl Harbor was bombed, recognizing a fascist threat to Western democracy. WWII was a good war. It had the ability to unite America. They united against Nazism and fascism. But even a good War has its bad times. If you look behind what you think happened at what really happened in WWII it becomes clear that the U.S. has nothing to be proud about.
WWII evolved the entire globe, putting the world's largest economic and military powers against each other: the AXIS powers Germany, Japan and Italy against the ALLIED powers Russia, Britain and the U.S. There were some 27,372,900 civilians and 20,858,800 military personnel killed in the war. http://warchronicle.com/numbers/WWII/deaths.htm
WWII got its start in the capitalist crisis of the 1930s. Starting with the 1929 U.S. stock market crash, all countries in the world capitalist economy suffered depression, stagnation and massive unemployment. http://socialismandliberation.org/mag/index.php?aid=360
Fact one that the Allies were not committed to fighting fascism is the abandonment of six million Jews to the Nazi genocide from 1933 to 1945. The Allies did not care about Jews; not only did they not try to stop the genocide; they actually obstructed some attempts to save Jews. http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/holocaust/basichist.html
Washington was fully aware of the escalating violence the Nazis were committing against Jews in Germany. From 1933 on and of Hitler's "final solution.". But the U.S. government did nothing to stop or even impede it. The New York Times and other news agencies were reporting stories of Nazi attacks on the Jews that ranged from descriptions of petty harassment, mass firings, impressments, murders and even the construction of concentration camps. In August 1942, a prominent German industrialist contacted the president of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva Dr. Gerhart Reigner, and warned of Hitler's plans for the "final solution." Reigner then cabled the plans to the U.S. where the State Department disregarded the cable; and even as more information came in, the U.S. delayed any response. To save Jews or stop the Holocaust. http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/israel/untermeyer.htm
One of the most well known attacks on the Jews was known as Night of Broken Glass. On the November 9, 1938, violence against Jews broke out across Germany. The Germanys tried to make it appeared like the violence was an unplanned attack, set off by the assassination of a German official in Paris at the hands of a Jewish teenager. In two days, over 1,000 synagogues were burned, 7,000 Jewish businesses were trashed and looted, dozens of Jewish people were killed, and Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, schools, and homes were looted while police and fire brigades stood by. http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/kristall.htm
President Roosevelt, and Secretary of State Cordell Hull blocked several attempt to let Jewish refugees, to inter the U.S. They appointed Breckinridge Long, as the U.S. State Department official in charge of matters concerning European refugees. Breckinridge Long was an extremely nerves person with a particular suspicion of Eastern Europeans. He suspected Jewish immigrants of being either communists or German spies! Long used many tricks to deny thousands of Jews admission into the U.S. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/peopleevents/pandeAMEX90.html
One publicized event that helped to bring the U.S.’s approach to Jewish refugees to light started in May of 1939. A ship called the ST. Louis with over 900 Jewish refugees departed from Hamberg, Germany for Cuba. Upon reaching Cuba, Cuban authorities cancelled the refugees' transit visas and denied entry to the passengers. The ship persuaded on to Florida hopping to be allowed to inter the U.S. Denied permission to land in the United States, the ship was forced to return to Europe. Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium each agreed to accept some of the passengers as refugees. Of the 908 Jewish passengers on the St. Louis, who returned to Europe, 254 are known to have died as a result of the Holocaust. The U.S. did not pursue a Jewish rescue policy for victims of the Nazi Germany holocaust until early 1944. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?ModuleId=10005139
In January 1944, after more than four million Jews had already been killed The Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, Jr along with other officials and an American Jewish community pressured President Roosevelt, to establish the War Refugee Board (WRB). The boad was underfunded and understaffed and pervaded little help with the rescue of Jewish refugees. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007094
The War Refugee Board worked with Jewish organizations, diplomats, and resistance groups in Europe to rescue Jews and provide relief to inmates of concentration camps. But the U.S. it’s self hardly did anything to stop the genocide. The U.S. didn’t bomb the tracks or crematorium at Auschwitz. Even with the Allied bombers had to fly over Auschwitz to bomb nearby factories.
The largest rescue efforts were led by a Swedish diplomat out of Budapest, Hungary named Raoul Wallenberg, Wallenberg helped thousands of Hungarian Jews by pervading then with Swedish Passports. With Sweden being a neutral country, it was hard for Germany to harm / deport Swedish citizens Wallenberg also set up hospitals, nurseries, and soup kitchens for Jews of Budapest. The War Refugee Board played a large role in the rescue of as many as 200,000 Jews. But, people still wonder how many more Jews might have been saved if the missions to rescue them had started sooner. http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/wboard.htm
Race dissertation against Japanese
Rather than trying to saving Jews and fighting Nazism, the U.S. waged a race war against the Japanese living with in its boarders. The U.S. government spent a large number of its propaganda not to denouncing fascism and Nazism but on anti-Japanese racism. At one point the U.S. almost started its own genocide agents the Japanese. When in 1942, on the floor of the Congress, the Mississippi Representative John Rankin gave this speech "This is a race war, The white man's civilization has come into conflict with Japanese barbarism...Once a Jap always a Jap. You cannot change him. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear...I'm for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps...Damn them! Let's get rid of them now!" http://www.leftinsf.com/blog/2005/06/left-in-sf-book-club-strawberry-days.html
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