The Hypocrisy of the Allied Powers:

World War II is perhaps the most distorted event in history. The massive distortions that surround World War II continue to infect morality and politics to this day, thus making it imperative for people in the present to repair our perception of the past, before we can gain an accurate perception of the future. As George Orwell said in 1984: He who controls the past, controls the future. This isn't just some idle catchphrase. It's been proven again and again that simply by invoking Hitler, or World War II, or Munich, or the Holocaust, anyone can win any argument about what we should be doing today. There's even a phrase for it, "Godwin's Law," that states that as an argument continues, the probability of someone invoking Hitler reaches 100%. People wouldn't invoke Hitler unless they found it be the easiest shortcut to victory in all arguments. If people can win an argument by invoking a lie, a distorted history, by being irrational and deceptive and manipulative, then the whole world will careen into oblivion, because reason and justice are no longer our guiding lights.

It may be that the lies and distortions surrounding World War II will never be defeated. So long as there are people closely connected to the events of the period, who have their whole self-identity wrapped up with the idea that they were the 'good guys' and their enemies the 'bad guys,' no one is going to listen to truth tellers that might distort their happy fantasies. But the greatest generation, and their children the baby boomers, are not long for this Earth. At that point, the world will be successfully divorced from the entire conflict, which means they will not infect their reason with passion, with personal biases, but be able to gaze upon history with objective, fair-minded eyes. There is a unique opportunity approaching for people to revisit World War II and finally set the record straight.

I do not think World War II will be forgotten by the sands of time, however. It was the largest war in world history, and dramatically changed the world forever after. I do not see how such a war could ever be forgotten or ignored in the future -- not unless an even larger war came, which would surely doom the human race. Which means we can't just let time erase the power of Godwin's Law, of the argument ad Hitlerum, of false parallels drawn between a false history and the world of today. At some point we have to kill this hydra. Ignoring it just means leaving it the eternal king of all political discussions and all debates forevermore.

With that preface, I will now attempt to correct the distortions and lies surrounding World War II.

There is one thing I detest above all else, hypocrisy and lies. There is something sniveling, insidious, and disgusting about a liar or a hypocrite that does not besmirch even a rapist or a mass murderer. At least when it comes to criminals, they are straightforward, honest, and direct. Not so the operator in the shadows, who manipulates everyone to work to his own advantage, while pretending to be a paragon of virtue. Therefore, what I find most disgusting about World War II aren't the war crimes, the mass slaughters, or the warmongering of the period -- it is the hypocrisy. Hypocrisy reached its highest level in history in World War II, and has been allowed to remain unchallenged ever since -- precisely because the Allied powers were the hypocrites, and they won the war.

Before World War II, the Allied powers had operated by one principle: National Self-Interest, combined with a feeling of superiority that justified their conquests, slaughters, and oppressions of the rest of the world. It was this principle that allowed Britain to engage in an endless series of evils in the building of its empire: Their conquest of previously free peoples who would have preferred self-determination, their brutal put-downs of Indian revolts, their utter uncaring neglect when it came to famines in India, their Opium wars that killed millions of Chinese so that Britain would have the right to addict tens of millions of additional Chinese to a destructive and deadly drug, their slave trading of blacks, their grossly criminal policies of taking massive numbers of Indians and carrying them across half the world to work on British profit-taking projects, like the Indians they sent to South America, the Caribbeans, Fiji, South Africa and Uganda, their navigation acts which meant everyone in the Empire had to trade on an unfair basis, reducing the profit of the subject people's work while increasing the profit of native Britons, their completely amoral entry into foreign wars simply to keep any continental power from uniting Europe and thus creating an economic or military challenge to British Imperial might, without any justification of self-defense or even humanitarianism, and boundless other sins the British exacted on the outside world.

It was this principle that allowed France to create a vast empire abroad, conquering free peoples who desired self-determination, cruelly mistreating the natives in their colonies such that they are still hated all around the world (In Algeria, Vietnam, Haiti, Rwanda, and everywhere the French went.) France also started many unprovoked wars in Europe with other European powers. Napoleon attempted to conquer Germany while it was still a series of small states. A few years later, Napoleon the III tried to attack Germany again in the Franco-Prussian war, simply because they didn't like the idea of Bavaria unifying with Prussia to form a German state. No one came to the aid of Germany in the Franco-Prussian war. No one said European states are not allowed to wage war on other European states, or conquer any other European state, in 1870. When Germany was attacked, it had to fend for itself. But when Germany attacks someone else, all of Europe mobilizes, out of pure altruism, in defense of the 'victim.' After World War I, a war ostensibly fought to preserve the self-determination and independence of Serbia, massive portions of German soil, peopled by Germans, who wished to be part of Germany, were pared off and given as spoils of war to the likes of France, Italy, and Poland. The hypocrisy! The damnable hypocrisy!

