Just back from a week long vacation!

Who really won The War?

There have been 62 years pass since the "end" of WWII and that is enough time to ask ourselves in retrospect: Who really won WWII? We all know that militarily the allies (including the hated but very necessary Godless Soviet Union) prevailed.

The invasion of Poland as well as the bombing of Pearl Harbor and other American military outposts in the Pacific mark the convienient beginnings as do the signings of unconditional surrender documents by Nazi and Japaneese officials mark its endpoints.

Less appreciated is the role that allied actions and inactions played in the encouragement of the military conflict.

Throughout most of 1937 and 38 (after the militarizatiion of the Rhineland, the anschluss of Austria and the crushing of Czechoslovokia the Soviets were trying furiously to ally themselves with Britain and France against the Nazis.

What is now celebrated as the fumbling, bumbling appeasement naievete of Neville Chamberlain was nothing of the sort. The studied indifference of the British and French to Soviet offers of military alliance was predicated on the hope that Hitler and Stallin would bleed each other white in a violent conflagration and then Britain and France could walk in and pick up the pieces.

The Soviet's concern over the Nazi's was well-founded because that "Axis' pact we al learned about in public school history that was signed between Germany and Japan in 1936 was actually titled "The Anit-Comintern Treaty."

It declared in part:

"recognizing that the aim of the Communist International, known as the Comintern, is to disintegrate and subdue existing States by all the means at its command; convinced that the toleration of interference by the Communist International in the internal affairs of the nations not only endangers their internal peace and social well?being, but is also a menace to the peace of the world desirous of co?operating in the defense against Communist sub­versive activities"

Britain and France bet that the Nazi's would attack
Stalin's Soviet Union before it would go after them. They lost. So thoroughly did Adolph Hitler cultivate this illusion that he even initially sought to include Britain as signatory to the pact.

Meanwhile in the Pacific, the United States froze all Japanese assets and embargoed oil shipments to Japan in the name of forcing the Japanese to withdraw their millitary from China and Southeast Asia. Japan could sustain itself for maybe 30 days with no new shipments of petroleum--so what were the Japanese to do?

None of what is written above is intended to justify the agressive designs of the Axis powers, but only to show that the hands of the Allies who oppossed them were just as dirty as their enemies and that allied diplomats could read the anti-comintern treaty as well as its signatories. Both sides agreed that nothing short of war would be tolerable and did what it took to commence such war.

Of couse, history never cooperates completely with those who would manipulate it. Today the primary victor of WWII (that would be the US!) is bogged down in general war throughout the Middle East to secure control of the world's principle oil supply.

It is seeking to promote "peace","democracy",
and " nation building" throughout the region.
It spurns negotiation, concilliation, and cooperation. It declares its way of life "non-negotiable" and in many other ways (like systematic use of cluster-bombs, white phosphorous, and "shock and awe" tactics) shows it has learned nothing from those it militarily vanquished in WWII.

So when we embrace that which we supposedly abhored, what have we won?

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