A Patriot's History of the Modern World

by Larry Schweikart

  Horror at the use of atomic bombs had tarnished the image of the United States in the minds of some, and even British historian Paul Johnson, who otherwise heaped praise on the Americans, likened the bombing (all civilian bombing, not just the use of atomic weapons) as the equivalent of terror. In fact, bombing of cities constituted a continuation of Clausewitz’s “total war” doctrine in place in every advanced nation since Napoléon’s time, and in the modern world, where civilians mass-produced weapons and the military used roads and railroads to move the machinery of war, it was not only inconceivable but impossible not to view civilians as part of the total war effort. Although British “area bombing” failed to achieve its reductions in industrial output, prior to 1942 all indicators pointed to it as effective in reducing the enemy’s ability to fight, if only by siphoning military resources from the Eastern Front. Atomic bombs were orders of magnitude bigger, but only in effect, not in concept. History had seen countless states and empires entirely eradicate enemies, to the point of leveling the cities that once existed.

  Nor did America or the West engage in the kinds of genocide or human rights abuses as a matter of policy that were characteristic of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or Communist Russia. Nowhere in the Western powers’ areas of occupation did concentration camps exist for the purpose of exterminating the enemy. Leftist historians point to the American internment camps for Japanese as similar. In fact, they were different in intent, operation, and, of course, result. Japanese-Americans’ life in the camps was no picnic. They lost property in the relocation. But they were not put into forced labor as were Stalin’s victims (even average Russians who merely disagreed with him), deliberately starved like the subjects in the Nazi camps, or experimented upon, as were the hapless Chinese tortured by the Japanese. Nowhere in the West did democratic institutions cease to function, even under the more repressive of FDR’s war orders; nowhere did free elections stop. Attempts to compare wartime actions in free societies to those of Communists and Nazis constitute nothing more than moral relativism at its worst, usually undertaken with the intent of minimizing or ridiculing American exceptionalism.

  Nor did America severely restrict American liberty at home under the guise of expediency or necessity to achieve wartime efficiency. Libertarians point to conscription, but the Selective Service Act was voted in by a representative democratic assembly of two houses of lawmakers. There was also rationing, but the government attempted to minimize its impact on the civilian population as much as possible by limiting the number of goods rationed to only the most critical for the war. As a result, the average daily caloric intake in the United States did not decline under rationing, and no one starved.

  Charity still reigned as a Christian principle, and the civilian population was not made to suffer purposefully to provide war materials or support. Actions in the United States were mostly voluntary, with ordinary citizens willingly purchasing war bonds to help defeat totalitarian aggressors. Wartime executions did not increase, either, and where the Nazis executed more than 30,000 of their own soldiers for various offenses, the United States executed just one in a military context, for the crime of desertion.128 Even as occupiers in Japan, American forces were instructed by General MacArthur not to eat scarce Japanese food. There is simply no moral equivalent in the way the United States prosecuted the war, either domestically or in battle in foreign countries, with the normal and widespread actions by the Communist or fascist powers. To say otherwise is simply mendacious.

  Internment of ethnic Japanese, both American citizens and aliens, during World War II has been held by those who would find fault in everything America does as evidence of institutionalized racism and inherent inequalities in the American republic. But such criticisms overlook the evidence in FBI files of actions supporting Japan by ethnic Japanese in the United States before internment, and that the internment was eminently successful in controlling an actual and potential fifth column. Similar internments of Italians and Germans, although in much lesser numbers, are rarely mentioned. And, of course, the Italians and Germans did not attack the United States at Pearl Harbor, and by so doing incur America’s wrath. Japan imprisoned Americans under exceedingly harsh conditions during World War II, and one wonders if Japanese leaders gave any thought at all to what might befall ethnic Japanese in the United States during the war due to their actions.

  As to the charge that Japan was forced into war and Pearl Harbor by the actions of Franklin Roosevelt, this hypothesis fails on all accounts. Even accepting the premise that FDR’s economic pressure triggered Japanese adventurism that bordered on national suicide, Japan had other options. In a very real sense, the potential for a Soviet and British collapse may have dictated FDR’s timing. Ultimately, however, the trade embargo with Japan came as a response to Japan’s domination of China. Japan had been acquiring Chinese territory and killing its citizens for ten years, and the alternative to a conflict with the United States was to withdraw from China. Instead, Japan forced a war on America to achieve the same aim.

  And finally, there is the leftist argument that the United States proved its moral bankruptcy at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This involves a “what if” theory, unprovable and untestable, against the reasonable belief in 1945 that an invasion of Japan’s four main islands was necessary to force a surrender. History cannot tell us how many Japanese would have died in that campaign, let alone the numbers of Americans and other casualties. Estimates run from a ridiculous and self-serving several hundred thousand, to as many as ten million or more. Against those numbers, Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s losses seem light. But again, Japan had alternatives to continuing the fight. Okinawa proved Japan could win only by causing the American public to lose heart by inflicting unacceptable casualties on Americans, themselves, and other nations. Even then, when surrender was an option to spare everyone further losses to no purpose, Japan chose to continue to fight. Only after the bombs demonstrated that Japan might be the only country to face enormous, even catastrophic, losses did Japan capitulate.

