Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

This remarkable editorial was accurate (however
unscientific its way of putting it) as to the real world situation.
The "War to Save Democracy" was an obvious lie to
those who had none, whpse nations were enslaved by U.S.
imperialism. While there was no real support for either
German or Japanese imperialism, there was considerable
satisfaction among the oppressed at seeing the arrogant
Europeans being frightened out of their wits by their supposed
"racial" inferiors. One South Afrikan Boer
historian recalls:
"It seemed possible that the Japanese might capture
Madagascar and that South Africa itself might be attacked.
The Cape Colored people were not at all alarmed
at the prospect. Indeed, they viewed the Japanese victories
with almost open jubiliation. Their sympathies and hopes
were with the little yellow skinned men who had proved
too smart for the British and Americans." (8)
Nor was this feeling just in Afrika. In colonial India
the sight of the British "master" suddenly begging his
subjects to help save him from the Japanese armies, revealed
to many that their oppressor was a "paper tiger." The
British generals soon learned that their Indian colonial
troops were more and more unwilling to fight for the
British Empire. The Communist Party USA was so alarmed
at Afrikan disinterejt in fighting Asians that it issued a
special pamphlet for them recounting the crimes of the
Japanese Empire against Ethiopia, urging Afrikans to
honor "the alliance of the Negro people with the progressive
sections of the white population, "
The sociologist St. Clair Drake relates how even
among U.S. Empire forces in the Pacific, Afrikan G.1.s
would loudly root for the Japanese "zero" fighters
overhead in the aerial dogfights against U.S. settler
aviators. Robert F. Williams says that as a youth he heard
many Afrikan veterans returning from the Pacific express
sympathy for the Japanese soldiers, and even say that the
Japanese tried not to fire at Afrikans. And studying the
U.S. propaganda posters of dark-skinned Japanese trying
to rape blond Euro-Amerlkan women, Williams saw a connection
to settler propaganda against Afrikans. (9) None
of this was any approval for Japanese imperialism, but an
expression of disassociation from the Euro-Arnerikan oppressor.
To the oppressed masses of the U.S., British,
Dutch, French, German, and other Western empires, this
war was not their war.
It is important to deal with the nature of the U.S.
involvement in the war. Outside of the shallow and obviously
untrue "War for Democracy" propaganda, the
two main arguments for the war were: 1. It was a war for
European freedom, to defeat the Nazis and save the Soviet
Union. 2. It was a just war of self-defense after the U.S.
military was attacked by the Japanese Empire at Pearl
Harbor (the main U.S. naval base in its Hawaiian colony).
Both lines were often used together, particularly by the settler
radicals.
perhaps the U.S. lzmpire could have led a
Ucrusade in E ~ to defeat ~ Nazism, ~ ~ but it ~ didn't. " In
strict fact, German fascism was defeated by the Russian
people. U.S. global strategy clearly called for stalling as
long as possible in fighting Hitler, in hopes that Germany
and Soviet Russia would ruin and exhaust each other. As 92
late as April 1943, Soviet forces were fighting 185 Nazi
divisions while the U.S. and British Empires were together
fighting 6. The heart and muscle of the German Army,
almost 250 divisions, got destroyed on the Eastern front
against the Russian people. That's why the Russian
military lost 6 million troops fighting Germany, while the
U.S. lost 160,000.
The Soviet Union's burden in the alliance against
German imperialism was so visibly disproportionate that
some Western imperialists were concerned. South Afrikan
Gen. Jan Christian Smuts warned in 1943: "To the ordinary
man it must appear that it is Russia who is winning
the war. If this impression continues, what will be our
post-war position compared to that of Russia?
Finally, in the last six months of the war, the Allies
landed 2 million soldiers in France in order to get in on the
German surrender and control as much of Europe as possible.
Those U.S. and British divisions faced a vastly inferior
German opposition (only 40% as large as the Allied force),
because the bulk of Hitler's forces were tied up with the
main war front against Russia.
During the war the Allies kept paratroop divisions
in England, ready to be air-dropped into Berlin if Russia
finished off the Nazis before Allied armies could even get
into Germany. (10) U.S. imperialism's main concern was
not to "liberate" anyone, but to dominate as much of
Europe as it could once the Russian people had, at such
terrible cost, defeated Hitler.
Amerikan war plans included being careful not to
interfere with the Nazi's genocidal sterilization of Europe.
Indeed, Washington and London appreciated how convenient
it was to let Hitler do their dirty work for them -
getting rid of millions of undesirable Jews, Communists,
socialists, trade-unionists and dissenters.. This cleaned up
Europe from the iwperialist point of view. And Hitler took
the weight.
The Allies were notorious in blocking Jewish
evacuation from the path of the oncoming Nazi conquest.
Roosevelt refused to lift restrictions on Jewish immigration.
As the war approached, on April 23, 1939, the U.S.
State Dept. announced that quotas were so "filled" that
Jewish immigration was to be halted except for special
cases. Desperate German Jews were told that they had a
minimum six year wait, until 1945. The New Deal's vicious
attitude was displayed in their mocking statement that
Jewish "applicants of Polish origin, even those who spent
most of their life in Germany, will have to wait at least 50
years" to obtain entry visas to the W.S.! The same day the
Roosevelt Administration announced that no tourist visas
to Amerika would be issued to German Jews - only those
Germans with "Aryan" passports could greet the Statue of
Liberty.
During the war the U.S. rejected pleas from the
Jewish underground that they use bombers to knock out
the rail lines Lo the death camps (and even knock out the
Ovens themselves). Yet, On Sept. 13,1944 the U.S. 15th Air
Force bombed the I.G. Farben industrial complex right
next to Auschwitz death camp (a few bombs fell in
Auschwitz itself, killing 15 S.S. men and 40 other fascists).
Although this proved the U.S. military's ability to strike at