Was World War II a “good” war? According to the official narrative, yes, it was.
Yet several historians have questioned the official narrative. Among these historians are John T. Flynn, Charles A. Beard, William Henry Chamberlin, and Harry Elmer Barnes. Together, they shed light on certain facts that may prompt us to reconsider the conventional wisdom. Shortly after the war ended, these scholars were quick to document little known facts that tended to undermine the official story. More recently, former judge and author John V. Denson provided a summary of WWII revisionist scholarship, focusing on the circumstances surrounding America’s entry into the war. These works gather a mass of evidence indicating that President Roosevelt and his inner circle, including Henry Stimson and George Marshall, knew more about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor than they let on; and, furthermore, that they deliberately withheld crucial intelligence from the Pearl Harbor commanders until it was too late. (For evidence, see recommended reading list below.)
Defenders of the official narrative often claim that the people who find deficiencies in the story somehow insult the people who fought in the war. But this is merely evasion, a rhetorical maneuver that sidesteps the crucial question: What did Roosevelt know and when did he know it?
It should go without saying that in questioning the official narrative no aspersions are necessarily being cast on war veterans. However, given the prevalence of dishonest critiques of revisionist scholarship—critiques that typically involve attacking the messenger while ignoring the evidence—I believe it is necessary to state the obvious: The questions under consideration have nothing to do with the character of American servicemen or what they believed about the war. Rather the questions deal with what the chief executive knew. Revisionist inquiries into the true causes of war do not detract one iota from the bravery or patriotism displayed by people who fought in the war. They instead prompt us to reconsider the real reasons behind the conflict and the extent to which they deviate from the public statements of President Roosevelt and other high-level officials.
In the film The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), there is a scene that illustrates this tactic of sidestepping these important questions (see video clip above). The movie tells the story of three men returning home from the war and their struggles to adjust to civilian life. The scene focuses on a sailor named Homer. Homer wears metal clamps in place of the hands he lost in combat. Back in his hometown, Homer goes to a pharmacy and takes a seat at the soda fountain. There, he sees Fred, a fellow veteran who works behind the counter. Homer orders a sundae.
Seated a few chairs down from Homer is a man reading a newspaper. The man wears an American flag button on his jacket. He notices Homer’s “hooks” and strikes up a conversation. He laments that men like Homer had to make such sacrifices in the war. “And for what?” he asks. Puzzled by the question, Homer asks the stranger what he means by that. The stranger goes on to claim that President Roosevelt and the “radicals in Washington” deceived us into the war, and that the evidence for this is well documented. As the stranger speaks, he holds up the newspaper. He invites Homer to read for himself, urging him to learn the real reasons why he had to lose his hands.
But instead of giving Roosevelt’s critic a fair hearing and looking at the evidence, Homer has an emotional reaction. He scoffs at the man’s “Americanism,” rips off the button on his jacket, and attacks him. A struggle ensues. Fred, who has been watching the two men from behind the counter, leaps over the counter and restores peace by sucker punching Roosevelt’s critic in the face. The blow sends the man reeling backward and crashing into a glass display case. The scene ends with Homer picking up the man’s button, an American flag amid fragments of shattered glass. He puts the button in his breast pocket, placing it over his heart: a symbolic gesture of reclaiming the mantle of patriotic devotion. As he does so, orchestral music swells in the background, announcing triumph.
The scene is curious as it does little in the way of advancing the plot, representing a detour from the main action, despite being the most action-packed scene in the movie. The stranger leaves the story as abruptly as he enters it. He appears only to take a beating and be whisked away. Does he press charges against Fred? What evidence does he have for his views? Do these views ever get a proper hearing in a court of law or elsewhere? We never find out. The man is a disposable foil to the protagonist. It is almost as if the screenwriter forced this scene into the movie in order to make a point. Upon further reflection, the point of the scene may well be the opening shot in a propaganda campaign to discredit and vilify revisionist historians who would dare challenge the official war narrative.
After all, what does this scene convey to the audience? It suggests to them how they, too, might deal with people who question the official story. Questioning what we’ve been told is now grounds for punching someone in the face. While perhaps uncouth, the violence directed at the stranger is laudable. It is a sign of patriotism.
Here, “patriotism” is redefined and equated with conformity to the official narrative. (Note that uncritical acceptance of this story places it in the realm of mythology.) At the same time, the appeal to emotion that elicits in the viewer a strong, negative reaction reveals the propagandistic nature of the message (see Homer’s reaction). The emotional messaging sends a warning to those who would question the government’s version of events leading up to the war: If you dare question the government, you risk becoming the target of violence. Nonconformists who are willing to consider evidence to the contrary are to be held in contempt. They are not to be tolerated, let alone debated; they are to be silenced. No one is allowed to ask, “…And for what?” A redefined patriotism now requires us to put down the books and put up our dukes. The scene thus announces the arrival of a new kind of kick-ass “Americanism.”