The U.S.S.R. was another ally in World War II. This is the same U.S.S.R. that, directly or indirectly, through its pushing of communism, and its practicing of communism, killed 100 million people during the 20th century. Much of that 100 million total had already been exacted before World War II. Lenin's brutal policies during the Russian Civil War already had killed millions, before Stalin came in and made a science of industrial scale murder. Under Stalin, officials were sent out to seize all grain in areas deemed 'enemies of the state,' like the Ukraine and Kazakhstan, which were in fact imperial conquests of nations yearning to be free, and refused to allow any refugees to leave these enforced starving grounds. With no food left because all of it had been taken, it was inevitable there would be a complete, purposeful depopulation, that led to cannibalism and around seven million dead. This was just one of Stalin's bloody deeds. Alongside it came his constant purges of 'reactionaries' and 'trotskyites,' his sending of millions of people to gulags where they would starve or freeze to death, his endless firing squads, and his persecution of ethnic minorities like Greeks, Germans, and Chechens to the point of near extermination. Even though World War II was ostensibly fought to protect Poland from invasion, Britain and France only declared war on Germany, and not the U.S.S.R., that also invaded Poland. Furthermore, they allowed the U.S.S.R. to permanently annex Poland as part of their empire After the war, which meant their original war aim of protecting Poland wasn't in the least achieved. The hypocrisy! And of course, the only possible explanation for this strange double standard is that their original war aim was never the protection of free, self-determining states, but simply the destruction of their hated rival, Germany, which they had desired to do for centuries. The U.S.S.R. didn't only invade and conquer the European state of Poland. They invaded Finland, the Baltics, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, Yugoslavia, ((THE SAME YUGOSLAVIA THE ALLIES WENT TO WAR IN WORLD WAR I TO PROTECT FROM CONQUEST!)), Czechoslovakia ((THE SAME CZECHOSLOVAKIA WE WERE SUPPOSED TO REGRET FOREVER NOT DEFENDING FROM HITLER AT MUNICH!)), East Germany and Moldova. In all of these regions they set up tyrannical, bloodthirsty powers that completely ruined the spirit and the economy of these regions, keeping them locked in an open-air decaying prison of squalor and depopulation. Whenever a country in Eastern Europe attempted to revolt, the U.S.S.R. would send in tanks and crush it, while the west looked the other way, twiddling its thumbs and never mentioning the principle of self-determination we fought two world wars against Germany to enforce.

The U.S.S.R., not Germany, strove for world conquest, and was a clear and present danger to the entire world. The U.S.S.R., not Germany, had spies completely infiltrating the U.S. government and an entire communist espionage and sabotage network set up to undermine our country from within. The U.S.S.R., not Germany, said they would 'bury us.' The U.S.S.R., not Germany, armed our enemies in North Korea, North Vietnam, and Cuba, and sent their very own pilots in their very own planes to shoot down and kill Americans. For all of these crimes, America never declared war on the U.S.S.R., but we did declare war on Germany, a power that had never done anything to us and never threatened us in any way. The hypocrisy!

Another allied power was China, only the most backwards and barbaric country on Earth at the time. When China wasn't busy killing itself in civil wars, like the 20 million who died during the Tienping revolt, it was imposing cruel and tyrannical rule the likes of which the world had never seen. Mao Zedong's communist party already controlled a sizable portion of China before World War II began, but afterwards they conquered the rest, imposing an artificial famine, 'The Great Leap Forward,' that claimed 40 million lives. They also invaded all of their neighbors, like Vietnam and India, annexed Tibet, and waged war on the United States for the sake of protecting one of the most vile regimes in world history, North Korea, which still to this day starves and brutalizes its people, all because China wanted it this way. China had all of the same sins that could possibly be ascribed to the Axis powers -- they slaughtered millions of innocent civilians, they invaded their neighbors, they did material harm to the United States, they weren't a democracy, but somehow America didn't care about China and saw no need to declare war on them either. The hypocrisy!

Last but not least, America is itself hypocritical to claim it was on the side of justice or humanity. America had engaged in the same sins, or worse, as their opponents in World War II. Imperialism? Check: the Philippines, Hawaii, and our conquest of the entire continent of the United States from the native Americans. Mass murder of civilians? Check: Untold thousands of black slaves who died in the Atlantic passage, millions of dead civilian Indians that we 'cleared out' so we could have the land to ourselves, and up to a million Filipinos who died fighting for their freedom from our imperial control. Lack of democracy? Check: Blacks still didn't have the right to vote when we went to war with Germany and Japan during World War II. FDR was serving an unprecedented 4th term in office, and had essentially become a dictator for life, who had radically expanded the power of government into all fields of life. Racism? Check: We rounded up and interned all Japanese Americans during World War II, while keeping blacks segregated from whites. We had a more ambitious eugenics program in our law books than Germany was practicing. We performed medical experiments on blacks where we deliberately infected them with diseases just to watch what happened. Wartime atrocities? Check: We firebombed civilian population centers in Tokyo, Hamburg and Dresden, and nuked the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many of our soldiers illegally killed prisoners attempting to surrender, and collected trophies of Japanese ears, skulls and fingers to proudly wear on top of their uniforms. We had already practiced everything we were objecting to among the Axis powers -- slavery, genocide, conquest, imperfect democracies, racism, the whole shebang. Comparatively, America's history is much more blood-stained, dark, and disgusting than either Germany's or Japan's.