  America’s moral power was also clouded by the wartime alliance with Stalin’s hideous gulag-ridden Soviet Union, which had sided with Hitler at the outset, invaded Finland, crushed Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, shipped off thousands of repatriated prisoners to new concentration camps, murdered 14,000 Polish officers, spied energetically on its allies, and perpetuated as many atrocities as it later prosecuted as part of the victorious war crimes tribunals. Barbarities on the part of the Americans absolutely occurred, and enthusiastic researchers can find examples of a G.I. who shot a surrendering German or a Marine who sent a skull home.129 More often than not, however, such excesses were provoked by the behavior of the Axis themselves: the Japanese, in particular, simply refused to surrender, occasionally turning themselves into human bombs, and word of the execution of Doolittle raiders had already reached American ears. The Japanese had ordered the flyboys to write their final letters home before tying them to crosses and shooting three of them (others were given temporary reprieves).130 For the “Aryan Supermen” whom Hitler had convinced were destined to rule the world or the Yamato-damashii who were descendants of the gods and for whom all others were subhumans, atrocities by definition could not be extraordinary at all. It was par for the course, tasks that had to be performed to attain a position of international dominance. One wonders what new or different barbarities a clash between the Nazis and Knights of Bushido would have produced. Americans, however, were ordinary men pulled into dirty, violent, and bloody circumstances, and to concoct a moral equivalence between these competing societies is as dangerously misleading and false as it is stupid. As it had been expressed in 1776, American actions came at the end of a “train of abuses,” many of them disgusting in the extreme, and the remarkable fact of the Second World War was that the United States and her Western allies did not deal more harshly with the vanquished. And when it was over, the United States had protected much of the world with an umbrella of freedom heretofore unseen in the
annals of human conduct.

  As a hard peace settled across the world, the United States entered an era of growth and prosperity created by the golden accident of the global conflagration. In one of the rare times in history, a major nation was at the same time the world’s top producer and consumer. Over the next quarter century, America would dominate world trade and production as no country—or empire—ever had. Europeans, ravaged by bombs and bullets, would recover rapidly, but even at that they remained heavily dependent on American goods, and goodness, to survive. And to do so, they would embrace a soft state socialism that set them on a path to long-term bankruptcy and social collapse. Stalin’s Soviet Union would recover as well, but through a much different dynamic, its influence succeeding through a grip of iron, imposed from Moscow, reinforced by Lenin and Marx from the grave.

  Those exceptional American characteristics that had brought freedom to much of the world and which would soon extend an unparalleled prosperity to all non-Communist nations came with a structural kryptonite, in that the postwar systems all depended on the simultaneous moral and fiscal integrity of the United States yet also required lavish lending, heavy military commitments, and an American unwillingness to dominate the free world the way previous victors had. That postwar world asked of the United States that it share its resources unreservedly, restrain itself economically, and rebuild its former allies and enemies enthusiastically. More challenging still, the postwar society would demand freedom, not just for suppressed peoples within and without America’s borders, but liberation from the very structures and moral restraints that had produced the triumphs in the first place. A legitimate and long-overdue revolution in civil rights for minorities within America’s borders and an end to colonialism abroad would be accompanied by social upheavals that contained the seeds of decay for Western society. Wealth and leisure provided by America’s influences soon would erode the institutions and disciplines needed to maintain, let alone expand, wealth and leisure for others.

  Behind these demands and the theories under which the United States attempted to meet them was the astounding ignorance throughout the world and even among America’s elites of what had made America great and why and how it had achieved the dominant place it occupied. Foreigners seemed pathologically incapable of understanding American exceptionalism, the four pillars that produced it, and why their adoption was necessary to replicate the American miracle. Their difficulties in this regard were also excusable—they did not understand American society, and most frequently possessed none of the four pillars in their own countries. Yet they still attempted to apply such words as “liberty,” “democracy,” “republicanism,” and “freedom” to their own political structures and societies, and reproduced them by rote in constitutions. More reprehensible was the “nation building” that would be attempted by American elites through the imposition of American political and economic structures without first establishing a foundation grounded by the four pillars. Indeed, whole books have been written on the “myth” of American exceptionalism, usually making it one of the least understood phenomena in the United States.131 A great amount of work clearly lay ahead at home and abroad to foster the understanding of what would produce human dignity and prosperity, using the American way or any other.

