War, Peace, and the State
by Joseph R. Stromberg
I. Introduction
This essay lists essential historical readings on wars (and related matters) which have involved or affected the United States (plural), starting in 1776. The framework is a Rothbardian one, in which wars are not sealed off from domestic politics, the ambitions of state bureaucrats, economic life and motives, and ideological currents. The perspective chosen is broadly "revisionist," although general works are included which will add to the reader’s overall knowledge of the subject. I begin with a chronological listing of works dealing with America’s wars – hot and cold – and go on to a thematic listing of works on statism and war, propaganda, and unconventional war. Our goal is to present, in one place, a broad bibliography of works which go against conformist "liberal-internationalist" – and now one would have to add "neo-conservative" – readings of the history of US foreign relations.
"Revisionism" is, simply put, part of an ongoing improvement of our historical knowledge.
Any new interpretation, right or wrong, amounts to a revision of some previously accepted view. In the case of foreign affairs, revisionism is of critical importance. Each official reading of a war becomes an honored precedent to be referred to when debating any new situation which could give rise to war. Thus, US policy-makers typically believe, or pretend to believe, that any new crisis comes down to a case of Fort Sumter, 1861, or Munich, 1938. It follows, then, that whatever was done at such times provides valuable guidance. Anyone who doubts this is invited to note the many references to World War II, Pearl Harbor, Lincoln, and so on, which have filled the press since September 11, 2001.
Official readings can even be arranged into a seamless series exhibiting the same causes and, therefore, demanding the same or analogous responses. Thus is created a sort of "myth of the eternal return" with respect to US foreign relations. In this mythical world, the United States bumbles along amiably – and in utter conformity with international law and high-minded principles – for years at a time, when it is "suddenly and deliberately attacked" out of the blue, for no discernible reason, by forces of total evil. If the seamless web of US innocent-bystanderhood is broken, however, things take on a far different look. This is all to the good, as it makes possible a genuine understanding of our situation and, at the same time, makes it possible to think of alternatives to officially offered policy options, which are usually limited to sanctions, bombing, more bombing, or invasion.
The late Murray Rothbard made a useful distinction between "narrow" and "broad" revisionism as regards US foreign relations. Those of the former school concerned themselves with the causes of the two world wars. Without a broader framework such writers fell prey to the Cold War, or any other cause or crusade, provided only that it was unconnected with European affairs from 1914-1945. Broad revisionists, by contrast, concerned themselves with wars and the causes of wars, generally, and were thus led to question much conventional wisdom about states, international relations, and the formation of public opinion.
Thus, it is no accident that libertarians – with their critical view of states and state behavior – should be among those interested in war and imperialism, both of which represent a widening of state power – first abroad, and then at home. War and empire, whatever immediate benefits they confer on those in position to enjoy such benefits, multiply the opportunities for a state to extend its power over its "own" citizens and their wealth. Libertarians and classical liberals have not had this field all to themselves, however. Old-line Progressives like Charles Beard and Harry Elmer Barnes, for example, became great critics of the drive to intervention in 1939-1941, and found themselves allied with right-wing Republicans with whom they previously had little in common.
Similarly, Leftists and Marxists sometimes ask very good questions about the interest and motivation of political actors and states and do very useful research on the basis of such questions. We may profit from their work, while disagreeing with their ultimate values. Here, we are interested in useful books and essays which shed light on war and peace. There is not enough space to analyze or quarrel with the politics of each item listed. The discerning reader will have to make allowance for such things.
The net has been cast fairly wide here, in the direction of the broadest possible revisionism. Useful "mainstream" works are also cited from time to time. No pretense is made of providing "balance": the Court Intellectuals and the kept media dominate the discussion and finding their works is no hardship for readers unsympathetic with our purposes. The end product is, I hope, a politically varied but thematically focused list of readings on war, peace, and states.
