The Pride of War: A Chapter Preview from 'The Politics of Fear'
The Pride of War
As detailed in previous chapters and in my last book, Iconoclasm, war serves many purposes. While veiled in themes of morality or protectionism, war is enacted more often to dominate or expand economic trade blocs. Trade routes and raw resources are invaluable in establishing the hierarchy of nations; therefore, international superpowers often levy the use of wars or alliances to control said assets. This harsh reality is difficult to advertise to the citizens of our modern world. The traditional themes of imperialism and war profiteering are largely out of vogue with average constituents, forcing governments worldwide to somehow display warfare as a moral duty. Morality is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to warfare.
War is about pride, national identity, and statist narratives. It is about selling a story that reinforces trigger words like freedom and democracy. It is a forceful method of comparative values, imposing a set of ethical standards upon a foreign entity for their supposed benefit. In this recognition, war is meant to solidify and commit domestic citizens to a loyalty that reinforces the state and all of its entrenched power. That is to say that war, in a practical sense, is meant to secure global economic advantages while reinforcing domestic nationalist ideologies.
To support this claim we can look at several case studies. Perhaps one of the most interesting and controversial is the role of the United States in World War II.
When I was in grade school there were several prevailing standards of education regarding the Second World War. These standards included two distinct narratives: One being that US involvement on the Western front stopped the spread of the European Axis, and the other being that the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima stopped the war. These stories paint the United States as a vehement adversary to the Nazis, the “sleeping giant” that caused the Axis to tremble in fear upon its awakening. When we learn stories such as these in childhood it is meant to indoctrinate feelings of national pride, self-righteousness, and statist faith. The underlying problem is that each of these narratives contain half-truths, incomplete truths, or outright lies.
The Western front was no doubt decimated by Nazi forces. At the height of German expansion in 1942, most of Europe was controlled by German forces or puppet states, sympathetic to the Axis cause. Save for the United Kingdom, Southern France, and small Allied protectorates in the Mediterranean, Europe was held in near totality by the Nazis. After the attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States was brought into the war formally, having ignored the aggressive Nazi appropriation of Europe for nearly two and a half years. The famous US offensive landing in Normandy still would not occur until 1944, only one year before war’s end. By the time American forces arrived on the Western front, the Third Reich had been attempting to push eastward into Russian territory (Operation Barbarossa, 1941). This was suppressed by the Soviets, turning the tide of the war in Stalingrad, 1943. The loss of the Western front, coupled with the Soviet vice grip from the east, was enough to send the Reich into remission. But let’s look more deeply at the statistics:
In 1941 the populations of the US and Russia were nearly the same, an approximate 130 million people. The US, a latecomer to the war, would never see bombs dropped on its mainland soil and would never see combat on the ground domestically. Given their lack of nativity to the conflict and their late involvement, the US would lose four hundred thousand soldiers in World War II— while the Soviet Union would lose eleven million (Ellis, John, World War II: A Statistical Survey, Facts on File, New York, 1993). To put this in perspective, for every American soldier killed fighting the Germans, eighty Soviet soldiers died. Along with this staggering statistic there were virtually no civilian casualties for the United States, while Russia lost somewhere between seven and twenty million non-combatant civilians. Americans on the Western front killed around eight hundred thousand Germans, while Soviets on the Eastern front killed nearly two million on the trek from Stalingrad to Berlin alone.
I don’t bring this up to berate the US. I bring it up because this illustrates why it is offensive to assert that the US won the war, while Russia bore the brunt of Nazi aggression. In fact, Russian adversity to the Nazis earlier in the war likely prevented them from becoming even more powerful prior to American involvement. By bringing up numerical figures I do not intend to depreciate from the sacrifice of each individual person accounted for. Quite the opposite actually: I hope this allows for a deeper and more heartfelt understanding of the sacrifices made by others.
