Great Wars and Great Leaders: a Libertarian Rebuttal

Great Wars and Great Leaders Great Wars and Great Leaders A Libertarian Rebual Ralph Raico Ludwig von Mie Intitute AUBURN,ALABAMA Copyright © 2010 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute Published under the Creative Commons Aribution License 3.0. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Ludwig von Mises Institute 518 West Magnolia Avenue Auburn, Alabama 36832 Ph: (334) 844-2500 Fax: (334) 844-2583 mises.org 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN: 978-1-61016-096-4 Dedicated to the memory of Murray N. Rothbard Lifelong mentor and friend Contents Foreword by Robert Higgs iii Introduction vii E 1 World War I: e Turning Point 1 2 Rethinking Churchill 53 3 Harry S. Truman: Advancing the Revolution 103 4 Marxist Dreams and Soviet Realities 143 5 Nazifying the Germans 157 R 6 Trotsky: e Ignorance and the Evil 165 7 e Two “Testaments” of American Foreign Policy 177 8 e Other War that Never Ends: A Survey of Some Recent Literature on World War I 185 9 Starving a People into Submission 197 10 John T. Flynn and the Apotheosis of Franklin Roosevelt 207 11 On the Brink of World War II 219 12 e Great War Retold 229 i Foreword by Robert Higgs For many years, I have described Ralph Raico as “my favorite historian.” When David eroux and I were making our plans in 1995 for the publication of a new scholarly quarterly, e Independent Review, and selecting the scholars we would ask to serve as associate editors, I knew that I would want one of them to be an excellent historian, and I knew also that the person I wanted most was Raico. I had complete confidence that he would bring to our project pre- cisely the combination of personal integrity, scholarly mastery, and sound judgment I needed in an associate. In the fieen years since then, I have never regreed that I prevailed on Ralph to serve in this capacity and that he graciously accepted my invitation. ree of the marvelous review essays that appear here were first published in TIR. Much earlier I had developed a deep respect for Raico as a scholar and as a person. I insist that these two qualities cannot be separated without dire consequences. Some scholars have en- ergy, brilliance, and mastery of their fields, but they lack personal integrity; hence they bend easily before the winds of professional fashion and social pressure. I have always admired Ralph’s amazing command of the wide-ranging literature related to the topics about which he lectures and writes. But I have admired even more his iii iv GREAT WARS AND GREAT LEADERS courageous capacity for frankly evaluating the actors and the actions in question, not to mention the clarity and wit of his humane, level- headed judgments. Academic historians, who long ago came to dominate the writing of serious history in the United States, have not distinguished themselves as independent thinkers. All too oen, especially in the past thirty or forty years, they have surrendered their judgments and even their aention spans to a combination of hyper-sensitive multiculturalism and power worship. ey tend to see society as divided between a small group of oppressors (nearly all of whom are, not coincidentally, straight white males engaged in or closely asso- ciated with corporate business) and a conglomeration of oppressed groups, among whom nonwhites, women, homosexuals, and low- wage workers receive prominent aention and solicitude. When the historians write about the economy, they usually view it though quasi-Marxist lenses, perceiving that investors and employers have been (and remain) the natural enemies of the workers, who would never have escaped destitution except for the heroic struggles waged on their behalf by labor unions and progressive politicians. When they write about international affairs, they elevate the “democratic” wartime leaders to god-like status, especially so for Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt— politicians whose public declarations of noble intentions the historians tend to accept at face value. Raico, in contrast, steadfastly refuses to be sucked into this ideo- logical mire. Having aended Ludwig von Mises’s famous seminar at New York University and having completed his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Chicago under F. A. Hayek’s supervision, he un- derstands classical liberalism as well as anyone, and his historical judgments reflect this more solid and humane grounding. For Ralph, it would be not only unseemly but foolish to quiver obsequiously in the historical presence of a Churchill, a Roosevelt, or a Truman. He knows when he has encountered a politician who lusted aer power and public adulation, and he describes the man accordingly. He does not sweep under the rug the crimes commied by the most publicly revered Western political leaders. If they ordered or acceded to the commission of mass