II. General Histories and Diplomatic Histories
Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974) and Alexander DeConde, A History of American Foreign Policy, 2nd edition (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971) are mainstream works. More critical are William Appleman Williams, The Contours of American History (New York: New Viewpoints, 1973) and The Shaping of American Diplomacy, 2 volumes (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1956), William Appleman Williams, ed., From Colony to Empire: Essays in the History of American Foreign Relations (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1972), and Walter LaFeber, The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad Since 1750 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989). The Anti-Imperialist Reader: A Documentary History of Anti-Imperialism in the United States, 2 volumes, eds. Philip S. Foner and Richard C. Winchester (New York: Homes and Meier, 1984) is a useful collection of documents. See also, Arthur A. Ekirch Jr., The Decline of American Liberalism (New York: Atheneum, 1969), The Civilian and the Military: A History of the American Antimilitarist Tradition (Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles, 1972), and Ideas, Ideals, and American Diplomacy (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1966).
III. The American Revolution, 1776-1783
For the American Revolution, see William F. Marina, "Militia, Standing Armies and the Second Amendment," Law and Liberty, 2, 4 (Spring 1976), pp. 1-4, and "Revolution and Social Change: The American Revolution As a People’s War," Literature of Liberty, I, 2 (April-June 1978), pp. 5-39, which stress the role of partisan warfare in the struggle. [More will be added here, eventually.]
IV. The War for Southern Independence: 1861-1865
For the complex ideological, political, and economic causes of the "Civil" War, see Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War (Chicago: Open Court, 1996), Joseph R. Stromberg, "The War for Southern Independence: A Radical Libertarian Perspective," Journal of Libertarian Studies, 3, 1 (1979), 31-53, and John S. Rosenberg, "Toward A New Civil War Revisionism" in Gerald N. Grob and George Athan Bilias, eds., Interpretations of American History, I (New York: The Free Press, 1972), 459-479.
The essays in David Gordon, ed., Secession, State and Liberty (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1998) are very useful, in particular Murray N. Rothbard, "Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State," pp. 79-88. See as well Richard Gamble, "Rethinking Lincoln," pp. 135-144, Thomas Fleming, "Did the South Have to Fight?", pp. 145-154, and Clyde Wilson, "War, Reconstruction and the End of the Old Republic," pp. 155-167, all in John V. Denson, ed., The Costs of War, 2d ed. (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1999). Finally, Charles Adams puts revenue issues on center stage in When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession (Lanham, Mass.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).
For military aspects of the war, see R. Kerby, "Why the Confederacy Lost the Civil War," Review of Politics, 35, 3 (July 1973), 326-45, Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still, Jr., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), and Virgil Carrington Jones, Gray Ghosts and Rebel Raiders (New York: Henry Holt, 1956), James J. Williamson, Mosby's Rangers (New York: Ralph B. Kenyon, 1896 [reprint 1982])
For the war’s impact on civil and economic liberty, see Henry Clay Dean, Crimes of the Civil War and Curse of the Funding System (Wiggins, Miss.: Crown Rights Book Co., 1998 [1868]), Dean Sprague, Freedom under Lincoln: Federal Power and Personal Liberty Under the Strain of Civil War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), John A. Marshall, American Bastille: A History of the Illegal Arrests and Imprisonments During the Late Civil War (Philadelphia: T. W. Hartley, 1875), and Ekirch, The Decline of American Liberalism, chapters 8 and 9 (pp. 116-146).
Rise of Total War
Total warriors regard the enemy’s entire society as a legitimate target. For the practice’s origins in the 1860s, consult John Bennett Walters, "General William T. Sherman and Total War," Journal of Southern History, 14, 4 (November 1948), pp. 447-480, Lance Janda, "Shutting the Gates of Mercy: The American Origins of Total War, 1860-1880," Journal of Military History, 59, 1 (January 1995), pp. 7-26, Daniel E. Sutherland, "Abraham Lincoln, John Pope, and the Origins of Total War," Journal of Military History, 56, 4 (October 1992), pp. 567-586, and James M. McPherson, Drawn With the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), chapter 5, "From Limited to Total War," pp. 66-86. An interesting comparative symposium on total war is Stig Förster and Jörg Nagler, On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861-1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). See, as well, Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1977).