Secondly, let’s look at the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Pearl Harbor was a tragedy that was unsolicited. The US had made no effort to provoke Japan, yet the kamikaze flights still commenced and riled Americans to join the Allies. For Japan this assault had been somewhat shortsighted, as it pinned the island nation in between three potential foes: Russia to the north, China to the west, and the United States to the east. Japan had only recently joined the ranks of international power and was likely seeking a heightened stature on the world stage, causing the emperor’s government to employ military strategies of hubris. Attacking the US provoked an intense firebombing of major Japanese cities, spearheaded by general Curtis LeMay. These bombing runs were not limited to military installations, and civilian casualties were high, prompting LeMay to issue the following quote post-war:
Killing the Japanese didn’t bother me very much at the time . . . I suppose if I had lost the war, I would’ve been tried as a war criminal. Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier (The Fog of War, Errol Morris, 2003).
Glossing over the considerations of this ideology, Japan quickly realized that it had bitten off more than it could chew. Talks began in the Japanese government for its conditional surrender, the primary condition being that the emperor could retain his power. Parts of the Japanese government were in favor of this plan; others wished to remain belligerent. Regardless, it was apparent that the emperor’s camp intended to surrender by sending a messenger to Stalin in Russia. However, this was preempted by the bombing of Hiroshima, Russia’s formal decree of war on Japan, and another bombing of Nagasaki. But let’s consider another factor . . .
The nuclear bomb was actually tested on US soil prior to its use in Japan. Near Socorro, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, an atomic bomb was set off. The Trinity Test was overseen by scientists and military strategists alike, observing the effects and implications of a nuclear device. One of the observed effects was intense radiation fallout, which could be maximized by a detonation in the air above an intended target. This means that the bombs dropped on Japan were not only maximized in their effect, but also the US handlers of the operation likely knew exactly how deadly and longstanding the radiation effects would be. Despite the clear reality that Japan would likely surrender under the pressure of regular fire bomb raids, this extreme nuclear tactic was still used.
Some conjecture surrounding the event offers a possible explanation. Many Japanese historians and progressive US scholars suggest that the nuclear bombs may have actually been a means to scare the Soviets, who were indeed next in line for global power succession post-war.
Two final notes about World War II revisionism are equally as disturbing. Firstly, the economy of Nazi Germany was inflated heavily by US and Wall Street investments. In fact, it would not be until 1942 that FDR’s Trading with the Enemies Act began to curb American investment in the Nazi war machine. Before this many prominent Western investors and politicians had been propping up Hitler’s rise to power, including Prescott Bush. The Union Banking Corporation, the Holland-America Trading Corporation, the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation, IG Farben (the manufacturer of Zyklon B), and the Silesian-American Company would all be companies that took American money and funneled it into Hitler’s regime. The US was well aware of Europe’s tilt into fascism, and given its explosive economic growth fascism was actually intriguing to prominent US investors.
Secondly, remember that civilian casualties for the Russians were extremely high. The Nazis targeted civilians with little to no discretion, a point made clear time and again during history class. What is not mentioned is the Allied employment of identical tactics. Bombing raids like Operation Gomorrah in Hamburg and the firebombing in Dresden, 1945, killed countless non-combatant people. Conservative guesses for Dresden alone stand at twenty-five thousand casualties, and the only military significance of the city was its work camps—where imprisoned Russians, Jews, and Gypsies met their untimely end at the hands of Allied forces.
Victors write the history books. Victors also write our formative curriculums, leaving stories incomplete or just downright incorrect. The Pride of War is a dangerous one. It aggrandizes and emboldens violence, buffing it with polish and making it shine with the colors of a national flag. These tactics are employed to make us think the ends always justify the means . . . but do they? A partial truth is, perhaps, no truth at all. Perhaps a partial truth is just a tactic to manipulate identities, loyalties, and ultimately fear. I chose World War II for this examination because of how invincible and righteous the US is made out to be. Truthfully I could have written this chapter about any nation, during any war.
The inherent point is that biases and narratives are created to tether an individual’s allegiance, subvert their critical thought, and maintain power over them. War demands justification; we want war to mean something. When that veil is pulled to the side we begin to question the motives and stability of our leaders—as well we should.