GERMANY’S WAR: The Origins, Aftermath & Atrocities of World War II
by John Wear

Establishment historians characterize National Socialist Germany as a uniquely barbaric, vile and criminal regime that was totally responsible for starting World War II and carrying out some of the most heinous war crimes in world history. Germany’s … More
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Average rating 4.67 · 12 ratings · 1 review

Thomas Dunskus
Thomas Dunskus rated it it was amazing
over 5 years ago
Fools at war

This book is a synopsis of the political and military actions undertaken by the major powers involved in what, over a few years, would become World War Two. For a moment, I was wondering whether I should not knock off a star, because the arrangement of the sections could perhaps be improved, but then the text as such is so important that this material consideration does not really matter – hence five stars.

The first part deals primarily with Germany’s most powerful antagonists in WW2, the Soviet Union and the USA. The central portion of the text concerns illegitimate acts committed by these countries before, during and after the war, while the third portion deals with such actions on the German side.

Whereas, in the present book, the account of the preparations for a major war by the Soviet Union, both materially and strategically, is still based mainly on the works of Viktor Suvorov, a Soviet intelligence operative who defected to the UK in 1978, much of what Suvorov later published in the West has now been corroborated in full by a former high-ranking officer in the former East-German army, Bernd Schwipper, who speaks Russian fluently and has spent many in months in Moscow going through the war archives.

In his book “Deutschland im Visier Stalins” (Germany in Stalin’s gunsight) published in 2015, Schwipper clearly shows that in the period between the defeat of Poland by Germany and the SU in the fall of 1939 and the German invasion of the SU not quite two years later, the Red Army not only conducted any number of wars of aggression but was also preparing a major offensive against Germany and the rest of Europe that was about to be launched when the German army attacked the SU in late June 1941 .

Schwipper is uniquely qualified to present such a view as his perfect knowledge of the Russian language allowed him to study the Soviet files in the Russian archives in great detail; the reader of John Wear’s work can hence be sure that Wear’s analysis is bullet-proof. It would be highly desirable for Schwipper’s book to be published in English as well.

The manner in which the US prepared its entry into the war is better known, as the corresponding sources have been more easily obtainable, but Wear’s presentation is still valuable in that it provides us with an overall view of the details. The reader can see how obstinately the US – and FDR in particular – pursued a policy aimed at provoking either the Germans or the Japanese to fire the first shot and hence justify the US entry into the war. Various tactics were employed, be it the basically illegitimate supply of war material to Britain in various ways (e.g. “destroyers for bases”), the active cooperation of US forces with the British navy in securing transports to the point where German submarines were attacked by US ships before war had been declared, or, as early as October 1939, to allow only Soviet submarines to enter US ports in spite of the fact that the SU had just fought a war against Poland and annexed the Polish East.

Quite apart from such military measures, the US, in the summer of 1941, ordered the closing of all Japanese and German consulates in the country. At the same time, the US presented documents to the press which supposedly showed German plans to advance not only into South America, but into North America as well – clearly ridiculous forgeries, considering the state of German armaments at the time.

The author shows us that in spite of such unbelievable provocations, Germany remained inactive and that Roosevelt thus had to search for other means to justify an American entry into the hostilities – the Far East. The most blatant measure in this regard was the freezing of all Japanese assets in the summer of 1941 – months before the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor.

That raid eventually took place on 7 December 1941. It could have been warded off by the US forces stationed in the area. As the author shows, however, while the US government had deciphered Japanese messages and therefore knew that an attack was imminent, the local commanders, Adm. Kimmel and Gen. Short were not informed – clearly a criminal act which led to greater damage to the American fleet and thus impressed the public to the point that it eventually approved FDR’s policy. Now there was total war.

In the Second Part of his book, the author describes the crimes committed by the Allies against Germans, such as the levelling of German cities, the expropriation and expulsion of some 15 million Germans from their native lands that had been undisputed parts of Germany for centuries, or the horrifying conditions obtaining in the camps where the German soldiers were held after their capitulation. In order to justify such illegal treatment of the prisoners, it was decided by the Allies not to define them as “prisoners of war” but as “disarmed enemy forces”, which allowed any kind of arbitrary measures to be taken against them, with the result that a considerable number of the prisoners died in the summer of 1945, after the end of the hostilities and in spite of the availability of food in western Europe.

Conditions were particularly bad in US and French camps; in some of the latter camps prisoners were without shelter even in 1946. On the British (and, surpringly, also on the Soviet side) the situation never degenerated to such levels if the local situation allowed it. The reason behind the Soviet attitude was perhaps that for the SU, it was a war of classes, not against peoples as such and whereas Hitler’s regime was considered to be a true enemy, Germans as such were not. The long-term result of this point of view was that the SU strove to build up some kind of national feeling in East Germany after the war, whereas in West Germany, any such tendencies were squashed.