V. Rounding Out the Continental Empire
Robert Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building (New York: New American Library, 1980) and Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansion in American History (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1963) see 20th-century US empire as a continuation of forcible 19th-century expansion over land. The frontier theme is taken further by Lloyd E. Ambrosius, "Turner’s Frontier Thesis and the Modern American Empire: A Review Essay," Civil War History, XVII, 4 (December 1971), pp. 332-339, and Wilbur R. Jacobs, "National Frontiers, Great World Frontiers, and the Shadow of Frederick Jackson Turner," International History Review, VII, 2 (May 1985), pp. 261-270. Ernest N. Paolino, The Foundations of the American Empire: William Henry Seward and U.S. Foreign Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973) emphasizes the neo-mercantilist, economic side of things.
VI. 1898 and US Empire
William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: Dell, 1962), The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York: Random House, 1969), and The Contours of American History, Thomas McCormick, The China Market: America’s Quest for Informal Empire, 1893-1901 (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1967), Lloyd C. Gardner, A Different Frontier: Selected Readings in the Foundations of American Economic Expansion (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1966), and Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967) and "The World and the United States," American Historical Review, 100, 4 (October 1995), pp. 1015-1033, all view US imperialism as centering on neo-mercantilist economic objectives.
The birth of the US overseas empire is treated in Philip S. Foner, The Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism, 1895-1898, 2 volumes (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1972), Joseph R. Stromberg, "The Spanish-American War as Trial Run, or Empire Its Own Justification," in Denson, ed., The Costs of War, pp. 169-201, Walter Millis, The Martial Spirit (Boston: Literary Guild of America, 1931), and Walter Karp, The Politics of War (New York: Harper and Row, 1979). Robert L. Beisner, Twelve against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968) and William F. Marina, "Opponents of Empire: An Interpretation of American Anti-Imperialism" (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Denver, 1968) treat the opponents of US imperialism, one of whom was William Graham Sumner; Sumner’s War and Other Essays (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1914) remains very useful.
Stuart Creighton Miller, Benevolent Assimilation: American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), Walter L. Williams, "United States Indian Policy and the Debate over Philippine Annexation: Implications for the Origins of American Imperialism," Journal of American History, 66, 4 (March 1980), pp. 810-831, and John W. Rollins, "The Anti-Imperialists and Twentieth Century American Foreign Policy," Studies on the Left, III, 1 (1962), pp. 9-24, with comments by Harold Baron (pp. 24-27) and Thomas J. McCormick (pp. 28-33), deal with various aspects and outcomes of the 1898 war.
On late 19th and early 20th-century European and US imperialism, see such classic studies as John A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965 [1904]), Scott Nearing, The Twilight of Empire (New York: Vanguard Press, 1930), Scott Nearing and Joseph Freeman, Dollar Diplomacy: A Study in American Imperialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966 [1925]), and Parker Thomas Moon, Imperialism and World Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1930).
VII. World War I and US Intervention
Sidney Fay, The Origins of the World War, 2 volumes (New York: Macmillan, 1948 [1928]) and Harry Elmer Barnes, The Genesis of the World War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929) and In Quest of Truth and Justice: De-Bunking the War Guilt Myth (Colorado Springs, Colorado: Ralph Myles, 1972 [1928]) deal with the origins of the great disaster.
More recent studies include L.F.C. Turner, Origins of the First World War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1970), Joachim Remak, The Origins of World War I, 1871-1914 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), A. J. P. Taylor, A History of the First World War (New York: Berkley Publishing, 1966), Arno Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (New York: Pantheon, 1981), and James Joll, The Origins of the First World War (New York: Longman, 1992). Niall Ferguson, in The Pity of War (New York: Basic Books, 1999), is especially skeptical about British intervention in the continental conflict.
C. Hartley Grattan, Why We Fought (New York: Vanguard, 1929, reprint New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1969), Walter Millis, The Road to War, America 1914-1917 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1935), Charles C. Tansill, America Goes to War (Boston: Little, Brown, 1938), Walter Karp, The Politics of War (above), Ralph Raico "World War I: The Turning Point" in Denson, ed., The Costs of War, pp. 203-247, and the classic H.C. Engelbrecht and F. C. Hanighen, Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1934), examine why the United States entered World War I. Tansill’s The Purchase of the Danish West Indies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1932) looks at a neglected case of a big power intimidating a little power.