Who are we to demand Germany or Japan act morally? Who are we to demand Germany and Japan refrain from conquering other people's land? Who is America to tell anyone anything, about anything? For that matter, who is Britain? Who is China? Who is the U.S.S.R.? Who is France? All of their histories were equally bloodstained, imperial, racist, unfree, etc. No one lived up to the standards we arbitrarily applied to Germany and Japan alone. Suddenly, Germany and Japan were required to act more virtuously than their own enemies, before and at the time, had ever been. This war wasn't about self-determination, or respecting human life, or democracy, self-defense, or anything else we have been told. It was a hypocritical war, fought on false pretenses, where the "Haves," those who had already long since performed their atrocities and conquered their vast empires, were fighting a war with the "Have-Nots," great powers of industry and intelligence that as of yet still possessed no hinterlands to expand into, and needed to commit atrocities to gain one. It is ridiculous for the "Haves" to require the "Have-Nots" stay "Have-Nots," either directly by demand, or indirectly by saying they can't acquire any territory through any 'immoral means.' This is because it is so hypocritical! How can America, the U.S.S.R., Britain or France tell anyone empires can't be acquired through immoral means? We all acquired our own empires through immoral means! How can we deny Germany and Japan the right of conquest and the right to wage aggressive war, when we were all doing the same things to other peoples at the same time?

The allied powers had two choices, if they wished to not be hypocrites: They could either reform themselves first, and then demand Germany, Italy, and Japan reform their own conduct in exchange. We could give back all of our ill-gotten gains, which would include completely evacuating Australia, Canada, and the United States of all white people, and then demand that Germany and Japan also refrain from gaining anything through ill means themselves -- or we could accept that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and simply state that Germany and Japan had better find weak prey to pick on because we were going to zealously defend our own holdings. There is no third option. Anything else is hypocrisy.

If you wish to justify the imperialism of the allied powers, it can only come through immoral egoism "anything in my own interest is justified," which would equally well apply to the actions of Germany or Japan, or through the principle that the superior should always supplant the inferior, and the Allied powers were always conquering and supplanting inferiors -- in which case Germany and Japan could also invoke the same principle. It's not like the backwater that was Poland, or even Russia, was any match for the technical, economic and cultural sophistication of Germany. Nor was the backwater of China any match for the technical, economic and cultural sophistication of Japan. For that matter, China Russia and Poland STILL are no match by any rubric for Germany and Japan, which even after the war managed to maintain themselves as some of the world's preeminent states. More preeminent than Britain or France, and thus, having a higher right to 'supplant the inferior' than we ourselves ever had.

What lessons are we supposed to learn from World War II? Why were the Axis powers the villains? Everything they did, we Allied powers did on an even greater scale. Civilian massacres, slavery, conquest -- anything you mention. We had not renounced or apologized for any of our actions, or paid reparations for any of our ill-gotten gains. At the time, the whole world was divided up between our various empires, and Germany and Japan were simply trying to get into the 'great game.' What could we possibly say about them we couldn't say about ourselves? How can we be righteous, avenging, punishing angels for their dark deeds, when no one has yet punished and avenged us for what we did? How is this justice? And why do we get to play the role of heroes, instead of farcical snakes that acted out of their own self-interest while wearing the cloak of altruism around our corrupted, hellish bodies?

The first time the Allied powers started living up to their own code of virtue they forcefully imposed on Germany and Japan was 1990. At this time, the Soviet Union fell and freed Poland, Ukraine, and the rest of their empire. China remodeled its economy back to capitalism, America had revoked all government-enforced racism, Britain and France had given away its overseas empires, and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, Germany and Japan lived up to the moral code that was imposed on it as early as 1950. For this reason, Germany and Japan have only one 'immoral' act in their entire life history, their actions surrounding World War II, while we are steeped in blood and injustice for centuries or millenia. Germany and Japan are eminently more moral, enlightened countries than their enemies, the Allied powers were, before OR after the war. It's no wonder that in international popularity polls, Germany and Japan continuously rank among the highest, while countries like France and the USA stay mired at the bottom. The world can't be deceived by our hypocrisy forever. Eventually people will add up all the crimes of history and discover, to their amazement, the incredibly positive balance Germany, Japan, and Italy (Rome, anyone?) have had on the world, compared to their enemies in World War II, who have been nothing but brutal tyrants, slavers and robbers across history.

Someday the Axis powers will be the good guys in our movies, and historical justice will have finally erased all the distortions that warp our world.