Daily Ramblings:
VDH Blues ...05/13/2005
02:25:08 pm
Historian Victor Hanson's usual Friday column is a
keeper this week: on World War II and how it is
remembered (or misremembered).
Revisionism
holds a strange attraction for the winners of
World War II. American textbooks discuss World
War II as if a Patton, Le May, or Nimitz did not
exist, as if the war was essentially the Japanese
internment and Hiroshima. That blinkered and
politically correct focus explains why so many
Americans under 30 are simply ignorant about the
nature and course of World War II itself.
Similarly, the British have monthly debates on
the immorality of their bombing Hamburg and
Dresden.
In dire contrast, even the post-Soviet Russian
government will not speak of the Stalin-Hitler
non-aggression pact, the absorption of the Baltic
states, the murder of millions of German citizens
in April through June 1945 in Eastern Europe, and
the mass execution of Polish officers. If we were
to listen to the Chinese, World War II was about
the gallant work of Mao’s partisans, who in
fact used the war to gain power, and then went on
to kill 50 million of their own citizens —
about the same number lost in all of World War
II. Japan likewise has never come to terms with
the millions of Asian civilians its armies
butchered or its systematic brutality waged
against American POWs.
The truth is that the supposedly biased West
discusses the contribution of others far more
than our former enemies — or Russian and
Chinese allies — credit the British or
Americans.
It's all here.
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