Carroll Quigley’s The Anglo-American Establishment (New York: Books in Focus, 1981) discusses US Anglophiles, while Robert Lansing’s War Memoirs (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1935) proves the point. Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975) and Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (New York: Doubleday, 1989) explore literary and cultural sides of the catastrophe. In Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), discusses World War I as the first "cubist war" (pp. 287-312). Finally, Arno Mayer, Wilson vs. Lenin: Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917-1918 (New York: Meridian Books, 1964) and N. Gordon Levin, Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America’s Response to War and Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968) show how ambitious US leaders sought to deal – this early – with their potential communist rivals for world power. For more on the ideological fallout of Wilson’s policies, see Paul Gottfried, "Wilsonianism: The Legacy That Won’t Die," Journal of Libertarian Studies, IX, 2 (Fall 1990), pp. 117-126. For a study of clerical opinion, see Richard M. Gamble, "War for Righteousness: The Progressive Clergy and the Great War" (PhD Dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1995).
Conditions on the Home Front
For Wilson’s reign of terror and the expansion of government during the war, see H. C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite, Opponents of War, 1917-1918 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957), Theodore Hornberger, "World War I and the Crisis of American Liberty," American Quarterly, 16, 1 (Spring 1964), pp. 104-112, and Ronald Schaffer, America in the Great War: The Rise of the War Welfare State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). For the role of progressive-statist intellectuals, see Randolph Bourne, War and the Intellectuals: Collected Essays, 1915-1918, ed. Carl Resek (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), Clarence Karier, "Making the World Safe for Democracy: An Historical Critique of John Dewey’s Pragmatic Liberal Philosophy in the Warfare State," Educational Theory, 27, 1 (Winter 1977), pp. 12-47, and
Murray N. Rothbard, "World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals," Journal of Libertarian Studies, IX, 1 (Winter 1989), pp. 81-125, and "War Collectivism in World War I" in Ronald Radosh and Murray N. Rothbard, eds., A New History of Leviathan (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972), pp. 66-110. For a caustic survey of the same topics, see H. L. Mencken, The Vintage Mencken (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), especially "Star-Spangled Men" and "The Archangel Woodrow," pp. 106-120.
Further Progress of Total War
Colin Simpson, The Lusitania (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972) and Ralph Raico, "The Politics of Hunger: A Review," Review of Austrian Economics, 3 (1989), pp. 253-259 deal with aspects of World War I as a total war.
VIII. Inter-War Years and The Fight Against Intervention, 1939-1941
Carl P. Parrini, Heir to Empire: United States Economic Diplomacy, 1916-1923 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969), Emily S. Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890-1945 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1982), and Stanley Lebergott, "The Returns to U.S. Imperialism, 1890-1929," Journal of Economic History, XL, 2 (June 1980), pp. 229-252, are useful for the interwar years. For essential background on the Middle East – soon to become an important US interest – see David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East, 1914-1922 (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1989) and Harvey O’Connor, The Empire of Oil (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1956). Murray N. Rothbard, "The New Deal and the International Monetary System" in Leonard P. Liggio and James J. Martin, eds., Watershed of Empire: Essays on New Deal Foreign Policy (Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles, 1976), pp. 19-64, and Robert Freeman Smith, "American Foreign Relations, 1920-1942" in Barton J. Berstein, ed., Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History (New York: Vintage Books, 1969) are important for the interwar years, especially the former.
William Appleman Williams, "The Legend of Isolationism in the 1920s," pp. 104-159 of The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, is essential reading. And see, on one important anti-interventionist, Orde S. Pinckney, "William E. Borah: Critic of American Foreign Policy," Studies on the Left, I (1960), pp. 48-61. On the "isolationist" movement, see Selig Adler, The Isolationist Impulse: Its Twentieth-Century Reaction (New York: Collier Books, 1961) (hostile) and Wayne Cole, America First: The Battle against Intervention, 1940-1941 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953), Manfred Jonas, Isolationism in America, 1935-1941 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966), Justus Doenecke, "Power, Markets and Ideology: The Isolationist Response to Roosevelt Policy, 1940-1941" in Liggio and Martin, Watershed of Empire, pp. 132-161 (much friendlier), and Manfred Jonas, "Pro-Axis Sentiment and American Isolationism," The Historian, 29 (February 1967), 221-237 (who finds very little such sentiment).