Prior to the fisticuffs, Homer goads the stranger into admitting, however reluctantly, that he sees American war veterans as “suckers,” although it is Homer, not the stranger, who insists on using this uncharitable term. The stranger began by saying “we” were deceived, and “we let ourselves be sold down the river.” The “we” in those statements presumably includes the stranger himself. Chances are he, like most Americans, believed the official story at one time. He believed this story until he became aware of evidence to the contrary. (Here I speculate, of course.) Regardless, it is at this point in the dialogue that the screenwriter shifts our attention away from the charge against Roosevelt and the “radicals in Washington” and instead focuses it on something else: war veterans. In doing so, he suggests that the stranger’s rejection of the official story implies pro-Nazi sympathies and a low opinion of American servicemen.
We are thus led to believe that, by questioning the official narrative, we only succeed in providing aid and comfort to the enemy, while insulting the very people who ought to be praised. And we praise veterans foremost by accepting the state’s mythology. In other words, we “support the troops” by supporting the state officials who put them in harm’s way. And we must never question their motives for doing so. To question the motives of state officials is to join the enemy. “You are either with us or against us,” to quote a phrase. This propaganda can only have a chilling effect on Roosevelt’s critics and would-be dissidents, while encouraging hyper-conformists to police the thoughts of their intellectually curious peers.
Furthermore, the stranger’s insistence that the U.S. fought the wrong people reinforces the idea that the U.S. simply had to fight. Neutrality was not an option. Here, we see the screenwriter’s use of (controlled) opposition to present us with a false choice, further cementing into place a sacred cow assumption. There is no question that the U.S. had to enter the war. The only question here is which side the U.S. should have taken (and that, too, is not really up for debate).
The choice, however, is a false one, as shown by revisionist historians who point out that there was, in fact, a third option. According to these historians, the third (and best) option for Americans was to stay out of the war entirely and to watch from a safe distance the two Evil Empires bleed each other to death (the two Evil Empires being, of course, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union). It is therefore possible to question the official story and advocate neutrality without embracing fascism. But one does not get this impression while watching The Best Years of Our Lives, particularly the scene in question. We are supposed to accept the interventionist position and believe that there was no choice in the matter. America was forced into the war. Pearl Harbor settled it.
The interventionist position, of course, presupposes the validity of the official story: that Roosevelt and his inner circle were genuinely surprised by Japan’s attack; that, prior to the attack, Roosevelt acted in good faith to keep America out of the war and did not set the country on the path to war by deliberately provoking Japan into firing the first shot; and, finally, that if the U.S. had not entered the war, Americans would now be speaking Deutsche. It is beyond the scope of this paper to delve into the evidence and arguments that effectively torpedo each of these points. Suffice it to say that the revisionist works mentioned above convincingly raise doubts about the official narrative, to say the least. (For the revisionist critique, see recommended reading list below.)
That pro-Roosevelt propaganda would appear in The Best Years of Our Lives is perhaps not surprising when we learn that the screenwriting credit belongs to one Robert E. Sherwood. It just so happened that Robert E. Sherwood was a speech writer for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was by all accounts a fervent, pro-British interventionist and (not surprisingly) an apologist for Roosevelt (see Those Angry Days by Lynne Olson, another Roosevelt apologist). Sherwood was also the director of the Overseas Branch of the Office of War Information, a U.S. intelligence agency which specialized in war propaganda during World War II.
Sherwood was presumably one of the “radicals in Washington” who pushed the country into war (and I am presumably one of those nonconformists who deserve to be punched in the face). Now here he is screenwriting for a movie that enshrines the official story and violently rejects any evidence that raises doubts about that story.
A question occurs to the intellectually curious: Did Sherwood use The Best Years of Our Lives as a platform for launching a propaganda campaign against Roosevelt’s critics, using the character of Homer as a human shield to deflect criticism of the official war narrative?
I have my suspicions.
Of course, you, dear reader, can judge for yourself.
Recommended reading list:
Barnes, Harry Elmer. 1954. Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. Caldwell, OH: The Caxton Printers, Ltd.
(Read here.)
Beard, Charles. 1948. President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: Appearances and Realities. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
(Read here.)
Chamberlin, William Henry. 1950. America’s Second Crusade. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company.
(Read here.)
Denson, John V. 2006. A Century of War: Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute.
(Read here.)
Flynn, John T. 1945. The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor. New York: self-published)
(Read here.)
Olson, Lynne. 2013. Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight over World War II, 1939-1941. New York: Random House.(Read here.)