Prelude

What were the reasons for World War II? Of course, Hitler attacked Poland. On the other hand, when Stalin invaded Poland and then attacked Finland a few months later, nobody declared war on the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Hitler tried to negotiate a settlement. So what were the reasons for World War II? The Versailles “Peace Treaty” had created so many injustices in Europe that it bore within itself the seeds of a new war. One ought not neglect the colonial arms race in the Pacific between the newcomer Japan and the old European colonial powers…

George Morgenstern, 1906-1988

By James J. Martin- George Morgenstern, the author of the first Revisionist book about the December 7,1941 Pearl Harbor attack and the complex history which preceded and followed it, died in Denver, Colorado on July 23, 1988, in his 83rd year. Morgenstern's book, titled Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War, published by Devin…

The Road to World War II

World War One’s direct costs to the United States were: 130,000 combat deaths; 35,000 men permanently disabled; $33.5 billion (plus another $13 billion in veterans’ benefits and interest on the war debt, as of 1931, all in the dollars of those years); perhaps also some portion of the 500,000 influenza deaths among American civilians from…

Charles Callan Tansill

Charles Callan Tansill, one of the foremost American diplomatic historians of the Twentieth Century, was born in Fredericksburg, Texas, on December 9, 1890, the son of Charles and Mary Tansill.[1] Tansill earned his bachelor’s degree from the Catholic University of America in 1912 and his Ph.D. degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1918. At Johns…

In the Garden of Beasts

By Erik Larson. Crown Publishing Group, New York, 2011, 448 pp. By June 1933, the “Nazis”—a new word in the world’s lexicon—had held power in Germany for almost six months, and were not expected to last, unlikely characters as virtually all of them were. The American ambassador to Germany had left his post shortly after…

Pearl Harbor: Case Closed?

Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor by Robert B. Stinnett. New York: Simon and Schuster, Touchstone, 2000. Paperback. 399 pages. Index, illustrations, maps. Pearl Harbor Betrayed: The True Story of a Man and a Nation under Attack by Michael Gannon. New York: Henry Holt, 2001. Hardcover. 340 pages. Index, illustrations, maps….

Revising the Twentieth Century’s ‘Perfect Storm’

Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia by Gabriel Gorodetsky. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. 408 pages. Samoubiystvo (Suicide) by Viktor Suvorov. Moscow: AST, 2000. 380 pages. Illustrations. Upushchennyy shans Stalina (Stalin’s Lost Opportunity) by Mikhail Meltiukhov. Moscow: Veche, 2000. 605 pages. Illustrations, maps. Stalin’s War of Extermination, 1941–45: Planning, Realization, and…

Disney’s $140 Million Dud

Pearl Harbor. (2001) Genre: film (war, drama). Length: 183 minutes. MPAA rating: PG-13. Starring: Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Alec Baldwin, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Mako, Jon Voight. Director: Michael Bay. Producer: Jerry Bruckheimer. Screenplay: Randall Wallace. Released by: Buena Vista. Grade: D. Scott L. Smith holds a B.A. in history from Idaho State University….

An Unsettled Legacy

Churchill’s War: Triumph in Adversity (Vol. II), by David Irving. London: Focal Point, 2001. Hardcover. 1060 pages. Photographs. Appendices. Source references. Index. (Available from the IHR for $50, plus shipping.) It has been fourteen years since the publication of the first volume of David Irving’s three-part biography of Britain’s legendary wartime leader. This second volume,…

Examining Stalin’s 1941 Plan to Attack Germany

Unternehmen Barbarossa und der russische Historikerstreit (“Operation Barbarossa and the Russian Historians’ Dispute”), by Wolfgang Strauss. Munich: Herbig, 1998. Hardcover. 199 pages. Illustrations. Source references. Bibliography. Index. No two peoples suffered more during the Second World War than the Russians and the Germans. In the carnage of that great global conflict, nothing matched the massive…

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