Other studies include Leonard P. Liggio, "Isolationism, Old and New – Part I," Left and Right, II, 1 (Winter 1966), pp. 19-35, Michele Flynn Stenehjem, An American First: John T. Flynn and the America First Committee (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1976), A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1998), and In Danger Undaunted: The Anti-Interventionist Movement of 1940-1941 as Revealed in the Papers of the America First Committee, Justus Doenecke, ed. (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1990).
Contemporary statements by "isolationists" include General Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket (Costa Mesa, California: Noontide Press, 1991 [1935]), Bruce Knight, How to Run a War (New York: Arno Press, 1972 [1936]), Charles A. Beard, Giddy Minds and Foreign Quarrels (New York: Macmillan, 1939) and A Foreign Policy for America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940), Edwin M. Borchard and W. P. Lage, Neutrality for the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), Porter Sargent, Getting Us Into War (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1941),
William Henry Chamberlin, "War – Shortcut to Fascism," American Mercury, LI, 204 (December 1940), pp. 391-400, Lawrence Dennis, The Dynamics of War and Revolution (New York: Weekly Foreign Letter, 1940), and John T. Flynn, Country Squire in the White House (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1940).
Thomas E. Mahl, Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-1944 (Washington: Brassey’s, 1998) deals with foreign agents of influence. For ideological currents of the period, see James J. Martin, American Liberalism and World Politics, 1931-1941, 2 volumes (New York: Devin Adair, 1964) and Justin Raimondo, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (Burlingame, Ca.: Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993), pp. 11-148.
IX. World War II: Causes and Consequences
General works on World War II include Captain B. H. Liddell-Hart, History of the Second World War (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970) and Esmonde M. Robertson, ed., The Origins of the Second World War (New York: St. Martins, 1971), as well as such revisionist works as A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (New York: Premier Books [Fawcett World Library], 1961[1965]), and Charles A. Beard, American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946) and President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: A Study in Appearances and Realities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948). See also, William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, "The War for the American Frontier," 160-200.
On the origins of the Pacific War, see A. Whitney Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938), Charles C. Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933-1941 (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952), Paul Schroeder, The Axis Alliance and Japanese-American Relations, 1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1958), William L. Neumann, America Encounters Japan: From Perry to MacArthur (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), Justus Doenecke, "The Debate Over Coercion: The Dilemma of America’s Pacifists and the Manchurian Crisis," Peace and Change, II, 1 (Spring 1974), pp. 47-52, and Thomas Breslin, "Mystifying the Past: Establishment Historians and the Origins of the Pacific War," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 8, 4 (October-December 1976), pp. 18-36.
Pearl Harbor Debate
The growing literature on Pearl Harbor includes George Morgenstern, Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War (New York: Devin Adair, 1947), Rear Admiral Robert A. Theobald, The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor (New York: Devin Adair, 1954), Husband Edward Kimmel, Admiral Kimmel's Story (Chicago: Regnery, 1955), Harry Elmer Barnes, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 1953), and "Pearl Harbor After Half a Century," Left and Right, IV (1968), pp. 9-132, reprinted as Pearl Harbor After Half a Century (New York: Arno Press, 1972), Ronald Radosh, "Democracy and the Formation of Foreign Policy: The Case of FDR and America’s Entrance into World War II," Left and Right, III, 3 (Autumn 1967), pp. 31-38, Bruce R. Bartlett, Cover-Up: The Politics of Pearl Harbor, 1941-1946 (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978), John Toland, Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982), James Rusbridger and Eric Nave, Betrayal at Pearl Harbor: How Churchill Lured Roosevelt into World War II (New York: Summit Books, 1991), Robert Smith Thompson, A Time for War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Path to Pearl Harbor New York: Prentice Hall, 1991), and Robert B. Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor (New York: Free Press, 1999).
