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The Myth of America's Heroic Participation in the Global War on Fascism

A Personalized History Talk

Early on, I of course meant December 7, 1941, not December 7, 1942 (Pearl Harbor).

Apparently the Trump movie The Apprentice did in fact finally get released in the US one month or so before the election. Pretty/too late, I’d say); I didn’t find it anywhere. Here is a fascinating interview with the movie’s director Ali Abbasi and executive producer James Shani.

Some books mentioned in this talk:

C. H. George, Journey to Dachau: An American Soldier’s Odyssey (New York: Vantage Press, 1996).

William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York: Simon & Schuster, [1961] 2011/reissue )

William Shirer, The Nightmare Years, 1930-1940 (Rosetta Books, reissued in 2014 ).

Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here ( 1935 ).

On Operation Torch, see a useful intro here, including this accurate statement: “The Allied invasion of French North Africa in November 1942 was intended to draw Axis forces away from the Eastern Front, thus relieving pressure on the hard-pressed Soviet Union. The operation was a compromise between U.S. and British planners as the latter felt that the American-advocated landing in northern Europe was premature and would lead to disaster at this stage of the war.”

The specific November Allied fiasco in the Port of Oran (Operation Reservist) in which my Uncle Connie and many others were killed by Vichy forces, is usefully discussed here. Of the two ships whose crews were slaughtered — the HMS Walney and the HMS Hartland — Connie was on the second one.

A US militarist website acknowledges that Hitler had named his train “Amerika” in honor of “the destruction of Native Americans by western settlers.” After Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into the global war, Hitler changed the train’s name from Führersonderzug Amerika to Führersonderzug Brandenburg.

See this for a useful online intro to how the Third Reich policy architects was inspired by the US Jim Crow regime but also with how the US denied citizenship to conquered Native Americans, Filipinos, and Puerto Ricans.

“Operation Paperclip” — the technical and scientific arm of US Nazi rehabilitation and incorporation — is usefully described here on Wikipedia.

The remarkable French Village series I mentioned (highly recommended) is marketed here. Every single episode is available at the Iowa City Public Library. It ran eight years and was very popular in France. It shows remarkable attention to historical accuracy on various levels. Very interesting to watch the episode set in early November 1942 and see the hope sparked in anti- and non-fascist villagers by news that my uncle and thousands of other Allied troops are invading Vichy-contolled ports in North Africa. It is the French non- and anti-fascists’ second big morale boost; the first one was news of Hitler’s mad invasion of the Soviet Union, which they see as taking some pressure off the French and which French communists see as requiring phyical assaults on the occupying forces and their Vichy collaborators. The Third Reich officers and soldiers occupying the village live in dread of being sent to the Eastern and Russian front.