On 8 May 1995, the British prime minister, John Major, referred to the end of World War II as the end of a thirty years’ war; in this, he was correct: both sides saw this war as an attempt to complete a task left undone at the close of the First World War – the show-down which ended European global domination. The Second World War was, however, the ultimate catastrophe of modern history, laying waste the heart and soul of Europe. Here you will find contributions about this conflict, its prelude, conduct, and personalities – excluding non-military Nazi personalities, which are covered under the entry “Third Reich Era.” Also covered are contributions dealing with war crimes (and lies about alleged war crimes) committed in the course of the conflict. This does not include the “Holocaust,” which has a separate entry (and is not a war crime in the strict sense).
By Harry Elmer Barnes ∙ August 1, 1980
No informed person could well deny that Winston S. Churchill was probably the most spectacular showman in the history of British politics, and he was surely one of Britain's greatmasters of patriotic and honorific rhetoric. But when we go beyond this into any phase of Churchill's career we enter debatable ground. Any careful study of…
By Lewis Brandon ∙ October 1, 1980
Oradour: Village Of The Dead, by Philip Beck, Leo Cooper Ltd., 196 Shaftsbury Avenue, London WC2; 88pp, hardback, t 5.25. ISBN: 0-85052-252-8. On reading this concise little book, one is struck by the tremendous contrast between descriptions of alleged German atrocities against Jews, and descriptions of alleged German atrocities against non-Jews. Most of the former…
By Harry Elmer Barnes ∙ July 1, 1967
Every American citizen has much more at stake in understanding how and why the U.S. was drawn into World War II than in perusing the Warren Report, its supplementary volumes, and the controversial articles and books of the aftermath, or the annals of any isolated public crime, however dramatic. However tragic and regrettable, the assassination…
By Lewis Brandon ∙ October 1, 1980
The Cruelest Night, by Christopher Dobson, John Miller & Ronald Payne; Little Brown, Boston, 224pp, hardback, available from IHR at $11.00. ISBN: 0-316-18920-0. In the March 1980 issue of Encounter, a “neo-conservative” journal edited by “ex-Trotskyists” (see “Nuremberg and Other War Crimes Trials,” IHR No. 306, pp. 10–11) an Australian academic lambastes John Bennett, the…
By Ditlieb Felderer, Richard Harwood ∙ August 1, 1980
It is variously claimed by the Exterminationists that human corpses underwent melting by some rendering process whereby raw material for soap was made. The process, means, and distribution system, are all totally unknown. Immediately after liberation, in Politiceni in Romania, the district rabbi ordered the collection of all bars of soap bearing the letters “RIF”….
By Louis Fitzgibbon ∙ April 1, 1980
In his magnum opus, Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn says: “They took those who were too independent, too influential, too noteworthy; they took particularly many Poles from former Polish provinces. (It was then that ill-fated Katyn was filled up; and then too that in the northern camps they stockpiled fodder for the future army of Sikorski and…
By Chip Smith ∙ August 1, 2009
Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, by Nicholson Baker. Simon & Schuster Inc., New York, 2008. 576 pp. bibliography, indexed. Nested near the end of Nicholson Baker’s first book, The Mezzanine, is an oddly memorable scene. Set apart from the novel’s famously annotated escalator ascent, the scene finds Howie…
By Joseph Bishop ∙ April 1, 2010
The further one seriously studies history, and particularly the World War Two period, the more striking is the disconnect between what is popularly believed and what actually happened. Perhaps the reading public continues to shrink, not only in the United States but around the world, while information and opinion are generally retrieved from television and…
By Joseph Bishop ∙ October 1, 2009
The Chief Culprit: Stalin’s Grand Design to Start World War II, by Viktor Suvorov Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2008, 328pp., illustrated, with notes, bibliography, indexed. The post-1945 war crimes trials in Nuremberg are underway and the international press excitedly covers the proceedings. The tribunal itself consists of justices not from victor powers but from wartime…
By David Wilson ∙ August 1, 2009
In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War Two and the War on Terror, by Michelle Malkin. Regnery, Washington, DC, 2004. 376pp. Michelle Malkin is a conservative columnist and blogger who, since 9-11, has become a strident advocate of enhanced scrutiny of foreigners in the United States, particularly those of Muslim…
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