William Henry Chamberlin, America's Second Crusade (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1950), George N. Crocker, Roosevelt’s Road to Russia (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1959), and William L. Neumann, "Roosevelt’s Foreign Policy Decisions, 1940-1945," Modern Age (Summer 1975), pp. 272-284, are critical assessments of US participation in the war. For arguments that US entry was unnecessary, see Bruce M. Russett, No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the United States' Entry into World War II (New York: Harper & Row, 1972) and Patrick J. Buchanan, A Republic Not an Empire: Reclaiming America’s Destiny (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1999), pp. 231-298.
John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1944) and The Roosevelt Myth (San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1998 [1948]), Dwight MacDonald, Memoirs of a Revolutionist (New York: Meridian Books, 1958), Richard Drinnon, Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Myer and American Racism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), and Thomas J. Fleming, The New Dealers’ War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the War Within the War (New York: Basic Books, 2001), treat some domestic consequences of the war. For a collection of Flynn’s antiwar (and other) essays, see Gregory P. Pavlik, Forgotten Lessons: Selected Essays of John T. Flynn (Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: Foundation for Economic Education, 1996).
For displacement of the British empire by the US, see Gabriel Kolko, The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-1945 (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), John Charmley, Churchill’s Grand Alliance: The Anglo-American Special Relationship, 1940-1957 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995), and Ralph Raico, "Rethinking Churchill" in Denson, ed., The Costs of War, pp. 321-360
Total War and World War II
For World War II as a high point of total war – in theory and practice – see F.J.P. Veale, Advance to Barbarism: The Development of Total Warfare from Sarajevo to Hiroshima (Appleton, Wisconsin: C. C. Nelson Publishing Co., 1953), Capt. Russell Grenfell, Unconditional Hatred: German War Guilt and the Future of Europe (New York: Devin Adair, 1958), David Irving, The Destruction of Dresden (New York: Ballantine Books, 1965), William L. Neumann, "Hiroshima Reconsidered," Left and Right, II, 2 (Spring 1966), pp. 33-38, James J. Martin, Revisionist Viewpoints: Essays in a Dissident Historical Tradition (Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles, 1971), "The Bombing and Negotiated Peace Questions – in 1944," pp. 71-124, Barton J. Bernstein, "Hiroshima Reconsidered – Thirty Years Later," Foreign Service Journal (August 1975), pp. 8-34, and "Wrong Numbers," The Independent Monthly (July 1995), pp. 41-44, and Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and the Origins of the Arms Race (New York: Vintage Books, 1987). Elbridge Colby, "Aerial Law and War Targets," American Journal of International Law, 19, 4 (October 1925), pp. 702-715, gives a rationale for future Anglo-American bombing practices before the fact.
US Wartime Planning Foretells the Cold War Order
How US imperial wartime planning presaged the Cold War is explained in William Appleman Williams, "The Large Corporation and American Foreign Policy," in David Horowitz, ed., Corporations and the Cold War (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), 71-104, and, in the same volume, Lloyd C. Gardner, "The New Deal, New Frontiers, and the Cold War: A Re-examination of American Expansion, 1933-1945," pp. 105-141, and David W. Eakins, "Business Planners and America’s Postwar Expansion," pp. 143-171; these essays complement those in Liggio and Martin, Watershed of Empire cited above.
See, as well, Lloyd C. Gardner, Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), James J. Martin, "‘Defense’ Origins of the New Imperialism,’" in Revisionist Viewpoints, pp. 1-27, Noam Chomsky, "Intervention in Vietnam and Central America: Parallels and Differences," Monthly Review, 37, 4 (September 1985), pp. 1-29, and Melvin Leffler, "The American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945-1948," American Historical Review, 89, 2 (April 1984), pp. 346-381. See as well Clyde Wilson, "Global Democracy and American Tradition," Intercollegiate Review, 24, 1 (Fall 1988), pp. 3-14.