  This would be the challenge of the next seventy-five years: to provide an umbrella of liberty and perpetuate American exceptionalism while allowing in just enough rain of difficulty and disappointment to remind Americans—and the world—that the era with which we all had been blessed was itself no golden accident.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  When Michael Allen and I began work on A Patriot’s History of the United States in the 1990s, we never contemplated the kind of success it has enjoyed. It has become better, printing by printing and edition by edition, thanks to the comments and, yes, corrections by our readers. This is exactly the kind of participatory technology/business that futurists have been predicting for a decade. One of those who appreciated Patriot’s History in its original form—but not without criticisms and corrections—was my coauthor on this book, Dave Dougherty. He has since become a friend, business associate, confidant, and writer on other projects. And the collaboration all began when I responded to his Amazon.com book review of Patriot’s History. Welcome to the future!

  Michael Allen has continued to be a source of inspiration, ideas, and suggestions on all the books, even those that do not bear his name. Thanks, Mike! David Limbaugh read early drafts of this book and encouraged me to see it through. As one can probably tell, I owe a great deal to the inspiration of Paul Johnson, who, as a nonhistorian, has written better history than many of the faculties at some of the best schools in America. Thanks to Philip Schwartzberg, who did a wonderful job on our maps and illustrations.

  The late Ed Knappmann was our agent on A Patriot’s History of the United States and all books leading up to, and including, this one. He is missed: a rare, up-front guy who never sold you a rainbow and never took no for a (permanent) answer. Since Ed’s death, Roger Williams has stepped in admirably and in every way possible maintained Ed’s high standards. We are in capable hands with Roger.

  Although she hasn’t worked on my books for five years, I still feel like Bernadette Malone Serton has been a voice of inspiration. Her replacement at Sentinel, Brooke Carey, and her associate, Natalie Horbachevsky…well, to say they’ve done a magnificent job on an immense manuscript is an understatement. They deserve much of the credit for the finished product. Thanks also to the entire publicity and publishing staff at Sentinel, and to Adrian Zackheim, who, as always, has run point on my projects.

  The success of the (now-trademarked) Patriot’s History series—it now includes a reader, a children’s book, and a television series in preproduction—owes a massive debt of gratitude to Rush Limbaugh, who interviewed me for his Limbaugh Letter in 2004 when A Patriot’s History of the United States first appeared, and to Glenn Beck, who in 2010 launched a one-man publicity campaign that drove the book to number one on the New York Times list. But while I can’t name them all, the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of homeschoolers who have used our books have played a critical role in shifting the marketplace for conservative (i.e., honest) history.

  Research and production of this volume was greatly assisted by my son, Adam Schweikart—who could be a great historian if he chose—by my friend Brian Bennett, by my brother-in-law Chris Castelitz, by Amanda Cruse, and by Cynthia King at the University of Dayton. UD has been extremely generous in providing everything from funding to release time, most of that due to the efforts of Dean Paul Benson and history department Chairman Julius Amin.

  Finally, my wife, Dee, steadfastly allows me isolation time to write, although strangely our intermittent shopping trips also permitted me extensive periods of reading, something that isn’t as easy to find as one might think.

  —Larry Schweikart

  Although it is not customary to laud one’s coauthor, I am indebted above measure to Larry Schweikart, not only for his work on this volume but also for his friendship and guidance. Although our relationship began in a most unorthodox fashion as he states, it has developed into close collaboration with daily phone calls and e-mails being the norm. I can’t imagine a better partner or having a more fulfilling working relationship.

  My interest in history began at the age of ten, when my brother Ralph gave me a book of biographies of famous persons to read. It stated that Alexander the Great had set civilization back one thousand years while Karl Marx was a great economic and political thinker. Even then, in 1950, I recognized spurious propaganda when I read it and began regularly checking books out of the Denver Public Library to read further. The next Christmas my parents gave me Life’s Picture History of World War II, followed in 1953 with Douglas Southall Freeman’s three-volume work, Lee’s Lieutenants, and Walter Goerlitz’s History of the German General Staff in 1954. That was supplemented by Statesmen of the Lost Cause from J. Howard Marshall, Jr.’s later wife, Bettye
Bohanon. In short, I was hooked on history at an early age and never took a college history course. Many of my parents’ friends and acquaintances took part in stimulating further reading on my part, and their names are too numerous to mention.

  In El Paso, where I lived for more than twenty years and was a professor of business–computer science, a close friend, Gary Thompson, guided me through dark times and encouraged me to produce several novels, which I made no serious effort to publish. More recently another friend has loomed large, Shirley Wunderlich. Following the death of her husband in January 2011, she has spent many hours reading my work and offering suggestions and corrections. She deserves my special thanks and appreciation.

  For the past ten years the continual requests for historical and political tracts from conservatives here in northern Arkansas have proven especially stimulating. The bedrock people who are the backbone of our country but scorned by our elites have an abiding thirst for historical knowledge and are the pond in which I swim. Hardly a day goes by in which I am not asked some serious historical question or to provide background for some current political issue.