murder, he tells us, without mincing words, that they did so. e idea that the United States has invariably played the role of savior or “good guy” in its international relations Raico recognizes as state propaganda, rather than honest history. FOREWORD v us, in these pages, you will find descriptions and accounts of World War I, of the lead-up to formal U.S. belligerence in World War II, and of Churchill, Roosevelt, and Truman, among others, that bear lile resemblance to what you were taught in school. Here you will encounter, perhaps for the first time, compelling evidence of how the British maneuvered U.S. leaders and tricked the American people prior to the U.S. declarations of war in 1917 and 1941. You will read about how the British undertook to starve the Germans —men, women, and children alike—not only during World War I, but for the greater part of a year aer the armistice. You will be presented with descriptions of how the communists were deified and the German people demonized by historians and others who ought to have known beer. You will see painted in truer shades a portrait of the epic confrontation between the great majority of Americans who wished to keep their country at peace in 1939, 1940, and 1941 and the well-placed, unscrupulous minority who sought to plunge the United States into the European maelstrom. Raico’s historical essays are not for the faint of heart or for those whose loyalty to the U.S. or British state outweighs their devotion to truth and humanity. Yet Ralph did not invent the ugly facts he recounts here, as his ample documentation aests. Indeed, many historians have known these facts, but few have been willing to step forward and defy politically popular and professionally fashionable views in the forthright, pull-no-punches way that Raico does. e historians’ principal defect for the most part has not been a failure or refusal to dig out the relevant facts, but rather a tendency to go along to get along in academia and “respectable” society, a sphere in which individual honesty and courage generally count against a writer or teacher, whereas capitulation to trendy nonsense oen brings great rewards and professional acclaim. ose who have not read Raico’s essays or listened to his lectures have a feast in store here. ose who have read some, but not all of the essays in this collection may rest assured that the quality remains high throughout the volume. Any one of the main essays well justifies the price of the book, and each of the review essays is a jewel of solid scholarship and excellent judgment. Moreover, in contrast to the bland, uninspired writing that most academic historians dish out, Ralph’s clear, vigorous prose serves as a tasty spice for the meaty substance. Bon appétit. Introduction e King of Prussia, Frederick II (“the Great”), confessed that he had seized the province of Silesia from the Empress Maria eresa in 1740 because, as a newcomer to the throne, he had to make a name for himself. is initiated a war with Austria that developed into a world-wide war (in North America, the French and Indian War), and went on to 1763. Of course, many tens of thousands died in that series of wars. Frederick’s admission is probably unique in the annals of leaders of states. In general, rulers have been much more circumspect about revealing the true reasons for their wars, as well as the methods by which they conduct them. Pretexts and evasions have proliferated. In today’s democratic societies, these are endorsed—oen invented —by compliant professors and other intellectuals. For generations, the unmasking of such excuses for war and war-making has been the essence of historical revisionism, or sim- ply revisionism. Revisionism and classical liberalism, today called libertarianism, have always been closely linked. e greatest classical liberal thinker on international affairs was Richard Cobden, whose crusade for repeal of the Corn Laws tri- umphed in 1846, bringing free trade and prosperity to England. Cob- den’s two-volume Political Writings (reprinted by Garland Publish- ing in 1973) are all revisionist accounts of British foreign policy. vii viii GREAT WARS AND GREAT LEADERS Cobden maintained that “e middle and industrious classes of England can have no interest apart from the preservation of peace. e honours, the fame, the emoluments of war belong not to them; the bale-plain is the harvest-field of the aristocracy, watered by the blood of the people.” He looked forward to a time when the slogan “no foreign politics” would become the watchword of all who aspired to be representatives of a free people. Cobden went so far as to trace the calamitous English wars against revolutionary France— which went on for a generation and ended only at Waterloo—to the hostility of the British upper classes to the anti-aristocratic policies of the French.

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