The expropriation and explusion of German civilians had been mapped out in 1943, i.e. before the crimes later laid at the Germans’ feet had taken place or at least before they had become known; the measures were finally sanctioned at Potsdam. The persons concerned were for the most part women, children and the elderly who were driven from their homes under the most apalling conditions. If we allot to each of the expellees a fortune – both personal (real estate, housing, etc.) and public (hospitals, schools etc.) – of only some 50,000 US Dollars at present prices, we reach figures that approach a level of close to 1 000 (US) billion dollars (10 to the power of 12). It is estimated that more than one million persons died as a consequence of these expulsions, because – while officially they were to be carried out in an “orderly and humane” manner – more often than not this was not at all the case, especially if the expulsions took place in the early postwar period,

Hitler’s government was aware of these plans and therefore attempted to anticipate them by evacuating the German population as the eastern front approached. This reviewer was among the people concerned, in a march that began in mid-January 1945 in central Silesia; the temperature never went much above 0 degF, even in daytime, during the first couple of weeks. The evacuation of the Auschwitz camp took place at the same time, those marches are now commonly called “death marches”.

In the last section of the book, the author deals with the crimes committed by the Germans during WW2, many of which have been extensively treated in postwar trials and are certainly established facts. For some reason and without much activity on the side of revisionists, specific figures have undergone a significant albeit slow decrease over the decades for some of the most (in)famous camps. Also, some sources are still contradictory, for example the English Wikipedia entry on the camps in former Eastern Poland states that these camps (such as Treblinka etc.) were equipped with crematoria, whereas the corresponding German entry (as well as much of the literature) clearly states that they were not. It would, obviously, be highly desirable for such differences to be eliminated by further research.

Looking at the events of WW2 today, with the benefit of hindsight, the reviewer is struck by oddities and sudden political changes in the early postwar period. To begin with, it must be remembered that Britain and France had gone to war in 1939 to save Poland and Chechoslovakia from German domination, but when the war was over, the Western Allies did not hesitate to turn these countries over to Stalin’s dictatorship for the next half century.

Also, within a couple of years, the western Allies realized that while they had won the war, the Soviet Union, their former major and highly appreciated ally, had rapidly become a new enemy in a conflict that would last for nearly fifty years: the “Cold War”. In the face of this unexpected situation, they rapidly changed their attitude towards West Germany: rather than weakening the country (as Morgenthau et al. Would have liked, they strengthened it, incorporated it into the new Alliance of the Virtuous (NATO) and helped the Germans to make it the strongest power in Western Europe – within a mere decade, the West German economy had surpassed Britain, to say nothing of France.

At the same time, though, the West had to make sure that Germany would continue to be an obedient nation; educational as well as legal measures where introduced to achieve this. However, as usual, there is no such thing as a free lunch, even though the bill maybe presented rather late: The German self-esteem, over something like two generations, has been broken to the point that, in the near future, the foreigners now drifting into the country may cause the center of Europe to collapse and the rest of the continent may well slide into the crater thus formed, simply because the Germans, like Goetz in Sartre’s play “The Devil and the Good Lord” are now trying to make up for their former sins and, in doing so, create situations that may soon become uncontrollable.

It reminds the reviewer of some lines written by Schiller:

“This is the curse of every evil deed
That propagating still, it brings forth evil”.
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https://www.unz.com/book/john_wear__germanys-war/
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John Wear articles https://www.inconvenienthistory.com/columnists/2873

John Wear was born July 11, 1953 in Houston, Texas. John graduated with a degree in accounting from Southern Methodist University in May 1974 and passed the CPA exam later that year. He graduated from the University of Texas Law School in December 1977 and passed the Texas bar in February 1978. John, who is currently retired, worked most of his career as a CPA. His most recent employment was from 1994 to 2008 with Lacerte Software, a tax division of Intuit Corporation.

John Wear is the author of the book Germany’s War: The Origins, Aftermath and Atrocities of World War II. This book is published by American Free Press and is also sold by The Barnes Review (TBR) and Amazon. John is also on the Board of Contributing Editors of TBR and to date has had 44 articles published by TBR. His work has been highly praised by Willis Carto, Paul Angel, John Tiffany and many others.

John has a new website located at https://wearswar.com/ thanks to the generous help of two friends. In addition to publishing John’s articles, this website has a Nuremberg Farce quote of the week section, a monthly Wears War movie review, and a Fake History Lie of the Month section. Readers are encouraged to sign up to receive new posts for free from this website by email. The goal of our website is to bring history in accord with the facts while being entertaining and enjoyable to read.