ex-post-facto claim that WWII was ‘justified’ because it was necessary to ‘save the Jews’ from Nazi extermination. In fact, virtually nothing was done to save the Jews until the very final months of the war, by which time Hitler had managed to murder 6 million Jews, hundreds of thousands of Romani people, and countless Communists and physically and mentally disabled people. As Swanson documents, far from saving Jews, the U.S., Britain, and other nations, when they had a chance to rescue German and Austrian Jewry in 1938, rejected a call to open their borders to threatened populations. Of 32 nations meeting in Evian, France to discuss the humanitarian threat, only two -- Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic -- agreed to increase their Jewish immigration quotas.” --Dave Lindorff, independent journalist, winner of 2019 Izzy Award
“War is organized insanity played out with mass murder. Nobody knows this better than David Swanson. In this book, revealing the hidden history of even our so-called ‘just war,’ Swanson will hopefully shock and awaken enough of us to reject war for all time.” --Thom Hartmann, author and radio host
“David Swanson provides an abundant amount of well-supported facts that deconstruct the myth about the necessity of World War II and the resulting misguided national and global priorities. Once you see how Swanson lays the false notions about WWII to rest, it becomes much easier to be against war, against all wars.” --Patrick Hiller, Executive Director of the War Prevention Initiative
“Leaving World War II Behind, is a fascinating scholarly account of killing, orchestrated by wealthy corporations and industrialists. Read it to know why America has been and is the world’s leading killer in the name of money.” -- Helen Caldicott, Founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility
“There is no more important time in world affairs to face the truth about ‘the good war’ and get beyond the myths that continue to obstruct sensible conflict resolution. I am confident that my father, who fought in it, would agree. Read Swanson’s book— and talk to your neighbours about it!” --William S. Geimer, author of Canada: The Case for Staying Out of Other People’s Wars
“In Leaving World War II Behind, David Swanson brilliantly destroys the myth that even if war is generally a bad thing World War II was the good war. In a stunning, fact-laden exposition, Swanson demonstrates the systemic failures of the western governments together with their corporate enablers that generated the practices of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and concentration camps, empowering Hitler. Swanson shows incontrovertibly that it was an underlying drive to preserve capitalism and destroy communist encroachment that led to support for Hitler when he was eminently stoppable. Every serious citizen should read this book. There is well-documented information here you have probably never heard reported before, about the myths of war as well as solutions that will surely transform your view of the world.” --Alice Slater, UN NGO Representative of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Board Member of World BEYOND War, Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, and Global Council of Abolition 2000.
“David Swanson puts little known facts about the origins of World War II into a compelling argument that there are alternatives to wars, if the war money-makers don’t influence the politicians who can pursue the alternatives. He documents that the World War II ‘good’ war wasn’t as ‘good’ as our history books tell us, detailing the U.S. targeting of civilians; firebombing cities in Germany and Japan; insisting on total, unconditional surrender that lengthened the war with Japan; refusing to take steps to save the victims of the Holocaust in the concentration camps; and developing and using nuclear weapons that did not shorten the war and continue to threaten human existence.” --Ann Wright, co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience.
“David Swanson's latest, revelatory book, Leaving World War II Behind, challenges a long list of pervasive myths enshrined in both U.S. history books and Hollywood movies. Like a present-day Morpheus, Swanson invites readers to choose the ‘red pill’ that strips away the false matrix of morality from ‘The Great War.’ Swanson's 18 chapters (backed with more than 500 footnotes) expose scores of uncomfortable truths. Some examples: Hitler's rise was abetted by some of America's most powerful corporations and businesses. The U.S. ignored Japan's repeated offers to surrender in order to demonstrate the power of its new nuclear weapons. Wars are no longer waged for territory, Swanson notes: ‘they're waged for weapons sales, fossil fuels, lusts for power, and bragging rights.’” --Gar Smith, author of Nuclear Roulette and The War and Environment Reader
“David Swanson's new book on World War II is both about the potency of myth and the dynamism of choice. The myth of the ‘Good War’ has been powerfully destructive, and Swanson devastatingly demonstrates how dangerous the consequences of this myth have been. But as the book unveils example after example of U.S. militarism and environmental destruction, we are reminded that at every step along the way, people have had the power of choice. Sometimes that choice may be blunted by group psychological processes, but it still exists, omnipresently in the background. Swanson's book is an impassioned plea to choose nonviolence and pacifism as against war and aggression. Revulsion against fascism fueled U.S. national interests in promoting WWII as a progressive cause. If nothing else, Leaving World War II Behind shatters the illusions that buttress such a myth, as well as subsidiary narratives that promote other U.S. imperialist wars from the Philippines to Vietnam to Iraq. With the U.S. moving towards war with Russia or China or both, this is a book every activist and antiwar partisan will want on their bookshelf.” --Jeffrey Kaye, author and psychologist
“My only regret of David Swanson’s Leaving World War II Behind is that it was not available during the decades I taught high school social studies. Every American student should be exposed to the myths of World War II. Swanson’s Leaving World War II Behind offers teachers and students the opportunity to unmask accepted textbook falsehoods of the most damaging war ever.” --Jack Gilroy, Maine-Endwell High School, Endwell NY (retired)
“David Swanson's Leaving World War II Behind not only debunks many of the myths surrounding WWII as the ‘good’ war, it thoroughly eviscerates them. One doesn't have to agree with every facet of Swanson's interpretation or even his conclusions to realize that this book makes profound moral and historical arguments that need to be thought about, debated, and learned from if we are ever to end the vicious cycle of violence, bloodshed, suffering, and retribution that has marked our world since long before the Second World War and continues to pose an existential threat to humanity today.” --Peter Kuznick, Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University and co-author (with Oliver Stone) of The Untold History of the United States (books and documentary film series)
“In this age of endless wars, David Swanson’s mission to put an end to war has taken on a new urgency. He calls his latest book a moral argument, but he backs it up with carefully documented historical evidence derived from others and then shapes the evidence into a new polemic: Was the epitome of a good war (WWII) really that great -- and thus a reason why more ‘good wars’ are likely to be necessary? How many Americans know that Hitler studied some of the evils perpetuated in the US -- genocide of Indians, reservations (models for concentration camps) slavery, westward expansion, and racist laws to name a few--and incorporated them into his own diabolical vision of Aryan greatness? (‘Go East Young Man’ a German newspaper proclaimed). Or that powerful US corporations and their leaders collaborated with Nazis before, during and after the war to achieve a desired goal: the defeat of the Soviet Union? This, Swanson states confidently, is the ‘dirty little secret’ hiding in World War II: ‘the top enemy of the West ….was the Russian communist menace.’ And isn’t it still so? Swanson forces us to come to grips with the myths and lies that abound in all wars, including the supposed good war in Afghanistan, and challenges us to join him in peace activism because ‘mass murder is horrible,’ a notion that led him to becoming a determined peace activist in the first place. Perhaps Covid-19, which has stripped away the veneer of America’s exceptional ‘greatness,’ in so many way, will also yield a Renaissance of new thinking about the imperative to end all wars and use the savings to create a new, more just world. To this end, David Swanson has shown us the way and done so brilliantly.” --Charlotte Dennett, author of The Crash of Flight 3804: A Lost Spy, A Daughter’s Quest, and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil
“I like the logic here. Swanson lays out the logic of pacifism in a couple